Prologue
The Capital World was celebrating the dawn of the new millennium, while cycle 997 of the Age of Expansion, in the Imperial Temporium, was only drawing to a close for the crew of the Falconte-class ship, Protheus.
Embarking on a journey of ambitious goals, there was no certainty that, upon their return, they would find the same home they had left behind. The present was the only thing they could cling to as they drifted into the immensity of the perennial void. Even so, most held onto the hope that it would all be worth it in the end.
The Alarium, Howard Ban Hets, on the other hand, accepted the job knowing it was his final voyage. Behind those hardened wrinkles and a disdain for the world outside his flask, filled with stories drowned in J’saari usque, Ban Hets resolved that in the uncertain corners of the universe, amidst an unfathomable darkness, dying wouldn’t be such a bad ending after all.
“LIVIA, wake the kids,” said the Alarium in a raspy voice, clearing his throat.
Ban Hets kicked off his boots and stretched his toes without taking his eyes off the image projected on the radioscreen in front of him. His chair was as comfortable as ever, right in the middle of the bridge.
“Initiating cryostatic capsule reanimation...” replied the soft, artificial voice of the Autonomous Integrated Virtual Intelligence.
Due to a bond forged over cycles of active service, the virtual assistant, despite her cold and logical nature, accepted Ban Hets to modify her acronym into something more similar to an Avantian name. In addition to improving the effectiveness of their communication, she also began to like it after a while.
“Reanimation process complete, Alarium,” reported LIVIA.
“What do we do with the trash can?” asked Ban Hets, looking at the image of a small, dark room with a figure of an Avantoid robot in a state of suspension.
“I’m not going to hack into its primitive neural network,” replied LIVIA with a dismissive tone. “It won’t hurt it to stay shut down a little longer.”
“When they find that mecho, I’ll tell them it was you who locked it in the waste compartment,” Ban Hets agreed with a laugh.
“I seem to recall that the mech served as your bartender the last time you were drunk, Alarium. And every other time you woke up for your routine checkup. Most of the time, you ended up in a pretty poor cognitive state, having to crawl back to your cryostatic capsule. The last time, you simply locked Zeta-One in the waste compartment because, according to you, he wasn’t good for a chat among colleagues.”
“Please, LIVIA, let a drunkard’s memories fade with the hangover,” said Ban Hets, frowning. “And that was several star phases ago, snitch.”
“It was four star phases and five days ago, drunkard.”
Just as Ban Hets was preparing to retort with some of the finest gems from his repertoire of vulgarities, an Avantian cleared his throat behind him.
“It’s a pleasure to see you, Magister Xuler,” said Ban Hets, turning around, clenching his teeth, and parting his lips. It was his best attempt at faking a smile.
“Alarium, I’m glad to see you alive,” replied Magister Evander Xuler Ish’tan, head of the Scienofist team. A tall, slender man with barely any hair on the sides of his head and the most smug face Ban Hets had ever seen. “And you’re sober, too.”
“Not by choice,” said Ban Hets, watching on the console as the ship’s power supply was restored, now that the cryostatic capsules were shut down.
“Well, how fortunate that your access to the liquor reserves has been restricted,” Xuler replied, raising his eyebrows. “None of us would have wanted to wake up and find you unconscious in the middle of the reactor room.”
“Thank you for bringing us here, Alarium,” interrupted a female dressed as a Magister while tying back her long, curly hair.
The female’s voice gave Ban Hets an addictive sensation, even more than analgesic jacvit, a chemical he often used to suppress the recurring pains in his body.
Xuler cleared his throat as he often did.
“Well, enough with the formalities,” he snapped, his jaw set. “We’ll take it from here, Alarium. You can take a rest. We’ll call you when the expedition preparations are complete.”
“I’d like to have a routine checkup, Magister Sans,” Ban Hets requested before Xuler could finish his speech.
“As you wish, Ban Hets,” replied Magister Jinn Sans, while Xuler glared at them.
“By the way, has anyone seen the Zeta-One mechanoid?” asked Xuler, folding his arms.
The image showing the Avantoid robot resting in the waste compartment vanished from the radioscreen in the blink of an eye.
“No sign of it, Magister,” replied LIVIA.
“Do you think he suspects something?” asked the Alarium, sitting on the stretcher, while Magister Jinn checked the status of the medical equipment in the infirmary deck.
“Xuler is very cunning.” Jinn’s deep black eyes shifted between Ban Hets’s face and the screens displaying real-time health reports on the ship’s crew. All the graphs indicated stable health with a green glow, except for Ban Hets, whose signal was flashing red.
Ban Hets flashed a genuine smile beneath his bushy mustache, losing count of the pulses he was measuring with his fingers on the side of his neck.
“It’s getting worse,” Ban Hets said, drawing in a sharp breath. “The pain, I mean.”
“When you’re sober, your neural activity intensifies,” Jinn explained.
“I know,” Ban Hets said with a mischievous smile. “You told me that the last time I woke you up.”
“Something you shouldn’t have done more than once,” Jinn smiled.
Ban Hets got up from the stretcher, took Magistra Jinn by the waist, and asked:
“Do you know what else intensifies my neural activity?”
Jinn looked Ban Hets in the eyes with a mixture of affection and pity. Lately, she couldn’t help but feel that she was only letting him stay close out of condescension.
No one else made her feel so desired, despite being the consort of someone else who was awaiting her return to the Capitol system. She filled a void in his heart that her home never could, and he experienced love on the eve of his final breath. A fair exchange for both of them, it seemed.
“Why did you really come?” asked the Magister, lowering her head. “You could have applied for the experimental treatment I told you about in Arthurus. With luck, you might have lived another fifteen or twenty cycles.”
“Or I might have died still,” Ban Hets replied stubbornly.
“The odds were very good for you, Howard.”
“I don’t care about dying, Jinn.”
“Don’t you think that’s selfish? Being here now and then just leaving me like that...”
“We’ve both been selfish,” Ban Hets replied, caressing the cheeks of the Avantian he loved. “You have a family, a name with meaning. I just want to feel good before I kick the bucket. I came here because in the middle of nowhere, I could have you all to myself. It doesn’t matter if I could have lived fifty more cycles. I know coming here was important to you. And I want to take you safely back home one last time.”
A glistening sheen covered Jinn’s eyes, and a single tear rolled down toward her lips. Just before it reached her mouth, the tear was lost in Ban Hets’ mustache, and their lips met in a passionate kiss.
Ban Hets managed to rest for just a couple of days before answering the call of duty. Having traveled for so long in the space beyond the edge of the binary galaxy was a considerable feat, even with the Federation’s most advanced interstellar travel technology, but the most difficult part of the journey was yet to come.
“What is that?” asked Ban Hets, observing the nebular cluster projected by the ship’s forward scanners onto the radiographic table.
“Do you believe in any god, Alarium?” Xuler returned the question, combing the little hair he had on the sides of his head, as he usually did when he was about to give a lengthy explanation.
“No,” Ban Hets replied simply.
“A concise answer,” Xuler noted, fascinated. “Most people set out to explain the reason for their lack of faith, while others profess the source of their beliefs. But you don’t waste time, Alarium. And it is time, above all, the question among us. You see, what lies before you is the closest thing to a deity that exists in our universe. Within this Bork globule, the creation of a small galaxy is taking shape. ”
“So, is that what you’ve come here to study?” Ban Hets asked.
“The truth is, Alarium, there’s no need to come all the way here to... study it. Back home, we have the best observatory in the binary galaxy, but I understand your ignorance.”
Ban Hets stifled a growl of disapproval. He didn’t like the way Xuler spat in his face at every opportunity, gloating over his ability to use more complicated words than he ever could. If it hadn’t been for Jinn standing there, pleading with her eyes for him to let it pass, the Alarium would have knocked the old Avantian’s teeth out with his knuckles long before they left Atlas.
“What am I supposed to do?” Ban Hets asked, bluntly.
Xuler smiled with arrogance as he manipulated a database displaying incomprehensible data to the Alarium. The only thing he could make out was a sort of star map pointing to a series of coordinates; that, at least, was familiar to him.
“Before beginning our journey, we received strange signals coming from inside this globule. At first, it seemed like an anomaly similar to those often caused by clusters of dark matter dissipating among the nebulae. However, six stellar phases later, the signal intensified at this point.” Xuler zoomed in on the star map, which revealed a region that appeared to have been erased from the map.
“There’s nothing there.”
“That’s what the map leads us to believe,” said Xuler, pointing upward with his index finger. “But this spot you see is just a region whose electromagnetic spectrum is unreadable.”
“There’s no light,” said Ban Hets, furrowing his brow and twitching his mustache.
“Exactly. An energy source is consuming any trace of light passing through the area and expanding toward the center of the globule. The fluctuations lead us to believe that, within that region, an object of enormous proportions is hidden, with characteristics very different from what we would normally identify as a dark vortex. But we don’t know the nature of that anomaly. With your help, we hope to find out what it is.”
Ban Hets spent a few seconds staring intently at the dark region on the star map. He had a bad feeling, not only because of the uncertainty of what they might find there, but because he knew he wasn’t going in alone.
“Shouldn’t you stay on the Protheus?” asked Ban Hets, while Magister Jinn adjusted the airflow in the Alarium’s pressurized suit.
“I’m the only one who can save your life if, for some crazy reason, you lose a piece of your body,” Jinn replied, helping Ban Hets regulate his breathing with the suit’s new settings. “Better?”
“Hell, yeah,” Ban Hets replied, rubbing his neck with one hand. “What I hate most about these suits is that I can’t drink.”
“You shouldn’t have come. Now I feel like I’m here just to look after you.”
“We’ll see who’s looking after whom, baby,” said Ban Hets, increasing the thrust of the small Vespula ship’s thrusters as it rapidly pulled away from the imposing Protheus Falconte.
Magister Jinn, the Zeta-One mecho, which had been mysteriously found on the scrap deck, and four other Scienofists accompanied Ban Hets on his journey to the dark region of the star map. Meanwhile, Xuler and the rest of the team monitored the expedition from the Protheus.
The ship’s radars detected little in the surrounding area, aside from the regular energy spikes emanating from various points on Bork’s globule.
“We’re getting closer!” exclaimed Ban Hets.
“Very well, Alarium,” replied Xuler from the Protheus, stationed right at the outer edge of the globule. “I’ll keep this line of communication open with you.”
As the Vespula ship approached its target, a sort of hole expanded before them. It looked like the entrance to a bottomless abyss. Not even the light of a distant star shone through it.
“Do you see anything, LIVIA?”
“There are no clear readings from this position, Alarium,” said the virtual intelligence, which had connected to the Vespula’s operational module. Through quantum entanglement, it was capable of operating on both ships simultaneously as long as a superposition node was installed on each.
“Then we have to go in,” said Ban Hets, propelling the ship into the void.
The ship shook violently as it crossed the threshold into the dark region. Jinn took the opportunity to approach Ban Hets silently and placed his hand on his shoulder. For a few minutes, the only thing they could see was the light emanating from the consoles in the cockpit. Slowly, uncertainty began to build, like drops of water falling into a shallow container.
Ban Hets watched into the abyss like a premonition of what was coming. The ship creaked, a metallic groan that echoed through the deck, reminding him that only a few inches of reinforced hull stood between them and the absolute nothingness of the vacuum. He took a slow breath, the recycled air tasting the acid of old machinery, and wondered if the universe felt as tired of existing as he did.
When the turbulence ceased, the ship had entered a space where the light spectrum was almost nonexistent, but there was something different there that the star charts hadn’t shown. Small crystalline formations floated in the surroundings, reflecting the flashes of light coming from the Vespula ship.
“Diagnosis, LIVIA.”
“All systems normal, Alarium,” replied the virtual intelligence. “Cabin pressure is stabilizing. The emergency capsules have not sustained damage.”
At the center of the cluster, thermal visors revealed a large floating mass, an asteroid with an unusual shape. A layer of crystalline formations resembling those of a glacier formed part of the outer surface. To Ban Hets, it looked like the tip of a chipped spear.
“There’s something beneath the ice,” Jinn suggested, making out shapes and a darker hue beneath the glacier.
“That’s right. Can you see this, Xuler?” Ban Hets asked, through the communicator.
“Good work, Alarium.” The communicator signal was weak. “Can you get closer to the object?”
“An energy emission analysis has allowed me to detect a subtle emission coming from inside the object,” added LIVIA.
“Is it a ship?” asked Ban Hets.
“It’s not fusion or electrical energy. It doesn’t match any known type of artificially generated wave. It seems unlikely that it’s a machine.”
“All right, the sensors seem to be acting up, but I’ll look for a safe place to land.”
The transport ship looked like an insignificant insect perched on the icy skin of a great beast. After landing, the expedition team took their time before stepping onto the asteroid’s surface, their suits tethered to the ship by carbonium ropes attached to safety harnesses.
“We’re on the asteroid, Xuler,” Ban Hets reported through his suit’s communicator. “Our feet haven’t melted, which is good news. What now?”
“Excellent, Alarium,” Xuler replied excitedly. “The source of the anomaly appears to be at a specific point beneath the surface. Zeta-One, deploy the excavation equipment at the coordinates sent,” he ordered, while the Scienofists tested the stability of the terrain to move around.
The mecho, obeying orders, unloaded a machine from the Vespula that looked like a giant drill, though in reality it was a high-intensity laser projector. While the others collected samples of the ice crystal, the machine’s laser pierced through the ice, revealing a golden layer of overlapping sheets that reflected the light emitted by the helmets of their suits.
“Is this orichalcum?” said one of the Scienofists, whose nose was so long it brushed against the suit’s protective mask.
“Don’t asteroids contain orichalcum and other metals?” asked Ban Hets.
“Yes, Alarium,” replied the Scienofist, running his fingertips over the solid golden surface. “It would be common on an asteroid or any celestial body composed mainly of rock, but this doesn’t look like a normal vein of orichalcum. It seems as though the metal has been manipulated, molded, or forged into sheets as if they were part of a covering. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Zeta One, deploy a seismic charge at the indicated coordinates,” Xuler ordered over the communicator.
“Magister, I don’t think that’s a good idea...” stammered the Scienofist with the prominent nose.
“The order has been given.”
“Please, Xuler,” said Ban Hets, making sure all the crew members’ harnesses were securely fastened to the Vespula. “Don’t you think it’s too rushed to blow a hole here without even knowing if the ground is stable?”
“You’re walking on it, Alarium. It looks pretty stable to me, so do your job and let me do mine.”
“Keep your distance,” suggested Ban Hets, taking Magister Jinn by the arm. “This gives me a bad feeling,” he whispered to her, as the group moved away from the spot where a device with hooks as long as terapula’s legs had been placed.
When the charge was activated, the hooks dug into the ice, and the ground shook slightly. A green light indicated the bomb was armed, and a flashing red light signaled the countdown. Small cracks were already visible in the golden plates and the surrounding ice crystals. The ice cracked slowly as the ground shifted toward the seismic charge, opening a crater of some depth. When the bomb exploded, obliterating everything within a ten-meter radius in the blink of an eye, what appeared before them left them speechless.
A layer of fleshy tissue, dotted with membranous lumps and melted orifices, spread out in all directions inside the crater. For a moment, Ban Hets thought it was a mass grave where dismembered and burned bodies were piled up, their raw flesh exposed, but nothing he saw had a recognizable shape or resembled any Avantian or Xenophagian body he had ever seen.
A strange substance oozed timidly from various points on the meaty ground. It had a reddish color as it oozed out, but it changed to a very dark hue, like that of oxidized blood, as it moved away from the ground. The state of the matter was baffling, for to the touch it felt like vapor, yet it moved like a liquid, following a strange path toward the void.
“But what kind of asteroid is this?” asked Ban Hets, as a faint buzzing plagued his ears.
“This isn’t an asteroid,” replied Jinn, his eyes wide open, making out the shape of some tissue membranes and also pieces of bone. “It’s an organic being.”
“What are you waiting for!?” exclaimed a Xuler, excitedly. “Collect the samples!”
It took the group of Scienofists a couple of minutes to recover from their astonishment. The mechanimo was the first to descend the crater’s rim until its tin hull touched the flesh. The others followed, after making sure the robot was safe.
“I don’t like this, Jinn,” Ban Hets whispered as they ventured deeper into the festering wound.
“Whatever this is, it’s dead, Howard,” Jinn replied, trying to calm Ban Hets’ nerves, though she didn’t sound very convinced. “It seems to be that way for a long time.”
“You don’t sound very sure of what you’re saying.”
Jinn’s silence confirmed his theory.
“I still don’t understand how it’s possible that the inner tissue isn’t frozen or compressed by the vacuum pressure.”
A thousand strands of the oily substance oozing from the rotting ground swirled in the air like very thin threads of fabric, giving the impression that it was raining upside down; they emerged from the ground and rose without any apparent direction.
“These things move on their own,” said Ban Hets, looking down at his suit. Strands of the dark substance formed webs around him, shifting subtly as if they had a will of their own and clinging to anything nearby that was moving.
“Zeta-One has detected temperature variations beneath the surface,” said Xuler over the communicator. “Any suggestions, Magister Sans?”
“It could be a post-mortem response to the seismic bomb’s stimuli,” suggested Jinn, gesturing to Ban Hets to stay calm.
“That makes sense. Do you think we could transport the entire specimen?” asked Xuler excitedly.
“Are you out of your mind?” exclaimed Ban Hets, shaking his head.
“I think a few samples will suffice for now, Xuler,” Jinn interrupted. “It seems safe to return another time if everything goes well.”
“Hey, over here!” shouted one of the Scienofists, quickening his pace toward a strange piece of meat that seemed to pulsate.
“Don’t stray from the group!” warned Ban Hets.
The strange mound was slowly expanding like a blister and contracting erratically. It seemed to be accumulating within itself a reservoir of that dark, viscous substance that was floating everywhere.
“Fascinating, take the samples,” Xuler ordered.
“Wait!” Ban Hets warned, quickening his pace toward the Scienofist.
Ignoring the warning, the Scienofist with the prominent nose approached the protuberance and set about taking a sample by cutting a piece from the specimen’s outer membrane. As soon as he made contact with the membrane, the pustule burst, scattering a splatter of dark substance in all directions. The ground shook violently, causing the Scienofist to lose his balance, become entangled in the rope of his harness, and crash to the ground.
“Everyone, stay put!” Ban Hets ordered, signaling to the rest of the team.
The Scienofist had some difficulty getting to his feet. Meanwhile, Ban Hets had the impression that the fleshy blister behind him was growing at an accelerated rate. The thousand floating strands of the dark substance vibrated at the same time with the pulsing of the tumorous growth.
“Get back to the ship!” exclaimed Ban Hets, as he helped the Scienofist steady his steps. “Everyone, get back to the ship!”
“Ban Hets, don’t forget the samples!” Xuler complained over the communicator.
“Wait...” stammered the Scienofist, gripping Ban Hets’s arm tightly. There was a tear in his protective mask.
As if they were metal particles drawn to a magnet, the dark substance clinging to the pressurized suit swirled around the exposed hole, seeping into the openings in the Scienofist’s face, who began to writhe several times grotesquely while Ban Hets struggled to hold him down.
Ban Hets’ senses went numb as if someone were repeatedly slamming his head against the ground to knock him unconscious. The visor of his suit turned black. It wasn’t a shadow; it was that viscous substance binding them both, pushing their bodies toward the tumor that had grown twice their height.
The Scienofist, still conscious, thrashed his body desperately, trying to stay near the surface; neither could hear his screams of terror through the lifeless void. Ban Hets yanked on the Scienofist’s harness, but the carbonium rope snapped with a sharp crack, flinging him backwards.
Ban Hets regained his balance as best he could. With his vision clouded by the blanket of dark substance swirling before him, he tried to find the Scienofist to help him one last time, but could only watch in horror as his body was devoured by that abnormal mass of pulsating tissue that continued to grow and spread toward him.
Then, a hand grabbed his arm. For a second, he thought it was his turn to be consumed, but through the fog of his visor, he met Jinn’s eyes. A surge in his heart propelled him to get on his feet and escape the darkness that stalked them.
