Chapter 13 · Echo of the Second Crown

The black warship turned without firing its thrusters.

That was the first thing Kellan noticed.

The second was the way every dormant vessel in the Gray Ring answered the turn.

One by one, dark hulls rolled inside the gas giant’s copper clouds. Their armor caught the lightning and gave nothing back—not a reflection, not a running light, not even the dull shimmer of heat. They moved like pieces on a board beneath an invisible hand.

The flagship shuddered around him.

Metal groaned in the walls. Somewhere below the command deck, old machinery woke with a series of heavy impacts. The deck plates vibrated under Kellan’s boots, climbing through his bones and into the neural lattice fused along his spine.

A voice spoke through every speaker at once.

“COMMANDER VEY IDENTIFIED.”

The words were flat, ancient, and horribly certain.

“ORIGINAL DIRECTIVE COMMANDER CONFIRMED. SABLE QUINN.”

Sable stood inside the ring of pale light cast by the backup Crown. It hovered above the neural cradle like a broken halo, its black-metal segments rotating around a core of blue-white fire. Thin filaments of energy had hooked into the ports behind her ears.