CHAPTER 9: PING

The wreckage loomed ahead, half-buried in the sand, its outer plating warped and scorched from a failed descent.

Elias felt his stomach tighten. If this thing couldn’t handle entry, what chance did an actual rescue have?

TERI hovered ahead, scanning the husk. “Well, this is a charming pile of garbage.”

Elias ran a hand along the bent hull, fingers tracing the faded mission markings. This lander had been here for years. A failed attempt. A silent monument to the dangers of this place.

But inside—

“Comms relay,” he muttered.

TERI was already on it, floating toward a half-collapsed panel. “If this thing’s even semi-functional, we might be able to bounce a signal up.”

Elias crouched beside the drone, pried the panel open, and was met with a mess of fried circuitry, loose cabling, and sand where sand definitely shouldn’t be.

TERI let out a mechanical sigh. “I’m gonna go ahead and not get our hopes up.”

Elias ignored it. He dug through the wreck, pulling aside debris, checking wiring, searching for something—anything—that could still work.

TERI hovered impatiently. “You know, the Odyssey-4 has much better equipment than whatever prehistoric junk—”

Elias yanked a data module free from the tangle of wires. The status light blinked faintly.

TERI stopped mid-sentence.

“…Okay, maybe there’s hope.”

Elias wasted no time. He reattached the module, rerouted the power from the emergency backup, and forced a manual initialization. The lander whined to life, lights flickering. The entire thing shuddered as if waking from a long coma.

Then—

A signal.

TERI’s eye flared. “Holy Moly.”

Elias swallowed. “We’re live?”

“Not just live.” TERI adjusted, running a quick scan. “We’re pinging Odyssey-4.”

Elias held his breath. Seconds crawled by.

Then—on the tiny, degraded screen of the lander’s ancient comms panel—

ACK

A single, simple acknowledgment.

Elias exhaled. His arms slumped against the console. He laughed, once. The kind of laugh that sounded too much like relief and fear mixed together.

“We did it,” he muttered.

TERI floated beside him, uncharacteristically quiet.

They’d reached the orbiting ships.

They weren’t alone.

But the problem wasn’t communication. The problem was…

What now?

Elias already knew what they were thinking up there. How? How the hell were they going to get him out of here?

A ship couldn’t just descend, scoop him up, and fly back out.

The turbulence, the entry conditions, the sheer instability of this planet’s atmosphere—it was a death trap.

Elias stared at the small, flickering signal readout. He could picture them in the Odyssey’s conference room right now. Studying the same data. Realizing the same impossible truth.

They had his signal.

But that didn’t mean they could save him.