STARBOUND

CHAPTER 1-THE SIGNALS THAT SHOULD EXIST

The stars over Vega-3 shimmered like a thousand unblinking eyes, watching the silent desert stretch endlessly beneath them. Commander Aria Kehlani stood alone on the ridge overlooking the research outpost, her gloved fingers curled tightly around the rail. The night wind carried the scent of metal dust and ozone—remnants from the storm that had ripped through the settlement hours earlier. The world felt still now, deceptively peaceful, as if holding its breath.

Aria didn’t believe in signs, but tonight the universe felt…intentional.

Behind her, the outpost dome hissed open. Soft footsteps approached.

“Commander,” said a calm, modulated voice. “You’ve been standing here for seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds. Prolonged exposure to Vega’s night winds is not ideal for human lungs.”

Aria exhaled sharply through her nose. “I’m fine, Lumen.”

The android stepped beside her, humanoid in form but unmistakably artificial—smooth silver plating, indigo-lit joints, and a face built from carefully animated lines that approximated expression. The edges of its optical lenses glowed faintly, adjusting to the darkness.

“You’re thinking about the message,” Lumen said.

Aria didn’t answer. Her eyes remained fixed on the horizon, where the stars painted a cold tapestry above the distant mountains.

The message. The reason she’d been summoned across six star systems in less than three days. The reason her pulse hadn’t calmed since she’d arrived.

It had been received only once, and only here on Vega-3—a planet with no history of anomalous transmissions.

A single tone.

Nine seconds long.

Resonant. Harmonic. Impossible.

And identical to the one her mother recorded twenty-six years ago—just days before she vanished on an expedition near the Carthusian Rift.

Identical. Down to the last frequency.

Aria swallowed. “Play it again.”

Lumen hesitated. “You’ve listened to it twelve times tonight.”

“Play it.”

The android gave a small nod. A faint hum vibrated through the air, growing into that haunting, crystalline tone—too pure to be natural, too structured to be random. It trembled at the edge of hearing, like a melody trying to remember itself.

When it ended, the desert seemed to darken.

Aria closed her eyes. She could still feel the resonance in her bones.

“It shouldn’t exist,” she whispered. “Not again.”

“No known celestial event, artificial beacon, or encoded distress pattern matches its construction,” Lumen confirmed. “Except, of course—”

“My mother’s recording,” Aria finished.

She felt Lumen’s gaze on her, not judging, just analyzing the micro-tremors in her voice. He always heard more than she wanted to give away.

“This cannot be coincidence,” he said.

“No,” she agreed.

A distant rumble rolled across the desert. Aria turned sharply, scanning the dark sky, half expecting to see a ship descending or another storm forming. But nothing moved.

Her pulse wouldn’t slow.

She’d spent years shutting down every whisper of her mother’s disappearance—every rumor that Dr. Selene Kehlani had found something at the edge of known space. Aria had buried it beneath promotions, decorated missions, and carefully constructed composure.

But this signal—this impossible echo—shoved everything back into the light.

Lumen stepped closer. “The research team awaits your assessment inside.”

Aria forced her posture straight and nodded. “Let’s go.”

---

The interior of the outpost dome hummed with quiet urgency. Screens flickered with spectral analyses, waveform models, and geolocation mapping. A half-dozen scientists stood clustered around the central console, shadows stretching under the harsh graphene lighting.

When Aria entered, heads turned. Whispers rippled.

“That’s Commander Kehlani?”

“She led the Helios breach rescue.”

“She’s the one whose mother—”

“Shh.”

Aria ignored them.

Dr. Amari Denholm, the outpost director, hurried forward with an eager—if nervous—expression. “Commander, thank you for coming so quickly. I know your time—”

“Show me the data,” Aria said.

Denholm blinked, then nodded rapidly and gestured to the holotable. A three-dimensional waveform projection spiraled upward, swirling like a ribbon of blue light.

“This is the raw signal,” he said. “It manifested at 0300 planetary time, with no precursor noise. It didn’t broadcast across any known channels—it simply appeared in our receivers. When we attempted to trace the point of origin…” He tapped the console.

The projection warped.

Re-centered.

Recalculated.

Then displayed a coordinate location.

Aria froze.

“That can’t be right,” she said softly.

The projection pulsed again, confirming.

Lumen leaned in. “This coordinate lies beyond mapped space.”

Denholm nodded grimly. “Roughly two light-years beyond the Perseid Expanse. Past the navigational blind zone. A place no beacon should be able to transmit from.”

Aria felt a chill crawl up her spine.

“The exact same offset as my mother’s last known location,” she said.

The room fell silent.

Someone exhaled sharply. Another muttered a quiet curse.

Denholm swallowed. “Commander…we believe there may be a connection.”

Aria stared at the projection, heart hammering. For years she’d told herself her mother was dead—lost to a navigation error, a stellar anomaly, anything that let the wound scar over.

Now the scar was cracking open.

“Where’s the encrypted file?” Aria asked.

Denholm pulled up a second projection—a rotating cube inscribed with energy patterns. “This was embedded inside the signal. We haven’t been able to decode it. We were hoping—”

Aria reached out, fingers hovering inches from the projection. The cube pulsed white, reacting to her presence.

The scientists gasped. Even Lumen’s optics flickered.

“It recognizes your biosignature,” the android said.

Aria’s stomach tightened. “That’s not possible.”

But the cube pulsed again—slow, deliberate—like a heartbeat.

Her heartbeat.

Denholm stepped back, visibly shaken. “Commander…whatever this is, it isn’t random. Someone—or something—intended this to reach you.”

Aria’s hand trembled. She curled it into a fist before anyone noticed.

“Send everything to the Valkyrie IX,” she said. “All data. All raw scans. And prep the landing pad—we depart within the hour.”

The room erupted in startled confusion.

“Depart?”

“Already?”

“But we haven’t—”

“Commander, that region of space is uncharted—”

Aria silenced them with a cold, steady look. “The longer we wait, the colder the trail gets.”

Denholm hesitated. “Are you sure about this? The Carthusian Rift is unstable. Dozens of missions have vanished there. If this is a trap—”

Aria’s voice dropped, firm and unyielding. “If there’s even a chance my mother left something behind, I’m going.”

Lumen stepped to her side. “Then I will accompany you.”

Aria nodded once.

The scientists exchanged worried glances, but no one dared protest further.

As Aria turned toward the exit, the signal tone began to play again—softly, echoing through the dome’s speakers.

A sound that should have died twenty-six years ago.

A sound that had waited.

For her.

Aria paused only once, whispering to herself:

“This time…I’m going to find you.”

Then she walked into the night, unaware that far beyond the stars, something ancient had already begun to stir.