When the Light Found the Forgotten Stars, a STAR WARS Jesus story

Chapter One

Jesus knelt in quiet prayer beneath a sky crowded with stars, far from the noise of ships, markets, engines, and men who thought power could hold the universe together. The desert wind moved across the stone and sand around Him, soft enough to be missed by those who were always hurrying. In the distance, a settlement flickered with electric signs, docking lights, fuel towers, cantina noise, and the restless traffic of people trying to outrun what lived inside them. Before the sun climbed over the dry rim of the horizon, before the sellers opened their stalls and the smugglers made their deals, He prayed for the lost, the proud, the afraid, and the forgotten souls who did not know that Heaven had already seen them.

The town below had learned to survive by pretending nothing mattered too much. Men laughed louder than they felt, women guarded their faces like doors that had been broken before, and children learned early that hope was useful only if it could be traded for water, food, passage, or protection. Somewhere inside that hard place, a young mechanic named Cassian Rell was already awake, tightening a cracked fuel line beneath a freighter that should have been retired years ago. He had grown up hearing about rebellions, empires, chosen destinies, and old stories of light standing against darkness, but most mornings his life felt smaller than all of that. He knew how to fix engines, patch hulls, hide fear behind sarcasm, and keep moving when his heart wanted to quit, but he did not know what to do with the quiet question that had followed him for years. Those who came looking for a Jesus in Star Wars faith story would not have expected to find Him first beside a half-buried repair bay where one tired man was trying to keep a dead machine alive.

Cassian’s hands were black with grease, and his left wrist throbbed from the burn he had earned the night before when a pressure valve burst against his skin. He ignored it because pain was simpler than debt, and debt was the language everyone understood in that place. His mother’s old repair shop sat between a docking yard and a street where travelers argued over fuel prices, false papers, and whether anyone could still cross the trade lanes without being inspected by the Empire. A small screen above the workbench replayed public announcements in a flat official voice, promising order, security, and peace through obedience, but nobody in the shop believed peace sounded like armored boots. Cassian reached up and switched it off, then glanced at the cracked holoframe near the tool rack, where his mother’s faded image stood beside his younger brother, and the grief he usually kept buried rose so fast that he almost dropped the wrench. Anyone who had read the related article about Jesus entering a world ruled by fear would have recognized the same hidden wound, but Cassian did not have language for it yet.

He only knew that the galaxy had taken from him and then expected him to keep paying rent on the empty space it left behind. His mother had died when a patrol raid tore through the lower quarter five years earlier, though the official report called it a stabilization action. His brother, Nalen, had disappeared two months after that, pulled toward a resistance cell by anger, courage, guilt, or some dangerous mixture of all three. Cassian told people he did not know where Nalen had gone, and that was true enough to keep him alive. What he never said was that the last words he had spoken to his brother were hard ones, spoken from fear and dressed up as reason.

The freighter above him groaned as the morning heat began to work its way into the metal. Cassian slid out from beneath it, sat up, and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. Across the yard, a small courier droid sparked at the neck and rolled in a tight circle, bumping against a stack of empty coolant drums. It had been doing that for an hour, and the customer who left it there had not paid in advance, which meant Cassian should have ignored it. Instead, he stood, walked over, and crouched beside the little machine with a tired sigh that sounded more like surrender than irritation.

“You and me both,” he muttered, opening the access panel. “Still moving, not really getting anywhere.”

The droid chirped once, weakly. Cassian found the damaged wire and pinched it between two fingers. It would take almost nothing to repair it, but almost nothing still cost time, and time was something he owed to everyone. A fuel broker wanted payment by noon. A local enforcer wanted protection money by sundown. A transport captain had threatened to ruin the shop’s name if the freighter was not ready by morning, though everyone knew the ship had arrived half-dead. Cassian closed his eyes for a moment and breathed through his nose, trying to hold back the pressure that had become so normal he barely noticed it until it turned into anger.

That was when he heard the argument in the street. It started as raised voices near the water stall, then sharpened into the kind of silence that made people look away. Cassian stood and moved toward the open front of the shop. A woman in a sand-colored cloak was holding a small boy behind her while two armored patrolmen blocked her path. One of them had her travel card in his hand. The other rested his fingers near the weapon at his side, not because he needed it, but because he liked the way people’s faces changed when they saw it.

“I told you,” the woman said, keeping her voice steady with visible effort. “My husband is at Docking Bay Four. He has the clearance codes.”

The taller patrolman turned the card over as if it bored him. “This document expired yesterday.”

“It expired because your checkpoint was closed yesterday.”

“That is not our concern.”

Cassian watched from the shadow of the shop. Everyone nearby did the same. A fruit seller lowered his eyes and rearranged the same three crates twice. A pilot pretended to check a navigation slate. Two boys on the corner stopped laughing. The woman’s child looked no older than six, and he clutched a small metal star in one hand, the cheap kind sold near the landing pads to travelers who wanted to remember that the sky was bigger than the place they were leaving.

Cassian’s jaw tightened. He knew what would happen next. There would be a fine, then a larger fine when she could not pay, then a confiscation, then maybe a holding cell. None of it would be called cruelty. It would be called procedure.

He stepped back from the doorway. He told himself it was not his business. He told himself that one mechanic with debt and no protection could not afford to become visible. He told himself that his mother had died because people thought courage could stop men with weapons. He told himself all of this because fear often speaks in the voice of wisdom when a man has been hurt enough.

Then another voice spoke from behind him.

“She is your neighbor.”

Cassian turned so quickly that his shoulder struck the doorframe. A man stood inside the edge of the shop, though Cassian had not heard Him enter. He wore simple clothes marked by travel and dust. His face was calm, but not distant. There was nothing weak in His gentleness, and nothing hurried in the way He looked at Cassian.

The first thing Cassian felt was irritation, because irritation was easier than being seen. “Shop’s closed.”

The man looked toward the street, where the patrolman had begun questioning the woman’s son. “Your door is open.”

“It is open for paying customers.”

The man’s eyes returned to him. “And what is she?”

Cassian almost answered with a joke. It rose naturally, the way old defenses do. But the words died before he spoke them, because the man’s question did not feel like cleverness. It felt like truth stepping quietly into a room where lies had been living too long.

Cassian looked away. “You don’t know how things work here.”

“I know how fear works,” the man said.

Something in Cassian’s chest tightened. Outside, the boy began crying, not loudly, but in the restrained way of a child who already understood that too much noise could make things worse. Cassian hated that sound. He hated it because his brother had cried like that once when soldiers searched their home. He hated it because he had promised himself he would never feel that helpless again, and yet he had built an entire life around staying out of the way.

“You want me to go out there and get myself arrested?” Cassian said.

“I asked you to see her.”

“I see her.”

“No,” the man said gently. “You see the cost.”

Cassian stared at Him. Anger moved through him, hot and sudden. “Cost is real.”

“Yes,” the man said. “So is mercy.”

The words landed with a weight Cassian did not want. He turned back to the street. The taller patrolman had opened the woman’s bag and scattered its contents across the dust. A small blanket, a food packet, two tools, and a folded letter lay near her feet. The boy bent to pick up the letter, but the second patrolman pushed him back with one gloved hand. It was not a hard shove, but it was enough to make the child stumble.

Cassian moved before he could talk himself out of it. He stepped into the street with his hands raised just enough to show he was not reaching for a weapon. The heat hit his face. Several people glanced up and then looked away even faster, as if his foolishness might spread.

“Her husband’s at Bay Four,” Cassian called. “I repaired his ship last week. Clearance is real.”

The taller patrolman turned slowly. “Who are you?”

“Cassian Rell. Rell Repair.”

The patrolman’s helmet visor hid his eyes, but Cassian felt the attention settle on him. “Are you claiming responsibility for her passage?”

Cassian swallowed. That was not what he had meant to do. Speaking one sentence was different from tying his name to a stranger’s trouble. He could feel the man from the shop behind him, though he did not turn to look. He could also feel the whole street waiting to see whether he would retreat.

“I’m saying the clearance is real,” Cassian said.

“That is not what I asked.”

The woman looked at him, and Cassian wished she had not. Her face carried both warning and hope, and he did not want either one. The boy held the metal star against his chest as if it could protect him. Cassian thought of Nalen at seventeen, standing in this same street with a bag over his shoulder, asking his older brother to come with him. He remembered saying, “I’m done losing people for causes that don’t even know my name.” He remembered Nalen answering, “Maybe that’s why they keep winning.”

Cassian drew a breath. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll vouch for her.”

The patrolman stepped closer. “You understand what that means if she fails inspection?”

Cassian’s mouth went dry. “I understand.”

The patrolman held him there for a long moment, then dropped the travel card into the dust. “Bay Four closes in twenty minutes. If she is not cleared by then, your shop gets sealed pending review.”

The woman grabbed her things with shaking hands. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Cassian did not answer. He was watching the patrolmen walk away. One of them turned his head slightly toward the repair shop, as if marking it in memory. Cassian felt the mistake settle around him with almost physical weight.

The woman touched her son’s shoulder. “Come.”

The boy paused before leaving and looked up at Cassian. “You helped us.”

Cassian wanted to say something kind. He wanted to say it would be all right. Instead, he nodded once, because he no longer trusted his voice. The woman and child hurried toward the docking bays, and the street slowly resumed its noise. People returned to their stalls, arguments, engines, and lies. The fruit seller did not look at Cassian. The pilot with the navigation slate walked away. Nobody thanked him, and somehow that made him feel more exposed.

He turned back to the shop and found the man waiting just inside.

“You satisfied?” Cassian asked.

The man did not answer the accusation. “What is your brother’s name?”

Cassian stopped. The street noise seemed to fall back. “What?”

“The one you still speak to when no one hears you.”

Cassian felt the blood leave his face. “Get out.”

The man’s expression did not change, but sorrow moved through His eyes with such tenderness that Cassian hated Him for it. “Nalen.”

Cassian stepped close, lowering his voice. “Who told you that?”

“No one here.”

“Then you don’t say his name.”

“He is not forgotten.”

Cassian’s hand closed around the wrench at his side. He was not going to use it. Some part of him knew that. Still, he held it because he needed something solid between himself and what was happening. “You don’t know anything about him.”

“I know you believe you failed him.”

Cassian laughed once, hard and empty. “That’s what this is? You wander into shops and dig around in strangers’ grief?”

“I came because you have been buried under yours.”

The words should have sounded impossible. Instead, they sounded like something Cassian had known and avoided. He turned away and crossed to the workbench, where the cracked holoframe leaned against a container of worn bolts. He picked it up as if moving it would give him something to do. His mother’s faded image flickered. Nalen’s face appeared beside hers, younger than Cassian wanted to remember.

“My brother made his choice,” Cassian said. “I made mine.”

“Yes.”

Cassian waited for more, but the man let the word stand. That bothered him more than a speech would have. He knew how to argue with speeches. He knew how to fight advice, pity, blame, and hollow encouragement. He did not know what to do with someone who let truth breathe in the room.

The man walked to the courier droid still sitting open near the coolant drums. He crouched and gently adjusted the loose wire Cassian had left unfinished. The droid gave a startled chirp, then rolled forward in a clean line for the first time all morning. It circled once, beeped with what sounded almost like relief, and stopped beside the man’s foot.

Cassian watched despite himself. “You fix droids too?”

“I restore what is willing to receive the hand.”

“That machine didn’t have a choice.”

The man looked back at him. “Do you believe you do?”

Cassian had no answer. The question pressed into places he did not let people near. He had spent years saying life had left him no options, but that was not entirely true. He had chosen silence many times. He had chosen bitterness because it gave him shape. He had chosen survival, then called it wisdom long after survival had turned into a prison.

A low roar cut across the morning as a cargo lifter rose from the far side of the docking yard. Dust trembled through the shop. Cassian glanced toward Bay Four and wondered whether the woman and her son had made it in time. He told himself not to care. He cared anyway.

The man stood. “Your help cost you something today.”

Cassian set the holoframe down too hard. “That’s what I said.”

“And yet you are not poorer.”

Cassian turned on Him. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what they’ll do. You don’t know who I owe. You don’t know how fast a man can lose everything here.”

“I know how fast a man can lose himself.”

The sentence struck deeper than Cassian expected. He looked at the floor. The shop suddenly felt smaller, not because the walls had moved, but because the truth inside them had grown too large to ignore. Outside, the settlement continued without mercy. Ships lifted. Traders shouted. The public screen down the street resumed its official promises. Everything sounded normal, and that made the moment feel even stranger.

Cassian forced a breath through his teeth. “Why are you here?”

The man came closer, not crowding him, not demanding anything. “To call you out of the grave you built while you were still breathing.”

Cassian’s eyes burned, and he hated that too. “I’m not dead.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But you have been living as though love already lost.”

Cassian looked up sharply. He had not asked His name, but now he knew it with a certainty that did not come from reason. It frightened him. The stories he had heard as a child had never placed holiness in a repair shop with grease on the floor and debt notices stacked beside broken parts. He had imagined God, if God existed, far above the violence of the galaxy, far beyond patrol routes, hunger, bribes, missing brothers, and mothers buried too early. Yet this man stood in front of him with dust on His clothes and mercy in His eyes, speaking as if Cassian’s hidden life mattered.

The shop door rattled as a gust moved through. A datapad on the counter flashed with an incoming notice. Cassian knew before he touched it that trouble had arrived. The message carried the seal of the local security office. His repair license had been flagged for review. Operations suspended pending inspection. Effective immediately.

Cassian stared at the words until they blurred. The old fear surged back with brutal force. He had done one decent thing, and the cost had already found him. He could almost hear the voice inside him laughing, telling him this was why mercy was dangerous, why courage was foolish, why the only safe life was one that stayed small and invisible.

He looked at Jesus. “There. That woman gets to leave, and I lose the shop.”

Jesus looked at the notice, then at him. “Is the shop your life?”

“It’s what I have.”

“It is what you are afraid to lose.”

Cassian’s anger returned, but now it shook. “Easy to say when you don’t have creditors, patrols, inspections, and a dead mother’s name on the lease.”

Jesus did not flinch from the bitterness. “Your mother’s name is not honored by fear.”

Cassian went still.

The words entered quietly, but they broke something open. His mother had been gentle, but she had never been small. She fed neighbors when the shelves were thin. She hid frightened travelers in the parts cellar during raids. She repaired ships for people who could not pay, then told Cassian that mercy was not waste just because cruel people could not measure it. After she died, he had kept her tools, her sign, her shop, and her name, but he had slowly abandoned the part of her that had looked most like courage.

He sat down on the low metal stool near the workbench. For a moment he looked younger than he was. The anger drained from his face, leaving only exhaustion. “I couldn’t save her.”

Jesus moved no closer, but His presence seemed to hold the room steady. “No.”

Cassian’s throat tightened. He nodded as if the answer confirmed a sentence he had been serving for years.

Jesus continued, “You were not asked to be her savior.”

Cassian covered his face with both hands. He did not cry loudly. He had forgotten how to do that. The grief came through him in a low, broken breath that seemed pulled from somewhere old. He had blamed the Empire, and he had blamed Nalen, and he had blamed himself most of all. Under every debt, every repair, every bitter answer, every refusal to help, there had been a boy in a ruined doorway believing he should have been stronger than death.

When he lowered his hands, Jesus was looking at him with the kind of mercy that did not excuse the lies but did not crush the man who had believed them. Cassian could not hold that gaze for long.

“What do You want from me?” he asked.

“Follow Me today.”

Cassian gave a tired laugh, though there was no humor in it. “My shop was just suspended.”

“Yes.”

“I have a captain waiting on that freighter.”

“Yes.”

“I owe money.”

“Yes.”

“If I walk away now, everything gets worse.”

Jesus looked toward the open street. “Everything hidden will come into the light one way or another.”

Cassian stood, restless and cornered. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer you have avoided.”

The courier droid beeped again and bumped lightly against Cassian’s boot. He looked down, then toward the counter, where the suspension notice still glowed. He wanted to throw the datapad across the room. He wanted to pick up the wrench and go back under the freighter until the world narrowed to bolts, seals, and problems that made sense. Instead, he found himself looking at the holoframe again.

Nalen’s young face flickered beside their mother’s. Cassian remembered the night his brother left. He remembered the anger in his own voice and the hurt in Nalen’s eyes. He remembered refusing to hug him because he thought withholding love might make him stay. That was the memory he hated most. Not the raid. Not the funeral. Not the debt. The last open door between them had closed because Cassian had been too afraid to bless what he could not control.

“Where are You going?” Cassian asked.

“To the place where men trade fear for power.”

Cassian looked toward the upper district. Everyone in town knew what stood there. The old administrative tower had once managed freight routes and water permits, but the Empire had turned it into a security post with holding cells below ground. People went in for questioning and came out quieter, if they came out at all. Rumors said captured rebels were moved through the lower cells before being sent off-world. Cassian had never gone near it unless repairs forced him within two streets.

“No,” he said.

Jesus waited.

Cassian shook his head. “No. I know what that place is.”

“So do I.”

“You can’t just walk in there.”

Jesus looked at him with calm authority. “Come and see.”

Cassian almost refused. The word formed in his mouth. It would have been easy. It would have been reasonable. It would have sounded like responsibility. But the shop suddenly felt less like shelter and more like a tomb with tools hanging on the walls. He thought of the woman and her son running toward Bay Four. He thought of his mother’s name over the door. He thought of Nalen somewhere in the wide dark between stars, or maybe nowhere at all.

He picked up his jacket from the chair. His hands trembled as he put it on. “If I follow You and this ruins me, I’m blaming You.”

Jesus stepped toward the street. “You already blamed yourself for what was never yours to carry.”

Cassian stood there a moment longer, breathing in the familiar smell of oil, dust, hot metal, and old grief. Then he walked out behind Jesus into the morning.

The settlement had fully awakened now. Heat rose from the ground in visible waves. Vendors shouted over engine noise. A pair of pilots argued beside a refueling rig while a security drone hovered above them like an insect made of law. A hooded musician near the cantina played a cracked stringed instrument, and the tune wandered through the street with a sadness that seemed older than the town itself. Cassian noticed things he usually ignored because he was always rushing past them: a woman counting coins before buying water, an old man rubbing his knees in the shade, two children pretending a broken antenna was a lightsaber while their mother watched the patrol route with fear in her eyes.

Jesus moved through it all without hurry. People looked at Him, then looked again. Some seemed unsettled. Others seemed drawn without knowing why. He did not perform anything. He did not announce Himself. Still, the street changed around Him in quiet ways, as if hidden wounds recognized the presence of the One who could name them.

Near the corner, they passed the fruit seller who had looked away during the woman’s trouble. The man kept his eyes on his crates until Jesus stopped beside him. Cassian braced himself, expecting judgment. The fruit seller did too. His shoulders rose, and his hands stilled over the bruised yellow fruit.

Jesus picked up one piece and turned it gently in His hand. “How long has your daughter been sick?”

The fruit seller’s face changed. His mouth opened, but no words came. Cassian watched the man’s hard merchant expression collapse into something raw and frightened.

“Three months,” he whispered.

Jesus set the fruit down. “Go home at midday.”

The man blinked. “I can’t close the stall.”

Jesus looked at him with tender firmness. “You are losing time you cannot buy back.”

The fruit seller gripped the edge of the crate. Cassian expected him to argue, but the man only nodded, slowly, as if something inside him had already known and needed permission to obey. Jesus continued walking. Cassian followed, shaken by how little it had taken to expose a life.

“You do that to everyone?” Cassian asked.

Jesus glanced at him. “See them?”

Cassian had no answer. The town looked different now, and he did not like it. It had been easier when people were obstacles, customers, threats, or noise. Seeing them made everything heavier. It also made the world feel strangely more alive.

They turned toward the upper district, where the streets widened and the buildings grew cleaner. The security tower stood beyond a line of barricades, its dark windows reflecting the desert sun. Armed patrolmen moved in pairs near the entrance. A transport truck idled beside the side gate, its rear compartment sealed. Cassian slowed.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

Jesus continued.

Cassian caught up. “I mean it.”

“I know.”

“You always this calm walking into danger?”

Jesus looked at the tower. “My Father is not absent from places men fill with fear.”

Cassian felt the words settle over the street, and for a moment the tower looked less permanent. It still stood. The weapons were still real. The men guarding it still had authority in the way the world counted authority. But something in Cassian’s mind shifted. The tower was not ultimate. The Empire was not eternal. Fear was loud, but it was not God.

At the barricade, a patrolman stepped forward. “State your business.”

Jesus looked at him. “I have come for those inside.”

The patrolman stared, then laughed once. “You have authorization?”

“My Father sent Me.”

Cassian closed his eyes briefly. “That’s not going to help.”

The patrolman’s amusement faded. “Move along.”

Jesus did not move.

The second patrolman raised his weapon slightly. People nearby began to slow down and watch from a careful distance. Cassian felt every instinct scream at him to step back, to become part of the crowd, to survive. Instead, he stayed beside Jesus, though his knees felt weak.

The first patrolman looked at Cassian. Recognition passed through his posture. “Rell Repair. Your license is under review.”

“So I heard,” Cassian said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“You should be at your shop preparing records.”

“I’m here.”

“That is unfortunate for you.”

Jesus turned His head toward the patrolman. “What did you do with the boy from the northern ridge?”

The man stiffened.

Cassian looked from Jesus to the patrolman. The weapon dipped slightly. Behind the visor, the man’s breathing changed. The second patrolman glanced at him, confused.

Jesus’ voice remained low. “You told yourself obedience made you clean.”

The patrolman took one step back. “Be quiet.”

“But you still see his face when you close your eyes.”

The air around them seemed to tighten. Cassian had seen men challenged before. He had seen threats, bribes, arguments, and desperate pleading. This was different. Jesus was not attacking the man, but neither was He letting him hide. The patrolman’s hand shook near the grip of his weapon.

“I said be quiet.”

Jesus looked at him with grief and authority together. “Lay down what is killing you.”

For one impossible moment, Cassian thought the man might do it. The patrolman’s shoulders lowered. His helmet tilted as if the person inside it had suddenly become tired beyond bearing. Then the side gate opened behind him, and an officer in a black uniform stepped out.

“What is this?” the officer demanded.

The patrolman straightened instantly. “Unauthorized disturbance.”

The officer looked at Jesus, then at Cassian. His face was clean, controlled, and cold in the way of men who had practiced removing themselves from the suffering their orders caused. “Detain them.”

Cassian’s body moved before his courage caught up. “Wait.”

The officer lifted one eyebrow. “Do you have something to say?”

Cassian did not. Not really. His mouth had outrun his plan. Jesus looked at him, and in that look Cassian felt both freedom and responsibility. He was not being forced. He was being invited into the truth, and the truth was not safe.

Cassian swallowed. “There are people in there being held without charge.”

The officer smiled faintly. “That sounds like an accusation.”

“It’s a question.”

“No,” the officer said. “It is a mistake.”

The patrolman reached for Cassian’s arm. Cassian flinched but did not run. The hand closed around his sleeve, and with it came the full weight of consequence. His shop, his debts, his fear, his mother’s name, his brother’s memory, all of it seemed to gather into one sharp point.

Jesus spoke before the patrolman could pull him away. “Cassian.”

Cassian looked at Him.

“Tell the truth.”

The officer’s smile disappeared.

Cassian felt the whole street watching. He thought about all the years he had survived by staying quiet. He thought of the woman at the water stall. He thought of Nalen leaving with hurt in his eyes. He thought of his mother opening the parts cellar for people who had nowhere else to hide. The truth rose in him like something painful being born.

“My brother was taken through this tower,” Cassian said. His voice shook, but it held. “Nalen Rell. Five years ago, lower quarter raid. You called it stabilization. My mother died that day. You erased the names. You buried the report. And everyone here knows you keep doing it.”

The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of things people had been afraid to say.

The officer stepped close. “You should have stayed under your ships.”

Cassian looked at Jesus, then back at the officer. “I know.”

The patrolman tightened his grip. The second one moved toward Jesus. For a moment, Cassian expected fire from heaven, a legion of angels, some visible force that would split the tower and prove that holiness could not be touched by armored hands. But Jesus simply stood there, willing to be seized, His face steady with sorrow and purpose. That frightened Cassian more than power would have, because it meant love was walking into the place everyone else feared.

As they were taken through the gate, Cassian looked back once at the street. The fruit seller stood beside his crates, pale and trembling. The pilot with the navigation slate had stopped pretending not to see. The two children no longer played. The whole town seemed caught between the life it knew and the truth that had just entered it.

Inside the tower courtyard, the noise of the settlement faded behind metal walls. The air smelled of hot stone, disinfectant, and fear covered badly by order. Cassian’s heart pounded so hard he could hear it. Jesus walked beside him, bound but unbowed, silent but not defeated.

Cassian did not know where this road would lead. He did not know whether his brother lived, whether his shop would survive, whether the woman and her son had escaped, or whether the town would forget what it had seen by nightfall. He only knew that the grave he had built inside himself had opened, and he could no longer pretend it was home.

For the first time in years, fear was not the only voice speaking.

And somewhere behind the walls of the tower, someone began to sing.

Chapter Two

The song inside the tower did not sound like courage at first. It was low, uneven, and almost swallowed by the hum of the walls. Cassian heard it as the patrolmen pushed him through the inner corridor, and for a moment he thought the sound came from a faulty vent or a loose wire trembling behind the panels. Then the voice rose just enough to carry a few words through the metal passage, not strong words, not polished words, but the kind of words a person repeats when there is nothing left to hold except memory.

Cassian could not make out the language. It was old, or broken, or maybe only muffled by the doors. Still, something in the tune moved through him with painful familiarity. His mother used to hum when she worked late, especially when the shop was full of danger and refugees were hidden beneath the floor. She had never sung loudly. She said quiet songs lasted longer in hard places because they did not need permission to survive.

The officer in black walked ahead of them with measured steps. His boots struck the floor in a clean rhythm that made the patrolmen straighten their shoulders. Cassian noticed how the air changed around men like him. People did not merely obey them. They arranged themselves before being commanded, as if fear had trained their bodies before words were even spoken.

Jesus walked beside Cassian with His hands bound in front of Him. The restraint looked wrong against Him, not because He seemed helpless, but because nothing in Him bowed to the meaning others placed on it. His face was calm. His eyes moved through the corridor as if He saw more than walls, weapons, doors, and cameras. Cassian could not understand that calm. He wanted it and distrusted it at the same time.

The officer stopped at a checkpoint where two guards sat behind a transparent barrier. One looked up from a display, saw Jesus, and frowned as if troubled by a thought he could not name. The other scanned Cassian’s identity band and gave a short laugh.

“Rell Repair,” the guard said. “You had one job today.”

Cassian said nothing.

The officer turned slightly. “He chose confession instead.”

The guard’s smile faded. He looked at Cassian again, more carefully this time. People in that town knew what confession meant. It was not a holy word there. It was something extracted, altered, recorded, and used. Cassian felt a brief surge of fear that the guard already knew how to make his words serve the Empire. He had told the truth in the street, but the tower had machines designed to turn truth into a weapon against the one who spoke it.

The barrier opened. They were taken down a narrow stairway that curved under the main floor. The light changed as they descended. Above, the tower had been clean, bright, and official. Below, the air grew damp, and the walls showed old scrape marks where hands had dragged, struck, or searched for balance. Cassian felt the temperature drop, though sweat ran beneath his collar.

The singing stopped.

He did not know why that frightened him more than the song had.

At the bottom of the stairs, the officer turned to Jesus. “You entered a restricted security zone, disrupted imperial procedure, and incited public disorder.”

Jesus looked at him. “A woman and her child were being crushed under your order.”

The officer’s mouth tightened, not from guilt, but from irritation at the plainness of the statement. “Order does not crush. It preserves.”

“It preserves what serves it.”

Cassian looked at Jesus. The officer did too. For a moment, something passed through the man’s controlled face. It was not conviction yet. It was the faint disturbance of a locked room hearing a key turn somewhere far away.

Then he recovered. “Put them in holding.”

The first cell door opened with a low mechanical groan. A patrolman shoved Cassian inside hard enough that he stumbled into the wall. Jesus entered without resistance. The door sealed behind them, and the lock engaged with a sound that seemed too final.

The cell was larger than Cassian expected, but that only meant it held more people. A man with a swollen eye sat against the far wall, one arm wrapped around his ribs. An older woman in a gray coat held a young girl asleep against her side. Two miners stood near the corner, whispering in tense bursts. A thin man with a bandaged head watched Jesus with open suspicion. Near the back, under a vent that carried cold air in shallow breaths, a prisoner with silver-threaded hair sat with his knees drawn up and his hands folded.

Cassian stared at him.

The man lifted his head.

For a moment, five years vanished. Cassian saw the boy with the bag over his shoulder, the quick grin, the restless eyes, the little scar near his chin from falling off the shop roof when they were children. Then the present returned with brutal force. The man at the back of the cell was thinner, harder, and older than Nalen should have been. His face carried the worn look of someone who had survived by closing doors inside himself.

“Nalen,” Cassian said.

The prisoner’s eyes sharpened. He stood slowly, as if his body had learned not to trust sudden hope. “Cass?”

The name broke something in him. Cassian crossed the cell before he knew he was moving. He reached his brother and stopped just short of touching him, because the last memory between them still stood there like a wall. Nalen looked at him with the same stunned disbelief.

“I thought you were dead,” Cassian said.

Nalen’s jaw worked once before he answered. “I thought you didn’t care.”

The words were not loud, but they cut through the cell. Cassian flinched as if struck. He had imagined this moment in a hundred ways and avoided it in a hundred more. He had pictured anger, reunion, blame, silence, even death. He had not prepared for the simple truth that his brother had lived for years believing he had been abandoned.

The older woman looked away, giving them the little privacy a cell could offer. The miners stopped whispering. Jesus stood near the sealed door, watching them with sorrow and patience.

Cassian tried to speak, but the first words failed. He looked at Nalen’s wrists and saw bruises where restraints had been. His brother noticed and pulled his sleeves lower.

“How long?” Cassian asked.

“In this tower?” Nalen said. “Three days. In their hands? Longer.”

“I looked for you.”

Nalen gave a tired smile with no warmth in it. “Did you?”

Cassian’s throat tightened. “I asked around.”

“You asked safe people safe questions.”

The truth of it hit him before he could defend himself. He had asked enough to ease the guilt, not enough to risk finding an answer that would cost him. He had told himself there was nothing more he could do, but beneath that was the fear that finding Nalen alive would demand courage he did not have.

Cassian looked down. “I was afraid.”

Nalen’s face hardened. “So was I.”

A patrol announcement crackled somewhere beyond the door, then dissolved into static. The girl asleep against the older woman stirred but did not wake. Cassian glanced at Jesus, and the look Jesus gave him held no accusation beyond truth itself. That made it harder to breathe.

The thin man with the bandaged head stepped forward. “You two can settle family business after we figure out who he is.”

He pointed at Jesus.

Nalen looked toward Him for the first time. Something in his expression changed, not recognition exactly, but unease. “He came in with you?”

Cassian nodded. “He brought me here.”

Nalen almost laughed. “You followed a stranger into the security tower?”

“Yes.”

“That may be the first brave thing you’ve done in years.”

Cassian accepted the blow because part of him thought he deserved it. Jesus did not move. The bandaged man came closer, eyes narrowed.

“You speak like an informant?” he asked Jesus.

“No,” Jesus said.

“Then what are you?”

Jesus looked at him. “The One who came to seek and save the lost.”

The cell went quiet in a strange way. Cassian expected someone to mock Him. No one did. The words sounded impossible in that place, yet they did not sound weak. Even the thin man seemed uncertain whether to sneer or step back.

The older woman’s eyes filled with tears before she could hide them. “My son used to say that.”

Jesus turned to her. “He learned it from your prayers.”

Her lips parted. “You knew him?”

“I know him.”

The woman covered her mouth, and the girl against her side woke, blinking in fear. Jesus lowered His gaze gently toward the child, and the girl did not cry. She stared at Him as if she had been frightened by many men but knew somehow that this man was different.

The bandaged prisoner shook his head. “Careful. Hope is how they get you to talk.”

Nalen looked at Jesus with guarded interest. “He’s not one of theirs.”

“How do you know?” the man asked.

Nalen kept watching Jesus. “Because they don’t look at prisoners like that.”

Cassian wanted to ask what he meant, but he already knew. Guards looked through people. Officers looked at records. Informants looked for weakness. Jesus looked as though every person in the cell remained fully human, no matter what had been done to them, no matter what they had done, and no matter what names the Empire had used to shrink them.

The lock clicked. Everyone stiffened. The door slid open, and two patrolmen entered with a medical droid hovering behind them. The officer in black remained outside the threshold.

“Nalen Rell,” he said.

Nalen straightened. Cassian stepped instinctively in front of him.

The officer looked amused. “That is touching.”

Cassian did not move. “What do you want with him?”

“What we have always wanted,” the officer said. “Names, routes, codes, loyalties. Your brother has been inconveniently stubborn.”

Nalen’s voice was low. “I told you I don’t have what you think I have.”

The officer ignored him and looked at Cassian. “But perhaps you do.”

Cassian’s stomach turned cold.

The officer continued, “You own a repair shop. You service freighters, courier vessels, salvage haulers, supply craft. You hear things. People trust mechanics because mechanics look too tired to be dangerous.”

“I don’t know anything,” Cassian said.

“Everyone knows something.”

Jesus stepped forward. One patrolman raised his weapon. Jesus stopped, not from fear, but with deliberate restraint.

The officer shifted his attention to Him. “You are very calm for a man who has no identification, no authorization, and no concern for his own survival.”

Jesus looked at him. “You are very empty for a man with so much power.”

A faint sound moved through the cell. It might have been a breath. It might have been fear. The officer’s eyes darkened, but his voice stayed controlled.

“Power is not empty.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But it cannot fill the soul.”

The officer entered the cell fully now. The patrolmen followed. Cassian felt Nalen tense behind him. The medical droid hummed with cold efficiency, its instruments folded beneath its round shell like metal fingers.

The officer stopped before Jesus. “You mistake patience for weakness.”

Jesus held his gaze. “And you mistake fear for peace.”

The officer struck Him.

Cassian jerked forward, but Nalen grabbed his arm. The sound of the blow seemed to stay in the room after the officer lowered his hand. Jesus’ face turned with the force of it. A red mark rose along His cheek. He slowly looked back at the officer, and what Cassian saw there shook him more than anger would have. Jesus did not look humiliated. He looked grieved for the man who had struck Him.

The officer seemed to feel it too, because his jaw tightened. “Take the brothers.”

The patrolmen seized Cassian and Nalen. Cassian struggled now, not with skill, but with panic. Nalen moved with the trained resistance of someone who had been dragged before and had learned when fighting only wasted strength. Jesus remained where He stood, watching them being pulled toward the door.

Cassian shouted, “Why aren’t You doing something?”

Jesus answered quietly, “I am.”

The door closed between them before Cassian could understand.

They were taken into a smaller room with a table bolted to the floor and two chairs facing each other. A window of dark glass covered one wall. Cassian knew someone stood behind it. He could feel the watching. Nalen was shoved into one chair, Cassian into the other. Their restraints locked to the table with magnetic clamps.

For several moments, they were alone.

Cassian looked at his brother. “I didn’t know.”

Nalen stared at the table. “I believe that.”

The words gave Cassian a brief breath of relief.

Then Nalen added, “That was the problem.”

Cassian closed his eyes. He wanted to argue, but the cell, the tower, the officer, and Jesus’ words had left him too exposed for old defenses to work. He opened his eyes again and saw the scar on Nalen’s chin. They were boys for half a second. Then they were men with too much history between them.

“I should have come after you,” Cassian said.

Nalen’s expression tightened. “Yes.”

There it was. No softening. No easy forgiveness. No sweeping music. Just the truth, sitting between them like another prisoner.

Cassian nodded, and his eyes burned again. “I’m sorry.”

Nalen looked at him then. The anger did not vanish, but it shifted. His brother had probably imagined that apology for years. Maybe he had hated it. Maybe he had wanted it. Maybe he no longer knew what to do with it now that it was there.

Before he could answer, the door opened. The officer came in carrying a small holoprojector. He placed it on the table and activated it. A flickering image appeared between the brothers: a set of star routes, names, docking marks, and coded transmissions.

“We found this on a courier vessel yesterday,” the officer said. “It was damaged, but not beyond recovery. Your brother’s cell was moving information along these routes. He claims not to know the missing contact.”

Nalen looked at the image and went still.

The officer noticed. “There it is.”

Cassian looked from the image to his brother. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Nalen said too quickly.

The officer leaned closer. “The missing contact repaired vessels under a civilian front. He passed supplies through ordinary routes. He was cautious, bitter, and useful without knowing it.”

Cassian stared at him.

The officer smiled. “You.”

Cassian shook his head. “No.”

Nalen’s face told a different story.

Cassian turned on him. “What did you do?”

Nalen’s eyes filled with exhausted regret. “I kept you out of it as much as I could.”

“As much as you could?”

“We needed clean ports, repair logs, harmless names. I used your shop as cover twice. Maybe three times.”

Cassian felt the room tilt. His license, the inspections, the sudden attention, the quiet threats from fuel brokers tied to security offices, the sense that danger had been circling closer for months. He had thought life was punishing him randomly. His brother had pulled him into a war without telling him.

“You used me,” Cassian said.

“I used the shop,” Nalen answered, but shame weakened the distinction.

“My mother’s shop.”

Nalen flinched.

The officer watched them with satisfaction. “Family is efficient. Betrayal does half the work.”

Cassian turned toward him. “Shut up.”

The officer’s smile grew. “There is the rebel heart. Very late, but still useful.”

“I’m not a rebel.”

“No,” the officer said. “You are a frightened mechanic who became useful to one side by accident and troublesome to the other by conscience. Men like you are everywhere. You want peace, but you keep your tools near the engines that move war.”

Cassian hated him for saying it because it was not entirely false. He had never wanted to choose a side. He had wanted the galaxy to leave him alone, yet his repairs had kept ships moving, his silence had protected cruelty, and his bitterness had not made him innocent. Refusing to care had still shaped the world around him.

The officer turned the projector off. “Here is what happens now. Cassian gives us the names of every irregular customer from the last year. Nalen confirms the routes. If the information proves useful, one brother leaves the tower. The other is transferred.”

Nalen’s face hardened. “No.”

The officer looked at Cassian. “You may choose which one.”

Cassian’s breath caught. The cruelty of it was so precise that it felt rehearsed. Maybe it was. Empires did not only build weapons out of metal. They built them out of guilt, fear, blood, memory, and love twisted under pressure.

Nalen leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed. “Don’t answer.”

Cassian almost laughed. “You don’t get to tell me what to do after this.”

“I know.”

“You used my shop.”

“I know.”

“You let me think I was just cursed.”

“I was trying to keep you alive.”

Cassian’s voice rose. “You disappeared.”

Nalen met his anger with his own. “I was taken.”

“After you left.”

“Because somebody had to do something.”

The old argument returned with new wounds. It filled the room quickly, as if it had been waiting years for walls strong enough to contain it. Cassian saw again the night Nalen left, the doorway, the packed bag, their mother’s tools still untouched after her death. He remembered accusing his brother of chasing a heroic death. Nalen remembered Cassian choosing the shop over him. Both memories were true, and neither one held the whole truth.

The officer let them burn for a while. Then he said, “The offer expires when I leave the room.”

Cassian’s mind raced. He thought of the woman and her son. The fruit seller. The prisoners in the cell. Jesus standing bound with mercy in His eyes. He thought of his mother saying that truth did not stop being true because fear entered the room. He thought of Nalen, alive and guilty and still his brother.

“What happens if I refuse?” Cassian asked.

The officer shrugged. “Then both of you are transferred.”

“To where?”

“You do not need a map for a grave.”

Nalen looked at Cassian. “Do not give him names.”

Cassian stared at the empty space where the projection had been. Names. He did have them. Not all, not in the way the officer wanted, but enough to harm people. A pilot who paid in old coins. A widow who moved medical packs inside coolant containers. A boy with a false limp who always came at dusk. Cassian had noticed more than he admitted. He had told himself noticing was not choosing.

The door behind the officer opened. One of the patrolmen stepped in and whispered something. The officer’s face changed slightly.

“What?” Cassian asked.

The officer ignored him.

Nalen lifted his head. “What happened?”

The patrolman glanced at the brothers, then back at the officer. “There’s a disturbance in holding.”

The officer looked irritated. “The unidentified prisoner?”

The patrolman hesitated. “He is speaking with them.”

The officer’s voice lowered. “So?”

“They are listening.”

A strange quiet entered the interrogation room. Cassian felt something like hope and fear together. The officer saw it on his face and struck the table with his palm.

“Hope makes people stupid,” he said.

Cassian looked at him, and for the first time since entering the tower, he saw the officer not as a wall but as a man building one. His control was not strength. It was panic refined into procedure. He needed the room cold because he was afraid of what might happen if anyone inside it became human again.

The officer stepped toward Cassian. “Choose.”

Cassian looked at Nalen. His brother’s eyes were steady now, but beneath the steadiness was pleading. Not for his own life. For Cassian not to become the kind of man this room was designed to create.

Cassian swallowed. “I won’t give you names.”

The officer stared at him. “That is your answer?”

“Yes.”

Nalen closed his eyes in relief and pain.

The officer leaned down until his face was close to Cassian’s. “You think this redeems you?”

Cassian’s voice shook, but he did not look away. “No.”

“Then why?”

Cassian thought of Jesus saying, You were not asked to be her savior. He thought of the grave he had built inside himself. He thought of how mercy had cost him and yet somehow left him less poor than fear ever had.

“Because they are not mine to sell.”

The officer studied him for a long moment. Then he straightened and walked to the door. “Transfer them both.”

The door opened, and for the first time, noise spilled in from the corridor. Not shouting exactly. Not panic. Something else. Voices. Many voices. Cassian heard the song again, but now it was no longer one prisoner under a vent. Others had joined, unevenly and quietly at first, then with growing strength. The melody moved through the lower level like water finding cracks in stone.

The officer froze.

A guard hurried past the open doorway. Another voice called from somewhere down the hall. The words were clipped and anxious. The holding cell door had been opened. No, not opened. The lock had failed. No, not failed. The report changed three times in as many breaths, which meant no one understood what was happening.

The officer turned sharply toward the brothers. “Keep them here.”

He left with the patrolman, and the door sealed again. Cassian and Nalen sat locked to the table while the song deepened beyond the walls.

For a moment, neither brother spoke.

Then Nalen said, “Who is He?”

Cassian stared at the door. “Jesus.”

Nalen let the name sit in the room. “I heard stories.”

“So did I.”

“I stopped believing most stories.”

Cassian nodded. “Me too.”

Nalen looked at him. “And now?”

Cassian did not answer quickly. He had no clean statement to offer. Faith, if that was what had begun in him, did not feel like a speech. It felt more like a locked place opening, and he was not sure what would be found inside.

“I think,” Cassian said slowly, “He sees the part of a man he’s been trying hardest to hide.”

Nalen gave a weary breath. “That sounds dangerous.”

“It is.”

The song outside grew louder. Cassian recognized one phrase now because it was being repeated in Basic by several voices. Light for those in darkness. Mercy for those in chains. The words were simple, almost too simple, yet in that tower they sounded like rebellion deeper than politics. They did not merely challenge the Empire. They challenged despair.

Nalen leaned back as far as the restraints allowed and looked at the ceiling. “When they took me, I thought about you for a long time.”

Cassian looked at him.

“I was angry,” Nalen said. “I kept replaying what you said when I left. I told myself I hated you. It helped for a while.”

Cassian’s voice was rough. “I hated you too.”

“I know.”

“No,” Cassian said. “I hated you because I missed you. That was easier.”

Nalen looked at him then, and the hard years between them seemed to lose some of their sharpness. They did not disappear. Nothing that real disappears because a person says one honest sentence. But something changed. The wall was still there, yet a door had been cut into it.

Nalen’s eyes lowered to the restraints. “I should not have used the shop.”

“No.”

“I told myself Mother would have wanted it.”

Cassian felt that one land. “Maybe she would have wanted courage. Not deceit.”

Nalen accepted it with a small nod. “Yes.”

The singing continued. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

The silence afterward was worse because it felt chosen.

The door opened again, but this time no officer entered. Instead, the patrolman from the barricade stood there, the one Jesus had spoken to about the boy from the northern ridge. His helmet was gone. His face was younger than Cassian expected, pale and strained, with eyes that looked as if they had not slept well in years.

He held a key cylinder in one hand.

Cassian stared at him. “What are you doing?”

The patrolman stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His breathing was uneven. “I don’t know.”

Nalen watched him carefully. “That’s not comforting.”

The patrolman looked at Nalen, then at Cassian. “The man you came with. He said the boy’s name.”

Cassian did not speak.

“No one knew the boy’s name,” the patrolman said. “We burned the records. The officer said names made martyrs. He said unnamed dead become dust faster.”

His hand tightened around the key cylinder.

Cassian’s anger rose, but it was different now. It had somewhere to go and nowhere useful to land. “What was his name?”

The patrolman’s face twisted. For a moment, he looked like he might run. Instead, he whispered, “Tovan.”

Nalen looked down.

The patrolman continued, “He was fourteen. He ran because we searched his family’s water shed. I fired because they told us runners carry signals. He had a tool battery in his hand. Not a signal. Not a weapon.”

Cassian remembered Jesus’ words at the barricade. You told yourself obedience made you clean. He looked at the patrolman and saw a man trapped under the thing he had done. He wanted to hate him cleanly, but Jesus had made clean hatred harder.

“What do you want from us?” Cassian asked.

The patrolman lifted the key cylinder. “I can release the restraints. I cannot get you out of the tower.”

Nalen leaned forward. “Why help us at all?”

The patrolman’s eyes flicked toward the door. “Because He looked at me like I was still a man.”

Cassian felt the sentence move through him. A few hours ago, he might have mocked it. Now he understood too well. Jesus had looked at him the same way in the repair shop, not as the bitter mechanic he had become, but as the man buried beneath it.

The patrolman unlocked Nalen first, then Cassian. The magnetic clamps released with a soft click. Cassian rubbed his wrists, staring at the man who had held a weapon on them less than an hour earlier.

“What’s your name?” Cassian asked.

The patrolman hesitated, as if names were dangerous on both sides of the door. “Varek.”

Nalen stood carefully. “Where is Jesus?”

Varek swallowed. “In the main holding corridor. The prisoners are refusing orders.”

Cassian’s heart tightened. “Are they armed?”

“No.”

“Then what are they doing?”

Varek looked confused and shaken by his own answer. “Standing.”

The word filled the room. Cassian understood immediately why that frightened the tower. People who cowered could be managed. People who raged could be crushed and called violent. But people who simply stood because truth had reached them were a different kind of threat.

Nalen moved toward the door. “We need to go.”

Cassian caught his arm. “Go where?”

“To Him.”

Varek looked between them. “The officer called reinforcements from the garrison.”

“How long?” Nalen asked.

“Minutes.”

Cassian felt the old fear surge again, practical and persuasive. They had no plan, no weapons, no route, and no guarantee that Jesus intended to escape at all. Following Him had already cost Cassian his shop, his safety, and whatever remained of invisibility. Now it might cost his life.

Then he remembered the woman’s boy clutching the metal star. He remembered his mother’s song. He remembered Nalen saying, I thought you didn’t care. He had already lost too many years to fear’s version of wisdom.

He opened the door.

The corridor outside was empty, but not quiet. Voices echoed from the holding level. Varek led them through a service passage, away from the main stairway. The walls vibrated faintly as heavy doors shifted somewhere above them. Cassian walked behind him with Nalen at his side, and for the first time since childhood, the two brothers moved in the same direction.

They reached the main corridor through a side entrance near the holding cells. Cassian stopped when he saw it.

The prisoners were standing in the open passage. The cell doors along the left wall were unlocked, though several still sparked at the control panels. Some prisoners leaned on others because they were too weak to stand alone. The older woman held the young girl against her side. The miners stood with their shoulders squared. The bandaged man was crying silently, though his face looked almost angry about it. At the center of them stood Jesus.

Several guards faced the prisoners with weapons raised, but they had not fired. The officer in black stood near the stairwell, his face no longer calm. He looked at the prisoners, then at Jesus, as if trying to calculate why the room had stopped obeying him.

Jesus was speaking, but not loudly. Cassian arrived in the middle of His words.

“Your life is not made clean by the innocence you claim for yourself,” Jesus said. “It is made new by the mercy you receive and the mercy you now must show.”

The words were not aimed at one person only. Cassian felt them reach prisoners, guards, rebels, cowards, grieving mothers, guilty men, and frightened brothers all at once. He saw Varek lower his head beside him. He saw Nalen close his eyes briefly. He felt his own defenses weaken again.

The officer raised his voice. “Enough.”

Jesus turned toward him.

“This tower is mine,” the officer said.

Jesus looked at the walls, the weapons, the sealed doors, and the men waiting for permission to harm. Then He looked back at the officer. “No.”

The officer’s face flushed. “You think you can take it from me?”

Jesus’ voice remained steady. “I came to free what never belonged to you.”

A tremor seemed to move through the corridor, though nothing physical shook. Cassian could not explain it. The lights did not burst. The walls did not fall. No army stormed the doors. Yet the authority in the room changed. The officer still had rank, guards, weapons, and the tower. Jesus had none of those things, and still every soul there knew which voice was true.

The officer drew his sidearm.

Several prisoners gasped. Nalen stepped forward. Cassian grabbed him, but Nalen shook him off. Varek lifted his hands as if pleading with the officer.

“Commander, don’t.”

The officer did not look at him. His weapon remained aimed at Jesus. “On your knees.”

Jesus did not kneel.

Cassian’s heart pounded. He wanted Jesus to do something visible, something undeniable, something that would make the officer drop the weapon and make everyone believe without risk. But Jesus only stood there, bound hands lowered before Him, His face marked from the blow, His eyes full of sorrow and unshaken love.

The silence stretched.

Then the young girl slipped from the older woman’s arms and stepped into the open space.

Cassian’s breath caught. The woman reached for her, but the girl had already moved too far. She could not have been more than seven. Her hair was tangled from sleep, and her face was thin with fear and hunger. She walked toward Jesus, trembling, but determined.

The officer’s weapon shifted slightly. “Move back.”

The girl stopped beside Jesus and took hold of His bound hand.

No one moved.

Jesus looked down at her, and His expression softened with such tenderness that Cassian felt tears rise again. The girl did not say anything. She simply stood there, holding onto Him in the middle of the tower.

One by one, others stepped forward. The older woman first. Then the miners. Then the bandaged man. Then Nalen. Cassian felt his brother move and did not stop him this time. Varek stepped away from the guards and stood with them too. His hands shook, but he stood.

Cassian remained near the side entrance, caught between the life he had known and the life now opening before him. It was one thing to speak in the street. It was another to stand in front of a weapon beside people who had no protection but truth. He could feel fear arguing with him, offering him one last chance to stay half-hidden.

Jesus looked at him.

That was all.

Cassian walked forward.

He stood beside Nalen, close enough that their shoulders touched. His brother did not move away. The officer looked at them all, and something like panic crossed his face. The weapon in his hand had not changed, but the room it pointed at had. Fear no longer moved through the people in straight lines. It broke, scattered, and lost command.

The officer shouted toward the guards. “Remove them.”

No one moved.

“I gave an order.”

The guards looked at the prisoners, at Varek, at the child holding Jesus’ hand, and finally at one another. Their weapons remained raised, but their fingers were no longer certain. Cassian saw it happen in real time. The Empire had trained their hands, but Jesus was reaching the place beneath training.

A siren sounded above them.

Varek turned sharply. “Garrison transport.”

The officer seized on the sound as if it saved him. “You see? This ends now.”

Jesus looked toward the stairwell, then back at the people. “No. This begins.”

Cassian felt the words settle into him with both hope and dread. He had wanted rescue to mean escape. Maybe it would. Maybe it would not. But he understood now that Jesus had not entered the tower merely to open cell doors. He had come to open graves inside living people, and once those graves opened, no man could honestly return to the darkness and call it home.

The siren grew louder. Heavy boots sounded above. Reinforcements were coming down.

Nalen leaned close to Cassian. “Whatever happens, I’m glad you came.”

Cassian looked at his brother. There was too much to say, and no time large enough to hold it. “I should have come sooner.”

“Yes,” Nalen said, and then his voice softened. “But you came.”

Cassian nodded, and the two of them turned back toward Jesus as the first wave of armored soldiers appeared at the top of the stairwell. The corridor filled with the sound of weapons being readied. The prisoners did not run. The guards did not fire. The officer stood between rage and unraveling.

Jesus lifted His eyes toward the soldiers, and the tower seemed to hold its breath.

Cassian did not know whether they would leave that place alive. He did not know what would happen to the shop, the town, the prisoners, Varek, Nalen, or himself. But the song began again behind him, softer than before and stronger in a way he could not explain. It rose from cracked voices, frightened voices, guilty voices, and tired voices that had discovered they were not alone.

This time, Cassian sang too.

Chapter Three

The soldiers came down the stairwell in a line of white armor, each one stepping into the corridor with trained precision and a weapon held across the chest. Their boots struck the metal steps in a rhythm that made the prisoners shrink closer together. The song weakened for a moment, not because faith had vanished, but because bodies remembered what weapons could do before hearts remembered what Jesus had said. Cassian felt Nalen’s shoulder against his own, and for the first time in years the closeness of his brother did not make him angry. It made him afraid of losing him again.

The officer in black seemed to grow taller as the soldiers filled the passage. His name patch caught the light when he turned, and Cassian finally read it clearly. Commander Orsan Vale. The name meant nothing and everything. It was not a monster’s name. It was not carved with darkness. It was just a man’s name stitched onto a uniform, which made the coldness in him feel even more terrible. Evil did not always arrive wearing the face people expected. Sometimes it arrived clean, calm, and certain that its paperwork made cruelty respectable.

Vale lifted his hand, and the new soldiers stopped halfway down the stairs. Their weapons angled toward the prisoners. Varek stood beside Cassian with his helmet still under one arm, his face exposed to everyone. That exposure seemed to cost him. He had spent years hiding behind armor that made obedience easier. Now the skin of his face carried every tremor his uniform used to conceal.

“Trooper Varek,” Vale said. “Return to formation.”

Varek swallowed. The corridor waited.

“I can’t,” he said.

Vale’s eyes narrowed. “You can.”

Varek looked toward Jesus, then at the prisoners standing around Him, then back at the commander. “No, sir. I mean I cannot do it anymore.”

The words were not loud, but they traveled through the corridor like a thrown stone across still water. Cassian felt the prisoners draw in breath. He heard a guard near the holding door shift his feet. One of the soldiers on the stairwell tilted his helmet slightly, as if disbelief had found a crack in the training.

Vale walked toward Varek with controlled slowness. “You fired on civilians. You guarded cells. You processed transfers. You signed reports. Do not pretend conscience came to you clean.”

Varek’s face tightened. “It didn’t.”

“Good,” Vale said. “Then stop performing remorse because a stranger made you feel human for five minutes.”

Varek almost looked down, but he did not. Cassian saw the cost of that small act. It took effort for a man to keep his eyes raised when his shame was being named in public. Jesus did not rescue Varek from the truth. He simply stood near enough that the truth did not crush him.

“I am guilty,” Varek said.

The young girl beside Jesus pressed closer to His bound hand. The older woman behind her began to cry quietly. Vale’s jaw tightened because guilt spoken honestly was different from guilt extracted under threat. Honest guilt did not belong to the tower. It had passed beyond the commander’s control.

Vale turned away from Varek and faced Jesus. “This is what you do, then? You make weak men call surrender freedom.”

Jesus looked at him steadily. “A man who confesses the truth is less enslaved than one who hides behind command.”

A low murmur moved through the prisoners. Vale heard it and hated it. Cassian could see that plainly now. The commander was not merely trying to stop an escape. He was trying to stop a different kind of authority from becoming visible. If the prisoners saw that a man could stand in truth without owning a weapon, the tower’s power would no longer feel whole.

Vale raised his hand again. “Separate the unidentified man from the group.”

Two soldiers came down the last steps and moved into the corridor. Their weapons remained ready, but their pace slowed as they neared Jesus. He did not step back. The girl still held His hand, and for a terrible second Cassian thought the soldiers might shove her aside. Before they reached Him, Jesus looked down at her with tenderness.

“Go to your mother now.”

The girl tightened her grip. Her small face tilted upward, frightened and stubborn. “No.”

Jesus lowered Himself just enough to meet her eyes, though His hands were still bound. “Little one, courage does not always mean holding on in the same way. Sometimes courage obeys when fear wants to cling.”

The child’s lips trembled. She looked at the soldiers, then at the older woman, who had both hands pressed over her heart. Slowly, the girl let go. Jesus watched her return to the woman before He turned back toward the soldiers.

One of them reached for Him.

Cassian stepped forward without thinking. Nalen caught his sleeve, not to stop him completely, but to slow the impulse that might get him killed before it mattered. Jesus glanced at Cassian, and that one look held him in place. It did not shame his desire to help. It steadied it. Cassian realized that much of his life had been divided between cowardice and reckless bursts of guilt, and neither one was the same as obedience.

The soldiers took Jesus by the arms. The corridor stirred with grief and anger. The bandaged prisoner started forward, but the miners held him back. Varek moved as if to intervene, then stopped when Jesus spoke.

“Do not answer fear with fear.”

Vale smiled faintly. “Convenient.”

Jesus looked at him. “No. Costly.”

The soldiers pulled Him toward the stairwell. As He passed Cassian, His eyes rested on him for only a moment. Cassian wanted instruction. He wanted a plan. He wanted Jesus to say where to go, what to do, how to save the prisoners, how to fix his brother, how to stop the garrison above them. But Jesus gave him something harder than a plan.

“Stay awake,” Jesus said.

Cassian did not understand. Then Jesus was taken past him, up the first steps, and away from the cluster of prisoners who had stood around Him like frightened people around a fire in the cold.

The corridor changed as soon as Jesus was separated from them. It did not lose His presence, but the fear came back with new force. The soldiers remained. Vale remained. The open cell doors remained. The prisoners were no longer safely hidden behind bars, yet they were not free. They stood in the worst place, between captivity and release, where the soul must decide whether the first taste of light was worth the danger it brought.

Vale turned to the guards. “Return all detainees to holding. Any resistance will be treated as rebellion.”

The word rebellion struck the prisoners differently. Some stiffened with pride. Others recoiled. Cassian knew why. In that world, rebellion was not only a cause. It was a sentence. Once the Empire placed that word on a person, anything could be justified. A mother could be punished for feeding the wrong traveler. A mechanic could be ruined for asking the wrong question. A child could lose a father and be told the family had threatened public order.

Nalen leaned close to Cassian. “We cannot let them lock everyone back up.”

Cassian looked at the soldiers, then at the prisoners. “We don’t have weapons.”

“We have people.”

“That’s not the same.”

Nalen’s eyes stayed on the corridor where Jesus had been taken. “Maybe that is what He is showing us.”

Cassian wanted to argue. He would have argued easily a day earlier. People without weapons became names on reports. People without power disappeared. People who stood in hallways against trained soldiers did not become legends in real life. They became warnings. Yet Jesus had walked into the tower with no visible force and had shaken it more deeply than any bomb could have done.

The guards started pushing prisoners toward the open cells. The miners resisted first, not violently, but by refusing to move. One guard shoved the older of the two in the chest. The man staggered, then straightened. His breathing was hard, and his face was pale, but he did not raise his hands against the guard. He simply stood where he was.

“Inside,” the guard barked.

The miner looked over at Cassian, as if asking whether the courage in the room had been real or only borrowed while Jesus was close enough to see. Cassian felt the question strike him. He had followed Jesus into the tower, spoken truth in the street, refused to sell names, and stood beside prisoners while a commander aimed a weapon. Yet now, with Jesus taken upstairs and the corridor turning back toward order, the old instinct to survive began whispering that he had done enough.

Nalen stepped forward before Cassian did. “No one goes back alone.”

Vale turned. “You are eager to be transferred first.”

Nalen’s face was tired but steady. “I have been transferred before.”

“Then you know how this ends.”

Nalen glanced at Cassian. “I thought I did.”

Cassian stepped beside him. It was not dramatic. His legs felt weak. His mouth was dry. But he stood with his brother, and together they moved toward the miner who had refused to enter the cell. Varek followed after a moment, then the bandaged prisoner, then the older woman with the girl in her arms. The prisoners began closing the space between one another until the guards could no longer isolate them without pushing through the whole group.

Vale watched this with growing anger. “You are confusing mercy with immunity.”

Cassian answered before he could talk himself out of it. “No. We know you can hurt us.”

“Then you are fools.”

“Maybe,” Cassian said. “But we are not going back into the dark just because you opened the door and regretted it.”

Several prisoners turned toward him. Cassian felt heat rise in his face. He had not meant to sound brave. He had only said what was true in the plainest words he had. Nalen looked at him with something like surprise, and that look meant more than Cassian wanted to admit.

Vale gave a sharp order. Two soldiers descended from the stairwell and moved toward Cassian and Nalen. Varek stepped in front of them, still unarmed.

“Sir,” Varek said, “the lower cells are not secure. If you force them in, this becomes worse.”

Vale stared at him. “You are advising me now?”

“I am telling you what is true.”

“No,” Vale said. “You are trying to save yourself by standing near the prisoner’s god.”

Varek flinched at the word god, not because he denied it, but because hearing it from Vale’s mouth sounded like mockery laid against something holy. Cassian felt it too. The commander was trying to make the sacred sound foolish. He was trying to reduce what had happened to emotion, weakness, and spectacle. Yet the more he spoke, the more Cassian saw the fear beneath him.

From above came the sound of a door opening, then another. Heavy footsteps moved across the upper floor. Jesus had been taken somewhere beyond sight. Cassian found himself listening for His voice, but the walls held it back.

A guard grabbed the bandaged prisoner by the shoulder. The prisoner twisted away and nearly fell. Cassian reached out to steady him. The guard lifted his baton, and Nalen caught the guard’s wrist. It happened fast. The guard reacted by striking Nalen across the face with his other hand. Nalen stumbled into Cassian, and the corridor erupted.

The miners surged forward. Varek shouted for the guards to stop. The older woman pulled the young girl behind her and pressed her into the corner. Several prisoners cried out. A soldier raised his rifle. Cassian saw the barrel lift toward Nalen, and something in him turned cold and clear.

He stepped between the weapon and his brother.

The soldier froze for half a second, perhaps because Cassian had no weapon, perhaps because his face looked less like defiance and more like pleading. Cassian did not know what he looked like. He only knew he could not watch his brother be taken from him again while he stood aside calling fear wisdom.

“Don’t,” Cassian said.

The soldier’s helmet hid his face. “Move.”

“No.”

Nalen grabbed the back of Cassian’s jacket. “Cass.”

Cassian did not move.

The rifle remained pointed at his chest. Cassian heard his own breathing. He heard the low hum of the corridor lights. He heard the young girl crying into the older woman’s coat. He heard the faint echo of something above them, maybe voices, maybe another order. For a moment his life narrowed to the black eye of the weapon in front of him.

Then a voice came through the ceiling speakers.

“Commander Vale to upper chamber.”

It was not Jesus’ voice. It was an officer from above, tense and clipped.

Vale turned toward the speaker. “I am occupied.”

“Now, Commander.”

The corridor held still. The soldier kept his weapon on Cassian, but his posture shifted. Vale looked at the prisoners, then toward the stairwell. He hated leaving. Cassian could see it. The lower level was no longer fully under his control, and every minute away from it gave the prisoners more time to remember they were human.

Vale pointed at the soldiers. “Hold them here. No one returns to the cells yet. No one leaves.”

He turned to Varek. “You will answer for this.”

Varek nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

Vale went up the stairs, and the corridor exhaled without meaning to. The soldiers did not lower their weapons, but the immediate violence loosened. Cassian stepped back slowly from the rifle. His heart pounded with delayed terror. Nalen touched his split lip and looked at the blood on his fingers.

“That was stupid,” Nalen said.

Cassian turned to him. “You would have done it.”

“Yes,” Nalen said. “That is why I know.”

Cassian almost smiled, but the moment was too heavy to hold it. He looked at the prisoners. They were still gathered, still afraid, still trapped between armed men and locked doors. Jesus had told him to stay awake. He understood a little more now. Staying awake meant not letting fear put him back to sleep after one brave moment. It meant seeing each person, each choice, each lie, and each small opening where mercy could still move.

The older woman came toward him with the girl clinging to her side. “There is another way out.”

Nalen looked at her sharply. “From the lower level?”

She nodded. “I was brought in through a service tunnel before dawn. They thought I was asleep when they opened it.”

Varek stepped closer. “The waste conduit.”

The bandaged man grimaced. “That sounds lovely.”

Varek ignored him. “It leads beneath the west landing pads. It is sealed from the control room.”

“Can you open it?” Nalen asked.

Varek hesitated.

Cassian watched his face. “Can you open it?”

“I know how,” Varek said. “But the moment I try, the upper floor sees the access request.”

The miner with the bruised ribs spoke from near the wall. “Then we need the upper floor busy.”

Cassian looked up the stairwell. “Jesus is already making them busy.”

No one answered, because everyone knew that was both hope and danger. Jesus was alone above them with the commander and whatever authority had called him away. The thought pressed on Cassian. He did not want to leave Jesus behind. At the same time, Jesus had not told him to follow upstairs. He had told him to stay awake, and the people in front of him needed a path.

Nalen moved close to Varek. “How many guards between here and the conduit?”

“Two at the service passage. Maybe three if the shift changed early.”

“Can the prisoners move quietly?”

Varek looked at the group. Many were weak. Some were injured. The girl was small. The older woman limped. The bandaged man swayed whenever he stood too fast. Quiet would be difficult. Fast would be impossible.

Cassian saw the calculation forming on Nalen’s face and knew his brother was returning to the part of himself that had survived raids and secret routes. Nalen would make hard choices. He would decide who could move, who could help, who might slow the group down, and how much risk each life created for the others. That kind of thinking had probably kept him alive, but it also carried danger. It could begin with responsibility and end by turning people back into pieces on a board.

Jesus’ words returned to Cassian. She is your neighbor.

“No one gets left because they’re slow,” Cassian said.

Nalen looked at him. “If we move as one group, we may all be caught.”

“Then we move as one group carefully.”

“That is not a plan.”

“It is a line we don’t cross.”

Nalen’s eyes hardened. “You think I want to leave anyone?”

“I think war taught you to.”

The words struck both of them. Nalen looked away first, and Cassian regretted the harshness but not the truth. He had spent years hiding from cost. Nalen had spent years paying it in ways that had damaged him. Neither brother had come through clean.

Varek spoke quietly. “There may be another option.”

They turned to him.

“The control relay for this level sits behind the old intake shaft. If someone reaches it and locks the lower doors open manually, the upper chamber cannot close them from above. It would also scramble corridor surveillance for a few minutes.”

Nalen’s focus sharpened. “How far?”

Varek pointed toward a side passage near the holding cells. “Past two locked gates.”

“Can you get there?”

“I can get us through the first gate. The second needs a maintenance bypass.”

Cassian almost laughed, but this time there was a bitter spark of usefulness in it. “That I can do.”

Nalen looked at him. “You sure?”

“I have spent my life opening things that should have been replaced.”

The bandaged man gave a weak snort. “That may be the most hopeful thing anyone has said today.”

A faint tremor moved through the tower. Dust sifted from a seam in the ceiling. The soldiers at the stairwell looked upward. Something was happening above them. It did not sound like an explosion. It sounded like a deep metallic strain, as though the tower itself had been forced to bear a truth it was not built to carry.

Then Jesus’ voice came faintly through the ventilation shaft.

Cassian could not hear all of it, but he heard enough.

“Those who love darkness fear the light because it shows what their hands have done.”

The corridor went still. Even the soldiers listened.

Another voice answered, likely Vale’s, though the distance distorted it. “You know nothing of order.”

Jesus’ reply came softer, yet somehow clearer. “Order without righteousness is only fear with clean walls.”

The words passed through the lower level like light under a door. Cassian saw the prisoners receive them. Not as a lesson. Not as a speech. As a naming of the world they had been trapped inside. Clean walls. Hidden cruelty. Official lies. Fear dressed as peace. Jesus was speaking upstairs, but He was also giving language to those below.

Nalen touched Cassian’s arm. “Now.”

Varek moved first. He spoke to the soldiers near the stairwell with the voice of someone still wearing enough authority to be obeyed for a few seconds. “Contain the main corridor. Commander ordered no one into the cells and no one out. That means no movement unless the upper chamber confirms.”

One soldier turned toward him. “You are relieved.”

“Then relieve me after you get a direct order,” Varek said. “Until then, if this level breaches because you abandoned position, Vale will bury you with me.”

It was a dangerous bluff, and it worked because fear knew Vale’s temper better than it knew Varek’s rebellion. The soldiers remained at the stairwell. Their weapons stayed raised, but their attention shifted toward the main group of prisoners.

Cassian, Nalen, Varek, and the older miner slipped toward the side passage with three others close behind. The older woman stayed with the child and the weaker prisoners, quietly preparing them to move when the doors opened. Cassian looked back once and saw the bandaged man standing in front of them despite his injuries, as if his thin body could become a shield by sheer decision.

The side passage smelled worse than the main corridor. Warm air moved through the vents, carrying the sour odor of old water and overheated machinery. Varek led them to a gray gate set into the wall behind a stack of broken restraint frames. He entered a code with shaking fingers. For one terrible second, nothing happened. Then the gate clicked open.

The first chamber beyond it was narrow, with pipes running low across the ceiling. Cassian ducked as he moved. Nalen followed close behind him. The older miner, whose name they learned in a whisper was Brant, carried a length of metal he had picked up from the restraint stack. He held it like a tool, not a weapon, though in that place the difference was thin.

At the second gate, Varek opened the control panel and stepped aside. “Your turn.”

Cassian crouched in front of it. The wiring was old, but the lock had been updated badly. That gave him a chance. He pulled a small driver from the lining of his jacket. Nalen stared at it.

“You kept tools on you in a holding cell?”

Cassian worked the panel loose. “You carried rebellion under my shop. Don’t judge my habits.”

Nalen gave a quiet breath that might have become laughter in a different life. Cassian focused on the wires. His burned wrist throbbed. Sweat ran down his temple. Somewhere above them, voices rose again. A heavy door slammed. The tower seemed to pulse with pressure.

As Cassian worked, Nalen crouched beside him. “About the shop.”

“Not now.”

“I need to say it.”

Cassian twisted two wires, got a spark, and pulled back with a hiss. “Then say it fast.”

Nalen kept his voice low. “I told myself using the shop was honoring Mother because she helped people. But I didn’t ask you. I didn’t trust you. I made you part of something and left you blind.”

Cassian glanced at him, then back at the panel. “Why?”

“Because I thought you’d say no.”

“I would have.”

“I know.”

The honesty hung there, rough but clean. Cassian found the bypass line and stripped the end with his teeth. He thought of all the years he had wanted his brother to confess exactly this. Now that he had, it did not heal everything, but it gave truth somewhere to stand.

“I was wrong too,” Cassian said.

Nalen said nothing.

Cassian connected the bypass, and the panel flickered. “I used the shop as a place to hide from anything that looked like love with a cost.”

“That sounds like something He would say.”

“Maybe He already did.”

The lock clicked, then jammed halfway. Cassian swore under his breath, stopped himself, and pressed his burned wrist against the inner latch. Pain shot up his arm. He turned the driver with his other hand and forced the latch free. The gate opened with a scrape loud enough to make everyone freeze.

They waited.

No alarm sounded.

Varek let out a breath. “Relay is ahead.”

They entered a low control room where old systems had been built around newer imperial hardware. It looked like a machine that had been conquered and forced to serve a new master. Cassian understood that feeling more than he wanted to. The original wiring had once moved water, heat, air, and door functions for a freight tower. The newer black modules controlled locks, surveillance, prisoner movement, and emergency seals. The Empire had not built the whole place. It had taken what already existed and bent it toward fear.

Cassian stared at the relay. “This is ugly.”

Brant looked at the wall of wires. “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” Cassian said. Then he paused. “Probably.”

Varek moved to the door and listened. Nalen stood beside Cassian, watching the panel as if willpower could help. The others waited in silence. Cassian opened the relay housing and began tracing the connections. He needed to lock the lower cell doors open, disrupt the cameras, and avoid triggering a full purge seal. The last part mattered most. If the tower thought the lower level had been breached by force, it could seal every exit and flood the service passages with suppressant gas.

His hands knew the work. That surprised him. He had spent years thinking his skills were small, useful only for keeping junk ships alive and creditors away. Now the same knowledge might open a path for prisoners. He felt no pride in that. It was more humbling than pride. Something ordinary in his life had been waiting for mercy to use it.

Above them, the speakers crackled again, but this time the voice was clearer. Vale was speaking from the upper chamber, and someone had opened the internal channel by mistake or panic.

“You think compassion can govern a galaxy?” Vale’s voice demanded. “You think mercy can hold back chaos?”

Jesus answered, “Mercy is not chaos. Mercy is the heart of My Father toward the broken. Righteousness is not cruelty. Truth is not control. You have used the language of peace while making war against the souls of men.”

Cassian stopped working for one second. Every person in the relay room listened. The words carried the clean spiritual force of something ancient and living, something that did not belong to the Empire’s century or any century. Jesus was not giving them a lesson. He was revealing the difference between the kingdom men build through fear and the kingdom of God that enters quietly and cannot be owned.

Vale’s voice sharpened. “Your Father has no jurisdiction here.”

Jesus said, “There is no place where He is not Lord.”

A sound followed that might have been a strike. Cassian’s hand clenched around the wire. Nalen stepped toward the door, but Varek blocked him.

“No,” Varek said.

Nalen’s eyes burned. “They’re hurting Him.”

Varek looked ashamed. “Yes.”

“We can’t just stand here.”

Cassian forced himself back to the relay. “He told me to stay awake.”

Nalen turned on him. “And that means wires?”

Cassian looked up. “Right now it means doors.”

Nalen stared at him, anger and fear moving across his face. Then he looked away, breathing hard. Cassian understood him. It felt wrong to work on a panel while Jesus was being struck above them. It felt cowardly. It felt too small. Yet perhaps obedience often felt small while the heart wanted something grand enough to silence its guilt.

Cassian pulled the surveillance module loose. The screens on the wall flickered. One showed the main corridor where prisoners waited in a tense cluster. Another showed the stairwell, soldiers shifting uneasily. A third showed the upper chamber.

Cassian went still.

Jesus stood in a wide room before a command table. His hands were still bound. Commander Vale faced Him with two senior officers nearby and four soldiers along the wall. One side of Jesus’ face was bruised now. Blood marked the corner of His mouth. He looked neither surprised nor defeated.

At the far end of the chamber, a large window overlooked the settlement. From that height, the town looked small and manageable. Cassian understood why men like Vale liked high rooms. People became movement, data, clusters, risk, and compliance. From above, it was easier not to see faces.

Vale moved closer to Jesus on the screen. The audio crackled but held.

“You could stop this,” Vale said. “I can see it. I do not know what you are, but I know restraint when I see it. You could break these walls if you wanted.”

Jesus looked at him. “Yes.”

The room below the screen went silent.

Vale’s confidence flickered. “Then why don’t you?”

Jesus’ answer came softly. “Because I did not come to save by becoming another image of your fear.”

Cassian felt the words enter him with force. He thought of how often he had wanted God to prove Himself by overpowering the people he hated. He thought of how much easier faith would be if mercy always arrived like a weapon pointed in the right direction. But Jesus stood bound and bleeding, and somehow He was the freest person in the tower.

Vale seemed disturbed by the answer. “You will die for people who will run the moment doors open.”

Jesus looked toward the camera, though Cassian knew He was not looking at a machine. He was looking at them. “Some will run. Some will return. Some will stand. My love is not measured by what fear taught them to do first.”

Cassian’s eyes stung. He turned back to the relay because he could not bear to watch and fail at the same time. His hands moved faster now. He crossed the bypass, grounded the lock feed, and tied the lower controls to the old freight system. The panel flashed red, then amber, then a dull green.

Varek looked at the screens. “You did it.”

Cassian hit the manual release.

Throughout the lower level, locks opened.

The screens showed the cell doors sliding wide. The prisoners did not cheer. They moved. The older woman guided the weakest toward the side corridor. The bandaged man helped a limping prisoner. The miners formed a human wall near the stairwell, not attacking the soldiers, but blocking their view long enough for others to slip away. The young girl looked toward the camera as if she somehow knew someone behind it had opened the way.

Then alarms began.

Varek swore under his breath. “Upper floor saw it.”

Cassian pulled two more wires. “Surveillance is scrambled for three minutes. Maybe four.”

Nalen moved toward the service exit. “Then we move.”

Cassian looked back at the upper chamber screen. Vale had turned toward a console, shouting orders. Jesus remained still. Their eyes met through the flickering image, impossible and certain. Cassian knew Jesus had seen the doors open. He knew He had known all along.

Varek opened the service exit, and the relay room emptied into a narrow tunnel. The air there was hot and foul. Pipes groaned overhead. The group moved quickly but not smoothly. Brant helped one injured prisoner. Nalen guided two others. Varek led with tense urgency, trying to remember which turns avoided sealed grates. Cassian stayed near the rear, listening for soldiers behind them.

The first group of prisoners joined them at the junction. More came from the holding corridor in staggered clusters. Fear made them want to rush. Weakness forced them to slow down. Cassian saw frustration flash across Nalen’s face as the line clogged near a low section of tunnel, but his brother did not snap at anyone. He ducked under the pipe and helped lift the young girl through, then took the older woman’s hand without being asked.

Cassian watched that and felt something inside him soften toward Nalen in a way he had not expected. His brother was not only the man who had used the shop. He was also the man who bent under a filthy pipe to help an old woman keep her balance while alarms screamed behind him. People were harder to hate when truth made room for the whole of them.

They reached the waste conduit seal. It was round, rusted at the edges, and locked with a heavy mechanical clamp. Varek entered an override code. The seal rejected it.

“Again,” Nalen said.

Varek tried. The panel flashed red.

Cassian pushed in beside him. “Move.”

“It’s security-coded.”

“It’s also old.” Cassian pulled the side housing loose and studied the mechanism. The alarms continued behind them. Somewhere back in the tunnel, someone cried out that soldiers had entered the lower service passage.

Nalen turned to the prisoners. “Stay low. Keep moving forward as space opens. Do not push.”

Cassian worked the clamp. The metal was stubborn, and his wrist burned with every turn. Varek held the loose panel aside. Brant braced the seal with the metal bar. Nalen kept the line calm. The older woman whispered to the child, though Cassian could not hear the words.

The clamp finally shifted.

“Pull,” Cassian said.

Brant pulled. Varek joined him. Nalen stepped in too. The seal opened with a grinding sound, and desert air rushed into the tunnel. It smelled of dust, fuel, and freedom.

Beyond the conduit, the passage sloped down beneath the west landing pads. Dim light filtered through grates above. The prisoners began climbing through, one by one. Some wept when they felt outside air. Others did not react at all. Freedom can arrive before the heart has strength to receive it.

Cassian stayed at the seal, helping people through. Varek stood with him. Nalen moved in and out of the opening, guiding prisoners down the slope beyond. The alarms grew louder behind them. Soldiers were close now.

The bandaged man reached the seal and stopped beside Cassian. “You coming?”

Cassian looked back down the tunnel.

The man understood. “He’s still up there.”

Cassian nodded.

The bandaged man’s face tightened. “He opened the doors.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe He means us to leave.”

Cassian did not answer. The man climbed through, and the line kept moving. Soon only a handful remained near the seal. Varek looked back too, his face torn.

Nalen returned through the opening. “Cass, we need to go.”

Cassian stared into the tunnel. “Jesus is still in the tower.”

“I know.”

“We can’t leave Him.”

Nalen stepped close. “Do you think He does not know where He is?”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” Nalen said. “But if we run back without hearing what He told us, we may turn His mercy into our guilt.”

Cassian flinched because the words sounded too much like truth. He wanted to save Jesus partly because he loved Him, though he barely understood that love. He also wanted to repay Him, to erase the helpless feeling of watching Him suffer, to prove he was not the man who had once let fear decide everything. But Jesus had not asked him for proof. He had asked him to stay awake.

The young girl and the older woman were the last prisoners at the seal. The woman paused, looking at Cassian. “He told us to go.”

Cassian turned to her. “When?”

“In the corridor,” she said. “When the doors opened. He said the shepherd does not open the gate so the sheep can admire the gate.”

Despite everything, Nalen gave Cassian a look. “That sounds like Him.”

The girl reached out and touched Cassian’s burned wrist with two small fingers. “He said He sees you.”

Cassian closed his eyes for a moment. The pressure in his chest was almost unbearable. Then he opened them and helped the girl through the seal.

A shout echoed from the tunnel behind them. Soldiers rounded the far bend.

Varek lifted a fallen pipe and jammed it across the seal frame. “Go.”

Nalen ducked through. Cassian followed, then turned back. Varek remained inside the tunnel.

“What are you doing?” Cassian said.

Varek’s face was pale, but calmer than before. “Someone has to slow them.”

“No.”

Varek smiled faintly, and for the first time he looked younger without looking weak. “I know what I have done. This does not erase it.”

“Then don’t act like dying fixes it.”

“I’m not trying to die.”

“You’re staying inside a tunnel with armed soldiers.”

Varek gripped the pipe. “I am trying to stand between them and the people I helped imprison.”

Cassian started back through the seal, but Nalen grabbed him from behind. “Cass.”

Varek looked at him. “You asked my name.”

Cassian stopped.

The first soldiers appeared fully in the passage behind Varek. Weapons rose.

Varek shouted to them, voice breaking but strong enough to fill the tunnel. “There are civilians beyond this seal. Injured detainees. A child. You fire through here, and you will know what you did.”

The soldiers slowed. Cassian could not see their faces. He could only see their hesitation.

Varek looked back once. “Tell someone Tovan’s name.”

Cassian’s throat tightened. “I will.”

Varek pulled the emergency lever beside the seal. The round door slammed down between them. Cassian lurched forward and struck it with both hands.

“Varek!”

No answer came through the metal.

Nalen pulled him back. “We have to move.”

Cassian stared at the sealed door, breathing hard. He wanted to hate the weight of choice. He wanted obedience to feel cleaner than this. Instead it felt like walking with a wound still open, trusting that Jesus knew how to hold what Cassian could not fix.

They moved down the sloped passage beneath the landing pads. Above them, ships roared and dust fell through the grates in thin streams. The prisoners traveled in a broken line through shadow and rust. Some leaned on strangers. Some carried those who could not walk. Nalen moved near the front now, guiding them toward a drainage cut beyond the perimeter fence. Cassian stayed near the back, still listening for pursuit, still thinking of Jesus above and Varek behind the sealed door.

The tunnel finally opened into a dry wash beyond the west edge of the settlement. The sun had climbed high. Its light struck the prisoners so fiercely that several shielded their eyes. They emerged one after another into the open desert, blinking like people born too quickly into a world they were not sure would receive them.

The town lay below and behind them, half-hidden by fuel towers, landing cranes, and heat shimmer. The security tower rose at its center, dark and straight against the sky. From the outside, it looked unchanged. Cassian knew better. Something had happened inside it that no report could fully bury.

Nalen gathered the prisoners near a line of rocks. “There are old maintenance sheds two ridges east. We can rest there before nightfall.”

Brant looked at the group. “And after that?”

Nalen did not answer quickly.

The older woman sat with the girl in the shade of a broken panel. “After that, we live the next faithful moment.”

Cassian turned toward her. She gave a tired smile. “I listened to Him too.”

The words quieted him. He looked at the prisoners. Escaping the tower had not made life simple. They had no supplies except what they carried. Patrols would search the area soon. Some had families in town who might now be in danger. Others had nowhere to go. Freedom had opened into responsibility almost immediately.

Nalen came to stand beside Cassian. “We should move before aerial scan.”

Cassian nodded, but he did not take his eyes off the tower. “Do you think He will come out?”

Nalen followed his gaze. “I don’t know.”

Cassian hated that answer because it was honest.

A deep sound rolled across the settlement. Not thunder. Not an engine. The tower’s upper signal array sparked once, then went dark. The public announcement screens across town flickered in the distance. For a few seconds, the official voice vanished. No promises of order. No warnings. No commands. Just silence over the streets.

Then another sound rose.

It came from the town itself.

People were singing.

Cassian could not believe it at first. The distance blurred the words, but the melody was the same one from the holding cell. It moved through the streets below, thin in places and stronger in others, carried by people who had heard prisoners sing and had decided not to let the song stay inside the tower. The sound trembled across the desert air, fragile and impossible.

The prisoners in the wash heard it. Some began to sing with them. The older woman joined first, then the girl, then Brant, then the bandaged man. Nalen did not sing, but his face changed as if the song had reached a place words could not. Cassian stood silent for a long moment, looking at the tower where Jesus remained unseen.

Then he sang too, not loudly, not well, but with a voice that no longer belonged entirely to fear.

As the song rose under the hard noon light, Cassian understood that the story had not ended when the doors opened. In some ways, the harder part had begun. Jesus had entered the tower and exposed the darkness, but now those who had been seen by Him had to decide how to carry that light into the open. They would have to move, forgive, confess, shelter, risk, and tell the truth when silence would be safer.

Cassian looked at Nalen. His brother looked back. There was still pain between them. There were still questions. There would still be anger, consequences, and grief waiting in the days ahead. But for the first time, the space between them did not feel like a locked door.

Above the settlement, the tower stood with its darkened signal array, and somewhere inside it Jesus remained in the hands of men who thought they had power over Him. Cassian did not understand why Heaven allowed that. He did not understand why mercy sometimes walked into suffering instead of around it. He only knew that Jesus had not been overcome in the tower. He had overcome something inside the people who had feared it.

Nalen touched Cassian’s shoulder. “We need to go.”

Cassian nodded. He turned from the tower with effort, then helped the older woman stand. The prisoners began moving east along the ridge, away from the settlement and toward the old maintenance sheds. Their steps were slow, uneven, and uncertain, but they were steps taken in the open air.

Behind them, the song continued in the town.

Ahead of them, the desert waited.

And above them all, the same stars that had watched Jesus pray before dawn waited for night to come again.

Chapter Four

The old maintenance sheds sat beyond the second ridge, half-sunk into the desert as if the land had been trying for years to cover them and forget what they had once been. Their metal walls had gone dull under the sun, and their doors hung unevenly from tracks clogged with dust. A few broken antenna poles leaned over the roofline. Cassian could see why Nalen had chosen the place. From the settlement, the sheds looked like scrap. From the air, they looked like nothing worth landing for. In a galaxy ruled by suspicion, being mistaken for useless could keep people alive.

The prisoners reached the sheds in scattered silence. The song from the town had faded behind them as the ridge rose higher between them and the tower, and without it the desert seemed too large. No one cheered when they arrived. A few dropped to the ground as soon as they passed into shade. Others stood in confusion, as if freedom had moved faster than their minds could follow. The young girl sat beside the older woman and kept staring toward the ridge, waiting for someone who was not coming yet.

Cassian helped Brant lower an injured prisoner onto a rolled tarp. The man’s breathing rasped in a way that made Cassian look for tools before he remembered he was not in the shop. He had no medpack, no clean water, no power cell, no spare cloth except what people were wearing. The helplessness hit him hard. In the shop, problems had edges. A cracked line, a loose coupling, a burned circuit, a jammed latch. Here, the need had faces.

Nalen moved through the shed with quick focus, checking doors, sightlines, ceiling gaps, and the narrow back exit that opened into a dry wash. He had become someone Cassian did not fully know. His brother’s eyes measured danger before kindness had time to speak. Yet he also paused to help the older woman sit where the shade was deepest, and when the girl asked if the man from the tower was coming, Nalen did not answer with a lie.

“I hope so,” he said.

The girl looked down at her hands. “He told me not to be afraid.”

Nalen crouched in front of her. “Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

The child seemed surprised by that, and Cassian watched her study his brother with serious eyes. Nalen had not softened his voice in a way that sounded fake. He had simply told her the truth. Somehow that helped more than comfort would have.

Cassian turned away and walked to the shed doorway. From there he could see the top of the tower beyond the ridge, a dark vertical line against the pale sky. The signal array remained dead. Ships still moved in and out of the settlement, but their routes had changed. Patrol craft circled lower than usual. Dust trails crawled near the western road, likely speeders moving toward the tower. The Empire had not lost control, not completely. It was wounded, and wounded power often became more dangerous.

Behind him, the bandaged man laughed once, low and bitter. “So this is freedom.”

Brant looked over. “You preferred the cell?”

“No,” the man said. “I just expected the air to feel different.”

The older woman answered without lifting her head. “It does. You are too tired to notice.”

Cassian glanced at her. She sat with her back against a support beam, one arm around the girl. Her face was lined by age, fear, and something steadier than both. He wondered how many losses she had survived without becoming hard. Some people were softened by suffering, but not in a weak way. They became like cloth worn thin from use, still able to cover someone cold.

Nalen came to the doorway and stood beside Cassian. For a while neither brother spoke. The silence between them was no longer empty, but it was not easy either. It held apologies that had begun but not finished. It held anger that had lost its right to rule but had not disappeared. It held the strange mercy of two men still breathing beside each other when both had believed the other was lost.

“They’ll search outward from the tower,” Nalen said. “Roads first. Then landing pads. Then old structures.”

“How long before they reach this place?”

“Not long.”

Cassian rubbed his burned wrist. The girl’s touch still seemed to linger there. “Then why stop?”

“Because some of them can’t move yet.”

Cassian looked at him.

Nalen’s mouth tightened. “I heard you.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Cassian looked back toward the tower. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“That makes two of us.”

“You’ve been doing this for years.”

Nalen shook his head. “I’ve been surviving inside it. That is not the same.”

The honesty settled between them. Cassian wanted to ask everything at once. Where Nalen had been. What he had done. Whether he had killed anyone. Whether he still believed the rebellion was clean. Whether he had thought about coming home. But the shed behind them was full of people who needed water, shelter, and a way out, and Cassian was beginning to understand that healing did not always arrive in the order a wounded heart preferred.

A low groan came from inside. The injured prisoner on the tarp tried to sit, then collapsed back with a sharp breath. Cassian moved before Nalen did. He knelt beside the man and pressed two fingers gently below his ribs.

“What happened to him?” Cassian asked.

Brant crouched across from him. “Interrogation room.”

The word was enough. Cassian swallowed his anger and looked at the man’s face. “What’s your name?”

The man’s eyes opened halfway. “Derso.”

“Derso, I’m Cassian. I fix ships, not people, but I know when a frame is under too much strain. You need to stay still.”

Derso tried to smile and failed. “That your medical opinion?”

“That is my frightened mechanic opinion.”

Brant pulled a torn strip from his own sleeve. “We need water.”

Everyone knew it, and no one had said it plainly yet. The sheds had old tanks, but when Nalen checked them, the gauges were dead. Cassian followed him to the back wall where a rusted service pump sat half-buried under dust. It had once pulled moisture from a shallow collector field, but the lines had been cut and capped years ago.

Cassian crouched and opened the housing. The interior smelled of heat and metal. “Maybe.”

Nalen leaned over him. “Maybe good or maybe bad?”

“Maybe stop breathing on my neck.”

Nalen stepped back. Cassian almost smiled despite himself. He pulled loose a panel and found the old manual line. The pump had been stripped of its regulator, but the core still turned. If the collector field beneath the shed had any reserve at all, he might be able to draw a little water.

He needed power.

He looked around the shed. Broken light strips. Dead wall outlets. A corroded charging dock. A cracked loader unit in the corner. The loader’s power cell was old, but it might hold a charge if the seals had not failed. Cassian crossed to it and opened the compartment. The cell was there.

Nalen watched him. “Can it work?”

Cassian lifted the cell carefully. “You ask that like the universe has been kind to equipment today.”

“Has it?”

“No. But the Lord seems to like using damaged things.”

The words came out before he could examine them. Nalen looked at him. Cassian looked back, embarrassed by his own honesty.

“I don’t know where that came from,” Cassian said.

Nalen’s expression softened. “I do.”

Cassian carried the power cell to the pump and rigged a temporary connection with wire from the old light strips. Several prisoners gathered quietly. Their watching made his hands feel clumsy. He was used to customers watching with impatience, not hope. Hope was heavier. It made failure feel personal.

The first attempt did nothing. The pump clicked once and died. Cassian adjusted the connection, scraped corrosion from the contact, and tried again. The motor whined, coughed, and stopped. Derso groaned from the tarp. The girl stood and came closer, her small hands clasped together.

Cassian closed his eyes for one second. He did not pray well. He did not know if what rose in him even counted. But he thought of Jesus in the tower and the way He had looked at broken people as if broken did not mean useless. Then Cassian opened his eyes and pressed the power lead more firmly against the contact.

The pump shuddered.

A thin stream of brown water spat from the pipe, then cleared enough to catch in a dented container Brant shoved beneath it. The sound that moved through the shed was not celebration. It was relief too deep to be loud. The older woman bowed her head. The girl smiled for the first time since Cassian had met her.

Nalen looked at the water, then at Cassian. “Mother would have loved that.”

Cassian kept his eyes on the pump. “She would have told me not to waste it.”

“She would have said that too.”

They filled every container they could find. The water was warm and tasted faintly metallic, but no one complained. Brant helped Derso drink in careful sips. The girl drank, then carried the container to the bandaged man before taking more for herself. Cassian noticed that and felt something tighten in him. Children should not have to learn mercy in places like this, but maybe that was where mercy shone most clearly.

As the prisoners settled into the shade, Nalen pulled Cassian aside near the back exit. “We cannot keep everyone here until night. If patrols come, the weak will not outrun them.”

Cassian looked toward Derso. “So what do we do?”

“There are three choices.”

Cassian gave him a look.

Nalen stopped himself and breathed out. “Sorry. There is a settlement east of here beyond the mining flats. I know a contact there. She can hide people for one night and maybe get them off-world in small groups.”

“How far?”

“Too far for Derso unless we carry him.”

“Then we carry him.”

Nalen’s eyes sharpened. “That slows everyone.”

Cassian stared at him.

Nalen looked away first. “I am not saying leave him.”

“Good.”

“I am saying the cost is real.”

“I know cost is real,” Cassian said. “I’m just tired of letting cost be the only truth in the room.”

Nalen absorbed that. He looked older than Cassian remembered and younger than he had seemed in the tower. “You sound different.”

Cassian glanced toward the ridge. “I met Someone.”

“So did I.”

They stood with that shared truth between them. The sound of the pump slowed behind them as the old collector began to empty. Outside, the desert wind dragged dust along the ground in thin sheets.

A shadow crossed the doorway.

Cassian turned fast. A woman stood at the entrance with a blaster lowered at her side. Her hair was tied back beneath a pilot’s scarf, and her face was streaked with dust. Behind her, the nose of a small freighter was barely visible beyond a cluster of rocks, its hull patched in three colors. Cassian recognized her only when the little boy stepped from behind her cloak, still clutching the metal star.

The woman from the water stall looked at him with wide, exhausted eyes. “You are alive.”

Cassian let out a breath he had not known he was holding. “You made it to Bay Four.”

“Barely.” She stepped inside and looked at the gathered prisoners. “What happened?”

Nalen moved forward, wary but not threatening. “Who are you?”

“My name is Sera Vonn. My husband owns the freighter Cassian nearly lost his shop for.”

Cassian gave a short laugh. “Nearly?”

Sera looked at him with regret. “The shop was sealed after we lifted. I saw patrols around it.”

The words struck him harder than he expected. He had known it was likely, but hearing it made the loss real. Rell Repair, his mother’s sign, the tools, the holoframe, the half-dead freighter still on the lift, everything familiar had been taken behind imperial seals. He looked down at his hands. They were still black with grease from the shop floor. That life was on him, but he could not return to it the same way.

Nalen watched his face carefully. “Cass.”

Cassian shook his head. “Not now.”

Sera stepped closer. “We heard the song from the tower. Then the signal array went dark. People started moving in the streets. Some were afraid. Some were angry. A fruit seller closed his stall in the middle of the day and told everyone his daughter was more important than imperial questions. That started something.”

Cassian looked up. “The fruit seller?”

Sera nodded. “He said a holy man told him to go home.”

A strange warmth moved through Cassian’s grief. Jesus had touched the town in ways Cassian had not even seen. One sentence at a fruit stall. One woman at a checkpoint. One child in a corridor. One guilty patrolman. One frightened mechanic. The kingdom He carried did not spread like imperial force. It spread like light finding cracks.

Sera’s boy came to Cassian and held out the metal star. Cassian looked at it, confused.

“For you,” the boy said.

Cassian shook his head. “You keep it.”

The boy pushed it closer. “My father says we can fly by real stars. You need this one.”

Cassian did not know what to do with that. He crouched slowly and took the cheap metal piece from the child’s hand. It was warm from being held. The edges were rough. A tiny hole near one point showed where it had once hung from a string.

“Thank you,” Cassian said.

The boy nodded solemnly, then returned to his mother. Cassian closed his fingers around the star and felt foolish for being moved by something so small. But small things had become difficult to dismiss since Jesus entered the repair shop. A cup of water, a child’s hand, a name spoken aloud, a door opening, a song rising where silence had ruled. Maybe grace often came in things power would never bother to count.

Sera looked toward Nalen. “We can take some of them.”

Nalen’s attention sharpened. “How many?”

“Our freighter is not large.”

Cassian spoke before Nalen could turn it into a calculation that wounded someone. “The injured first.”

Sera nodded. “That is what I meant.”

Nalen gave Cassian a tired look. “I was going to say that.”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

Cassian almost smiled again, but then Sera’s expression changed. She looked toward the doorway, listening. A faint engine sound moved over the ridge. Not a freighter. Smaller and faster.

“Patrol scouts,” she said.

Nalen moved instantly. “Everyone up.”

The shed filled with strained movement. Brant and another prisoner lifted Derso on the tarp. Sera ran outside to guide her husband closer with the freighter. The boy stayed beside the older woman, trying to look brave. Cassian tucked the metal star into his jacket and helped disconnect the power cell from the pump.

The engine sound grew louder. Dust rose beyond the western ridge. Nalen cursed under his breath, then caught himself and glanced at the girl as if she had become a conscience in the room.

Cassian moved to the doorway and saw two scout speeders crest the ridge. Their white panels flashed in the sun. They had not spotted the shed yet, but they would within seconds. Sera’s freighter lifted from behind the rocks and swung low, its landing gear still half-extended.

“They’ll see the ship,” Nalen said.

“They already did,” Cassian answered.

The scout speeders banked sharply toward the sheds.

Brant looked at Nalen. “We can’t load everyone before they arrive.”

Nalen looked at the prisoners, the freighter, the ridge, and the approaching scouts. Cassian saw the old war-thinking rise again, but this time Nalen fought it. He did not reduce the people to weights and odds. He looked at their faces.

“We need to draw the scouts away from the loading ramp,” Nalen said.

Cassian’s stomach tightened. “How?”

Nalen looked toward the back wash. “Someone runs.”

Cassian understood. A small group could lead the scouts east along the wash while the injured boarded the freighter. If the runners reached the rock cut, they might hide among the old mining channels. If they did not, they would be taken or shot.

“I’ll go,” Nalen said.

Cassian grabbed his arm. “No.”

Nalen’s eyes flashed. “Not this again.”

“Yes, this again. You always decide the dangerous thing is yours because guilt makes you feel responsible.”

“And you always want to stop me because fear makes love look like control.”

Both of them went silent. The words had come fast and true. For one second, the sheds, prisoners, and engines faded behind the old doorway where Nalen had left years earlier. Cassian saw how easily the same wound could repeat itself in a new costume.

Jesus had exposed the grave. Now they had to choose whether to climb back in.

Cassian loosened his grip. “Then we decide without punishing each other.”

Nalen’s anger softened into something pained. “Fine.”

Cassian looked at the approaching scouts. “We both go.”

“No.”

“That was not a question.”

Nalen looked as if he might argue, then stopped. A slight smile, sad and real, touched his face. “Mother would hate this.”

“Mother hid people under floorboards.”

“She would still hate it.”

“Yes.”

They turned to Brant. “Get them on the ship,” Cassian said. “If we don’t come back, head east.”

Brant nodded, but his eyes were wet. “I am too old to keep receiving mercy from younger fools.”

Cassian handed him the power cell. “Then make it useful.”

Sera’s freighter descended hard near the shed, blasting dust through the open doorway. The ramp lowered before the landing struts fully settled. Her husband, a broad-shouldered man with a patched flight vest, appeared at the top of the ramp and shouted for the injured. The prisoners moved with urgent care. Derso was carried first. The older woman and the girl followed after the weakest. The bandaged man tried to refuse boarding until Brant shoved him forward with a growl.

Cassian and Nalen ran out the back of the shed into the dry wash. The scout speeders saw them almost immediately. One turned toward the freighter, but the other angled after the brothers. Cassian waved both arms and shouted with more confidence than he felt.

“Over here!”

The second speeder corrected its course. The first hesitated, then followed. The plan worked, which was its own kind of terror.

Cassian and Nalen ran east along the wash. Sand dragged at their boots. The heat struck like a wall. Behind them, the speeders dropped low. Warning shots cracked against the rocks ahead, throwing chips of stone into the air. Cassian ducked and nearly fell. Nalen caught his jacket and dragged him forward.

“Still glad you came?” Nalen shouted.

“No!”

Nalen laughed once, breathless and wild. It was the first real laugh Cassian had heard from him since they were boys, and the sound broke his heart while he was running for his life.

They reached the first mining channel and turned sharply between two walls of rust-colored stone. The speeders overshot, then circled back. Cassian pressed himself against the wall, chest heaving. Nalen leaned beside him, listening.

The freighter’s engines roared behind the ridge. Cassian closed his eyes briefly. “Lift. Lift.”

A blast of dust rolled over the wash. The freighter rose into view beyond the shed, slow at first, then faster as it cleared the ridge. One scout broke away to pursue, but Sera’s husband banked hard and dropped behind a line of old cranes near the mining flats. The other scout stayed near the wash, searching for the brothers.

Nalen pulled Cassian deeper into the channel. “Move.”

They slipped through a narrow cut between rock walls. The path twisted downward, then opened into an old excavation pit filled with broken drilling equipment. Cassian saw a rusted ore cart, a cracked conveyor belt, and several collapsed support beams. Nalen pointed toward a drainage pipe half-hidden behind debris.

“In there.”

Cassian looked at it. “That thing barely fits a child.”

“Then become humble.”

They crawled into the pipe as the speeder circled overhead. Cassian’s burned wrist scraped metal, and he bit back a cry. Nalen pushed in behind him. The pipe smelled of dust, old oil, and creatures Cassian did not want to identify. They lay still, shoulder to shoulder, while the speeder hovered above the pit.

A voice amplified through the air. “Come out and lie flat on the ground.”

Cassian whispered, “I hate your plans.”

“You helped make this one.”

“That is why I hate it.”

The speeder’s engine shifted. Dust blew into the pipe. Cassian fought the urge to cough. Nalen’s shoulder pressed against his. In the darkness, with the sound of the machine above them, Cassian was suddenly a child again, hiding beneath the shop floor with Nalen while their mother moved quietly overhead. He remembered Nalen’s hand gripping his in the dark. He remembered being annoyed because his younger brother squeezed too tightly. He remembered not letting go.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian whispered.

Nalen did not answer at first. The speeder moved farther away, then closer again.

“For which part?” Nalen asked quietly.

Cassian stared into the dark curve of the pipe. “For making you leave alone. For being angry that you cared. For not looking hard enough. For keeping Mother’s shop and losing the part of her that mattered.”

Nalen’s breathing changed. “I’m sorry I made your life a hiding place for my war.”

Cassian nodded slightly, though Nalen could barely see him. “I forgive you.”

The words surprised him. They did not feel complete, but they were true. Not finished, not easy, not free of future pain, but true enough to begin.

Nalen was silent so long that Cassian thought he had said too much. Then his brother whispered, “I forgive you too.”

Outside, the scout speeder drifted away toward the ridge.

Inside the pipe, the two brothers remained still, not because of the patrol now, but because something holy had entered even that cramped and filthy place. Cassian thought of Jesus standing bound in the upper chamber, refusing to save by becoming another image of fear. He understood a little more. Jesus did not merely open prison doors. He opened the places where people had locked each other out.

After several minutes, Nalen backed slowly out of the pipe. Cassian followed, covered in dust and shaking with exhaustion. The pit was empty. The freighter was gone. The maintenance sheds sat quiet beyond the ridge.

Then the public screens in the settlement flickered to life.

Even from the mining pit, Cassian could see the largest screen on the tower wall glow above the rooftops. At first it showed static. Then the image cleared.

Jesus stood in the upper chamber.

His hands were still bound. His face was bruised. Commander Vale stood behind Him, furious, while officers scrambled near the command table. Somehow the tower’s internal feed had been routed to the public screens. Cassian did not know who had done it. Varek, maybe. A guard with a troubled conscience. A frightened technician. God using another damaged wire in another broken system.

Jesus looked out through the screen, not like a prisoner addressing a crowd, but like a shepherd looking for lost sheep.

The sound reached them faintly across the distance.

“Do not fear those who can bind the body and still cannot command the soul.”

Cassian stood slowly. Nalen came beside him.

On the streets below the tower, people stopped moving. Vendors, pilots, mechanics, water carriers, children, patrolmen, debt collectors, and travelers all looked up. The town that had spent years looking away was being asked to see.

Jesus continued, His voice calm and clear. “Your Father sees what empires hide. He sees the widow who has been threatened in silence. He sees the child taught to lower his eyes. He sees the guilty man who thinks there is no road back. He sees the brother who stayed, and the brother who left, and the wound between them. He sees the city beneath the stars, and He has not turned away.”

Cassian’s breath caught. Nalen lowered his head.

Vale lunged toward the command table. The image shook but did not disappear. Jesus turned slightly toward him, and even through the distance Cassian felt the authority of that look.

“You can darken screens,” Jesus said. “You cannot darken the light of God.”

The screen cut to static.

The town remained silent.

Then, from somewhere near the lower market, the song began again.

Cassian could not hear all of it from the pit, but he saw what happened. People did not scatter. Not this time. A few patrolmen moved into the streets, but not with the same certainty. Some citizens stepped out from doorways. The fruit seller stood in front of his closed stall with his daughter beside him, a thin girl wrapped in a blanket. Sera’s freighter was gone, but the woman’s courage had left a mark. The tower still stood, but the town beneath it had been seen by God, and being seen had made hiding harder.

Nalen touched Cassian’s arm. “We should get away from the ridge.”

Cassian nodded, but his eyes stayed on the screen until the static faded to black.

They moved through the mining channels until the settlement disappeared behind stone and heat. Neither spoke for a long while. The desert stretched open ahead, harsh and bright. Somewhere east, the freed prisoners were traveling toward shelter. Somewhere behind, Jesus remained inside the tower. Somewhere between those two realities, Cassian felt his old life falling away and a new one beginning without asking whether he felt ready.

When they reached a narrow ledge overlooking the dry flats, Nalen stopped to catch his breath. Cassian leaned against the rock beside him. The cheap metal star pressed against his chest from inside his jacket. He took it out and held it in his palm.

Nalen looked at it. “What is that?”

“A child gave it to me.”

“Why?”

Cassian looked toward the sky, washed pale by daylight but still holding stars beyond what the eye could see. “He said I needed it.”

Nalen studied him, then nodded as if that made more sense than it should have.

Cassian closed his hand around the star. He did not know what would happen next. He did not know if they would reach the others, if the tower would fall, if Varek was alive, or if Jesus would walk out before night. The questions remained, and they were not small. But beneath them, something steadier had begun. For years, fear had told him that love always led to loss. Today, love had led him into danger, truth, grief, forgiveness, and a kind of freedom he could not yet explain.

Nalen started walking again. Cassian followed.

Behind them, faint but real, the song continued under the hard desert sky.

Chapter Five

The mining channels carried Cassian and Nalen farther from the settlement than either of them expected. What looked from a distance like a few shallow cuts in the desert became a broken maze of stone ledges, collapsed shafts, rusted machines, and old warning markers half-buried in sand. The place had once been busy with labor, engines, lights, pay records, shouted orders, and men who came home too tired to speak. Now the wind moved through the abandoned cuts with a dry whisper, pushing dust over tracks left by machines that no longer ran and people no longer remembered.

Cassian followed Nalen through the narrow bends, trying to keep his burned wrist close to his chest. The cheap metal star pressed against his palm until its rough edges marked his skin. He did not put it away. He did not know why. Maybe because the child had given it to him. Maybe because it was easier to hold a small piece of metal than all the questions now crowding his mind. Maybe because, after years of fixing ships beneath a sky he rarely looked at, he needed something that reminded him the heavens were still above the dust.

Nalen moved with the careful urgency of someone who had learned to read danger in broken ground. He paused at every ridge, listened before turning corners, and studied the sky whenever the low buzz of distant engines reached them. Cassian saw how much of his brother’s life had been shaped by being hunted. It was in the way Nalen never stood in the open longer than needed. It was in how he stepped where stone would not keep a clear print. It was in how he looked back often, not because he trusted Cassian less, but because he had lost too many people behind him.

“You learned all this where?” Cassian asked as they descended into a wider cut.

Nalen did not look back. “Different places.”

“That answers nothing.”

“It answers enough for now.”

Cassian wanted to press him, but he heard the strain under the words. There would be time for questions if they lived long enough to ask them well. He was beginning to understand that truth could not always be dragged out just because someone finally wanted it. Some doors opened only when the person inside them had enough safety to turn the handle.

They reached a collapsed drilling platform near midday. Its metal legs had buckled, leaving the main deck tilted against a ridge like a wounded animal. Nalen climbed a side brace and looked east across the flats. Cassian stayed below and leaned against a support beam, breathing hard. He was not weak, but fear and heat had worn him down in ways labor never had.

“Do you see them?” Cassian called quietly.

Nalen remained still. “Maybe.”

Cassian looked up. “Maybe good or maybe bad?”

“Movement near the sheds beyond the flats. Hard to tell from here.”

Cassian pushed himself away from the beam. “Patrol?”

“Not moving like patrol.”

Nalen climbed down and landed lightly in the dust. He pointed toward a low run of dark stone ahead. “We use that ridge until we reach the old service road. If the others made it to the sheds, we should see tracks.”

Cassian nodded, but his eyes drifted back toward the west. The settlement was hidden now. So was the tower. That made Jesus feel farther away, though Cassian knew distance was not the whole truth. Jesus had seemed near even through a broken screen. He had seemed near in the cell, in the service tunnel, in the song rising from the town, and in the small mercy of water from an old pump. Still, Cassian’s body wanted to turn back. His mind kept returning to the upper chamber, to Jesus bound before Commander Vale, to the screen cutting to static.

Nalen noticed. “You are thinking about Him.”

Cassian gave a humorless breath. “I don’t know how to stop.”

“Maybe you are not supposed to.”

Cassian looked at his brother. “That sounds like faith.”

Nalen glanced toward the ridge. “It sounds like trouble.”

They started walking again. For a while they moved without speaking, saving breath for the heat. The desert around them shimmered. High above, faint trails marked ships leaving atmosphere, bound for places Cassian had repaired engines for but never seen. He used to imagine that leaving the settlement would feel like freedom. Now he was outside it, hunted, homeless, and carrying a child’s metal star while his brother guided him toward fugitives. Freedom, he was learning, was not the absence of danger. It was the strange new ability to walk without letting fear own every step.

The old service road appeared as a pale scar across the flats. Nalen crouched beside it and studied the ground. Cassian looked too, though most of it meant nothing to him. He saw drag marks, boot prints, and one long scrape that might have come from Sera’s freighter ramp or a piece of broken cargo.

“They came through here,” Nalen said. “Several on foot. One injured carried low.”

“Derso.”

“Probably.”

Cassian scanned the horizon. “How far to the eastern sheds?”

“Half an hour if we move well. Longer if we stop.”

They did not stop. The farther they walked, the more signs appeared. A strip of torn cloth caught on a thorned plant. A shallow print from the older woman’s uneven step. A small round mark where the girl’s shoe had pressed into softer dust. Each sign pulled Cassian forward. These were no longer anonymous prisoners. They were people whose weight had crossed the ground ahead of him, and he felt responsible to catch up without turning that responsibility into control.

When they finally saw the eastern sheds, Cassian understood at once that something was wrong. The buildings were smaller than the first shelter, built around an old water tower and a line of storage bins. Sera’s patched freighter rested behind the largest shed, partially covered with torn camouflage netting. Several prisoners moved near it, but they were not preparing to leave. They were gathered in tense clusters, facing one another as if the danger had followed them in a different form.

Nalen slowed. “Stay low.”

Cassian crouched beside him behind a ridge of broken stone. Voices reached them, carried by the wind. He recognized Brant’s deep tone first, then Sera’s sharper one. Another voice answered, agitated and high. The bandaged man. Cassian could not catch the words, but the shape of the argument was plain.

“They’re fighting,” Cassian said.

Nalen’s face tightened. “Of course they are.”

Cassian looked at him.

His brother sighed. “Not because they’re bad. Because they’re frightened, hungry, injured, and free enough to disagree.”

They moved closer, keeping low until Brant spotted them and lifted one hand in relief. The old miner came toward them with dust on his beard and worry in his eyes. His shoulders dropped when he saw both brothers alive.

“You found each other twice in one day,” Brant said. “That is either mercy or poor planning.”

Cassian almost smiled. “Where is everyone?”

“Too many inside. Too many opinions outside. Derso is worse, the freighter has a cracked stabilizer from the flight, and half the group wants to run before night while the other half says we should return to town for family.”

Nalen looked toward the ship. “Can it fly?”

“Sera’s husband says yes if the stabilizer is patched. He also says no if anyone asks whether it will fly safely.”

Cassian rubbed his face. “That sounds like most ships I work on.”

Brant studied him. “Then I am glad the Lord brought us a mechanic.”

The phrase struck Cassian differently than it would have that morning. He almost deflected it with a dry remark, but the look in Brant’s eyes stopped him. The old man was not flattering him. He was recognizing provision where Cassian still saw only damage.

Nalen was already moving toward the argument near the largest shed. Cassian followed. Sera stood with her arms crossed, facing the bandaged man and three other freed prisoners. Her husband, Tobin, crouched by the freighter’s landing strut with a tool in hand and the expression of a man trying not to hear a fight he would eventually be dragged into anyway. The older woman sat in the shade with the young girl beside her. Derso lay inside the open shed, pale and sweating.

The bandaged man turned when he saw Cassian. “Good. The mechanic lives. Maybe he can explain why we are still sitting here waiting to be found.”

Sera answered before Cassian could. “Because the ship cannot carry everyone at once, and if we lift too soon with a damaged stabilizer, we may crash before the patrols even need to shoot.”

“We should scatter,” the man said. “Small groups. Different directions.”

“With injured people?” Sera said. “With a child?”

“With everyone who can move.”

Cassian heard the hidden sentence beneath it. Leave those who cannot. The man did not say it, and maybe he hated himself for thinking it, but fear had brought the thought into the open anyway.

Nalen stepped between them, not aggressively, but with enough presence to quiet the immediate exchange. “What’s your name?”

The bandaged man blinked, thrown by the question. “Kerrit.”

“Nalen Rell. You are scared, Kerrit.”

Kerrit’s face hardened. “That is not insight. That is the weather.”

“No,” Nalen said. “It matters because scared men make plans that sound practical while cutting people loose.”

Kerrit’s jaw worked. “You think I want to?”

“I think none of us is safe from it.”

That softened the edge of the accusation. Cassian watched his brother carefully. Nalen was not speaking from superiority. He was speaking as a man who had seen that same instinct in himself and did not want to obey it. Kerrit looked away, and the anger in him wavered.

Sera turned to Cassian. “Can you look at the stabilizer?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fix it?”

Cassian looked at the freighter, then at Tobin, then at the cracked strut assembly. “That depends on how honest your husband is about what happened to it.”

Tobin snorted without looking up. “I landed under pursuit with twelve more people than the ship likes and one engine running hot. The stabilizer objected.”

Cassian crouched beside him. The damage was ugly but not hopeless. A stabilizer arm had cracked near the hinge, and the control cable had stretched out of alignment. The kind of proper repair it needed required a lift, a replacement arm, and a shop that had not been sealed by the Empire. The kind of repair they could make in the desert required salvage, nerve, and enough mercy from God to keep metal from failing at the worst possible moment.

Cassian glanced at the old storage bins. “Any scrap in there?”

Tobin pointed with his tool. “Mostly junk.”

Cassian stood. “Junk is just a part waiting for humility.”

Nalen looked at him. “You are starting to sound like you enjoy this.”

“I enjoy engines. I do not enjoy being hunted.”

“That is a reasonable distinction.”

Cassian and Tobin spent the next several minutes searching the bins. They found a bent brace, two old couplings, a spool of cable, and a cracked panel from a loader unit. Cassian carried them back to the ship and began shaping a temporary splint for the stabilizer arm. Tobin watched his hands.

“You were Rell Repair?” Tobin asked.

“I am Rell Repair.”

Tobin hesitated. “Sera said they sealed it.”

Cassian tightened a coupling harder than necessary. “A seal is not a funeral.”

Tobin accepted that and said no more.

The argument among the others quieted, but it did not end. Fear moved from voice to voice in lower tones now. Some wanted to go back for family before patrols locked down the settlement completely. Others wanted to flee while they could. A few sat apart, unable to choose because captivity had trained decision out of them. Cassian worked while listening. He had always believed people in crisis needed solutions. Now he saw they also needed someone to hold the room steady while truth rose without being crushed by panic.

The young girl came near and watched him repair the stabilizer. She kept a careful distance, as if she had been told not to bother working adults but could not stay away.

“What is your name?” Cassian asked without looking up.

“Lysa.”

“That’s a good name.”

She stood quietly for a moment. “Is Jesus still in the tower?”

Cassian’s hand paused. Tobin looked away and pretended to search for another tool. Cassian set the coupling down and turned toward her.

“Yes,” he said.

“Will He leave?”

Cassian wanted to say yes. He wanted to promise her that holy people always walked out of dark places before the worst could happen. He wanted to protect the part of her that still believed rescue should be clean. But Jesus had not lied to her, and Cassian would not honor Him by lying in His name.

“I don’t know how,” Cassian said. “But I know He is not trapped the way they think He is.”

Lysa considered that. “Because He is not afraid?”

Cassian thought of Jesus standing before Vale. “Because He belongs to His Father.”

The girl nodded slowly, as though that answer reached somewhere deeper than explanation. Then she took the small cloth from her pocket, knelt, and began wiping dust from the tools Cassian had laid on the ground. He almost told her she did not need to help. Instead, he let her. There was dignity in being allowed to do something useful when the world had made you feel small.

Inside the shed, Derso cried out. The sound cut through every conversation. The older woman called for water, and Brant hurried in with a container. Sera followed. Nalen stood near the doorway, looking torn between the ship, the horizon, and the injured man.

Cassian tightened the final cable loop, then stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “Tobin, hold this steady. If it slips, you’ll lose the alignment.”

Tobin grabbed the brace. “Go.”

Cassian entered the shed. Derso lay on his side now, breathing shallowly. Sweat shone on his face. The bruising along his ribs had darkened, and the way he guarded his chest told Cassian something inside was wrong. He had seen men injured in shop accidents. He had seen crushed hands, burns, fractured shoulders, and one pilot who had hidden internal bleeding until he collapsed beside the fuel rack. Derso had that same frightening stillness between waves of pain.

“We need a medic,” Sera said.

Brant looked toward the desert. “There is no medic here.”

The older woman held a damp cloth to Derso’s forehead. “There may be one in town.”

No one answered because everyone knew what that would mean. Returning to the settlement was dangerous for anyone. Returning for a medic while patrols were searching was close to madness. Derso opened his eyes, and his gaze moved from face to face.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

Sera leaned closer. “Save your strength.”

Derso shook his head slightly. “Don’t go back for me.”

Kerrit stood in the doorway, face pale beneath the bandage. He had argued for leaving the weak behind, but now the weak man had a name, a voice, and a request that sounded too much like surrender.

Nalen looked at Cassian. Cassian saw the question. It was larger than one injured man. It was the same question the whole day had been asking in different ways. What is a life worth when saving it costs something? What does mercy do when wisdom counts the risk and finds it too high? How do frightened people obey God in a world where cruelty punishes love?

Cassian crouched beside Derso. “Do you have family in the settlement?”

Derso’s lips moved, but no sound came at first. Brant helped him drink. Derso swallowed with effort. “A sister. Mara. Lower quarter. She thinks I was transferred off-world.”

Sera closed her eyes briefly.

Derso looked at Cassian. “If I die, tell her I did not give them her name.”

Kerrit made a sound and stepped back from the doorway. He turned away, but not before Cassian saw his face break. The man had wanted survival without attachment because attachment made survival harder. Now Derso’s faithfulness had made that impossible.

Nalen spoke quietly. “We need that medic.”

Sera looked at him. “We do not even know who to get.”

“I do,” Tobin said from outside.

Everyone turned. Tobin stood at the shed entrance with grease on his hands. “There is a woman near the old transit arch. Doctor once, before the Empire pulled her license. She patched me up when a cargo chain split my shoulder.”

Sera stared at him. “You never told me that.”

“You were angry enough about the cargo chain.”

“This is not the time to protect yourself from my memory.”

Tobin lowered his eyes. “Her name is Dr. Ilyra Venn.”

Nalen looked toward the west. “Can she be trusted?”

Tobin nodded. “She hates uniforms and overcharges smugglers. That is usually a good sign.”

Cassian stood. “I’ll go.”

Nalen’s answer came immediately. “No.”

Cassian faced him. “We are not doing this again.”

“You are the only one who can finish the stabilizer.”

“Tobin can hold a brace and turn a wrench.”

Tobin made a face. “That gives me more credit than my wife does.”

Sera looked at him. “Earn it.”

Nalen stepped closer to Cassian. “The town knows your face now. The tower broadcast named the wound between us without naming you, but Vale knows exactly who you are.”

“He knows you too.”

“Yes. That is why I should go.”

Cassian felt the old pattern trying to return. Nalen stepping into danger to prove his life meant something. Cassian stopping him because loss still ruled his love. Both of them could make their fear sound noble if they tried hard enough.

The older woman spoke from beside Derso. “You both should stop arguing as if courage belongs to only one of you.”

The brothers turned toward her.

She wrung the cloth over a small basin. “One goes. One stays. Not because one is braver. Because both tasks matter.”

The plainness of it quieted them. Cassian looked at Derso, then at the unfinished ship, then at the western ridge. He hated the truth because it asked him to remain while someone else risked what he wanted to risk himself. Staying could be obedience too. That was harder for him to accept than danger.

Nalen seemed to understand before Cassian spoke. “I know the back ways into the lower quarter.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “You take Kerrit.”

Kerrit looked up sharply. “Me?”

“You wanted to run,” Cassian said. “Now run toward someone.”

Kerrit’s face flushed. “I am not trained for this.”

“Good,” Nalen said. “Trained people are everywhere. We need someone who knows what fear sounds like from the inside.”

Kerrit looked as if he wanted to refuse. Then his eyes moved to Derso. Whatever he saw there made refusal harder. He gave one stiff nod.

Sera took a small transmitter from her belt and handed it to Nalen. “Short range only. Two bursts if you are coming back with the doctor. One if you are being followed. None if you cannot transmit.”

Cassian did not like that last part. “Do not be heroic.”

Nalen gave him a faint smile. “I thought you liked me better brave.”

“I like you alive.”

The words landed between them with more tenderness than either expected. Nalen’s smile faded, but not sadly. He reached out and gripped Cassian’s shoulder. “I will try to be both.”

Cassian held his gaze. “Try hard.”

Nalen and Kerrit left within minutes, cloaked in dust-colored coverings from the freighter’s emergency kit. They crossed the flats low and careful, then disappeared into the channels leading back toward the settlement. Cassian watched until the land swallowed them.

Then he returned to the ship.

The work waiting for him felt almost merciful. Metal asked for attention without asking him to solve his whole soul at once. He helped Tobin splint the stabilizer, reroute the cable, and reinforce the hinge with a scavenged brace from the storage bin. Lysa cleaned tools. Brant organized water. Sera prepared the cabin for Derso in case the doctor came. The older woman prayed under her breath while pressing the cloth to Derso’s head, not loudly enough for performance, but steadily enough that the shed seemed less empty.

Cassian heard her words once when he passed near.

“Lord, You saw Hagar in the wilderness. See us here too.”

He stopped. Scripture had been something his mother kept in memory more than in books. She had whispered old stories while fixing meals, cleaning wounds, hiding strangers, and mending torn jackets. Cassian had thought of those stories as comfort for people who could not change anything. Now one came alive in a desert shed beside an injured man, and it did not feel weak. It felt like a rope thrown across centuries.

The God who saw a woman in the wilderness could see fugitives beneath a rusted roof. The God who heard slaves could hear prisoners. The God who sent bread in barren places could bring water through a broken pump and mercy through frightened hands. Cassian did not turn it into a lesson. He simply stood there for a moment and let the connection steady him.

A burst of static came from Sera’s transmitter near sundown.

Everyone froze.

Two bursts.

Sera grabbed the device. “They’re coming.”

Relief moved through the shed, but only for a second. A third sound followed, not from the transmitter, but from the sky. A patrol craft passed high overhead, moving west to east. Its shadow slid across the ground like a blade.

Tobin looked toward the freighter. “We can lift in ten minutes if we must.”

Cassian tightened the last bolt on the stabilizer. “You can lift now if you must. You can land safely only if God remains generous.”

“Then I will fly reverently.”

Sera ran to the ridge with Brant. Cassian followed. In the distance, three figures moved through the fading light. Nalen and Kerrit supported someone between them, a woman with a medical satchel slung across her body. Behind them, farther back, dust rose in a narrow line.

Sera lifted the transmitter. “One burst would have been helpful.”

The answer crackled back, broken by movement. Kerrit’s voice came through, breathless. “Couldn’t. Running.”

Nalen’s voice followed, strained but controlled. “Two scout bikes behind us. Not close yet.”

Cassian’s stomach dropped.

Sera turned toward Tobin. “Start the ship.”

Tobin ran.

The camp came alive. Prisoners who had been resting stood and gathered what little they had. Brant and the older woman prepared Derso. Lysa picked up the tools without being told and shoved them into Cassian’s bag. Cassian looked at her, startled.

“You need them,” she said.

He nodded once. “Yes. I do.”

The freighter’s engines coughed, then roared unevenly. Tobin shouted something from the cockpit that sounded both technical and prayerful. The ramp lowered. Sera guided people toward it, keeping her voice firm but calm. No one pushed. Fear tried to rush them, but something stronger held the group together now. Not confidence. Not certainty. Something closer to shared obedience.

Cassian ran out beyond the sheds to meet Nalen, Kerrit, and the doctor. As they came closer, he saw that Dr. Ilyra Venn was older than he expected, with silver hair cut short and a face that looked carved by years of refusing to be impressed by powerful men. She carried the satchel herself despite the men helping her.

“I can walk,” she snapped as they neared.

Nalen released her carefully. “You said that while falling.”

“I said I could walk. I did not say I could outrun imperial scouts.”

Cassian almost laughed from relief. “Derso is this way.”

She looked him over. “You are the mechanic.”

“Yes.”

“Then stop standing like a signpost and take my bag.”

Cassian took it.

The first scout bike crested the far ridge.

Nalen turned. “Inside. Now.”

They ran for the freighter. Cassian felt the old panic rise, but it did not take command. He moved beside the doctor, matching her pace. Kerrit stumbled once, and Brant caught him near the ramp. The first shot struck the sand behind them, sending dust into the air. Sera returned fire from the ramp, not to hit, but to make the scouts swerve.

Dr. Venn climbed aboard and went straight to Derso. Cassian followed with the satchel. The freighter lurched before the ramp fully closed. Tobin shouted from the cockpit, “I said reverently, not comfortably!”

The ship lifted hard.

Cassian grabbed a wall brace as the floor tilted. Lysa cried out, and the older woman pulled her close. The stabilizer groaned in a way Cassian did not like. The temporary brace held for one second, then two, then ten. The freighter rose over the sheds as scout fire flashed below.

Nalen stood near the ramp controls, breathing hard. Cassian looked at him across the shaking cabin. His brother was alive. Kerrit was alive. The doctor was working over Derso with sharp commands and steady hands. The prisoners were frightened, crowded, and airborne, but they were together.

Then the tower came into view through the side viewport.

The settlement lay beneath the fading sun, its streets lit by fires, screens, and moving patrol lights. The security tower stood at the center with its upper chamber glowing. Several imperial craft circled it, but they were not leaving. Something held their attention there. On the largest public screen, static flickered again, then cleared for only a moment.

Jesus appeared.

He was standing on the tower roof now, still bound, with soldiers around Him and Commander Vale at His side. The wind moved His clothes. The whole town seemed gathered below, though Cassian could see only clusters of people from the moving ship. The image shook as if someone was trying to cut the feed and someone else was fighting to keep it open.

Dr. Venn looked up from Derso despite herself. The prisoners turned toward the viewport and the small cabin screen that Tobin had patched into the public signal. Even the wounded fell quiet.

Jesus lifted His face toward the sky.

His voice came through broken, but clear enough.

“Father, forgive them. Open their eyes to the darkness they have called light, and let those who have been afraid learn to walk as children of God.”

Cassian gripped the wall brace. Something in him trembled. The words were not escape. They were not strategy. They were not revenge. Jesus prayed over the very place that had beaten Him, bound Him, lied about Him, and tried to use Him as an example of failed mercy. He prayed as if His Father still ruled the roof, the tower, the town, the desert, the sky, and every soul beneath it.

Commander Vale seized Him by the arm.

The screen cut out.

The freighter climbed into the darkening sky. No one spoke for a long moment. The engines rattled. Derso moaned as Dr. Venn worked. Lysa cried silently into the older woman’s coat. Kerrit sat on the floor with his head in his hands. Nalen stood frozen near the ramp. Cassian still held the brace, the metal star pressed inside his closed fist.

Sera’s voice came softly from the cockpit doorway. “We have to jump soon.”

Tobin called back, “Not with this stabilizer unless everyone wants to meet the Lord faster than planned.”

Dr. Venn did not look up. “This man will die if you shake him apart.”

Cassian turned toward the engine access hatch. “Then we do not jump yet.”

Nalen looked at him. “Patrol craft will follow.”

“I know.”

“Then what do we do?”

Cassian opened the access hatch and felt heat roll out from the engine compartment. The problem inside was loud, dangerous, and possibly beyond what a temporary repair could hold. He thought of Jesus praying on the tower roof. He thought of the God who saw people in wilderness places. He thought of the child who gave him a star because real stars were hard to hold.

“We keep the ship alive,” Cassian said. “We keep Derso alive. We keep each other awake. And when the next door opens, we go through it.”

Nalen looked at him for a long second, then nodded.

The freighter banked east under the first lights of evening, carrying the wounded, the guilty, the frightened, the forgiven, and the newly responsible into a sky that was not safe but was still held by God. Behind them, the tower stood in the settlement like a question no one could avoid anymore. Ahead of them, the dark opened wide, and Cassian crawled into the engine heat with tools in his hand and a prayer he still did not know how to say.

Chapter Six

Cassian crawled into the engine compartment while the freighter climbed through the thin upper air, and the heat inside felt like a wall that did not want him to pass. The ship trembled around him with every uneven burn from the port engine. A stabilizer warning blinked red above the access hatch, then amber, then red again. He had seen ships complain before, but this one sounded less like machinery and more like a living thing trying to carry too much pain without breaking.

He wedged himself between two coolant lines and reached for the cracked regulator with his burned wrist tucked close to his body. The tools Lysa had packed for him clinked softly in the pouch at his side. That small act of care stayed with him while he worked. A child had noticed what an exhausted mechanic needed before he did, and somehow that humbled him more than the danger. He pulled the regulator cover loose, and hot vapor hissed into his face.

From the cabin behind him, he heard Dr. Venn giving orders in a voice that made panic feel unwelcome. She demanded cleaner cloth, more light, less movement, and silence from anyone who was not helping. Derso groaned once, then went quiet under her care. Cassian could not see him from the engine compartment, but he imagined the man lying on the cabin floor while the doctor fought to keep his breathing steady. The freighter carried too many people, too much fear, and not enough room for despair to spread without touching everyone.

Nalen appeared at the hatch and braced one hand against the frame. “How bad?”

Cassian did not look back. “The engine wants to quit, the stabilizer wants to tear loose, and the ship seems personally offended that it is still flying.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It is not good.”

“Can you keep it in the air?”

Cassian tightened a valve and listened to the engine tone shift slightly. “For a while.”

Nalen’s silence told him that a while was not enough. Beyond the hull, patrol craft would be rising soon. The Empire would not ignore a damaged freighter leaving the eastern flats with escaped prisoners aboard. Even if the tower still held the attention of the settlement, the sky belonged to men with scanners, weapons, and orders clean enough to hide murder inside them.

Tobin shouted from the cockpit, “I need better news than a while.”

Cassian shouted back, “Then stop asking mechanics for miracles.”

Sera’s voice came from nearer the cockpit doorway. “We may need one.”

Cassian pushed deeper into the engine space, feeling the ship’s vibration through his ribs. He thought of Jesus on the tower roof, praying over the men who had hurt Him. He thought of how strange that prayer had been. It had not sounded like surrender to evil. It had sounded like perfect trust in the Father while evil still believed itself strong. Cassian had no words like that inside him, but in the engine heat he found a smaller prayer rising without polish.

“Lord, keep this ship together,” he whispered.

He almost laughed at himself. It was not a grand prayer. It was not even complete. Yet after he spoke it, his hands steadied. He rerouted the coolant flow through a secondary line and used a stripped cable to hold the cracked regulator in place. The repair was ugly, but the engine tone lowered from a violent rattle to a strained growl. That was not peace, but it was mercy enough for the next minute.

Nalen leaned farther into the hatch. “You prayed.”

Cassian glanced back. “You were listening?”

“You shouted at Tobin and whispered to God. The contrast was hard to miss.”

Cassian returned to the regulator. “Do not make it strange.”

“It already is strange.”

The freighter lurched sharply, throwing Nalen against the hatch frame and Cassian into the coolant housing. A warning alarm screamed from the cockpit. Cassian caught himself with his good hand and felt pain tear through his burned wrist anyway. He clenched his teeth until the first wave passed.

Tobin called out, “Two patrol craft climbing from the west.”

Sera answered, “Three. One came from the tower side.”

The cabin shifted into tense movement. People grabbed straps, braces, and one another. The old woman began praying quietly again, and this time her voice carried just enough for those near her to hear. Lysa asked if they were going to fall. No one answered quickly, which was answer enough for a frightened child. Then Brant’s deep voice told her that ships complained loudly before they obeyed, and the girl seemed to accept that because Brant sounded like a man who had argued with heavy things for most of his life.

Cassian dragged himself out of the engine compartment and stumbled toward the cockpit. Nalen followed. The front viewport showed the curve of the planet below, the desert fading into shadow as evening spread over the land. Three patrol craft were rising behind them, small dark shapes with bright engine trails. The freighter was already shaking too hard to outrun them.

Tobin sat hunched over the controls, one hand on the throttle and the other tapping corrections into a navigation board that looked older than Cassian’s patience. Sera stood beside him, watching the scanner. Her face remained calm, but her fingers gripped the console edge hard enough to whiten.

“We cannot jump,” Tobin said before Cassian asked. “The stabilizer will shear under the stress, and Dr. Venn will feed me to the engine if I shake her patient apart.”

From the cabin, Dr. Venn shouted, “Accurate.”

Nalen looked at the scanner. “Can we reach cover?”

Sera pointed toward the navigation display. “There is a debris field ahead. Old shipyard remains, mining platforms, dead cargo frames, and enough metal to confuse scanners if we get there before they lock weapons.”

Cassian studied the display. The field sat in high orbit, a graveyard of industrial ruin left over from some forgotten boom. It would be dangerous to enter with a damaged stabilizer and an overloaded freighter. It would also be worse to remain in open sky with patrol craft closing.

“Can the ship handle it?” Sera asked.

Cassian looked at Tobin. Tobin looked back with the expression of a man hoping someone else would lie first.

Cassian gripped the back of the pilot’s chair. “It can handle careful flying.”

Tobin nodded once. “Then we are doomed.”

Sera leaned closer to the console. “First patrol is hailing.”

The cockpit speaker crackled. A cold voice filled the small space. “Unregistered freighter, power down your engines and prepare for boarding. You are carrying escaped detainees and are ordered to submit to imperial authority.”

The cabin behind them went quiet. Cassian felt every freed prisoner hear the word detainees and understand what it had been designed to hide. Not people. Not names. Not stories. Detainees. A word clean enough to erase bruises.

Tobin reached for the transmitter. Sera caught his wrist.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Buying time.”

“With what?”

“My charm.”

“You have none under pressure.”

“I have confidence.”

“That is worse.”

Cassian took the transmitter before their argument could ripen. He held it for a second, then pressed the channel open. Nalen’s eyes sharpened in warning, but Cassian had already chosen.

“This is Rell Repair,” Cassian said. “We are experiencing engine failure and carrying injured civilians. We cannot power down without losing altitude.”

The patrol voice returned. “Cassian Rell, you are wanted for aiding insurgents, obstructing imperial procedure, and participating in an unlawful detention breach.”

Cassian looked at the scanner. The patrol craft were still closing. “You forgot repairing unstable freighters under unreasonable conditions.”

No one laughed, but Tobin’s mouth twitched.

The patrol voice hardened. “Power down now.”

Cassian released the transmitter and looked at Tobin. “Debris field.”

Tobin shoved the throttle forward.

The freighter strained toward the broken ring of wreckage ahead. Patrol fire flashed behind them, not close enough to hit yet, but close enough to remind everyone that warnings were ending. The ship crossed into the debris field under a spray of tiny impacts as old metal fragments struck the shields and scattered like sparks. Tobin swore under his breath, then apologized toward the cabin when Lysa gasped.

The field swallowed them quickly. Massive cargo frames drifted like skeletons in the dark. Broken mining arms turned slowly without power, their joints frozen in gestures of labor that had ended years ago. A cracked transport hull rotated ahead, one side torn open to reveal empty decks and cables floating like dead roots. The freighter slipped between them, too large for comfort and too damaged for grace.

Cassian stood behind Tobin and called out clearances as best he could. “Left three degrees. Down. Not that much down. That beam is not as far away as it looks.”

Tobin pulled the ship hard, and the stabilizer screamed through the frame. In the cabin, someone cried out as people slid against one another. Dr. Venn’s voice cut through the noise, furious and focused.

“If you break this man open, I will haunt your family line.”

Tobin shouted back, “Doctor, I am trying to preserve everyone’s family line.”

The first patrol craft entered the field behind them. Its pilot moved faster than Tobin but with less caution, trusting training and a cleaner machine. It fired once, and the shot struck a drifting cargo plate that spun violently into the path of the second craft. The second patrol craft swerved, clipped the edge of a dead platform, and disappeared behind a cloud of wreckage. No explosion came, but its signal vanished from the scanner.

Sera exhaled. “Two remain.”

Nalen stood behind her, watching the display as if he could will a path open. Cassian saw the tension in his brother’s face and knew he was fighting the urge to command everything. Nalen’s life had taught him that survival belonged to the one who seized control first. Jesus was teaching them something different, but the old training did not die quietly.

“Nalen,” Cassian said.

His brother looked over.

“Check the cabin. Keep them steady.”

Nalen hesitated. For a moment Cassian thought he would argue. Then Nalen nodded and left the cockpit. That simple obedience mattered. It meant his brother was willing to serve where he was needed, not only where fear told him he could control the outcome.

The freighter passed under a broken cruiser spine, and the cockpit darkened as the wreckage blocked the last light of the planet. For several seconds, only instrument glow lit their faces. Cassian looked out at the ruined structure around them and felt a strange sadness. Once, men had built these machines with confidence. They had hauled ore, moved cargo, made money, promised futures, and filled reports with the language of progress. Now the pieces drifted in silence, another reminder that the works of proud hands did not last as long as people believed.

A patrol shot struck the freighter’s rear shield. The ship bucked hard. Cassian slammed into the console. Sera grabbed his jacket before he fell backward. A new warning flashed.

“Stabilizer brace is slipping,” Tobin said.

Cassian looked at the readout and felt his stomach drop. The temporary repair was failing under the sharp turns. If the stabilizer tore free, the freighter would spin into wreckage or become an easy target. He needed to get back into the access bay.

He pushed away from the console. “Keep her level for two minutes.”

Tobin stared at him. “Have you seen where we are?”

“Yes. Make it flatter.”

Cassian ran from the cockpit before Tobin could answer. In the cabin, the prisoners were strapped wherever straps existed and braced wherever they did not. Nalen knelt beside Lysa and the old woman, speaking quietly. Kerrit held one side of Derso’s makeshift stretcher while Dr. Venn worked with both hands inside a field of dim medical light. Derso’s face was gray, but he was still alive.

Cassian reached the engine access and opened the stabilizer crawlspace beneath it. Hot air and vibration burst out. He lowered himself inside, then stopped when he saw Lysa watching him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Arguing with the ship.”

“Will it listen?”

Cassian thought of Jesus’ words about sheep and gates, about fear and light, about the Father who ruled even places men claimed for themselves. He gave her the truest answer he had. “I hope so.”

He crawled into the narrow space. The stabilizer linkage shook violently beside his shoulder. The brace he had installed at the sheds had shifted, and one coupling had begun to strip. He reached for it, but the freighter banked hard, and the linkage slammed against the housing. His hand barely missed being crushed.

“Tobin!” he shouted.

The ship leveled slightly. Not enough, but enough to work. Cassian pulled the coupling free and tried to reset it. The threads were almost gone. He needed a pin, a clamp, anything that could hold the brace under stress. He searched his pouch and found nothing strong enough.

Then he felt the metal star in his jacket.

For one second, he resisted the thought. It was foolish. It was a child’s trinket, not a repair part. It meant something now, and using it felt wrong. But the stabilizer did not need meaning. It needed a small piece of metal with a hole through it and enough strength to wedge the coupling in place.

Cassian took out the star and held it in his grease-blackened fingers. Its cheap surface caught the red warning light. He thought of the boy saying real stars were for flying by, and he almost smiled through the fear.

“Lord,” he whispered, “I hope You do not mind using this too.”

He jammed one point of the star under the coupling, threaded stripped cable through the small hole, and pulled until the metal bent but held. The brace steadied. The linkage still shook, but no longer tore loose with every turn. Cassian pressed his forehead briefly against the warm housing, too relieved to move.

A voice crackled through the ship’s internal comm. It was not Tobin, Sera, or Nalen.

“Cassian Rell.”

Cassian froze.

The voice came again, broken by static. “Cassian Rell, do you receive?”

He scrambled backward out of the crawlspace, hitting his shoulder on the hatch. Nalen had heard it too and was already moving toward the cabin speaker. Sera shouted from the cockpit, “That signal is coming through an imperial band.”

The voice returned, faint but recognizable.

“Cassian, this is Varek.”

The cabin changed around the name. Kerrit looked up. Brant stood. Nalen turned sharply toward Cassian. Lysa’s eyes widened because she remembered the man who had stayed behind the sealed door.

Cassian grabbed the wall comm. “Varek?”

Static answered first. Then Varek’s voice came through again, strained and uneven. “I do not have long.”

“You’re alive,” Cassian said.

“For now.”

Cassian closed his eyes for one second. Gratitude came so suddenly that it hurt.

Varek continued, “The tower is in lockdown. Vale lost control of the lower level, but he still holds the roof and upper chamber. Some guards refused orders after the broadcast. Others did not.”

Nalen stepped close to the speaker. “Where is Jesus?”

There was a pause full of static. “With Vale. On the roof. He would not stop speaking to the crowd.”

Cassian gripped the comm. “What are they doing to Him?”

Varek’s breath came rough over the signal. “Trying to make Him kneel.”

No one in the cabin spoke.

Varek went on. “He is not kneeling.”

The words moved through the freighter with quiet force. Cassian saw the old woman bow her head. Dr. Venn stopped for one second, then resumed working on Derso with tears in her eyes that she seemed too stubborn to acknowledge. Even Tobin said nothing from the cockpit.

Sera’s voice came through the open doorway. “We still have two patrol craft behind us.”

Varek heard her. “I know. I accessed their channel. The lead craft has orders to disable your engines before you leave the field.”

Cassian looked toward the cockpit. “Can you stop them?”

“No,” Varek said. “But I can mislead them for a moment. There is an old ore hauler ahead of you, broken in half. If you pass through the central frame and power down your main engine for eight seconds, their scan may follow the heat ghost I send through the debris.”

Tobin shouted, “Powering down inside a wreck field is not flying. That is falling with confidence.”

Varek answered, “Then fall carefully.”

Cassian looked at Sera as she entered the cabin. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady. “Can we trust him?”

Cassian thought of Varek standing in the tunnel, telling soldiers there was a child beyond the seal. He thought of Tovan’s name. He thought of Jesus looking at guilty men like they were still men. “Yes.”

Nalen nodded. “Yes.”

Sera returned to the cockpit. “Tobin, old ore hauler ahead. Central frame.”

Tobin groaned. “I miss legal cargo.”

The freighter moved deeper into the wreckage. Cassian returned to the cockpit and watched the ore hauler appear ahead, enormous and broken, its central frame a dark rectangular opening lined with twisted support beams. The space looked barely wide enough for the freighter. The patrol craft followed behind, weaving through debris with increasing confidence. They had better engines, better weapons, and no wounded civilians aboard.

The comm crackled again. Varek’s voice came through softer. “Cassian.”

“I’m here.”

“If you live, tell someone his name.”

“Tovan,” Cassian said.

The cockpit went quiet.

Varek’s breath trembled. “Yes.”

“I will.”

Another pause. “Jesus said names spoken in truth are not lost.”

Cassian swallowed. “That sounds like Him.”

The ore hauler filled the viewport. Tobin’s hands tightened on the controls. Sera counted distance under her breath. The patrol craft behind them locked weapons, and the warning tone began again.

Sera said, “Now.”

Tobin cut the main engine.

The freighter dropped into silence.

For eight seconds, the ship became a body without breath. It drifted through the ore hauler’s broken central frame while the cockpit lights dimmed and every loose object in the cabin floated slightly before gravity correction coughed back. Cassian heard Lysa gasp. He heard Dr. Venn tell Derso to stay with her. He heard Nalen whisper something that might have been a prayer or his brother’s name.

Outside, a bright heat signature shot away to the left, released through the debris field by Varek’s false signal. The first patrol craft followed it. The second hesitated, then turned after the first. Their weapons fired into a cluster of dead fuel pods that erupted in a silent bloom of light beyond the ore hauler.

Tobin reignited the main engine.

The freighter dropped hard, then surged forward through the far side of the frame. The stabilizer groaned, but the star-held coupling did not fail. Cassian gripped the console and felt laughter rise in him, wild and relieved, but it came out as a choked breath.

Sera checked the scanner. “They lost us.”

Tobin leaned back. “I would like it recorded that I hated every part of that.”

Cassian looked at the stabilizer readout. Still damaged. Still holding. He closed his eyes briefly. The prayer inside him had no shape except thank You.

The comm crackled once more. Varek’s signal was weaker now.

“They are tracing me,” he said. “I have to cut the channel.”

Cassian reached for the transmitter. “Can you get out?”

Varek did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was quieter. “I do not know.”

“Varek.”

“I am not the boy I killed,” Varek said, and the words came with effort. “I cannot die to pay for him. Jesus made that clear. But I can tell the truth now, and I can help whom I can.”

Cassian felt the weight of that. It was not the false peace of a man trying to buy forgiveness with one brave act. It was the beginning of repentance, costly and unfinished.

Varek continued, “If I do not leave, remember that I was seen before I was judged by men. That matters.”

Cassian looked toward the cabin, where Lysa sat pressed against the old woman, where Derso fought for breath, where Kerrit held a blood-stained cloth, where Nalen stood with his head lowered. “It matters.”

Static thickened.

Then another voice entered the channel.

“Trooper Varek.”

Commander Vale.

Cassian’s whole body went cold. Sera reached to cut the signal, but Nalen stopped her with one hand. Everyone listened.

Vale’s voice was calm, but something in that calm had frayed. “You have mistaken emotional collapse for moral awakening.”

Varek answered faintly, “No, Commander.”

“You aided fugitives. You corrupted communications. You shamed your uniform.”

“I shamed it before today.”

A pause followed. Cassian imagined Vale in some control room, surrounded by broken authority, speaking to a man he could no longer fully command.

Vale’s voice lowered. “Where is the freighter?”

Varek said nothing.

Vale continued, “You think he will honor you? This Jesus? You think he will erase the dead boy because you helped a few prisoners breathe another day?”

Varek’s answer came through static, but it held. “No. He told me the dead are not erased. That is why I must tell the truth.”

The signal broke for several seconds. When it returned, Vale was no longer speaking to Varek. He seemed to be somewhere open, with wind striking the receiver.

“You hear this, Rell?” Vale said. “You and your brother carry criminals, traitors, cowards, and fools. You believe mercy has made you clean. It has only made you visible.”

Cassian picked up the transmitter. His hand shook, but his voice did not as much as he expected. “Then we are visible.”

Nalen looked at him.

Vale was silent for half a breath. “You will wish you had stayed hidden.”

Cassian thought of the repair shop, the sealed door, the grave he had built while breathing. He thought of Jesus saying that his mother’s name was not honored by fear. He thought of the tower, the cells, the song, the child’s star holding a ship together in the dark.

“No,” Cassian said. “I already know what that life costs.”

Vale’s voice sharpened. “Where is the freighter?”

Cassian looked at the people behind him. “Carrying names you tried to bury.”

The channel filled with static. Beneath it, faint but real, another voice could be heard. Jesus. Cassian could not make out every word, but one sentence came clear.

“Let the weary come into the light.”

The signal cut.

The cockpit remained silent. The debris field drifted around them like a dark sea of broken things. No patrol craft showed on the scanner now, but no one mistook that for safety. They had escaped one net. Others would follow. Still, something had changed inside the freighter. They were no longer only running from the tower. They were carrying testimony away from it.

Dr. Venn called from the cabin. “He is stable enough to move, if stable means not dying in the next ten minutes.”

Tobin turned halfway in his chair. “Doctor, your comfort needs work.”

“So does your landing.”

Sera looked at the navigation display. “There is an old smuggler route beyond the debris field. It runs under the sensor shadow of a dead moon. If we reach it, we can disappear long enough to decide where to set down.”

Nalen came to the cockpit entrance. “We need somewhere the injured can rest and the others can choose what comes next.”

Sera nodded. “There is an abandoned listening post on the moon’s far side. No official traffic. No active beacon. My husband used it once when he made a decision he still has not fully confessed.”

Tobin looked offended. “Several of my decisions remain unfairly described.”

Sera did not look at him. “Set course.”

The freighter eased out of the debris field under low power. Cassian stood behind the pilot’s chair and watched the dead moon appear ahead, pale and scarred, half-hidden in shadow. It looked barren from a distance, but then so had the maintenance sheds. So had the desert. So had his own life, if he was honest. The Lord seemed untroubled by barren places.

Nalen stood beside him. “You answered Vale.”

“I noticed.”

“You did not sound afraid.”

“I was afraid.”

“I know,” Nalen said. “That is why it mattered.”

Cassian looked at his brother. The cockpit lights cast shadows under Nalen’s eyes, making him look both worn and alive. There was still so much between them. The apology in the pipe had opened a door, but walking through it would take longer than one day. Forgiveness had begun. Trust would need time, truth, and many choices neither brother had made yet.

Cassian held out his hand. The metal star was no longer there. It was wedged inside the stabilizer, bent into usefulness, hidden where no one would see it unless the ship was opened again. He felt its absence in his palm.

Nalen noticed. “You lost it?”

Cassian shook his head. “Used it.”

“For what?”

“To keep us flying.”

Nalen looked at him for a long moment, then toward the dark moon ahead. “The boy will like that.”

“I hope so.”

“He gave you a star, and you put it in a ship.”

Cassian leaned against the console, exhausted. “Real stars were unavailable.”

Nalen’s smile came quietly, and this time Cassian let himself return it.

The freighter crossed into the moon’s shadow. The cabin lights dimmed to preserve power, and the noise of the engines softened as Tobin reduced thrust. Behind them, the debris field and the planet fell away. Ahead, the abandoned listening post waited in darkness. No one knew whether it would offer shelter, danger, or both.

In the cabin, the old woman began the song again, softer than before. One by one, others joined. Kerrit sang with a cracked voice. Brant hummed low. Lysa’s small voice rose beside them. Even Dr. Venn, who claimed not to sing while working, shaped the words under her breath as she checked Derso’s pulse.

Cassian listened from the cockpit and realized the song had changed. In the tower, it had been the sound of people refusing to disappear. In the freighter, it became something else. It became a promise carried by frightened people who had not reached safety yet, a fragile confession that the light had found them and they were not willing to return unchanged.

He looked toward the dark window and thought of Jesus still under the open sky above the tower. He did not understand why Jesus had stayed. He did not understand why the One who could break walls chose instead to stand among those who built them. But Cassian knew now that Jesus was not absent from this ship because His body remained behind. His mercy had come aboard in every person He had seen, every truth He had spoken, and every act of obedience now trembling its way forward.

The dead moon grew larger ahead. Tobin guided the freighter toward a narrow canyon on its far side, where the abandoned post sat hidden from open space. The ship descended carefully, every vibration testing the damaged stabilizer. Cassian held his breath as the landing struts reached for the ground.

The freighter touched down hard, bounced once, and settled.

No one moved at first. Then Tobin slowly lifted both hands from the controls. “Reverent landing.”

Sera closed her eyes. “Merciful landing.”

Cassian looked at the stabilizer readout. The brace had held. The child’s star had held. The ship had held.

For now, that was enough.

The ramp lowered into darkness, and cold moon air entered the cabin. Nalen picked up a small lamp. Cassian took his tool pouch. Sera lifted her blaster, though she kept it pointed at the floor. Brant helped Dr. Venn prepare Derso for movement. The others waited, tired but awake.

Cassian stepped to the top of the ramp and looked out at the abandoned listening post. Its low structures sat against the canyon wall like silent witnesses. Above the moon’s jagged horizon, the stars burned with a clarity the desert atmosphere had hidden. There were more of them than he could count.

He thought of Jesus praying beneath stars before dawn, before the tower, before the shop, before Cassian knew his life would be split open by mercy. He wondered whether Jesus was praying still.

Then Cassian stepped down the ramp with his brother beside him, carrying tools into the dark because the next door had opened, and the people Jesus had freed needed someone to walk through it first.

Chapter Seven

The listening post had been abandoned long enough for dust to become part of its architecture. Cassian stepped down the ramp with Nalen beside him, and the cold air of the dead moon entered his lungs so sharply that it almost hurt. After the desert heat, the moon felt like a place that had forgotten the warmth of living things. The canyon walls rose on both sides in jagged gray layers, and the stars above looked close enough to accuse them of smallness. No engines roared here. No market voices shouted. No public screens promised order. The silence was so complete that the freighter’s cooling metal sounded loud.

Sera moved behind them with her blaster lowered but ready. Tobin stayed in the cockpit, muttering to the ship as if apology might persuade it not to collapse. Brant and Kerrit helped Dr. Venn bring Derso down the ramp on a makeshift stretcher. The older woman carried a lamp in one hand and held Lysa close with the other. The rest of the freed prisoners followed in a slow line, blinking into the darkness with the cautious look of people who had learned that every shelter had to be tested before it could be trusted.

Cassian aimed his small work light toward the nearest structure. The listening post had been built into the canyon wall, its outer door partly shielded by a fallen sensor mast. Three low buildings connected through a covered corridor, and a round communications dish leaned at an angle above the roofline like a tired ear still trying to hear a universe that had stopped speaking to it. A faded service mark on the wall showed that the station had once belonged to a mining communications network. The Empire had probably ignored it because it was old, small, and inconvenient. Cassian was beginning to appreciate old, small, and inconvenient things.

Nalen moved ahead first, lamp raised. He did not rush. His body still carried the habits of a man expecting betrayal from every doorway. Cassian watched him pause near the entrance and look back toward the group.

“Wait here,” Nalen said.

Sera joined him. “I know this post. There is a main control room, two bunk spaces, a storage room, and a lower crawl passage. If anyone has been here recently, we should see it fast.”

Cassian stepped toward the door. “Then we look together.”

Nalen glanced at him. “You do not have to come through every door first.”

“No,” Cassian said. “But I know what bad wiring smells like.”

Sera gave him a brief look. “That is oddly useful.”

The outer door resisted when Nalen pulled it. Cassian found the manual release, scraped dust from the housing, and forced the latch with a tool from his pouch. The door opened halfway, grinding against the track. Cold stale air breathed out of the post. It smelled of old insulation, dry rot, and dead power cells. Cassian shone his light across the floor. No fresh tracks. No discarded ration wraps. No heat from recent use. Only dust, fallen panels, and the long patience of a forgotten place.

They entered slowly. The corridor walls were lined with conduit. Some had been stripped by scavengers, but not all. Cassian felt a strange relief at that. A place with wire still in the walls could be coaxed back toward usefulness. A place with rooms could hold the injured. A place with a roof, even a cracked one, could give fear somewhere to sit down.

The main control room opened to their left. Its consoles sat dead beneath a layer of gray dust. The central display was cracked, and the old signal board had several missing modules. Sera ran her fingers along the edge of a panel and frowned.

“Tobin said this place was quiet,” she said. “He did not say it was this dead.”

Cassian crouched by the main power junction. “People who make questionable landings do not always provide complete reports.”

Nalen moved to the far door and checked the latch. “Clear.”

Sera tilted her head, listening. “No movement.”

Cassian opened the junction and found the old battery couplings. “There is emergency power if the cells did not leak themselves empty.”

“Can you bring it up?” Nalen asked.

Cassian looked inside. “I can offend it awake.”

He worked for several minutes while Nalen and Sera checked the side rooms. When the first emergency light flickered to life, the control room changed. It did not become welcoming, but it became possible. A dim amber glow filled the corridor. The floor showed no signs of recent visitors. The bunk room had six narrow sleeping shelves, a cracked hygiene unit, and a storage locker containing two folded thermal blankets that smelled stale but usable. The second room held a long worktable and three old chairs. The storage space had empty crates, a coil of pressure hose, a sealed container of mineral filters, and a small heater with a cracked casing.

Cassian looked at the heater and felt genuine gratitude. “That can be fixed.”

Nalen studied him. “You say that like it is food.”

“Warmth is food when people are cold enough.”

They brought the others in. Dr. Venn took the workroom immediately and turned it into a medical space with the authority of a general claiming ground. Derso was placed on the table, and the doctor began ordering people around with such precision that even the frightened obeyed before asking why. Brant found a water line in the rear utility room, but the tank was nearly dry. Cassian promised to check the recycler once the heater worked. Tobin entered last, looking at the walls with the awkward guilt of a man who had remembered a hideout but forgotten its condition.

Sera crossed her arms. “You said this place was usable.”

Tobin looked around. “It was usable when I was desperate.”

“You are often desperate.”

“That is why I know places.”

Sera stared at him for a long second, then turned away because there was too much to do for the argument they probably deserved to have. Cassian noticed that. Marriage, he thought, carried its own kind of war and mercy. People could love each other and still hide things. People could stay and still fail to tell the truth. He glanced at Nalen, and the thought reached deeper than he intended.

Lysa stood near the control room doorway, looking at the amber lights. “Are we safe here?”

No one answered right away. The adults had learned too much to speak quickly. The older woman came beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“We are sheltered,” she said. “Safe belongs to God.”

Lysa seemed to consider that. “Is that better?”

The older woman smiled faintly. “It is harder. But yes.”

Cassian carried the heater to a corner of the control room and opened its cracked casing. The work steadied him. His hands were sore, and his burned wrist pulsed with heat, but the act of repairing something small enough to understand gave his mind a place to rest. He had not stopped thinking about Jesus. No matter what he touched, his thoughts returned to the tower roof, to the broadcast, to the prayer. Father, forgive them. The words had followed him through the wreck field and into the moon’s shadow.

He wanted to know what had happened after the screen cut out. He wanted to know whether Varek had survived. He wanted to know whether Commander Vale had struck Jesus again, whether the crowd had stayed, whether the song still moved through the settlement, whether his shop remained sealed, whether anyone had touched his mother’s holoframe. The questions gathered until they threatened to become another kind of prison.

The heater sparked, sputtered, and gave off a thin coil of warmth. Cassian adjusted the cracked casing until the glow steadied. Several prisoners drifted closer without seeming to notice themselves doing it. Warmth invited the body before the mind admitted need.

Nalen came and stood nearby. “Dr. Venn says Derso may live if fever does not take him.”

Cassian nodded. “That is almost good news.”

“It is the kind we have.”

Nalen sat on the floor across from the heater, elbows resting on his knees. For a moment he looked like the boy who used to sit in the shop after closing, waiting for their mother to finish the accounts so they could share whatever food was left. Cassian lowered himself to the floor beside the open heater panel.

“You should rest,” Nalen said.

“So should you.”

“I slept in a cell.”

“That does not count.”

Nalen gave a quiet breath. “No, it doesn’t.”

The room around them settled into low movement. Brant handed out small sips of water. Sera and Tobin argued in whispers near the cockpit of the freighter, which was still visible through the open outer door. Kerrit sat alone against the wall, staring at his hands. The older woman had begun sorting blankets and assigning the coldest people to the warmest spots with gentle firmness. Dr. Venn worked over Derso in the next room, her shadow moving across the doorway whenever she crossed the lamp.

Cassian watched Kerrit for a while. The man had wanted to scatter, wanted to leave the weak, wanted survival to be simple. Then he had run back toward danger with Nalen and returned with the doctor. Now he looked more frightened than before.

Nalen followed Cassian’s gaze. “He thinks one brave act should make him feel better.”

“Does it?”

“No.”

Cassian leaned back against the wall. “Good to know.”

Nalen looked at him. “You too?”

Cassian thought about stepping into the street for Sera, refusing Vale’s bargain, standing before the rifle, opening the tower doors, helping the prisoners, fixing the ship. None of it had erased the grief inside him. None of it had made him clean in the simple way he had secretly wanted. It had only made him more awake. He could feel his wrongs more clearly now, not less. He could also feel mercy beneath them, which made the pain bearable without making it disappear.

“I thought courage would feel cleaner,” Cassian said.

Nalen nodded slowly. “It doesn’t. Sometimes it makes you notice the dirt.”

Cassian glanced at him. “You have been carrying that a long time.”

Nalen looked toward the workroom where Dr. Venn was moving around Derso. “I did things because they seemed necessary. Some were. Some I told myself were. After a while, necessity becomes a language that can excuse almost anything if no one interrupts you.”

“Did Jesus interrupt you?”

Nalen’s face changed. “In the cell, yes.”

“What did He say?”

Nalen was quiet so long that Cassian thought he might not answer. When he did, his voice was lower. “Before you saw me, before they brought you in, He looked at me and said I had confused being willing to die with being willing to love.”

Cassian let the words settle. They sounded exactly like Jesus, and they opened a room inside Nalen that Cassian had not known was there.

Nalen continued, “I hated Him for a moment.”

“Because He was wrong?”

“Because He wasn’t.” Nalen rubbed his hands together near the heater. “I thought if I was willing to die for the cause, that proved my heart was still good. But I was not always willing to be patient, honest, gentle, or known. Dying sounded simpler than living truthfully with people who might see me fail.”

Cassian felt that reach him too. He had hidden from costly love by staying small. Nalen had hidden from it by becoming useful to danger. Different graves. Same darkness.

Before Cassian could answer, a sharp tone sounded from the old signal board.

Everyone in the control room froze.

Sera crossed the room first, blaster in hand. Cassian stood and moved to the console. The signal board blinked with weak amber light. An incoming transmission was brushing against the post’s dead receiver, too faint to lock, but strong enough to wake the old system.

Tobin came in from the corridor. “That thing works?”

Cassian looked at him. “Barely.”

“Can it expose us?”

Sera’s face tightened. “If it transmits, maybe. If it only receives, no.”

Cassian checked the routing. “Receiver only. For now.”

Nalen stepped closer. “Can you clear it?”

Cassian adjusted the tuning dial. Static filled the room, low and broken. The freed prisoners gathered in the doorway and along the walls. Dr. Venn shouted that anyone not bleeding should stay out of her workspace, then appeared in the doorway herself with blood on her sleeve and a hard look on her face.

The static shifted. A voice came through, distant and unstable.

“This is civilian relay channel seven. Repeat, civilian relay channel seven. The tower broadcast has been interrupted. Public gathering in the lower quarter continues despite dispersal orders. Multiple arrests reported near the market.”

Sera looked at Cassian. “That’s from town.”

The voice faded, then returned with another layer of interference. “Unconfirmed reports indicate Commander Vale has declared emergency authority. All citizens are ordered indoors. The unidentified teacher remains in custody.”

Lysa pressed against the older woman. Cassian felt the entire room lean toward the word teacher, as if the title was too small and still precious because it meant Jesus was alive.

The transmission crackled. Another voice cut in, closer to panic. “They took Him back inside after the roof feed. People are still singing outside the tower. Patrols are breaking up groups, but they keep starting again in other streets.”

Brant whispered, “The town is awake.”

Kerrit stood from the wall. “They will crush it.”

No one rebuked him because the fear was reasonable. The Empire knew how to crush public courage. It knew how to wait until songs grew tired, until families feared losing children, until bread mattered more than truth because hungry bodies could not hold ideals forever. Cassian thought of the fruit seller’s daughter, of Sera’s husband flying under fire, of Varek somewhere inside the tower, of his mother hiding people beneath the floor. Every awakened person in the town now had to decide what obedience meant after the first wave of courage passed.

The signal shifted again, and a new voice entered. This one was official, cold, and amplified.

“Residents are advised that unlawful gatherings endanger public safety. The individual responsible for today’s disruption is in custody. Those who return to their homes will be shown leniency. Those who continue to spread false religious agitation will be treated as collaborators in sedition.”

Lysa looked up. “They mean Jesus.”

The older woman pulled her closer. “Yes.”

The official voice continued, “Cassian Rell and Nalen Rell are wanted for questioning regarding the escape of dangerous detainees and theft of a civilian freighter. Any person aiding them will be subject to property seizure and detention.”

Tobin threw both hands outward. “Theft?”

Sera turned toward him slowly. “This is what bothers you most?”

“It is my ship.”

“It is our ship.”

“I accept correction.”

The tension in the room shifted for half a breath, but it returned quickly. The official voice repeated the warning. Cassian stood very still. Hearing his name spoken through imperial channels made his body react before his mind did. He had spent years avoiding attention. Now his name was being used to frighten people away from mercy.

Nalen watched him. “You all right?”

“No.”

“That is fair.”

Cassian turned the volume lower, but he did not shut it off. “They are going to use us to make helping people look dangerous.”

“It is dangerous,” Kerrit said.

Cassian looked at him. “Yes. But they are going to make it look wrong.”

Kerrit absorbed that and looked away. The difference mattered. Danger could not be denied. Wrong had to be resisted.

Dr. Venn stepped fully into the control room. “The patient needs rest, and the rest of you need a decision. This post will not stay hidden forever if imperial channels are naming you.”

Sera nodded. “We can wait until the ship cools, then leave before moonrise.”

Tobin glanced at her. “The stabilizer needs more than cooling.”

“How much more?”

“A real repair.”

Cassian answered before Tobin could soften it. “The temporary brace held through landing, but the coupling is damaged. It needs a replacement part, or the ship risks losing control under jump stress.”

Sera’s face tightened. “Can we get one from the post?”

“Maybe from the dish assembly. It has a rotational bearing near the base. If the size is close, I can adapt it.”

Tobin stared at him. “Take apart the communications dish?”

Cassian pointed at the dead console. “Were you planning to send poetry?”

“No, but I become nervous when desperate men remove large pieces from structures keeping us hidden.”

“The dish is leaning. It is not hiding us. It is depressing us.”

Sera looked toward the outer corridor. “Do it.”

Nalen stood. “I’ll help.”

Cassian nodded, but Dr. Venn cut in before they could move. “You, brother with the wounded face, sit for ten minutes or fall down later in a less convenient place.”

Nalen touched the swelling near his cheek where the guard had struck him. “I’m fine.”

Dr. Venn’s eyes narrowed. “That is the anthem of men who make my work harder.”

Cassian surprised himself by laughing softly. Nalen looked offended for only a second, then sat because the doctor’s authority seemed less negotiable than imperial law.

Cassian went outside with Tobin and Brant. The cold had deepened. The stars burned over the canyon with almost painful clarity. The broken communications dish leaned from its tower above the post, and the rotational bearing sat beneath a rusted housing near the roofline. Reaching it required climbing a narrow service ladder that had not been inspected by anyone trustworthy in years.

Tobin shone his lamp upward. “I dislike this.”

Cassian tested the ladder. It groaned but held. “You dislike many useful things.”

“I have survived by respecting my dislikes.”

Brant gripped the base of the ladder. “I will hold it.”

Cassian began climbing. The moon’s weak gravity made his body feel slightly wrong, as if every step carried a delayed answer. The canyon dropped beneath him, and the freighter sat below with its ramp still open, a small pocket of life in a dead place. Through the control room window, he could see the prisoners gathered around the heater. They looked fragile from above. That thought made him think of the tower window, of Vale looking down on the settlement. Cassian tightened his grip on the ladder.

From above, people could look small if a man wanted them to. Jesus had looked from the tower roof and seen them all.

Cassian reached the bearing housing and wedged his lamp against the frame. The bolts were corroded. He sprayed them with solvent from Tobin’s kit and waited. While he waited, the old receiver below crackled loud enough for sound to carry faintly through the open door.

The official broadcast had ended. Another civilian voice came through, trembling but determined. “If anyone can hear this, the lower quarter is sheltering families near the old transit arch. They are searching homes close to Rell Repair. Do not come through the west road. Repeat, do not come through the west road.”

Cassian froze at the mention of the shop.

Tobin looked up from below. “Keep working.”

Cassian knew he was right. Still, the name Rell Repair pulled at him like a hand around the chest. His mother’s shop was no longer only a sealed property. It was becoming a marker in the town’s fear, a place people would avoid or search or whisper about. He thought of the holoframe and wondered whether the patrols had smashed it.

He turned the first bolt too hard and stripped the edge.

“Careful,” Tobin called.

Cassian breathed through his nose. Careful. He hated that careful was still necessary when everything in him wanted to run west. He adjusted the tool and tried again. The second bolt loosened. Then the third. Brant steadied the ladder while Tobin caught the smaller pieces Cassian lowered by cable.

The receiver crackled again.

“This is Varek.”

Cassian nearly dropped the tool.

Everyone below went still. The voice was faint, but clearer than before. Someone inside must have raised the volume.

Varek continued, “I am transmitting through emergency maintenance band. I do not know who can hear. Commander Vale has ordered all records from the lower detention level destroyed. He is moving the teacher before dawn.”

Cassian’s pulse quickened.

Nalen appeared in the doorway despite Dr. Venn’s order, his face pale in the amber light. Sera came behind him. The older woman and Lysa stood near the console. No one spoke.

Varek’s voice shook. “They are preparing a public judgment at first light. Not a trial. A warning. He knows the city will gather if they hear. He wants them to see what happens to mercy.”

Cassian looked out over the dark canyon. Public judgment. First light. The words carried a meaning everyone understood without needing details. Vale wanted to turn Jesus’ suffering into a tool. He wanted the town to learn that compassion ended in humiliation, that truth ended in punishment, that mercy could be dragged into the open and broken before witnesses.

Varek continued, “Some guards are refusing orders. Not enough. Vale has called for reinforcements from the orbital garrison. If you are away, stay away.”

A burst of static swallowed him.

Then his voice returned, softer. “If Cassian or Nalen hear this, Jesus told me to say something. He said, ‘The one who has received mercy must not let fear decide what mercy means next.’ I do not know what that means for you. I know what it means for me.”

The transmission broke.

Cassian remained on the ladder with one hand on the bearing housing. The canyon seemed to tilt beneath him. He heard Nalen step outside. He heard Sera whisper something to Tobin. He heard Lysa ask the older woman whether they were going back. No one answered her.

Cassian lowered the final bolt and freed the bearing. It was heavier than he expected, and for a moment his burned wrist nearly failed. Tobin and Brant pulled it down by cable. Cassian climbed back slowly, each rung giving him time to feel the weight of what Varek had said.

When he reached the ground, Nalen stood waiting.

“We have to go back,” Nalen said.

Sera closed her eyes.

Tobin looked toward the freighter. “The ship can maybe fly after the repair, but it cannot fight a garrison.”

Kerrit had come to the doorway. “Go back for what? To stand in a crowd while they make an example of Him?”

Nalen turned on him. “He stayed for us.”

Kerrit’s face twisted. “And He told us to go.”

“He also told Varek to send that message.”

Cassian held up one hand. The argument stopped, not because he had authority over them, but because everyone was desperate for a voice that did not begin with panic.

“We do not know yet what obedience is,” Cassian said.

Nalen stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means I do not want to run back because guilt is loud. I do not want to stay away because fear is louder. Jesus did not tell us to throw our lives at the tower so we could feel loyal. He told us not to let fear decide what mercy means next.”

The words were difficult as he said them because they resisted the quick answer everyone wanted. Nalen looked angry at first, then wounded, then uncertain. Cassian knew why. His brother knew how to risk his life. Waiting for wisdom felt like cowardice to him. It felt that way to Cassian too.

The older woman came outside with Lysa beside her. “Then pray.”

Everyone looked at her.

Cassian swallowed. “I am not good at that.”

She looked at him with gentle firmness. “No one asked you to perform.”

The canyon wind moved around them. The stars overhead looked unbearably bright. Cassian thought of Jesus beginning the day in quiet prayer beneath a sky like this. Before He walked into the town, before He called Cassian out of hiding, before He entered the tower, He had prayed. Not as a pause from action. As the root beneath it.

Cassian looked at Nalen. His brother looked back, and some of the urgency in his face softened into fear honest enough to kneel. One by one, without command, the small group lowered themselves near the base of the broken communications dish. Sera knelt beside Tobin. Brant bowed his head. Kerrit remained standing for a moment, fighting himself, then slowly sank down near the doorway. Dr. Venn did not leave Derso, but through the open door Cassian saw her lower her head beside the worktable.

Cassian knelt on the cold ground. He did not know what to do with his hands. He held them open because closed fists felt wrong.

For a while no one spoke.

The silence was not empty. It held the tower, the town, the prisoners, the wounded, the dead boy named Tovan, the sealed repair shop, the woman and child, the fruit seller and his daughter, the guilty guards, the frightened citizens, Commander Vale, Varek, Derso, Nalen, Cassian, and Jesus standing somewhere under guard while dawn moved slowly toward them all.

Cassian finally spoke, not loudly and not well.

“Father,” he said, and the word felt strange in his mouth because he had avoided it for years. “I do not know how to pray like He does. I do not know what we are supposed to do. I want to go back because I love Him, and I want to stay away because I am afraid. I do not trust my guilt, and I do not trust my fear. So help us hear You. Help us obey without trying to become saviors. Help us not abandon mercy because it costs too much. And please, Lord, be with Jesus in that tower.”

His voice broke on the last sentence. He stopped, ashamed for half a second, until Nalen spoke beside him.

“And forgive me for making courage about my own death more than other people’s life,” Nalen said. “Teach me how to love without using people, without hiding behind the cause, and without running from the people who still need me.”

Sera’s voice followed, low and steady. “Protect the families in the town.”

Tobin added, “Keep this ship together better than I have.”

Despite the heaviness, a few people breathed out something close to laughter. It did not break the prayer. It made it human.

The older woman prayed for the prisoners. Brant prayed for Derso. Kerrit, after a long silence, whispered that he did not want to be the kind of man who saved himself by leaving others behind. Dr. Venn’s voice came faintly from the workroom, asking God to make her hands steady and her pride less sharp, though she added that sharpness had been useful and she hoped Heaven understood context.

Cassian bowed his head lower. The cold ground pressed against his knees. For the first time since the repair shop, he felt still. Not safe. Not certain. Still. The urgency did not vanish, but it stopped ruling him for a moment. Beneath it, something quieter formed.

When the prayer ended, no one moved quickly.

Then the old signal board inside the post crackled again.

Cassian stood, and everyone followed him back into the control room. The receiver flashed with a second incoming signal, this one weak and narrow, not a broadcast. Sera adjusted the tuning. Tobin checked the passive routing to make sure they were not transmitting. Cassian leaned over the board.

A woman’s voice came through. “This is Mara Derso on lower quarter band. I heard my brother’s name on a hidden relay. If anyone has him, answer if safe. If not safe, listen. The old transit arch is full. People are gathering because of the teacher. They are not going home.”

Derso stirred in the workroom when he heard the voice. Dr. Venn looked up sharply. “Keep him still.”

The woman continued, “They say the teacher will be brought out at first light. Some want to fight. Some want to run. Some are just standing there with candles and scrap lamps. I do not know what is happening. I only know the city feels different. If my brother lives, tell him I am not ashamed of him.”

Derso made a broken sound. Dr. Venn pressed a hand to his shoulder and told him to breathe.

Mara’s voice trembled. “Tell him he protected me. Tell him I am speaking now because he did not give them my name.”

The signal faded.

Kerrit covered his face. Brant turned away. Cassian felt the message settle over all of them. The town was not merely waiting to be rescued. People inside it were already choosing. Mara had chosen to speak. The fruit seller had chosen his daughter. Varek had chosen truth. The guards wavering inside the tower were choosing, or trying to. Jesus had awakened more than the people who escaped.

Nalen looked at Cassian. The old desperate fire was still in him, but now it burned cleaner. “Maybe going back does not mean storming the tower.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “Maybe it means helping the town stand without turning fear into violence.”

Sera looked at the receiver. “We can use the post.”

Tobin frowned. “For what?”

Cassian turned toward the broken signal board. He saw it then, not fully, but enough. The dish was damaged, but not useless. The receiver still pulled hidden voices out of darkness. The transmitter had been disabled, but not destroyed. They had a bearing from the dish, a damaged freighter, a group of people carrying testimony, and a town where many were hearing only imperial threats.

“We can send truth back,” Cassian said.

Tobin stared at the gutted dish bearing on the floor. “You just removed a major part from the communication system.”

Cassian looked at the bearing, then at the signal board, then at the ship. “Then we choose which broken thing needs it most.”

Sera understood first. “If the freighter flies, we can leave. If the post transmits, the town can hear.”

Dr. Venn appeared in the doorway. “And if the injured stay here too long without medicine, they suffer.”

Every option cost something. No path opened cleanly. Cassian almost smiled, not from humor but from recognition. This was what Jesus had been teaching all day. Mercy did not remove cost. It changed what cost was allowed to mean.

Nalen looked at the people gathered in the control room. “We do not decide this for everyone.”

The statement surprised Cassian and moved him. His brother, who had once used the shop without asking, now stopped himself from making a secret decision for the group. That was not a full redemption, but it was real movement.

Sera nodded. “Everyone gets told the truth. The ship may fly if we use the bearing. The post may transmit if we use it here. We may not have time to do both before dawn.”

Kerrit looked toward Derso. “Can the doctor stay if some leave?”

Dr. Venn’s eyes flashed. “The doctor is present and dislikes being discussed like cargo.”

Kerrit lowered his head. “Sorry.”

She studied him, then gave one sharp nod. “Accepted. Do not improve too slowly.”

They gathered the freed prisoners in the control room and the corridor beyond it. Cassian explained the situation as plainly as he could. No stirring speech. No heroic promises. The freighter needed the bearing to fly safely. The post needed the bearing to send a strong enough signal back to the town. If they repaired the ship first, they might escape before patrols found the moon. If they repaired the transmitter first, they could send testimony and warning into the settlement before Jesus was brought out at dawn, but they might lose the chance to leave quickly.

When he finished, the room stayed quiet.

Then Lysa raised her hand as if she were in a schoolroom instead of an abandoned listening post. “Can Jesus hear the signal?”

Cassian crouched so he was closer to her height. “I don’t know.”

She looked disappointed but thoughtful. “Can the people hear it?”

“If we fix it, maybe.”

“Then they should hear what He did.”

The simplicity of it moved through the adults. Not because it solved everything, but because it clarified what fear had made tangled. The people should hear what Jesus did. They should hear the names. They should hear that the prisoners were not dangerous shadows but human beings. They should hear that Varek told the truth. They should hear that mercy had opened doors and that the Empire was lying.

Brant spoke next. “I vote we fix the transmitter.”

Sera looked toward the freighter. “That may strand us.”

Brant nodded. “Then we are stranded with a purpose.”

Kerrit swallowed. “Fix the transmitter.”

One by one, others agreed. Not everyone with confidence. Some with tears. Some with visible fear. A few looked toward the freighter as they spoke, grieving the safer path even as they surrendered it. Dr. Venn said she cared less about votes and more about getting better light for Derso, but if truth was medicine for the town, then she supposed someone should stop talking and repair the machine.

Finally, all eyes turned to Cassian and Nalen.

Nalen looked at Cassian. “You are the mechanic.”

Cassian shook his head. “We are the brothers.”

Something in Nalen’s face changed. He nodded once. “The transmitter.”

Cassian looked at the bearing on the floor. The ship needed it. The post needed it. The people had chosen to speak into the dark rather than simply run through it. He felt fear rise again, but this time it did not sound like wisdom. It sounded like fear.

“The transmitter,” Cassian said.

They began working immediately. Tobin complained while helping because apparently that was how he served. Sera climbed the outer structure to reroute the dish by hand while Brant held the ladder. Cassian and Nalen worked side by side at the signal board, removing dead modules, bridging old circuits, and adapting the bearing into the transmitter alignment assembly. Lysa carried small tools. Kerrit wrote down names as people gave them, not just names of the escaped, but names of those still inside, names of the missing, names the Empire had tried to turn into dust.

Derso, half-conscious in the workroom, whispered his sister’s name over and over until Dr. Venn told him Mara had already spoken like a woman with more courage than sense, which in her medical opinion was often the family trait of people worth saving.

The hours moved quickly toward dawn.

As Cassian worked, the receiver kept bringing fragments from the settlement. The lower quarter gathering had spread. People were lighting lamps near the transit arch, the water stall, and the road outside the tower. Patrols had arrested some, but others took their places. The official channel repeated threats. Civilian voices broke through with prayers, warnings, names, and songs. The city was afraid, but it was no longer asleep.

Near the darkest hour before morning, the transmitter light finally turned green.

Cassian stared at it, hardly trusting the glow.

Tobin leaned over his shoulder. “Is that good?”

Cassian let out a breath. “That is very good.”

Nalen stood on his other side. “Can we reach them?”

Sera’s voice came from the roof through the open comm line. “Dish is aligned toward the settlement relay shadow. Try it before my hands freeze to this thing.”

Cassian looked around the control room. The freed prisoners gathered close. The heater glowed in the corner. Derso breathed in the workroom. Lysa stood beside the older woman. Kerrit held the list of names with shaking hands. Nalen stood beside Cassian, no longer across a locked door, no longer buried in the past, but present.

Cassian keyed the transmitter, then paused.

He had spent years not speaking. Now the town might hear him.

Nalen placed a hand on his shoulder. “Tell the truth.”

The same words Jesus had spoken in the tower returned through his brother’s voice. Cassian closed his eyes for one second, then opened them and began.

“This is Cassian Rell of Rell Repair,” he said, his voice traveling from a dead moon through a broken dish toward a frightened town under imperial watch. “The people taken from the tower are alive. They are not shadows. They are not rumors. They have names. They have wounds. They have families. The Empire called them dangerous because calling them human would have made cruelty harder.”

The room stayed silent around him.

Cassian continued, “Jesus entered the tower without a weapon. He opened the eyes of prisoners, guards, guilty men, grieving families, and frightened people like me. He did not come to start panic. He came with truth, mercy, and the authority of God. Commander Vale wants you to believe mercy has failed because Jesus is in custody. Do not believe that lie. Mercy is alive in every person who refuses to let fear decide what love means next.”

His voice trembled, but it did not break. Nalen handed him the list. Cassian looked at the first name, then began reading. He read Derso’s name. He read Mara’s. He read Varek’s. He read Tovan’s name carefully, with grief and honor, because the dead boy was not a tool and not an argument. He read the names of prisoners in the room, names of those missing, names of those still feared lost. Others stepped forward and spoke too. Brant told the miners’ names. The older woman gave her son’s name and said Jesus knew him. Kerrit confessed that fear had almost made him abandon the weak, and mercy had not let him. Dr. Venn came to the doorway and told the lower quarter that Derso lived and Mara should keep herself alive long enough to scold him in person.

Then Lysa stepped forward.

Cassian looked at the older woman, who nodded.

Lysa stood on a crate so she could reach the transmitter. Her voice was small, but the room held it carefully.

“My name is Lysa,” she said. “Jesus held my hand in the tower. He told me courage can obey even when fear wants to cling. If you are scared, I am scared too. But He saw us.”

She stepped down quickly and buried her face against the older woman. No one moved for several seconds.

Cassian keyed the transmitter again, but before he could speak, the receiver answered.

At first there was only static. Then a sound came through from the settlement.

Singing.

Not one voice. Not a hidden voice under a vent. A crowd.

The song filled the control room in broken waves, carried across distance by old relays, damaged equipment, frightened courage, and the mercy of God. People in the lower quarter had heard. People near the tower had heard. Maybe Jesus had heard. Cassian did not know. But the song rose, and this time it did not sound like prisoners trying not to disappear. It sounded like a city learning how to stand.

Nalen lowered his head. Sera’s voice came from the roof, quiet over the comm. “They heard.”

Cassian stepped back from the transmitter, suddenly exhausted. The eastern edge of the moon’s canyon had begun to pale with the first hint of reflected dawn. Somewhere far away, on the planet below, first light was nearing the tower.

The story was not over. The danger had not passed. The freighter was still damaged. The Empire still held Jesus. Commander Vale still intended to turn mercy into a warning. But in the abandoned listening post, among fugitives, wounded people, guilty people, frightened people, and brothers learning how to love truthfully, a different kind of warning had gone out first.

The city had been told what mercy had done.

Now morning would reveal what fear would do in return.

Chapter Eight

Morning reached the dead moon slowly, not as sunrise reached a living world, but as a pale reflection crawling over stone that had known too much darkness. The canyon outside the listening post brightened by degrees, silver first, then gray, then a thin cold gold that touched the broken communications dish and the patched hull of Sera’s freighter. Inside the control room, no one celebrated the new light. They stood around the old signal board as the song from the settlement came through in waves, sometimes clear, sometimes torn by static, but never fully gone.

Cassian leaned one hand against the console and listened until the sound seemed to enter his bones. He had expected people to scatter when the official threats began again. He had expected the lower quarter to hide its lamps, the market to empty, the frightened to tell themselves they had done enough by listening. Instead, the voices had multiplied. Some sang with confidence. Others sounded like they were crying while they sang. The song was not polished, and that made it harder to dismiss. It carried the weight of people who were afraid and standing anyway.

Nalen stood beside him, arms folded tightly, eyes fixed on the receiver as though the machine were a window. His face had swollen where the guard struck him, and dried blood still marked the corner of his mouth. He looked like a man trying to stay still while every instinct in him demanded action. Cassian knew that feeling now. Waiting could become its own kind of suffering when someone you loved was in the hands of cruel men.

Sera climbed down from the roof with her fingers red from the cold and dust streaked across her cheek. Tobin helped her through the doorway, and for once he did not soften the moment with a complaint. He only took her hands in his and rubbed warmth back into them while she kept her eyes on the signal board. Their small tenderness seemed almost out of place among fugitives and warnings, but Cassian found it steadying. The world was still large enough for care.

Dr. Venn emerged from the workroom and wiped her hands on a cloth that had already been washed and reused too many times. “Derso is alive,” she said, and the room turned toward her with the kind of attention people give to mercy when it arrives with limits. “He is not well, and I do not approve of any plans that involve shaking this post, shaking the ship, shaking the patient, or making me work under worse light than I already have. If anyone intends to do something foolish, I prefer to know before the bleeding starts.”

Kerrit, who had been sitting beneath the receiver with the names list still in his lap, looked up at her. “Does speaking truth into an imperial crackdown count as foolish?”

Dr. Venn gave him a sharp look. “Often. Continue.”

The answer should not have comforted anyone, but it did. It was honest enough to make courage feel less lonely. Cassian straightened, adjusted the transmitter gain, and tried to lock the signal more firmly onto the settlement relay shadow. The old post resisted him with the stubbornness of neglected machinery. He could hear his mother’s voice in memory telling him not to insult a broken thing until he had first thanked it for lasting this long.

The receiver cracked, and the song vanished under a burst of official signal. Commander Vale’s voice filled the control room, colder than the moon air and controlled in a way that made Cassian’s hands tighten. “Residents of the lower quarter and surrounding districts, you have been warned. The unidentified agitator has been found guilty of inciting sedition, aiding detainee escape, corrupting imperial personnel, and spreading unlawful religious panic. Any person remaining in unauthorized assembly at first light will be recorded as a participant.”

Lysa stood beside the older woman, holding the edge of her coat. The child’s face had changed since the tower. Fear still lived there, but it no longer ruled every expression. She listened to Vale’s words with confusion more than terror, as if she could not understand how a man could use so many official phrases to describe Jesus holding her hand.

Nalen moved closer to the console. “He is going to bring Him out now.”

Cassian nodded. His mouth had gone dry. The first instinct that rose in him was the old one, the one that wanted to seize control through movement. Run to the ship. Force the freighter into the air. Return to the planet. Land near the tower. Do something large enough to quiet the helplessness. Yet the freighter could barely fly. Derso could not be moved violently. The transmitter was the only thing they had that could reach the town before Vale’s spectacle began.

The older woman stepped nearer to Cassian. “Keep the line open.”

“I am trying,” he said, working the tuning with careful fingers. “The relay is weak.”

She looked at him gently. “So were we.”

That silenced his frustration better than advice would have. Cassian adjusted the alignment again, then nodded to Sera. She stepped to the secondary panel and held the dish control steady by hand because the bearing they had adapted could not maintain the angle on its own. Tobin went outside to the roof ladder despite Sera’s protest, calling back that if the dish fell, he wanted to be there to dislike it personally. Brant followed him without comment because everyone had learned that Tobin’s humor worked best when someone sensible stood nearby.

The official channel cut to a live tower feed. Static cleared slowly. At first the image on the control room screen showed only a courtyard washed in early light. Then the view shifted to the broad roof of the security tower. Cassian felt the whole room still. People gathered behind him, pressing close but not crowding, as if nearness to one another might make the sight bearable.

Jesus stood near the center of the roof with His hands bound before Him. His face was bruised. His clothes bore dust and blood where men had handled Him roughly. Soldiers formed a hard line behind Him, and Commander Vale stood at His right, clean, armed, and pale with the sleepless fury of a man who had spent the night losing control. Below the roof, the town filled the streets around the tower. Lamps and scrap lights still burned though dawn had come. People stood on balconies, beside stalls, near landing posts, along alleys, and at the edge of the transit arch. They looked small from the roof camera, but Cassian no longer believed small meant powerless.

Vale stepped into the camera’s center. “You have been deceived,” he said to the town and every listening channel. “This man has used grief, guilt, and superstition to weaken lawful order. He has caused prisoners to flee, citizens to disobey, and sworn personnel to betray their duty. You have mistaken emotional disturbance for truth.”

Jesus stood quietly beside him, and the quiet made Vale’s words sound thinner. Cassian noticed that immediately. So did the room. Vale had the camera, the soldiers, the roof, and the law, but Jesus had the weight. He did not need to interrupt because truth was already present in Him.

Vale turned toward Jesus. “You will tell them to disperse.”

Jesus looked out over the town, and even through the poor image, Cassian felt the tenderness of that gaze. He looked as though He saw each person, not a crowd to control, not a movement to manage, but souls standing beneath fear and longing for God. When He spoke, His voice carried through the tower feed, low and clear.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

The words entered the listening post with a force that did not come from volume. The older woman covered her mouth. Dr. Venn closed her eyes. Nalen bowed his head. Cassian had heard his mother speak those words long ago in the repair shop while cleaning a wound on a stranger who had nothing to pay with. He had not understood then. Now he heard them from Jesus Himself, spoken over a town under occupation, over fugitives on a dead moon, over guilty guards and tired mechanics and children taught to lower their eyes.

Vale’s face tightened. “That is not what I ordered you to say.”

Jesus turned toward him. “You cannot order light to call darkness peace.”

Vale struck Him in front of the crowd.

Lysa made a small sound, and the older woman pulled her close. Cassian’s hand slammed against the console before he knew he had moved. Nalen stepped forward with such sudden anger that Sera caught his arm. The room shook with the desire to do something, anything, but the screen held them where they were. Jesus turned His face back slowly. He did not answer the blow with hate. The mercy in His eyes seemed to grieve for Vale more deeply than the pain grieved for itself.

The town below reacted. Voices rose. Soldiers along the roofline shifted. Vale lifted one hand to restore silence, but the crowd did not return fully to fear. Cassian heard the song begin again beneath the official feed, faint at first, then spreading. Vale heard it too. His expression changed from anger to something closer to alarm.

“Silence them,” Vale ordered.

Below, patrols moved into the streets. The camera angle did not show everything, but the receiver caught enough sound to make the listening post tense. Shouts. A child crying. Boots moving. Someone calling a name. Then another voice broke through, not from the tower feed but from a civilian relay.

“My name is Mara Derso,” the woman said, and Derso stirred in the workroom as if pulled toward her voice. “My brother is alive because mercy found him. Do not let them tell you these people are nameless. Do not let them make Jesus look guilty because He stood with the wounded.”

The official feed distorted as if someone inside the tower tried to jam the relay. Cassian leaned over the console, adjusting the transmitter. “They are fighting the civilian channels.”

Sera held the secondary panel steady. “Can we strengthen ours?”

“Only by narrowing the band.”

“Do it.”

Cassian hesitated because narrowing the band meant fewer channels might receive them, but those that did would receive them clearly. The broad signal carried testimony like rain scattered by wind. A narrow signal could cut through interference if the dish held. He made the adjustment, then keyed the transmitter.

“This is Cassian Rell,” he said, and his voice went back across the distance. “The tower feed is not the whole truth. The Empire is striking the One who healed the truth in us. Do not answer them with violence. Do not give fear another weapon. Stand. Sing. Speak names. Help the weak. Shelter the hunted. Tell the truth where you are.”

Nalen looked at him as the words left the room. Cassian had not planned them. He had simply spoken from what Jesus had done in him. Not violence. Not retreat. Not panic. A different obedience.

The receiver answered almost immediately with fragments from the town. The fruit seller’s voice came through once, rough and tearful, saying his daughter was standing beside him and would not be used as a reason to hide. Another voice said the water stall had become a place where people were passing lamps forward. Someone near the transit arch said patrols were trying to separate families, but neighbors were linking arms without striking back. The song kept rising between reports, sometimes broken by static, sometimes swallowed by official noise, but returning again and again.

On the tower roof, Vale seemed to understand that something was moving beyond him. He seized Jesus by the arm and pulled Him closer to the camera. “Look at Him,” he shouted to the crowd. “Your mercy bleeds. Your hope is bound. Your holy man stands under judgment because authority still holds this city.”

Jesus looked at the crowd, then at Vale. “You have confused My patience with your victory.”

The sentence passed through the control room like a bell. It struck Cassian first in fear, then in wonder. Jesus was not trapped in the way Vale believed. He was choosing obedience beneath His Father’s will. The bonds on His hands were real, but they did not define Him. The roof was real, the soldiers were real, the threat was real, but none of it sat above the Father.

Vale’s voice lowered, and the camera microphone caught his words though he likely meant them for Jesus alone. “If you can stop this, stop it.”

Jesus answered with quiet sorrow. “I have come to save, not to perform.”

Vale’s face twisted. “Then you are useless to them.”

Jesus looked at the streets below. “Ask them.”

The camera shifted, perhaps by accident, perhaps by the trembling hand of someone no longer committed to the script. It showed the lower quarter in dawn light. People were not charging the tower. They were not scattering either. They stood in clusters around the weak. A woman gave water to a guard who had lowered his weapon. A man lifted a fallen child and returned him to his mother. The fruit seller held his sick daughter with one arm and a lamp with the other. Near the transit arch, Mara Derso stood on a crate, speaking into a hand relay while others shielded her from view. At the edge of the crowd, two patrolmen removed their helmets.

Cassian heard Varek’s voice through a hidden channel, faint beneath the feed. “It is spreading inside too.”

Nalen leaned toward the receiver. “Varek?”

The signal wavered. “I am here. Lower guards are refusing transfer orders. Records destruction failed. Some names are preserved. Not all. I am sorry.”

Cassian gripped the console. “You did what you could.”

“No,” Varek said, and his voice trembled. “I am doing what I should have done sooner. That is different.”

The honesty hurt because it was clean. Cassian thought of his own delay, of years spent asking safe questions safely. He understood. Mercy had not erased the late hour. It had made obedience possible within it.

A harsh sound cut across the tower feed. Vale had drawn his sidearm again, not pointing it at the crowd this time, but at the soldiers nearest Jesus. His own men had begun to hesitate. “Return to formation,” he ordered. “Any soldier refusing command will be treated as a traitor.”

The soldiers moved uneasily. Some obeyed. Others did not. One young soldier nearest Jesus lowered his weapon. Cassian could not see the face behind the helmet, but the movement was unmistakable.

Vale turned on him. “Raise it.”

The soldier did not raise it.

Jesus looked at the soldier with mercy so strong that the young man’s shoulders shook. Then Jesus spoke to him, not loudly, but the microphone caught it. “Truth has found you. Do not be afraid of its light.”

Vale struck the soldier with the sidearm, knocking him to one knee. The crowd cried out. Nalen swore under his breath, then bowed his head as if ashamed of the old reflex. Cassian felt anger rise, but beneath it came the words he had just sent into the town. Do not give fear another weapon. He had spoken them, and now they judged him too.

Sera’s hands were shaking on the panel. “The dish is drifting.”

Cassian returned to the controls. “Hold it there.”

“I am holding it.”

Tobin’s voice came from the roof comm, strained by effort. “The mount is cracking.”

Brant shouted behind him, “Then speak less and brace more.”

The signal flickered. Cassian adjusted the gain, then opened their transmitter again. “Varek, if you can hear us, the town needs the roof feed kept open.”

Varek answered through static. “I can hold it a few more minutes. They are tracing the maintenance band.”

“Can you leave?”

“Not yet.”

Cassian wanted to tell him to run, but the words stopped. Not because Varek’s life mattered less, but because Cassian was learning that love did not always mean pulling someone away from their obedience. He closed his eyes for half a second, then opened them. “Tell the truth as long as you can.”

Varek’s answer came quietly. “That is what He told me.”

On the tower roof, Vale dragged Jesus toward the parapet where the whole town could see Him without needing the screen. The camera followed. The morning sun struck Jesus’ face, revealing the bruising more clearly. He looked wounded and holy, humbled before men and yet untouched in the deepest place. Cassian felt the contradiction break something open in him. All his life he had believed power proved itself by refusing to be wounded. Jesus revealed a love so powerful it could enter wounds without becoming less.

Vale addressed the crowd below. “This ends when you kneel.”

For a moment Cassian thought he meant the crowd. Then Vale turned to Jesus. “Kneel, and I will spare them further arrests today. Kneel, and I will let the weak go home. Kneel, and your followers can keep their songs inside their houses where they belong.”

The offer moved through the town like poison disguised as mercy. Cassian felt it even from the moon. Vale had learned enough to use compassion against Jesus. He was trying to make Jesus appear responsible for the suffering Vale himself caused. It was the same old weapon, sharpened for a holy target. Do what fear demands, or the pain that follows is your fault.

Jesus looked down at the people. He saw mothers holding children, guards shaking inside armor, old men leaning on canes, prisoners’ families, merchants, pilots, debtors, and neighbors who had once looked away. Then He looked at Vale.

“I will not kneel to fear and call it mercy.”

The crowd did not erupt. It grew still. The sentence settled into them first. It found places where they had made bargains with fear for years and called those bargains peace. It found Cassian too. He thought of every time he had told himself silence was wisdom, every time he had let another person carry the cost because he did not want attention, every time he had kept his mother’s sign but not her courage.

Vale’s face darkened. “Then their suffering is on you.”

Jesus answered, “Their suffering is seen by My Father, and your cruelty is seen with it.”

Those words changed the roof. The soldiers heard them. The town heard them. The listening post heard them. Vale seemed to feel the exposure physically. For one brief second, all his clean walls vanished. He was simply a man standing before the truth of what his hands had done.

Then he raised his weapon toward the crowd.

The control room went cold.

Jesus moved.

He stepped between Vale and the people below. It was not dramatic in the way Cassian expected. It was simple, immediate, and complete. Jesus placed His bound body in the path of the weapon as naturally as another man might step through a doorway. The soldiers froze. Vale froze too, shocked not by resistance, but by the purity of the act.

Jesus spoke softly. “You will not use them to hide from yourself.”

Vale’s weapon shook.

Cassian held his breath. Everyone in the listening post did. The whole room seemed suspended between judgment and mercy, between what fear had always done and what truth might yet expose. Varek’s hidden channel was still open, and through it Cassian heard someone inside the tower whisper, “Commander, lower the weapon.”

Vale did not lower it. His face had gone gray. He looked at Jesus, and the thing inside him that had hidden behind order seemed to split under the gaze of the One who knew him. For a moment, Cassian saw not a commander, not a uniform, not an enemy, but a ruined man who had built a tower around his own darkness and called it strength.

Jesus said his name. “Orsan.”

Vale flinched as though the name itself had struck him. Cassian realized then that he had never heard anyone call the commander by his first name. Names mattered. Names returned people to the truth. Names stripped away titles that had grown large enough to cover the soul.

Jesus continued, “How long will you keep sacrificing others to silence the judgment already speaking inside you?”

Vale’s hand trembled harder. The weapon dipped, then rose again. Tears did not fall from his eyes, but something in him looked close to breaking. The crowd below remained silent. Even the song had stopped. The moment belonged to truth.

Then an officer behind Vale shouted, “Reinforcements inbound.”

The spell of stillness fractured. Vale jerked his head toward the sky. Several imperial craft appeared in the brightening distance beyond the tower, descending from orbit with hard clean lines. The sight restored something terrible in him. He stepped back from the edge, weapon still in hand, and shouted for the soldiers to secure Jesus.

The young soldier who had lowered his weapon rose from one knee and moved first, not toward Jesus, but between Jesus and the soldiers. Another soldier joined him. Then another. Varek’s voice broke through the hidden channel, breathless. “Roof guard is splitting. Lower level moving up. I am opening stair access.”

Nalen turned to Cassian. “This is it.”

Cassian did not ask what he meant. The town had stood. The guards were wavering. The reinforcements were descending. The signal could still carry truth, but soon the garrison would drown every local channel with force.

Sera shouted from the side panel, “Dish mount is failing.”

Tobin’s voice came from outside. “Very failing.”

Cassian looked at the transmitter. “We need one more message.”

Nalen stepped closer. “Then say it.”

Cassian shook his head. “Not me.”

He looked toward Lysa.

The room understood before the child did. Lysa’s eyes widened, and she stepped back against the older woman. Cassian crouched in front of her, careful not to rush the moment.

“You do not have to,” he said.

She looked toward the screen, where Jesus stood on the tower roof while soldiers divided around Him and imperial craft descended behind the morning clouds. “Will they hear me?”

“Yes,” Cassian said. “If the dish holds.”

Her small face tightened with fear. “What should I say?”

Cassian thought of all the words adults had used that day. Detainees, sedition, order, custody, authority, procedure. Then he thought of Jesus holding her hand. “Tell the truth you know.”

The older woman knelt beside her. “I will stand with you.”

Lysa climbed onto the crate again. Cassian adjusted the microphone and nodded. The child leaned toward it, and for a second no sound came. The control room waited with the kind of silence that protects rather than pressures. Then she spoke.

“My name is Lysa,” she said, voice trembling. “I was in the tower. I was scared. Jesus did not make people hurt anyone. He did not tell us to hate the guards. He held my hand, and He told me courage can obey. Please do not let them say He is bad because He loved us. Please do not hurt people for Him. Just do not stop seeing them.”

Her voice broke, and the older woman wrapped an arm around her. Cassian kept the transmission open for one more breath, then another. He did not know if the town heard through the jamming. He did not know if the signal carried beyond the moon. He only knew that a child had spoken truth against an empire, and the room had become holy with the weight of it.

The receiver answered with static.

Then the song returned.

This time it was louder than before. It came from the town and from inside the tower at once, two signals overlapping, imperfect and alive. Varek’s hidden channel carried voices in stairwells. The civilian relay carried voices in streets. The official tower feed carried the sound from below because the microphones could not avoid it. People were singing Lysa’s courage back to her without knowing her face.

Lysa began to cry. The older woman held her. Dr. Venn turned away, pretending to examine a medical cloth. Kerrit wept openly now, no longer trying to hide it. Nalen’s hand came down on Cassian’s shoulder, and Cassian covered it with his own.

On the screen, Jesus turned His face slightly, as if He heard the child from across the distance. Cassian could not prove that He did. He simply knew. A faint smile touched Jesus’ bruised face, not because the danger had passed, but because love had borne witness through the least powerful voice in the room.

The communications dish groaned outside.

Sera shouted, “Cassian!”

The signal tore with a violent burst of static. The screen flickered. The tower image fractured into lines. Tobin shouted from the roof, and Brant called for everyone to get back. A metallic crash shook the post as part of the dish mount broke loose and slammed against the outer wall.

The receiver went dark.

The control room fell into silence.

For several seconds, no one moved. The loss of the signal felt like blindness. The town, the tower, Jesus, Varek, Vale, the descending garrison, all of it vanished behind a dead screen. Cassian stared at the black display, willing it to return. It did not.

Nalen’s hand remained on his shoulder. “They heard.”

Cassian nodded slowly, though his throat was tight. “Yes.”

Sera entered from the outer corridor, breathing hard, face pale. “The dish is finished. Maybe forever.”

Tobin appeared behind her with dust in his hair and a bleeding scrape on one cheek. “I disliked that accurately.”

Brant came in last, carrying a bent support rod. “No one is dead.”

Dr. Venn pointed at Tobin. “You are bleeding on my floor.”

Tobin touched his cheek, looked at the blood, and sighed. “I have been through enough today to deserve a more impressive wound.”

Sera took his face in both hands and examined the scrape herself. “Be grateful for disappointment.”

He looked at her, and for a moment the room’s fear softened around their marriage. “I am,” he said quietly.

Cassian turned from the dead console. “Can we fix the freighter without the bearing?”

Tobin’s face sobered. “Not for a jump.”

Sera looked toward the outer door. “Can we fly low power?”

Cassian thought about the stabilizer, the child’s star wedged in the brace, the damaged coupling, and the dead moon’s shadow. “Maybe short range. Not fast. Not far.”

Nalen looked toward the darkened screen. “We may need to return anyway.”

Dr. Venn stepped forward before Cassian could answer. “Derso cannot survive another violent flight right now. Several others are near collapse. If you leave, you leave with the strong, and if you stay, you risk being found with the weak. That is the truth.”

Kerrit looked at her, then at Derso’s room. “Then we stay with the weak.”

Everyone turned toward him. His face flushed, but he did not take it back.

“I said we,” Kerrit continued, voice rough. “I do not know how to be brave without wanting to run, but I know what I was becoming when I thought leaving them made sense. I do not want that man to make the next decision.”

The older woman nodded with deep approval. “That is a good beginning.”

Cassian looked at Nalen. His brother’s eyes moved toward the dead screen, then the freighter, then the people gathered in the room. He was weighing everything. Cassian could see the pain of it, but he could also see the change. Nalen was no longer simply looking for the boldest risk. He was looking for the most faithful care.

“We stay until Derso can be moved,” Nalen said. “We repair what we can. We keep listening if any receiver line comes back. If a door opens to help the town without abandoning the wounded, we take it.”

Cassian felt the quiet rightness of that. It did not satisfy the part of him that wanted to run toward Jesus. It did not answer what had happened on the tower roof after the signal died. It did not promise safety. But it refused to let fear or guilt decide the shape of mercy.

He looked around the room. “Then we make this place livable.”

No one needed a speech after that. The work began because work was what obedience looked like next. Brant and Kerrit reinforced the outer door. Sera and Tobin checked the freighter’s remaining power. Dr. Venn returned to Derso. The older woman and Lysa sorted blankets and water. Nalen helped Cassian remove salvage from the broken dish mount, not for transmission now, but for heat, light, and maybe enough parts to keep the receiver alive.

As Cassian worked, he found a small fragment from the dish’s reflective panel. It had bent in the crash but not shattered. He turned it in his hand. The surface caught the pale canyon light and threw it against the wall in a thin bright line. Lysa saw it from across the room and came closer.

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“Yes,” Cassian said. “But it can still reflect.”

She looked at the strip of light on the wall. “Like us?”

Cassian looked at her, and for a moment he could not speak. Then he nodded. “Yes. Like us.”

The child accepted this with the seriousness she gave to everything now, then returned to the older woman. Cassian watched her go and felt the weight of the day settle differently inside him. He had wanted the story to move in clear victories. Door opens. Prisoners flee. Ship escapes. Signal reaches town. Jesus walks free. But mercy was moving through broken things that still bore marks of damage. A bent star in a stabilizer. A dead post carrying truth. A guilty guard preserving names. A child speaking through fear. A brother learning not to use courage as a hiding place. A mechanic learning that love did not lose simply because it bled.

Hours passed inside the moon’s cold canyon. The receiver did not return. The freighter did not become safe. Derso did not wake fully, though Dr. Venn said his breathing had steadied. Outside, the stars faded in the reflected morning light, then slowly returned as the moon turned deeper into shadow again. No patrols came. That was mercy, or delay, or both.

Near the end of the long morning, Cassian sat on the floor beneath the dead console with a tool in his hand and his head against the wall. Nalen sat beside him. Neither spoke for a while. The control room hummed faintly from the emergency power, and the heater glowed in the corner like a stubborn ember.

“You think He is alive?” Nalen asked.

Cassian closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“You say that like faith.”

“I say it like need.”

Nalen nodded. “Maybe those are closer than we thought.”

Cassian opened his eyes and looked toward the dark screen. He could still see Jesus in memory, standing on the tower roof, refusing to kneel to fear and call it mercy. He did not know what had happened after the signal died. He did not know whether the garrison had taken control, whether Vale had broken, whether Varek had survived, or whether the town still sang. But he knew this: Jesus had entered the place of fear and made truth visible. Nothing could put that fully back into darkness.

He turned his head toward Nalen. “When we get back, we find the shop.”

Nalen looked at him. “When?”

“When.”

A faint smile moved across his brother’s face. “And if it is gone?”

Cassian thought of his mother’s sign, the tools, the holoframe, the floorboards that had hidden frightened people, the life he had preserved and the courage he had neglected. The shop mattered. It mattered deeply. But he understood now that Rell Repair had never been holy because of walls.

“Then we rebuild what mercy still needs,” he said.

Nalen looked at him for a long time. “Together?”

Cassian held his gaze. “Together.”

The word did not fix the years. It did not heal every betrayal or answer every grief. But it stood where silence used to stand, and for now that was enough. The brothers sat beneath the dead console while the others moved around them, and in that cold abandoned post, far from the tower and still somehow held within the reach of God, the work of grace continued without needing the world to call it victory.

Outside, the broken dish leaned against the canyon wall, ruined as a transmitter but still catching light along its torn edge. Inside, the people Jesus had seen began learning how to live as though being seen had changed them.

Chapter Nine

The first probe came while the listening post was trying to become a shelter instead of a hiding place. It arrived without the roar of engines or the warning of boots, a small black machine gliding over the canyon rim with its sensors turning beneath it like an insect searching for heat. Cassian saw its shadow pass across the floor before he heard the faint hum. He was kneeling beside the broken receiver panel with a stripped cable between his fingers, trying to draw one more breath of signal out of the dead board, when the thin dark shape crossed the doorway and moved over the outer wall.

He did not shout. The tower had taught him the cost of panic. He lifted one hand, and Nalen saw him from across the control room. In the next breath, Nalen was on his feet, moving toward the corridor with the quiet speed of a man whose body understood danger before the rest of the room did. Sera reached for her blaster. Tobin stopped tightening a freighter coupling and turned his head toward the canyon. The older woman drew Lysa close without frightening her, and Kerrit looked from face to face as if trying to learn how courage behaved when fear entered quietly.

Cassian pointed toward the ceiling. “Probe.”

The word moved through the room in a low wave. Dr. Venn appeared in the workroom doorway with a medical clamp in her hand and an expression that made it clear she would blame everyone equally if her patient was interrupted. Derso lay behind her, pale but breathing. His eyes were open now, which should have been good news, except his first clear morning on this moon had begun with the possibility of being found again.

Nalen reached the outer door and looked through the narrow gap. The probe hovered above the remains of the communications dish, scanning the torn mount and the roofline. Its sensor head turned slowly toward the freighter. Sera stepped beside Nalen, keeping her weapon low.

“If I fire, it transmits before it drops,” she whispered.

Nalen nodded. “If it has not transmitted already.”

Cassian set the cable down and crossed the control room, careful not to run. Every person in the post watched him as if he might have an answer. That still startled him. Yesterday morning, customers had looked at him only when something broke. Now frightened people looked at him because something larger than machinery needed holding together, and he did not feel worthy of that trust. He was only beginning to understand that God often made people useful before they felt ready.

The probe drifted lower. Its hum entered the room like a thought everyone wanted to reject. Tobin eased in behind Cassian and looked through the doorway over Nalen’s shoulder.

“That is not a civilian scout,” Tobin said softly.

Sera did not look at him. “I know.”

“It has a military uplink.”

“I know.”

“It sees heat.”

She finally glanced at him. “Tobin.”

He swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say. His fear did not vanish, but he obeyed the moment by becoming quiet. Cassian respected that more than he expected. Fear did not always need to disappear for a person to become helpful. Sometimes it only needed to stop talking long enough for wisdom to speak.

Cassian looked back at the control room. The heater still glowed in the corner. Its warmth, the emergency lights, the medical lamp over Derso, the freighter’s cooling engines outside, all of it could be seen by a heat scan if the probe came close enough. The post had become livable, and that made it visible. Mercy had made them easier to find.

Nalen looked at Cassian. “Can we blind it?”

“Maybe.”

“With what?”

Cassian glanced at the gutted signal board, the broken dish fragments, the mineral filters, the remaining emergency power, and the old environmental controls. An idea formed, ugly but possible. The post’s insulation system still had a thermal purge line, meant to vent stored heat from the old communication core during long transmissions. If he could force the purge through the roof vents, the probe might read the whole structure as a useless heat bloom instead of identifying bodies inside. It might report faulty equipment rather than fugitives. It might also overload their remaining power and leave them cold.

“The thermal purge,” Cassian said.

Tobin’s brow furrowed. “That system is older than my better judgment.”

“Then it will recognize you.”

Sera gave him a look that almost became a smile, then vanished as the probe shifted nearer. “How long?”

Cassian turned toward the utility junction. “Not long if the valve responds.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then I offend it manually.”

Nalen followed him to the rear corridor. The passage was narrow, lit by a single amber strip that flickered as they moved. Cassian opened the utility hatch and found the purge manifold buried behind old conduit. Dust fell into his face. He coughed once, then forced the access panel wider. The valve wheel had seized halfway open, and the override lever had snapped years ago. Of course it had. Nothing in this place seemed willing to be saved without first testifying to neglect.

Nalen crouched beside him. “Tell me what to pull.”

“If I knew, I would sound more confident.”

The hum outside grew louder. The probe had descended to the level of the roof. From the control room, Lysa asked whether it could see through walls. The older woman answered her gently, but Cassian could not hear the words. He put both hands on the valve wheel and turned. Pain shot through his burned wrist. The valve did not move.

Nalen reached in beside him. “Together.”

They gripped the wheel from opposite sides. Cassian felt his brother’s shoulder press against his. For one sharp instant, he remembered them as boys under their mother’s workbench, trying to loosen a rusted part while she laughed softly at their seriousness. He had not known then how precious ordinary closeness was. He had not known how quickly fear could turn brothers into strangers.

They pulled.

The valve shrieked, shifted, and stuck again. Cassian clenched his teeth and pulled harder. Nalen did too. The second movement came suddenly, and both of them nearly fell backward. Hot air rushed through the manifold with a deep throaty sound that rolled through the walls.

From outside, Sera whispered sharply, “It sees something.”

Cassian shoved himself deeper into the hatch and rerouted the purge line toward the roof vents. Tobin appeared behind them with a lamp and a coil of cable. “I am helping because I dislike being hunted more than I dislike confined spaces.”

“Hold the lamp higher,” Cassian said.

“That is not an honorable use of my gifts.”

“Higher.”

Tobin obeyed.

The vents opened with a rumble above them. Heat poured out of the old post and into the canyon air. The emergency lights dimmed. The heater died. In the workroom, Dr. Venn shouted a question that was really an accusation. Cassian ignored it because the power draw had already begun, and stopping halfway would waste the only chance they had.

Nalen called toward the control room. “Everyone stay low and still.”

The probe hovered above the roof for several seconds. Cassian could hear it through the vent line, a faint mechanical whine almost drowned by the purge. He imagined its sensors filling with scattered heat, the post no longer a cluster of living bodies but one broad, confusing release from dead equipment. He imagined an operator somewhere seeing the scan and deciding the old station had coughed itself awake because of failing systems. He imagined wrong conclusions saving lives.

Then the probe moved.

Its hum drifted toward the canyon wall, paused, and rose. The sound became thinner, then vanished over the ridge.

No one spoke.

Cassian stayed crouched inside the utility hatch, listening until the silence became trustworthy. Then Tobin exhaled so loudly that Nalen gave him a warning look.

“I held that in heroically,” Tobin said.

“You held a lamp,” Nalen said.

“With conviction.”

Cassian leaned back against the corridor wall. Sweat cooled quickly on his face now that the heater was out. The post temperature had already begun to drop. He looked at the dead amber strip above them and knew the purge had drained more power than he hoped.

Sera came from the control room. “It left east.”

“Did it transmit?” Nalen asked.

“I do not know.”

Cassian closed the hatch and stood slowly. “Assume yes.”

Sera nodded, though the answer hurt. “Then we cannot stay long.”

Dr. Venn’s voice cut down the corridor. “You cannot move my patient long either.”

The old pressure returned, but it entered a room that had changed. Yesterday, fear would have demanded immediate action. Now everyone seemed to feel the need to tell the truth before running toward any answer. They gathered in the control room while the last warmth slipped from the walls. Derso had been moved closer to the doorway so he could hear. Dr. Venn stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder, not tenderly in appearance, but with the steady contact of someone keeping a man anchored to life.

Cassian checked the power panel. “We have enough emergency power for low lights and the medical lamp for a few hours if nothing else draws from the system. Heat is gone unless I can repair the small portable unit.”

Sera looked toward the outer door. “If the probe transmitted, patrols may come.”

Tobin rubbed the scrape on his cheek. “If it did not transmit, another one may come because the first one found a heat bloom.”

Kerrit sat on an overturned crate, hands clasped hard between his knees. “So either way, they may come.”

“Yes,” Nalen said.

The answer was plain, and no one improved it with false comfort. Lysa leaned against the older woman. The child had not cried when the probe passed. Cassian noticed that too. She was still afraid, but fear had begun to share space with something stronger.

Derso stirred on the stretcher. His voice was weak but clear enough to make everyone turn. “Mara.”

Dr. Venn bent toward him. “You already said her name twenty times. Either wake fully or be quiet productively.”

Derso’s eyes moved toward Cassian. “Did she hear?”

Cassian came closer. “She spoke over the relay. She knows you protected her.”

Derso’s face trembled, and tears slipped sideways into his hair. “She was always braver.”

“No,” Kerrit said suddenly.

The room turned toward him. He looked startled by his own voice but continued. “Not no to your sister. I mean you were brave too. You were lying there ready to die and still thinking about the name you did not give them. That is not nothing.”

Derso stared at him. Kerrit looked down, uncomfortable under the attention. “I almost argued to leave you behind,” he added. “I need to say that where you can hear it.”

Dr. Venn’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps not while he has internal injuries.”

“No,” Derso whispered. “Let him.”

Kerrit swallowed. “I was scared. I made fear sound practical. I thought if I called it strategy, I would not have to admit I was willing to survive at someone else’s expense. I am sorry.”

Derso’s breathing was shallow. He looked at Kerrit for a long time. “You came back with the doctor?”

Kerrit nodded. “Nalen made me.”

Nalen frowned. “I invited you strongly.”

Kerrit accepted the correction with the ghost of a smile. “He invited me strongly.”

Derso closed his eyes. “Then keep becoming that man.”

Kerrit lowered his head, and no one spoke for several breaths. Cassian felt the exchange settle over the room like a small window opened in a place that had been airless. This was what Jesus had started. Not quick perfection. Not clean people proving themselves clean. People telling the truth in front of those they had wronged, then taking the next faithful step.

The signal board crackled once.

Every head turned.

Cassian moved to it immediately, careful not to draw too much power. The receiver light flickered weakly. He adjusted the gain by hand. Static filled the room, thin and unstable, then cleared just enough for a voice to come through.

It was not official.

It was Varek.

“Emergency band,” he said, breathing hard. “If anyone receives, the probe sweep has expanded beyond the planet. They are searching known debris and moon shelters. Leave if you can.”

Nalen stepped to the console. “Varek, can you hear us?”

Static answered. Cassian checked the transmitter and shook his head. “Not enough power to send without killing the receiver.”

Varek continued, unable to hear them. “The roof judgment failed. Vale did not get what he wanted. The crowd did not kneel. The teacher was taken inside before garrison landing. Many soldiers refused crowd suppression. Some were detained. Some escaped into the streets. The town is under curfew now, but the lower quarter is hiding people.”

The room absorbed the words with a mixture of relief and dread. Jesus had not been freed, but Vale’s attempt had failed. The town had not bowed to fear. That mattered, even though the danger had grown.

Varek’s voice weakened. “I saw Him after they brought Him down. He asked for water for a guard who struck Him. I do not understand Him. I know He is Lord.”

Cassian closed his eyes. The picture was so like Jesus that it hurt. Bound, bruised, and still seeing thirst in the man who had harmed Him. Not softness. Not weakness. A mercy that refused to let another person’s sin define the limits of His love.

Varek continued, “Vale is unraveling. He has ordered the teacher transferred to the orbital garrison before night. If that happens, no local witness remains. They will bury the story.”

Sera looked at Nalen. Nalen looked at Cassian. No one said what everyone heard beneath Varek’s message.

The transfer before night changed everything.

Varek’s signal crackled. “Mara Derso is alive. Fruit seller and daughter alive. Rell Repair sealed but not destroyed. I repeat, sealed but not destroyed. I found the holoframe and hid it under the east counter.”

Cassian gripped the console so hard his fingers hurt. The room blurred for a moment. He turned away before anyone could see too much, though of course they saw. Nalen’s hand touched his back once, brief and steady.

Varek’s voice returned after another wave of static. “Tovan. His full name was Tovan Pell. I said it in the tower record before they locked me out. If I do nothing else, his name is there now.”

A long pause followed.

Then, softer, Varek said, “Jesus told Vale that buried truth rises. I think the commander is afraid because he believes Him.”

The signal broke again. When it came back, Varek sounded farther away. “If any of you are listening, do not come back because of guilt. Come only if the Father sends you. That is what He said. I did not want to include that part. I wanted help. But He said truth must not be bent even toward rescue.”

The receiver hissed with static.

Varek spoke once more, barely audible. “I am going to try to slow the transfer.”

The signal died.

For a while, no one moved. The message had done what Jesus’ words always seemed to do. It closed false doors and opened a harder one. Come only if the Father sends you. Not guilt. Not fear. Not the desperate need to repay Jesus by acting brave. Obedience. That word had become heavier than courage.

Nalen walked to the outer door and looked into the canyon. Cassian followed him after a moment. The cold light had sharpened along the rocks. The probe was gone, but its absence no longer felt like safety. Somewhere beyond the moon, imperial search patterns were widening. Somewhere on the planet, Jesus was being prepared for transfer. Somewhere inside the tower, Varek was still standing in the late hour of his repentance.

Nalen spoke without turning. “I want to go.”

Cassian stood beside him. “I know.”

“I am trying to know whether that is God or guilt.”

“That is where I am too.”

Nalen rubbed his face with both hands. “I spent years thinking delay was cowardice. Now every time I move quickly, I do not trust myself.”

Cassian looked out at the canyon floor. “Maybe that is part of being healed.”

“It feels terrible.”

“Yes.”

Behind them, Tobin and Sera were speaking quietly near the freighter ramp. Dr. Venn was checking Derso again. Brant carried salvage into the control room. The older woman had begun wrapping people in blankets because the heater was dead. Life did not pause for holy questions. People still needed warmth, water, repairs, and a place to stand.

Cassian thought of the Scriptures his mother had carried in her heart. He thought of Israel at the edge of the sea, trapped between water and Pharaoh’s army, unable to save themselves by going backward or forward unless God made a way. He thought of the wilderness, where people learned that bread could come one morning at a time. He thought of the garden where Jesus would one day pray not My will but Yours, and though Cassian did not know the full shape of that mystery, he understood now that obedience could feel like agony before it became peace.

The older woman came to the doorway and joined them. She had Lysa’s blanket folded over one arm. “You are both waiting for the feeling that will make obedience painless.”

Nalen gave a tired laugh. “You hear too much.”

“I have lived long enough to recognize men trying to think themselves out of surrender.”

Cassian looked at her. “What is your name? We never asked.”

She smiled sadly. “Avren.”

The name entered the space gently. Cassian felt ashamed that it had taken so long. She had prayed, comforted, guided, and steadied them, and still they had called her the older woman in their minds because danger made people useful before it made them known.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“For not asking sooner?” Avren said.

“Yes.”

She looked toward the canyon. “Then receive the lesson and do not waste it.”

Nalen nodded. “Avren, how do we know whether to go back?”

She did not answer quickly. Cassian appreciated that. A quick answer would have sounded like a slogan. Avren looked at the freighter, the post, the people inside, and the pale sky beyond the canyon rim.

“When the Lord led Israel by cloud and fire, they did not create the pillar,” she said. “They followed it. But they still had to pack their tents when it moved.”

Cassian waited.

Avren turned to them. “You cannot create the call by wanting one. You also cannot refuse it because it arrives with work. Look at what is actually in your hands. Look at who would be abandoned. Look at which path asks for love rather than relief from guilt. Then pray again and move when the way opens.”

Nalen lowered his eyes. “And if no way opens?”

“Then obey what is already clear.”

Cassian looked back into the post. What was already clear? Derso could not be shaken by a dangerous flight. The freighter could not jump. The probe might bring patrols. The receiver had given them truth but not a plan. The people inside needed warmth. The transfer would happen before night. The post had old systems, dead machinery, broken dish parts, and perhaps one short-range transmitter if he could rebuild power. The freighter could fly short-range. The moon had canyons, shadows, and old mining tunnels. The Empire was searching known shelters.

Something began to form.

Not a full plan. More like a door opening a crack.

Cassian stepped away from the doorway and returned to the control room. He went to the old wall map beside the signal board. It showed the listening post’s original network, including dead relay buoys, mining channels, emergency beacons, and maintenance launch points from years before. Most were useless. Some were not. He traced the line from the moon to the orbital garrison routes, then to the planet’s upper atmosphere.

Nalen came beside him. “What do you see?”

Cassian tapped one old mark near the moon’s far orbit. “This post used to guide ore barges through a maintenance lane. The lane passes under the garrison approach path.”

Sera joined them. “That lane has been abandoned for years.”

“Yes.”

“Which means it may not be watched.”

“Or it may be mined with debris and forgotten hazards,” Tobin said from the doorway.

Cassian nodded. “Also yes.”

Nalen studied the map. “Could the freighter reach it?”

“Short-range, maybe. No jump. Low power. If we repair the stabilizer enough to handle one controlled run.”

Sera’s eyes narrowed. “And then?”

Cassian looked at the map, then at the dead dish components. “We cannot fight the transfer. We cannot storm the garrison. We cannot save Jesus by force.”

Nalen’s jaw tightened, but he did not interrupt.

Cassian continued, “But if Vale transfers Him before night, there will be a convoy. Convoys use records, clearance, and silence. They bury people by controlling the story. If we reach the maintenance lane, we may be able to intercept the convoy signal, not physically, but through the old relay buoys. We can force the testimony into the transfer channel. Names. Witnesses. The tower feed. Lysa’s message. Varek’s confession if we caught enough of it. We make it impossible for them to move Jesus quietly.”

Tobin stared at him. “You want to chase an imperial transfer with a limping freighter and haunt their paperwork?”

Cassian looked at him. “Yes.”

Tobin considered this. “That is less suicidal than some options and more suicidal than staying here.”

Sera stepped closer to the map. “If we transmit into a military channel, they can trace us faster.”

“Yes.”

“How long would we have?”

Cassian looked at the power readings. “Minutes. Maybe less.”

Nalen’s eyes had changed. The desperate fire was there, but now it had direction. “We would not be going back to rescue Him by force.”

“No,” Cassian said. “We would be bearing witness where they want silence.”

Avren entered quietly behind them. “That sounds closer.”

Dr. Venn arrived, arms crossed. “Closer to what?”

“To obedience,” Avren said.

Dr. Venn looked at the map, then at Cassian. “Can Derso remain here with me and enough people to protect him?”

Cassian turned to Nalen. This was the hard place. The group could not all go. The injured could not move. Some would need to stay at the post, knowing it might be found. Others would fly the freighter into a dangerous lane to send testimony into the transfer channel. There was no path where everyone stayed together and safe.

Nalen spoke carefully. “We ask who can go without pretending those who stay are lesser.”

That mattered. Cassian saw Avren notice it too.

They gathered everyone again. This time the fear in the room was different. Not smaller, but more honest. Cassian explained the old maintenance lane, the transfer, the possibility of intercepting the convoy channel. He did not make it sound noble. He did not make it sound safe. He told them the ship might be traced, the post might be found, and the message might fail. He also told them what Varek had said. Jesus had warned them not to come because of guilt. Bearing witness was not the same as pretending to be saviors.

When he finished, Derso spoke from the workroom. His voice was weak, and Dr. Venn looked ready to forbid it, but he continued anyway. “Mara spoke because she heard I lived. If you can make them hear who He is, do it.”

Kerrit stood near the heater that no longer worked. “I will stay with Derso.”

Everyone looked at him again. This time he did not flinch as much.

“I ran for the doctor,” Kerrit said. “Now I stay with the man I wanted to leave. That is not punishment. It is what mercy means next for me.”

Dr. Venn studied him, then nodded. “Useful.”

From her, that was almost a blessing.

Brant decided to stay too, partly because Derso needed strong hands and partly because he trusted his old miner’s instincts if patrols came through the canyon. Avren would remain with Lysa and the weakest unless Lysa’s mother could be located later through the relay. Sera and Tobin would fly because it was their ship and because no one else knew how to coax its bad habits into motion. Cassian would go because the transmission rig would need his hands. Nalen would go because the convoy channels and imperial movement patterns were the kind of danger his years had taught him to read.

The decision left the room quieter, not easier.

Cassian returned to the freighter with Tobin and Sera to make the stabilizer safe enough for low-power flight. Without the proper bearing, the repair would be worse than before. He used a support collar from the broken dish, two old pressure clamps, and the bent reflective panel Lysa had called broken but still able to reflect. The child watched from the ramp while Avren stood behind her.

“You’re using that piece too?” Lysa asked.

Cassian looked at the bent panel in his hands. “Yes.”

“Will it help?”

“I think so.”

She nodded. “It already did.”

Cassian understood. The strip had reflected light on the wall. Now it might hold a stabilizer brace in place long enough for the freighter to carry witness into a military channel. Broken things kept changing jobs around Jesus.

The repair took hours they did not have and still not enough time to be trustworthy. The power cell was weak. The engine regulator held, but barely. Tobin ran preflight checks with increasing concern, while Sera loaded the recorded testimony Cassian had saved from the transmitter buffer into the freighter’s old comm system. They did not have everything. The dish crash had corrupted parts of the morning feed. But they had Cassian’s first message, several names, Lysa’s voice, fragments from Mara, some of Varek’s confession, and enough of Jesus on the roof to reveal that Vale’s charges were lies.

Near midafternoon, another probe swept far above the canyon but did not descend. Everyone froze until it passed. That settled the timing. They could not wait for evening.

Before boarding, Cassian went to the workroom. Derso was awake, though pale and weak. Kerrit sat beside him with water. Dr. Venn was organizing supplies with the grim efficiency of someone preparing to keep people alive through circumstances she disliked.

Derso looked at Cassian. “Tell Mara I heard her.”

“I will if I can.”

“No,” Derso said. “Tell her when you can. Not if.”

Cassian accepted the correction. “When I can.”

Kerrit stood. “If patrols come, we will move him into the lower crawl passage.”

Dr. Venn gave him a sidelong look. “You will move him when I tell you and not one breath before.”

Kerrit nodded. “When she tells me.”

Cassian looked at him. “You all right?”

Kerrit gave a tired smile. “No. But I am staying.”

Cassian held his gaze. “That counts.”

He found Avren and Lysa near the control room. Avren had wrapped the girl in two blankets and given her one of the small lamps to hold. Lysa looked at Cassian with solemn eyes.

“Are you going near Jesus?” she asked.

“Nearer,” Cassian said. “Not all the way, I think.”

“Can you tell Him I said thank You?”

Cassian crouched. “I think He knows.”

“I know He knows,” Lysa said. “But tell Him anyway.”

Cassian nodded. “I will.”

She reached into her pocket and frowned when she found it empty. “I don’t have another star.”

Cassian’s throat tightened. “The first one is still working.”

That seemed to comfort her. She stepped forward and hugged him quickly, almost fiercely, then returned to Avren as if embarrassed by her own courage. Cassian stood slowly.

Nalen waited near the ramp. Sera was already aboard. Tobin was in the cockpit, calling out warnings to the ship as if sternness could replace engineering. Cassian paused at the foot of the ramp and looked back at the listening post. It no longer looked dead. It looked fragile, patched, cold, and occupied by people Jesus had seen. The broken dish leaned uselessly, yet its remains now lived inside the freighter and its message inside the ship’s comm system.

Avren raised one hand in blessing. “Go with obedience, not guilt.”

Nalen answered before Cassian could. “Pray that we know the difference.”

“I already am,” she said.

The ramp closed. The freighter lifted slowly from the canyon floor, groaning like it resented every inch. Cassian stood behind Tobin in the cockpit as the post dropped beneath them. The stabilizer readout wavered but held. The bent reflective panel and scavenged clamps kept the assembly aligned. The child’s star remained wedged deep in the earlier brace, unseen but still part of the ship’s fragile flight.

They rose along the canyon wall under low power, then slipped into the moon’s shadow. Sera watched the scanner. Nalen stood beside her, reading the faint traffic lines that crossed the orbital map. The transfer would leave the planet before night. If Varek was right, they had only a narrow window to reach the abandoned maintenance lane and force their testimony into the convoy channel.

The planet appeared beyond the moon’s edge, bright and troubled, the settlement hidden somewhere beneath cloud and distance. Cassian looked at it and thought of Jesus under guard, Vale unraveling, Varek delaying, Mara speaking, the town standing, and the repair shop sealed but not destroyed.

Tobin eased the freighter into the old lane. Debris pinged softly against the hull. The ship trembled. The scanner filled with ghost returns from dead relay buoys and abandoned mining equipment. For the first time that day, Cassian saw a path that did not feel like running away or rushing blindly back. It felt narrow, costly, and strange enough to belong to God.

Nalen looked at him. “Ready?”

Cassian placed his hands on the patched comm rig. “No.”

Sera glanced back. “Honest.”

Cassian thought of Jesus telling him to stay awake. He thought of Varek saying truth must not be bent even toward rescue. He thought of Lysa’s request. Tell Him thank You. Then he powered the rig and watched the old relay buoy ahead flicker to life, dim and stubborn against the dark.

The freighter moved into position beneath the garrison approach path, carrying no weapons strong enough to matter, no army, no clean plan for victory, only names, witness, and a testimony fear had failed to silence.

Chapter Ten

The old relay buoy woke like something pulled from deep sleep against its will. At first it gave only a weak pulse on the freighter’s scanner, a dull green blink buried beneath static, debris noise, and the cold movement of official traffic overhead. Cassian leaned over the patched comm rig with both hands on the console, feeling the hum of borrowed parts travel through his palms. The bearing they had taken from the listening post was gone from the ship, the dish was ruined, the stabilizer was held together by salvage, a child’s metal star, and mercy that had outlasted reason, and now they were trying to force testimony through a relay that had no earthly reason to still function.

Tobin guided the freighter into the shadow of an abandoned ore platform that drifted at the edge of the maintenance lane. The platform had no lights, no beacon, and no life signs. It hung there like a dead city in miniature, with cranes folded inward and docking arms frozen in positions of unfinished work. Beyond it, the planet turned slowly below them, beautiful from a distance in the way wounded places sometimes are. From up here, no one could see the lower quarter, the tower roof, the sealed repair shop, the lamps, the bruised faces, or the people who had stood in the streets because Jesus had made hiding harder.

Sera watched the scanner from the copilot’s seat. Her face carried the tight focus of someone holding fear and skill in the same body. “Convoy traffic will pass through the upper approach line if Varek’s timing is right.”

Nalen stood behind her, studying the movement of small lights across the display. “Vale will want a direct transfer. Fast enough to prevent another gathering, but official enough to preserve his version of events.”

Cassian kept working the relay connection. “You sound like you know how men like him think.”

“I know how systems protect themselves when truth gets loose.”

Tobin glanced back. “That is both profound and terrible for morale.”

“No one asked you for morale,” Sera said.

“I provide it unwillingly.”

Cassian adjusted the transmitter gain by a fraction and watched the relay pulse strengthen. The buoy answered with a second blink, then a third, and for a moment he felt the same quiet thrill he used to feel when a dead engine turned over after hours of stubborn work. Not victory, not yet, but response. A broken thing had answered his hands.

The cabin behind them was quieter now because fewer people were aboard. The absence of those left at the listening post felt almost physical. Cassian kept noticing the empty places where Lysa had stood, where Avren had prayed, where Dr. Venn had insulted fear by refusing to let it interfere with medical work. The freighter carried Sera, Tobin, Nalen, Cassian, and three freed prisoners who had chosen to come because their voices were part of the recorded testimony and because the ship might need more hands if the rig failed. Brant had stayed behind. Kerrit had stayed. Derso had stayed because his body could not survive the flight. Every absence had a name now, and that made the ship feel heavier, not lighter.

Nalen looked toward Cassian. “How long can we transmit once the relay opens?”

Cassian checked the power flow. “Maybe four minutes before the signal burns through the patched array.”

Sera’s eyes remained on the scanner. “And after that?”

“After that, we become very interesting to everyone listening.”

Tobin made a low sound. “I preferred being forgettable.”

Cassian almost smiled, but the old fear was alive inside him too. Four minutes. A small window in a large dark system. The message they carried might break through, or it might vanish into static. It might reach the convoy channel, or it might only give away their position. It might strengthen the town, or it might do nothing but invite pursuit. He had no promise that obedience would look effective before it cost them.

He thought of Jesus standing on the tower roof, refusing to kneel to fear and call it mercy. That sentence had become a line inside Cassian. He could feel it whenever fear offered him a bargain. Fear always wanted worship first, then called the kneeling practical. Jesus had not knelt. Now Cassian had to learn what standing looked like in his own small place, with wires under his fingers instead of soldiers at his back.

A tone sounded on the scanner.

Sera stiffened. “Traffic rising from the planet.”

Nalen moved closer. “How many?”

“Three escort craft. One central shuttle. Military profile.”

Cassian looked up. “Transfer convoy?”

“Likely.”

Tobin reduced the freighter’s power even further. The ship seemed to shrink into the platform shadow. The lights in the cockpit dimmed. The engine noise softened to a low tremor. Outside, the old platform blocked them from the main approach path, but if anyone ran a focused scan, the freighter would not remain hidden long. Cassian looked at the relay buoy ahead. Its weak pulse continued, waiting for the exact angle.

The convoy appeared on the far scanner, moving up from the planet in a clean line. Two escort craft flew ahead and slightly above the shuttle. One trailed behind. The central vessel was larger than Cassian expected, armored, with a narrow signal mast and a holding compartment shielded against external scans. He did not need to see inside to know what it carried. The whole cockpit seemed to understand at once.

Sera’s voice lowered. “He is on that shuttle.”

No one answered because saying it would not make the truth heavier. Cassian felt Nalen move beside him. His brother’s breathing had changed. Every part of Nalen wanted to act with his body, to put the freighter between Jesus and the convoy, to make courage visible in a way that matched the pain in his chest. Cassian knew because he felt it too.

“We cannot attack them,” Cassian said quietly.

Nalen did not look at him. “I know.”

“We cannot stop the shuttle.”

“I know.”

Cassian turned toward him. “Do you?”

Nalen’s jaw tightened. For a moment the old fire flashed in his eyes, the part of him that had survived by hating any limit that felt like surrender. Then he looked at the scanner, at the escort craft, at the damaged freighter’s shaking controls, and finally at Cassian. “Yes,” he said, and the word cost him. “I know.”

That small surrender felt like something holy and painful. Nalen was not giving up on Jesus. He was giving up the lie that love must always prove itself by rushing into the most dramatic danger. Cassian saw that and respected it deeply because he knew it might be harder for his brother than dying.

The relay buoy brightened.

Sera looked over. “We are in position.”

Cassian loaded the testimony packet. It included their spoken names, Lysa’s message, the fragments from the tower roof, Varek’s confession, Mara’s voice, and Cassian’s warning to the town not to answer fear with violence. He had woven the pieces together as cleanly as the damaged system allowed. It was not polished. It carried static, breaks, uneven volume, and trembling voices. That made it true.

“Opening relay handshake,” Cassian said.

Tobin whispered, “I do not like the phrase handshake when imperial weapons are involved.”

Sera gave him a look. “Fly quietly.”

“I am flying with deep quiet.”

The relay accepted the first handshake, rejected the second, then accepted a third after Cassian forced the old maintenance code through a stripped authorization loop. The console flashed amber. He had a path into the outer convoy band, not the command channel, but close enough to bleed through if he pushed the power hard. The freighter’s comm rig whined under the load.

Nalen stood beside him. “Tell me when.”

Cassian’s fingers hovered over the transmit key. “Now.”

He sent the packet.

For several seconds, nothing happened. The console showed transmission, but no return signal confirmed receipt. The convoy continued climbing. The escort craft held formation. The shuttle moved toward the higher approach path that would take it to the orbital garrison. Cassian watched the signal strength flicker and felt helpless anger rise. The message was going out, but he did not know if anyone was hearing it. He pressed more power into the line.

The cockpit lights flickered.

Tobin turned. “That is power we need for not dying.”

“I know,” Cassian said.

Sera watched the scanner. “One escort craft just shifted.”

Nalen leaned over the display. “They heard something.”

The trailing escort broke formation and angled slightly toward the old platform. Cassian’s stomach tightened. The message had reached them, but perhaps only as an intrusion to be hunted. He kept transmitting anyway. Lysa’s voice moved through the packet now, her small words riding the channel toward soldiers, shuttle operators, recording systems, and whatever listening ears God had prepared.

Please do not let them say He is bad because He loved us.

The line hit Cassian as if he had not heard it before. Sera’s eyes filled, though she did not look away from the scanner. Tobin sat very still. Nalen lowered his head for half a breath, then lifted it again.

The relay crackled with a return burst.

A voice came through the convoy band. “Unauthorized transmission detected. Identify source.”

Cassian did not answer. The testimony continued.

The escort craft angled harder now. Its scan cone swept across the debris field. Tobin eased the freighter lower behind the platform, but the stabilizer groaned. The star-held brace held for the moment. Cassian saw the warning light flicker and silently thanked a child who had given away what she loved.

Another voice entered the convoy band, sharper and closer. “All channels lock down. Suppress civilian packet.”

The testimony cut for a second, then returned in fragments. Mara’s voice came through next, clear enough to make the cockpit feel like the lower quarter had entered it. My brother is alive because mercy found him. Do not let them tell you these people are nameless.

The convoy’s central shuttle shifted slightly.

Sera whispered, “Someone inside is routing it.”

Cassian looked at her. “How do you know?”

“Because suppression should have killed it.”

Nalen’s eyes sharpened. “Varek?”

“Maybe. Or someone else.”

Cassian pushed the signal again. The comm rig sparked near his left hand, and he pulled back with a hiss. Tobin cursed softly and reached to cut power, but Cassian stopped him with a look. The transmission was still moving. They had maybe one minute left.

Then a new voice broke through the convoy band.

“Cassian.”

It was Varek.

The cockpit froze around the name. His signal was faint, buried under alarms and official commands, but it was there.

Cassian grabbed the transmitter. “Varek, we hear you.”

“I cannot hold the channel long,” Varek said. “The packet reached the shuttle. It reached the roof guard, the transfer crew, and the town relays before suppression. It is spreading again.”

Nalen leaned in. “Where is Jesus?”

A burst of static cracked over the channel. Then Varek answered. “On the shuttle. Guarded. Bound. Praying.”

Cassian closed his eyes briefly. Of course He was praying.

Varek continued, “Vale is aboard. He ordered full channel suppression, but two operators refused. One was arrested. One opened the maintenance band.”

Sera looked at the scanner. “Escort craft is still sweeping toward us.”

Varek must have heard some alarm through the channel because his voice sharpened. “You need to leave.”

Cassian looked at the signal meter. “Not yet.”

“Cassian.”

The warning in Varek’s voice carried more than fear. It carried knowledge. Men in the convoy could see more than the freighter could. The escort was closer than their scanner made it appear. Cassian knew that, but the packet had not finished. The last segment remained. Jesus on the roof. His refusal. His words to Vale. If fear heard every other testimony but not that one, something essential would be missing.

The convoy band erupted with Vale’s voice. “Trace the source and destroy it.”

Tobin looked at Sera. “That is us.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I dislike being accurately described by enemy orders.”

Cassian pushed the final packet segment into the channel. The comm rig screamed. The cockpit lights cut out completely, then returned in dim emergency red. The freighter shuddered as the stabilizer lost power compensation for one dangerous second. Sera grabbed the console. Tobin fought the controls.

On the channel, Jesus’ recorded voice came through, broken but unmistakable.

I will not kneel to fear and call it mercy.

The words entered the convoy band, the old relay, the freighter, and every open receiver still connected to that moment. For a heartbeat, even the official commands seemed to stop. Cassian could imagine the transfer crew hearing it. He could imagine frightened citizens hearing it again from hidden relays. He could imagine guards who had raised weapons lowering their eyes. He could imagine Vale hearing the sentence he had failed to bury.

Then the packet ended.

The comm rig blew.

Sparks burst from the panel, and Cassian jerked backward as smoke filled the cockpit. Sera shouted. Tobin pulled the freighter hard away from the platform shadow just as the escort craft came around the edge of the debris. A shot tore through the place where they had been hidden seconds before, striking the old platform and sending a spray of metal fragments into space.

The freighter lurched. Alarms screamed. The stabilizer warning went solid red.

Tobin shouted, “I need the engine you promised me would remain alive.”

Cassian coughed through smoke and slammed the comm panel shut. “I promised nothing that specific.”

Sera rerouted power from the dead transmitter. “Second shot incoming.”

The escort craft fired again. Tobin rolled the freighter beneath a broken docking arm. The shot clipped the arm and spun it into the escort’s path. The pilot swerved, but not enough. The craft struck the far end of the arm, lost formation, and tumbled briefly before correcting. It was not destroyed, but it was delayed.

Nalen gripped the back of Sera’s chair. “Can we reach the moon?”

“Not directly,” Tobin said. “They will follow our heat trail.”

Sera looked at the debris map. “There is a cargo shell ahead. If we cut power inside it, we may hide long enough for them to chase the wrong drift.”

Tobin stared at her. “You are becoming too comfortable with falling inside dead things.”

“I married you,” she said.

He nodded once. “Fair.”

Cassian looked at the stabilizer readout and felt his chest tighten. “The brace will not hold another hard roll.”

Tobin’s hands stayed on the controls. “Then I will make only gentle bad decisions.”

The freighter ran low through the debris, trailing smoke and heat. Behind them, the escort craft regained control and came after them. The other convoy ships did not pursue. That mattered. The shuttle continued toward the orbital garrison, carrying Jesus and Vale away from the planet, but the testimony had reached the channels before silence closed over it. Cassian held onto that because the sight of the shuttle shrinking on the scanner made him feel like he was failing all over again.

Varek’s voice came through one last time, not from the blown transmitter but from the emergency receiver, faint and failing. “He heard it.”

Cassian turned sharply. “Who?”

“Jesus,” Varek said. “He heard the child.”

The cockpit went still even while alarms continued around them.

Varek’s voice broke with static. “He said, ‘Tell her I received her thanks.’”

Cassian’s eyes burned. Nalen covered his mouth with one hand and turned away. Sera bowed her head. Tobin, for once, said nothing.

Varek continued, “He also said, ‘Do not confuse My being taken with My being overcome.’”

The signal cracked. Vale’s voice shouted somewhere in the background. There was movement, a struggle, then Varek again, breathless.

“Go.”

The channel died.

The escort craft fired a third time.

Tobin threw the freighter toward the cargo shell ahead, a massive hollow section from an old bulk hauler drifting near the maintenance lane. Its open side yawned like the mouth of a dark cave. The freighter entered too fast, scraping the upper hull against the shell’s torn edge. Metal screamed. The stabilizer bucked. Cassian was thrown against the side console and hit the floor hard. Sera kept one hand on Tobin’s chair and one on the power routing board. Nalen grabbed Cassian by the jacket and pulled him back before loose debris from the cockpit floor struck him.

“Power down,” Sera said.

Tobin killed the engines.

The freighter drifted inside the cargo shell, dark and silent except for the ticking of cooling metal and the soft hiss of damaged systems. The escort craft swept past outside. Its scan beam moved over the cargo shell, paused, then shifted. Everyone held still, as if human movement could somehow be seen through the hull. Cassian could hear his own breathing. He could hear Nalen’s. He could hear the small electrical crackle from the dead comm rig.

The escort circled back.

Tobin’s hand hovered near the controls. Sera shook her head almost imperceptibly. Not yet. The freighter remained cold and silent. The cargo shell drifted slowly, turning its broken side away from the scan path. The escort’s beam passed again, then moved on toward the debris trail left by the platform strike.

Seconds stretched. Then minutes.

Finally, Sera breathed. “It is moving away.”

Tobin kept his voice low. “How far?”

“Far enough to live for the next minute.”

Cassian leaned back against the console from the floor. His shoulder throbbed. His burned wrist had reopened, and blood mixed with grease along his palm. Nalen crouched beside him.

“You hurt?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“Less than the ship.”

Nalen gave a weak smile, then helped him sit up. In the dim emergency glow, his brother looked exhausted beyond anger. The kind of exhaustion that comes after obedience has spent every borrowed strength and left only dependence behind. Cassian knew the feeling.

Sera checked the damaged systems. “Main transmitter is gone. Long-range gone. Stabilizer critical. Engines can restart, but not cleanly.”

Tobin looked into the dark beyond the viewport. “The cargo shell is drifting away from the moon.”

Cassian stood with Nalen’s help and studied the navigation display. The freighter was safe for now only because it was inside a drifting piece of wreckage moving slowly into deeper debris. If they restarted too soon, the escort might reacquire them. If they waited too long, they would lose the angle back to the moon and the listening post. If the stabilizer failed during the return, they might not land at all.

The choices were getting smaller.

Nalen looked at the dead comm rig. “But the message got through.”

“Yes,” Cassian said.

His brother turned toward him. “Then this was not wasted.”

Cassian wanted to believe that without sorrow. He could not. The shuttle still carried Jesus away. Varek’s fate was unknown. The town remained under curfew. The post might be found. The freighter was crippled. Obedience had not solved everything. It had only carried light farther into the dark.

Maybe that was enough for the moment.

A faint sound came from the emergency receiver. Not a signal exactly. More like an open channel catching distant noise through the damaged convoy band. Cassian moved toward it, but the sound was too weak to tune. Voices drifted in and out. Static swallowed them. Then, for one brief second, the receiver cleared.

It was the song.

Not from the settlement this time. From the convoy.

Cassian stared at the receiver. Nalen heard it too. So did Sera and Tobin. The song came faintly through the transfer channel, carried by someone aboard the shuttle or one of the escort craft, maybe a guard, maybe a prisoner, maybe Varek before he was silenced, maybe several voices too soft for command systems to notice at first. It lasted only a few seconds before static took it.

But it had been there.

Jesus was being transferred toward the garrison, and the song had followed Him into the shuttle.

Cassian lowered himself into the pilot’s side jump seat because his legs no longer felt steady. He looked out at the dark interior of the cargo shell. The dead metal around them, the damaged ship, the failed transmitter, the distant shuttle, the song in the channel, all of it came together in a way he could not explain. He had thought witness was what they sent from safety into danger. Now he saw that witness traveled in both directions. The town had sung into the tower. The moon had spoken into the convoy. The convoy had carried the song back into space. Mercy was moving through every crack fear failed to seal.

Tobin restarted one small thruster, barely enough to change their drift. The freighter trembled but did not cry out as badly as before. Sera guided him through the slow turn. Nalen stayed beside Cassian, watching the scanner for the escort’s return.

“Can we make it back?” Nalen asked.

Tobin looked at the readings, then at Cassian. “Mechanic?”

Cassian studied the stabilizer data. The brace was bent. The star-held coupling remained in place, but the surrounding housing had warped. The engines were unstable, but not gone. The ship could not run. It could limp. Sometimes limping was what grace looked like after impact.

“We can make it back if we fly like we are carrying wounded people,” Cassian said.

Sera looked over her shoulder. “We are.”

“I mean the ship too.”

Tobin nodded gravely. “At last, someone respects her feelings.”

The freighter eased out of the cargo shell and turned slowly toward the dead moon. The escort craft had moved deeper into the debris field, following the false trail created by their last burst of heat. The convoy was gone from the immediate scanner, climbing beyond local reach. Cassian watched the empty place where the shuttle had been until Nalen touched his shoulder.

“He said not to confuse being taken with being overcome.”

Cassian nodded. “I heard.”

“Do you believe it?”

Cassian looked down at his injured hand, then toward the dead transmitter, then out at the stars. “I think I need to.”

Nalen sat beside him. “Me too.”

The moon’s far side appeared again, its canyon line barely visible beneath the gray curve. Somewhere in that shadow, Avren, Lysa, Dr. Venn, Derso, Kerrit, Brant, and the others waited without knowing whether the freighter would return. Cassian thought of Lysa asking him to tell Jesus thank You. He would tell her Jesus had received it. He would tell her the song reached the convoy. He would tell her the star she gave him still held the ship together, though it was bent out of sight and doing work no one would notice unless they knew where to look.

The freighter descended slowly toward the canyon. Every meter felt borrowed. Tobin handled the controls with rare tenderness. Sera spoke corrections softly. Nalen watched the rear scanner. Cassian kept one hand near the emergency stabilizer release, ready to shift power if the brace slipped again. No one joked during the final approach.

The listening post came into view below.

At first, all looked still. Then a lamp flashed twice near the outer door.

Sera exhaled. “They are there.”

Tobin guided the freighter down. The landing was harder than anyone wanted and softer than Cassian expected. The ship struck the canyon floor, tilted, corrected, and settled with a groan that sounded like a tired animal lying down. The stabilizer finally gave a sharp crack, and the warning panel went dark.

Tobin lifted his hands slowly. “We are landed.”

Cassian looked at the dead panel. “We are also not leaving soon.”

Sera closed her eyes, then opened them. “Then we make soon unnecessary.”

The ramp lowered. Cold air entered again, and with it came the faces of those who had waited. Lysa ran first, then stopped herself as if remembering injuries and fear and the seriousness of all things. Cassian stepped down slowly. His body hurt. His hand bled. Smoke still clung to his clothes.

Lysa looked up at him. “Did you get near Him?”

Cassian knelt despite the pain in his shoulder. “Near enough.”

Her eyes searched his face. “Did you tell Him thank You?”

Cassian swallowed. “He heard you. He said to tell you He received your thanks.”

The child stared at him. Then her face crumpled, and she stepped into his arms. Cassian held her carefully, looking over her head toward Avren, who stood with tears in her eyes and one hand pressed against her heart.

“He also said something else,” Cassian said softly, to Lysa and to everyone gathering near the ramp. “Do not confuse His being taken with His being overcome.”

Avren bowed her head. Kerrit closed his eyes. Brant looked toward the stars. Dr. Venn stood in the doorway of the post, her expression tight with relief she would probably deny later. Derso lay just inside the workroom, awake enough to hear. The words moved through them all and settled where fear had been preparing to build another room.

Nalen came down the ramp behind Cassian. “The message reached the convoy.”

Sera followed. “And the town relays before suppression.”

Tobin leaned against the ramp frame. “And one escort craft, which disliked us greatly.”

Brant looked at the damaged ship. “Can it fly again?”

Tobin opened his mouth, then closed it and looked at Cassian.

Cassian stood, still holding Lysa’s hand. He looked at the freighter. The stabilizer was broken beyond another quick patch. The transmitter was burned out. The engine might run, but not safely. They had landed with witness delivered and options narrowed. The moon shelter had become less temporary than anyone wanted.

“Not soon,” Cassian said.

The answer did not bring panic the way it might have earlier. People looked at one another, frightened but not undone. They had already learned that being stranded did not mean being abandoned. They had learned that broken places could become shelters, dead relays could carry truth, and damaged ships could deliver mercy farther than anyone expected.

Avren stepped forward. “Then we begin here.”

Cassian looked toward the listening post. Its walls were cold, its systems weak, its dish broken, its power fading, and its people alive. He thought of Rell Repair sealed in the settlement, not destroyed. He thought of the holoframe hidden under the east counter. He thought of Jesus being carried toward the garrison, praying and not overcome. He thought of the song reaching even the convoy.

“What are we beginning?” Kerrit asked.

Avren looked at him with the calm of someone who had been waiting for that question. “A place where fear does not get the final word.”

No one answered quickly because the sentence was too large for the small canyon, and yet somehow it fit. Cassian looked at Nalen. His brother looked back, and the same understanding passed between them. They could not return to who they had been. Not after the tower. Not after the roof. Not after the child’s voice, Varek’s confession, Derso’s name, Mara’s courage, and Jesus’ words traveling through the dark.

Cassian picked up his tool pouch with his uninjured hand. “Then we need heat first.”

Dr. Venn nodded. “And light.”

Sera looked at the freighter. “And a way to know what happens next.”

Tobin sighed at the damaged systems. “And apparently a miracle with wiring.”

Nalen stepped beside Cassian. “We have a mechanic.”

Cassian looked at him. “We have brothers.”

That word stood between them again, stronger than before. Nalen nodded, and together they walked toward the post with the others. Behind them, the freighter cooled in the canyon, wounded but faithful. Above them, stars shone over the dead moon. Far beyond those stars, the shuttle carried Jesus toward a place built to bury truth in higher walls.

But the truth had already escaped.

It had gone into the town, into the convoy, into the names, into the song, into a child, into a guilty guard, into a sealed repair shop, into two brothers, and into a broken shelter on the far side of a forgotten moon. The Empire could still harm bodies. It could still seal doors, jam channels, and drag mercy before judges who did not understand it. But it could not make the seen unseen again.

Cassian stepped inside the listening post and set his tools beside the dead heater. The next door had opened, not outward yet, but inward. Into work. Into waiting. Into witness. Into a mercy that had not finished moving.

Chapter Eleven

The listening post did not become a refuge because anyone called it one. It became a refuge because frightened people began doing the work a refuge requires. Brant dragged broken panels across the outer doorway to block the worst of the cold. Kerrit helped him without being asked, though his hands shook whenever the wind moved across the canyon with a sound too much like distant engines. Avren gathered the weakest near the center room and arranged the blankets so body heat could be shared without anyone feeling like a burden. Dr. Venn claimed the workroom again and turned it into a place where suffering had to answer to her before it was allowed to take anyone.

Cassian worked on the heater with Nalen beside him. The portable unit had died after the thermal purge, and the post’s main heating system had no power left to spare. The only option was to rebuild the small heater with parts from the freighter’s damaged secondary vent and a cracked relay from the dead transmitter. It was not the kind of repair any responsible mechanic would approve, but responsibility had become a different thing since Jesus entered the shop. Sometimes it meant keeping a broken thing alive long enough for people to breathe.

Nalen held the lamp while Cassian worked. Neither brother said much at first. The room around them had the quiet heaviness that follows danger when the body finally realizes it has survived one more time. People spoke in low voices. Sera checked the outer canyon from the doorway with Tobin close behind her. Tobin had stopped joking for a while, which worried Cassian more than the jokes had. Lysa sat near Avren with her knees pulled under the blanket, watching the heater as if she could encourage it by refusing to look away.

Cassian tightened the last contact and waited. The heater clicked once, hummed, then went silent.

Nalen glanced at him. “Is that supposed to happen?”

“No.”

“Should I ask another question?”

“No.”

Cassian opened the casing again and moved the relay by hand. The contact sparked. The heater gave off a weak orange glow, then coughed a breath of warm air into the room. It was thin, uneven, and not nearly enough, but several people turned toward it with visible relief. Lysa smiled. Avren closed her eyes for a moment. Dr. Venn shouted from the workroom that if anyone cheered too loudly, she would assign them medical duties.

Tobin appeared in the doorway, looked at the heater, and nodded with solemn approval. “I have always believed in ugly miracles.”

Cassian sat back on his heels. “Then you must love your ship.”

Sera looked over her shoulder. “He does.”

Tobin placed one hand over his chest. “She wounds me because she trusts me.”

“She wounds you because you fly her badly,” Sera said.

The room warmed by a degree, perhaps two, but the small exchange warmed it more. Cassian noticed that people breathed differently when ordinary humor returned, even briefly. Not the careless humor of people pretending nothing was wrong, but the worn human kind that said fear had not managed to steal every room in the soul.

Nalen set the lamp down beside the heater. “What next?”

Cassian looked at the dead receiver, the ruined transmitter, the damaged freighter visible through the outer doorway, and the people gathered in the post. “Everything.”

“That narrows it.”

“The receiver first,” Cassian said. “If we cannot fly, we need to listen.”

Nalen nodded. “And after that?”

“Water. Heat. Ship. Door seals. A way to hide from probes. Something that looks like food if Heaven is feeling generous.”

Nalen studied him with a faint smile. “That sounded dangerously close to a list.”

Cassian looked at him. “Then forget the order and start carrying things.”

His brother laughed softly. The sound was tired, but real. It moved through Cassian in a way he did not expect. For years, the memory of Nalen’s laughter had belonged to childhood, then grief, then anger. Hearing it now in a dead moon shelter beside a broken heater felt like receiving something back without being able to claim ownership of it. He did not know what would happen between them in the long run, but he knew this much. The grave inside him no longer held his brother’s voice.

They returned to the receiver while the others settled around the thin warmth. Cassian removed the burned transmitter components and separated anything that might still serve. The main board had been scarred by the overload in the maintenance lane, and part of him still winced at the sight. The rig had died carrying Jesus’ words into the convoy. It was hard to call that failure. It was also hard not to feel the loss. Without transmission, they could not speak to the town, the convoy, Varek, Mara, or anyone else. They could only listen if he could get the receiver working again.

Nalen sat on the floor across from him, sorting salvaged pieces by shape and condition. He held up a small cracked module. “Useful?”

Cassian looked. “Maybe for parts.”

Nalen set it in the middle. “That means yes when you are tired.”

“It means I do not want to encourage it.”

“Do parts need encouragement?”

“Some do.”

The work went on in careful silence. Outside, the canyon darkened slowly as the moon turned away from reflected light. Stars returned overhead, sharper than before. Cassian could see them through the broken upper seam of the outer corridor when he looked up. He thought again of Jesus in quiet prayer beneath the desert stars before dawn. That felt like a lifetime ago, but it had been barely more than a day. Time had stretched around mercy, making one day large enough to hold years of buried truth.

A low groan came from the workroom. Cassian looked up. Dr. Venn’s shadow moved across the doorway, then Avren went in with water. Derso was awake again. Cassian heard his weak voice and Mara’s name. The doctor answered him with less sharpness than usual, which told Cassian the man’s condition had either improved or worsened. He hoped for the first and feared the second.

Kerrit crossed the control room carrying a panel brace. He stopped near Cassian. “Dr. Venn says Derso is asking what happened after Mara spoke.”

Cassian looked toward the workroom. “Tell him the town heard her.”

“He wants details.”

Nalen set down the module. “Then give him details.”

Kerrit’s face tightened. “I do not know how to make them hopeful.”

Cassian understood the fear. Details could cut both ways. The town had heard. The crowd had stood. The convoy had received the message. The song had reached the transfer channel. Jesus was still taken. Varek was in danger. The freighter was grounded. The post could be found. All of it was true, and truth did not always arrange itself neatly into comfort.

Avren came back from the workroom and seemed to understand before anyone explained. “Hope is not made by hiding the hard part,” she said.

Kerrit lowered his eyes. “Then I will tell him.”

He went into the workroom. A few moments later, Cassian heard him speaking quietly to Derso. He did not make himself sound brave. He told the story simply. Mara spoke. The city heard. Jesus was taken toward the garrison. The testimony followed Him. Lysa’s thanks reached Him. The song entered the convoy. Kerrit’s voice shook when he reached that part, but he kept going.

Derso listened without interrupting. When Kerrit finished, there was silence. Then Derso said, faintly but clearly, “Good.”

Dr. Venn answered, “That is not a medically useful response.”

Derso whispered, “Still good.”

Cassian looked at Nalen, and they both returned to their work. After another hour, the receiver board accepted power. It did not bring in a clean signal, but static lived in it again. Cassian adjusted the gain slowly. Nalen leaned closer. Sera joined them. Tobin hovered behind her, pretending not to be worried.

The first sound that came through was official noise. A repeating imperial sweep tone moved across the band, then broke into coded chatter. Cassian lowered the volume and tuned beneath it. Civilian channels were mostly dark, likely jammed or silent out of fear. The lower quarter relay did not answer. The tower feed was gone. The convoy channel had moved beyond reach.

Then, buried under the static, they heard singing.

It was so faint that Cassian thought at first he had imagined it because he needed it. He held up one hand, and the room quieted. The song came again, broken into fragments, but there. Not from the convoy this time. Not from the official channels. It came from somewhere local to the planet, bouncing weakly through old equipment, perhaps the same civilian relay network that had carried Mara’s voice. The words were unclear, but the melody had become familiar enough that no one needed words to recognize it.

Lysa stood from her place near Avren. “They are still singing.”

Cassian adjusted the receiver with careful fingers. “Somebody is.”

The signal faded, returned, then faded again. It was not enough to know who sang or where. It was enough to know the song had not been buried. Around the room, shoulders lowered. Sera sat on the edge of a crate and covered her face for a moment. Tobin placed a hand on her back. Brant bowed his head. Kerrit stood in the workroom doorway with tears on his face again, no longer ashamed enough to hide them quickly.

Nalen looked at the receiver as if it were a flame. “Vale failed.”

Cassian nodded. “Not completely.”

“No,” Nalen said. “But not completely matters.”

That was true. Jesus had not been freed from the shuttle. The tower had not fallen. The Empire had not repented. But Vale had tried to use suffering as a warning, and the warning had become witness. He had tried to make mercy look defeated, and mercy had spread into the very systems built to silence it. The victory was not final, but it was real. Cassian was learning to honor real things even when they were unfinished.

The song faded into static. Cassian kept scanning, but nothing clearer came through. He finally lowered the volume and sat back. His injured hand throbbed. The burn on his wrist had reopened during the flight and now needed cleaning. He had been avoiding Dr. Venn because he suspected she would treat avoidance as a personal insult and maybe enjoy proving it.

Avren noticed the blood first. Of course she did. “Cassian.”

He looked up. “It is nothing.”

Dr. Venn’s voice came from the workroom. “Bring me the man who said that.”

Cassian closed his eyes. “I said nothing.”

“You said the oldest lie in emergency medicine.”

Nalen stood. “I’ll escort him.”

“I can walk,” Cassian said.

“So can most prisoners,” Nalen answered. “That never stopped anyone from escorting them.”

Cassian gave him a tired look but stood. The room watched him with the small satisfaction people feel when someone else is forced to receive care after giving it. He entered the workroom and found Dr. Venn waiting with a basin, a cloth, and an expression that promised no sympathy for male stubbornness. Derso lay on the table nearby, awake but weak. Kerrit sat beside him, holding a cup.

Dr. Venn pointed to the stool. “Sit.”

Cassian sat.

She took his wrist with firm hands and unwrapped the dirty cloth he had tied around it earlier. The wound looked worse in the medical light. Red, raw, streaked with grease and dried blood. Dr. Venn inhaled sharply through her nose, which from her seemed like both diagnosis and accusation.

“You repaired a heater, a receiver, and a freighter with this hand?”

“Mostly with the other one.”

“Do not become clever while infected.”

Derso turned his head slightly. “She means that kindly.”

“No,” Dr. Venn said. “I mean it accurately.”

Still, her hands were careful when she cleaned the burn. Cassian stared at the far wall while pain ran up his arm. He tried not to pull away. Nalen stood in the doorway, watching without hovering. That mattered too. His brother did not rush to take over, did not make the pain about himself, did not look away. He simply stayed.

Dr. Venn wrapped the wrist with a clean strip from her dwindling supplies. “You will not crawl into any more engines today.”

Cassian almost answered.

She looked up sharply. “That was not the beginning of a negotiation.”

He closed his mouth.

Derso’s weak smile appeared for a second. “She wins every room.”

Dr. Venn secured the wrap. “Only the rooms that deserve survival.”

Cassian looked at Derso. The man’s face was still pale, but his eyes had more life in them now. “You heard the song?”

Derso nodded faintly. “Mara is stubborn. If she is alive, she is singing badly somewhere.”

Kerrit looked down at the cup in his hands. “You sound proud.”

“I am.”

Kerrit’s voice grew quiet. “I hope you see her again.”

Derso studied him. “You said that like a man who is not sure he deserves to hope with someone.”

Kerrit flinched.

Derso breathed shallowly for a moment, gathering strength. “Stay long enough to learn how.”

Kerrit nodded, unable to answer.

Cassian stood after Dr. Venn released him and returned to the control room with Nalen. The post felt different now. Still cold. Still broken. Still dangerous. But people had begun to occupy it with purpose. Brant and Tobin were reinforcing a lower crawl passage. Sera was mapping probe routes based on the weak signals the receiver had captured. Avren was teaching Lysa how to fold thermal blankets tight enough to keep warmth in. Three freed prisoners were clearing a storage room so the weakest could lie down away from the draft.

Nobody called it building a community. That would have sounded too clean and too soon. But that was what it was becoming. A small, frightened, unfinished gathering of people who had been seen by Jesus and now had to decide how being seen changed the way they treated one another.

Near what would have been evening on a living world, Cassian stepped outside. Nalen followed him after a few moments. The canyon lay in deep shadow, and the freighter sat wounded near the post, its hull marked by burns from the debris field. The broken stabilizer hung slightly lower on one side. Cassian would need parts they did not have to make it fly safely again. That problem remained like a stone in his mind.

Above them, the stars were bright enough to make the darkness feel less empty. Cassian leaned against a rock and looked up.

Nalen stood beside him. “You are doing it again.”

“What?”

“Looking at the sky like you expect an answer to write itself there.”

Cassian breathed out slowly. “Maybe I am.”

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

Nalen looked upward too. For a while they simply stood there. The silence between them had changed again. It no longer demanded to be filled. That was new. Before, silence had been a place where old resentment grew teeth. Now it could hold grief without turning it into accusation.

Cassian finally spoke. “When Jesus said you confused dying with loving, did you understand right away?”

Nalen’s face tightened in the starlight. “I understood enough to be angry.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“No,” Nalen said. “I did not understand right away. I am still understanding.” He shifted his weight against the rock. “For years, I thought the highest proof of love was being willing to die for people. There is truth in that, but I made it easier than living with them. Dying can happen once. Loving people truthfully keeps asking for you after the brave moment passes.”

Cassian let that settle. “I think I confused staying with loving.”

Nalen turned his head.

Cassian kept looking at the stars. “I stayed at the shop. I kept Mother’s name. I kept the tools. I kept the door open. But I used staying as proof that I had not abandoned anything, when I had abandoned people in smaller ways every day.”

Nalen did not answer quickly. “You were hurt.”

“So were you.”

“That did not excuse what I did.”

“No,” Cassian said. “It did not excuse me either.”

The honesty did not burn as badly as it once would have. Maybe because Jesus had already stood in the deepest place of it. Cassian no longer felt the need to choose between blaming himself forever and pretending he had done nothing wrong. Mercy had made a third way possible. Tell the truth, receive forgiveness, and walk differently.

Nalen looked toward the freighter. “If we ever get back, we can reopen the shop.”

Cassian smiled faintly. “That is optimistic.”

“We can steal it back.”

“That is less spiritual.”

“We can prayerfully reclaim it.”

Cassian looked at him, and Nalen’s mouth twitched. The joke was small, but the word we was not. Cassian let it stand between them and felt its weight.

A faint movement caught his eye near the canyon rim.

He straightened.

Nalen saw the change and reached for the small sidearm Sera had reluctantly given him before the relay run. Cassian lifted a hand, signaling stillness. Something was moving along the ridge, but not like a probe. It was low, irregular, and slow. A person, maybe two. Cassian watched the shadow break from the rocks, then stumble.

“Nalen,” he whispered.

“I see it.”

They moved toward the outer edge of the post without calling inside yet. If it was a scout, noise would give away too much. If it was someone wounded, delay could cost them. The figure slid down the slope, caught itself on a rock, then collapsed to one knee.

Cassian’s chest tightened. The person wore partial armor, stripped of its helmet and outer plates. One arm hung badly. Dust and blood darkened the uniform.

Nalen raised the sidearm. “Stop there.”

The figure lifted his head.

It was not Varek.

For one sharp second, disappointment cut through Cassian before he could stop it. Then shame followed, because the man in front of them was still bleeding and human. He was young, younger than Varek, with frightened eyes and a face bruised beneath one cheekbone. Cassian recognized him after a moment as the soldier Jesus had spoken to on the tower roof, the one who had lowered his weapon before Vale struck him.

The young man raised his good hand. “I am not here to harm you.”

Nalen did not lower the weapon. “How did you find us?”

The soldier swallowed. “I followed the probe path after it returned incomplete. I knew it had found something, but I erased the final sweep before the search team reviewed it. I took a scout pod and came alone.”

Cassian stepped closer. “Why?”

The young soldier looked past them toward the post. Light leaked faintly from the doorway. He seemed almost afraid of it. “Because He told me truth had found me.”

Nalen’s grip on the sidearm loosened slightly but did not drop. “What is your name?”

The soldier closed his eyes for a second, as if hearing his own name had become difficult. “Joren Pell.”

Cassian went still. “Pell?”

The young man nodded, and tears gathered in his eyes before he could stop them. “Tovan was my brother.”

The canyon silence deepened around them. Nalen lowered the weapon fully. Cassian stared at Joren, unable to speak at first. Tovan, the boy Varek had killed. Tovan, whose name had been burned from the records and then spoken back into them. Tovan Pell. And now his brother stood bleeding on a dead moon because Jesus had looked at him on a tower roof and told him not to fear the light.

Cassian’s voice came rough. “Does Varek know?”

Joren shook his head. “No. I heard the transmission. I heard him say the name. I thought I hated him enough to kill him if I ever found him.” He looked down at his shaking hand. “Then Jesus looked at me after Vale hit me, and I understood that if I killed Varek in my heart forever, the Empire would still own both my brother’s death and my life.”

Nalen lowered the sidearm to his side. “Where is Varek now?”

Joren’s face tightened. “Held in the tower. Alive when I left. Vale ordered him transferred separately after the teacher. He wanted him made an example for the guard units.”

Cassian felt the words land hard. Alive. Held. Not safe.

“And Jesus?” he asked.

Joren looked up toward the stars. “The shuttle reached the orbital garrison. But the transfer did not stay quiet. Your message spread through the convoy. Some soldiers refused to process Him as a sedition prisoner. They recorded Him as a religious detainee instead, which sounds small, but it slows what Vale wanted to do. He was furious.”

Nalen stepped closer. “What did Vale want to do?”

Joren hesitated. “Erase the local record and move Him into black custody. No name. No charge. No witness. Your transmission made that harder.”

Cassian breathed out slowly. Not victory. Not freedom. But harder. Again, harder mattered.

Joren swayed, and Cassian reached him before he fell. Nalen helped support his other side. The young man stiffened at first, as if being touched kindly felt dangerous. Then his strength gave way, and he leaned on them.

“We need Dr. Venn,” Cassian said.

Nalen gave a short, humorless breath. “Everyone eventually does.”

They brought Joren into the post. The room reacted with instant fear when they saw the uniform, then confusion when they saw the blood, then silence when Cassian said his name. Pell. Avren looked at him with sorrow that seemed to understand before details arrived. Lysa hid behind her for a moment, then peered out.

Dr. Venn came from the workroom and took one look at Joren. “Another one?”

Cassian held him upright. “He was on the roof.”

“The roof seems medically irresponsible.”

“He is Tovan’s brother.”

Dr. Venn’s expression changed, not softly, but deeply. She pointed to the cleared storage room. “There. Sit him down before he collapses on something I already cleaned.”

Joren was placed on a low crate while Dr. Venn examined his arm and ribs. He had a blaster burn along his side, bruising from Vale’s blow, and a shoulder that had nearly dislocated during his escape. None of it seemed fatal, which made the room breathe again.

Kerrit stood in the workroom doorway beside Derso. “Why would he come here?”

Joren looked at him through pain. “Because I heard the names. I heard Lysa. I heard Cassian say not to answer fear with violence.” His eyes moved around the room and settled briefly on the child. “I needed to know if people who spoke like that were real.”

Lysa stepped a little farther from Avren. “We are real.”

Joren nodded, tears slipping now. “I know.”

Avren came forward and knelt in front of him. “Your brother’s name was spoken here with honor.”

Joren’s face broke. He covered it with his good hand, and the sound that came from him was not loud, but it carried years of trapped grief. Dr. Venn paused her work just long enough to let it pass, then continued binding his side with unusual gentleness.

Cassian watched Joren weep and thought of Varek in the tower. The man who killed Tovan had spoken his name. The brother of Tovan had come to the refuge. Jesus had placed truth between them before either knew what mercy would demand next. Cassian felt the scale of it and almost stepped back from the weight. This was beyond strategy now. Beyond escape. Beyond survival. Jesus was not only exposing the Empire. He was bringing the wounded and the guilty toward a place where neither vengeance nor denial could rule.

Nalen came to stand beside him. “This is going to get harder.”

Cassian nodded. “Yes.”

“You think Varek and Joren will have to face each other?”

Cassian looked at Joren, then toward the dead receiver. “I think Jesus already started that road.”

Nalen was quiet. “That kind of mercy frightens me.”

“Me too.”

The receiver crackled again from the control room. Everyone turned. Cassian moved to it quickly. The signal was stronger now, but narrow, likely because Joren’s scout pod had brought a fresh relay key into range. Sera stood beside Cassian and helped tune it.

A hidden tower channel came through.

A woman’s voice spoke in a rush. “This is Mara Derso to the moon shelter, if the relay key worked. The soldier said he would carry it. I do not know if you hear me. The lower quarter still stands. Curfew is failing in pieces. People are sheltering families in repair bays, storage rooms, under stalls, anywhere they can. Rell Repair is sealed, but people are leaving lamps outside it.”

Cassian closed his eyes. Lamps outside the shop. His mother’s name beneath light. He felt Nalen’s hand on his shoulder again.

Mara continued, “Varek is alive. He is being held in the tower lower command room. Vale’s authority is being challenged by garrison command because of the public feeds. They are not merciful. They are embarrassed. That may buy time.”

Sera whispered, “Embarrassment is useful.”

Mara’s voice trembled. “Derso, if you hear this, I am alive. Stay alive or I will be angry beyond spiritual maturity.”

A weak laugh moved through the post. Even Dr. Venn allowed that one.

Derso called from the workroom, voice thin but determined. “Tell her I am afraid.”

Cassian keyed the receiver out of habit, then remembered the transmitter was dead. No answer could be sent. Derso seemed to realize it too. His eyes closed, and Kerrit gripped his shoulder.

Mara’s message continued. “The teacher is at the orbital garrison, but the story is no longer buried. People are saying His name in the streets now. Some do not understand. Some are mocking. Some are afraid. But they are saying it. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”

The name filled the control room through static and distance, spoken by a woman in a frightened town to a broken shelter on a dead moon. Cassian bowed his head. Around him, others did the same. Not because anyone commanded it. Because the name had become the center of everything.

Mara’s final words came softer. “If you can hear me, do not think this is over. The city has been seen by God. We cannot unsee that now.”

The signal ended.

The room remained still.

Joren sat in the storage doorway with his arm bound and his face wet. “She is right,” he said.

Cassian looked at him.

The young soldier swallowed. “I spent years believing the Empire was too large for truth to matter. Then one man stood on a roof and would not kneel. Now every system is trying to explain why that frightened them.”

Nalen looked toward the outer canyon. “Because it should.”

Cassian stood beside the receiver, one hand resting on the console. He felt the shape of the next movement beginning, though he did not yet see it clearly. Varek alive in the tower. Jesus at the orbital garrison. The lower quarter standing. Lamps outside Rell Repair. Joren in the shelter with Tovan’s grief inside him. The freighter grounded but not useless. The receiver alive. The transmitter dead. The canyon hidden for now but not forever.

The story had widened again.

Avren seemed to sense the same thing. She looked at Cassian, then Nalen, then the others. “Rest while there is rest. The Lord often gives the next instruction after the body admits it is not God.”

Dr. Venn pointed at Cassian. “I support that theology medically.”

No one argued. Not because the danger was gone, but because exhaustion had become its own truth. They arranged watches. Sera took the first with Nalen. Brant and Tobin took the second. Cassian was ordered to sleep before he was allowed to touch another circuit, and for once he obeyed. He lay on the control room floor near the heater, wrapped in a thin blanket that smelled of dust and metal, listening to the low breathing of people around him.

Lysa slept near Avren. Derso murmured Mara’s name once, then quieted. Kerrit stayed awake beside the workroom longer than his watch required. Joren slept fitfully in the storage room, flinching whenever the wind struck the outer panels. Nalen stood near the doorway with Sera, his silhouette framed by stars.

Cassian closed his eyes and saw Jesus again. Not as defeated. Not as absent. He saw Him praying. He saw Him looking at Cassian in the repair shop. He saw Him holding Lysa’s hand. He saw Him standing before Vale, refusing the bargain fear had offered.

For the first time since this began, Cassian slept without feeling like sleep was betrayal.

Outside, the dead moon turned in silence. Far away, the city kept its lamps burning outside a sealed repair shop. Farther still, in a garrison built to swallow names, Jesus was not overcome.

Chapter Twelve

Cassian woke to the sound of someone speaking his name softly, and for one disoriented moment he thought he was back under a freighter in the repair shop before dawn. His body expected the smell of engine oil, hot dust, and old tools. Instead he opened his eyes to the dim amber glow of the listening post, the cold metal wall near his shoulder, and the sight of Nalen crouched beside him with a finger raised for quiet.

“Receiver,” Nalen whispered.

Cassian sat up too quickly and felt pain flash through his wrist and shoulder. The room was still mostly asleep. Lysa lay curled beneath a blanket beside Avren. Kerrit slept sitting against the workroom doorframe, chin lowered to his chest. Joren stirred in the storage room but did not wake fully. The little heater gave off a faint warmth that reached only those closest to it, yet even that weak glow had become part of the shelter’s heartbeat.

Nalen helped Cassian stand. The floor tilted under him for half a breath as exhaustion protested, but the low crackle from the receiver cleared his mind. Sera stood at the console, one hand resting near the tuning dial. Brant was beside the outer doorway with a lamp hooded in his palm. Tobin stood behind Sera, unusually quiet, his arms folded as if holding himself together by force.

Cassian reached the console and listened.

At first there was only static. Then a woman’s voice came through in short broken pieces, not Mara this time. Older. Strained. Trying to sound official and failing because fear kept entering the edges of the words.

“Maintenance band twelve... repeat, maintenance band twelve. Unauthorized spiritual agitation continues in lower quarter and market district. Garrison command has assumed supervisory authority over local security operations. Commander Vale’s tower authority under review pending transfer report.”

Sera looked at Cassian. “That is internal.”

Cassian adjusted the gain carefully. The receiver whined, and the voice sharpened.

“All nonessential detention records are to be preserved until audit. No destruction without garrison countersignature. Personnel involved in transfer disruption are to be isolated for questioning. Trooper Varek Ruun remains in custody. Guard Joren Pell listed as missing and presumed deserter.”

Joren woke at his own name. He came out of the storage room slowly, his injured side wrapped tight, face pale in the low light. No one asked him to sit. No one asked why he had come. The transmission had already named the cost.

The voice continued, “Religious detainee transferred to Orbital Holding Station Aurek-Seven. Classification contested. Public disturbance on surface remains unresolved. Civilian rumor network continues spreading unverified testimony. Suppression teams unable to identify single origin point.”

Nalen breathed out softly. “Because there isn’t one anymore.”

Cassian kept one hand on the console. The words should have frightened him, and they did, but beneath the fear came something steadier. The Empire could no longer silence the story by closing one door, arresting one person, jamming one channel, or burning one record. The witness had scattered into too many ordinary mouths. It was in Mara’s voice, Lysa’s message, Varek’s confession, Joren’s escape, Derso’s survival, lamps outside Rell Repair, songs in the lower quarter, and frightened soldiers who had seen Jesus refuse to kneel.

The voice faded. Another channel cut in, lower and more guarded. “Aurek-Seven confirms arrival. Detainee refused identification procedure beyond given name. Medical scan indicates trauma consistent with tower handling. Detainee requested water for escort personnel. Request denied.”

Dr. Venn appeared from the workroom doorway as if the word medical had summoned her. “Denied?”

Tobin glanced at her. “You were sleeping.”

“I was resting my anger.”

The channel continued. “Detainee continues speaking to personnel despite isolation order. Two guards requested reassignment after contact. One chaplain-equivalent interpreter requested access and was denied by command. Garrison chief has ordered full doctrinal containment review.”

Cassian stared at the receiver. The phrase was absurd, and yet he understood it. They did not know what to do with Jesus, so they were naming Him with whatever cold language their systems could produce. Doctrinal containment. Religious detainee. Spiritual agitation. They were trying to cage the living Lord inside administrative terms. It would have been laughable if the hands holding Him were not violent.

Avren had woken now. She sat up slowly, keeping the blanket over Lysa. “They are afraid of His words.”

Joren’s voice came hoarse from the storage doorway. “They should be.”

Everyone turned toward him. He looked younger in the half-light, stripped of helmet, armor, and certainty. “I heard Him speak to a guard who had mocked Him during the transfer. The man laughed at first. Then Jesus asked him how long he had been sending money to his mother under a false name because he was ashamed to tell her what he had become.” Joren swallowed. “The guard stopped laughing. No file had that information. No interrogator could have known it. Jesus did not expose him to humiliate him. He spoke as if He was calling the man back from somewhere far away.”

Cassian thought of the repair shop, of Jesus asking what his brother’s name was. He felt the memory like a hand laid against a wound that had begun to heal but was still tender.

Nalen looked at Joren. “Did the guard listen?”

“I don’t know,” Joren said. “He left the compartment before we docked.”

“Leaving can be listening,” Avren said quietly. “Sometimes a person has to step away from the lie before he can turn toward the truth.”

The receiver shifted again. A burst of static swallowed the garrison channel, then a civilian signal slipped through beneath it. Mara’s voice returned, tired but alive.

“If the moon shelter still receives, listen only. Do not answer. They are tracing response bursts. The lower quarter is still holding lamps after curfew. Rell Repair has become a gathering point even with the seal in place. People are leaving names there. Written names, scratched names, spoken names. Names of the taken, the dead, the missing, the guilty, and the afraid. Someone painted Tovan Pell’s name on the ground outside the door before patrols washed it away. By morning three more people had written it again.”

Joren covered his mouth with his good hand. His shoulders shook once, but he did not turn away.

Mara continued, “Derso, if you hear this, I am still angry with you for nearly dying before I could yell at you. Stay alive. Dr. Venn, if you are with him, I have never met you, but I am trusting you with my brother and asking God to make your hands stubborn.”

Dr. Venn folded her arms. “Her theology is improving.”

A faint smile passed through the room and vanished as Mara’s voice lowered.

“Cassian Rell, people are asking about your mother. Some remember what she did during the raids. Some did not know. They are telling the stories now. The shop is sealed, but it is not empty in the way Vale wanted. Your mother’s name is being spoken with honor.”

Cassian lowered his head. The words entered him slowly because they were too much to receive at once. He had feared the shop would become a warning. In a way, it had. But not the warning Vale intended. It had become a place where hidden stories were returning to the light. His mother’s mercy, which he had thought buried under debt, dust, and old tools, was rising in the city through the mouths of people who remembered.

Nalen stepped close enough that their shoulders touched. Neither brother spoke. Cassian did not need him to. The silence held more than words could have.

Mara’s signal crackled. “There is another thing. Garrison command is offering leniency to anyone who turns over escaped detainees, rebel contacts, deserters, or those spreading the teacher’s message. Some are tempted. Some are scared. Do not judge too fast. People have children. People are hungry. People remember what the tower does. Pray for us. Pray we do not sell one another to buy one more quiet night.”

Avren bowed her head immediately. Lysa stirred but did not wake. Brant turned toward the wall, his jaw tight. Kerrit had woken during the message and now sat rigid beside the workroom doorway, the words sell one another pressing visibly into him.

The signal faded before Mara could say more.

The control room remained quiet in the aftermath. No one rushed to fill the silence. The message had brought them news, but it had also brought responsibility. The lower quarter was not a symbol. It was people under pressure. Some had stood with lamps. Some might turn others in by nightfall. Both were true. Cassian realized he had wanted the city to become brave all at once because that would make the story cleaner. Jesus had never treated people that way. He saw them in their mixture of fear, hope, guilt, courage, weakness, and longing, and He still called them toward the Father.

Kerrit stood slowly. “I understand them.”

No one asked who he meant.

He looked toward the dead transmitter panel. “The ones tempted to turn people over. I hate that I understand them, but I do. When fear gets loud enough, betrayal starts sounding like the price of keeping one person safe. Maybe yourself. Maybe your child. Maybe someone you love.” His face tightened. “And then you tell yourself you had no choice because the alternative was too costly.”

Derso called weakly from the workroom. “You came back.”

Kerrit turned toward the doorway.

Derso’s voice was thin but steady. “You are not the man fear tried to make finished.”

Kerrit closed his eyes. Cassian saw the words reach him. Not finished. That was mercy. Not pretending the wrong was small, but refusing to let the wrong have the last word over a living soul.

Joren stepped closer to the receiver. “If the city is writing Tovan’s name, the tower will respond.”

Nalen looked at him. “How?”

“By finding someone to blame for the name returning.”

“Varek,” Cassian said.

Joren nodded. “And me, if they connect me to the moon shelter. My family too, if they find them.”

“Do you have family still in the city?” Avren asked.

Joren’s face changed. “My mother. She lives near the old grain lift. She thinks I am still loyal. She thinks Tovan died in a work accident because that is what the report said.”

The room absorbed that slowly.

Cassian turned toward him. “You never told her?”

Joren shook his head. “I was already in training when he died. Varek was in another unit then. I heard rumors, but the official report came sealed through command. I believed it because believing it allowed me to keep wearing the uniform.” His voice grew rough. “Then after the tower broadcast, I accessed restricted files. There was almost nothing left. Just a partial incident marker and the erased name. Varek speaking it confirmed what I had already begun to know.”

Nalen’s gaze lowered. “Your mother does not know.”

“No.”

Cassian thought of his own mother’s name spoken outside Rell Repair. He thought of a woman near the old grain lift still living inside a lie built around her dead son. The pain of it made him look at the receiver as if it could become a bridge by will alone.

“We need the transmitter,” he said.

Tobin, who had been quiet too long, gave a tired laugh. “I knew the moment was coming. I felt it approaching like a creditor.”

Sera looked at the burned panel. “Can it be rebuilt?”

Cassian did not answer quickly. He crouched beside the rig and opened the casing again. The overload from the maintenance lane had blackened the main output board. Several contacts were fused. The relay coil was ruined. The directional amplifier had cracked in two places. With proper parts, he could rebuild it. With what they had, he could perhaps make it scream once more before it died permanently. But one more uncontrolled burst might lead the Empire straight to the shelter.

He told them that.

No one looked surprised. They had learned by now that every door came with cost.

Joren stepped forward. “If you can send one message, send it to my mother.”

Cassian looked up.

Joren’s eyes were wet but firm. “Tell her Tovan did not die in a work accident. Tell her he ran because he was afraid, and he was shot by men who were also afraid and trained to call fear order. Tell her his name is being spoken. Tell her I am sorry I served the system that buried him.”

Avren stood slowly. “She should hear that from you if possible.”

“I cannot transmit without exposing this place.”

Sera looked at Cassian. “Could we send from the scout pod?”

Everyone turned toward her. Joren had arrived in a small imperial scout pod and hidden it below the canyon rim. Until then, it had been treated only as a risk. Cassian saw the possibility open. The pod had a military transmitter, small but intact. If removed from the pod and patched through the listening post’s receiver alignment, it could send a narrow message. Or the pod itself could be moved away from the shelter and used as a decoy transmitter. That might protect the post. It might also cost the person operating it.

Tobin shook his head. “No. I recognize the shape of this idea, and I dislike it early.”

Nalen looked at Sera. “How far from the post would it need to be?”

“Far enough that a trace does not land on the canyon. Close enough that the message can ride the old relay shadow.”

Cassian stood. “The ridge above the dry basin. Two kilometers east.”

Tobin stared at him. “You knew that too quickly.”

“I fixed the receiver. I know where the shadow is strongest.”

“That does not comfort me.”

Joren lifted his chin. “I will do it.”

“No,” Nalen said immediately.

Joren’s face hardened. “It is my mother.”

“And your pod. And your signal. And your name is already listed as missing and presumed deserter. The moment you transmit, they will know you are alive.”

“They may already know.”

“May is not the same as handing them proof.”

Joren stepped closer. “You do not get to decide when my mother learns the truth.”

Nalen’s mouth shut. The room felt the force of the correction. It was not hostile. It was a boundary drawn by grief and love. Cassian watched Nalen receive it. His brother’s face shifted, and he nodded once.

“You are right,” Nalen said.

Joren seemed almost startled by the lack of argument.

Nalen continued, “But you also do not get to turn truth into a death wish because you cannot bear the years you stayed silent.”

The words landed hard because they came from recognition, not control. Joren looked away. Cassian saw his throat move.

“I do not know how to live with it,” Joren said.

Avren came toward him. “Then do not try to solve the whole weight tonight. Tell the truth. Stay alive. Let repentance have more than one breath.”

Joren looked at her, and something in him loosened. He did not become less determined, but his determination lost some of its despair.

Sera crossed to the outer doorway and looked toward the canyon. “If we use the pod from the ridge, they trace the transmission there. We can rig it to continue broadcasting after Joren leaves. A false heat source, maybe a delayed pulse. That could pull search craft away from the post.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “It might also give us a channel to send more than one message.”

Tobin sighed. “There it is. The idea grows teeth.”

Nalen looked at Cassian. “How many messages?”

“Not many. The pod transmitter is built for short encrypted bursts, not open testimony. But if we strip the encryption and force the channel, we can send a narrow beam toward the lower quarter relay, maybe another toward the tower if the receiver key from Joren still works.”

Joren lifted his head. “The tower?”

“Varek,” Cassian said.

The room stilled.

Joren’s face changed in a way that hurt to witness. Varek had killed his brother. Varek had spoken Tovan’s name. Varek was alive in the tower and might be punished because he had refused to bury truth anymore. Joren’s grief and Varek’s repentance had not yet stood face to face, but both were already inside the same mercy.

“What would you send him?” Joren asked.

Cassian did not answer for a moment. “That Tovan’s brother is alive. That Tovan’s name is being spoken. That Jesus is not overcome. That he should tell the truth as long as he has breath.”

Joren looked down. “And if I do not want to encourage the man who killed my brother?”

Cassian nodded. “Then tell the truth about that too.”

Joren looked at him sharply.

Cassian continued, “Jesus did not ask any of us to pretend mercy feels easy. If you cannot bless Varek yet, do not lie. But do not let hatred decide what truth he is allowed to hear.”

Joren stared at him. For a second, Cassian felt the strange discomfort of hearing Jesus’ work in his own words. He had not become wise. He had become interrupted by mercy often enough that some of it was beginning to answer through him.

Dr. Venn stepped into the control room. “If anyone is going to the ridge, take water, wraps, and someone who can carry the injured soldier back if his noble intentions collapse.”

Tobin raised one hand halfway. “I vote for someone else.”

Sera looked at him.

He lowered the hand. “I withdraw my cowardice from the formal record.”

Nalen turned to Cassian. “You cannot go. Your wrist is infected if you keep abusing it, and the transmitter work can be done here once we pull the pod unit.”

Cassian did not like the immediate no rising in him, but he examined it before speaking. Was it wisdom or the need to control the next risk? Dr. Venn would likely agree with Nalen. Avren would tell him to look at what love required, not what guilt demanded. Jesus had told him to stay awake. Awake meant seeing his body truthfully too.

“I can help remove the transmitter,” Cassian said. “Then I stay.”

Nalen nodded, surprised and relieved.

Joren looked toward the canyon. “I go.”

“So do I,” Sera said.

Tobin opened his mouth.

Sera held up a finger without looking at him. “Not because I want to die. Because I know field transmitters, I can rig the delayed pulse, and you need to keep the ship from becoming sculpture.”

Tobin closed his mouth. His fear for her passed plainly over his face. Then he nodded. “Come back and insult my repairs.”

“I plan to.”

Brant agreed to go because the pod would need to be dragged into the best position, and he trusted his old miner’s strength more than anyone’s optimism. Nalen would go too, because the ridge route might carry patrol risk and because he could read imperial movement if the signal drew attention fast. Cassian would remain with Avren, Lysa, Dr. Venn, Derso, Kerrit, Tobin, and the weakest in the post.

The division hurt, but it did not feel wrong.

They waited until the moon’s rotation placed the canyon in deeper shadow. While they prepared, Cassian and Tobin went with Joren to the hidden scout pod. It sat under a spill of rock below the eastern rim, smaller than Cassian expected, its outer shell scored by hurried landing. The pod had no comfort, no room for mercy, and a transmitter built for obedience to command. Cassian opened the communications bay and began removing the unit.

Joren stood beside him, watching the work. “I used this transmitter to report movements.”

Cassian loosened a bracket. “Now it will tell the truth.”

“Does that make it clean?”

Cassian paused. He thought of the shop, the freighter, the tower systems, the relay buoy, and the soldier before him. “No. But it makes it used differently.”

Joren nodded slowly, as if that answer hurt less because it did not pretend too much.

By the time the unit was removed, Cassian’s wrist had begun throbbing again despite the wrap. Tobin noticed but said nothing until they were walking back toward the post with the transmitter carried between them. Then he spoke quietly.

“You know, for a man forbidden to crawl into engines, you interpret rules creatively.”

“I did not crawl into an engine.”

“You crawled into imperial communications.”

“Different category.”

Tobin glanced at him. “Dr. Venn will not appreciate that distinction.”

“She appreciates very little.”

“True. It is part of her charm.”

They brought the unit into the control room, where Sera and Nalen helped Cassian connect it to the old receiver calibration system. The pod transmitter had enough power for several bursts, but the alignment would need to be set at the ridge by hand. Cassian built a simple trigger delay from the pod’s emergency beacon and an old timing switch. It might continue broadcasting after the team left. Or it might fail. Much of their life now depended on things that might fail.

Before they left, Avren gathered everyone in the control room. No one announced prayer. They simply became quiet together. That had started happening naturally now. The room had learned to turn toward God before the next danger, not as ritual, but because they had reached the end of their own strength too often to pretend otherwise.

Joren stood with the transmitter pack over his shoulder. His injured side was tightly bound. Nalen stood beside him with a lamp and sidearm. Sera carried tools, wire, and a small recorder. Brant carried water and the false heat pack they had built from the freighter’s damaged vent coils.

Avren prayed first. She asked the Father to keep them from courage that was really pride, from caution that was really fear, and from words that were true in content but empty of love. Then she prayed for Joren’s mother, for Varek in the tower, for Jesus in the garrison, and for the city trying to stand beneath pressure.

Joren’s face tightened when she prayed for Varek, but he did not pull away.

When the prayer ended, Lysa came to Joren. She looked up at his uniform, stripped now of its outer armor but still recognizable. He seemed unsure what to do under the gaze of a child who had been held prisoner by men dressed like him.

“My brother had a metal star,” she said.

Joren blinked. “Tovan?”

“No,” she said. “I mean I gave one to Cassian. It helped the ship.”

Joren looked confused, then listened.

Lysa continued, “Maybe your brother’s name can help somebody too.”

The room went still. Joren knelt slowly, though it clearly hurt his side. “I hope so.”

Lysa reached out and touched the edge of his sleeve. “I am sorry he died.”

Joren closed his eyes. A tear fell, and he did not wipe it away. “Thank you.”

The ridge team left soon after. Cassian stood in the doorway and watched their lamps disappear one by one into the canyon shadow. It was difficult to stay. His body wanted to follow. His fear wanted to see every step. His guilt wanted to be useful where danger was loudest. Instead, he turned back into the post because the people who remained also needed care.

Tobin went to the freighter. Kerrit helped Avren move the weakest farther from the outer door in case the decoy signal brought search craft. Dr. Venn made Cassian sit while she checked his wrist again, and this time he did not argue. Derso listened from the workroom as Mara’s earlier message was replayed from the receiver buffer, his eyes closed, one hand pressed against his chest.

The waiting began.

Waiting had texture now. It was the scrape of Tobin’s tools outside. The faint breathing of people trying to sleep but unable. The low murmur of Avren comforting Lysa. The sharp smell of medical cleanser. The dead transmitter casing on the floor. The receiver’s low static. The knowledge that Nalen, Sera, Brant, and Joren were moving toward the ridge carrying words that could either heal, expose, or summon pursuit.

Cassian sat beside the receiver and watched the signal meter. He had set it to catch the pod burst if the alignment worked. It might take fifteen minutes for them to reach position. It took twenty-three. He counted without meaning to. Each minute pressed on him until Avren came and sat beside him.

“You are trying to carry them by worrying,” she said.

Cassian kept his eyes on the meter. “Is it obvious?”

“Yes.”

“I do not know how to stop.”

“Then turn it into prayer each time you notice.”

“That sounds like a lot of prayer.”

“That is often why the Lord allows us to notice.”

Cassian looked at her, then back at the meter. “You make surrender sound like work.”

“It is.”

He breathed out and tried. Not with many words. Each time fear showed him Nalen hurt, he gave Nalen to the Father. Each time fear showed Sera captured, he gave Sera to the Father. Each time fear showed Joren dying before his mother heard the truth, he gave Joren to the Father. It did not make waiting painless. It made waiting less dishonest.

The signal meter jumped.

Cassian straightened. “They’re on ridge.”

Tobin hurried in from the freighter, wiping his hands on a cloth. Kerrit came from the workroom. Avren stood. Lysa woke from a light sleep and came to her side. Dr. Venn remained with Derso but called out, “If something explodes, use precise language.”

Cassian tuned the receiver. Static rose, then narrowed. The first transmission burst went out from the ridge, and the post caught a reflection of it.

Joren’s voice filled the room.

“Mother, this is Joren.”

The words were raw. No official tone. No soldier’s cadence. Just a son speaking from a place he should not have been.

“I do not know if this will reach you. I pray it does. Tovan did not die in a work accident. He was shot during a security action near the northern ridge. His name was buried. I helped serve the machine that buried him because I was afraid to know the truth. I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

The signal shook but held.

“His name is being spoken now. Tovan Pell. I heard the man who killed him say it with grief. I am not ready to know what mercy asks of me there, but Jesus looked at me and told me truth had found me. I believe Him. I am alive. I cannot come home yet. If they come to you, tell the truth only if God gives you strength, and if you are afraid, I understand. I love you. I should have said more before.”

The burst ended.

No one in the post spoke. Lysa held Avren’s hand with both of hers. Cassian looked at the receiver and thought of a mother near the old grain lift hearing her living son confess the buried truth about her dead one. He prayed the message reached her. He prayed she was not alone when it did.

The second burst followed, aimed toward the tower’s maintenance band.

Cassian leaned closer.

This time Nalen spoke first. “Varek Ruun, if you receive this, listen. Joren Pell is alive. Tovan’s brother is alive. He heard you speak Tovan’s name. He has not forgiven you. He does not know what mercy will ask of him. But he knows the name was spoken, and the record you tried to restore matters.”

Cassian closed his eyes. Nalen’s voice was steady, but he could hear the weight beneath it.

Then Joren’s voice came, lower.

“Varek, I do not know what to say to you. I hated you before I knew your name. I still hate what you did. I need the truth to stay ugly where it is ugly. But Jesus did not let me turn my grief into another prison. Tovan’s name is Tovan Pell. My mother’s name is Elian. Mine is Joren. If you are punished for speaking his name, know that I heard it. I am not ready to bless you. I will not lie. But I will not ask for your name to be buried either.”

The transmission shook with interference. Joren continued.

“Tell the truth as long as you have breath. If Jesus speaks to you, listen. If you are afraid, I am afraid too.”

The second burst ended.

Kerrit sat down hard on a crate. “That was mercy?”

Avren answered softly. “It was truth walking toward mercy without pretending it had arrived.”

Cassian felt the sentence settle over him. That was where many of them were. Not finished. Not cleanly healed. Not ready for all that grace might one day demand. But walking toward it instead of away.

The third burst began with Sera’s voice. “Lower quarter relay, if you receive this, pass quietly. The garrison has moved Jesus to Aurek-Seven, but His witness has reached the transfer channels. Do not let them tell you silence has returned. Guard Joren Pell confirms records were altered around Tovan Pell’s death. Trooper Varek Ruun restored part of the record before his detention. Preserve names. Preserve testimonies. Protect families. Do not answer with violence. Do not hand over the weak to purchase time. We are alive. We are listening when we can.”

A pause followed. Then Nalen spoke again.

“Rell Repair is sealed, but my brother and I are alive. If lamps are still there, let them mean this. The shop was never only a building. It was a place where mercy once hid people from fear. Let it become that again wherever you are. Under stalls. Behind doors. In repair bays. In kitchens. In alleys. If you have a lamp, hold it for someone who has no light left.”

Cassian bowed his head. He had not known Nalen would say that. His brother had taken the shop’s meaning and carried it into the city without stealing it from him. That touched a place in Cassian too deep for immediate words.

Then the delayed pulse started.

The signal repeated fragments from all three messages, mixed with a false heat signature from the ridge unit. Cassian watched the meter spike. The decoy was working, perhaps too well. Search systems would see the ridge now. They would trace the pulse. The team needed to be moving back already.

Several minutes passed.

Then the receiver caught a short burst from Sera. “Returning. Probe contact west. Do not light outer door.”

Cassian stood. Tobin grabbed the lamp and hooded it fully. Kerrit moved to the doorway, then stopped as if unsure whether he had the right to help. Avren touched his arm. “Go.”

He went.

The post became dark except for the shielded heater glow. Outside, the canyon wind rose. Cassian stood near the door with Tobin and Kerrit, listening. The probe hum came first, distant and high. Then footsteps on stone. More than one set. Fast, uneven. Cassian’s heartbeat quickened.

A shadow moved near the outer wall.

Nalen entered first, breathing hard. Sera followed, then Brant. Joren came last, nearly falling as he crossed the threshold. Kerrit caught him under the uninjured arm and helped him in. No one spoke until the outer panel was sealed behind them.

Sera leaned against the wall. “Probe took the bait.”

Tobin looked at her, trying to appear calm and failing completely. “How close?”

“Close enough that I will enjoy telling you later.”

He pulled her into his arms. She let him for two breaths, then stepped back, but her hand stayed in his.

Nalen came to Cassian. Dust streaked his face. His eyes were bright with exhaustion and something like awe. “The relay answered.”

“We heard.”

“Did Joren’s message reach?”

“We caught the reflection. I think it did.”

Joren stood near the wall, shaking from pain and cold. “My mother?”

Cassian met his eyes. “I cannot promise. But the signal was strong.”

Joren nodded. He looked both relieved and more wounded, as if hope had opened a door to grief he had kept locked. Avren guided him to sit near the heater. Dr. Venn came to inspect him and muttered that repentance apparently made patients forget they had ribs.

The post settled again, but not into rest yet. The probe remained somewhere outside, chasing the ridge pulse. The delayed transmitter would eventually burn out, and when it did, search craft might widen the sweep. They had bought time. They did not know how much.

Cassian and Nalen stood together near the receiver. For a few minutes, no new signals came through. Then, faintly, the lower quarter relay returned.

A woman’s voice, older and broken, came across the band.

“Joren.”

The room froze.

Joren lifted his head.

The voice trembled so badly that each word seemed to fight its way through tears. “Joren, this is your mother. I heard you. I heard Tovan’s name. I knew the report lied. A mother knows when a paper is colder than the truth. I waited for someone to be brave enough to say what the Empire buried. I did not know it would be my living son.”

Joren covered his face with both hands.

His mother continued, “Come home when God opens the road. Do not come because guilt drags you. I have already lost one son to fear wearing a uniform. I will not ask another to die proving he has a heart. Live truthfully. That will be harder. I love you. Tovan Pell. Joren Pell. Elian Pell. We are not buried.”

The signal broke under a wave of static.

Joren made a sound that seemed pulled from the deepest part of him. Avren knelt beside him and held his shoulders while he wept. No one looked away as if his grief were shameful. Cassian watched with tears in his own eyes. Tovan’s name had crossed from buried record to confession to witness to a mother’s mouth. It did not undo death. It did not erase Varek’s guilt. It did not heal everything. But the name had risen.

The receiver crackled again, catching another burst, this one from the tower band.

Varek’s voice came through, weak but alive.

“Received.”

That was all at first.

Then, after a long pause, he spoke again.

“Joren Pell, I heard you. I will not ask you for mercy you cannot give. I will not make my guilt your burden. Tovan Pell was fourteen. He held a tool battery. He ran because we made terror normal. I fired. I have said it into the tower record. I will say it again before whoever listens. I am sorry. That is too small, but it is true.”

Joren lifted his head slowly, tears still on his face.

Varek continued, “Your mother’s name is Elian. Yours is Joren. His is Tovan. Mine is Varek Ruun, and I will not hide behind my helmet again.”

Static rose. Behind it, voices shouted. Varek spoke faster.

“They are moving me from the lower command room. I do not know where. Jesus is at Aurek-Seven. Before transfer, He told me buried truth rises. He also told me repentance must become protection for others or it curdles into self-pity. I did not like that either.”

A faint, broken laugh moved through the room, even from Joren, though it came through tears.

Varek’s signal weakened. “If this is the last I send, tell the child her voice reached farther than fear wanted. Tell Cassian the shop lamps are still burning. Tell Nalen courage can learn tenderness and still remain courage. Tell Joren I will carry Tovan’s name without demanding anything from him.”

The signal distorted badly. Varek’s final words came through in pieces.

“And tell... tell anyone listening... Jesus is Lord... and He is not overcome.”

The tower band went silent.

No one moved.

The phrase had returned to them again, not as comfort without cost, but as a pillar in the dark. Jesus is Lord. He is not overcome. Spoken first through witness, then through convoy static, now through the voice of a guilty man being taken deeper into punishment because truth had found him.

Joren stood, unsteady. Dr. Venn started to object, but Avren lifted one hand, and the doctor stopped. Joren faced the receiver.

“I heard him,” he said, though the transmitter was no longer open. Maybe he knew. Maybe he only needed to say it aloud. “I heard him.”

Cassian felt Nalen beside him, silent and deeply moved. The two brothers had found each other in a tower. Joren and Varek had found the first terrible edge of truth across signals and blood. Mara and Derso had found each other through hidden relays. The city and the moon had found each other through names. Jesus, taken and not overcome, seemed to be gathering broken pieces across distance without needing to stand physically in the room.

A sudden alarm beeped from Sera’s scanner near the doorway.

The moment shattered.

Sera grabbed the device. “Search craft changed direction.”

Tobin looked over her shoulder. “Toward us?”

She waited as the scanner refreshed. Her face tightened. “Not directly. Toward the ridge first. But after the decoy burns out, they may sweep the canyon.”

Cassian looked at the room. People were exhausted. Joren was injured. Derso was still fragile. The freighter could not fly well. The post was no longer only a shelter. It was becoming a witness point, a place connected to the city by fragile channels and rising names. If they ran again, some might die. If they stayed, some might be captured. There was no easy road.

Nalen looked at him. “What is already clear?”

Cassian recognized Avren’s question inside his brother’s mouth. He looked around slowly. What was already clear? The wounded needed protection. The receiver mattered. The people in the city needed to know they were heard. Search craft were coming. They could not outrun a full sweep with the freighter damaged. The canyon itself had old crawl passages and mining cuts. The listening post could be made to look empty if heat and light were hidden. The freighter could perhaps be powered cold and disguised as dead salvage.

“We hide the shelter in plain sight,” Cassian said.

Tobin blinked. “That sounds poetic, and I distrust poetry during search operations.”

Cassian moved to the wall map. “The post was abandoned. We need it to look abandoned again. No heat bloom. No visible lamps. No active power from above. We move everyone into the lower crawl passage and storage hollow before the sweep. We leave the upper rooms cold. The freighter goes dark and gets covered with the fallen dish panels and canyon dust.”

Sera nodded quickly. “If they scan close, body heat in the crawl passage?”

Cassian tapped the lower utility line. “The old mineral filters run beneath it. Dense enough to blur a weak scan if we pack thermal blankets against the upper seam.”

Brant stood. “We can move panels.”

Dr. Venn spoke from the workroom. “Derso cannot be dragged like cargo.”

“No,” Cassian said. “We move him once, carefully, and make the crawl passage a medical space until the sweep passes.”

She studied him, then nodded. “Acceptable if everyone obeys me immediately and completely.”

Tobin lifted a hand. “For clarity, is there a world where partial obedience is acceptable?”

“No.”

“Good. Clean leadership.”

The room moved. Not chaotically. Not calmly either. It moved with practiced urgency, the kind people learn after fear has visited more than once and failed to become master. Brant and Tobin went outside to cover the freighter. Sera and Nalen shut down every nonessential power draw and rigged the post to go cold in stages. Kerrit and Avren prepared the lower crawl passage with blankets. Joren insisted on helping until Dr. Venn threatened to sedate him with whatever was closest, which happened to be a wrench. He sat after that.

Cassian worked at the power junction. His wrist hurt, but he used his other hand and moved carefully. He thought of the first time he had hidden someone beneath a floor as a child while his mother moved overhead. He had been afraid then too. But his mother had not made fear the center of the room. She had given him a task. Hold your brother’s hand. Do not speak. Breathe slowly. Fear had stayed, but obedience had given him somewhere to stand.

Now he gave others tasks, and he understood her better.

The scan warning chirped again. Sera looked toward the outer door. “Craft is at the ridge.”

The delayed pod transmitter sent one final burst of false signal, then died. A distant flash lit the canyon rim. The search craft had fired on the decoy.

“Now,” Cassian said.

The post went dark.

They moved into the lower crawl passage by touch and hooded lamp. Dr. Venn supervised Derso’s transfer with terrifying precision. Lysa carried one corner of a blanket and whispered to herself, not in panic, but repeating words Jesus had given her. Courage can obey. Avren stayed near her. Joren lowered himself into the passage with a grimace and accepted help from Kerrit, which seemed to cost both of them in different ways. Nalen waited until the last person entered, then followed Cassian into the narrow space.

Tobin and Brant slipped inside moments later, covered in dust. The freighter had been buried under panels and shadow as best they could manage. Sera sealed the crawl hatch from within. Darkness gathered around them, close and heavy.

Above, the listening post looked dead.

Inside the lower passage, the living held still.

The search craft arrived with a low engine note that vibrated through the walls. It passed once over the canyon, slow enough to feel deliberate. Dust sifted from the seams. Lysa pressed against Avren. Joren closed his eyes. Derso’s breath rasped, and Dr. Venn kept two fingers at his throat. Cassian lay near Nalen with his shoulder against cold metal and remembered the tower, the cell, the pipe, the ship, the cargo shell, every narrow place fear had tried to make final.

The craft passed again.

A scan beam hummed through the upper post. The old walls clicked as energy moved over them. Cassian held his breath, then forced himself to breathe slowly because panic wasted air. Nalen’s hand found his in the darkness, not dramatically, not like children now, but as brothers who had learned that being strong did not always mean being untouched. Cassian held on.

Above them, the search craft hovered.

For several long seconds, nothing moved.

Then, faintly through the dead upper rooms, a sound entered the crawl passage. Not from the craft. Not from the receiver. From someone inside the passage, so soft at first Cassian could not place it.

Lysa was humming.

Avren did not stop her. The tune was barely more than breath, quieter than the engine hum, but it moved through the dark. One by one, others joined under their breath. Not loud enough to be heard above. Not enough to endanger them. Just enough to remind their own hearts what fear was not allowed to own.

Cassian closed his eyes. Nalen’s hand remained in his. The search craft hovered above them, full of sensors, weapons, and men trained to find what the Empire wanted buried. Beneath it, in a narrow crawl passage on a dead moon, wounded people hummed the song Jesus had carried into the tower.

The craft moved.

Its engine note shifted east, then farther east, following the dead decoy path beyond the ridge. The hum faded slowly until the canyon returned to silence.

No one moved for a full minute.

Then Tobin whispered from the dark, “I disliked that very much.”

Sera’s quiet laugh shook more than it sounded. A few others breathed out. Dr. Venn muttered that everyone should remain still until she personally gave fear permission to leave. Even in the dark, relief moved through them like warmth.

Cassian felt Nalen’s hand loosen but not disappear. He did not pull away.

After a while, Sera opened the crawl hatch and checked the upper rooms. The post remained dark and cold. The craft did not return. They had not been found.

They emerged slowly, stiff and chilled. The heater was off. The lights were dead. The freighter outside looked like part of the canyon ruin. The receiver would need to be awakened carefully. Everything useful had to be rebuilt again.

But they were alive.

Cassian stood in the dark control room and looked toward the sealed upper window, where stars showed through a narrow crack. The day had given them no clean victory, but it had given them witness, names, truth, and another breath. Jesus was still at the garrison. Varek was still in danger. The city was still under pressure. The post was still fragile.

Yet fear had searched the canyon and failed to take them.

Avren came beside him, carrying the lamp. “What now?”

Cassian looked at the dead heater, the receiver, the people emerging from the crawl passage, and the brothers standing beside one another in the half-dark.

He thought before answering. Not quickly. Not out of panic. Then he said, “Now we bring the light back carefully.”

And they did.

Chapter Thirteen

They brought the light back carefully because fear had taught them that even mercy needed wisdom in a hunted place. Cassian restored one emergency strip first, low and amber, enough to see the floor without spilling brightness through the cracked seams above. Sera checked every outer gap before allowing the heater to breathe again. Tobin and Brant pulled the false panels back from the freighter only far enough to reach the maintenance hatch, then covered the rest again with dust, broken dish fragments, and the kind of careless ruin that made machines look unworthy of inspection. The listening post woke by inches, not as a station returning to service, but as a wounded body learning how to keep living quietly.

The people moved differently after the search craft passed. No one mistook survival for safety, but something in the room had changed. They had lain in darkness beneath a machine built to find them, and instead of turning on one another or surrendering to panic, they had hummed the song Jesus had placed in them. That mattered. Cassian could feel it in the way Kerrit helped Joren stand without flinching at the uniform cloth still visible under his cloak. He could feel it in the way Lysa no longer asked if they were safe every time a sound moved through the walls. He could feel it in Nalen’s silence beside him, no longer restless in the same way, as if his brother had begun to understand that courage could wait without becoming weak.

Cassian knelt beside the receiver and tried to wake it without drawing another scan-worthy pulse. The system was exhausted. He knew that was not a proper way to think about equipment, but the word felt right. Every circuit had been pushed past its designed purpose. Every borrowed part had carried more than it should have carried. He touched the warmed edge of the casing with the back of his fingers and thought of all the people in the room who were the same way. Pushed past design. Used by fear. Rewired by mercy. Still humming.

Nalen crouched beside him with a small lamp. “How long before we can hear the city again?”

Cassian adjusted a fuse bridge and listened to the faint change in tone. “If the receiver forgives me, soon.”

“Does it hold grudges?”

“It has personality now.”

“That means it learned from you.”

Cassian glanced at him, and for once the remark did not sting. It settled between them with something close to ease. Their history remained. No sentence had erased it. Yet the old defensive edge had dulled, replaced by a fragile willingness to let humor exist without using it as armor. That too felt like grace. Not dramatic, not clean, but real.

Across the control room, Dr. Venn was speaking to Derso in the workroom doorway. She had moved him closer to the main room so he would not feel cut off from the others, though she insisted the move had been for circulation and not compassion. Derso sat propped against rolled blankets, pale and sweating, but awake. Kerrit remained near him, ready to help without hovering. Joren sat across the room with his injured arm bound close to his side, staring at the floor while Elian Pell’s message replayed silently in his face. His mother had heard him. That mercy had not made him lighter yet. Sometimes being heard meant a person could finally feel the full weight of what had been hidden.

Avren sat with Lysa near the heater, mending the torn edge of a blanket with thread pulled from an old storage sack. The child watched her hands. “Did Jesus mend things?”

Avren smiled softly. “He restored them.”

Lysa thought about that with the seriousness she gave to holy ideas. “Is that different?”

“Yes,” Avren said. “Mending can close a tear. Restoring gives something back its place.”

Cassian heard the words while working and felt them move through him. Restoring gives something back its place. Rell Repair. His mother’s name. Nalen beside him. Tovan’s name in the record. Derso’s sister speaking through fear. Joren no longer hidden inside a uniform. Varek telling the truth from a cell. Jesus in the garrison, still Lord though bound by men who could not understand why their power failed to define Him.

The receiver sparked softly, then gave a weak line of static. Cassian froze. Nalen leaned closer. Sera crossed the room immediately and lowered the heater output by hand to keep the power draw steady. Tobin came in from the freighter with grease on his jaw and a brace piece in one hand, then stopped when he heard the signal.

Cassian turned the gain slowly. “Come on.”

The static shifted. A civilian channel rose, broke, vanished, then returned in pieces. He caught music first, not the full song but the ending of it, a few notes carried by a relay too damaged to know it was tired. Then Mara’s voice came through, lower than before.

“Moon shelter, if you hear only, we are still here. They searched the market after the lamps spread. Some were taken. Some were released because too many witnesses kept speaking names aloud. The sealed shop remains under guard, but the lamps outside Rell Repair are being moved from doorway to doorway so patrols cannot remove them all at once. Your mother’s name is still being spoken, Cassian. People are saying she hid neighbors before anyone called it resistance. They are saying mercy had roots here before the tower knew what to do with it.”

Cassian closed his eyes for one breath. His mother had become more present in the city after death than he had allowed her to be while keeping her shop alive. That truth held both comfort and grief. He had preserved her tools but not fully carried her courage. Now strangers were carrying what he had neglected, and instead of feeling replaced, he felt summoned.

Mara continued, “Derso, stay alive. I am not repeating that again unless necessary, which means I will probably repeat it soon. Dr. Venn, I have been told you are difficult. Good. My brother needs difficult mercy.”

Dr. Venn lifted her chin slightly. “She has discernment.”

Derso smiled weakly. “She would like you.”

“She would obey me,” Dr. Venn said.

Mara’s message became softer. “Joren Pell, your mother is under protection near the old grain lift. She heard Varek’s message too. She has not spoken publicly yet. Do not ask that of her too quickly, even in your heart. Some grief needs shelter before it becomes testimony.”

Joren lowered his head. Avren looked at him across the room with deep gentleness, but she did not speak. Cassian saw the young man receive the sentence as both mercy and correction. He had wanted truth to reach his mother. Now he had to let her respond as a person, not as the next necessary witness in a growing story.

The signal flickered, and another voice cut in, official but strained. “Surface security bulletin. Unauthorized lamp gatherings remain prohibited. Citizens are warned against repeating unverified claims concerning the religious detainee known as Jesus. Orbital Holding Station Aurek-Seven confirms containment. Further civilian speculation will be treated as interference with garrison order.”

Tobin frowned. “They said His name.”

Nalen looked up. “Yes.”

The room understood the weight of that. The Empire had avoided names whenever possible. It preferred categories, charges, classifications, and numbers. Now the official bulletin had spoken His name because people were already saying it too widely to avoid. They tried to wrap it in warning, but the name had passed through their own channel. Jesus. Cassian felt the quiet triumph of that, not because the danger had lessened, but because truth had forced itself into the language of those trying to bury it.

The bulletin continued, “Trooper Varek Ruun has been transferred from local custody for garrison review. Guard Joren Pell remains wanted for desertion, theft of imperial property, and distribution of falsified grief propaganda.”

Joren flinched at the phrase. Derso’s eyes opened wider, and Kerrit muttered something under his breath. Avren set her mending down.

“Falsified grief,” she said softly. “That is what fear calls sorrow when sorrow starts telling the truth.”

Cassian kept tuning. The official channel dissolved into static, and beneath it another signal rose. This one came from higher orbit. He stiffened because the frequency pattern was not civilian. It was not the tower either. It was near the garrison band, narrow and guarded.

Sera stepped close. “Careful.”

“I know.”

The signal cleared for a few seconds, and a male voice spoke in clipped, formal phrases. “Aurek-Seven internal review log. Detainee continues noncompliant verbal engagement. Personnel instructed not to converse without authorization. Detainee requested that injured transport officer receive treatment before questioning resumed. Request noted and delayed.”

Dr. Venn’s jaw tightened. “Delayed treatment again.”

The log continued, “Commander Vale insists detainee is central agitator and must be processed under emergency sedition authority. Garrison legal command disputes classification after widespread civilian and military channel contamination. Public record exposure has increased procedural risk.”

Nalen breathed out slowly. “Procedural risk.”

Sera looked at him. “Their word for witnesses.”

The voice went on. “Several personnel report distress after direct contact with detainee. One guard claims detainee identified private family circumstances not included in any file. Command recommends rotation of staff and isolation protocol.”

Cassian felt the hairs rise along his arms. Jesus had moved from repair shop to tower to shuttle to garrison, and everywhere men tried to manage Him, He kept seeing them. Not as a tactic. Not as manipulation. As Lord. Every system built to contain Him had people inside it, and Jesus would not treat even guards as machinery. That frightened their leaders more than any weapon because it meant the walls were full of souls.

The internal log broke off. A second voice entered, quieter and less official. “This is Aurek-Seven maintenance channel. I do not know who hears. The one they brought from the surface is in isolation cell three. He is praying. He has been praying for the station, the city below, the wounded, the guards, and someone named Cassian who thinks he only fixes broken things.”

The room went utterly still.

Cassian’s hand slipped from the receiver dial.

Nalen looked at him, eyes wide. No one spoke. The signal continued through the hush.

“He prayed for Nalen, that courage would become tender without becoming afraid. He prayed for Lysa, that her voice would keep its light. He prayed for Varek and Joren and Tovan’s mother. He prayed for Commander Vale by name. I heard Him ask the Father not to let Vale’s fear have the last word over his soul.”

Cassian could not breathe normally. Jesus was at the garrison, in isolation, under guard, and praying for them by name. Not vaguely. Not as a distant holy figure who had moved on to larger matters. He remembered. He saw. He carried them before the Father while they sat in a broken post on a dead moon trying to keep a heater alive. The tenderness of it nearly undid him.

The maintenance voice trembled. “I do not know what He is. I know the station feels different because He is here. Men who joked yesterday are quiet today. A medic who said she did not believe in gods cried after leaving the cell. Commander Vale has requested private access. Denied for now. Garrison command wants controlled review before any further contact. That will not hold.”

The channel crackled. Voices sounded in the background. The speaker continued faster.

“If this reaches the surface, tell them the detainee is alive. Tell them He is not silent. Tell them He prayed for the city beneath the stars. Tell them we are not all deaf up here.”

The signal cut abruptly.

No one moved.

Cassian stared at the receiver until the static blurred. He felt Nalen’s hand on his shoulder again, but this time Nalen was shaking too. Lysa had risen and come closer without anyone noticing. She looked at Cassian with hope and tears together.

“He prayed for me?”

Cassian turned toward her, and his voice came rough. “Yes.”

She nodded as if some deep question had been answered. “I thought He would.”

That nearly broke the room. Sera turned away and pressed her hand over her mouth. Tobin looked at the ceiling as if the dust there needed sudden inspection. Brant sat down heavily on a crate. Kerrit bowed his head. Joren wept silently, perhaps because Jesus had prayed for his family, perhaps because He had prayed for Varek too, perhaps because mercy had once again gone farther than grief was ready to travel.

Avren came beside Lysa and rested a hand on the child’s shoulder. “He lives to intercede.”

The words were quiet, but they carried Scripture without sounding like a lesson. Cassian had heard something like that from his mother once. He had not understood it then. Now, in a room full of wounded fugitives hearing that Jesus prayed from a garrison cell, he understood enough to be humbled. Jesus did not stop saving when men restrained His hands. He prayed. He saw. He spoke. He carried names into the Father’s presence.

Nalen sat beside the console and lowered his head into both hands. Cassian gave him space, but after a moment his brother spoke.

“I thought if He was taken farther away, we had failed Him.”

Cassian looked at the dead stars beyond the upper seam. “He is praying for the people who took Him farther away.”

Nalen laughed once, but it came out broken. “Of course He is.”

The room stayed quiet for a while. It was not the silence of fear this time. It was the silence of people trying to make room inside themselves for the mercy they had just heard. Cassian realized that they had been measuring distance by maps. Jesus was on Aurek-Seven. They were on the dead moon. The city was below. The tower stood somewhere in between. But prayer had crossed all of it without asking permission from any garrison route, relay shadow, or imperial channel.

Tobin finally cleared his throat. “I have not enjoyed much of today, but I am beginning to think their communication security has spiritual weaknesses.”

Dr. Venn stepped into the room. “Everything has weaknesses when it is arrogant.”

Tobin nodded. “That includes ships.”

“That includes pilots.”

He placed a hand on his chest. “Doctor, healing comes in many forms. Yours is mostly insult.”

“Accurate diagnosis often feels personal.”

The small exchange let the room breathe. Cassian returned to the receiver, but the garrison channel was gone. He adjusted the dial for several minutes, catching only fragments of official chatter and one weak line of the city song. Then the system slipped back into static.

Sera looked toward the wall map. “If Aurek-Seven is leaking maintenance signals, we may be able to hear more when its orbit passes through the relay shadow.”

Cassian nodded. “But not constantly. We need to conserve power.”

Nalen lifted his head. “When is the next window?”

Cassian checked the orbit chart from the old post, then adjusted for the garrison’s path. “Several hours. Maybe longer. The data is old.”

Tobin looked toward the freighter. “Good. That gives us several hours to accomplish impossible repairs with inappropriate parts.”

Sera touched his arm. “Can the freighter fly low again?”

“Fly, yes. Trust, no.”

Cassian glanced at the freighter through the outer gap. “We do not need it to fly yet.”

Nalen looked at him. “What do we need?”

Cassian looked around the room before answering. He saw exhausted people waiting for the next alarm, the next signal, the next decision. He saw Derso alive but weak, Joren carrying new grief, Kerrit learning to stay, Lysa trying to understand courage, Avren steadying everyone with prayer and truth, Sera and Tobin holding each other through fear, Brant ready to move heavy things until his strength gave out. They did not only need a ship. They needed a way to endure the next hours without becoming less human.

“We need to make the post hold,” Cassian said. “Power, water, heat, and hiding. If Jesus is praying in the garrison, then we do the faithful work in front of us.”

Nalen absorbed that and nodded. “The next faithful work.”

“Yes.”

No one argued. The phrase moved through them and settled into hands. Avren and Lysa returned to blankets. Kerrit helped Dr. Venn clean the workroom. Joren asked to help with the receiver records, and Cassian gave him a small task cataloging every signal they had heard so the truth would not remain trapped in memory alone. Sera and Tobin returned to the freighter with Nalen and Brant to see whether the damaged stabilizer could be made less dangerous. Cassian stayed at the power wall, studying the old water recycler.

The recycler had become urgent. Their stored water would not last. The post had a condensation system tied to mineral filters, but the pump had seized, and the filtration chamber had cracked. Cassian opened the casing and found dust, corrosion, and one dead rodent-like skeleton curled near the intake. He stared at it for a moment.

“Respectfully,” he muttered, “you are not helping.”

Lysa appeared beside him with a cloth over her nose. “Is that part of the machine?”

“No.”

“Was it once?”

“No.”

“Should I ask fewer questions?”

Cassian looked at her. “Maybe for both of us.”

She crouched at a safe distance and watched him remove the remains with a piece of scrap metal. “Jesus prayed for me.”

“Yes.”

“I keep thinking about that.”

“So do I.”

She rested her chin on her knees. “Do you think He gets tired praying for everybody?”

Cassian paused with his hand inside the recycler. He thought of Jesus bruised and bound in the garrison cell, praying after a day of being struck, mocked, transferred, and classified by frightened men. He thought of all the names spoken through the relays. Cassian, Nalen, Lysa, Varek, Joren, Tovan’s mother, Vale, the city. He thought of his own exhaustion and how small his love became when tiredness took over.

“I think His love is stronger than tired,” he said.

Lysa considered that. “My love gets tired.”

“Mine too.”

“Maybe He helps it wake up again.”

Cassian looked at her, then back at the recycler. “I think He does.”

The pump resisted him for nearly an hour. Lysa stayed for much of it, handing him small tools and asking fewer questions than before but still enough to prove she was alive and thinking. When the pump finally turned, it gave a grinding complaint that brought Tobin from the freighter.

“I heard a dying machine,” Tobin said. “Naturally, I came to visit.”

Cassian wiped sweat from his forehead. “It is not dying. It is repenting.”

Tobin bent to inspect it. “Repentance sounds expensive.”

“Usually.”

The recycler produced nothing at first. Then a slow drip formed at the output line. One drop. Then another. Lysa stood so still she seemed afraid movement might stop it. Cassian placed a small cup beneath the line and waited until the bottom shone with a thin layer of water.

Lysa whispered, “It worked.”

Cassian looked at the cup. It was not enough. Not nearly. But it was water from a dead system on a dead moon after people had prayed, hidden, witnessed, and worked. He lifted the cup and carried it to Avren.

“For Derso first,” Avren said.

Dr. Venn took it without ceremony, though her eyes softened. “Good. Now make more.”

Cassian almost laughed. “Yes, Doctor.”

The day settled into labor. The recycler dripped slowly, then steadily enough to fill a container over time. The heater warmed the main room by small degrees. The receiver was given short listening windows to conserve power. The freighter’s stabilizer remained a serious problem, but Tobin and Nalen managed to brace the outer hinge so it would not collapse while grounded. Sera found a way to mask the ship’s residual heat with cold panels from the canyon wall. Brant reinforced the crawl passage so Derso could be moved more safely if another search came.

Joren sat with the signal records for a long while, writing names with his good hand. His letters were stiff at first, military neat, then slower as the weight of each name touched him. Tovan Pell. Elian Pell. Varek Ruun. Derso. Mara. Lysa. Avren. Cassian Rell. Nalen Rell. Dr. Ilyra Venn. Sera Vonn. Tobin Vonn. Brant. Kerrit. He paused over Commander Orsan Vale, then wrote that name too.

Cassian noticed. “Why include him?”

Joren did not look up. “Jesus prayed for him.”

Cassian let the answer stand.

Near the next listening window, the group gathered again around the receiver. No one had to be called. The rhythm had formed naturally. Work, listen, pray, work again. Cassian brought the garrison band up carefully. Static filled the room. The Aurek-Seven orbit had moved closer to the relay shadow, and the signal strengthened enough for broken internal chatter to return.

This time the first voice was a guard, speaking low and fast. “Isolation cell three remains under watch. Detainee has refused food until water is given to injured escort. Command has not authorized.”

Dr. Venn’s face darkened.

Another voice answered, “Give the escort water off record.”

“You want me disciplined?”

“You want Him to keep looking at you like that?”

Silence followed.

Then the first guard said, “Fine.”

The channel shifted. There was movement, a door, footsteps, then a sound that made the whole room lean closer. Jesus’ voice came faintly, not through a direct microphone but through an open guard channel.

“Thank you.”

Only two words. Soft. Worn. Holy.

The guard’s voice trembled. “Why thank me? I mocked You.”

Jesus answered, “You gave water.”

“I gave it to him, not You.”

“You gave it where mercy was needed.”

The guard said nothing. The channel carried only a faint mechanical hum.

Then the guard asked, almost angrily, “What do You want from us?”

Jesus’ reply came gently. “The truth.”

“That will ruin men.”

“Lies already have.”

The room in the listening post went still again. Cassian felt the words enter every hidden place. Lies already have. That was the story of the tower, the shop, the uniform, the city, the dead records, the buried names, the old grief between brothers. Truth did not ruin what lies had made whole. It exposed what lies had already broken so mercy could begin restoring it.

The guard’s voice lowered. “I do not know how to come back from what I have done.”

Jesus said, “Come into the light you have been avoiding, and take the next step there.”

The channel broke into static before more could be heard.

Kerrit bowed his head. Joren closed his eyes. Nalen looked at Cassian. They had all been given the same instruction in different forms. Come into the light. Take the next step there. It was not grand enough for pride, but it was large enough for a life.

Another signal entered, this one official. “Commander Vale has been granted supervised access to isolation cell three at his request. Session to be recorded. Security present.”

Nalen straightened. “Vale is going in.”

Sera looked at Cassian. “Can we hear?”

“I don’t know.”

He adjusted the tuning, careful not to lose the channel. Static hissed, thinned, then caught the edge of another feed. The audio was poor, full of echo and interference, but it was enough to hear a door open.

Bootsteps.

A pause.

Vale’s voice, quieter than before.

“You keep praying.”

Jesus answered, “Yes.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

Vale breathed out sharply. “Do not.”

“I will not stop bringing your name before My Father.”

The silence that followed felt different from all the others. Cassian could imagine Vale standing in the isolation cell, stripped of the roof, the crowd, the tower, the weapons, and the performance. He was still dangerous. Still proud. Still responsible for terrible things. But he was also a man whose name Jesus had carried into prayer.

Vale spoke again. “You are destroying order.”

Jesus said, “No. I am revealing what disorder has worn your name.”

Vale’s voice hardened. “You do not know what I have prevented.”

“I know what you have done.”

“You speak as if mercy can govern men who would tear each other apart without fear.”

Jesus’ voice remained steady. “Fear has not healed them. It has only trained them to hide the tearing.”

The room in the listening post seemed to stop breathing.

Vale said nothing for several seconds. When he spoke again, something under his control had cracked. “If I let go, everything I have done becomes what it is.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

“That would end me.”

“No,” Jesus said. “It would end the lie that has been killing you.”

The channel flooded with static. Cassian fought the dial, trying to hold the feed. He caught only fragments after that.

Vale’s voice: “Too late.”

Jesus: “Not while you hear My voice.”

Vale: “They will punish me.”

Jesus: “You have feared men more than God.”

Vale: “And if God judges me?”

Jesus: “Then come to Him without pretending you are clean.”

The feed snapped away.

Cassian kept his hand on the dial, but the signal was gone. No one spoke. The room had listened to Jesus call a cruel man toward repentance without softening the cruelty or denying the judgment. It was unlike anything Cassian had ever heard. Men usually excused or condemned. Jesus revealed and invited. He told the truth so completely that there was nowhere to hide, and He offered mercy so deeply that hiding no longer had to be the only option.

Joren’s voice came quietly. “Can a man like Vale repent?”

The question carried more than theology. It carried Tovan. It carried Varek. It carried Joren himself. It carried everyone in the room who had done harm, avoided truth, or cooperated with fear.

Avren answered after a long moment. “The question is not whether Jesus is able to receive a repentant man. The question is whether the man will come into the light without demanding that those he harmed carry his comfort for him.”

Joren looked down at the names record. “That is harder.”

“Yes,” Avren said. “Mercy is not pretending harm was small. Mercy is God entering the truth with power to raise what sin tried to bury.”

Cassian turned back toward the receiver. The garrison channel had gone quiet again. He lowered the power to preserve what remained. Around him, the room seemed both heavier and steadier. Jesus was at work in the garrison. The city was still speaking. The shelter was holding. None of it was finished, but all of it was moving.

Later, when the post dimmed into its artificial night, Cassian stepped outside alone for a moment. The canyon was cold and still. The freighter rested under its disguise, wounded but faithful. Above the jagged rim, stars burned in silence. Somewhere beyond them, Aurek-Seven held Jesus in a cell and could not keep Him from praying, seeing, speaking, and calling men out of graves they had built inside themselves.

Nalen came out after him but did not interrupt. The brothers stood beneath the stars. After a while, Cassian spoke.

“He prayed for me.”

Nalen nodded. “And me.”

Cassian looked toward the sky. “I keep thinking I should feel stronger because of that.”

“Do you?”

“No,” Cassian said. “I feel more known.”

Nalen was quiet for a moment. “Maybe known comes before strong.”

Cassian let that settle. Behind them, the shelter glowed faintly through covered seams. Inside were people who had been prisoners, cowards, rebels, guards, children, widows, healers, pilots, mechanics, and brothers. Not one of them was simple. Not one of them was beyond the sight of God.

Cassian looked at the stars until his eyes blurred. The day had begun in darkness after a search craft passed. It ended with water dripping from a dead recycler, heat moving through a repaired coil, names written into a record, and Jesus praying from a garrison cell as if no wall could interrupt His Father’s work.

For now, that was the light they had.

And carefully, faithfully, they kept it burning.

Chapter Fourteen

The water recycler became the sound by which the shelter measured mercy. It did not rush. It did not pour. It gave one slow drop, then another, each one striking the bottom of the container with a small clean sound that made people glance toward it without meaning to. Cassian had never thought a machine could teach patience, but the old recycler did. It gave enough to keep them working, enough to keep Derso drinking, enough to remind them that provision did not always arrive in the amount fear demanded.

By the time the next listening window approached, the post had become more ordered without becoming comfortable. The weakest slept near the heater, which now breathed uneven warmth into the main room. The storage hollow had been cleared in case another sweep came, and blankets were stacked near the crawl passage entrance. Joren sat beside the wall record, carefully writing every name that had come through the signals, while Kerrit read the list back to him in a low voice so no one would vanish through a spelling mistake or a tired hand. Dr. Venn had allowed Derso to remain awake for short stretches, though she treated hope itself as something that needed medical supervision.

Cassian worked at the receiver with Nalen beside him. The old system now had a rhythm of its own. It had to rest between windows because every listening period drained heat, light, or power from somewhere else. Tobin said the machine was becoming part monk and part blackmailer, which Cassian thought was not entirely wrong. The receiver gave them truth, but it demanded sacrifice each time it opened.

Sera came in from the freighter with her scarf pulled tight around her neck. “The stabilizer will not take another hard lift.”

Cassian looked up. “How hard?”

“Anything beyond careful hovering and low drift.”

Tobin followed her in, rubbing his hands together against the cold. “I used more hopeful words when I said it.”

“You said we could fly if everyone agreed not to need control,” Sera said.

“That is technically hopeful.”

Nalen looked toward the freighter through the covered doorway. “Can it reach another hiding place if the post is found?”

Tobin hesitated, and that hesitation answered before he did. “Maybe. If the hiding place is close, forgiving, and downhill.”

“There is no downhill in space,” Sera said.

“That is part of the problem.”

Cassian sat back from the receiver and looked around the control room. The shelter had held through one search, but it could not become permanent. Not with limited power, a damaged ship, a traceable history, and Jesus held at Aurek-Seven. Still, leaving too soon could kill the wounded and scatter the fragile witness forming among them. The same truth returned in a new shape. Mercy moved, but it did not rush because panic wanted motion.

Avren entered with Lysa beside her, carrying a small container of water for Dr. Venn. The child had become quieter since the search craft, not in a broken way, but in the way of someone watching the adults closely and learning which silences were fear and which were prayer. She paused near Cassian and looked at the receiver.

“Will we hear Jesus again?”

Cassian turned the tuning dial slightly. “We might hear about Him.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I know.”

She did not press him, and that restraint seemed older than her years. Avren rested one hand on Lysa’s shoulder and looked at Cassian with gentle concern, as if reminding him that children deserved truth but not the full weight adults sometimes mistook for honesty. Cassian nodded slightly.

“I hope we do,” he said.

Lysa accepted that answer because it did not pretend. She carried the water into the workroom, and Dr. Venn’s voice softened almost imperceptibly when she thanked her. Cassian noticed. Everyone noticed more now. Jesus had made seeing feel like responsibility.

The receiver light flickered.

The room shifted toward it before anyone spoke. Sera lowered the heater draw by habit. Tobin moved to the door to check for light leaks. Nalen leaned closer to the console. Cassian brought the garrison band up slowly, careful not to overload the repaired feed.

Static moved like wind through metal. Then a voice came through, official and clipped. “Aurek-Seven internal session record. Supervised access to isolation cell three concluded. Commander Vale removed from private review after emotional instability observed. Detainee remained compliant with physical containment and noncompliant with silence order.”

Tobin whispered, “I admire that classification.”

Cassian held up one hand for quiet.

A second voice entered the log. “Commander Vale requested removal of restraints during session. Request denied by guard supervisor. Detainee stated restraints were not preventing the conversation Vale feared.”

Nalen bowed his head slightly. The words sounded like Jesus. Not dramatic, not ornate, but cutting into the hidden place with a clean edge.

The log continued. “Garrison chief has ordered formal inquiry into surface procedural breaches following record contamination and civilian unrest. Commander Vale insists expanded sedition authority remains necessary. Detainee asked whether truth required authority to expand because it was weak or because it was guilty.”

Sera let out a breath. “He said that to Vale?”

Avren answered quietly from behind them. “He said it to everyone listening.”

The log shifted into a lower-quality recording. A door sounded. Then Vale’s voice came, strained in a way it had not been on the roof. “You have no idea what men become when no one holds them down.”

Jesus answered, “I know what men become when fear is the hand holding them.”

Vale’s breathing came through the feed before his next words. “I kept order.”

“You kept accounts of fear and called them peace.”

“I stopped chaos.”

“You taught souls to hide. Chaos remained beneath the floor.”

Cassian’s eyes moved toward Nalen. Both brothers remembered the floorboards of the repair shop, the hidden refugees, the fear that had shaped their childhood. Jesus’ words had a way of crossing rooms, histories, and defenses without asking permission.

Vale’s voice sharpened. “You speak as though every frightened person can be trusted with freedom.”

Jesus said, “No. I speak as though every person belongs first to God, not to your fear of what they might do.”

A long silence followed. When Vale spoke again, his voice was quieter. “If I confess, men will use it. The garrison will bury me. The city will hate me. The guards will turn. The rebels will call it weakness. The dead will still be dead.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

Cassian felt the answer land. Jesus did not rescue Vale from consequence with soft words. He did not make repentance sound easy. He did not pretend confession would make the dead return or the city forget.

Vale almost laughed, but the sound had no humor. “That is your mercy?”

Jesus answered, “Mercy is not a door away from truth. It is the presence of God within it.”

No one in the listening post moved. Joren stood in the storage doorway, pale and still. Kerrit had come from the workroom, and Derso’s eyes were open behind him. Dr. Venn stood with her arms crossed, but her face had lost its hard line.

Vale said, “And if I cannot bear what is true?”

Jesus replied, “Then you have been bearing the lie too long.”

The feed broke under a wave of static. Cassian adjusted the receiver, trying to hold the cell channel, but it slipped into official chatter. He caught fragments from other rooms on the garrison. Words like review, unrest, classification, containment, and unauthorized dissemination moved through the static. They sounded increasingly desperate. The Empire had language for obedience, punishment, transport, and suppression. It had no good language for a man like Jesus or the truth spreading from His wounds.

Joren sat down slowly near the wall record. His face was drawn. Cassian watched him, then looked back at the receiver.

“You all right?” Nalen asked him.

Joren did not answer immediately. “I wanted Vale to sound like nothing but a monster.”

No one corrected him.

He looked toward the workroom where Derso lay. “It is easier when the people who do evil sound empty inside. It is harder when they sound afraid.”

Avren came and sat across from him. “Harder does not mean less true. Fear in a man does not erase the harm he did. It only shows where Jesus is calling him from.”

Joren looked at her. “I do not know if I want Vale called from anywhere.”

“I believe you.”

That answer seemed to help because it did not rebuke the pain. Joren looked down at the name record. His finger rested near Tovan’s name but did not touch it. “If Vale repents, does that dishonor the people he hurt?”

Avren’s face carried a sadness that had learned to stand upright. “Not if repentance tells the truth and becomes protection. False repentance asks the wounded to make the guilty feel clean. True repentance steps into the light and accepts that mercy does not remove the need to repair what can be repaired, confess what must be confessed, and bear consequence without demanding worship for feeling sorry.”

Joren absorbed that slowly. “I can live with that better.”

Kerrit spoke from the doorway. “I needed to hear it too.”

Derso looked toward him with tired kindness. “I know.”

Cassian returned to the receiver. The garrison channel had faded, but another signal began to pulse from the lower band. Sera noticed the pattern before he did.

“That is not the city,” she said.

Cassian narrowed the scan. “No. It is closer.”

The signal came from the moon’s outer relay shadow, weak but moving. Tobin stepped forward. “Please tell me that is not another probe.”

Cassian listened. The tone was too irregular for a probe and too narrow for a search craft. It carried a distress marker, old format, repeated manually. Someone nearby was transmitting with a handheld unit or failing pod.

Nalen looked toward the outer door. “Can we locate it?”

Sera checked the small scanner. “South ridge. Maybe three kilometers. Low power. Intermittent.”

Tobin closed his eyes. “Of course the dead moon has visitors.”

Cassian watched the signal pulse again. It did not broadcast identification. Only distress. Three short bursts, pause, two short bursts. A pattern used by civilians and older crews when standard channels were unsafe. It meant injured, hiding, unable to transmit openly.

Nalen looked at him. “Could be a trap.”

“Yes.”

“Could be someone who followed the testimony.”

“Yes.”

“Could be someone from the garrison?”

Cassian thought of the maintenance voice, the guard who gave water, the operators who refused suppression, the staff now troubled by Jesus’ presence. “Yes.”

The room felt the weight of the possibilities. Helping could expose the shelter. Ignoring could leave someone to die. No one needed to say the old line. She is your neighbor. It had become part of them now, and that made decisions harder because they could no longer pretend not to see.

Dr. Venn stepped from the workroom. “If someone is injured within three kilometers, they may become dead while you finish naming risks.”

Tobin looked at her. “Doctor, have you considered that danger is dangerous?”

“Constantly. That is why I object when people waste time before entering it.”

Nalen looked toward Avren. “What is already clear?”

Avren did not answer right away. She listened to the signal pulse again. Then she said, “Someone is calling from the dark. We do not yet know why. We know Jesus has not taught us to treat need as an inconvenience.”

Cassian nodded. “We do not bring them straight here. We scout first, shielded lamps, no active transmission, one retrieval sled if needed.”

Sera checked her blaster. “I go.”

Tobin’s face tightened. “Sera.”

She looked at him. “I know.”

He swallowed what he wanted to say. “Take the west cut, then turn south after the broken mast. Less visible.”

She softened. “Thank you.”

Nalen reached for his cloak. “I go too.”

Cassian stood. “So do I.”

Dr. Venn’s eyes snapped toward his bandaged wrist. “No.”

“This may involve equipment.”

“This may involve infection, collapse, and me becoming louder.”

Nalen looked at Cassian. “She is right.”

Cassian hated that because it was true. His body had begun to throb with feverish heat around the wound, and he had ignored it while working the receiver. Going into the cold, carrying tools, and possibly dragging someone back would not be wisdom. It would be guilt with a lamp.

He sat back down slowly. “Fine.”

Dr. Venn blinked, visibly prepared for a longer fight. “Good.”

Tobin leaned toward Sera. “I can go.”

Sera looked at his scraped face, tired eyes, and hands still stiff from hours in the cold. “You need to keep the ship quiet and ready.”

He wanted to argue. Cassian saw it. Instead, Tobin nodded. “Come back and continue being right in person.”

“I will.”

Joren stood, holding his side. “I should go.”

Nalen shook his head. “You are wanted, injured, and wearing enough imperial history to frighten anyone calling for help.”

Joren looked down at himself, then nodded reluctantly. “Then take my old signal code. If it is someone from the garrison, they may answer it.”

Sera crossed to him, and he gave her a short sequence from memory. She repeated it back once. He corrected one number. She repeated it again. He nodded.

Brant joined the scouting group without waiting to be asked. He took the retrieval sled, two blankets, water, and a heavy tool bar. Kerrit stepped forward too, then paused.

“I can go,” he said.

Derso looked at him from the workroom. “You can also stay.”

Kerrit turned toward him.

Derso’s voice was weak but clear. “Not every chance to help has your name on it. Stay because I need someone who will not let me pretend I am stronger than I am.”

Kerrit looked torn, then deeply moved. “All right.”

Cassian saw that obedience cost him. Running toward danger had become tempting because it felt like a way to prove he was changing. Staying beside Derso, where change looked slower and less visible, might be harder. Kerrit returned to the workroom, and Derso gave him a small nod.

The scouts left through the south crawl exit rather than the main door. Sera went first, then Nalen, then Brant pulling the low sled. The post became quiet after they disappeared. Cassian set the receiver to passive tracking and watched the distress pulses. Each one seemed to take longer than the last. The signal was weakening.

Tobin paced near the freighter access until Avren told him kindly that he was moving fear from one side of the room to the other without improving it. He stopped, then sat with visible effort. Lysa brought him a small cup of water. He took it with unusual seriousness.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You look like you need a job,” she said.

“I do.”

She handed him a torn blanket. “Avren said this needs folding.”

Tobin accepted it as if being entrusted with military command. “Then I shall fold with honor.”

Cassian smiled despite the tension. Lysa returned to Avren, and Tobin folded the blanket badly but earnestly. The sight of it steadied the room in a small way. Everyone had some work. Even waiting could be given shape.

The receiver caught a short-range whisper from Sera after several minutes. “Signal stronger. No visual yet.”

Cassian did not answer because they had agreed not to transmit unless necessary. He marked the signal on the old map. The distress source lay near a collapsed ridge channel south of the post, beyond the place where the moon rock turned darker from old mining burns. If a craft had gone down there, it might not be visible from above.

The next message came through five minutes later. Nalen’s voice, barely audible. “Found wreckage. Small escape pod. One survivor visible. Possible second inside. No active hostiles. Approaching.”

Joren moved closer despite his injury. “Can you tell origin?”

Cassian waited. Static moved through the room. Then Sera’s voice came.

“Garrison maintenance pod. Aurek-Seven marking.”

Everyone went still.

Joren whispered, “Someone came from the station.”

Cassian’s eyes moved toward the garrison band on the receiver, then back to the short-range tracker. Had someone fled after hearing Jesus? Had someone been sent to lure them? Had the maintenance speaker escaped? Had a guard come seeking the people named in the prayers? The questions stacked quickly, and Cassian forced himself not to run ahead of truth.

Nalen’s voice returned. “Survivor is conscious. Says he needs Cassian Rell.”

Cassian felt the room turn toward him.

Tobin stopped folding the blanket. “That is rarely good.”

Cassian leaned toward the receiver though he could not transmit. “Who is it?” he whispered, uselessly.

Sera’s next words came through after a burst of static. “He says Jesus told him your name.”

Cassian closed his eyes. The shelter seemed to tilt around him, not from fear exactly, but from the overwhelming tenderness and responsibility of being known from a place he could not reach. Jesus had prayed his name in isolation. Now someone from that station had crashed on a dead moon asking for him because Jesus had sent him, or because the man claimed He had.

Dr. Venn came to stand beside Cassian. “If they are bringing injured people, clear the workroom floor.”

Cassian opened his eyes. “You believe him?”

“I believe bleeding people need space before philosophy.”

That settled the room into motion. Kerrit helped move supplies. Avren prepared blankets. Joren sat down only because Dr. Venn pointed at him without speaking. Tobin went to the outer door, then remembered the scouts were returning through the crawl exit and moved there instead.

Cassian remained at the receiver, tracking the slow return. The distress signal stopped. That could mean the survivor’s transmitter had died, or it could mean Sera shut it off to avoid detection. He listened for engine noise above. None came. Only the low breath of the shelter, the drip of water, the faint heater hum, and the quiet movement of people preparing to receive someone whose arrival might change everything.

The crawl hatch opened twenty minutes later.

Brant entered first, pulling the sled. A man lay on it, wrapped in one of the blankets. He wore a gray maintenance uniform marked with Aurek-Seven identification, torn at the sleeve and dark with blood near the ribs. His face was older than Cassian expected, with a close-cut beard and eyes sunken from pain and exhaustion. Sera came behind him, supporting a second survivor, a young woman in medical station clothing with a bruised temple and one arm clutched to her chest. Nalen entered last, watching the passage behind them until the hatch was sealed.

Dr. Venn took command immediately. “Workroom. Both of them. Nobody crowd me unless you are useful.”

The maintenance man lifted his head weakly as Brant and Tobin carried him. His eyes searched the room until they found Cassian.

“Cassian Rell?” he asked.

Cassian stepped forward. “Yes.”

The man reached under his torn uniform with a shaking hand. Sera tensed, but he only pulled out a small data wafer sealed in a clear protective strip. He held it toward Cassian.

“He said you fix broken things,” the man whispered. “He said this needed hands that knew the difference between restoring and controlling.”

Cassian took the wafer carefully. “Who said?”

The man looked at him as if the answer should be obvious and impossible all at once. “Jesus.”

The room grew still.

Dr. Venn leaned over him. “You can deliver holy messages after I keep you from dying.”

The man gave a faint, painful smile. “He said there would be a doctor with no patience for foolish timing.”

Dr. Venn froze for half a second.

Tobin whispered, “That is unsettlingly accurate.”

The doctor recovered and pointed toward the workroom. “Move him.”

They carried the survivors inside. Cassian followed with the data wafer in his hand, feeling its small weight like a live coal. The young medical worker looked at Joren as she passed and recognized the uniform beneath his cloak.

“You deserted from the roof,” she said.

Joren nodded slowly. “Yes.”

She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Good.”

That one word seemed to steady him.

Dr. Venn began examining the maintenance man while Sera helped the young woman sit. The man’s breathing was strained, but his eyes remained fixed on Cassian.

“My name is Oren Taal,” he said. “I worked station maintenance. I opened a channel earlier. Maybe you heard.”

Cassian nodded. “We heard you say He was praying.”

Oren closed his eyes briefly, relieved. “Good.”

The young woman spoke through pain. “I am Leva. Medical support, second level. I treated the transport officer Jesus asked water for.”

Dr. Venn looked at her. “Arm broken?”

“Maybe.”

“Useful answer. I will decide.”

Cassian held up the wafer. “What is this?”

Oren looked toward Leva, then back to Cassian. “Isolation cell recordings, internal logs, transfer records, medical scans, Vale’s classification requests, guard refusals, and the names of station personnel who heard Him and began preserving evidence. Not all. Enough.”

Nalen stepped into the doorway. “Evidence for what?”

Oren swallowed. “That Vale lied. That the tower records were altered. That Jesus did not incite violence. That garrison command knew the charges were unstable and kept Him contained anyway. That people inside the station are starting to testify.”

Joren leaned against the wall, face pale. “How did you get it out?”

Leva answered. “Badly.”

Oren gave another faint smile, then winced. “We copied what we could. Took a maintenance pod during waste cycle shadow. Got clipped by a patrol scan leaving the garrison. We crashed because I am not a pilot.”

Tobin nodded with grave sympathy. “Many people suffer from not being pilots.”

Sera looked at him. “This is not the moment.”

“It was supportive.”

Dr. Venn cut open Oren’s sleeve. “It was noise.”

Cassian looked at the wafer again. The small object might carry more than records. It might carry proof the city needed, proof the garrison feared, proof that Jesus’ presence had reached the inside of the station. It also might carry danger directly to the shelter. If the garrison knew it was missing, they would search harder. If the data was traceable, the post could be exposed the moment they opened it.

“Is it tracked?” Cassian asked.

Leva shook her head, then stopped because the movement hurt. “We stripped active tags. Passive signature may remain if opened on a standard device.”

Cassian looked toward the receiver. “Good thing nothing here is standard.”

Oren’s eyes found his again. “Jesus said not to release it in anger.”

Cassian stilled.

Oren continued, each word costing breath. “He said truth used as revenge becomes another servant of fear. He said release what protects the vulnerable, exposes the lie, and calls the guilty into the light. Do not release what only feeds hatred.”

Joren looked down. Kerrit did too. Nalen’s eyes moved toward Cassian. The instruction was too precise, too holy, and too difficult. Evidence could become a weapon in the hands of pain. The wrong release could expose repentant guards to slaughter, endanger families, or turn the city from witness toward vengeance. The right release could preserve truth, protect the accused, and make buried names harder to erase.

Cassian held the wafer with both hands now. “Did He say anything else?”

Leva answered softly. “He said Lysa must know her voice reached the station.”

Lysa appeared behind Avren in the doorway.

Leva turned toward her. “Are you Lysa?”

The child nodded.

Leva’s face softened through pain. “I heard you. I was in the medical corridor outside isolation when your message replayed through the transfer channel. A guard who had been laughing stopped. He sat down on the floor. He said his daughter was your age.”

Lysa’s eyes filled. “Did Jesus hear?”

“Yes,” Leva said. “He smiled when He heard your voice. I saw it.”

Lysa pressed her face into Avren’s coat, not hiding this time, but receiving what was too large for her to hold in front of everyone.

Oren closed his eyes, and Dr. Venn touched his throat. “Stop talking now.”

He opened them again, stubbornly. “One more.”

“No.”

“Doctor.”

Dr. Venn looked at him with sharp warning.

Oren whispered, “He prayed for you too.”

Dr. Venn’s face changed so quickly that Cassian almost looked away. “You are delirious.”

“No,” Oren said. “He said, ‘Tell Ilyra that hands trained by sorrow are still held by My Father when they heal.’”

The room went silent.

Dr. Venn stood frozen over him. For the first time since Cassian had met her, she had no immediate answer. Her face seemed to close, then open in pain she did not want seen. She turned away for a moment, one hand pressed against the edge of the table.

Leva looked at her gently. “He knew your name.”

Dr. Venn drew one slow breath. When she turned back, her voice was controlled but lower. “Then honor His concern by staying alive.”

Oren nodded faintly. “Yes, Doctor.”

Cassian stepped out of the workroom with the data wafer. Nalen followed. They went to the control room and stood by the receiver, not speaking at first. The shelter had changed again. Jesus had sent evidence through broken station workers who had risked their lives. He had sent instructions that restrained anger before anger had fully formed. He had sent names and words for Lysa and Dr. Venn. Even in isolation, He was shepherding them.

Nalen looked at the wafer. “This could change everything.”

Cassian shook his head slowly. “Or get everyone killed if we use it wrong.”

“Yes.”

They stood with that truth between them. The next door had opened, but it did not lead to quick action. It led to discernment. Cassian had spent most of his life fixing what was directly in front of him. Now he held something that could reach a city, a garrison, a tower, and every frightened person caught between truth and fear.

Avren came into the control room with Lysa beside her. She looked at the wafer, then at the brothers. “You know what you must do first.”

Cassian nodded. “Pray.”

This time, he did not say he was bad at it. He simply knelt near the receiver with the wafer in his hands. Nalen knelt beside him. Avren and Lysa joined them. One by one, others came from the workroom, the freighter door, the heater, and the shadows of the post. Dr. Venn remained with Oren and Leva, but Cassian saw her bow her head where she stood.

The prayer was quiet. Cassian asked the Father to guard them from revenge disguised as courage, from fear disguised as wisdom, and from delay disguised as patience. He asked for truth to protect the vulnerable and expose what needed light. He asked for Jesus at Aurek-Seven, for Varek in custody, for Vale under conviction, for the city under pressure, for Elian Pell, Mara, Derso, Joren, Lysa, Dr. Venn, and every person whose name had been carried farther than fear wanted.

When he finished, the post remained still.

Then the receiver crackled.

No one moved quickly. Cassian reached up slowly and tuned the channel. It was the garrison band again, weak but present.

A voice they did not know spoke through static. “Isolation cell three status update. Detainee remains in prayer. Commander Vale has requested second access. Request pending. Evidence breach suspected. Station search initiated.”

Cassian looked at Nalen.

The search for the wafer had already begun.

The voice continued, “All maintenance pods grounded. Medical staff restricted. Unauthorized personnel to report immediately.”

Then, beneath that official voice, barely audible, another sound entered the channel.

The song.

Not from the city. Not from the convoy. From Aurek-Seven.

It was faint, scattered, and quickly suppressed, but it was there. Somewhere inside the orbital garrison, someone had begun singing the tower song.

Oren heard it from the workroom and began to cry softly.

Leva whispered, “It reached them.”

Cassian closed his eyes with the wafer still in his hands. The evidence mattered. The decisions ahead mattered. Danger had increased. Search had begun. But before they had opened a single file, before they had released one record, the song had already entered the garrison.

Jesus was still in isolation.

And the station was no longer untouched by the light.

Chapter Fifteen

The song from Aurek-Seven did not last long enough to become strong, but it lasted long enough to change the room. It slipped through the garrison channel in broken pieces, then vanished under a hard official sweep that filled the receiver with static. No one needed to hear more. The sound had been real. Somewhere inside a station built to classify, isolate, process, and contain, someone had taken the song born in a tower cell and carried it into the halls above the planet.

Cassian remained kneeling with the data wafer in his hands until the static thinned. The small strip felt heavier now. Before the song, the wafer had seemed like evidence, dangerous and necessary. After the song, it felt like part of a larger movement already under way, not the beginning of truth but one more vessel for it. That mattered because it humbled him. If he acted as though everything depended on his hands, he would become frantic, and frantic hands could damage what mercy meant to restore.

Nalen knelt beside him, silent and tense. His brother’s eyes stayed on the receiver as if the song might return if he refused to look away. Sera stood near the power wall, one hand resting on the manual cutoff. Tobin had stopped halfway between the control room and the outer door, his usual words caught somewhere behind wonder. Avren held Lysa close. Joren sat with his injured side wrapped tight, his face pale beneath the weight of his mother’s message, Varek’s confession, and now the sound of singing in the garrison where Jesus was held.

Oren lay in the workroom with Dr. Venn bent over him. His breathing had grown rougher after the climb, the crash, and the effort of delivering the wafer. Leva sat against the wall with her arm bound to her chest, watching the doorway as if part of her remained back in the medical corridor of Aurek-Seven. When the song came through the receiver, she had whispered that it reached them. Now she looked frightened by the cost of that reach.

Cassian rose slowly. “We need to know what is on this before we decide anything.”

Sera looked at the wafer. “Opening it may expose us.”

“I know.”

Tobin stepped into the room. “For once, I would like a plan where the sentence does not end with I know.”

Nalen looked at him. “Can we open it through the freighter system without transmitting?”

Tobin’s face tightened. “The freighter system is currently a collection of injuries arranged around a cockpit.”

Sera answered more practically. “Maybe. If we isolate the reader from every outbound channel and power it through a separate cell, we can view the files without the ship broadcasting anything. If the wafer has a passive signature, it could still wake when accessed, but we can put it inside the cargo shell lining. That should muffle most trace leakage.”

Cassian glanced toward the freighter. “How much power?”

“Not much for reading,” Sera said. “More if we copy.”

“Can we copy without standard indexing?”

Sera looked at Tobin. Tobin looked insulted and thoughtful at the same time. “Yes. Badly. Which may be safer than properly.”

Dr. Venn’s voice came from the workroom. “If you are going to turn my shelter into a courtroom, do it where my patients are not breathing smoke.”

Cassian looked toward the workroom. “How is Oren?”

“Alive, no thanks to his timing.” She stepped into the doorway, wiping her hands. “He has blood loss, rib trauma, and the kind of stubbornness that makes men speak when they should be unconscious. Leva’s arm is fractured but manageable. Derso remains alive because I continue to outvote death.”

Derso’s weak voice followed from inside. “She is very persuasive.”

Dr. Venn did not turn around. “You are welcome.”

The room breathed again for a moment, and Cassian was grateful. Fear had a way of narrowing every face into urgency. Small human exchanges widened the room just enough to remember they were not machines in a crisis. They were people being held together by grace, work, weariness, and the stubborn refusal to let fear be the only voice.

Sera and Tobin set up the isolated reader in the freighter’s cargo bay because the ship’s thickened hull panels gave them better shielding than the post walls. Cassian carried the wafer in both hands. Nalen walked beside him. Joren followed, though Dr. Venn had warned him against standing too long. Leva came too because she understood part of the station’s file structure, and because she said if anyone misread the medical logs, she would rather correct them before the error became dangerous.

The freighter’s cargo bay smelled of overheated wiring, dust, and bodies that had been afraid inside it for too long. Tobin had rigged a small screen to an independent power cell. Sera removed the ship’s outbound comm link entirely and placed it on the floor several feet away, as if distance could make everyone feel better. Cassian knew it helped only a little. Still, a little had become a category worth respecting.

Sera looked at him. “Once we open it, we do not rush.”

Cassian nodded. “We look for what protects people first.”

Nalen added, “And what exposes the lie without feeding vengeance.”

Joren’s jaw tightened, but he nodded too. That cost him. The files might contain names of those who harmed prisoners, altered records, denied water, signed transfer orders, or enabled Vale. Some part of him likely wanted every name thrown into the city like fire. Cassian understood that desire. He also knew Jesus had already warned them. Truth used as revenge becomes another servant of fear.

He inserted the wafer.

The screen stayed blank for several seconds. Tobin leaned forward, then leaned back, as if proximity might offend the device. The power cell hummed. A faint line crossed the display. Then the file structure opened.

Leva inhaled sharply. “They got more than I thought.”

The wafer held several directories. Transfer records. Medical intake scans. Tower-to-garrison communication logs. Classification disputes. Command review notes. Guard incident reports. Internal channel captures. Evidence breach audit. A folder labeled contamination response. Another labeled civilian narrative control. The language alone revealed the fear beneath the system. They had not named it truth, testimony, conscience, or mercy. They had named it contamination.

Nalen pointed to the classification dispute file. “Start there.”

Cassian opened it. The screen filled with formal statements from garrison legal command, surface security, and Commander Vale. The first records showed Vale arguing that Jesus should be processed as a sedition leader under emergency authority. The garrison disputed the category because the available recordings did not show Jesus urging violence, armed resistance, or organized rebellion. Vale insisted that His words produced noncompliance, which he called destabilizing influence. A legal officer responded that refusal to obey unlawful crowd dispersal orders did not prove sedition by the detainee. Someone had written a note in the margin: “Surface commander appears personally compromised by public failure.”

Tobin gave a low whistle. “That is bureaucratic blood.”

Sera read the line again. “They are not defending Jesus. They are protecting themselves from Vale’s bad record.”

Leva nodded. “That happens often. But it still slows things.”

Cassian opened the medical intake file. Jesus’ scan appeared first, cold and clinical. Bruising to face and torso. Wrist abrasions from restraints. Dehydration. Signs of repeated physical strikes. The report listed injuries without naming the cruelty that caused them. Beside it were delayed treatment notes for two guards, one transport officer, and a detainee escort. In the comments field, someone had recorded that Jesus requested water and treatment for others before responding to intake questions.

Dr. Venn had joined them at the cargo bay entrance without announcing herself. Her eyes moved over the screen. “Copy that.”

Cassian turned. “You said not to make this a courtroom near your patients.”

“I changed my mind because the evidence is medically relevant to my anger.”

Sera began copying selected files to an old local drive Tobin had pulled from the freighter’s navigation archive. They did not copy everything. Not yet. Leva warned them that some personnel names in the medical logs belonged to people who had quietly helped. Releasing those names openly could get them punished or killed. Cassian created two groups, one for public release and one for protected record. The distinction felt important. Truth did not require carelessness.

They opened the guard incident reports next. Varek’s name appeared in three places. Failure to obey detention control order. Unauthorized preservation of lower tower records. Suspicion of aiding escape through maintenance channel. There was also a tower notation made before he was locked out. Tovan Pell’s name had been entered into a restored incident field, alongside a short confession in Varek’s own words. It was not polished. It did not defend him. It said the boy had run with a tool battery, that Varek fired under false threat training, and that the record was altered by command culture to remove accountability.

Joren turned away from the screen.

No one forced him to keep looking. That restraint itself became mercy. Nalen stepped slightly between Joren and the display, not hiding the truth, but giving the grieving man a place to breathe. Cassian waited. The room waited with him.

After a moment, Joren spoke without turning back. “Keep it.”

Cassian nodded. “Protected or public?”

Joren’s shoulders rose and fell. “Public enough that my mother can ask for the full truth. Protected enough that it does not become street vengeance before she can breathe.”

Avren’s teaching had reached him. Cassian felt gratitude for that. He marked the file accordingly, preserving the record but redacting home locations and names of those who had helped restore it. Joren turned back only after the screen moved to another file.

The civilian narrative control folder was worse in a different way. It contained draft messages meant for public release. The Empire planned to describe Jesus as a manipulative religious extremist who exploited grief, caused detainee flight, and endangered children by encouraging unlawful assemblies. One draft named Lysa as an example of a minor psychologically influenced by agitation. Cassian felt the room go cold.

Lysa was not in the cargo bay, and he was grateful she did not see it. Nalen’s face darkened. Sera’s hand tightened on the side of the console. Tobin stopped breathing normally. Joren looked sick. Leva closed her eyes and whispered something under her breath that sounded like anger trying to become prayer.

Cassian stared at the line using Lysa. A child who had held Jesus’ bound hand in fear and spoken truth through trembling courage was being turned into proof against Him by people who never saw her as a soul. Something in Cassian wanted to release the whole file at once, unredacted, with every author named and exposed. He could feel the heat of that desire in his chest.

Then Oren’s message returned to him. Truth used as revenge becomes another servant of fear.

He stepped back from the screen.

Nalen noticed. “Cass?”

“I need a moment.”

He left the cargo bay and stepped down the ramp into the cold canyon. The stars were hidden behind the upper shadow of the ridge now, and the post glowed faintly through covered seams. He walked far enough from the freighter to breathe without the smell of smoke and hot wiring. His hands shook. Not from cold alone.

The file had touched something more than anger. It had shown him how easily systems could take the vulnerable and use them as shields for lies. It had shown him that Lysa’s courage, Jesus’ mercy, and the prisoners’ witness were not only at risk of being silenced. They could be twisted. A false story could be built around true pain. That felt almost worse than denial.

Nalen came down the ramp behind him but did not speak at first. He stood beside Cassian in the canyon shadow.

“They are going to use her,” Cassian said.

“They want to.”

“She is a child.”

“I know.”

Cassian turned toward him. “I want to burn that whole file into every channel they have.”

Nalen nodded. “I know.”

“That is not wisdom.”

“No.”

“It feels like justice.”

“It might contain some,” Nalen said. “That is why it is dangerous.”

Cassian looked at him. His brother understood too well. For years, Nalen had lived inside causes where justice and rage ran close together, where truth and strategy could become tangled, where pain made people feel clean while they harmed someone else in the name of righteousness.

Nalen continued, “We release the part that protects her and exposes the lie. We do not release in a way that makes her carry the fight.”

Cassian closed his eyes. “She already carried too much.”

“Yes.”

They stood there until the first wave of anger became grief. Cassian let it. He was learning not to trust the version of himself that wanted to act before grief had told the truth. When he opened his eyes, Nalen was still beside him.

“Thank you,” Cassian said.

“For what?”

“For not letting me be alone with that.”

Nalen looked toward the post. “I owe you years of that.”

Cassian did not answer quickly. The old instinct might have said yes, you do, and made the moment smaller. Instead, he nodded once. “Then start here.”

Nalen accepted it.

They returned to the freighter. The others had waited. Sera had not touched the file further. Tobin leaned against the wall with his arms folded, looking angrier than he wanted to show. Leva sat with her injured arm against her chest and watched Cassian carefully. Joren stood near the ramp, pale and silent.

Cassian looked at the screen. “We redact Lysa’s identifying details. We release the proof that they planned to use a child’s fear to smear Jesus and the escaped prisoners. We include her own words only if Avren agrees and Lysa is protected from becoming a symbol people can hunt.”

Sera nodded. “That is right.”

Dr. Venn, from the doorway, said, “And we never let anyone outside this shelter decide what that child owes the story.”

Cassian looked at her. “Yes.”

They continued. It took hours to sort the files. Some were clear enough for public release. Others needed protection. Some were dangerous without context. Some had names of guards who had refused orders and would be killed if exposed too soon. Some revealed Vale’s lies directly. Some revealed that garrison command was not righteous, only cautious. The distinction mattered. They were not looking for heroes inside the system. They were looking for truth and those willing to protect it.

Near the end, they found the isolation cell audio.

No one opened it immediately.

The file was marked restricted internal review. It included several short recordings from Jesus’ cell, captured before and after Vale’s supervised visit. Cassian stared at the list of timestamps. He wanted to hear His voice again. Everyone did. But wanting was not enough reason to open something. Jesus was not evidence only. He was Lord. Even recordings of Him deserved reverence, not consumption.

Avren had come into the cargo bay by then. Cassian turned to her. “Should we listen?”

She looked at the screen for a long moment. “Why?”

The question stripped away curiosity. Cassian thought carefully. “To know what He wants released. To avoid using His words wrongly. To understand what Oren carried.”

Avren nodded. “Then listen as servants, not spectators.”

They did.

The first recording opened with silence, a low cell hum, and distant station noise. Then Jesus’ voice came through, quiet and tired, praying. Cassian bowed his head before he meant to. Others did the same. The prayer was not long, or perhaps the file captured only part of it, but every word seemed to hold someone.

“Father, keep the little ones from being used by the proud. Strengthen the weary who are learning to stand. Let those who have done harm come into truth without fleeing from consequence. Guard the city from hatred that wears the clothing of justice. Let mercy become courage, and let courage remain clean.”

The file ended.

No one moved.

Cassian felt the prayer answer the very danger in the room before they had named it fully. Guard the city from hatred that wears the clothing of justice. He could still feel the heat in his chest from Lysa’s file, but now Jesus’ words stood in front of it, not denying the anger, but refusing to let it lead.

The second recording was shorter. Jesus was speaking to someone, probably the guard who gave water.

“You are afraid that truth will take everything from you,” Jesus said. “But the lie has already been collecting your life piece by piece. Come into the light. Bring what you have done. Bring what you have hidden. My Father does not heal shadows you insist on calling home.”

The guard’s voice was too low to understand. Jesus answered gently.

“No one enters truth clean. They enter because they are called.”

The file ended.

Joren sat down on a cargo crate and covered his face. Kerrit, who had entered quietly during the recording, lowered himself beside him. Neither spoke. The words belonged to both of them, and perhaps to everyone there.

The third recording began with Vale’s voice. It was not the same segment they had heard over the receiver. This one seemed to come later, after the official session.

“You think I cannot see what you are doing,” Vale said.

Jesus answered, “What do you see?”

“You are turning guilt into loyalty.”

“No,” Jesus said. “I am calling guilt into repentance before it becomes despair.”

Vale’s voice shook. “You know nothing about despair.”

Jesus was silent for a moment. When He answered, His voice carried such sorrow that the cargo bay seemed to shrink around it. “I know every grave men build before they die.”

Cassian closed his eyes. The repair shop returned to him. The sealed grief. The bitter safety. The grave he had built while still breathing. He heard Nalen’s breath catch beside him and knew his brother had felt it too.

Vale said, “If I confess, they will destroy me.”

Jesus answered, “If you do not, you will continue destroying others to protect what is already dead.”

A long silence followed. Then Vale spoke with a quietness that sounded more dangerous than anger. “I cannot undo it.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But you can stop worshiping the lie that required it.”

The recording ended.

Tobin sat down on the floor without making a joke. Sera remained standing behind him with one hand on his shoulder. Dr. Venn’s face was turned away. Leva cried silently, perhaps because she had heard pieces of these conversations from the other side of a medical corridor and now understood more of what she had risked her life to carry.

Cassian closed the file list. “We do not release all of that.”

Nalen looked at him. “No.”

Avren nodded. “Some words are for the public record. Some are for the souls who heard them. Do not confuse holy access with permission to broadcast everything.”

Cassian felt the truth of that. The city needed proof. It did not need every intimate moment in Jesus’ cell turned into fuel for public fury. The guilty needed to hear His call. The vulnerable needed protection. Vale’s lies needed exposure. But Jesus’ prayers were not raw material for outrage. They were holy. They could guide them without being exploited.

They built the release slowly. It contained the medical summary proving Jesus had been struck before the public judgment. It contained the classification dispute showing sedition charges were unsupported. It contained Vale’s requests for emergency authority and his attempts to erase or control records. It contained protected testimony from Oren and Leva that garrison staff heard Jesus pray and saw personnel changed by His presence. It contained the civilian narrative control file with Lysa’s personal details removed but the planned misuse of a child exposed. It contained a careful statement about Tovan Pell’s restored record, with Joren and Elian protected until they chose otherwise. It contained a short audio excerpt of Jesus saying, “I will not kneel to fear and call it mercy,” because those words had already been public and belonged to the city’s witness.

They did not release the private prayer yet. They did not release names of quiet helpers. They did not release Leva’s medical access codes. They did not release every guard’s failure. They did not release what would satisfy anger while endangering repentance. The restraint took longer than rage would have taken. That told Cassian they were probably closer to obedience.

The next problem was sending it.

The main transmitter remained dead. Joren’s scout pod transmitter had burned itself out on the ridge. The freighter’s comm rig was destroyed except for short internal channels. The listening post’s dish was broken. They had the truth, but no clear voice strong enough to carry it back to the city or the garrison. The frustration in the room grew with every failed option.

Tobin finally stood and walked to the cargo bay wall, where a cracked panel covered the freighter’s old emergency beacon. He stared at it for a while.

Sera noticed. “No.”

“I have not said anything.”

“You are looking at the beacon.”

“It looked at me first.”

“Tobin.”

He turned. “The beacon can transmit a distress packet through official rescue bands. It is not designed for this much data, but we could compress the release into repeated bursts. If we launch it as a distress call from the freighter, every search craft in range hears it. So do automated rescue relays. So does the garrison. So does the surface if the relay shadow catches it.”

Sera’s face hardened. “And it tells them exactly where the freighter is.”

“Yes.”

Cassian looked toward the post. “Can we detach it?”

Tobin’s expression shifted. “Maybe. Mount it on debris. Send it drifting out of the canyon with a timed pulse.”

Sera’s eyes narrowed. “The old survey sled.”

Brant, who had entered near the end, nodded slowly. “There is a small survey sled under the rear storage rack. I saw it when we moved panels.”

Tobin looked pleased and worried. “That might work.”

Cassian followed the idea. The emergency beacon could be removed from the freighter, mounted on the survey sled, loaded with the compressed release, and sent along the canyon’s low-gravity slope toward open space. Once far enough from the shelter, it would activate and transmit the packet as a repeating distress burst. Search systems would trace the sled, not the post. If it reached the relay shadow before being destroyed, the release could spread.

It was risky. It could fail. It could draw search craft back to the moon. It could buy them time or end it. No path was clean.

Avren looked around the cargo bay. “Does this protect the vulnerable?”

Cassian nodded slowly. “If it works, it exposes the lie without naming the helpers.”

“Does it feed vengeance?”

Nalen answered. “Less than we wanted. More than the Empire wants.”

Avren studied him, then gave a faint smile. “That may be a faithful measure.”

Dr. Venn looked toward the workroom. “Can it be done without moving my patients?”

“Yes,” Sera said.

“Then do it before someone invents a worse idea.”

They worked through the next artificial night. Tobin and Cassian removed the beacon from the freighter while Sera stripped its standard distress identifier and replaced it with the compressed file burst. Nalen and Brant dragged the old survey sled from storage and cleared its thruster ports. Joren helped write the cover statement that would lead the release. Leva checked the medical summary for accuracy. Avren sat with Lysa and explained, in gentler terms, that they were sending truth so people would not lie about Jesus or the prisoners. Lysa asked if her name would be used. Avren told her no, not without her protection. Cassian watched the child’s shoulders lower.

Near completion, Joren brought Cassian the cover statement. It was short, steady, and stronger because it did not try to sound heroic.

“This record is released to preserve truth, protect the vulnerable, and prevent false charges from being used to justify further harm. Jesus of the surface settlement did not incite violence. He stood with prisoners, children, guards, and citizens under fear. Records enclosed show that Commander Orsan Vale misclassified events, suppressed evidence, and attempted to use public suffering to preserve control. Names of vulnerable witnesses and quiet helpers are protected until they can speak safely. Do not answer this record with vengeance. Preserve names. Protect families. Tell the truth.”

Cassian read it twice. “This is good.”

Joren looked down. “I wanted it angrier.”

“I know.”

“I still do.”

Cassian folded the statement into the packet. “That may mean it cost you something honest.”

They loaded the beacon just before the next relay shadow window. The survey sled was small, barely more than a flat cargo platform with old guidance fins and a weak thruster pack. Tobin said it had the moral confidence of a dinner tray, but Sera believed it could drift far enough if launched from the upper canyon cut. They could not risk many people outside. The launch team would be Sera, Tobin, Nalen, and Brant. Cassian wanted to go, but his wrist had grown hot beneath the bandage, and Dr. Venn threatened to assign Lysa to guard him if he tried.

“I would do it,” Lysa said.

“I know,” Cassian replied. “That is why I am staying.”

Before the team left, they gathered around the sled in the main room. The beacon sat bolted to its center, ugly and small and carrying enough truth to trouble a garrison. Avren prayed over it, not as if the machine were holy, but as if the work it carried had been placed in God’s hands. She asked that the truth go where mercy intended, that lies be exposed without hatred taking root, that the guilty be called into light, and that the vulnerable be shielded from the proud.

Then Tobin touched the sled and said, “Please fly better than I expect.”

Sera looked at him. “Was that a prayer?”

“It may be my most honest one.”

They left through the upper cut, dragging the sled on softened runners. Cassian stayed at the receiver with Joren and Leva beside him. Avren remained near Lysa. Kerrit sat with Derso. Dr. Venn pretended not to watch the door every few seconds.

The launch window came twenty minutes later.

Sera’s short-range signal clicked once. Ready.

Cassian could not answer, but he pressed his hand against the console as if touch could travel. The receiver picked up a faint beacon handshake. The sled had powered on. A few seconds passed. Then the emergency burst launched.

At first there was only static.

Then the receiver caught their own packet reflecting back through the relay shadow, compressed and repeating. The cover statement went out. The medical record. The classification dispute. The protected testimony. Vale’s contradiction. The attempted misuse of a child. The restored name of Tovan Pell. Jesus’ public words. I will not kneel to fear and call it mercy.

The packet repeated.

Again.

Again.

Then the official channels erupted.

Cassian heard overlapping voices. “Unauthorized distress burst.” “Trace source.” “Surface relay contamination.” “Aurek-Seven command responding.” “Do not rebroadcast.” “Civilian band picking it up.” “Lower quarter relays active.” “Who launched this?” “Suppress it.” “Too late.” “Repeat, too late.”

Joren gripped the edge of the console with his good hand. Leva began to cry silently. Avren bowed her head. Lysa listened with wide eyes, not understanding every word, but understanding enough to know that something hidden had found the air.

The receiver caught Mara’s voice through the chaos, laughing and crying at once. “We have it. We have it. The city has it.”

Then another voice. Elian Pell, Joren’s mother, older and steadier than before. “Tovan Pell’s name is true. My son Joren speaks truth. Do not use my grief to kill. Use it to stop lying.”

Joren broke then, not loudly, but completely enough that Leva reached for his uninjured hand and held it. He did not pull away.

The garrison band returned with fierce static. Through it, a voice from Aurek-Seven shouted, “The release is inside the station net.” Another answered, “It entered through rescue band before suppression.” Another said, “Medical staff have copied it.” Then the song came again, stronger than before, breaking through in pieces as if the garrison itself had become a chamber where truth echoed from wall to wall.

Cassian looked toward the doorway, waiting for the launch team. Seconds stretched. The packet kept repeating. Official channels fought it. Civilian channels caught it. The release moved beyond their control, which frightened and relieved him. Truth had left their hands. Now they had to trust the Father with where it landed.

A distant flash lit the canyon.

Lysa gasped. Avren held her. Cassian stood so fast his injured wrist struck the console. Pain shot through him.

The receiver crackled with Tobin’s voice. “Beacon away. Sled destroyed. We are returning. I object to how close that was.”

Cassian closed his eyes. “Thank You, Lord.”

Nalen’s voice followed, breathless but alive. “Search craft chasing debris trail. Keep the post dark.”

The room moved immediately. Lights were hooded. The heater lowered. The upper seams covered. Dr. Venn oversaw Derso’s move toward the crawl passage before anyone asked. Joren helped Leva stand. Kerrit carried water. Avren guided Lysa. The shelter prepared for another sweep, but this time fear did not enter alone. The truth had gone out ahead of it.

Sera, Tobin, Nalen, and Brant returned through the upper cut covered in dust and cold sweat. Tobin had a new burn on his sleeve and seemed offended by it. Sera’s face was pale but alive. Brant carried a broken runner from the sled like a trophy no one wanted. Nalen came straight to Cassian.

“It got out,” Cassian said.

Nalen nodded, breathing hard. “We saw the relay lights wake.”

“The city has it.”

His brother’s face changed. “And the garrison?”

Cassian looked toward the receiver. Through static, suppression orders, and fragments of alarm, the song still moved.

“The garrison has it too.”

Nalen closed his eyes, and for a moment the brothers stood forehead to forehead, not speaking, not hiding, simply receiving the weight of mercy carried through broken machines and frightened obedience.

Then Aurek-Seven’s official command voice cut through every channel.

“Commander Orsan Vale is relieved pending inquiry.”

The room froze.

The voice continued, strained and furious beneath its formal tone. “All surface narrative orders issued under emergency authority are suspended. Religious detainee classification under review. No transfer to black custody authorized. Station personnel are ordered to cease unauthorized song, prayer, file duplication, and civilian channel contamination immediately.”

Tobin whispered, “That last part seems unsuccessful.”

No one laughed loudly, but a breath of relief moved through the shelter. Vale was not redeemed by being relieved. Jesus was not free because classification was under review. The Empire had not become righteous because embarrassment forced a correction. Still, a door had opened that had not been open before.

The receiver crackled again.

This time the voice was not official.

It was the same maintenance channel from Aurek-Seven. Oren lifted his head from the workroom as soon as he heard it.

“Moon shelter,” the voice said, trembling. “We received the release. The station received it. The city received it. They are trying to stop copies, but too many exist now. The detainee heard the song. He is still in isolation. When they told Him Vale was relieved, He prayed for him again.”

Avren closed her eyes.

The voice continued, “He also said, ‘Tell them truth has gone out, but love must carry it now.’”

Cassian bowed his head.

The message ended in static.

Truth has gone out, but love must carry it now. It was exactly the next burden. The files had been released. The lie had been exposed. Vale had been removed from immediate authority. The city had proof. The station had witness. Now came the harder work of not letting truth become hatred, not letting relief become pride, not letting exposure become cruelty, and not letting the wounded be used by any side.

Cassian looked around the shelter. Every face showed some version of the same understanding. They had not reached the ending. They had reached responsibility.

Lysa stood near Avren and asked quietly, “Does this mean Jesus can come back?”

Cassian walked to her and crouched, careful with his wrist. “I do not know yet.”

She nodded, disappointed but not undone. “But they cannot say He was bad because He loved us.”

Cassian’s throat tightened. “No. Not the same way.”

“That is good.”

“Yes,” he said. “That is very good.”

The receiver continued humming softly behind them, alive with distant static, fragments of the song, and the first sounds of a story fear had failed to bury. In the garrison, Jesus remained in isolation. In the city, lamps still burned outside a sealed shop. In the shelter, wounded people stood around a broken machine and understood that their work had only changed shape.

The light had gone out across the channels.

Now they had to become people who could carry it without turning it into fire that consumed the very ones Jesus came to save.

Chapter Sixteen

The first hours after the release were quieter than Cassian expected. He had imagined truth moving like a blast through the city and the garrison, shaking every wall at once. Instead, it moved more like water through stone. It found cracks. It entered hidden rooms. It touched people who had been pretending not to listen. It carried names into places where names had been forbidden. The official channels shouted louder, but the louder they became, the more frightened they sounded.

Inside the listening post, no one slept well. Even when bodies lay still, the room remained awake. The receiver whispered with fragments from the city, the garrison, and the emergency bands now flooded with denials, warnings, copied files, half-prayers, and confused reports. Cassian kept the volume low to preserve power, but every time the static shifted, heads lifted. The shelter had become a place where people listened for the next small sign that mercy was still moving.

Derso slept in short broken stretches. Dr. Venn said his fever had begun to turn, though she refused to call anything good until it stayed good long enough to deserve the word. Mara’s voice had reached him twice after the release, each message shorter than the one before because the lower quarter relays were being watched more closely. She told him the city had the files. She told him people were reading them aloud in storage rooms, kitchens, repair bays, and under market awnings while patrols searched for the source. She told him the lamps outside Rell Repair had spread to other sealed doors now, not as decoration, but as a quiet sign that buried names were being brought into the light.

Joren sat near the receiver with the name record in his lap. He had copied his mother’s words three times, not because he needed the record, but because his hand seemed to need to believe them. Tovan Pell. Joren Pell. Elian Pell. We are not buried. Each time he wrote the sentence, his face changed a little. Not happier. Not healed in any easy way. More present. Grief had stopped being only a locked room inside him. It had become a place where truth could finally enter.

Kerrit stayed near Derso through most of the night. He helped Dr. Venn with water, blankets, and whatever small tasks she allowed him to perform. Once, when Derso woke in pain and tried to apologize for needing help, Kerrit answered in a voice so low Cassian almost missed it.

“Do not make it harder for me to become decent.”

Derso gave a weak breath that might have been laughter. “I will try.”

Those were the moments that kept Cassian steady. The release had gone out across channels, but the proof that Jesus was changing them did not live only in public exposure. It lived in a frightened man staying beside the one he had once been willing to leave. It lived in a soldier writing the name of the brother whose death had been hidden. It lived in a doctor receiving a word from Jesus and then returning to the work of keeping people alive. It lived in Lysa sleeping with her hand wrapped around the edge of Avren’s coat because she still needed someone near her in the dark.

Near the next listening window, Aurek-Seven returned.

The garrison signal came through unevenly, but stronger than before, as if more channels had begun quietly feeding fragments outward. Cassian bent over the receiver while Sera steadied the power draw. Nalen stood beside him, arms folded, eyes fixed on the signal meter. The official voice came first, repeating discipline orders and warning station personnel against unauthorized distribution of internal records. Then a maintenance channel slipped beneath it.

“Religious detainee remains in isolation cell three. Commander Vale confined to supervisory quarters pending inquiry. Station command unable to identify all duplicated evidence nodes. Surface unrest persists. Civilian assemblies remain nonviolent but noncompliant.”

Tobin, who sat on the floor repairing a cable with one of Cassian’s tools, looked up. “Nonviolent but noncompliant. That may be my favorite official insult.”

Sera did not smile, but her eyes softened. “It means the city is still standing.”

The maintenance voice continued. “Several station personnel have requested access to detainee for personal statement correction. Requests denied. Unverified reports of prayer gatherings in service corridors. Command has ordered corridor cameras reviewed.”

Leva, sitting near Dr. Venn with her fractured arm bound close, closed her eyes. “That will put them at risk.”

“Can they identify faces?” Nalen asked.

Leva nodded. “If the cameras were active.”

Oren, still weak on a pallet beside the workroom wall, answered before she could continue. “Service corridor three has a blind spot near the coolant manifold. I used it for years to avoid supervisors.”

Dr. Venn looked down at him. “You should be resting.”

“I am resting with helpful details.”

“You are speaking with wounded ribs.”

“They have opinions, but not authority.”

For the first time, Dr. Venn almost smiled. Almost. Then the receiver caught another fragment, and the room turned back toward it.

A new voice came through. Male, low, and shaken. “This is Aurek-Seven service corridor three. I do not know who can hear. We copied the release. We heard the child. We heard the files. We heard the words from the roof. There are more of us than command knows. We are not armed. We are not organized. We are trying to tell the truth without getting one another killed.”

Nalen leaned forward, listening with painful attention.

The voice continued. “Jesus is still praying. A guard was sent in to order silence. He came out and asked for a copy of the surface release. The medic who treated the escort has begun writing statements from staff who saw Vale’s condition during transfer. One officer says command is considering moving Jesus again to prevent further contamination. We do not know when.”

Cassian’s hand tightened on the console. Moving Jesus again could mean many things, most of them worse. Another station. A deeper cell. A place beyond civilian channels. The release had slowed black custody, but it had not ended the danger.

The voice lowered. “If the moon shelter hears this, the evidence helped. But command is adapting. They are not trying to make Vale look innocent anymore. They are trying to make this about procedural confusion, emotional contagion, and unauthorized local escalation. They will sacrifice him to save the system if they must.”

Joren looked up sharply. “Sacrifice Vale.”

Avren’s face grew sad. “Fear consumes its own servants when they become inconvenient.”

The voice from Aurek-Seven kept speaking. “Jesus told one of us that truth must go deeper than one guilty man or the roots remain. I do not fully understand. I think He means we cannot let them make Vale the whole disease.”

The room became still.

Cassian felt the sentence enter him with force. Vale had become the face of the cruelty they saw, and rightly so. He had struck Jesus, threatened the city, buried records, weaponized procedure, and tried to make fear look like mercy. But Jesus was right. The system was already there before Vale. It trained Varek. It lied to Joren’s mother. It sealed repair shops. It named prisoners as dangerous because their humanity was inconvenient. If Vale alone fell and everything else remained, the city would have a scapegoat instead of repentance.

Nalen lowered his gaze. “That is harder.”

“Yes,” Cassian said.

Joren’s expression tightened. “It means justice cannot stop at the man easiest to name.”

No one replied quickly. The thought cost everyone something. Naming one villain could give pain a place to land. Seeing the wider truth required more courage and more restraint. It demanded that anger remain honest without becoming lazy.

The voice from the station faded into static. Cassian kept tuning, but the signal slipped away.

Sera looked toward the evidence drive. “We may need a second release.”

Tobin’s face fell. “The first one nearly invited every armed craft in range to our doorstep.”

Sera turned to him. “I know.”

“I was there. I remember vividly.”

“We do not have to decide this second.”

Cassian looked at the receiver, then at the room. “Not yet.”

Nalen seemed relieved by the answer and burdened by it at the same time. “What would a second release even say?”

Cassian thought of the station voice. Truth must go deeper than one guilty man or the roots remain. “It would show the pattern without exposing the people who are trying to help.”

Leva shifted carefully. “The wafer has system policy files. Not just Vale’s requests. I saw folders we did not open.”

Sera nodded. “Containment protocols. Detainee classification guidance. Civilian narrative control templates.”

Tobin leaned back against the wall. “So the evil has paperwork.”

“It always does,” Dr. Venn said.

Cassian looked at the data drive resting near the isolated reader. They had opened enough to expose Vale’s lies. They had not opened the deeper policy files because they had been focused on protecting Jesus, Lysa, Tovan’s record, and the immediate false charges. Now the next layer had arrived. The surface commander was being separated from the system that made him useful. If they allowed that story to stand alone, the truth would be narrowed.

Avren spoke from near the heater. “Do not open more until you know why.”

Cassian turned toward her.

She looked at the evidence drive. “The first release had a clear purpose. It protected the vulnerable and stopped a lie from hardening. If you open deeper files now, do it because love requires the roots to be exposed, not because your anger needs a larger target.”

Joren lowered his head. Kerrit did too. Cassian felt the correction reach him as well. Anger could disguise itself as discernment once it learned the language of truth. He had to watch that in himself.

They waited, not idly, but with hands busy. The post needed care. The recycler’s flow slowed again, so Cassian and Tobin cleaned the intake while Lysa handed them tools and asked whether water could get tired. The heater coil began making a high whining sound, and Sera discovered the cracked relay was warping under the load. Brant found a way to redirect warmth from the freighter’s dormant engine housing into the main room for short bursts without lighting up the whole canyon on scans. Dr. Venn changed bandages, checked fevers, and declared that no one in the shelter had earned the right to collapse without permission.

The work kept them from becoming only listeners. That mattered. News without faithful labor could turn the soul into a room full of fear. Cassian found himself repeating the phrase that had begun guiding them. The next faithful work. Not the whole future. Not every answer. The next faithful work.

By midcycle, they opened the deeper files.

They did it in the freighter’s cargo bay again, using the isolated reader. This time Avren came with them from the beginning, not because she understood systems, but because they trusted the way she understood the human heart. Leva sat beside the reader to explain garrison file categories. Joren came too, though he asked someone else to read aloud when files touched Tovan’s case. Nalen stood behind Cassian with one hand resting on the cargo frame. Sera operated the reader. Tobin watched the disconnected outbound link like it might betray them through sheer personality.

The containment protocol files were cold. They described how to handle disruptive religious figures, grief-driven assemblies, local martyr narratives, emotionally contagious testimony, and unauthorized moral language within occupied communities. Cassian hated that phrase most. Unauthorized moral language. The system did not merely fear weapons. It feared people using words like mercy, truth, sin, repentance, neighbor, and God outside official permission. It feared moral speech because moral speech made obedience answer to Someone higher than command.

Leva explained quietly. “These are not written for one town. They are templates.”

Nalen’s jaw tightened. “Used elsewhere?”

“Yes.”

Cassian kept reading. The protocols advised authorities to avoid direct theological dispute unless necessary. Instead, they were told to reframe spiritual claims as emotional instability, grief exploitation, civic disorder, or foreign agitation. They were instructed to isolate visible leaders, discredit witnesses through personal history, redirect public attention toward property damage or procedural violations, and offer selective leniency to fracture communities under pressure.

Joren looked sick. “They already had words for what they would do to us.”

Sera nodded. “Before they knew your names.”

The civilian narrative templates confirmed the same pattern. There were blank fields where local names could be inserted. Child witness, grieving family member, former detainee, compromised guard, unauthorized healer, religious agitator. Lysa’s planned misuse had not been invented from nothing. It was a template filled with her life. Varek’s guilt could be framed as emotional breakdown. Joren’s confession could be framed as grief propaganda. Mara’s voice could be framed as radicalization of a bereaved relative. Even Dr. Venn’s medical statements could be dismissed as the work of an unlicensed practitioner aligned with fugitives.

Dr. Venn, who had entered silently at some point, read that line and gave a low, humorless laugh. “Unlicensed practitioner. They should fear me more accurately.”

No one laughed with ease, but the remark kept the anger from swallowing the room whole.

Cassian sat back. “This is bigger than Vale.”

Nalen nodded. “And older.”

Leva pointed to another folder. “There are station objections. Not everyone accepted these protocols.”

Sera opened it. The records showed internal disputes from legal officers, medical staff, logistics personnel, and even a few security supervisors. Most objections were careful and self-protective, but they existed. Some warned that suppressing religious witness often increased unrest. Others argued that falsifying grief narratives created long-term instability. A medical officer had written that denying treatment as leverage violated basic station ethics, though the note had been marked as impractical humanitarian objection.

Tobin frowned. “Impractical humanitarian objection sounds like something decent people get called before someone ignores them.”

Leva nodded. “Yes.”

One file contained a list of prior incidents where similar containment protocols had been used. Names of settlements, moons, border stations, mining communities, and refugee corridors. Many were coded, but not all. Cassian felt the wider map of suffering open before him. Their city was not the first. Jesus had entered this place, but the roots of fear stretched beyond the settlement and beyond Aurek-Seven.

Nalen spoke quietly. “If we release this, it changes the story.”

Cassian looked at him. “How?”

“It stops being only about what Vale did to Jesus and the city. It becomes about the machine that taught men like Vale how to bury truth.”

Joren’s eyes stayed on the screen. “That needs to happen.”

Avren nodded, but her face remained solemn. “Yes. But when truth widens, so does danger. People may feel overwhelmed. Some may turn from the personal wound because the larger system feels too large to face. The release must keep the human names at the center, or the roots will become an idea instead of a thing people recognize in their own street.”

That was true. Cassian could feel it. The policy files were terrible, but they were abstract. Lysa was not abstract. Tovan was not abstract. Derso was not abstract. Jesus struck on the roof was not abstract. If the second release became only systems and protocols, people might understand the scale but lose the heart. If it stayed only with the heart, the system might survive by sacrificing Vale. The truth needed both.

They built the second release around that balance. It began with the human witness already known: Jesus did not call for violence; prisoners and citizens stood because they had been seen; named people had been harmed by a system that preferred categories to souls. Then it included excerpts from the containment templates showing that the effort to discredit them came from established policy, not one commander’s temper. It exposed the phrase unauthorized moral language because everyone in the cargo bay agreed people needed to see that. It included proof of narrative templates used to manipulate child witnesses, grieving families, guilty guards, and medical testimony, with vulnerable names redacted. It included internal objections from station personnel, protected where necessary, to show that conscience existed inside the system too.

The cover statement took longer. Joren wanted stronger wording. Nalen wanted clearer warning against violence. Leva wanted protections for station staff who might now come forward. Dr. Venn wanted every medical denial named bluntly. Sera wanted the release short enough to spread before suppression. Tobin wanted the beacon system not to be involved again, which everyone appreciated but could not fully honor.

Cassian wrote the first draft, then read it aloud.

“This second record is released because the first lie was not born in one man alone. Commander Vale acted with cruelty and must answer for what he did, but the evidence shows that the same machinery of fear existed before him and will continue after him unless truth reaches the roots. These records show prepared methods for discrediting grief, children, medical witnesses, repentant guards, and communities who speak of mercy, justice, repentance, and God outside official permission. Do not let one guilty commander become the place where truth stops. Do not answer this with hatred. Hatred makes fear easier to govern. Keep the human names at the center. Protect the vulnerable. Preserve the evidence. Tell the truth in love, and do not surrender the word neighbor to those who only understand control.”

The room remained quiet when he finished.

Avren’s eyes were wet. “That is close.”

Dr. Venn folded her arms. “Add medical denial as a pattern, not an exception.”

Leva nodded. “And say that some inside the station objected. If people think everyone in uniform is the same, those trying to tell the truth may be killed before they can help.”

Joren looked down. “That is hard for me.”

Avren answered gently. “Then it is good that you said it aloud.”

They revised the statement. The final version carried the weight more cleanly. It did not soften Vale’s guilt. It did not flatten every guard into one face. It named the pattern. It protected helpers. It warned the city not to let righteous anger become a weapon against anyone wearing a uniform. It called for records to be preserved, families to be protected, medical care to be given, and all charges against Jesus to be judged in the light of the released evidence.

Then came the same old problem. Sending it.

The first survey sled was gone. The emergency beacon was gone. The main transmitter was gone. The garrison was watching relay shadows now. Any second burst from the same moon region could bring a full sweep. Sera searched every system still alive and found nothing strong enough. Tobin checked the freighter’s backup locator and declared it too weak to do anything except disappoint their descendants. Oren suggested the scout pod’s short antenna could be rebuilt from the wreckage, but that would require returning to the crash site. Brant said the search craft might have already scanned that area after the distress pulse.

Cassian stared at the map for a long time.

The answer, when it came, was so simple he distrusted it.

“We do not send it from here,” he said.

Nalen looked over. “Where, then?”

Cassian pointed to the dead moon’s old maintenance network. “The search craft destroyed the decoy sled at the ridge, but the blast may have thrown beacon fragments into the upper ravine. If even one transmission coil survived, we could turn it into a passive repeater. Not a broadcaster. A repeater. We load the release into a low-power pulse from here, bounce it off the coil when the garrison channel passes over the relay shadow, and let Aurek-Seven’s own leaked maintenance network pull it in.”

Tobin stared at him. “You want to whisper at a broken piece of exploded beacon and hope a garrison hears it.”

Cassian considered that. “Yes.”

“That is not a plan. That is a parable.”

Sera leaned over the map. “It might work because they will be watching for active transmitters, not dead debris reflecting a maintenance pulse.”

Leva’s face sharpened with thought. “If the station’s maintenance band is already unstable from internal leaks, a reflected pulse could be mistaken for another local duplication node.”

Nalen nodded slowly. “Meaning they might search inside the station first.”

“Which buys the moon time,” Cassian said.

Tobin rubbed his face. “I miss when bad ideas sounded obviously bad.”

The difficult part was retrieving the coil. Someone had to go to the ridge where the search craft destroyed the decoy. The area might be watched. The blast could have left hot fragments, unstable rock, or trace markers. The team would need to go during the coldest window, carry no active signals, find the coil by sight and touch, and return without leading anything back.

Cassian could not go. Dr. Venn made that clear before anyone asked. Joren could not go either. Leva and Oren were out of the question. Derso could barely sit upright. Avren needed to remain with the shelter. Sera and Nalen would go. Brant insisted because he knew how blast fragments settled in low gravity rock. Tobin insisted too, surprising everyone, including himself.

Sera looked at him. “You hate ridge work.”

“I hate many things I still do.”

“It may be watched.”

“I know.”

“You do not have to prove anything.”

Tobin’s expression softened in a way Cassian had rarely seen. “I am not proving. I am coming back with you.”

Sera held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Then stay quiet when I tell you.”

“I have been preparing badly for that my whole life.”

Before the team left, Nalen pulled Cassian aside near the outer corridor. The shelter was busy around them, but the small space between the brothers felt private.

“You are sure about staying?” Nalen asked.

Cassian glanced at the bandage on his wrist. The skin around it was hot, and his shoulder still throbbed from the cargo shell impact. “No. I want to go.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Cassian looked at him. “I am sure staying is right.”

Nalen nodded. “I needed to hear the difference.”

Cassian studied his brother’s face. “You come back.”

“I will try hard.”

“That line is getting old.”

“It is still honest.”

Cassian reached out and gripped his shoulder. “Then hear this too. You do not have to become the bravest man in every room to be my brother.”

Nalen looked down for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes were bright. “And you do not have to keep every broken thing working to be worth staying with.”

The words entered Cassian quietly but deeply. Worth staying with. He had not known he needed them until they landed. He nodded once because speaking would have made too much show of something sacred.

The ridge team left through the crawl exit under deep shadow. Cassian stayed at the receiver with Leva, who helped prepare the release packet for the low-power pulse. Joren continued copying the name record by hand. Kerrit remained with Derso and Dr. Venn. Avren and Lysa sorted the last useful blankets, though Lysa kept glancing at the crawl hatch until Avren gently redirected her hands.

Waiting came again, but it no longer felt like emptiness. It had become part of their obedience. Cassian tuned the receiver to the coldest band and tracked for search sweep residue. Twice he heard distant probe chatter, but neither signal moved toward the ridge team. Once a garrison channel opened long enough to reveal that Aurek-Seven was still searching for the evidence breach and that Jesus remained in isolation. Then, unexpectedly, the channel caught a few words from the cell.

A guard’s voice said, “They are still singing.”

Jesus answered, “Yes.”

“Does that please You?”

A pause followed.

Then Jesus said, “It grieves Me when they suffer. It pleases My Father when fear does not own them.”

The signal slipped away.

Cassian sat back slowly. It grieves Me when they suffer. He held onto that. There had been moments when the spread of truth almost felt exhilarating, like a victory unfolding. But Jesus did not rejoice in suffering as if it were proof of loyalty. He saw the pain. He grieved it. The Father was pleased by faith, not by the wounds fear inflicted. That distinction guarded Cassian’s heart from turning hardship into something romantic.

Leva looked at him. “I needed to hear that.”

“So did I.”

The ridge team returned later than expected. Too late by enough minutes that the shelter had grown painfully quiet. When the crawl hatch finally opened, Brant entered first, breathing hard, carrying a small scorched piece of beacon housing wrapped in cloth. Sera came next with dust across her face and a shallow cut above one eyebrow. Tobin followed with his arm around Nalen, who was limping.

Cassian stood fast. “What happened?”

Nalen waved him off. “Rock slide.”

Tobin gave him a look. “A rock slide caused by you stepping where Sera specifically said not to step.”

Sera closed the hatch. “Quietly. I said quietly.”

Nalen looked at Cassian. “I stepped quietly in the wrong place.”

Dr. Venn emerged with the expression of a woman vindicated by fresh injuries. “Bring him here.”

“It is my ankle,” Nalen said.

“And apparently your pride. I can examine both.”

Cassian helped Nalen sit near the workroom while Sera handed him the wrapped beacon piece. Inside it, blackened and bent, was a transmission coil. Not intact, but not destroyed.

“Will it work?” Sera asked.

Cassian turned it gently in his hand. “It is offended, but alive.”

Tobin leaned against the wall, catching his breath. “You and broken machines have unhealthy optimism.”

“Did anything follow you?”

Sera shook her head. “Not that we saw. Search sweep moved north while we were in the ravine. We stayed under rock until it passed.”

Nalen winced as Dr. Venn touched his ankle. “The coil landed near the blast scar. Brant found it.”

Brant lowered himself onto a crate. “Old eyes are useful when young people are busy falling.”

Nalen accepted that without argument, which told Cassian the ankle hurt more than he admitted.

They built the passive repeater in the control room. Cassian worked with one hand and let Leva handle the finer connections when his wrist shook. Sera aligned the coil to the receiver’s old output loop. Tobin supplied commentary until Dr. Venn told him silence would improve his medical outlook. Joren compressed the packet again, making sure the protected names remained protected. Avren prayed quietly while mending another torn blanket. Lysa watched the coil as if it were another star being given a job.

The timing mattered. Aurek-Seven would cross the relay shadow in less than an hour. The pulse had to be weak enough not to trace directly, strong enough to wake the coil, and shaped closely enough to the station’s maintenance noise to slip inside the confusion. Cassian’s hands moved slowly, carefully. He could feel fever at the edge of his focus, but he pushed no harder than necessary. He had learned that breaking himself was not faithfulness if the work needed him steady.

When the window opened, everyone gathered.

The shelter went dark except for the receiver and the small glow of the patched pulse unit. Cassian looked around the room. Nalen sat with his ankle wrapped, jaw tight from pain. Sera stood beside Tobin, one hand on his arm. Brant leaned against the wall. Joren held the name record. Leva sat close enough to watch the signal. Oren lay awake, lips moving in silent prayer. Dr. Venn stood with Derso and Kerrit near the workroom. Avren held Lysa’s hand.

Cassian breathed once, then sent the pulse.

The unit barely made a sound. No dramatic burst. No alarm. Only a faint flicker across the receiver panel as the packet left the post, touched the damaged coil, and vanished into the relay shadow.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then Aurek-Seven’s maintenance band erupted.

Not loudly at first. A few confused signals. A system query. A repeated file request. Then the second release began appearing inside the station’s own internal channels, not as a distress broadcast from outside, but as if it had awakened within the walls. Cassian watched the receiver catch fragments of the cover statement.

The first lie was not born in one man alone.

Prepared methods for discrediting grief, children, medical witnesses, repentant guards, and communities who speak of mercy.

Do not let one guilty commander become the place where truth stops.

Unauthorized moral language.

The phrase seemed to strike the station hardest. It repeated across several channels, first as part of the release, then in voices reading it aloud with disbelief. Unauthorized moral language. Someone laughed bitterly over an open maintenance line. Someone else said, “They meant prayer.” Another answered, “They meant conscience.”

The garrison command channel rose in alarm. “Contain internal duplication. Lock maintenance bands. Identify origin node.”

Another voice answered, confused. “Origin appears internal.”

Sera closed her eyes in relief. “It worked.”

Tobin whispered, “The dead debris sermon has succeeded.”

Aurek-Seven became noise. Official orders, station staff whispers, copied fragments, attempts to lock systems, other attempts to preserve the files. The release had entered the station like a rumor with evidence attached. It would not reach everyone. Some would reject it. Some would fear it. Some would use it wrongly. But it had gone deeper than Vale now. It had named the roots.

Then the receiver caught a channel from the city.

Mara’s voice came through broken but fierce. “We have the second record. The lower quarter has it. The tower guards have it. Someone projected the phrase unauthorized moral language onto the wall outside Rell Repair. People are laughing and crying because that is what they tried to outlaw. They wanted to make conscience sound illegal.”

Another voice joined hers. The fruit seller. “My daughter says mercy does not need a permit.”

Lysa laughed before she could stop herself, then covered her mouth. The room’s tension broke into soft, exhausted laughter. Even Dr. Venn’s face moved.

Mara continued, “Listen. The city is shifting. Not safe. Not free. But shifting. Some who were ready to turn people over are stopping because the files show how fear fractures communities on purpose. Some guards are warning families before raids. Some are still cruel. Do not think this is clean. But truth is making the lie work harder.”

Truth is making the lie work harder. Cassian repeated the sentence silently. That was what they had been seeing all along. The darkness was not gone. It was laboring now. It had to explain, deny, reclassify, sacrifice, suppress, and chase. Before Jesus entered, fear had moved with ease. Now every lie had to fight through names.

The city signal faded, replaced by static, then a garrison channel again. This time the voice belonged to the station speaker who had first told them Jesus was praying.

“Moon shelter, if you hear. Second release received. Station staff are copying protected version. Command cannot isolate all nodes. Some officers are arguing that detainee cannot be moved again without full review because public and internal records are too exposed. Vale’s inquiry expanded. He is not the root, but he may be the first branch to break.”

Cassian gripped the console. “And Jesus?”

The receiver could not carry his question, but the speaker answered the question the shelter needed.

“Jesus remains in isolation. When the second record spread, someone near His cell read the cover statement aloud. He said, ‘Let truth go to the roots, and let love keep the axe from becoming hatred.’”

Avren bowed her head. “Lord, help us.”

The speaker continued, “He is asking to speak with Vale again.”

Joren looked up sharply. “Why?”

No one could answer.

The channel faded for several seconds. When it returned, it carried another sound. Footsteps. A door. A guard voice announcing supervised access. Then Vale’s voice, hoarse and emptied of its former polish.

“They released the protocols.”

Jesus answered, “Yes.”

“They will blame me first.”

“Yes.”

“They should.”

Jesus did not soften the truth. “Yes.”

The silence after that was long.

Vale spoke again, and his voice broke in a way that made the room feel exposed. “I wanted them afraid because I was afraid of what would happen if they were not.”

Jesus answered, “Now you are nearer to truth.”

“I ruined lives.”

“Yes.”

“I buried names.”

“Yes.”

“I struck You.”

“Yes.”

“I used children.”

Jesus’ voice remained steady, but sorrow deepened in it. “Yes.”

Vale made a sound that might have been anger or grief. “Say something else.”

Jesus said, “Come into the light.”

Vale’s breath shook. “I do not deserve light.”

“No one deserves light. The Father gives it because He is merciful.”

“If I confess, I lose everything.”

Jesus answered, “If you confess, you stop offering others to protect what sin has already taken from you.”

Another silence. Then Vale whispered, “What do I do?”

The shelter went completely still.

Jesus said, “Tell the truth without asking the wounded to comfort you. Preserve the records you tried to bury. Release those held under your false reports. Name the dead. Accept judgment from God before you face judgment from men. Begin there.”

Begin there. Not escape there. Not be praised there. Not be healed without consequence there. Begin there.

The feed broke into static before Vale answered.

Joren was shaking. Kerrit too. Nalen had one hand over his mouth. Cassian could feel his own heart pounding. He did not know whether Vale would obey. He did not know whether the station would allow him to confess. He did not know whether confession could survive the machinery already moving around him. But Jesus had given the man a beginning, and in that beginning the difference between cheap remorse and repentance became painfully clear.

Lysa whispered, “Is Vale going to become good?”

No one answered quickly.

Avren drew her close. “He is being called into truth. We will see whether he follows.”

The child nodded, solemn and unsatisfied, which was probably the right response.

The receiver lost the garrison channel after that. Cassian lowered the power before the system overheated. The second release had gone out. The city had it. The station had it. Jesus had spoken to Vale again. The roots had been named, though not removed. The shelter sat in the quiet after action, when the soul wants resolution and receives responsibility instead.

Nalen leaned back against the wall, his injured ankle stretched in front of him. Cassian sat beside him. For a long while, the brothers watched the dim receiver lights fade to their resting glow.

“You think Vale will confess?” Nalen asked.

“I do not know.”

“I want him to.”

“So do I.”

Nalen looked at him. “That surprises me.”

Cassian thought about it. “I want him to tell the truth. I want the people he hurt protected. I want the records released. I want him stopped. I do not know what I feel about his soul yet.”

“That is honest.”

Cassian nodded. “Jesus seems willing to go places in mercy I am not ready to enter.”

Nalen looked toward Joren, who sat with the name record held against his chest. “Maybe we follow as far as we can today.”

That was enough. It had to be. Cassian leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Around him, the shelter breathed in fragile rhythm. Water dripped. The heater hummed. Derso slept. Oren murmured in pain, and Dr. Venn answered him with a low command to stay where life could still reach him. Lysa whispered something to Avren about mercy not needing a permit, and Avren’s quiet laugh warmed the room more than the heater.

The next faithful work would come soon. It always did.

For now, truth had gone deeper. Love had kept it from becoming revenge. And somewhere in an isolation cell on Aurek-Seven, Jesus was still calling the guilty, guarding the wounded, and teaching frightened people how to stand in the light without turning it into fire.

Chapter Seventeen

The shelter did not become peaceful after Vale’s voice vanished into static. It became quieter in the way a room becomes quiet after a door opens onto something too large for anyone to step through quickly. Cassian stayed beside the receiver with his back against the wall, listening to the low resting hum and trying not to imagine the isolation cell on Aurek-Seven too clearly. He could still hear Jesus’ words to Vale inside him. Tell the truth without asking the wounded to comfort you. Preserve the records you tried to bury. Release those held under your false reports. Name the dead. Accept judgment from God before you face judgment from men. Begin there.

Begin there sounded simple until Cassian thought about what it would require. Vale would have to stop managing appearances. He would have to let the truth speak even when it did not make him sound misunderstood, wounded, or noble. He would have to tell the city what he had done without demanding that the city admire his honesty. He would have to name people whose names he had erased and accept that some of them would never thank him for finally doing what he should have done long ago. Cassian understood that in a smaller way. There were apologies he still owed his brother that could not be made in one dramatic moment. There were years of silence that could not be repaired by one brave sentence.

Nalen sat beside him with his injured ankle wrapped and propped on a folded panel. Dr. Venn had ordered him not to stand unless the shelter was collapsing, and then only after asking whether the collapse had medical approval. He had tried to argue once, which had ended quickly. Now he sat with his hands clasped over his knee, staring at the receiver as though he could see through it into the garrison.

“He might not do it,” Nalen said.

Cassian nodded. “I know.”

“I want him to because it would help. I do not know if I want him to because Jesus called him.”

Cassian looked at him. “That is more honest than most people would say.”

Nalen breathed through the pain in his ankle. “I am tired of having clean-sounding reasons for mixed things.”

The sentence settled between them. Cassian looked across the room toward Joren, who sat near the name record with his head bowed. The young soldier had heard Vale come close to confession, but close was not the same as repentance. Everyone in the shelter had learned that by now. Close could become a doorway. Close could also become another place to hide, a place where a man feels the pain of truth but refuses the obedience it requires.

Avren moved quietly among the sleeping and half-sleeping bodies near the heater. Lysa had finally fallen asleep with her cheek against a folded blanket, one hand tucked beneath her chin. Oren slept badly in the workroom, waking whenever his ribs pulled too sharply against his breath. Leva sat nearby with her fractured arm wrapped, answering Dr. Venn’s questions about Aurek-Seven when the doctor asked them and falling silent when memory became too heavy. Derso slept in short stretches, and Kerrit remained beside him, no longer trying to appear useful every second. He had learned that staying was sometimes the work.

The receiver crackled before anyone expected the next window. Cassian sat forward immediately. Sera crossed from the power wall and lowered the heater draw without being asked. Tobin, who had been working at the freighter access with Brant, ducked into the room with a coil of wire hanging from one shoulder and a look of weary suspicion.

“That machine is developing dramatic timing,” Tobin said.

Cassian tuned carefully. “It may be a residual channel.”

The static cleared into the surface band first. It was not Mara. It was a male voice, older, breathless, and speaking from somewhere with crowd noise behind him. Cassian recognized him after a moment as the fruit seller from the market. His voice had become familiar through fragments, though Cassian still did not know his name.

“This is Callen from the lower market,” the man said. “If the moon shelter hears, the second record changed things. The patrols tried to say Vale alone lost judgment. The files showed otherwise. People are asking what else was prepared before any of us stood in the street. They are asking who wrote templates for our grief before they knew our names. Some are angry in a way that frightens me. Some are steady. Some are bringing food to families they were afraid to visit yesterday.”

The background noise rose, then dropped as he moved away from the crowd. “My daughter asked me to say this. She says the girl from the tower was right. Mercy does not need a permit. I did not teach her that. Jesus did something to this city, and now my child is braver than her father.”

His voice broke slightly, but he continued. “Rell Repair is still sealed. Lamps remain. Someone tried to smash them, and a guard stopped him. Not because he loves us. I think because he is afraid of what he has seen in himself. That may be enough for today.”

The signal shifted, and Mara’s voice came in over his. “Callen, move east. Patrol sweep is coming through the arch.”

The transmission cut.

Cassian looked at the receiver, then at Nalen. “Callen.”

Nalen gave a faint nod. “A name.”

It mattered. Another person had stepped out from the crowd and become known. The fruit seller was Callen. His daughter was still unnamed to them, but no longer abstract. She had a father who had almost chosen work over her until Jesus stopped beside a fruit crate and told him to go home. That one sentence had now become lamps, testimony, and a child’s wisdom moving through a city.

Joren looked up from the name record. “Should I write him down?”

Cassian turned toward him. “Yes. Callen from the lower market. Daughter protected. Name not yet known.”

Joren wrote carefully. He had begun adding notes beside names when full details were not safe or complete. Not gossip. Not speculation. Just enough to honor without exposing. The record had become a strange kind of holy work. It could not save anyone by itself, but it resisted erasure.

The receiver slid into garrison noise again. Sera adjusted the gain while Cassian steadied the line. The Aurek-Seven channel sounded chaotic beneath its formal surface. Commands overlapped. Someone demanded that all secondary copies of the second release be surrendered. Someone else reported that service corridor walls had been marked with the phrase truth must go deeper than one guilty man. A third voice warned that staff were using prayer gatherings as cover for file duplication.

Tobin leaned against the wall. “They keep saying these things as if the words themselves do not spread them.”

Leva answered quietly from the workroom doorway. “Command has a habit of turning every warning into a map.”

A sharper voice cut through the channel. “Supervisory quarters security breach. Commander Vale has requested formal statement entry. Legal command present. Religious detainee not present. Repeat, religious detainee not present.”

Everyone in the room shifted toward the receiver.

Nalen’s hand tightened over his knee. “Vale.”

Cassian adjusted the tuning with the gentleness he used on fragile circuits. The signal wavered, then found a recording room feed. At first they heard only movement. Chairs. A door seal. A voice asking Vale to state his name, rank, and reason for statement. Vale answered with the old title, but it sounded different now, as if the title had become a coat soaked through with rain.

“Commander Orsan Vale,” he said. “Surface security authority suspended pending inquiry.”

A legal officer spoke. “You are entering this statement voluntarily?”

Vale paused. “No.”

The room on Aurek-Seven went quiet.

The legal officer’s voice sharpened. “Clarify.”

Vale breathed unevenly. “I am not here because my conscience is noble. I am here because the truth has cornered me, and if I do not speak now, I will continue lying until nothing human remains.”

Cassian felt the shelter go still. Joren’s pen stopped on the page. Kerrit stood in the workroom doorway. Avren came closer with Lysa still asleep behind her. Dr. Venn appeared beside Leva, her face unreadable.

The legal officer said, “That is not an acceptable formal opening.”

Vale answered, “Then write that down too.”

For the first time, Cassian heard something in Vale that was not command, not performance, not panic disguised as strength. It was not goodness yet. It was not humility fully formed. It was a man standing at the edge of the lie he had served and finding no safe language left.

Vale continued before the legal officer could regain control. “I misclassified the surface incident involving the detainee known as Jesus. The sedition charge was unsupported by the evidence available to me. I knew that before transfer. I pursued emergency authority because the public failure threatened my command position and because the detainee’s influence exposed instability already present in the lower district and inside tower personnel.”

The legal officer interrupted. “Commander, you are advised not to characterize motives beyond procedural scope.”

“My motives are part of the procedure,” Vale said. “That is what I helped hide.”

Nalen’s eyes lifted toward Cassian. Neither spoke. Vale was not giving the clean statement officials wanted. He was beginning where Jesus told him to begin.

Vale’s voice grew rougher. “I authorized suppression of civilian witness. I approved public framing that described detainees as dangerous before individual review. I permitted draft narratives using a minor witness as evidence of emotional manipulation. I struck the detainee on the tower roof and in the lower holding level. I threatened civilians with collective punishment if the detainee did not kneel. I ordered record destruction related to tower detention logs. That order failed in part because Trooper Varek Ruun disobeyed it.”

Joren’s face tightened at Varek’s name. Avren noticed but did not touch him. She let him stand inside the hard thing without making comfort another kind of pressure.

Vale continued. “The death record of Tovan Pell was altered under tower security culture before my direct command, but I benefited from and preserved the same culture. I did not restore the record when I had power to do so. I treated erased names as administrative convenience. This was not an isolated failure. It was a pattern.”

The legal officer’s voice came sharper now. “This statement is exceeding agreed scope.”

“Yes,” Vale said. “The scope was another lie.”

The receiver crackled, but the signal held. Cassian realized he had leaned so close to the console that his injured wrist pressed against the edge. He eased back, not wanting pain to pull him away from what was happening.

Vale spoke again, and this time his voice changed. It did not become soft. It became heavier. “I do not ask forgiveness from the citizens under my command. I have no right to demand peace from those I made afraid. I do not ask the families of the detained, the missing, or the dead to carry my remorse. I ask that the records be preserved, that those held under false tower reports be reviewed immediately, and that the detainee Jesus be removed from sedition processing. His presence did not create the disorder. It revealed what fear had already built.”

No one in the shelter breathed easily. Cassian looked at Joren. Tears had gathered in the young man’s eyes, but his face remained steady. He was not relieved. That would have been too simple. He was witnessing a beginning that touched his brother’s death but did not undo it.

The legal officer said, “Commander Vale, this statement may be used against you in military tribunal, civil inquiry, or security command review.”

Vale’s answer came quietly. “Yes.”

“You understand that you may be detained pending charges?”

“Yes.”

“You understand that hostile civilian elements may use this confession to incite further unrest?”

Vale paused. When he answered, Jesus’ influence was unmistakable. “Then release the full statement with the warning that truth must not become vengeance. Do not hide my guilt to prevent their anger. Do not use their anger to hide the system. Release it.”

A second official voice entered, lower and more controlled than the legal officer. “This proceeding is suspended.”

Vale spoke over him. “No.”

The official voice sharpened. “Commander.”

Vale’s next words came fast, as if he knew the door was closing. “Jesus told me to name the dead. Tovan Pell. Sela Marrin. Ivo Chent. Rusk Halden. Miri of the east water line. Three unidentified from the freight raid whose names I never asked for because unnamed bodies made my reports easier. Lower detention transfer group seven, falsely marked as armed conspirators. Nalen Rell, held under expanded insurgent association without proper record. Derso Vennik, injured under questioning. Others in the logs. Preserve the logs. Do not let them—”

The feed cut.

Static swallowed the room.

Cassian kept his hand on the dial, fighting to regain the signal, but it was gone beneath a hard suppression tone. Sera moved to another band. Nothing. Leva tried a station maintenance offset from memory. Still nothing. The garrison had slammed the door shut.

The shelter remained frozen around the silence.

Joren lowered his pen. “He said Tovan.”

Avren answered softly, “Yes.”

“He said other names too.”

“Yes.”

Joren looked at the page, then at Cassian. “I do not know what to feel.”

Cassian nodded. “You do not have to decide fast.”

Joren’s face tightened. “Part of me hates that he said it. Part of me needed him to. Part of me wanted him to sound worse. Part of me wanted him to sound better. None of it brings Tovan back.”

“No,” Cassian said. “It does not.”

That truth needed to remain plain. Repentance did not raise the dead it had helped bury. Only God could raise the dead. Human confession could open records, stop lies, free captives, and begin repair, but it could not demand that grief become satisfied. Cassian understood that more deeply now. Mercy was not a shortcut around mourning. It was God’s presence inside the truth, as Jesus had said.

Derso’s weak voice came from the workroom. “He named me.”

Dr. Venn turned toward him. “Yes.”

“I was not sure the tower knew my name.”

Kerrit moved beside him. “Now the station heard it.”

Derso closed his eyes. “Mara will hear.”

The receiver suddenly sparked back to life on the surface band, not the garrison. Mara’s voice came through in the middle of a sentence, breathless and full of movement. “—heard it. We heard it. Vale’s statement broke through before they killed the feed. Lower quarter has fragments. The names are being repeated. Tovan Pell. Sela Marrin. Ivo Chent. Rusk Halden. Miri of the east water line. Derso Vennik. Nalen Rell.”

Nalen went still at his own name.

Mara continued, “People are angry. Some are shouting for blood. Others are saying what Jesus said. Truth must not become vengeance. The lamps outside Rell Repair are being carried to the tower steps. Not thrown. Carried. The fruit seller Callen is telling men to put down tools they picked up as weapons. His daughter is yelling at grown adults with terrifying effectiveness.”

A sound close to laughter moved through the room despite the weight.

Mara’s voice lowered. “Cassian, Nalen, if you hear this, the city knows Vale spoke. It knows the system tried to stop him. It knows the records exist. The tower guard is splitting wider. Some families are being released from holding because the names are too public now. Not all. Not enough. But some. Derso, your review file has been reopened. I am going to live long enough to insult whoever closed it.”

Derso whispered, “That is my sister.”

Mara continued. “Joren Pell, your mother heard Vale say Tovan’s name. She did not collapse. She stood in the old grain lift doorway and said, ‘Now write it where rain cannot wash it.’ People are carving the name into scrap metal plates because chalk can be removed.”

Joren covered his face. He did not weep loudly this time. The grief came quieter, deeper, with the strange strength of truth finally finding a public place.

Mara’s signal shook. “We have to move. Patrol line coming. If anyone hears from Jesus, tell us. The city is asking where He is. The city is asking why the man who told the truth is still bound.”

The signal ended.

The city is asking why the man who told the truth is still bound. The sentence remained after Mara’s voice vanished. Cassian looked toward the receiver. He had no answer, not one that could satisfy the city. Jesus had not been freed by the releases, the confession, the song, or the records. He remained in isolation while the truth He carried spread beyond every wall meant to contain it.

Nalen shifted, wincing at his ankle. “They will move to demand His release.”

Sera nodded. “The city?”

“And station staff,” Leva said. “If Vale’s confession reached internal channels, people inside will ask too.”

Tobin looked worried. “Asking makes command nervous. Nervous command makes bad decisions.”

Avren turned toward the receiver. “Then the next message must guard the city from becoming what fear can easily crush.”

Cassian knew what she meant. If the city stormed the tower or rioted, command could reframe everything again. The protocols had taught them that. Violence would become the story. Jesus would be named as the cause. Families would be punished. The guilty system would receive the excuse it wanted. But if the city stood with lamps, names, records, prayer, and nonviolent witness, fear would have to reveal itself more plainly.

“How do we send anything now?” Nalen asked.

No one answered. The beacon was gone. The repeater coil had likely burned out or become traceable after the second release. The transmitter was dead. The freighter could not safely fly. The receiver could listen but not speak beyond a weak local pulse that would not reach the city. Once again, truth gathered in them with no clear path outward.

Cassian stood carefully and walked to the wall map. He studied the old network until the lines blurred. The moon shelter, the ridge, the destroyed decoy, the maintenance lane, the debris field, Aurek-Seven’s orbit, the surface relay shadow. They had used almost every dead thing they could reach. Every pathway now carried risk.

Oren called from the workroom, voice weak but urgent. “The maintenance pod.”

Cassian turned. “Your pod crashed.”

“Yes,” Oren said. “But not all of it. The distress system was damaged, not gone. We removed the main wafer before you brought us here, but the pod still has its blackbox burst core. It is designed to survive impact and transmit only when physically triggered.”

Leva looked at him sharply. “That core is shielded.”

Oren nodded, then grimaced. “And short. Very short. It would not reach the city from here.”

Cassian followed the thought. “But it might reach Aurek-Seven when the station passes overhead.”

Sera looked at the orbit chart. “A direct upward burst?”

“Yes,” Oren said. “If you place it outside the canyon shadow during the overhead window. It will look like a crash recovery ping unless someone reads the packet.”

Tobin looked toward Cassian. “How many miracle scraps does this moon have?”

Cassian did not smile. “Enough for today, maybe.”

Leva shook her head slowly. “The burst core can only send one tight packet. It is not for long testimony.”

Avren’s eyes moved toward Lysa, then the receiver, then the evidence drive. “Then the message must be short.”

Nalen looked at Cassian. “What does the city need?”

Cassian thought about Mara’s words. People are angry. Some are shouting for blood. Others are saying what Jesus said. The city is asking where He is. The city is asking why the man who told the truth is still bound. A long release would not help now. The city had evidence. It had names. It had Vale’s confession fragments. What it needed was a clear word that could travel from Aurek-Seven back down through the channels already awake, a word that told them how to stand without becoming fuel for the lie.

He looked at Avren. “Truth must not become vengeance.”

She nodded. “And love must carry truth.”

Joren stood slowly with the name record in his hand. “And the dead must be named without using the dead to demand more death.”

That sentence came from a costly place. No one improved it.

Dr. Venn stepped into the control room. “And medical review must be immediate for those still held. Do not let spiritual language make bodies sound less urgent.”

Cassian nodded. “Yes.”

Leva added, “And Jesus must be removed from isolation and allowed independent witness review. That wording matters to station staff.”

Sera looked at the evidence drive. “We cannot put all that in one burst.”

“No,” Cassian said. “But we can send a statement that becomes a seed. Short enough to repeat. Clear enough to resist misuse.”

They wrote it together. It took longer than expected because every word had to carry weight without becoming a weapon. The final message was short, but not shallow.

“Jesus is not overcome. Vale’s confession must be preserved, but one guilty man must not become the end of truth. Name the dead. Free those held under false reports. Protect the vulnerable. Give medical care to the injured. Do not answer fear with vengeance. Stand with lamps, records, prayer, and courage that does not become hatred. Truth has gone out. Love must carry it now.”

They read it aloud in the shelter. Each person listened from the place where the words touched them. Joren listened at name the dead. Derso listened at free those held under false reports. Dr. Venn listened at medical care. Lysa listened at protect the vulnerable. Nalen listened at courage that does not become hatred. Cassian listened at Jesus is not overcome.

The next question was who would place the burst core outside the canyon.

Oren could not go. Leva could not go. Cassian should not, though his body argued with that less convincingly now. Nalen could not move fast with his ankle. Sera had already risked too much and was needed to align the receiver. Brant could carry the core, but he did not know the station timing well enough. Tobin surprised everyone by stepping forward before the debate began.

“I can do it.”

Sera turned on him. “No.”

He nodded. “That is a fair opening response.”

“Tobin.”

“I know the ridge from the sled launch. I know how to place a beacon because I have had to recover my own bad landings more than once. I can move quietly enough if I do not speak, which I admit is the difficult part. Sera, you need to align the receiver. Cassian needs to stay at the board. Nalen cannot run. Brant can come with me to carry the shielding plate, but I should set the core.”

Sera stared at him, and the room held its breath. Their marriage had been woven through jokes, corrections, shared danger, and unsaid fear since the freighter first reached the shed. Now the fear stood plainly between them.

“You do not need to prove yourself,” she said.

“I know.” His voice softened. “I am not trying to become brave in front of you. I am trying to do the part I can do.”

The words changed her face. She looked away for a moment, then back at him. “You come back.”

“I plan to continue being irritating.”

“That is not a promise.”

“It is my most reliable trait.”

She did not laugh. She stepped close and pressed her forehead briefly against his. “Come back.”

“I will try hard.”

Cassian and Nalen looked at each other at the familiar line, and even in the heaviness, something gentle passed between them. Trying hard had become the honest vow of people who knew they were not sovereign over outcomes.

Brant agreed to go with Tobin. They would carry the burst core to the upper ridge, place it under a shielding plate angled toward Aurek-Seven’s pass, trigger it, and return before any scan could lock their bodies. If the ping worked, the message would enter the garrison’s crash recovery system. If station staff still had conscience enough to copy it, it would spread. If not, it would be one more small act offered into the dark.

Before they left, Lysa approached Tobin with a folded strip of reflective panel she had been carrying since the dish broke. “For the signal,” she said.

Tobin looked at it. “Does it have special powers?”

“No,” she said. “It is broken and still reflects.”

He accepted it with unusual solemnity. “Then it belongs in our equipment.”

He tucked it into the shielding plate’s edge. Sera watched, and something in her fear softened just enough to let him go.

The shelter went into low-power silence as Tobin and Brant left through the upper cut. Cassian sat at the receiver with Sera beside him. Nalen sat on his other side, ankle wrapped, frustration held tightly in his jaw. Joren stood near the name record. Avren and Lysa sat together by the heater. Dr. Venn remained with Derso, Oren, and Leva, but the workroom door stayed open.

The overhead window approached.

Sera whispered the countdown from the old orbit chart. “Three minutes.”

Cassian checked the crash recovery band. Faint garrison noise moved behind it.

“Two minutes.”

No one spoke.

“One minute.”

The receiver caught a brief local click. Tobin’s signal. Ready.

Sera closed her eyes once, then opened them. “Window.”

The burst core fired.

The receiver lit with a sharp clean pulse, stronger than Cassian expected and gone almost as soon as it came. The message shot upward from the ridge, carrying their short statement into the garrison recovery band. For several seconds, nothing came back. Then Aurek-Seven answered with an automated ping.

Crash recovery packet received.

Cassian exhaled. “They got it.”

Sera whispered, “Come back, Tobin.”

The garrison band shifted. A station voice said, “Unexpected recovery packet. Origin lunar debris field. Contents nonstandard.” Another voice answered, “Route to quarantine.” A third voice, lower and familiar from the maintenance channel, cut in. “Copy it first.”

Then the short statement began repeating inside the garrison channel.

Jesus is not overcome.

Vale’s confession must be preserved.

Name the dead.

Free those held under false reports.

Do not answer fear with vengeance.

Truth has gone out. Love must carry it now.

The words repeated again, then fragmented as suppression began. But enough had entered. Cassian could hear station staff reading lines aloud. Someone in a corridor repeated Jesus is not overcome. Another voice said, “Send it down.” Another said, “Surface relays are waiting.”

The surface band woke seconds later. Mara’s voice broke through, crying and laughing. “We have it. Lamps stay. No weapons. Tell everyone. Lamps, records, prayer. No vengeance. Jesus is not overcome.”

The lower market voice, Callen, followed. “Put the tools down. Hold the lamps higher. Say the names.”

Elian Pell’s voice entered, older and strong with grief. “Tovan Pell. We name the dead. We do not make more mothers for the lie.”

Joren sank onto a crate, the name record against his chest.

The receiver filled with voices, too many to follow. The city was repeating the message. The station was repeating it. Official channels tried to crush it and helped spread pieces each time they named it. The shortness made it impossible to bury cleanly. It could be remembered. It could be spoken in streets. It could be whispered in corridors. It could be carried by people with no machines at all.

Then Sera stiffened. “Where is Tobin?”

Cassian shifted to the local band. Static. No click. No return signal. Sera stood, face going pale.

“Again,” she said.

Cassian tuned wider. Nothing.

Nalen tried to stand, pain flashing across his face. “I can go.”

“No,” Dr. Venn shouted from the workroom before anyone else could.

Sera grabbed a lamp and headed for the crawl exit. Cassian rose to follow, but Brant’s voice suddenly cracked through the local band, breathless and strained.

“Returning. Need help at upper cut. Tobin fell. Alive. Move fast.”

Sera was gone before the sentence ended.

Cassian turned to Nalen, who looked ready to tear his own ankle apart to follow. “Stay,” Cassian said.