Daimon Lunar Station
Silence was not an absence.
It was matter.
Dense. Oppressive. Almost palpable — as if it occupied space, as if pressing against the lungs and seeping under the skin.
From the wide panoramic window of the Daimon Lunar Base, Major Lando Voss stood motionless, integrated into the structure of titanium and reinforced basalt. The cold surface vibrated with imperceptible micro-variations, transmitting a faint, continuous hum — the metallic breath of the installation.
On the other side of the multi-layered glass, the Far Side stretched out in a fossilized landscape. A motionless ocean of deep craters, jagged reliefs, and absolute shadows. There was no transition of light. No welcoming horizon. Only abrupt ruptures between the total blackness and the dead gray of the regolith.
The South Pole–Aitken basin looked like an ancient scar — vast, silent, indifferent.
The Daimon Base rested in the heart of the Von Kármán crater.
Seen from the outside, it was a precise, almost surgical intrusion — geometric lines breaking the natural irregularity of the Moon. From the inside, however, it was something else.
It was an organism.
The long corridors were veins illuminated by cold LED lights that never varied in intensity. The recycled air carried a constant metallic odor — iron, ozone, and heated polymers. There was also a faint acidic trace, the result of continuous chemical filtering, which left a dry taste in the throat.
Interconnected modules pulsed with quiet activity. Vertical elevators glided through dozens of underground levels with mechanical precision. Shielded laboratories operated without pause. Pressurized hangars opened and closed in calculated cycles. Automated production lines followed perfect rhythms, indifferent to fatigue.
Two thousand people lived there.
Or survived.
They breathed reused air. Slept under artificial cycles. Fed on protein synthesis. And pretended — with an almost religious discipline — that time still belonged to Earth.
But Earth did not exist there.
Lando rested the palm of his hand against the glass.
The cold pierced his skin with ease, dissipated by his own body’s thermal control.
“Funny...” he murmured, his voice low, almost absorbed by the environment. “We saved the world... and now we can’t even look at it.”
Outside, the sky was not a sky.
It was a void.
Absolute black. No twinkling. No atmosphere to soften the light. The stars did not flicker — they remained fixed, hard, far too distant to offer any comfort.
The beauty was precise.
And completely inhuman.
Lando Voss had never been ordinary.
Created under Project Ascension during the Union War, he was a refined product — an experiment taken to its logical conclusion. Accelerated reflexes, optimized muscle density, parallel cognition. His metabolism processed energy in a hybrid manner, even harnessing filtered radiation.
Efficiency pushed to the limit.
He was designed to win.
And he did.
But victories accumulate residues that reports do not record.
Memories.
Cities consumed by plasma.
Skies torn apart by autonomous swarms.
The sharp snap of particle weapons tearing through structures — and bodies.
And then, the silence.
Five billion dead.
A number so vast that it ceased to mean individuals.
“We were too many...” he whispered. “And we didn’t know how to share the planet.”
From the collapse, the Global Union was born.
A single flag.
A single government.
A single narrative.
The promise was simple: definitive peace.
The delivery, more complex: absolute control.
Constant surveillance.
Institutional silence.
And sealed archives.
The Daimon Base was one of those archives.
Officially, a scientific-strategic hub.
In practice, a repository for anomalies, discarded projects, and inconvenient truths.
There were no Earth laws there.
No courts.
No public opinion.
The Moon did not judge.
It only preserved.
The ventilation system exhaled a continuous flow. The sound resembled a deep breath — slow, constant, artificial. Mixed with it was the faint hiss of circuits and the distant echo of metallic structures adjusting to thermal stress.
Lando closed his eyes for a moment.
That sound was the only sign of life.
Or the simulation of it.
Time, in Daimon, did not move forward.
It repeated itself.
No sunrise. No sunset. No seasons.
Just programmed cycles.
Shifts.
Routines.
And the progressive wear and tear of the human mind trying to find meaning in an environment that offered none.
He began to doubt.
Of himself.
Of what remained human.
Sometimes, he perceived something.
Not a voice.
Not exactly.
An echo.
Fragmented.
Out of alignment.
Enough daydreaming.
It was what Dr. Kessler used to repeat during the initial tests:
“Thinking too much is a critical failure in the field, Voss. Machines do not hesitate.”
But he did hesitate.
And he was classified as a defect.
He wasn’t supposed to feel.
He wasn’t supposed to question.
He wasn’t supposed to remember.
He was designed as a solution.
A precise tool.
Disposable.
But something drifted.
Or, perhaps, it worked beyond expectations.
If it weren’t for her, he would have been eliminated by now.
Dr. Helena Moss Voss.
Chief geneticist.
His creator.
His exception.
“He is not a failure,” she declared, firmly, before the military council. “He is the next stage.”
There was resistance.
High costs.
Political risk.
The proposed solution was direct: discontinuation.
Final destination: a moon of Jupiter.
Cold, distant, definitive.
Helena refused.
And she rewrote his destiny.
Not with algorithms.
With a decision.
Major Lando Voss was a point of convergence.
His body tolerated extreme thermal variations without collapsing.
His musculature responded almost instantaneously.
His mind processed multiple vectors simultaneously — strategy, ballistics, behavior.
A hybrid.
Between man and system.
Aging did not follow him at the same pace.
It was slower.
Almost irrelevant.
He joined the special forces at age twelve.
He was leading operations at fifteen.
He became a legend at twenty.
A political problem at twenty-eight.
The decorations were not a source of pride.
They were a weight.
Order of Absolute Unity.
Black Titanium Star.
Helios Medal of Strategic Supremacy.
Orbital Cross of Extreme Merit.
Twelve Purple Hearts.
One for each officially recorded death.
Twelve returns.
And he was still functional.
Two days earlier, the alert appeared.
With no apparent urgency.
No alarm.
Just a log in the system.
Stella Unit — an exploration android — missing.
Location: Apollo crater.
Distance: approximately six hundred kilometers from Daimon.
Status: lost.
The Moon will absorb it.
No signals.
Almost.
“Last recovered transmission,” the technician reported, projecting the data into the air.
It wasn’t interference.
It was a pattern.
The unit had detected an anomaly before disappearing.
A mineral formation.
Dense.
Deep.
Incompatible with known models.
High concentration of Helium-3.
Regolith enriched with rare earths.
Titanium veins of unusual purity.
It was an uncatalogued compound.
The electromagnetic signature was unstable.
Irregular.
Almost... organic.
“This shouldn’t exist here,” someone murmured.
But it did.
And that was enough.
The Helios Consortium had already decided.
Primary mission: recover the android.
Secondary objective: map the deposit.
Operational translation: exploration.
Profit.
“Your new partner arrives in a few hours, Major.”
The third one in less than a year.
Few could stomach Daimon.
Not because of the work.
But because of the environment.
“Name?” Lando asked.
“Sergeant Kira Novak. Hybrid. Advanced tactical training.”
A pause.
“The previous ones... didn’t perform.”
Lando exhaled slowly.
It was expected.
No mind was designed to endure absolute silence.
Nor what arises within it.
Most preferred Lucentia — the first lunar colony. A city with adjusted gravity, simulated lighting, commercial spaces, music, a constant stream of stimuli.
An edited version of Earth.
Daimon left nothing.
It exposed.
Without filters.
Without distractions.
There, humanity was not staged.
It was tested.
Lando turned back to the window.
Nothing had changed out there.
But something had shifted inside him.
The mission was simple.
Recover.
Analyze.
Return.
But there was a dissonance.
A subtle misalignment.
Not with the android.
Not with the data.
With the Moon itself.
“Major,” the communicator called, with light static. “The ship Argus has just docked in the main hangar.”
He closed his eyes for a brief moment.
The air tasted of metal.
“On my way.”
The corridors swallowed him again.
The sound of his footsteps was absorbed by the technical flooring. Only the faint noise of the mechanical joints of the surrounding systems accompanied his movement.
And then, the feeling.
Ancient.
Recognizable.
The same one that precedes decisive battles.
An unsettling perception.
As if something were out of alignment.
As if the board were... tilted.
I’ve lived this before.
But the memory wouldn’t come.
Or didn’t want to come.
The hangar door opened with a pneumatic hiss, releasing a jet of cold air smelling of lubricant and lunar dust.
And there she was.
Motionless.
Impeccable posture.
Silent.
Waiting.
Sergeant Kira Novak.
But it wasn’t just her presence.
It was the instant.
Something had begun.
And this time, it didn’t involve just humans.
