Echoes in the Void

The red planet loomed in the viewport, a desolate expanse of dust and jagged stone lit faintly by a dying sun. For the crew of the Odyssey, this mission to Sector Nine-Tau was meant to be routine—an exploratory survey of mineral deposits. Instead, they found the Aeternum, a ship missing for over a century, silently orbiting the planet like a tomb.

Commander Reyes was the first to board, leading a small team comprised of Dr. Lena Morris, a xenolinguist; tech engineer Malik Zhou; and medic Ana Keller. From the moment they stepped onto the Aeternum, a heavy silence pressed against them. Systems were offline, yet some sections remained sealed, protected by cryptic access codes written in a language none of their systems could decode.

The deeper they ventured, the stranger things became. Doors opened by themselves. Distant whispers echoed in empty halls. Lena began to translate fragments etched into the walls—messages that spoke of “the awakening,” of “watchers beneath time.” They were warnings, she realized, not instructions.

Malik managed to reboot a portion of the mainframe. Video logs showed a crew driven mad, speaking in tongues, drawing symbols in their own blood. Whatever the Aeternum had discovered down on the planet—it had followed them back.

As systems flickered back to life, the ship locked them in. Ana vanished during a routine check of the medical bay. They found her later, eyes wide open, mouth full of a black, dust-like substance that seemed to pulse. Malik tried to override the ship’s command, but it was as though the Aeternum had developed a mind of its own.

Reyes made the call. They had to destroy it.

Lena objected—there was still more to learn. But when the ship began to replicate her voice over the comms, calling out in languages that hadn’t existed in millennia, she understood. Some knowledge came with a price.

They planted explosives in the core and returned to the Odyssey. As the Aeternum disintegrated in the upper atmosphere, the planet below seemed to tremble. A crack formed across its surface, revealing… movement.

They didn’t wait to see more. As they jumped into hyperspace, none of them spoke. In the silence, they carried with them a truth too vast to name. The void is not empty. It watches. It remembers.

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