Chapter 11 – Crimson Resonance

The containment laboratory—normally silent—buzzed with the strained hum of over-taxed fans. In the room's center, inside an armored-glass sarcophagus, the captured ruby sphere pulsed faintly: three flashes — pause — three flashes. Each heartbeat cast rippling shadows across the faces of Lira, Arke, and Dr. Vela Rojas, head of biophysics. No one dared blink, afraid to miss the instant the object revealed its true nature.

Vela passed an optical probe over the crystal surface. The readout produced an odd graph: no significant heat spikes, yet micro-fluctuations in density—as though the sphere were breathing. Lira frowned.

"Any radioactive trace?" she asked.

"Zero," the doctor replied. "No heavy-element signature either. It's mostly silicon and carbon in a lattice I don't recognize. And the burnt outer layer … it's denatured collagen tissue."

Arke leaned closer, fascinated. The sphere's red hue reminded him of Martian sunsets he'd only seen in old photos—a beauty that stirred nostalgia for a world he'd never walked.

"If it's tissue, does that mean it was alive?" he murmured.

"Not exactly," Vela said, shaking her head. "It's more like the lining of an artificial organ—something meant to insulate it from absolute cold."

Impatient, Lira opened the intercom to the Matriarch.

"Matriarch, can you identify the crystal structure?"

The AI answered in its flat voice:"Spectrometric analysis incomplete. Polymorphic bond network does not match human databases. Photon excitation recommended to obtain an internal hologram."

Arke arched an eyebrow."Irradiate an unknown object that only just glued itself to our hull? Sounds like an engraved invitation to disaster."

"Or to conversation," Vela countered. "If it's built to react to energy stimuli, maybe it's waiting for us to 'wake' it."

Lira pressed her lips together. Every watt on the fuel charts equaled a potential life. Yet the external signal had shifted frequency since the artefact came aboard; if they didn't answer, they might miss their one chance to learn whether refuge existed beyond Kronos-452.

"Ten seconds of low-power laser," she ordered. "Nothing more."

In the observation gallery, Serrin rubbed a bruised shoulder beneath his compression suit while watching Teko on the bleachers, eyes fixed on the sphere. The boy clutched his scrap of insulation like a talisman.

"They shouldn't shine light on it," he whispered. "It looks like it hurts."

"Hurt or not, at least we'll know what it is," Serrin muttered. "We can't steer by hunches."

Teko didn't answer; his eyes mirrored every crimson flare.

Dr. Vela tuned the laser. A thin green beam pierced the glass shield and struck the red surface. The lab seemed to hold its breath. The triple heartbeat stopped. One second. Two. Three. Suddenly the sphere flooded with inner light: geometric patterns ignited—golden helices spinning and branching like alveoli—and at its core a brilliant octagonal shape appeared.

The loudspeakers erupted in a choir of harmonics. Arke slipped on headphones; thousands of layered voices chanted the same motif—persist, persist, persist. Beneath the echo he caught something new, a sub-frequency sliding underneath, barely audible: coordinates.

"It's broadcasting position!" he yelled. "Two separate origin points!"

Vela cut laser power, yet the sphere stayed lit. Fully awakened, the inner helices stabilized, forming an eight-pointed star floating in suspension.

The Matriarch broke in:"New frame received. Symbolic language compatible with sonde culturelle protocols. Translation: 'Home 1 eclipsed. Home 2 burning. Seek refuge among spindles. Persist.'"

Lira's stomach hollowed. Home 1 eclipsed … Home 2 burning. Had that extinct civilization also faced two dying suns—failed, and now sent a late warning to whoever followed?

"What are 'spindles'?" Serrin asked over intercom.

The AI paused."Probable reference to rotating cylindrical structures—possible artificial habitats."

Arke's hands trembled around his tablet."If those spindles exist, we might not need Kronos-452. They could be roaming refuges using stored residual energy."

Vela, exhilarated, was already sketching the required engineering in her head: helium-3 isotopes in magnetic traps … degenerate-matter reactors … theory only, but theory that might buy them centuries.

Lira, meanwhile, saw something else: another destination, another deviation. Every deviation cost heat, water, lives. She keyed the comm.

"Project a course to the coordinates," she ordered.

The Matriarch displayed a hologram. Two blue dots appeared, scaled in light-years. One lay barely 0.3° off their current heading—an eleven-day efficient run. The other, eight degrees farther, meant an extra month and a third of their remaining deuterium. Consumption curves bled red across the projection.

"The first is feasible," Serrin said. "With brutal heating cuts we could reach it and return to the original vector if it's a false lead."

"And if it's empty we're worse off," Vela objected. "But if it's a habitat, we gain thermal reserves—maybe fuel."

Arke recalled the ghost-ship echoes: a grim mirror of their own voyage. Would these spindles be abandoned husks—or the promise of a 'Home 3' still enduring?

Teko pressed a palm to the observation glass."We can't leave the fire alone," he murmured. "If fire calls, we answer."

The simplicity jolted Lira. She gazed at the sphere: golden helices still turning, the octagon shining insistently—an eye waiting for reply.

She drew a deep breath, feeling the weight of every choice since her first day in command; the weight of every body in cryostasis, every child who'd never seen natural light. She recalled her instructors' mantra: A captain isn't guided by fear, but measures it with the ruler of reason.

"Matriarch," she said at last, "compute a correction burn to the first blue point. Maximum efficiency. Show me heat loss and crop-survival projections."

The AI's silence lasted one heartbeat, then figures filled the screens.

Serrin exhaled raggedly. Vela smiled, exhausted yet hopeful. Arke closed his eyes, listening to the echo of persist mingling with a doubled heartbeat—no longer sure if it was his or the crystal's.

Teko tightened his grip on the insulation scrap. In his mind the helices were branches, the octagon a burning fruit. For the first time since the thrust he imagined planting a new tree someday—if ever they found soil beneath a true sun.

In the lab's dimness the crimson object quickened: three flashes, pause, three flashes, then a longer flare—a luminous sigh, as though celebrating the decision just made.

Singladura shifted course by eight-tenths of a degree. No one felt it in that instant, yet everyone knew: they had set off toward the unknown once more, clinging to a borrowed red heart already beating inside their shared destiny.