Starlight Debt

The signal arrived on a Tuesday.


Juno was feeding her daughter breakfast when the message blinked into existence—just a soft tone on her tablet, like an email. Harmless. Innocuous. It only read:


“The debt has come due. Prepare for retrieval.”

—Orion Covenant Office, Station Eos


Her blood went cold.

She remembered something, something grieving, that was long buried under the beautiful memories she'd gathered all these years with her daughter by her side.
---


In the quiet curve of the L5 Habitat, where Earth shone like a blue coin in the portholes, Juno had made peace with her past. She thought she'd outrun it—left it behind with the collapsing red suns and dead captains and broken oaths.


But some promises survive even time and space.


---


That night, when her daughter, Mira, asked for a bedtime story, Juno told her the truth. The softened version, hyding all the scary cruel facts she endured.


“You know how I used to be a pilot, right?”


Mira nodded. She was seven and bright as comet ice. “Like, really far away pilot?”


“Really far,” Juno smiled. “There was a mission. We were trapped near a neutron well. Our ship—Aeneid—was going down. Engines gone. Crew gone. Only the starlight and static left.”


“What happened?” Mira asked with wonder in her eyes.


Juno hesitated. “I made a deal.”


---


The Orion Covenant wasn’t supposed to exist. Ancient, and stitched into the quantum backbone of space, they weren’t people. They were entities, another race, another species, from a distant place—guardians of balance, debt-keepers of cosmic law.


Juno had whispered a plea to the void.


They’d answered.


She lived. Everyone else didn't.

They had rescued her and brought her back to her daughter.


---


The door chimed at midnight.


It wasn’t a person. Just light—impossibly bright and without source—flowing through the walls and resolving into a shape that resembled a man only if you looked without trying.


“You have borne the years well,” it said, with a voice like music underwater.


“I have a child,” Juno whispered.


“She will not suffer. The debt was your life. We are here for it.”


---


She could have begged. She didn’t.


Instead, she asked for one day, just a day.


And—uncharacteristically—they gave it.


---


Juno wrote letters she’d never send.


She stood on the orbital garden deck, memorizing her daughter's laughter as Mira chased artificial butterflies.


She recorded a message, encrypted it under Mira’s name, and marked it to unlock on her twelfth birthday. It said things like:


> “There are places beyond stars that you’ll reach someday.”

> “Forgive me.”

> “This love is starlight—it never fades, only travels.”


---


The last sunset she saw was artificial—filtered through solar mirrors—but she wept anyway.


Because a goodbye is a goodbye.


Even when it's lit by stars. At the very least it reaches the heart. At least it gave closure.


Two weeks later — Somewhere past Andromeda Drift


A salvage crew found the Aeneid.


It's systems were dead. But the logs were intact.


Final entry dated years ago—before Juno ever returned.


> “Engine failure. No escape possible. I've activated the beacon. If the Orion Covenant hears me, I’ll pay anything. I’ll give my life. Just… just let me see my daughter again. She’s not even born yet. But I will find a way. Please.”


The AI couldn’t make sense of it.


The crew shrugged it off as an echo glitch.


---


But on Earth, a girl named Mira grew up with the story of a woman who’d once stolen a piece of the universe and paid for it with love.


She became an astrophysicist. Later, a starship captain.


She named her first vessel the soJuno’s Debt


---


Every time she crossed a new system, she whispered:


> “I know you’re watching. I’ll find you.”


And though she never did, sometimes, when the ship floated just right, and silence reigned between stars, she swore she heard a voice say:


“You already have.”


---


End.