Rylee's face told them everything they needed to know.
The door slid open with a soft pneumatic hiss, and several officers sauntered into the mess hall. They walked with an air of overzealous importance as they joined the rest of the enlisted soldiers, their uniforms crisp and their chins high in that particular way career officers had of making everyone else feel small. Laughter and conversation resumed around them, the tension breaking like a fever as people convinced themselves the worst was over.
Marcus barely noticed them. He was watching Rylee.
She entered near the back of the group, but unlike the others, she wasn't performing. Her jaw was set in that familiar way he'd learned to read—the tension in her neck, the slight downturn of her mouth. Her eyes were focused, staring at something only she could see. The look of someone who'd just been handed something heavy and was still calculating its weight. Still deciding whether to carry it or let it crush her.
She didn't sit. Instead, she tilted her head, gesturing for them to follow with a quick, sharp motion that brooked no argument, and disappeared through a back corridor out of the mess. The gesture was subtle enough that only their team noticed. Anyone else would have thought she was just heading to the refresher.
Everyone at the table exchanged a glance—a whole conversation in a single look. Lucas raised his eyebrows. Chelsea nodded once. Nigel was already pushing back from the table. Without a word, they got up to follow.
She led them through the narrow halls of the ship, past the berthing compartments and down a service ladder, to a training deck buried two levels below. The journey took five minutes, and with each step The knot in Marcus's stomach tightened. Whatever this was, it required privacy. Whatever this was, it was bad.
The training deck was empty while everyone was still back in the mess. The lights flickered on automatically as they entered, illuminating rows of exercise equipment and combat training mats that smelled faintly of old sweat. The space was larger than most areas on the ship, designed to accommodate up to fifty soldiers during peak hours. Now it felt cavernous. Hollow.
"What's up?" Lucas asked after shutting the door behind them. He leaned against it casually, but Marcus noticed his hand hovering near the lock panel. Just in case. "Didn't want to talk back there?"
"No," Rylee said, frowning. She was pacing, which she never did. Three steps one way, three steps back. Like an animal in a cage too small for it. "This is a need-to-know sort of thing, and they advised me against letting anything slip outside of my team."
"Advised?" Marcus asked. The word felt wrong in his mouth, too soft for whatever was making Rylee act like this.
"Advised several times and strenuously, and by the captain, no less."
"Captain, as in Captain Jessup?" Chelsea asked, her eyes widening. In six months, Marcus had never heard of Captain Jessup personally advising anyone below the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Rylee nodded. "I hope that stresses how important this is."
The words hung in the air like smoke. Around them, the ship hummed its endless mechanical song—air recyclers and power conduits and the distant throb of engines pushing them through space. Marcus found himself hyper-aware of every sound, every vibration.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "How important what is?"
"We're one of the advance teams," she said, and there was a hint of excitement and breathlessness in her voice that didn't quite match the tension in her shoulders. "One of three."
"Advance teams?" Chelsea asked. "Advance teams for what?"
Rylee stopped pacing. She faced them, and in the harsh fluorescent light her face looked older, carved from something harder than flesh. "To go into the Void."
"The what?"
"That's what they're calling it. The Void." She shook her head, a strand of dark hair escaping her regulation bun. "No clue, really. No one knows what it actually is. That's sort of the craziness to all of this: no one has any idea what is going on. The best scientists in three systems have been studying it for days, and they've got nothing."
"Hold up," Nigel said, raising his hands. His face had gone pale, the perpetual enthusiasm that usually animated his features replaced by something closer to dread. "What are you talking about? Start at the beginning because we weren't briefed on any of this."
"Alright." Rylee took a breath, steadying herself. "A few days ago, we lost contact with a planet out in a nearby solar system. Colony world. Thousands of people."
"When you say 'we' lost contact, you mean...?"
"We. Everyone. The fleet, scientists, commercial interests, everybody. Every communication channel went dark at the same time. Like someone flipped a switch." She snapped her fingers, the sound sharp in the empty room. "One moment they were there. The next—nothing."
"Okay," Marcus said slowly, his mind already racing through possibilities. Equipment failure. Solar interference. Sabotage.
"So, they sent a ship to investigate, and it never reported back."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Marcus felt Chelsea shift beside him, her shoulder brushing against his.
"So, they sent a few more ships there to check it out, and that's where things get weird." Rylee's voice dropped, as if she was afraid of being overheard even in this empty room. "The planet was gone. Or, like, covered."
"Uh, what?" Nigel asked, his voice cracking slightly.
"It was enveloped in some sort of shell-like thing, but not really a shell. It was still permeable, but completely impossible to see or sense inside. Like... imagine a soap bubble, but made of pure darkness. They sent ships around it completely, mapped every inch of its exterior, and it's like a giant ball in space."
"The entire planet?"
"The entire system," Rylee said, and the words landed like hammer blows. "Multiple planets, moons, everything within a certain radius. It even contains all light—nothing gets in or out. A perfect sphere of absolute nothing."
Marcus felt his stomach twist. He'd studied astronomy as a child, fascinated by the vastness of space. He knew what was possible, what the universe could do. This wasn't possible.
"A black hole?" Lucas offered, grasping for something that made sense. "I didn't think something like that could pop up so quickly."
"No," Rylee said. "Nothing known or documented. Black holes have radiation signatures, gravitational effects you can measure from light-years away. This has nothing. It's just... there. Like the universe has a hole in it." She paused, letting that sink in. "There are dozens of scientific and research ships there now, the best minds humanity has to offer, and they can't make heads or tails of it."
"Can they get inside?" Chelsea asked.
"They can. Physically, at least. After the first ship was lost, they sent drones into it—every type they had. Exploratory probes, communication relays, hardened military units. At soon as they went through the exterior, they lost all contact. Every single one. The drones never came back."
Silence stretched between them like a wire pulled tight enough to hum.
"So..." Lucas began.
"Uh oh," Nigel said. "I see where this is going."
"We're the guinea pigs," Chelsea said flatly, stating what they were all thinking. "They're sending three teams inside to figure out what this thing is, and we're one of them. They've run out of drones they're willing to waste, so now they're wasting people instead."
"Yeah," Rylee said. There was no joy in her voice now, just the tired acceptance of someone who'd already processed this and come out the other side. "That's why we have more information, and why we aren't allowed to tell anyone else anything I just told you. This is strictly need to know."
"But we do not even know what is inside," Chelsea pressed. "Why all the secrecy?"
"Because it's new," Marcus said. The answer came to him clearly, the way obvious things sometimes did. "And new usually means valuable. The last thing anyone wants is this reported to family members until we have more information. If word got out, there'd be panic. Questions. Demands for explanations command doesn't have."
Rylee nodded. "Got it in one."
"Can we even get inside?" Nigel mused, rubbing his chin. His scientific mind was already working the problem, Marcus could tell, trying to find angles that might save them. "For all we know, the drones didn't return because whatever they ran into inside the barrier instantly destroyed them. Atomized them. Turned them into component particles before they could send back a single byte of data."
Rylee shrugged. "Possible, but the scientists don't believe that is the case."
"How could they know?" Nigel's voice rose, frustration bleeding through. "What you're describing is literally the definition of them having no clue what is going on. They could say we all turn into unicorns when we pass through the barrier, and we can't disprove it. The scientific method requires observable data, and they have none."
"This isn't encouraging," Marcus said. "I think I'd rather not be a guinea pig and not know what is going on than to get sent through like this. Ignorance was at least comfortable."
"Where is your sense of adventure?" Rylee asked, and for a moment, a ghost of her usual fire flickered in her eyes. "Opportunities like this are why we signed up. We get to explore something completely unknown, which rarely happens. Most soldiers spend their whole careers running drills and never seeing anything more exciting than a simulated engagement."
"It's also rarely good," Marcus countered. "The unknown usually wants to kill you. That's why it's unknown—everyone who found out what it was didn't live to tell about it."
"Why are they sending anyone at all?" he pressed. "Shouldn't we study the thing more and send more drones before risking human lives? Drones are cheaper than people."
"Not really," Nigel said, his voice taking on the clinical detachment he used when discussing uncomfortable truths. "With how many trillions of people there are in the universe, the raw materials to make a military-grade drone are likely more valuable. Lithium. Titanium. Rare earth elements. All in limited supply. Human beings?" He shrugged. "Those are renewable."
"That's a scary thought," Lucas said.
"It's a rescue mission," Chelsea said, returning to Rylee's previous thread. Her voice was steady, focused. Cutting through the speculation to what mattered. "You said this all started when we lost contact with a planet."
"A planet and its moon base," Rylee confirmed. "We lost contact with both, and now it's been three days without a word. Thousands of people—scientists, civilians, families—gone silent. Command wants to know why we have no contact and what has happened to them. And more importantly, they want to know if there are survivors."
"And risking our lives is worth maybe getting a sliver of information," Nigel said bitterly.
Rylee shrugged, but there was steel in it. "That's what we signed up for. We knew the risks when we put on these uniforms."
"I signed up to shoot bad guys," Lucas argued. "Not to get thrown away on a wish and a prayer into some cosmic mystery that nobody understands."
"How long?" Marcus asked. The question felt heavy in his mouth. "How long do we have until they send us in?"
"Two hours," Rylee said. "We're already warping that way and should arrive at the outer barrier soon. We're going to the moon base. The other two teams are heading to different cities on the planet."
Two hours. Marcus let that sink in. Two hours until they stepped into something no one had ever returned from. Two hours until they either made history or became another statistic in a classified report that would never see the light of day.
"Any details on who we might find there?" Chelsea asked, ever practical.
"The manifest lists a few hundred personnel at the moon base. Scientists, technicians, support staff. Some families in the residential sector—mostly kids of researchers who couldn't arrange alternative care." Rylee pulled up her datapad, the screen casting blue light across her features. "Last transmission mentioned a Dr. Morrison coordinating evacuation efforts before communications went dark. If anyone survived, they might know what happened. She's our primary contact."
"Simple enough," Chelsea said, though her voice held no conviction.
"The other good news is we get full kits," Rylee said, and there was a hint of genuine enthusiasm in her voice now.
This had the desired effect of perking Lucas up. His eyes brightened like a child on a gift-giving holiday. "Full kits?"
She nodded. "Full kits. All the toys. Experimental weapons, heavy armor, the works. Whatever we want from the armory, we take."
"Holy hell," he breathed. "They must really mean business."
"This mission is our top priority. The kind of mission they give out medals for." Rylee looked at each of them in turn, her gaze lingering. "The kind of mission that makes careers. Or ends them."
"The kind of mission they send medals to your family for," Nigel corrected, shaking his head. "Posthumous commendations for brave service. I don't suppose I can opt out?"
Rylee laughed, but there was an edge to it. "Not a chance. You're the tech specialist. If anything electronic needs hacking inside that thing, you're our best shot."
"Wonderful."
"Cheer up. The entire mission is supposed to take a few hours. We slip through the barrier, check on the moon base and make sure everyone is okay, and slip out to report our findings. In and out. Right now, the best theory is that this is just an anomaly in space that will dissipate on its own. For all we know, the scientists on the moon base don't even know we are out here to get in touch with them. Maybe their communications array just malfunctioned."
"That doesn't explain the other ship that went missing," Marcus said. "Or the drones."
"Maybe not," Rylee admitted, "but it doesn't mean it's all doom and gloom, either. Maybe there's an explanation we haven't thought of. Maybe everything is fine and we're going to feel silly for all this worrying."
"True."
Marcus didn't believe it. Neither did anyone else, from the looks on their faces. But the alternative was panic, and panic wouldn't help anyone.
"So, let's head to the armory, get our gear, and then go be heroes," Rylee said, forcing brightness into her voice.
They filed out of the training deck, footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. Marcus nodded along with the others, but something cold had settled in his stomach like ice water. Three teams going in. One to the moon base, two to the planet. He found himself wondering about those other teams—the faces he'd never see, heading into the same darkness from different angles.
He wondered how many of them were feeling this same dread right now. How many of them were making peace with the idea that they might not come back. How many of them had families waiting, letters unwritten, words unsaid.
He wondered how many of them would come back.
He wondered if any of them would.
And underneath that thought, darker and quieter: he wondered what was waiting for them on the other side. What could possibly swallow an entire solar system? What could silence thousands of people in an instant?
Some part of him—the part that had chosen documentary work over a safe desk job, the part that had joined the military instead of staying on Dresbon—wanted to know.
The rest of him was absolutely terrified to find out.
Join the Discussion