Starcalled · Gabriel Alvarez

Book 1, Chapter 4: The Sands of Edari

January 21, 2019·42 min·3 clips

Captain Landris interrogates the imprisoned Zeridian assassin Adi, and what Adi reveals about the senator's murder implicates someone far closer to the Colonial station.

Radio contact fails. Delarev brings word that Commander Tyg and Acting Chief Zorin's team have gone silent just as Captain Landris reaches the command deck. The relay opens anyway. Prince Ol' Ken appears through the Temple Relay with armored soldiers beside him, going around the Council while the surviving Councilors hide. Protocol is already cracked. Landris calls the transmission a breach, then orders movement toward the palace and an extraction team for Zorin. Priorities do not stay put for long. On the ground, Zorin's team reports visibility falling apart as the storm drives survivors away from their last known position. The cargo hold locks down. Osborn will not drop the Berenian ramp without a grekin gun, while Elona and Dredgen haul a ruined drone across the floor. Elona pulls the drive core and finds shrapnel inside it, which makes Ryder's survival feel suddenly mechanical and very fragile. Corbin makes the room even stranger. Osborn sees a hulking mechanical body and assumes machine. Corbin gives the flat correction: he is organic. No one has time to sit with that. The drive has to reach the shuttle, even with the storm making the crossing look nearly impossible. Ryder stays partly undefined. Osborn guesses at a virtual interface, but Elona cuts him off and stays on the failed core. Hol'kari forces advance. Outside, Ilona and Corbin push for the shuttle as Dredgen fights with repairs and wind wipes out the perimeter. Then the danger takes shape. A plasma pike cuts out of the haze, forcing Ilona into the shuttle as the storm, the damaged drive, and the marching troopers all arrive at once.

As heard by us

Protocol, storm damage, and repair work keep the chapter split between palace contact and extraction pressure.

StarCold keeps the episode in motion by splitting the attention between command deck protocol, Temple Relay contact, and the storm-hit ground effort.

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Why you'd press play

When the radio goes dead and the storm closes in, the rescue turns into a palace-level crisis across the command deck.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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