Chapter 117 · The Argument

The wreckfield dimmed behind them as Stent eased the Faded Glory into a slow holding pattern. The pulse no longer pressed through the hull, but its shape remained in their thoughts like an afterimage. Eli shut down the primary console, stretched the tension from his shoulders, and followed Stent into the small common room.

They didn’t speak while they prepared their meal.

Just heated ration packs. Water. A smear of spice paste Stent pretended not to dislike. The ordinary sounds of spoons and metal containers felt almost out of place after what they’d seen—too mundane, too grounded.

They sat opposite each other at the narrow table, steam rising between them in faint curls that twisted with the ship’s slow drift.

Eli poked at his bowl. “This feels ridiculous,” he muttered. “Eating. Now.”

“It is necessary,” Stent said simply.

“Because you think better on a full stomach?”

“Because you think worse on an empty one,” Stent replied, which earned a quiet snort Eli didn’t mean to let out.

He took a bite anyway. The food tasted like nothing in particular, but it grounded him, gave him something simple to hold on to while his mind tried to sort through the impossible.

A long moment passed.

Eli finally said, “We can’t follow it.”

Stent didn’t look surprised. He only tilted his head, waiting. Waiting for Eli to elaborate his point.

Eli swallowed another mouthful, pushing through the knot in his throat. “We don’t know what’s out there. We don’t know if these things mean harm to us, or if the next one that jumps will drag us into a star, or a gravity well, or—hell—another galaxy entirely. We don’t know anything.”

“That is correct,” Stent said.

“Good,” Eli said. “Because that’s my point.”

“It is not a point,” Stent replied evenly. “It is a description.”

Eli stared at him. “You’re impossible.”

“So is the situation.”

The ship creaked softly as the temperature shifted. Tee wandered into the room, chirped once, and stationed himself near the table like a sentinel too polite to eavesdrop but too curious to leave.

Eli leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Stent… we’re following a theory. Not even a theory—barely a hypothesis. We have two pulses that might be communication, might be coordinates, or might be biological noise. And we’re talking about chasing them into gods-know-what.”

Stent chewed once, thoughtfully, placing his utensil down with slow precision.

“Discovery,” he said, “often resembles suicide.”

Eli blinked.

Stent continued, calm as if reading from a technical manual: “In the Ascendancy, first-contact expeditions regularly traverse unknown regions with no guarantee of return. Navigation through the Chaos itself is an exercise in trust—trust in mathematics, in instinct, in the skill of the pilot. The unknown is not a deterrent. It is a mandate.”

Eli stared at him across the dim room. “Stent… that’s not reassuring.”

“I did not intend it to be.”

They held each other’s gaze for a quiet moment—one man grounded, the other uncompromising—and something eased between them, neither concession nor victory, just acceptance that the path forward was not measured in safety.

Eli dropped his head into his hands, letting out a tired laugh. “Stars. We’re actually considering this.”

“We are.”

“And we might die.”

Stent’s voice was soft, but steady. “Not if we understand the message first.”

Eli lifted his gaze. “And if we don’t?”

Stent picked up his utensil again, the gesture small, certain.

“Then we follow anyway.”

They returned to the cockpit after dinner, bowls left to cool on the counter, the hum of the engines the only sound greeting them. The wreckfield still stretched outside the viewport like a suspended graveyard, its fragments drifting in lazy spirals that caught the faint light of distant stars. The pulse had faded almost entirely now, its signature collapsing into a thin line of residual energy clinging to the far edge of the sensors.

Stent eased into the pilot’s chair and rested both hands on the controls with the quiet certainty of someone solving a problem that had no instructions. Eli slid into his own seat, reactivating the filters, overlaying the last clean pulse against the faint remnants still echoing through the field.

A thin arc of distortion shimmered in the distance—soft, wavering, nearly invisible.

“There,” Eli said, pointing. “Trace it. That’s where the creature went.”

Stent adjusted their heading, turning the Faded Glory toward the pale ripple that marked the purrgil’s departure. The ship responded with a low, resonant hum, as though it, too, remembered the pulse and recognized its shape.

The distortion fluttered once. A delicate flicker. A breath.

And then, from behind a fractured slab of Destroyer hull, a second shape emerged—another purrgil, smaller than the last, gliding with slow, deliberate movements as if patrolling the dark. Its fins caught the scatterlight in muted streaks of violet and indigo. Its body rolled gently, revealing fresh scars tracing along its hide in pale ridges.

Eli sucked in a breath. “Another one.”

Stent said nothing. He only steadied the ship’s drift, allowing the creature space.

The purrgil lifted its head, eye gliding past the cockpit, and released a slow pulse of shimmering energy. The waveform blossomed across the sensors—perfectly matched to the earlier patterns, a signature repeated with deliberate precision.

Message. Invitation. Direction.

The creature paused, fins stilling.Then it folded space.

The stars bent. Light rippled. And the purrgil slipped into hyperspace, its body stretching into a luminous thread before vanishing entirely—no tunnel, no flare, just a fold of reality closing softly behind it.

The sensors quivered with the aftertrace.

Eli swallowed hard. “There. You saw it—there’s its ion signature.”

“Residual but readable,” Stent said. “We can follow.”

Eli glanced at him, nerves coiled beneath his ribs. “We actually doing this?”

Stent’s expression didn’t change. “We are.”

He pushed the thrusters forward by a fraction—still gentle, still respectful—aligning the Faded Glory with the faint trail left hanging in the dark.

Eli fastened his harness. “All right. Into the void, then.”

Stent engaged pursuit, the engines rising in a quiet, steady crescendo.

“We follow,” he said.

And the Faded Glory slipped after the purrgil’s fading path, chasing a creature that had rewritten the rules of the universe with a single breath.