The records contained no official coordinates, but they did include deliveries of life-support supplies and specialized food.
Imani compared the fuel consumption on the transport logs against the distances between known jump points.
Three locations fit the available data.
One was inside the wildlife preserve.
One was a research relay abandoned decades earlier.
The third lay near a field of mineral dust that disrupted civilian scanners.
The dust field offered the best place to hide a station.
Hravik contacted the regional rescue service and requested an authorized search mission.
The service agreed to send a patrol ship within forty-eight hours.
Sepha asked whether the crew would include medical personnel trained to handle skithra toxin.
The coordinator said the nearest qualified specialist was on Meridian.
She realized he meant her.
Hamish was present when the call ended.
He looked at her expression and asked whether she was thinking of another trip.
Sepha admitted that she was.
She had spent twenty-two years inside clinics, laboratories, and hospital corridors.
Her training had taught her to wait for patients to arrive and then do everything possible to help them.
Now the patients she needed to reach might be held on a platform nobody had officially acknowledged.
Hamish said he could take her there if the search authority approved his ship.
Imani looked up from the engine repair report and announced that the vessel would require a full inspection first.
Hamish said he had hired her precisely because she cared too much about the machinery.
She informed him that caring about the machinery was the only reason it remained in one piece.
For the first time in several days, Sepha laughed.
The sound surprised her.
Then a new message appeared on her screen.
It came from an anonymous relay, carried through a chain of obsolete communication satellites.
The message contained only seven words and a fragment of audio.
Do not bring the girl here yet.
Sepha played the recording.
A woman’s exhausted voice spoke over the sound of a ventilation fan.
Tell Vela I remember the blue grass.
Sepha listened again, hardly daring to breathe.
Vela had described the blue grass in the medical corridor, but the details had not been included in any public report.
Nerin Tal might still be alive.
Sepha forwarded the recording to an independent analyst rather than telling Vela immediately.
Hope was valuable, but false certainty could be crueler than silence.
She would wait for the voice to be verified.
