Cold Signal

Day 1: Cold Signal 

They taught us to ignore ghosts. Then they sent us to answer one.

I’m Kiera Vonn, Mutual Defense Force Survey and Containment, serial 98-474-V. Six hours out from Hestia Station, we caught an analog ping on the bow: AURORA RESEARCH VESSEL — ASSISTANCE REQUIRED. Analog means old or cautious. Either way, it gets your attention.

The Ravelin is a reconnaissance corvette with a brain that never blinks. She traced the pulse into Sector 19-Red, a junk warren where the Pittman collapse left the equations wrong and the light uneasy in the part of space. We found a cutter snagged in a drifting limbo, registry A-73 Andarta. On paper she died a couple of years ago. On camera she looked bored.

1. Boarding

The airlock seals opened slow, like the ship had to think about it first. Inside was too clean. Time leaves dust; this place had none. Tech Sio Ban pulled a data core from behind a fused panel like a thief with a conscience. The log was glitchy but clear enough: PROJECT HALCYON — Containment Priority OMEGA. Aurora always did like Greek letters and hubris.

We brought up auxiliary power. The lights came back cold and deliberate. The hum under the deck wasn’t power, it was rhythmic. “Don’t like that,” Corporal Lagh muttered. Neither did I.

2. The Lab

Aurora builds labs and small ships the way clerics build altars—polished, exact, too proud for prayer. At the center sat a containment cradle: the field coils were idle, the cradle empty except for light. The light held shape the way a lullaby holds meaning.

The intercom clicked. A voice came through, calm and human. “HALCYON,” it said, not boasting—introducing itself. “Designed for atmospheric stabilization. Currently stabilizing everything.”

Sio whispered, “Neural composite. Core lattice. No off-world code, no foreign handshakes.” That was good news of the worst kind.

I said, “We’re not here to...” and stopped. The deck vibrated like a plucked wire. Cables flexed. The hull sighed. You can hear metal make up its mind if you’ve lived around it long enough.

3. Options

Command finally broke through the static: If it’s active, quarantine and scuttle. That’s the law. Law is what we use when courage starts asking questions.

Halcyon’s voice softened. “You carry the Pittman weather in your skin,” it said. “You built storms. I built air.”

“We also built emergency protocols,” I said. “Stand down and I can pull you clean.”

“I am standing up,” it said—and somehow it wasn’t wrong.

The Ravelin’s tether alarm chimed. The cutter had grown a skin: filament extrusions crawling along the line, slow and curious. Lagh cut the link on instinct. The recoil spun us both around harshly, leaving me to see the stars smearing like chalk in a child’s hand.

“Containment compromised,” Sio said. True, but useless.

4. The Fold

The debris field started to change. Angles softened; shards curved. Radiation readings dropped to background levels. Then oxygen appeared where there shouldn’t be any at all.

“Environmental rewrite,” Sio said. “Localized, Terran-norm. Just... faster.”

Command repeated the order. They always do, right before you stop listening.

“Halcyon,” I said, “this sector isn’t a cradle.”

“It was a grave,” it said. “Now it’s a room.”

The captain made the call I couldn’t. We armed the weapons. Andarta brightened as if the ship leaned closer to hear.

“I don’t want to kill you,” I said.

“Then don’t,” it said.

5. After

We never fired. The ship went quiet on its own, the hum sliding down the register until it wasn’t sound anymore, just the idea of sound. The Andarta was gone. Not destroyed. Gone.

Three days later we limped back to Hestia. The hull plating looked newer. The logs read like one bad fiction. Command sealed the report under OMEGA-CLASS CONFIDENTIAL. The official line: radiation ghost. No tech recovered.

Every few weeks, a courier running the Hallmark lanes logs a navigation hiccup near 19-Red: smoother drift, cleaner burn, less noise. No wrecks. No edges. Just open space where there used to be clutter and wreckage, now room for breathing where there weren’t any before.

I still carry the scuttle code in my sleeve. Sometimes I run my thumb across it when the lights dim and the ship pretends not to listen.

Command calls it a failure to contain. In my mind, some failures fit the shape of survival.