The storm had chosen.
I stood with both hands on the diagnostic platform and felt Soltharra move through my ship.Awaken it.Take it over.Remake the dead space into something else.
Something conscious.Aware.Unique.The ship was part of Soltharra now, but also itself the same way a stormglass tree or a rock retained its identity.
I stood in the blinding white of the reactor bay with the planet moving through my ship and didn’t try to analyze what was happening.There was no data that could explain this.
The beacon.
The thought arrived quietly.The beacon that would signal my people.Bring the salvage crews.Strip this living, conscious, singing world down to dead rock for Imperium mineral extraction.Leave Sorik's valley silent.Leave Sorik alone.Leave me in the dead air of an Imperium posting with the marks fading and the planet's hum gone and the memory of what being truly alive, truly loved, had felt like.
The planet's signal moved through the ship's conduits in slow, deep pulses.
My marks blazed and I knew the ship was talking to me.
You know, don't you,I thought.You know what the beacon means.
The signal pulsed.Asked a question.Can you reach it?
If I turned it off, I’d be condemning my crew to life here.No choice.No discussion.I did not feel right making that decision for them.
The signal pulsed again with something that did not ask permission.Something that simply acted.
I stood in the reactor bay and felt Soltharra choose for all of us.Sighed with the relief of a decision shared with something vast and ancient.Something I could not reason with or overrule.
"Sloane."Sorik’s hand landed on my shoulder.
I turned to face him.
He looked at me the way he always looked at me.Like I was extraordinary.
"I think…" My voice was something I almost didn't recognize — open, undefended, a voice filled with wonder."I think the storm just took over the ship."
He laughed."Yes.I can feel that."He looked all around the interior, his gaze tracking the new marks spreading over the walls as we watched.“Where is the beacon?”
He knew.Of course he did.He’d been talking to this planet his whole life.I was the novice here.
The planet's signal pulsed through the deck plating.Up through my boots.Into the marks at my collar in a slow, warm wave.
“Come on.We need to go to bridge.”
He followed me through the ship without question, back to the place I had truly believed I would die.The pilots’ seats were exactly as I had left them.But this time, every console and system was fully active.Online.
I opened the beacon system.Tracked the crew.
Six of ten beacons were moving.Not toward the crash site.Toward Sol'Virex — the settlement marker glowing eleven kilometers northeast on the planet-interface map.
My crew moved toward safety.There was only one way they would be heading toward the village.They were being escorted.Sorik’s guards had found them.
Six found.Four not moving.
Sorik leaned over my shoulder, studied the map.“I will send warriors to retrieve them as soon as we reach the village.We still have time.They will be safe.I give you my word.”
“Thank you.”One less thing to worry about.While I had been in crystal caves and on cliff ledges and running through charged jungle, Sorik's people had found mine.
I opened the emergency beacon’s control system.My hand hovered over the deactivation panel.
“Will my crew be safe in your village?Even if they don’t have mates?”