The station hovered above the churning plasma fields of Gliese-4b, its hull crackling with static discharge. Technician Mira Das adjusted her visor, watching as her drone descended into the storm below, retrieving rare ionized ore.
Today, though, the ore wasn’t coming up. “Something’s wrong,” Mira muttered. A glitch? No—feedback pulse waved through her suit, not random, but rhythmic. A pattern.
She routed the signal through translation algorithms. Static resolved into something hauntingly like language. A distress call. From the storm itself.
Mira hesitated. Recalling the drone would mean severing contact, letting the message fade into unreadable noise. But sending it deeper would risk total loss.
With a deep breath, she locked in her decision—broadcasting instead of retrieving. If something was down there, it had waited long enough to be heard.
The station’s systems pulsed in reply, the storm’s rhythm shifting ever so slightly. Waiting.
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