Chapter 29 · The Star Wakes

The star sees me.

I don't know how I know that. The vault feed is still open in my neural, the archive file blinking with coordinates and timecodes and a handwritten note I can't stop reading. But underneath all that data there's something else now. A presence. Heavy. Old. And it knows my admin signature like I've been checking in for shifts.

The pod shudders. Not from the crew banging outside. From something deeper.

"Sable." Briar's voice cuts through comms. "What the hell did you just open?"

"The delivery manifest," I say. My mouth is dry. "The cargo wasn't going to Helio Terminus. It was going to—"

Every screen in the escape pod whites out.

Then they all snap back online showing the same feed. External hull cams. Every single one of them pointed outward into the Rimward Dark where we've been drifting.

And there it is.

A star.

Not the dim red dwarf we passed six jumps back. This thing is massive and it shouldn't be here. It's pulsing. Slow. Rhythmic. Like a heartbeat. The light coming off it isn't steady. It's breathing.

"Oh fuck," I whisper.

"Sable, talk to me." That's Vey now.