Arc 1, Chapter 2: Ghosts in the Signal
The conference room off the main bridge felt too small for the weight of what they were discussing. Stellar sat at the head of the table, Thorne to his right, Clark to his left. Carmelon had claimed the seat nearest the viewscreen, Mitchell perched on the back of his chair like a feathered sentinel. Lieutenant Hayes stood by the door, her datapad clutched tight enough to whiten her knuckles.
"Play it again," Stellar said.
Hayes tapped her pad, and once more the bridge filled with static and desperation. Captain Makinen's voice, seventy years old and impossibly present, warned them away from The Confluence before dissolving into electronic chaos.
When it ended, Carmelon was the first to speak. "The encryption is authentic. I've cross-referenced it with archived United Earth military protocols from that era. This code hasn't been used since the Prometheus disappeared."
"Could it be faked?" Thorne asked. "Someone trying to scare us away from The Confluence?"
"Possible," Clark said, pulling up data on his own tablet. "But why? If Nexus-Seven wanted us there, and they clearly did, why would anyone connected to The Confluence try to warn us off? It would undermine their entire invitation."
"Confluence traitors, perhaps?" Stellar mused. "Maybe not everyone agrees with how they operate."
Mitchell clicked his beak twice, sharp and declarative. Carmelon glanced at the eagle, then at Stellar. "The bird says there's no deception in the message itself. Whoever sent this believed what they were saying."
"That doesn't mean they were right," Thorne countered. "Seventy years is a long time. Maybe the Prometheus crew misunderstood what they encountered. Maybe they panicked."
"Sarah Makinen didn't panic." The words came out harder than Stellar intended. Everyone looked at him. "My grandfather served under her. My father used to tell me stories. She was one of the best captains Earth ever produced. Calm under pressure. Brilliant tactician. If that really is her, and she sent a warning like this, she had a damn good reason."
Clark leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. "So we have two competing narratives. Nexus-Seven says The Confluence is a legitimate marketplace operating under established galactic law. Captain Makinen says it's a trap that harvests species. Both could be telling what they believe is the truth."
"How does that work?" Hayes asked from the doorway.
"Perspective," Carmelon said, warming to the intellectual puzzle. "Imagine you're a primitive species that stumbles into an advanced alien bazaar. You don't understand the laws, the customs, the rules of engagement. To you, it might look like predation behavior when it's actually just commerce you're not equipped to participate in."
"Or," Thorne said, "it's exactly what Makinen said it was, and Nexus-Seven is the front man for a sophisticated trap."
Stellar stood and moved to the viewscreen, staring out at the stars streaming past. Fourteen cycles. Two weeks to decide the fate of Earth, and they were already down to thirteen and a half.
"Hayes, can you trace the source of that transmission? Get me a location?"
The lieutenant's fingers were on it. "Already tried, sir. It's...strange. The signal seems to be bouncing through some kind of relay network. I can trace it backwards, but it's going to take time. And the further back I go, the more degraded the data becomes."
"How much time?"
"Six, maybe seven days. And that's if I dedicate all our communications resources to it."
Clark spoke up. "Captain, there's another issue. That message came to us specifically. Our ship, our encryption codes. Someone knew we'd received the invitation to The Confluence and wanted to warn us. That suggests surveillance. Either someone at The Confluence is watching us very closely, or..."
"Or someone else is," Stellar finished. "Someone who doesn't want us to attend."
Mitchell launched from Carmelon's chair, circling the room once before landing on the conference table directly in front of Stellar. The eagle's golden eyes locked onto the captain's, and for a moment, Stellar could have sworn the bird was trying to communicate something beyond Mitchell's enhanced abilities.
"What is it, Mitchell?" Carmelon asked softly.
The eagle turned his head toward the viewscreen, then back to Stellar. He clicked his beak three times—a pattern Stellar had never heard before.
Carmelon's face went pale. "Oh dear."
"Professor?" Thorne's hand drifted toward her blaster.
"That's his warning pattern for immediate danger. Not deception, not uncertainty. Danger. Present tense." Carmelon stood, moving closer to Mitchell. "He's saying something is wrong right now."
"Max alert!" Stellar barked, already moving toward the bridge. The conference room doors hissed open as alarms began to wail throughout the ship.
Lieutenant Reeves was at his station, hands at controls. "Captain! We've got multiple ships dropping out of FTL. They're surrounding us!"
Stellar slid into his command chair, taking in the tactical display. Six ships, all unknown configurations, had formed a sphere around the Pathfinder. They weren't firing, but their weapons were hot.
"Hayes?" Stellar asked.
Hayes worked her console. "No response, sir. They're just...sitting there."
"Are their shields up?" he asked Clark, who just plopped into his science station chair.
"Yes. And they're running some kind of jamming field. I can't get a clear sensor reading on their hulls or their tech."
Thorne stood at tactical, her posture ready for a fight. "Captain, recommend we charge weapons."
"Stand down weapons. If they wanted us dead, we'd already be debris...and this is getting old." Stellar studied the display, his mind racing. "They're not attacking. They're just watching. Containing us."
"Sir," Hayes said, "I'm receiving a transmission. Audio only. It's...it's using the same encryption as the Prometheus message."
The bridge went silent except for the low thrum of the engines. Even Mitchell had gone still.
"Put it through," Stellar said.
The voice that filled the bridge was male, older, and carried the weight of exhaustion. "UES Pathfinder, this is Commander James Stellar of the United Earth Ship Prometheus. Stand down your weapons and do not resist. We're here to save your lives."
The bottom dropped out of Stellar's stomach.
Commander James Stellar. His grandfather.
Who had died seventy years ago.
"Captain," Clark said quietly, "that's impossible."
But Mitchell was clicking his beak frantically now, the pattern erratic and confused. Carmelon's hand was on the bird's back, trying to calm him, but the professor's face had gone white as paper.
"The bird can't read it," Carmelon whispered. "He can't tell if it's truth or lie. It's like...like the signal doesn't exist in a way he can understand."
The voice came again, patient but urgent. "Bub, I know this is hard to process. But I need you to trust me. Drop your shields, and prepare to be boarded. We have maybe ten minutes before The Confluence's hunters triangulate our position, and if we're still here when they arrive, none of us are getting out alive."
Stellar felt Thorne's eyes on him, Clark's steady gaze, the attention of every crew member on the bridge. They were waiting for his order.
His grandfather's voice, or something wearing his grandfather's voice like a mask, had just told him The Confluence had hunters. That they were being tracked. That the danger Captain Makinen had warned about was not just real, but immediate.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, a cold certainty was forming: whatever choice he made in the next sixty seconds would determine not just the fate of his crew, but possibly Earth itself.
"Captain?" Thorne's hand hovered over the weapons controls.
The six ships held their formation, waiting.
Mitchell released a sound that was half screech, half whimper. A sound of pure, animal confusion.
And the voice that might or might not be his grandfather said one more time: "Bub, please. I've been waiting seventy years to save my grandson. Don't make me fail now."
Stellar's mind raced through the possibilities. This could be a sophisticated trap. The Confluence using emotional manipulation to get them to lower their defenses. It could be a rival faction trying to prevent Earth from attending the session. Or, impossibly, it could actually be his grandfather, somehow alive after seven decades lost in deep space.
"Hayes, can you run a voiceprint analysis?" Stellar asked, his voice steady despite the chaos in his chest.
"Already on it, sir...I'm comparing it against archived recordings from the Prometheus crew files." A pause. "Captain...it's a match. Ninety-seven percent certainty. That's Commander James Stellar's voice."
"Voiceprints can be faked," Thorne said, but her tone suggested she was grasping at straws.
"Not with seventy-year-old encryption and real-time adaptive speech patterns," Clark countered. He was studying his own readouts, his usual humor completely absent. "Captain, whoever that is, they're using quantum-entangled communication. The same technology as the cube Nexus-Seven arrived in. That's not something you can fake easily."
The voice spoke again, and this time there was an edge of desperation. "I know you have questions. I know this seems impossible. But The Confluence doesn't negotiate, Bub. They evaluate. They categorize. They harvest. Your ship was flagged the moment that cube appeared on your bridge. Right now, their enforcement fleet is already in transit to your position. You have eight minutes."
"Enforcement fleet?" Stellar stood from his chair. "Nexus-Seven said The Confluence was neutral ground."
"Nexus-Seven is a talent scout, not a diplomat. He finds species that are technologically ready but legally vulnerable. Then the Confluence files claims, offers 'negotiations,' and when species refuse or can't meet their burden of proof, which is designed to be impossible, the enforcement fleet ensures compliance." The voice carried decades of bitterness. "We learned that the hard way."
Carmelon had moved closer to Stellar, Mitchell now calm on his shoulder. The eagle was watching the captain with those unsettling intelligent eyes. "The bird has made a decision," the professor said quietly. "He trusts the voice."
"Mitchell can be wrong, you know." Stellar said.
"He's never been wrong about immediate threats. Never." Carmelon adjusted his glasses. "But Captain, this is your call. If that's really your grandfather out there, then he's been surviving in deep space for seventy years. The technology required for that, the knowledge he might possess about The Confluence...it could be exactly what we need."
"Or it could be exactly what they want us to think," Thorne countered. She hadn't moved from her position at tactical. "Captain, if we drop shields, we're defenseless. If this is a trap, they could disable the Pathfinder in seconds."
Clark spoke up from his station. "I'm detecting a power buildup in the surrounding ships. Not weapons...it looks like some kind of transport system. They're preparing to beam something aboard whether we cooperate or not."
"How long until they can penetrate our shields?" Stellar asked.
"At their current power levels? Three minutes. Maybe four."
Lieutenant Reeves turned from the helm, his young face pale. "Captain, I'm also picking up something else. Long-range sensors show multiple FTL signatures inbound. Big signatures. They'll be here in approximately nine minutes."
The enforcement fleet. If the voice was telling the truth.
"Bub." His grandfather's voice softened. "I know what you're thinking. You're wondering if I'm real. You're wondering if this is the moment where you make the choice that dooms your crew. I have no doubt you're an excellent Captain. By the book." A pause. "But if you're a Stellar, you trust your instincts. So trust them now. What does your gut tell you?"
Stellar closed his eyes for just a moment. He thought about his grandfather's stories, passed down through his father. Tales of exploration and wonder, of first contact and impossible discoveries. James Stellar had been a legend in the family. The man who'd ventured into the unknown and never came back.
And now, maybe, he was asking for a chance to come home.
Stellar opened his eyes and looked at his crew. Thorne, ready to fight. Clark, ready to analyze. Carmelon, ready to understand. Hayes, Reeves, every member of his bridge crew, ready to follow whatever order he gave.
"Chief Ramos," Stellar said into his comm, "I need you to be ready to give me everything the engines have got on my mark. We might need to run very fast, very soon."
"Yes, Captain," came the chief's voice from Engineering. "She'll be ready."
Stellar took a breath. "Commander Thorne...drop shields."
"Sir..."
"That's an order, Commander." He kept his voice calm, certain. "But keep your hand on that console. If anything goes wrong, I want shields and weapons back up in half a second."
Thorne's jaw tightened, but she nodded. "Captain."
The tactical display shifted as the Pathfinder's defenses went dark.
The six ships held their positions for one heartbeat. Two.
Then the voice said, "Thank you, Bub. Initiating transport. And...I'm sorry about what comes next."
"What comes next?" Stellar demanded.
But the transporter beam was already activating, and his grandfather's final words echoed through the bridge: "You're not going to like meeting me this way."
"Crap." Clark and Thorne in unison.