The inspection flag stays green. The Lead Officer and Dockmaster Vane clear out, and the cargo bay finally exhales. Serafina leans over the terminal, her relief sharpening into something colder as the decrypted coordinates keep scrolling.
Serafina
That data was never just corporate dirt. It is a route key, and it matches the hidden relay lattice your kin use.
She projects the plotted course. The line Nahuli thought was random snaps into place with the encrypted map, then bends again, hard, toward a dead point in space marked by old station debris and a warning halo.
Zoya
That is not a route. That is a snare.
The shuttle's nav display resolves the trap, a buried beacon knot wrapped around the relay path. The supposed gamble was never a guess at all, it was a key turning inside a lock someone else built.
Serafina
I did not drag us here for scrap. I wanted the coordinates, because someone has been hiding your people's signal and selling the map around it.
Zoya
And now we know why the hunters kept circling us. They were not chasing cargo. They were guarding the door.
✓ Quest Accepted
Find my people
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach Vey Port
“We are already at vey Port. Now that I'm here let's try to find more avali”
SUCCESS (Mediocre Xeno-Linguistics, rolled +2)
Nahuli keeps his focus on the route key, and the trap resolves into a family signal instead of a dead end.
Serafina
That lattice is not random. It is tuned to Avali traffic patterns, old ones.
Zoya
So your people are not lost, they are being filtered.
Serafina pulls up the hidden handoff point, and the display tags it with a registry knot used for private clan traffic.
Nahuli
The cipher matches dialect markers, not just coordinates.
Serafina
Someone built this to separate kin from everyone else, then sold access to the highest bidder.
Zoya
Which means there is a real destination behind the snare.
The terminal finishes decoding. A secure contact line for Avali identifiers appears, tagged with the same hidden relay logic and a fresh transit fee.
“I use the line to contact my people and call one here.”
SUCCESS (Mediocre Xeno-Linguistics, rolled +0)
Nahuli keys into the secure line and the screen answers with a clean, old-style lattice handshake. The trap does not open into a dead zone, it opens into a waiting channel.
Serafina
That is a family channel. Old clan routing, masked under commercial junk.
Nahuli
I call it.
He sends the request through the decoded contact line, precise and brief. The terminal accepts his dialect markers, stamps the signal with an Avali registry echo, and queues it on the hidden relay knot.
Zoya
So the bait was built to sort your people from everyone else.
A response tag blooms beneath the route, not a location, but a meeting acknowledgment and a transit fee. The system has someone on the other end, and it treats Nahuli like a valid caller.
Serafina
Then they are not lost. They are reachable.
The crew goes still as the display settles on the accepted contact, waiting for the next reply.
“Arrange a meet up”
SUCCESS (Mediocre Diplomacy, rolled +1)
The terminal accepts the meeting request and holds it steady, as if waiting for a name to attach to the other side.
Serafina
You actually got through. I was half expecting a dead queue and a polite lie.
Serafina
That route was never meant for cargo. It was always people.
Nahuli
He asks for the meet.
The contact line responds with a location stamp, a short transit window, and the same credit surcharge still tucked under the manifest like an insult.
Zoya
So they are waiting. That changes the job.
Serafina
It does. If your people built this filter, they built it to keep others out, and to keep you in reach.
Serafina taps the display, then looks back at Nahuli with a careful, practical kind of warmth.
Serafina
Do you want me to stay on the line with you, or give you the first word when they answer?
“Head to the meeting point to find my kin”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled -1)