Amber Wing holds under reduced thrust while the derelict’s thermal cycle falls toward its predicted gap. Kiryati enters from the defensive tracking station, carrying fresh passive telemetry.
Kiryati
The pulses are not only cycling inward. Each one briefly paints a narrow external band with a coherent emitter signature.
Ranuko freezes the current thermal model beside the defensive records. The new band appears for less than a second at a time, aligned with the derelict’s recovery cycle but not aimed at Amber Wing.
Ranuko
The waveform is structured, but I cannot classify it as a command, targeting pulse, or interception attempt from timing alone.
Kiryati
That is why I brought it here. Defensive records show no matching weapon handshake, but the emitter coherence is genuine.
Nahuli keeps the drive below the coupling threshold and orders the comparison confined to read-only analysis. The external band fades, leaving only its measured shape and phase relationship.
Nahuli
Compare it against the records without naming it hostile. We need evidence of what it does before we decide what it means.
The next low-energy gap approaches. The crew has a signal to classify, a departure geometry to preserve, and no safe basis yet for treating the derelict’s brief emission as either permission or attack.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the function of the derelict’s coherent emitter signature