The alcove settles into a tired hum. Nahuli keeps both hands on the console, while the key shard glows dimly beside his toolbelt.
Ranuko
The trace is gone. For now.
At the corridor entrance, Zoya lowers her shoulders a fraction and checks the dark beyond the hatch. Serafina leans against the frame, finally letting herself breathe.
Serafina
That is the first quiet I have heard since Vey Port. I do not trust it, but I like it.
Zoya
Enjoy it while it lasts. Quiet means we are still alive enough to complain.
Ranuko’s ears flick toward the console readout. The comms glow stays clean, no fresh alarms, no incoming spikes. His posture eases, just a little.
Ranuko
Kaelen is not on top of us. That counts as a victory.
The shard finishes its faint pulse and goes still. For a moment, the ship feels almost workable, like a thing held together by stubborn hands and luck.
Serafina
When you are done babysitting that console, Nahuli, tell us what kind of trouble you think this signal was trying to hide.
✓ Quest Accepted
Decode Kaelen's hidden message
“I don't know what Kaelyn wants, nor do I care. I care more about getting this data core back to my employers on Avalon.”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled -1)
Nahuli
I do not know what Kaelen wants, and I do not care. The data core goes back to my employers on Avalon.
The words land flat and clean. Nahuli's fingers keep moving over the console, and the last of the shard's false trace collapses into a neat, silent archive packet tagged for Avalon.
Ranuko
Good. Then we stop chasing his tricks and start counting our own supplies.
Zoya
Avalon pays, or it at least knows how to make an order stick. Better than a dead man's invitation.
Serafina
So that is the shape of it, not rescue, not revenge. Delivery. I can work with delivery.
A thin chirp cracks from the console, once, then stops. The decrypted message opens in a narrow text spine under the core file, ugly with corporate compression and Kaelen's signature hash.
Nahuli's hand pauses as the hidden layer resolves. The cost of the clean scrub is obvious in the log, a warm spike of heat from the overworked port and a smear of warning dust on the shard casing.
Kaelen's message is not a threat. It is a route, a receipt, and a deadline, all folded into one encrypted line that now reads plain enough to matter.
Quest Complete
Decode Kaelen's hidden message