Chapter 11: The Helix Summit and Borrus's Transmission

The broadcast came in on a standard Confederation emergency frequency at 1147 ship time, seventeen days out of Ironveil, while Samwell was running diagnostics on the secondary heat manifold and Merrick was sitting in the common space staring at a cup of protein broth he hadn't touched.

Pip caught it first. He was in the navigation bay running the receiver through its routine scan — a task Farro had given him partly because he was capable of it and partly because having something procedural to do seemed to keep his energy from becoming restlessness — when the emergency chime sounded and the automated transcript began scrolling. He read it once quickly, the way young people read, all velocity and surface, and then he read it again more slowly, and by the time he read it a third time his face had changed into something that hadn't finished deciding what it was.

He came forward and knocked on the cockpit frame.