A shimmer of movement drew Kera’s attention away from her reading.

But she felt foolish before even scanning the horizon. Through the coastal lookout’s wide windows, it was clear the ocean beyond Dromos was only as calm and vacant as ever. The town’s harbor still sheltered its small flock of lazy fishing trawlers, none yet launched for the morning catch. And deeper waters beyond lacked the slightest hint of waterborne activity, let alone the passing of smugglers’ sloops or water-phraints. A reflection of the late sunrise scintillated across the surface, but nothing more.

She found where she’d left off in her book. In a town as quiet as Dromos, some sort of distraction was almost a survival necessity. During those last three months, Kera hadn’t seen anything that even might’ve been a smuggler, even once, since she’d first reported for duty. Most townsfolk knew each other, so crime was almost non-existent. As far as they were from the phraintlands, hive incursions were the remotest of concerns. And cosmopolitan ideologies like anarchism had a long way to go before simple fishermen would care to learn what the word even meant.

The town’s position overlooking a less-frequented shipping lane meant that smuggling had been once a very real issue. But in the Emperor’s later years it was an open secret that criminals had grown bold enough to use the direct aerial routes between cities, rather than sticking to subtler but more circuitous coastal skirting. And of course, the deeper ocean navigable by neither air nor sea that surrounded Setet’s littorals meant that only cabotage from the northern and southern coastal approaches to Dromos’ bay required monitor, while daydreams wondering what might lie beyond the sunrise felt like fantasies too childish to entertain even as distractions from boredom.

So for those last three months, her copy of Campaigns and Conquests of Maxadin I was the best Kera had for the experience of pride and adventure and the performance of duty in the Patrol Corps she’d so desired. It was a riveting historical chronicle even the sixth time re-read, but she’d hoped for so much more when first she’d enrolled in the Academy. She’d wanted to live that history for herself, or at least a small part of it, rather than just read about it.

The telegraph console chirped.

Kera dropped the page once more. Dragging her chair closer to her desk, she readied a pen to take down the incoming message atop the tome’s leatherbound cover.

But in the intervening seconds, nothing followed the single, irregular tone.

“...Sekhem?” she asked. “The capital sent their salutation on time this morning, right?”

At the desk behind Kera’s window vantage, her comrade shuffled through a low stack of papers before extracting one a few below the top.

“Our liaison with Atum-Ra was on the dot, thirteen minutes ago,” said Sekhem, as she scrutinized the timestamp through her glasses. “I acknowledged, and they confirmed receiving.”

“I… don’t think we’ve gotten one from the port authority, yet,” Kera said, as she looked over her own transcripts. “It’s been completely quiet, actually, until just now. Sounded like an accidental transmission, or something.”

Hilomnos, a few dozen miles to the south, was the hub of trade on Setet’s eastern coast. Sometimes a busy early morning for the port authority meant that Dromos was simply a second priority, given its typical irrelevance in broader affairs. But the salutation was just a short, perfunctory verification of the working order of their line of communication.

“Maybe they forgot about us,” said Sekhem. “Why don’t you ask them, just in case? In so many words.”

Kera hesitated, fingers poised on the transmitter. 

DRMS-2 to HLMNS-P14: Daily salutation. Do you read?

But as she waited for a response, still the wire remained silent. 

Footsteps, instead, tramped up the stairs, before she had time to react.

Kera stared at the console as she felt the sweep of Lieutenant Reglus’ gaze, hoping the clicking tones of a response from Hilomnos would begin to provide her the guise of productivity.

And indeed, the console began to chirp with dots and dashes of a message. She fumbled for her pen to scribble a transcription. But Reglus was already heading her way. 

“Focused today, Sergeant Iumatar?”

Knowing she should say something to explain herself, under the crushing weight of Reglus’ narrow pupils Kera managed only to continue her transcription.

“If you really are taking down a message right now, then at least manage to say so,” said Reglus flatly.

“Oh, give her a moment, Lieutenant,” Captain Virgil called from the stairway between grunts of exertion. “I’m sure the watch has a good explanation for any delay with the comms forwards.” 

He strode over to clap Reglus' shoulder, in a gesture like that between old friends. But at the same time, as if to urge his lieutenant back, from where he towered over Kera.

“And look, Reglus. That looks too long to be a simple salutation. Sergeant Iumatar might actually have something half-important there. Is that right, Sergeant?”

Kera managed a weak, grateful nod. The sequence from the console ended at last, and she tore off the completed transcription from her notepad.

“Well?” said Reglus.

Kera trembled as she offered the sheaf to Virgil, but then not for fear of Reglus’ disdainful glare.

“Hilomnos Port-Forteen to Dromos-Two,” the captain narrated aloud. “Widespread communications disruption ongoing with many nodes; Unidentified objects on approach from the…”

Virgil trailed off, but continued to read in silence as his silver whiskers drooped in sudden consternation. He paced to the window of the lookout.

Kera saw it too. Just cresting over the far horizon.

That time, not just the sunshine’s shimmering reflection.

“Gods above…”