The chaotic signal from the Void Pirate battle pulsed through the comms array, an urgent reminder that their ideological war was trivial compared to the looming threat of annihilation. The cold reality of the data—mass-casualty pirate tech, an unregistered civilian target, and a collapsing jump point—forced Lyra's focus away from her gun and onto the console.
"We don't have time for a full security protocol," Lyra said, her voice tight, echoing the cold panic rising in her chest. "If we send an unverified warning, the Solari will flag it as Lunara sabotage and ignore it."
"And if I use a Lunara channel, your Ascendancy will believe it's a trap and send a single scout ship, poorly armed, expecting low-level skirmish," Orion countered, his fingers flying across the input pad, compiling the critical combat metrics into a condensed burst. "We must devise a code that is unimpeachable to both sides while being completely nonsensical to any third party."
"A joint code doesn't exist," Lyra scoffed. "Our languages don't even share an alphabet, let alone a cipher."
Orion paused, looking at her. "We share one thing, Lyra. A common history, however contested. And a deep-seated distrust of each other's methods. We will use that distrust."
He began inputting a complex sequence onto the screen, a Lunara cipher built on tonal frequency and positional mathematics. He then keyed a field labeled 'AUTHENTICATION PHRASE.'
"The Solari will assume any complex Lunara code is a feint," he explained. "We must trigger their deep-seated arrogance. We will use a phrase of Solari doctrine, corrupted by Lunara syntax. It must be so insulting to both our protocols that it could only come from a genuine threat, or a madman."
Lyra stared at the dark screen, thinking of the tenets drilled into her since childhood. Light leads the way. Order through fire. The Ascendancy is Absolute.
"The Solari phrase is: The Sun's Fire is the Only Truth, Lyra whispered. "Lunara strategy is based on mathematical certainty. They despise such grand, emotional absolutes."
Orion's eyes glinted with sudden, sharp intelligence. "Perfect. We will use the Lunara mathematical key to decode the Solari emotional slogan. We will transmit the phrase in the Solari binary alphabet, but transpose the characters using my own positional cipher. Only a Lunara strategist would know the transposition key, and only a Solari commander would recognize the slogan's sacrilege."
He typed furiously, his injured leg forgotten in the heat of tactical genius. The authentication phrase flashed across the screen: THE SUN'S FIRE IS THE ONLY TRUTH—encrypted by a Lunara algorithm.
"Now, the coordinates," Orion continued. "We can't give our current location, but we must pinpoint the pirate threat. We will use a dual-coordinate sequence: the Solari's common sector marker for the area, followed immediately by the Lunara's secret, deep-void triangulation number for the jump point. They will both recognize their half and assume the other side's coordinates are a verification check."
The sheer audacity of the plan—forcing two warring empires to trust each other through mutual, insulting verification—left Lyra momentarily speechless. It was the epitome of Lunara strategic brilliance, leveraging psychological bias over technological superiority.
"We need a final failsafe," Lyra insisted, pressing her hand against the power cell, feeling the familiar hum of her home. "A secondary signature, something only a command-level Solari will recognize as a signal of high distress, masked as noise."
She pulled a small, delicate chip from her own wrist gauntlet—a miniature data recorder used for critical mission logs. She didn't hesitate. She jammed the chip into the Lunara transceiver's bypass port.
"That chip contains my full Solari commission and tactical profile," Lyra explained. "My commander will receive the transmission's metadata. She'll see the call is coming from me, but filtered through a Lunara black box. It will terrify her into action."
Orion stared at the chip, his expression unreadable. Giving up her commission data was a massive act of vulnerability, an admission of dire necessity that transcended their war.
"A beautiful act of desperation, Warrior," Orion conceded, a rare, almost imperceptible hint of respect in his tone. He pulled his own Lunara commission tag—a small, dark ceramic disc—from his neck and slotted it into a parallel port. "We are equally desperate, Lyra. We risk court-martial or execution for this. But we will be alive to face it."
He looked at her one last time, his dark eyes penetrating. "When I press the button, the transmission is instant, and the countdown to rescue begins. We have five cycles maximum before our signal is discovered. Are you prepared to face the consequences of telling the truth, Lyra?"
Lyra nodded, her hand leaving the power cell and resting on the button beside his. "I am prepared to face the consequences of the unified lie, Strategist."
They placed their hands on the button together—the Firebrand's sun-warmed glove resting on the Architect's ice-cold palm.
***TRANSMITTING.***
The comms array flashed once, a sharp, white burst of light, and then immediately went dark, returning them to the oppressive silence of the ravine. The signal was away, hurtling toward two distant, warring fleets.
"It is done," Orion said, his voice flat. He immediately began disconnecting the power cell, packing the array back into the salvaged containers. He was already planning for the next phase: evasion.
Lyra stared out at the dark sky, seeing the chaotic light of the distant pirate battle.