Lira Voss

Log Entry: 3162.10.26 Situation Summary: External communications remain fully jammed. Long-range antenna array offline. Emergency beacons nonfunctional. The Vigilant Dawn drifts further toward the gravitational edge of the Rift Expanse. Communications Officer Lira Voss is attempting to restore a transmission link to the nearest Imperial relay—while strange, unidentified signals begin to bleed through the static. --- Chapter IV — Communications Officer Lira Voss The bridge was quiet now, save for the crackle of static and the rhythmic pulse of a dying comms array. Lira Voss sat hunched over her console, the pale glow of monitors painting tired lines beneath her eyes. She’d been listening for hours—filtering, amplifying, rerouting through damaged relays—hoping for any voice that wasn’t their own. So far, the void had given her nothing but silence. And then, not silence. A whisper—faint, almost human—threaded through the interference. It was fragmented, distorted, but the cadence… it felt like speech. She leaned closer, adjusting the frequency dials with careful precision. “Repeat transmission… identify yourself,” she murmured. Static. A crackle. Then— “…not alone…” Lira froze. The voice was faint but wrong—too fluid, as though it didn’t belong to a single throat. The sound crawled along her nerves. Her comms board flickered. She yanked open the access panel, finding melted circuits and pulsing threads of organic growth creeping along the wiring. They pulsed faintly, as if listening back. Her breath hitched. “No, no, no—” She grabbed her blade and severed the growth, the monitor flaring bright white before dying completely. The smell of burnt metal filled the air. “Bridge to Engineering,” she said, voice tight. “Varik, we’ve got—” The lights flickered again. The whisper returned, louder this time. “…we see you…” Lira slammed the comms offline but as she stared at the dead monitor, she thought she still heard breathing.