Stellar Frigate “Valkyrion,” Outer Expanse Sector D7 — 17 hours before Earthfall

  The hum of the engine was the only constant in the void.

  Commander Lys Solari stood in the bridge's upper bay, eyes on the drifting planet fragment outside the viewport. It wasn’t on any chart—no orbital signature, no history. Just a floating mass of stone, broken and scorched like it had been born in the aftermath of a forgotten war.

  She exhaled, fingers tracing the thin scar over her temple. It pulsed sometimes, when something... unnatural was nearby.

  “Still no response from Command?” she asked, voice low but sharp.

  “Dead silence,” replied Kael, the ship’s navigator and off-duty saboteur. “Either someone wiped the beacons out of this entire quadrant or they want us blind.”

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  Lys clicked her teeth. “Both are bad.”

  Valkyrion was a Class-9 adaptive cruiser, designed for deep-sector exploration and light combat. They weren’t built for rescue missions, but this wasn't a rescue. This was a ping. A single anomaly detected on a dead frequency—Ancient Earth code, broadcasted from this fragment like a ghost transmission.

  “Bring up the psionic feed,” Lys ordered.

  Kael frowned. “We’ll risk overload if the echoes are corrupted.”

  “We’re already flying blind. Just do it.”

  A ripple passed through the ship as the psionic array came online. Waves of thought, memory, and raw emotion licked at the minds of every crew member like static rain.

  And then... clarity.

  A voice—no, not a voice—a memory that didn’t belong to any of them echoed through the array:

  “They are us. And we are the failure they corrected.”

  Lys froze.

  Kael whispered, “...Did you feel that?”

  Before she could answer, the long-range sensors lit up.

  “Contact. Multiple warp signatures. Subspace distortion in five... four...”

  Valkyrion’s AI flared red: INCOMING ENTITIES — DNA MATCH: 100% HUMAN

  Lys gritted her teeth. “Sound the battle chime. Ready graviton shields. And someone tell me how the hell our own blood is warping in without ships.”

  Outside, space split like glass. Figures emerged—unarmored, unarmed, unflinching.

  They stood in the vacuum like gods who’d forgotten fear.

  And they were smiling.