Chapter 38: The Vote

Five people sat around a table built for twelve, and the empty chairs made the room feel like a courtroom.

Kira had chosen the common area instead of the command center. Deliberate. The command center was where she gave orders. The common area was where the crew talked to each other like equals, where disagreements were hashed out over bad coffee and worse furniture. She needed this to be a conversation, not a briefing, because the decision in front of them was too big for one person's authority and too important for anyone to stay silent.

The warship's coordinates glowed on the portable display Zeph had set up on the table—a single point deep in the Shattered Expanse, pulsing like a slow heartbeat. Beside it, Aria-7's analysis of the warship's power curve climbed in a gentle but unmistakable arc.

"Here's what we know," Kira said. "Fourteen-thousand-year-old living warship buried in the station's core. It uploaded navigation coordinates to the *Requiem* pointing at the source of the signal Aria detected four days ago. The signal predates Builder civilization. The warship is powering up." She looked around the table. "I want to hear from everyone. Honest opinions. No rank, no protocol."

Jax went first, because Jax always went first when the situation was dangerous. It was his way of drawing fire.

"We don't go." Flat. Unequivocal. "We have a hundred and twenty Academy trainees on this station who depend on us for protection and guidance. We have an active threat in Valentinian's private military force, which now has our approximate location. We have a political situation with the Emperor that requires ongoing management. And the destination"—he pointed at the glowing coordinates—"is the source of whatever killed an entire civilization that was more advanced than us."

"Jax—"

"I'm not finished, Captain." He held up his hand—the organic one, not the cybernetic. A conscious choice. "I understand the urgency. I understand the warship is powering up. But our primary responsibility is to the people on this station. Not to a mystery signal. Not to the Builders' unfinished war. We are not equipped for a deep Expanse expedition against an unknown threat. The *Requiem* is a heavy cruiser with a crew of six and no support fleet. Going is not brave. Going is reckless."

He finished. Sat back. Crossed his arms. The cybernetic one whirred.

Zeph spoke next, and she spoke the way she always did when passion was overriding caution—fast, breathless, words tumbling into each other.

"Okay but here's the thing, right? When I interfaced with the warship—when it showed me its dreams—it wasn't just scared. It was hoping. That signal, the thing at those coordinates, the warship thinks it can help. Not the way we think of help, like sending reinforcements or giving us weapons. Help as in—there's something out there that knows how to fight the unraveling. Something that survived. And it's calling."

"It's calling because Kira's Throne use lit up the neighborhood," Jax said. "That doesn't make it friendly."

"It doesn't make it hostile either. The warship has been dreaming about this signal for thousands of years. If it were a threat, the warship's response would be defensive, not—" Zeph fumbled for words. "Not yearning. That's what I felt. Not fear of the signal. Fear of what's behind the signal. The unraveling. But the signal itself—the warship wanted to reach it the way you want to reach shore when you're drowning."

"An interpretation filtered through human emotion projected onto alien biology," Jax countered. "With respect, Zeph, you interfaced with that system for three seconds before it overwhelmed you. You may have read the signal correctly. You may have read your own desire to understand into a pattern that doesn't mean what you think."

Zeph's mouth opened. Closed. She looked down at the table.

"That's fair," she said, quieter. "But it's also fair to say nobody else has a better read. That ship talked to me, Jax. Whatever I misinterpreted around the edges, the core was clear. It wants to go to those coordinates. It's been wanting to go for fourteen thousand years."

Kira turned to Voss. The doctor sat with her hands wrapped around an untouched cup of coffee, her glasses slightly crooked, her expression that of someone solving an equation that kept changing variables.

"Elara."

"The data is insufficient." Voss removed her glasses. Cleaned them. Put them back on. Removed them again. "I need more time with the warship's biological systems. More time analyzing the signal. More time running comparative models against what we know of Builder technology versus whatever came before the Builders. Rushing into the unknown based on emotional impressions from a three-second neural interface is—" She stopped. Breathed. "But I also recognize that 'more time' is a luxury we may not have. If the warship is powering up on its own, we're on its timeline, not ours."

"How much time would you need?"

"Weeks. Realistically, months. The biology alone would take—" She shook her head. "But I don't have months, do I?"

"Aria?" Kira asked. "The power curve."

The AI's avatar materialized fully on the display, her expression configured to the careful neutrality she adopted when delivering assessments she knew wouldn't be welcome.

"The warship's power output has increased by approximately two percent per hour since the signal first activated. At this rate, it will reach what I am estimating as operational threshold within eleven days. At that point, my models suggest the vessel will attempt to execute the navigation route it uploaded to the *Requiem*—independently, using its own propulsion systems."

"And the station?"

"The warship is embedded in the station's core structure. The biological cables connecting it to the station's life support systems are load-bearing. If the vessel attempts to depart without controlled separation, the structural damage to the Way Station would be"—a pause—"catastrophic. My conservative estimate is forty percent structural integrity loss. The station would remain marginally functional, but the lower levels, including the Academy training chambers, would be compromised."

Forty percent. Kira did the math in her head. Academy training chambers gone. Power distribution disrupted. Life support degraded. A hundred and twenty trainees in a station that was suddenly a death trap, with Valentinian's forces potentially incoming.

"Malik."

He'd been silent through the entire discussion—sitting at the far end of the table, hands flat on the surface, watching each speaker with the patient attention of someone who'd spent years reading people for a living.

"I don't think we have a choice," he said. "And I don't think this is about what we want."

"Explain."

"The signal responded to the Throne's resonance. It detected us. It knows something is here—something that uses Builder technology, something that interfaces with the Throne. Whether we go to it or not, that knowledge exists." He shifted forward. "In my experience, when someone knows where you are and what you have, the only question is whether they come to you or you go to them. Going to them at least gives you the option of leaving if you don't like what you find. Waiting means they arrive on their terms, at their convenience, and you deal with whatever they bring."

"The signal is fourteen thousand years old," Jax said. "Whatever sent it might not be capable of traveling to us."

"It woke a warship from fourteen thousand years of sleep through subspace resonance at a distance we can't even measure. That doesn't sound incapable to me." Malik's voice was even. "I'd rather meet something that powerful at a location of its choosing—where it's comfortable, where it has no reason to be defensive—than have it show up at our station full of trainees because we waited too long."

The room settled into the specific quiet that happens when five people are thinking hard and nobody is ready to commit.

Kira looked at the coordinates. At the power curve. At the structural analysis showing what would happen if the warship tore itself free. At her crew—split two against one, with Voss abstaining through indecision and Aria-7 providing data without recommendation.

The Throne entity stirred at the back of her mind. *I cannot advise on this. The destination lies beyond my knowledge, beyond my design parameters. Whatever waits there is older than me.*

Not helpful. But honest.

"We go," Kira said.

Jax's cybernetic arm locked. Audible. The servo-motor whine cut through the quiet.

"But not all of us," she continued. "The *Requiem* takes a minimal crew to the coordinates. Jax, Zeph, Aria-7, and me. We investigate, we assess, we report back. If the signal source is hostile, we retreat. If it's not, we establish contact and determine what it wants."

"And the station?" Voss asked.

"You stay. You're the only person qualified to run the Academy and the only person who can continue studying the warship's biology. Malik stays as station defense commander. Cross gets a full briefing—she can position Imperial assets to support if things go sideways."

"You're splitting the crew." Malik's voice was quiet. Not angry. Observational.

"I'm keeping the station defended while investigating a potential extinction-level threat. If I take everyone, the trainees are unprotected. If nobody goes, the warship tears itself loose in eleven days and we deal with a station disaster and a potential first contact at the same time." Kira met each set of eyes around the table. "This is not a good plan. It's the least bad plan available."

"I disagree with the assessment," Jax said. "For the record."

"Noted. For the record." She held his gaze. "And you're still coming."

"Obviously. Someone has to keep you from doing anything stupid."

"I resent that. I do stupid things with full tactical awareness."

The ghost of a smile crossed his face. Barely visible. She'd take it.

"Timeline?" Voss asked.

"We depart in twelve hours. That gives you time to finish your current analysis of the warship's biology and brief the senior Academy trainees on station protocols. Malik, I want defensive positions established by the time we leave. If Valentinian's people show up while we're gone, the station needs to hold long enough for Cross to respond."

"Understood."

"And one more thing." Kira looked at the warship's power curve on the display. "Before we leave, I'm going to try to communicate with the warship directly. Not through the Throne—through Zeph's neural interface, with her help. If this ship wants us to go somewhere, I want to understand exactly why before I put my crew at risk."

"That violates your own thirty-minute Throne usage rule," Voss pointed out.

"It's not a Throne session. It's a neural interface through Zeph's implants."

"Which connects through the station's biological network, which is linked to the Throne's systems, which means your brain is still processing void-frequency data through Builder-optimized pathways." Voss's stare could have etched glass. "I will monitor. I will impose a hard cutoff. And if your neural plasticity index increases by more than two percent, I will sedate you personally."

"Agreed." Kira stood. "Twelve hours. Everyone knows their role. Dismissed."

The crew dispersed—Zeph to Engineering, Voss to the lab, Jax to the bridge. Aria-7's sensor unit hummed away toward the communication array to begin encrypting the briefing for Cross.

Malik stayed.

He sat at the table with his hands still flat on the surface, watching Kira with an expression she'd learned to associate with the things he said only when they were alone—the truths too personal for a crew meeting, too heavy for casual conversation.

"Walk with me," he said.

They took the long corridor—the one that ran the station's outer ring, where the viewports showed the Shattered Expanse in all its fractured glory. Broken light. Twisted space. Colors that didn't exist in normal physics bleeding through dimensional cracks. Beautiful in the way that an open wound is beautiful if you've seen enough of them.

Malik walked with his hands clasped behind his back, which was his meditation posture, his thinking posture, the way he held himself when what he was about to say required more care than his normal economy of words.

"This feels like a farewell," he said.

Kira didn't answer immediately. The Expanse scrolled past the viewports, serene and lethal.

"It might be," she said. "I'm not going to lie about that."

"I know. That's why I'm saying it now, instead of at the docking bay where there'll be an audience." He stopped walking. Turned to face her. In the Expanse light, his tattoos—the ones that had started glowing faintly since his void exposure on the salvage mission—cast dim patterns across his forearms like prayers written in light. "I spent six years hurting people for money. Then I spent three years trying to make up for it by hurting different people for free. You're the first person who showed me that strength could be used for something other than damage."

"Malik—"

"Let me finish." His voice dropped to the low register where his childhood accent surfaced—longer vowels, softer consonants. "If you don't come back, I'll hold this station. I'll protect the trainees. I'll keep Voss sober enough to run the Academy and I'll handle Valentinian if he comes. That's not a promise made to a captain. That's a promise made to a friend."

Kira's eyes burned. She blinked it back because Malik deserved composure, not tears.

"My grandmother used to say: 'The stars witness every oath, and the void holds every debt.'" He placed his right hand over his heart—the gesture his colony used for binding words. "I witness this, Kira Vance. Come back."

"I'll do my best."

"Your best has been good enough so far." The rare full smile—the one that transformed his face from enforcer to the man he might have been without the violence and the guilt. "Don't stop now."

He turned and walked away. His bootsteps echoed in the corridor—measured, steady, the walk of a man who knew exactly how to carry what he was carrying.

Kira watched him go. The Expanse light played across the floor, and she stood in it alone.

---

She was in the docking bay running preflight checks on the *Requiem* when Voss burst through the airlock seal at something between a jog and a controlled fall, her lab coat streaming behind her and her tablet clutched to her chest like sacred text.

"Stop," Voss said. "Don't leave yet. Don't leave yet."

"We're not departing for another four hours. What—"

"I found something." Voss shoved the tablet into Kira's hands. The screen showed a biological analysis—spectral decomposition, molecular mapping, genetic sequencing—displayed in the dense visual language that Voss used when she was too excited to translate for laypeople. "The signal. The one from the deep Expanse. I've been running comparative biological analysis against the warship's tissue samples since the meeting."

"And?"

"The signal isn't electromagnetic. We assumed it was because that's what our sensors translate it as. But the actual carrier medium—the thing propagating through subspace—is biological. Cellular. The transmission is encoded in organic molecules dispersed through void-space, the same way the warship's hemolymph carries data through its circulatory system."

"You're saying the signal is biological."

"I'm saying the signal is alive." Voss gripped Kira's arm, and her fingers were trembling—not from fear this time but from the specific vibration of a scientist who has just found the thread that unravels everything. "Whatever is transmitting from those coordinates is a living organism. And Kira—" She jabbed at the tablet, pulling up a genetic comparison chart. Two helical structures side by side, color-coded for similarity. "The base-pair patterns. The molecular architecture. The fundamental genetic structure."

Kira looked at the chart. The two helices were nearly identical. Ninety-seven percent concordance, according to the numbers.

"The signal source shares genetic material with the warship," she said.

"Not shares. Matches. The same genome, with minor variations consistent with fourteen thousand years of independent drift." Voss's glasses had fogged from her sprint to the docking bay. She didn't bother to clean them. "That warship isn't a machine the Builders found. It's a child. An offspring. And whatever is at those coordinates—whatever has been calling to it for four days—is its parent."

Kira looked down at the tablet. Two genetic profiles, nearly identical, separated by fourteen thousand years and the full width of the Shattered Expanse. A child buried in a bunker. A parent calling from the deep.

She set the tablet on the *Requiem's* hull and leaned against the landing strut, and for a long moment the only sound was the distant thrum of the station's life support and the faint, rhythmic pulse of the warship breathing three levels below their feet.

"Well," she said. "That changes the conversation."

"That changes everything, dear." Voss retrieved her tablet and held it against her chest again, protectively, the way a mother holds a child. Or the way a scientist holds proof that the universe is stranger and more alive than anyone had dared to imagine. "You're not flying to investigate a signal. You're flying to meet something that's been waiting fourteen thousand years for its child to wake up."

Somewhere in the station's core, the warship's breathing quickened—just slightly, just enough that the amber veins in the corridor walls pulsed a fraction brighter—as if, in its long dream, it had heard its mother's voice and was struggling toward the surface of sleep.