Kel arrived on the supply shuttle forty-two hours later, which meant he'd been on it before Maren even pressed the button.
"They intercepted my report," Maren said, not a question.
Her brother stood in the airlock, still in his military pressure suit, ice crystals melting off his boots. He was taller than she remembered, broader, his jaw set in that expression she associated with their father — a man who had communicated disapproval the way other people communicated love, constantly and without effort.
"ESA flagged your transmission before it hit Ganymede," Kel said. "I was already en route. Coincidence."
"You don't believe in coincidence."
"No." He pulled off his helmet. His hair was shorter, almost shaved, and there was a new scar running along his left temple. "I believe in classified deployment orders. I've been assigned to evaluate your claim and determine if it constitutes a security threat."
"It's not a claim, Kel. I have data."
"You had data about Kepler-442 too."
The words hit exactly where they were aimed. Maren felt the old anger flare — six years' worth, compressed and pressurized like the atmosphere outside these walls.
"That was different and you know it. I was right about Kepler. The signal was atmospheric noise. I just—"
"You just destroyed your career proving it. And Dad's."
Silence. Jupiter turned outside the viewport.
"Show me the signal," Kel said.
She showed him. She walked him through both layers, the mathematical countdown and the biometric encoding, watching his face cycle through skepticism, confusion, and something she'd never seen on her brother's face before: fear.
"This is real," he said.
"Yes."
"And it's addressed to you."
"Yes."
Kel sat heavily in the chair Maren had vacated. He stared at the spectrogram for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was different — not the military officer's clipped authority but something older, the voice of the boy who'd once helped his little sister build a radio telescope from kitchen scraps in the Atacama.
"Maren, Earth's response is already in motion. The Joint Defense Directorate classified your signal twelve hours ago. They're calling it 'Prometheus Contact Event' and they've moved the Jupiter orbital defense grid to ready status."
"Defense grid? It's a countdown, not an invasion."
"From their perspective, there's no difference. Something unknown is coming in forty-one days. The military's job is to assume the worst."
"And your job?"
Kel met her eyes. "My official job is to determine if you're a security risk or an asset. My unofficial job—" He hesitated. "Command is developing something. A directed energy weapon that could theoretically ignite Jupiter's hydrogen atmosphere. They're calling it Sunmaker."
Maren felt the floor tilt beneath her. "They want to turn Jupiter into a bomb?"
"A deterrent. A signal of their own: don't come closer." He paused. "They'll use it, Maren. If they feel threatened enough. Thirty-nine days from now, they will light the match."
"And kill everyone on Europa, Ganymede, Callisto—"
"Acceptable losses. Their words, not mine."
Maren looked at the signal still scrolling across the screen. The invitation from the void.
"Then we have thirty-nine days," she said, "to figure out what's actually coming. Before they burn everything to answer a question they never asked."
Kel nodded slowly. "Where do we start?"
"The signal has a third layer. LUMEN couldn't crack it with current processing power. But the Titan shipyards have a quantum array that could."
"Titan is a military installation."
"Good thing I have a military escort." She almost smiled. "Brother."
Kel didn't smile back. But he stood and offered his hand. "Let's go to Titan."
Outside, Jupiter's Great Red Spot rotated into view — an ancient storm the size of two Earths, churning with patient, indifferent violence. Somewhere beyond it, past the orbits of all the planets, past the Kuiper belt, past the heliosphere itself, the signal continued its countdown.
Forty-one. Forty. Thirty-nine.
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