A narrow-band transmission appears inside the isolated diagnostic bridge, bypassing Saven’s disconnected capsule systems without touching Amber Wing’s controls. Its carrier is external, weak, and precisely aimed.
The packet addresses Saven by a call sign he has not used since before the failed departure. It contains a timestamp, a vector correction, and a clipped audio fragment.
The Captain
Clever little ship. It turns danger into leverage, then pretends the maneuver was maintenance.
Saven
That call sign is not in the capsule. I abandoned it before the departure failure. Whoever sent this knew me before I entered the corridor.
Ranuko freezes the packet in the read-only archive and compares its timing against the wake records. The vector correction points back toward the corridor Amber Wing just crossed.
Lahani
The source is not Saven’s capsule. Someone watched our maneuvers closely enough to grade them, and waited until we carried him aboard.
The transmission’s encryption resembles no Avalon registry or known relay handshake. Kiryati remains behind with emitter three, while Nahuli, Lahani, Ranuko, Riyanu, Nikayo, and Saven are aboard Amber Wing as the message repeats once.
Identify the sender of the external transmission