A Distant Reverie

Chapter 91

The general voice channel suddenly fell silent.

Vesper suspected that private voice chats were taking place between Shiori, Kiara, and Ame about their next course of action.

"Anything from Lady Ouro?" he asked after initializing a private call with Suisei.

"I checked just now, but no. She's been silent ever since the first day of our arrival."

Vesper frowned. She's been surprisingly quiet. The lack of guidance was nerve-wracking. This sort of the incident felt like something that the otherworldly entity would have stepped in to intervene.

"What about Ame? Any signs that Lady Ouro might have been speaking with her?"

"No clue. Ame mostly keeps to herself outside of training."

Vesper groaned. He had a terrible premonition that something drastic was about to happen.

"You think something is going to go wrong, Vesper?"

"Maybe it's the pessimist in me or the anxiety talking, but yes," Vesper replied, "The past week has been too quiet. Too peaceful. If something was going to break this status quo, now would be the perfect moment."

"I don't disagree, but we're going to need a better reason than feelings if we want to convince them not to go and help."

The general voice channel opened back online.

"Ame, Ms. Houshou and I are finished with the ore extraction."

"Calli, did you hear that distress signal?" Ame asked.

"Yeah. From what I can tell, the signal wasn't broadcasted specifically at us. It was sent as a wide area signal using a generic frequency."

"That's problematic. If their broadcast wasn't encrypted, then Incursions might have heard it as well."

"We also got newbies with us. I don't know if responding to the call is a good idea."

Silence filled the voice channel.

Vesper let out a sigh of relief. It was obvious that Ame's group was reluctant to ignore the distress call, but it seemed that everyone was arriving at the same conclusion without their influence.

"They're just ten minutes away, aren't they?"

It was Marine. Her confident demeanor blared over the speakers.

"Don't worry about us. We can handle ourselves."

***

With Marine's declaration, Ame's group agreed to investigate the distress signal. It was obvious that their consideration for Vesper, Suisei, and Marine had been one of their main points of contention.

Vesper glanced at the map on the side of his display. Ame just finished charting a path from their current location to the source of the distress signal.

"No abnormalities in our immediate vicinity. Let's make haste everyone."

The Exos began to move. Vesper took his position as one of the vanguards on the side of the formation. His display suddenly flickered with a notification. It was an invitation to a private group voice channel initiated by Marine.

He pressed accept.

"How are the two of you feeling?" Marine asked.

"Well, anxious," Vesper spoke up after a few seconds of silence.

"I take it that the two of you aren't so pleased with what I just did?"

Vesper sighed.

"In my defense, I was okay with whatever decision Ame and her team made in the end. All I did was remove us from their equations."