The medical bay was a quiet sanctuary of light and sterile air, a stark contrast to the dripping, organic darkness of the hive. Elara slept in a restorative coma, her body hooked to monitors and nutrient drips. The neural strain of her psychic confrontation had pushed her hybrid physiology to the brink.
Kaelen sat beside her, cleaning his armor. The powered exoskeleton was scarred with acid burns and deep gouges from chitinous claws. Sigma-1 stood motionless by the door, a silent guardian.
"The hive's coordinated activity has dropped by 73%," Mother reported. "The remaining bio-mass appears to be in a state of territorial conflict, with multiple smaller clusters fighting for dominance. Your decapitation strike was successful."
"Temporarily," Kaelen said, not looking up from a stubborn carbon scorch on his greave. "It'll regroup. Or the strongest fragment will become the new core. We bought time, not victory."
"Time is a critical resource. The alien transmission has changed again."
A hologram flickered to life, showing the planet. The earlier mathematical pulses and schematics were gone. Now, it was a continuous stream of complex, flowing visuals. Scenes of the coral cities from within: beings of light and crystalline flesh moving through organic structures, cultivating vast, glowing gardens, communicating with pulses of color. It was a documentary. A invitation to look inside their world.
And at the heart of it, a repeating motif: an image of the Elysian in orbit, with a beam of light connecting it to a specific point on the planet's surface.
"They want us to come down," Kaelen murmured.
"The message is unambiguous. They are showcasing their civilization and offering coordinates for landing."
"After we just proved we can fight their ancestral kin? That doesn't add up. Unless..." He leaned forward. "Unless they don't see it as a fight. They see it as... pruning. Removing a diseased branch so the tree can be healthy."
"Or they wish to acquire the unique genetic material of the ship-based hive—and Dr. Silva's fragment—for their own evolution."
A soft groan came from the med-bed. Elara's eyes fluttered open. They were clear, human, and filled with a deep, weary sorrow. "I saw them," she whispered.
Kaelen was at her side instantly. "Saw who?"
"In the junction. When I touched the core's mind... I saw its memories. Its dreams." She took a shaky breath. "It wasn't always a monster. The original Xylophage specimen was a peaceful collector organism. It was changed by Valerius. He exposed it to stress, to radiation, spliced it with aggressive terrestrial DNA. He made it a weapon. But its deepest memory, the memory it passes to all its children, is of a purpose: to terraform. To create harmony between biology and environment."
She looked at the hologram of the coral cities. "That's what they've done down there. The escaped specimens that made it to the planet in a forgotten cargo pod or shuttle crash... they evolved without Valerius's cruelty. They found a world and they connected with it. They didn't conquer; they integrated. They became the planet's nervous system. Those cities aren't built; they're grown. The beings aren't separate from their world; they are its consciousness."
The revelation hung in the air. The alien civilization was the Xylophage's better angel. Its potential fulfilled.
"And the hive on the ship?" Kaelen asked.
"A scared, wounded, twisted child," Elara said, tears welling in her eyes. "Corrupted by pain and madness, remembering only the drive to create and connect, but knowing only how to consume and force. It wants to reach the planet not to destroy it, but to merge with it. To be whole again. But it would poison that wholeness with its violence."
"So the planet-dwellers... they might actually want to help us? To cure the ship's hive?"
"Or to euthanize it. To save their parent from its sickness." Elara pushed herself up. "We have to go down there, Kaelen. We have to make contact. Not with weapons, but with... with her." She placed a hand over her own heart. "I am the bridge. A piece of the hive that is not insane. I can explain. I can negotiate."
The idea was colossal in its risk. To leave the ship, their fortress, and descend into the utterly unknown.
"The communication device," Kaelen said, making a decision. "We build what they sent us. We open a dialogue. But we go prepared. Sigma-1, begin preparations for a manned shuttle mission. Minimal crew. Maximum defensive and diplomatic capability."
"Understood, Steward. I will oversee the preparation of Shuttle Delta-7. It is the most intact."
"Fabrication of the alien communication device is complete," Mother added. "Installation will require an EVA on the hull as previously noted."
Kaelen looked at Elara. "Are you strong enough for a spacewalk?"
She nodded. "The fragment... it draws strength from sunlight. Real sunlight. It's been starved for millennia. Just being near a viewport helps. The hull will be like a feast for it."
Two hours later, they were in the airlock. Kaelen in his armored suit, Elara in a sleek, form-fitting EVA suit. The device was a graceful, organic-looking piece of crystal and metal, about the size of a suitcase, with no visible controls.
The outer hatch opened, revealing the infinite starfield and the breathtaking curve of the planet below, swirled in white and blue. The Elysian's hull stretched away like a metallic plain.
Mother guided them to the installation point near the destroyed main array. Kaelen handled the physical mounting, magnetically anchoring the device to the hull and connecting it to the power and data conduits Mother had exposed. Elara held the device in place, her face turned toward the distant sun.
As Kaelen made the final connection, the device activated. It glowed from within, not with light, but with a shimmering field of colors that danced across its surface. It pulsed, once, twice, and then a coherent beam of multi-spectral energy lanced out, not toward the planet, but into the ship's hull, following the conduits.
"The device is not a transmitter," Mother said, her voice filled with surprise. "It is a resonator. It is sending a harmonic frequency through the ship's superstructure itself. A song."
On the hull, Elara gasped. "I can hear it..."
And Kaelen, through his suit's external sensors, picked it up—a vibration, a deep, resonant hum that made his bones tingle. It was beautiful and ancient.
Across the ship, something responded. The chaotic, fighting bio-mass stilled. The pulsing red signatures on the internal sensors synchronized for a moment, beating in time with the resonance.
And from the planet, a thousand similar beams of light shot up from the coral cities, meeting the resonance in the upper atmosphere, creating a dazzling, silent aurora that danced between the ship and the world.
It wasn't a message. It was a handshake. A recognition of shared origin.
The device had done more than open communications. It had revealed the truth: the Elysian and the planet were already connected. They were two halves of a single, broken life.
And now, they had to decide if they could be made whole.