Zara woke from hibernation to discover she'd aged twelve years. Sixteen years subjective felt like long sleep. But she was sixty-eight now. Ship sensors showed Lira's grave ten light-days ahead. Close.
Her console displayed transmissions from home. Recorded over nineteen years. Sent to her trajectory. Colony updates she'd missed while frozen.
Cultural drift: 17%. Language evolved. Mika—now forty-three—sent message in mixture of old dialect (for Zara) and new standard (her actual speech). Hybrid language. Archaeological translation required even from assistant she'd known.
Gliese 163: still silent. Presumed dead or isolated.
Two more colonies stopped responding: Gliese 832, Lacaille 9352. Pattern emerging. Some colonies couldn't maintain connection. Chose or were forced into complete isolation.
Ross 128 genetic crisis resolved via Threadkeeper intervention. Children surviving. But colony changed. Desperate years had transformed culture.
Proxima Centauri attempted ansible research again. Threadkeepers destroyed facility. Again. Colony bitter. Resentful of enforced silence.
Kepler-442 adapting. New generation dominant. Ansible-era humans aging out. Cultural memory shifting from personal to historical.
Nineteen years. Entire generation grown. Mika's daughter was twenty-two now. Adult. Never knew ansible except as ancient history.
Zara would arrive at Lira's grave carrying language from 2888. Would return to colony speaking language from 2925. Thirty-seven year gap. She'd be linguistic fossil.
But promise would be kept. That mattered more than comprehension.
Ship decelerated toward coordinates. Lira's wreckage ahead. Preserved. Patient. Eternal.
Memorial awaited. Pilgrimage neared completion. Promise about to be fulfilled.
Zara activated final approach. Toward grave. Toward honor. Toward keeping faith with dead truth-teller who'd bought futures she couldn't have imagined.
Soon.
END CHAPTER 6