Last Light in the Dark - Chapter 2: The Anomaly

Something was wrong with the Endeavor.

Marcus felt it the moment his shuttle docked—a vibration in the hull that hadn't been there before, a frequency that set his teeth on edge. The Endeavor had always hummed, but this was different—a discordant frequency that didn't belong.

The docking clamps engaged with their usual pneumatic hiss, and Marcus unstrapped from his seat with fingers that felt oddly numb. Through the viewport, he could see the shuttle bay was chaos—more activity than he'd witnessed in six months aboard this vessel. Crews ran between ships with the frantic energy of disturbed insects, their voices lost in the din of machinery and alarms.

Soldiers, mechanics, and officers ran up and down the halls with a life and energy he had never experienced. The Endeavor was an M-Class warship, built for strength and utility at the complete expense of anything that could be described as "luxury." The hallways were narrow and jagged, with pipes and steam running through them like exposed veins. The air tasted of recycled breath and hot metal, thick enough to chew. They were barely wide enough for two people to move past each other, which meant there was a lot of frenetic shoving as people rushed to their destinations.

"Move it, grunt!" A cargo specialist shouldered past Marcus hard enough to spin him into the wall. The impact sent a sharp pain through his shoulder, but the man was already gone, disappearing into the crowd without a backward glance.

Rylee disappeared to the bridge as soon as their shuttle landed, her boots striking the deck with the precise rhythm of someone already mentally three steps ahead. She was late for a briefing with the other officers, something he knew would infuriate her. She hated to be late for anything, much less a briefing from her commanding officers. He'd seen the flash of irritation in her eyes through her visor—that tightening around her mouth that presaged a storm.

"You'd think the universe was ending," Lucas muttered beside him, ducking as a technician rushed past with an armful of cable. "People need to calm down."

"Maybe it is," Nigel said from behind them, his voice pitched just loud enough to hear over the ambient noise. "Ending, I mean. Would explain a lot."

The rest of the team split off to their various tasks. Since Nigel couldn't remotely upload the logs he recovered, Marcus had to personally deliver the terminal he recovered from the wreck to the quartermaster's office. The journey took twice as long as usual, threading through crowds that seemed to grow denser the closer he got to the ship's core.

The quartermaster's office was buried deep in the bowels of the ship, past the reactor core and through a maze of service corridors that always smelled faintly of coolant and desperation. The man behind the desk—Hendricks, according to his faded nameplate—barely looked up when Marcus entered.

"Log it and leave it on the pile," Hendricks said, gesturing vaguely at a corner where equipment formed a small mountain. "I'll get to it when I get to it."

"This might be important—"

"Everything's important today." Hendricks finally met his eyes, and Marcus saw something there that made his skin prickle. Not fear exactly. Something worse. Resignation. "Just leave it."

After that, he decided to drop his kit off in his quarters, his mind churning over that look in Hendricks's eyes. The quartermaster had been aboard the Endeavor for fifteen years. He'd seen everything from pirate raids to diplomatic crises. What could possibly have put that expression on his face?

No sooner had he stepped inside his five-by-eight quarters when the speakers clicked to life and an announcement filled the entire ship:

"Attention all crew members and civilians aboard the Endeavor: All enlisted officers of rank Lance Corporal or higher please assemble on the main deck. All other crew members assemble in your respective mess halls for a ship-wide brief. ETA ten minutes."

Marcus found himself holding his breath as the announcement clicked off and his room fell silent again. The walls seemed to press closer, the small space suddenly claustrophobic in a way it hadn't been before. He had never heard of a ship-wide briefing before but knew that it must be something important. In six months, he'd attended maybe a dozen sectional briefings. Ship-wide meant everyone. Ship-wide meant serious.

He hesitated a moment longer, staring at his bunk with its rumpled blanket and the photograph of his family taped to the bulkhead. His mother, his father, his younger sister with her gap-toothed smile. They felt very far away right now.

Then he rushed back out into the hallway. It normally took him ten minutes to reach the mess hall, so he would have to hurry.

The hallway jumble was worse as the entire crew streamed to their designated locations. The emergency lighting had switched on at some point—when had that happened?—bathing everything in a harsh red glow that turned familiar faces into masks of shadow and crimson. Marcus ducked and weaved through the halls, sliding sideways past everyone else and squeezing through any gap he could find. It earned him more than a few angry looks, but right now he couldn't care less.

The anxiety and anticipation in the air were palpable, thick as smoke. The threat of war with the outer planets always loomed in the background; he had been hearing about such a war since he was a child. His grandfather had fought in the last major conflict, the one that had left scars across three systems and cost millions of lives. He'd died before Marcus was born, but his stories lived on in family gatherings—tales of horror and heroism that had seemed romantic until this very moment.

Now the idea that it might finally be a reality put everything into stark focus and made Marcus a little sick to his stomach. He had known when signing up how dangerous this job could be, but the actual chance of being in a warzone had also seemed so small. Distant. Abstract. The kind of thing that happened to other people in other times.

Don't jump to conclusions, he chastised himself as he squeezed between two arguing technicians. The brief could be about anything. It doesn't mean there was an attack, and it certainly doesn't mean war.

Yeah. Right.

Telling himself that did nothing to keep his palms from sweating. Did nothing to slow the hammer of his heart or quiet the voice in his head that whispered of all the ways this could go wrong.

He stumbled into the mess hall along with a stream of latecomers. The space was packed to the brim with boisterous soldiers, more than he had ever seen gathered in one place. The usual smell of recycled air and bland food had been overwhelmed by the press of bodies—sweat and fear and the acrid tang of anxiety. He recognized most of them, but there were a fair number he had never seen who worked opposite shifts. Faces that had been names in databases, now suddenly real, suddenly present, suddenly in the same predicament as him.

His team was there waiting for him: Nigel, Lucas, and Chelsea Park. The only one missing was Rylee, who was still up with the other officers on the main deck. Marcus slipped into the seat next to Chelsea, the metal chair cold against his back even through his uniform. He exchanged glances with the others and saw his own uncertainty reflected back.

"Any word?"

"Nothing yet," Lucas said. He was drumming his fingers against the table, a nervous habit Marcus had noticed a dozen times before. Normally it irritated him. Today it seemed almost comforting. A sign of normalcy in an increasingly abnormal situation.

"I have gotten no solid details from sleuthing, either," Nigel added, shaking his head. His usual enthusiasm was muted, replaced by something darker. "Half the crew thinks it's an attack from the outer planets, and the other half think it's a direct order from the First Citizen. No one knows what's going on."

"Which just means more panic," Chelsea added. Her voice was calm, but Marcus noticed her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, knuckles white.

Marcus frowned. "The First Citizen?"

Everyone stared at him, and then Lucas burst out laughing. The sound was too loud in the tense atmosphere, drawing irritated looks from nearby tables. "Oh, that's right. Sometimes we forget you grew up in such a sheltered life."

Marcus squirmed in his seat, heat rising to his cheeks. He hated when they called him out about his upbringing. He came from a wealthy family on the planet Dresbon, which was famous for its utter disdain for Core world politics and history. On Dresbon, they'd barely acknowledged the wider galaxy existed—his parents had called it "unnecessary noise." They prided themselves on isolation, on their own traditions and customs, on being apart from the galaxy's endless machinations. Marcus could list all thirty of the last Lords of Dartmuth and describe the local geography outside Dresbon's capital in exacting detail, but for any details from the wider galaxy, he was hopelessly out of the loop.

"The Core World leader," Chelsea explained with a shrug, taking pity on him. "Core World Emperor would be a better descriptor, but they deemed millennia ago such a title to have too much baggage and changed it to First Citizen. Marketing, basically. Makes autocracy sound democratic."

"He doesn't give orders to specific ships," Nigel added. "Like, ever. He doesn't give orders at all, as far as I'm aware—he rules through appointed governors and military commanders. Which means if he is giving an order to us directly, it would have to be something unprecedented. That would explain the pomp and circumstance."

"Not likely," Lucas objected, shaking his head emphatically. "It's definitely an attack. Has to be. Why else would they be scrambling like this?"

A hush fell over the crowd as the viewscreen at the front of the mess flickered to life and the lights dimmed. The sudden silence was almost worse than the noise had been—the held breath of hundreds of people waiting for news that might change everything.

"Looks like we're about to find out," Chelsea said quietly.

After a few seconds of a blank white background, the viewscreen shifted into focus on the captain of the ship: an elderly stateswoman named Captain Blythe Jessup. She had gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, piercing eyes the color of storm clouds, and never smiled. In six months, Marcus had never once seen her expression change from its default of stern disapproval. She was not, according to shipboard gossip, a woman who tolerated weakness in any form.

"I know you are all wondering what is happening," she began without formality, her voice flat and precise as a laser cutter, "but I will strongly caution everyone against the rampant speculation that has been pervading the ship over the last several hours. It is unbecoming for a crew of this nature, and such fear-mongering will not be tolerated."

She paused, staring at the screen with a disapproving frown that seemed to reach through the display and fix on each of them individually. Marcus could swear those gray eyes met his for a moment, judging and finding him wanting.

Finally, she began speaking again.

"The update, as it pertains to all of you, is this: we have been tasked with joining the rest of the fleet in this region outside an anomaly to assist in a rescue and recovery mission. It will take us outside our pre-planned route and delay our port arrival by an indeterminate amount of time. There has been no attack, and these orders come from the fleet commander of this region. Your immediate commanders will fully brief you on a need-to-know basis.

"Anyone caught engaging in further untoward speculation regarding our orders over the next few hours will be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

And with that, the connection terminated with an abrupt click. The screen went dark.

Everyone in the room sat in shocked silence for thirty seconds, processing what they'd just heard—or rather, what they hadn't heard. Then Lucas burst out laughing, the sound sharp and slightly manic in the quiet.

"I guess our captain doesn't like gossip."

"Guess not," Chelsea agreed, leaning back in her chair with an expression of bemused frustration. She was a diminutive woman who kept her blonde hair in a tight bun, almost a mirror of the captain's own severe style. She had green eyes and a quick wit and was one of Marcus's closest friends—one of the few who didn't treat him like an outsider.

"She's good at giving us information without telling us anything," Nigel added, rubbing his temples. "Rescue mission? Anomaly? I feel like I know less about what is going on now than I did before. She basically told us to stop asking questions and accept that we're being rerouted for reasons she refuses to explain."

Marcus just shook his head. The entire situation felt odd, like trying to grip something in a dream and having it slip through your fingers. He knew there had to be more going on than what the captain had just delivered. She basically just gave them a warning to stop making up stories, but of course, that was going to have the opposite effect: they would have been better off getting some actual information from her.

"What now?" he asked.

"Now we wait for Rylee," Chelsea said. "She'll have a real update, hopefully. Officers always know more than they're supposed to tell us."

"Unless we're not important enough to be included," Nigel added with a grimace. "And in that case, we just need to accept that we will probably never know what's really going on and that our leave was delayed for an unspecified reason."

"We better be getting paid for this," Lucas said.

Nigel just laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Not a chance."

But Marcus wasn't thinking about pay. He wasn't thinking about leave or speculation or the captain's veiled threats. He was thinking about that word she had used. The word that had stood out like a beacon among all the careful military phrasing.

Anomaly.

In all his years on military vessels—admittedly not that many, but enough to know the patterns—he'd never once heard command use that word. They called things "situations" or "incidents" or "tactical scenarios." Clean. Clinical. Controllable. Words that fit into boxes on forms, that could be categorized and filed and forgotten.

Anomaly suggested something else entirely. Something outside their experience. Something they didn't have a word for because they'd never encountered it before.

Something wrong.

His mind drifted back to the wreck they'd just left. The stuffed bear with its button eyes. The terminal with its logs of a ship's final moments. The feeling that had been gnawing at him ever since—the sense that something fundamental had shifted when he wasn't looking.

And for reasons he couldn't explain, Marcus felt a cold certainty settle in his chest like a stone dropped into still water: whatever they were heading toward, none of them were ready for it.

None of them could be.

Because how do you prepare for something that doesn't have a name?