Iron Echo
When the CSS Vigilant's long-range array catches an impossible signal bleeding from the edge of mapped space, Commander Vesper Kaine is ordered to hold station. The transmission matches a weapon the Accord outlawed three generations ago, a resonance pulse, dubbed the Iron Echo, that once unmade entire fleets in a single sweep. Following the signal is treason. Ignoring it may be worse. Kaine's crew has trained for years against simulated echoes. Now the simulation has stopped. Strike coordinator Sura Tamm calibrates weapons the Vigilant was never meant to carry. Executive officer Idris Quennell argues for the chain of command. Intelligence officer Cassius Reinhardt argues against it. Engineer Sable Myles has already rerouted power to systems she refuses to name. Navigator Yara Solenne plots a course through debris fields that should not exist. Civilian attaché Theron Drevos knows more about the derelict than his clearance permits. Veteran Rohan Thessaly, the only crew member to have witnessed an Echo fire, has gone unnervingly still. As rival powers converge on the same coordinates and the derelict begins to wake, the Vigilant's officers must choose: retrieve the Iron Echo and betray the peace, or destroy the proof that the Accord's victory was ever real at all.