[Open ocean — Central zone — Day 32 — 2:15 AM]
Two days.
The captain had waited exactly two days.
This time the ships did not arrive in containment formation. They arrived in a straight line — all nine in single file, bows forward, at the speed of something that had finished measuring and was coming to apply what it had learned.
Kira from the crow's nest:
"He changed formation. The captain is coming at the front."
Seraph looked at the nine ships on the horizon.
*He's coming first,* she thought. *That means what he measured gave him confidence.*
*Or respect.*
*It doesn't matter which. The result is the same.*
---
The first ship stopped a hundred meters away.
The captain on the bow with the Depth Mark active from the first second — visible, at maximum, without signature suppression. The ocean responding around him with the pressure of twenty years of integration.
