THE YIELD

VESPERA

The universe near the galactic center did not go dark. It glowed brightly.

I pressed my forehead against the thick, reinforced glass of the transit shuttle. My eyes burned from the sheer, unfiltered glare of hundreds of millions of ancient stars crowded into a tight space.

Down here, near the heart of the Milky Way, space was not an empty, black void. It was a dense, glittering sea of nebulae made of gold dust, cosmic radiation, and a light so harsh it felt physically heavy.

“Step back from the viewport, passenger,” a mechanical voice droned over the speakers. “Approaching Security Hub Primus. Prepare for bio-scan and atmospheric recalibration.”

While the others sat frightened and exhausted in their seats, doing everything they were told, I did the opposite. I didn’t budge an inch.

The journey here had been expensive; why should I spend it in a damn seat when there was so much to see out here.

I had sacrificed my last earthly credits for this one-way ticket, signed a contract I barely understood, and survived six brutal light-leaps just to land on a chunk of ice and crystal.

All just for university money. Real, hard off-Earth currency that would buy my way into an elite university back home and let me leave my orphan past behind once and for all.

All I had to do was work as a Human Integration Assistant. Babysit a few rich human colonists, organize their schedules, show them around the base. Easy money.

The shuttle lurched hard as it broke through the outer defense layer. Outside, floating freely in the vacuum like a shimmering, transparent wall, a massive golden energy curtain stretched across thousands of miles. From my vantage point, it looked like a finely woven veil.

Then the curtain flared up.

I took a deep breath and leaned further forward. Behind the golden haze, massive, jagged warships were engaged in a silent, brutal battle with sleek, shadowy interceptors.

Glaring arcs of plasma sliced through the darkness, unfolding into soundless explosions of white fire. It was an active war zone, hidden right behind a layer of shimmering light.

“Clearance for curtain passage granted,” the automated voice chirped, completely unfazed by the massacre taking place just a few miles away. “Welcome to Citadel-Voss.”

The shuttle dived through the curtain and broke into the atmosphere of a world made entirely of towering, jagged crystal spires and rushing, turquoise-blue rivers.

Three suns hung in a low, unnatural arc across a violet sky, casting blinding reflections onto every surface.

The transit terminal was a chaotic swarm. High-security hubs hummed under heavy energy weapon deployment, and armed guards with iridescent skin marched past groups of arriving soldiers and aliens.

I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder, ducked through three separate biometric checkpoints, and followed the flickering neon signs toward the central command spire.

The shuttle doors hissed open, and the ambient climate hit me like a physical blow.

Before I could even set a foot on the platform, two armored guards grabbed my arms and pushed me straight into a narrow, cylindrical airlock labeled: ATMOSPHERIC ADAPTATION CELL 04.

“Wait – what is –”

The airlock closed with a heavy pneumatic thud. White light flooded the metal walls while a thick, ice-cold vapor rained down from the ceiling vents.

It wasn’t simple fog. The moment the chemicals touched my skin and forced their way into my lungs, my nerve endings screamed out.

It felt as though thousands of microscopic needles were being driven into my pores simultaneously.

My chest burned as if I were inhaling ground glass. My throat constricted while the mixture violently adapted my blood oxygen levels to the planet’s dense, high-pressure atmosphere and icy crystal-valley winds.

I dropped to my knees, clawed my hands into my collar, and clenched my teeth so hard that I bit my tongue.

A hot, sharp pain flared up behind my eyes, blurring my vision into streaks of violet and blinding white.

“Decontamination and biological pressure adjustment at eighty percent,” a synthetic voice droned from the speaker above me. “Initiating gene verification.”

A harsh blue laser grid scanned my body from head to toe, burning like a sunburn wherever it hit skin. I forced myself to stand up, trembling violently.

The ice-cold chemical residue evaporated off my clothes, leaving an uncomfortably tight, hypersensitive feeling on my skin.

The opposite door clicked. The airlock hissed open, revealing a massive, blue-skinned guard in polished obsidian armor.

He held a glass tablet, and his dark, pupil-less eyes traveled from the screen to my face.

He didn’t offer me a hand. Instead, he grabbed my wrist with a heavy, gloved hand and pressed a small metal scanner against my pulse. A sharp, loud beep echoed through the quiet corridor.

Green light flooded the device.

“Vespera Chaise. Human, origin Earth,” the guard droned.

His voice was deep enough to vibrate through the soles of my boots. He checked the tablet one last time, matching my biometrics with his screen.

“You survived the alignment standing up. Usually, most humans are lying on the floor.”

“Glad I can entertain you,” I cleared my throat, rubbing my aching neck. “Is the welcoming committee always this accommodating?”

“You are expected,” he answered, completely ignoring my irony.

He stepped aside and gestured down a long high-security corridor lined with armed posts and shimmering force fields.

“Follow me. Do not stray from the marked path, and do not touch the crystal walls unless you want your hands to freeze to the stone.”

I pulled my bag higher onto my shoulder, clenched my teeth against the lingering pain in my lungs, and fell in behind him.

In my contract, my supervisor was listed with his full, formal title. I pulled out my own glass tablet and re-read the unpronounceable sequence of symbols: High Commander Vaelen-Voss-Kaelen-Dryn, Regent of the Chromarii, Keeper of the Galactic Core.

“Voss will do,” I muttered to myself as I strode down the reflective corridor of the executive tier.

We reached the massive, heavy obsidian doors of the Commander’s office. I took a deep breath, smoothed down my blue travel tunic, and put on my professional “please-pay-me” smile.

I raised my hand to knock, but it wasn’t necessary.

The obsidian doors flew open. My guard casually stepped aside, completely unfazed—as if he had experienced this dozens of times before.

A tall, stunning alien woman rushed out into the corridor, hysterically sobbing.

Her skin had a transparent lavender hue, but her left forearm was a nightmare.

A dark, jagged bite mark dripped with luminous violet fluid, and black, toxic-looking veins spread like spiderwebs up her forearm toward her neck.

“Barbarian!”, the woman howled with a thick, melodic accent. She held her ruined arm cradled to her chest as she stumbled past me. “Cruel, heartless asshole!”

I froze, and my blood turned to ice. I stared after the crying woman, then at the black veins creeping up her neck, and finally back into the open doorway.

She got mangled.

The professional assistant in me resigned on the spot. The sharp-witted, hot-tempered orphan who had survived twenty years on the rough streets of Earth took command.

“Hey! Wait!”, I yelled after the woman, but she ran through the security doors and disappeared down the hall.

I spun on my heel, jaw set, knuckles white, and marched straight into the Commander’s office.

“What the hell do you think you’re –”

The words caught in my throat.

The office was massive, lined with high crystal windows overlooking the glowing rivers far below. But I wasn’t looking at the view.

In the middle of the room stood a giant, excessively muscled alien. His skin wasn’t normal. It glowed in a violent, blinding shade of furious, luminous red.

And he was buck-naked.

Heatwaves rolled off his chest, so hot that the air around him visibly shimmered.

His broad body was covered in fine, intricate silver lines that looked like constellations, and his deep-set eyes burned like liquid gold.

Seething with rage, he looked up, his chest heaving as if he had just finished a fight.

“I said that’s enough!”, he roared. His voice made the floor vibrate and rattled my teeth. He slammed a massive, ruby-red fist onto the obsidian desk, cracking the stone. “That’s the second one today! I am not ready for another one, you insufferable –”

He cut himself off. He had probably only now heard the sound of my heavy, angry breathing. He turned toward me, and his fiery golden eyes narrowed as he finally registered who had dared to intrude into his office.

I didn’t back down an inch. I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and stared a stark-naked, glowing-red alien warlord straight in the eyes.

“First of all,” I said, my voice taking on a razor-sharp, sarcastic undertone, “put some clothes on. And second: I don’t know what kind of sick, barbaric meeting you’re running here, but I’m pretty sure bleeding guests in your office isn’t in my job description.”

He blinked. His red skin flickered into a surprised violet for a fraction of a second before switching back to angry red.

“Who the hell are you?”, he snarled at me.