Integral scans 20.6%

Once he was inside the life pod, its reinforced and lined walls would disconnect his wrist device from the ship’s remote connection. Whatever he did, he needed to do it now. With likely seconds to act, and standing on the cusp of hope. He keyed up the remote connection to the science station. And began the processes of emergency data transfer and storage. The ship contained a hardened data storage appliance. The size of a good book and three times as heavy, this device would receive all of the ship’s mineralogical, astrological, and optical scan data, then disconnect the cabling from the storage appliance. The appliance, in turn, would activate a sustain-and-stabilize mode until it could be retrieved. Theoretically, the data in the device could survive indefinitely.

Data Transfer started; 12% complete. Estimated time to completion: 12 minutes.

Twelves, what are the chances? But twelve minutes was a long time; he wasn’t sure …

Integral scans at 20.2%. Evacuate Now.

He did not have time. He would have to trust the system’s ability to complete the transfer. Vest thrust himself forward into the life pod and awkwardly fitted himself into the standing restraint. Activating a tactile switch at his side, the restraints tightened against his suit and braced the sides of his head. The experience was confining and unnerving, his ability to move stripped from him, and his field of vision offering only a faint glimpse of the ship’s corridor at the fringes of his visor. Another tearing sound roared through his ears, another volley.

Integral scans at 1-

Silence, both visually and audibly.

The corridors and the life pod abruptly descended into a momentary void of incomparable darkness. The alarms ceased, his wrist device displaying disconnected in flashing yellow. The emergency lighting slowly glowed to life in sick orange. The auto-ejection should have continued, was designed to continue, even in the event of a full system failure. Confined, Vest’s thoughts started to boil, to rage. The fear that had been held at bay by movement and purpose was rising like flood waters, faster than reason could dam it back up. “Breathe, focus on breathing.” Vest chanted to himself, finding it hard to focus on something so erratic. “There is an emergency manual operation in the pod.”

The act of giving himself instructions cleared the black specs forming in his vision: “Find it, pull it.” He blindly reached above his head with his still-functioning hand and wrist. He strained against the head brace to grant himself just a minimal more of vision. He found it, neck aching, grasping it, and stopped. In the corridor, an ethereal shadow floated just outside the hatch, reflecting the sick orange glow of the emergency lights, but also emitting a faint brilliance of the rest of the Mirrored Ban. The effect was a partial corporeal. In that moment, his breathing slowed and the hairs across his arms and neck raised. Light seemed to pulse from within and along thin lines of the semi-organized scattering of the silicate that had transitioned into the ship. A different fear washed away the fear of confined death. For a moment, he made eye contact with something. Yet there were no eyes, no face, nothing his brain or mind could use to represent a thing capable of making eye contact. But in the seeming seconds, he felt his eyes being searched by another pair. Like the accidental eye contact with someone you might know. He pulled the lever, the hatch slammed closed, followed by a rapid succession of five lights and a buzzer. A violent thud brought the bile to his throat as the life pod ejected away from the William Clark. A chance of hope for survival.

The William Clark heeled away from the rapidly departing life pod, obeying the laws of motion. Its systems past the point of ability to obey the commands its central computer desperately issued. Too weak to continue, its life energy nearly let out in full into the surrounding space, with the core sputtering and cooling. The Pirate corvettes, seeing the last life pod depart and the prey no longer struggling, ceased their onslaught. Unconcerned with picking up survivors, “more mouths to feed” the pirates joked and laughed, they followed the Clark as it sank into the swirling rapids of the Mirrored Ban, intending to feast upon their reward.

Years gone by, and Vest still felt confined and tumbling through space. It was expected by Vest and others that parts of the Clark would have shown up on the black and grey markets, maybe even the entire ship. Or that it would later be seen as a pirate itself. Ill-fitted and retrofitted to issue destruction from a shadow. Vest feared and hoped that an encrypted data vault would be auctioned to the highest bidder for a year-long decryption process. Expectations were not honored. No part of the William Clark ever surfaced. Nothing. After a decade, Timothy Vest, always the hopeful, decided it was still out there. Something must have discouraged the pirates from consuming the ship whole. Maybe the radiation leak or the exhausting effort of navigating deep in the rapids of light and reflection. Vest had ten years to create mental models as to why, but little way of validating the what-ifs he had concocted. But with the most recent message he had received from the original expedition’s backer, the word “approved” was highlighted across the summary. After ten years, he had the means to validate. To retrieve the data, find out what happened. The chance of hope, in going back. And to look the mirrored ban in the eyes.

All Hands, All Hands, Abandon Ship. Life Pod Auto Ejection will occur when structural integrity scans are below 20% Viable. All Hands, repeating.

Klaxons, buzzers, and bells emphasized the inflamed red letters glowing upon the various wrist and eyewear devices of every crew member of the CSV William Clark. The hull cracked and hissed as hyper-accelerated rounds of tungsten tore through. The ship's onboard systems took over the task of evasive maneuvers and every other still-functioning system critical to the survival of the remaining crew. The control bridge was cleared, and the last of the crew were near or in life pods. Operations Chief Timothy Vest, the pseudo-captain of this science vessel, was alone and still operating the Engineering Control Board, keeping the passages clear and venting smoke from areas the crew had to cross. Through death's valley to safety into the great darkness. The oddity of the thought, the calm in the calamity, was jarring given the context. The first thud of a completed ejection sequence gave him hope; maybe some of them would survive.

The two corvette-class ships, retrofitted and ill-fitted gunships, had been hiding among the belt of asteroids and unique silicate sand after having likely gotten word from an earlier supply and fuel depot that the William Clark had been en route to survey this region. They had departed the company of the CSV-10 Bound For North Freighter group three days prior, stopping only once at the required checkpoint before entering the belt. Aptly named the Mirrored Ban, this space, with its asteroids and floating waves of sand, reflected light with such luminosity that it looked like waves of light upon the white-capped river. The particles and larger objects all silently moving in a uniform flow in orbit around the dim terrestrial orb, roughly the size of Sol's Mars, where it is beautiful at any distance in its sparkling refraction and reflection.

But they also reflected and scattered LiDAR, Radar, and all other modern sensing equipment. Projecting images of objects, ships, just like a mirror. And it was this unique feature that made it worth studying and marked it deadly like the bands of a venomous snake. Sensors could not be trusted, so when the reflections in the mirror fired the first volley, the William Clark was doomed. If Mark Barnes had not been a capable pilot, a short hauler experienced in flying by sight, they'd have all been dead. He'd seen the blue glare among the river of white from the pirate cannons and performed a course override; the first round pierced the hull only a foot from the ship's reactor core. A little to the left, and they'd pierced the heart of William Clark. Barnes only bought them time. Time enough to launch a signal flare, time enough for a distress beacon, and time enough to initiate the evacuation orders when the weapon systems failed to find their marks and the second volley of pirate cannons ripped and gouged the thinly armored hull. The critical systems control board began to whistle a trilling warning of cascading failures.

“Vest, this is Barnes.” The remarkable calm of Barnes’ voice blistered through the in-ear radio, and, surprised by the calm in his own voice, he responded. “Go for Vest.”

“Our orientation is wrong. If we eject now, we will be on a direct course to an asteroid. We didn’t get a good scan on the hardness of these things.”

“Copy, I’ll rotate 40 degrees; how's that look?”

Barnes could be heard counting, doing the math vocally: “yeah, yeah that’ll do it. I think, I can’t see if the damn thing is moving or if we are running parallel. No time, and might not matter. Vest, that rotation.” he struggled for a moment “it puts you reactor up to the assholes putting holes in the ship.”

“I know.”

“Good luck and get out soon,” Barnes signaled with a sigh, and the radio returned to silence; in that moment, he could hear the anxiety, the fear, rising in Barnes' voice. “Good luck to you too, and fate be as it is” Vest said to the air in his suit, as near on a prayer as a statement. He scrambled to the navigation console and triggered the rotational thrusts. At 33 degrees, a counter-rotation kicked in to stabilize orientation. At 40 degrees, like an actor hitting the stage cue, the thud of a completed ejection sequence marked escape and the potential to hope for survival of his friends and crewmates. Vest smiled, potential for hope.

The William Clark shook and shuddered in its death rattle. The Pirates, seeing the opportunity and being the opportunistic predators they were, fired a fourth volley. They, too, must be without computerized firing; the arc of the tungsten rod collided with a brilliantly reflecting asteroid, dissolving it into a glistening glitter of diamonds that scattered 99% of the photons that struck them. Laws of motion carried the rod ever forward, now with an entourage of the brilliant light before striking the ship. The lights dimmed, the console darkened, reawakened, gasped, and dimmed. The output on his wrist device sputtered and struggled. A three-toned bell sounded at the Engineering Control Board—radiological warnings. Gravity was failing, pushing from the navigation console, he drifted, half-scrambled, to the Control Board. Lights and console gasping for life, the reactor had been hit. Not directly. A glancing blow, not enough to outright kill the William Clark, but effectively it was now bleeding out, seeping its life energy into the internal structure as its ability to maintain fusion slowly failed.

User should evacuate.

A warning protocol? The wrist device flashed each word with a buzz, something from the ship's internal protocols, maybe a primitive code set?

Life Pod Three, ready. Integral scans at 22.3%.

Vest oriented himself to the corridor leading to the life pod, a short five-step skip. With the gasping, gravity came and went in varying degrees; in one exceptional moment, Vest was brought face-first to the floor and mistakenly braced himself with his hand. The pain and popping sound from his wrist were excruciating and brief. Immediately, the gravity failed back to a low and off state, with the ship's automated systems continuing to attempt to be as difficult a target as possible, and he, being untethered, was left stationary as the ship moved in an orientation that was down to him. The thud of his back striking the ceiling and its numerous tubes and protruding accents left a dull ache. What should have been five steps away became a painful, slow, and careful drift. Half walking, half drifting, nursing his broken wrist, Vest made his way to the life pod in the flickering dim as the scittering hiss sound of the beautifully reflective sand and tungsten collided with the ship.

Integral scans 20.8%. Auto ejection imminent. Move to any available life pod immediately.

Asha had nearly gone cross-eyed reading that conclusion. Haulers were seldom among the suicide stats, and those that were seemed to prefer less painful means such as navigating into an asteroid belt while the compression drive was engaged. Rumor was, you never experienced the reality of death at relative speeds beyond light. She doubted that. Besides, there was too much strangeness in this report to simply attribute the resolution of things so straightforwardly. Every door in every companionway and drone bay had been ruptured in a way suggesting travel towards engineering, supported by autonomous logs registering rapidly increasing pressures causing door failure. The flight deck door was in one piece and in place, but the ventilation system had undergone a procedure for a caustic atmosphere emergency, recovery teams had identified nothing of the sort in the atmosphere currently or previously. His personal defense weapon had two discharges, but scorching consistent with directed energy impacts could only be found on the first companionway leading from the flight deck. That was two of potentially eight beams. Where did the other six strike? Besides all this, pilot logs showed that he had been experiencing strange communication errors and deflections.

Then there was the pilot, Asha changed reports on her handheld display pad, Peter Dove. He was a former member of the Spaceborn Legionnaires. A loose militia for the equally loose consortium that was the spaceborn flotilla. Not unusual, the legion was a volunteer service, but nearly all spaceborn served. They were a fragile society, with no planet to call home, and every ship was a precious thing and a target. The Sol Confederate still actively hunted them. His record was unimpressive, but honorable. Her ever-present smile flickered for a moment as she recognized some of the battles he had been part of. Her own memory of the battles was not kind. The Dorian campaign stood out starkly. A collection of 14 moons in orbit around a supermassive gas giant, each a memorial to slaughter. She uncomfortably shifted in the chair. Those memories still plagued her, and physical scars burned occasionally as the synthetic layers underneath inflamed the surrounding organic tissue. But his work as an isolated hauler was unblemished. He delivered on time, on budget. His ship was leased, always in good repair. Nothing to suggest he was anything but a well-disciplined man. Like others, he had scars of war, but he was otherwise in good health per the pilot registry. That was not what they found, however. Mr. Dove was near death. His right knee had been badly damaged from what the medical officer determined was a fall, fractures in the surrounding bones and torn ligaments would have made movement excruciating. When he opened the containment of the power generation system he had received well above the lethal dose of radiation and was only saved by his suit's shielding. The medical officer could repair the burns and DNA damage, but if he hadn’t placed his suits' shielding in series, siphoning power off the core, he would have surely been killed. More evidence against suicide. The medical report was concise on all these matters, but the reporting officer's sureness was missing from the second part of the report:

“The patient has extensive damage to the Myelin Sheath, evident in what can only be described as holes exposing the nerve cells beneath. There are locations in the feet, legs, and lower body where the damage occurs at greater frequency, as well as a location on the right shoulder and near the heart. Damage of this level would have affected the saltatory conduction of the nerve cells, leading to an observable delay in motor function and disorders of the heart and lungs. Suit logs show that stimulants were administered at increasingly high levels, as well as increasing oxygen levels to compensate for the blood oxygen saturation levels falling below safe levels indicating hypoxemia. Also present in the logs is a bradycardic rhythm which could be related to and consistent with damage to the Myelin Sheath.”

The medical officer went on to explain that autoimmune and viral infections did not drill holes in the sheath. Asha vocalized her discomfort at the idea with a groan. He’d live, but the recovery time before his nerves recovered would be extensive.

Her display signaled a message, an addendum to the report. A member of the recovery team had been working to recover data from the ship's internal recorders, camera, and audio. The radiation had corrupted and distorted the majority of them past recovery, but one audio file had been recovered. The message was for her situational awareness, but contained an extra line, “recovered from suit, expedition class got all the bells. It is unsettling as hell.” Her eyebrows shot up. She played the audio file, and it was as expected, distorted. The radiation had inserted numerous pops, clicks, and stutters. She had to focus on making the two voices. Voices! She sat up, both feet to the ground, nearly ready to spring over her desk. Voices? Manifest showed it was a single crew vehicle, support, and supply configured to the same. She adjusted the volume and focused harder, replaying the short audio file. A name, Peter Dove, possibly, and a phrase, never touched by creation? Punctuated with roaring laughter. The gong of the radiation alarm sounded; containment had been breached. More laughter, weaker but louder, closer to the suit microphone, possibly Peter Dove himself, and a multi-tonal roar layered under the static: “Civilian merchant vessel 4113, pilot Peter Dove, receiving your distress signal, how may I assist?” Followed by “Never touch creation,” All the while weakly laughing, Peter Dove slipped from consciousness.

A short recap: Peter Dove, while traveling the loneliest corridor in space, encounters a strange phenomenon of unanswerable distress beacons and signal reflections that becomes a mist-like thing filling the drone bay. Attempting to close the hatch results in the computer warning of an obstruction…

Obstruction detected in Drone Bay hatch. Immediate attention required.

The wrist display buzzed and flashed the warning in bright red. A second tendril and a third begin to pour into the bay, the bottom becoming a pool of black. Dove gave the command for the emergency override, the hydraulics of the hatch were disengaged and replaced by a screw mechanism that began to steadily and rapidly close the hatch.

Override active, warning, obstruction present: Organic or inorganic matter will be damaged.

Good, Dove reflected. Anything out there didn’t belong in here. On camera, he could see the mist flowing in became a rapid gush beginning to flood the bay. The mechanical screw mechanism whined and whirred as it pinched off the flow, sealing with a resounding thud.

Operation complete.

The mechanism was capable of several tons of force. It was designed to shear through steel in case of a failed drone deployment. But by the sound of the mechanism, it had met resistance at or near its capability. The bay was nearly half filled with the black mist, the surface of it rippling slightly like a pond’s surface when fish glided in circles. What now? Another thought shot across Dove’s mind. The bay door was sealed; there was no mechanism besides the hatch to expose that area to space. This was an integrated bay and he could not disconnect it from the rest of the ship. The bay door began to groan, as if a giant leaned against it. Dove shook his head, eyes aching from being wide and unblinking, the mist shifted and seemingly pressed against the door, like a glass tipped sideways and the contents threatening to spill out. The wrist display began to buzz alarmingly.

Warning: Bay door is under stress; pressure rating has been met. Relieve pressure on the bay door to avoid rupture.

How could a mist have mass, seemingly at will? Was this what settled on the ship, causing the drift? Dove did not believe in superstition, but he believed in fear. The voice that penetrated the steel melted any doubt. Muffled yet resonating, as if it emanated from the steel itself.

“Civilian merchant vessel 4113, pilot Peter Dove, receiving your distress signal, how may I assist?”

His voice, the urgency and anticipation of that first message in response to the silent distress call. Again, with diminishing urgency, replaced by curiosity. He heard his voice a third time, again with less urgency, less anticipation, more curiosity, and more annoyance. The door groaned louder, pops issuing from the hinging and sealing system. The alarmed buzzing of the wrist display was overwhelmed by his heart, pounding fiercely against his chest. The suit’s life support adjusted to compensate for his rapid, shallow breathing. He backed up a step, bumping against the ladder leading up into the flight deck. Rattling against the rungs, the wrist device won his attention.

WARNING: DOOR FAILURE IMMINENT. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY

Dove’s instinct overriding fear, he gripped a rung above his head and, while turning, fired the suit’s mobility assist system, propelling him past the six rungs into the control deck. A deafening crack of the door failing under the immense pressure was followed by a heavy thud as the atmosphere filled the vacuum in the bay. The door was sucked back into position for a moment before falling to the floor with yet another clang, and the bell-like chimes of pieces that tumbled and rolled away. Looking down through the access tube, Dove could see the mist crawling along the floor. “Peter Dove,” his voice called up to him from the mist, “Vessel 4113”

Dove drew his weapon from the safety compartment on his hip. The weapon, essentially a brick with a trigger, whistled as its capacitors charged, the sound loud even through his helmet. The mist began to crawl up rung, by rung. Hands, Dove felt his heart rate rattle upwards again, those tendrils are starting to look like hands. He backed away. The pilot’s chair was behind him, as well as the exit to the rest of the ship. The mist rose out of the access tube, columns of it lifting into the air like thunderheads, tendrils issuing forward, each taking a vague form of a hand. In the boils of the thunderhead, faces and heads like mockeries formed and faded.

Dove began to feel heavy, his thoughts were slower and he could feel his heart strain to beat faster, feeling its need to beat faster. Looking down, his eyes had to be forced to focus on the lithe tendrils now at his feet and wrapping around his ankles. The thought to move, the command from the brain through the nervous system, was slow. Eventually, the body moved not as if through a thick medium. But simply delayed. The effort to move, to will the body, and to think, became a powerful demand almost beyond his capacity. But he moved. Putting the chair between himself and the mist moving outside its reach. It was gathering now, becoming less an analogy and more an avatar. The life support system of his suit detected the sudden drop in heart rate and decreasing oxygen levels in the blood. It treated the symptoms, it increased the oxygen mixture, adding a stimulant. Dove felt the effects immediately. His thoughts came faster now, his heart rate climbing. The mist advanced again, Dove raised his weapon leveling it at the largest collection of mist, and pulled the trigger. In milliseconds, the vertically stacked twin lenses focused alternating beams of invisible light in rapid clicks as the internal capacitors discharged. Invisible to the eye, the directed energy of the weapon created a volley of flaring ignitions against the mist form. The blinding flashes of superheated matter burned with the intensity and speed of ignited accelerant, creating a short-lived strobe effect. The mist recoiled, roaring, giving Dove a feeling of dissatisfaction, not pain. He released the trigger. It could only fire a volley of four beams with each trigger pull. But the weapon had affected the mist. He triggered his suit’s mobility assist system again and ran.

He cleared the bulkhead of the flight deck leading into the walkways for the rest of the ship. Crossing the threshold he triggered the door, sealing it. Dove slowed down, the door was of the same type as the bay, and it would hold for at least as long. He came to the first of three ladders leading down through the galley, bunk, and finally to the engineering deck. He looked back, though any rupturing of the door would have been audible. His wrist display showed the door was sealed and not at risk. His breathing slowed. Did the mist give up this easily? Was it harmed by his weapon more than he had assumed? Shaking his head, it didn’t matter; Dove had a plan that required him to be on the engineering deck. He began with a careful step down onto the first rung and eased himself down, his suit making the climb down cumbersome.

“Peter Dove”

The voice spoke softly with force, the tone was no longer his. He looked up through the companionway, a boil of mist in the shape of a human face stared at him with eyeless recesses. The vents, the tubes, and the ductwork delivering life-sustaining atmosphere had instead delivered death. Dove could see the fog pouring from a nearby fist-sized circle. The mist reached down and painfully gripped his shoulder. Thoughts began to slow, his heart beating slower with forced contractions as the nervous system struggled to deliver the proper signals to sustain it. Bright and dark spots formed in his vision. He let go, pitching himself backward.

After three separate impacts along the walls and ladder of the companion way, he landed heavily facedown against the steel floor. Dove rolled, drawing and firing, as his suit gave him another dose of stimulant to mitigate the symptoms of the mist’s touch. Half his volley struck the mist, igniting it and the steel beside it in a blinding strobe. As before, the mist recoiled and more by instinct than thought Dove sealed the companionway. He also sent a command for a ventilation emergency. Throughout the ship, he could hear the echo of segments of the ventilation system sealing with steel doors, followed by the hissing of a hardening foam being injected into the ducting. Designed to prevent the spread of a caustic atmosphere, the ventilation system was now useless, and more importantly, not traversable. Dove was now dependent on his suit’s life support.

“Peter Dove, Vessel 4113!”

The mist roared as the hatch boomed in its tantrum. Dove pushed himself to his feet, his right leg sending searing pain through him. He wasn’t sure at what point, but somewhere in the fall he had twisted or somehow damaged his knee. The suit’s ability to assist motor function, through micro actuators and exoskeleton support, made the pain bearable as it bore some of the weight. Dove grimaced as he half limped, half dragged his right leg along. A scratch in his helmet, thankfully not a crack, partially obscured his vision and the feeling of something viscous on his temple gave him a true sense of how bad the fall was and how much his suit had saved him from a broken neck. The mist now was a continuous source of sound, roaring his name and beating upon the door. His wrist display buzzed and alerted that the door was under pressure. Dove made his way to the next companionway, traversing it slower than he preferred at this moment, sealing the hatch behind him. Each hatch gaining him more time. Almost there, another step, Dove repeated his mantra as his right leg burned with pain.

Dove stumbled down onto the console for the Power Generation System, a domed piece of machinery half the size of a man but responsible for powering the vessel for eternity. Triggering the engineering door closed. Dove released the clasps on the underside of the console, removing a bundle of wiring meant to act as a connection point for a secondary power source used to cold start, or otherwise restart, the system in case of an emergency. Reversing several pins, he connected the modified plug to his suit’s shielding control.

Warning: the radiation environmental protection system has detected an outside of parameters connection. A series power storage device is outside the specifications for the system. Damage to the system and the user may occur in this configuration.

Dove breathed in relief; he wasn’t sure that would work. Connecting his suit to the power generation system had been a last-minute addition to his plan, and with the extra power available to the suit, he hoped and gambled for a better chance of surviving. Pulling himself up from the floor, he felt the swelling in the knee. Dove would be unable to move on this leg in a moment, but that was fine; there was nowhere else to run. He began a series of patterns and instructions on the system console, a set of overrides each ending with a warning statement and an alert ping. His wrist display buzzed alarmingly.

Door Rupture, Berth Companionway.

The mist was charging ahead, making shorter work of obstacles. He could hear the bass thud of an impact on the companionway hatch just before the engineering deck. It wouldn’t last long. Dove didn’t need long. He performed the final override, a final warning and alarm ping sounded punctuated by the bursting failure of the companionway door. A click unlocked a lever that Dove gripped tightly with his hand and arm that held his wrist display, using the suit’s actuators to lock his grip in place. He released the lock on the engineering door, and it began to open slowly as the mechanism drew back. Dove couldn’t risk damage to anything on this deck, not now.

“Peter Dove, Vessel 4113. Distress”

The mist bellowed with laughter. It was nearly fully formed now, unmistakably humanoid, with only occasional boils of mist falling from it to be regathered at its feet. It moved with a mimicry of walking, drifting forward further than each step would have allowed, as though it was walking on a conveyor belt.

“Distress, Peter Dove is in distress.”

It was coming closer, Dove wanted it to be closer yet. He could feel the slowing effects again, the heart aching to beat faster. The mist reached out, it touched him again on the shoulder, his lungs seized, his heart nearly stopped, the nervous system needing to force each beat. Consciousness was fading as the oxygen levels in the blood depleted, and as blood stopped circulating. Dove held one thought, one focus, Joseph’s words “Never touched by creation,” a roar of laughter, the mists’ humanoid head thrown back. Tenderils, more hands rose from the pool, settled on the floor, and rose, gripping Dove. “No. Peter Dove. Never touched by creation.” Dove’s suit was at its limit of mixing oxygen and stimulant, his wrist device alarmed audibly

Heart rate below minimum, Oximeter reading below threshold for registered user. SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY.

Dove forced himself to look directly into the dark recesses of the mist’s face. He threw the lever. A brilliant blue flash filled the deck, penetrating every layer of the ship as the dome opened revealing the achievement of fusion energy generation. A neutron star, smaller than a micron, released its energy into space. An immeasurable thousand upon thousand times more radiation was layered upon the always-present background radiation. The mist was thrown from him. The light acted like a physical wall upon it. Its corporeal form became disorganized as it degenerated back to mist.

EMERGENCY: Radiation levels are currently lethal to all known organics. Battery for shielding depleted, switching to secondary.

Dove could feel the burn of the radiation through the suit. The mist howled, unable to generate the mass necessary to take form or move. Dove sagged, held in place by his locked grip on the lever. Hanging there by his hand, knees half to the floor, he laughed. His last thought before awareness faded with consciousness: the touch of creation, he owed Joseph a coffee.

The core now cold, the shadowed silence of a ship under emergency power was nearly a complete and perfect tomb. The wrist device performed a series of if-then procedures and determined that Dove had not moved in an appropriate manner or time frame based on historical profiles and regarding the recent emergency events. With the last of its own internal battery, fighting through a series of internal errors caused by the radiation it signaled a command to the flight deck before it joined Dove in its own form of unconsciousness. The flight deck, in turn, received the command and began the broadcast of an automated distress signal.

Part 1: Guests

He ignored it. This time he ignored it. The blinking red light, the signaling of distress, could not be answered. Peter Dove had tried eleven times previously to answer the signal. Always formally and as required by space-faring law, “Civilian merchant vessel 4113, pilot Peter Dove, receiving your distress signal, how may I assist?” Only to receive silence in return. An absolute silence, void of the common clicks and pops and static that bleeds into communication from the hostile environment that is space. Eleven times, he was greeted with pure silence.

Vessel 4113 wasn't a new vessel by any means, but a recent retrofit had replaced most of its aging equipment to include communications and sensor arrays. It had been tested and retested before launch. Dove tested it again and eleven times previously, all functional. It was important that it worked, 4113 was a long-range single crew hauler on what was called the loneliest corridor from Sol Confederate Space to the planet devoid Cygni Binary. The people of Cygni Binary lived in their collection of manmade stations and satellites between the binary stars of Cygni A and uninspiringly named B. There were some things they could not produce or manufacture, so men and women unafraid of isolation made the six-month journey across 11 (or 10, depending on position) light-years across black nothingness, a corridor of space famed for being the epitome and definition of the devoid aspect of space.

Dove lazily rested his head on his arm, settling fully on the console, and triggered the sensor array. Light, radio, and a thousand bursts of every energy filled this void, traveling in immeasurable distances in every direction. No returns, no reflection, no suspected absorption. Nothing was out there. Yet without a source, without a point of origin, the signal light blinked a slow pulse. Sighing, he continued to ignore the flash of the light. For the last 72 hours, this signal pestered with its empty alert. He wondered how long it would signal, and as though on cue, with some connection to the question, it stopped. He drew his eyebrows tight in consideration. One more check of the equipment would hurt nothing, and besides, what else is there in this isolation?

Down in the maintenance access area for the communications maintenance shaft, down two ladders and one ramp from the flight deck, he again checked the equipment by establishing a feedback loop. The system sent a signal and received it via the appropriate channel and equipment. Dove chuckled to himself. It worked, not surprisingly. The sensor array had been the same. He sat back against the wall of the space, no bigger than himself, checking heading and speed from his wrist display. As a single crew ship, he was able to check any system and issue any command remotely. He could fly the ship from anywhere on the ship. Though the areas that could support crew were limited to just a bunk, the flight deck, engineering deck, and a galley area that was configured for cooking and entertainment, three rooms in total that were all clustered tightly together, while the other twenty thousand square feet of the vessel was cargo areas. Sealed without that which was necessary to support life. Is there anything else that can be checked? He sighed again heavily, staring into the middle space between him and the ordered wiring and collection of circuit boards that made up all of the ability to communicate exterior 4113. He had checked the logs, and he had received a signal with an unknown point of origin and lacking the signature used for identifying known equipment. If it were a system error, it was a perfect one, free of the hallmarks of a failure. There was nothing out there, yet something was signaling distress. Dove sat up with the rising of a thought. He had not tried sending a signal, simply answering the one he received. The testing showed he could send a signal in a loop, which was to connect the send and receive together. But he had not simply sent his own signal. Using his wrist device, he punched in the commands to send a general hail to all ships within range. Basically, a “hello, is anyone out there?” burst of digital noise. Transmit complete, listening the wrist device signaled. It would take a moment for any ship within range to receive and answer. If they chose to, there was no rule, no law against ignoring a random non-distress communications burst. No one rarely did, however, even ships carrying crews of more than one, some 10 or more, happily answered. Thrilled to have another soul to talk to. Thrilled to not be alone. But it could take a moment, beyond the hour, for a reply to be received depending on distance. When the wrist device buzzed, physically and audibly, it startled Dove causing him to jerk his arm to full length as if it intended to bite him. He wished it had, as it would have been simpler.

Signal reflection detected, communications burst returned, distance to object 400 meters, signal returned all vectors, 400 meters. Navigational sensors updating.

Dove felt his face tightening as he ran back to the flight deck, landing solidly in the control chair, drawing up the various displays on the thin semi-translucent screens that now surrounded him. The screens flashed with readouts for speed, heading, and the recent navigation plot and chart. A burst of LIDAR and RADAR sensors flooded the surrounding space, returning in less than a second if an object was within 400 meters. An object entering his space-compression envelope at this point, or an obstruction already compressed, would create enough drag to trigger a shearing event as the compression field unwound uncontrollably. He could be dead by now, and reality has not caught up. In the off chance that maybe it was possible his mind raced to probable solutions. The thought died as navigation updated: no obstruction, safe to proceed flashed upon the screen. There was nothing out there. He repeated the action, communication burst, reflection, and navigational scan. It was the same. Maybe he'd missed something? Contemplating, he could issue a drone but at this speed the drone would disintegrate the moment it left the bay, dissolved to dust by the shearing forces as the ship leaped from point of origin to destination, compressing and crossing segments of space. An effect wholly invisible to a passenger except for the sudden streaking of visible stars and reflective objects in a space that was less void of anything than the corridor to Cygni Binary. Dove ran his hand across his clean-shaven cheek and chin. Routines were important to the isolated. The absurdity puzzled Dove, reflection at 400 meters from all vectors, and his hello world was returned to him from all directions. 4113 was essentially surrounded by nothing. True, he thought, but nothing doesn’t reflect. He brought up the momentum controls and gave the command to decelerate to conventional speeds. Braking initiated, discharging drive systems, and engaging origin anchors. Cycle complete in thirty minutes. Dove made notes in the ship's log, disengaging the compression drive with the intent to deploy a maintenance drone to review the communications tower and to log the recent silent distress signals and signal reflections. With two taps of his fingers, a final look of puzzled focus at the now dark signal light Dove raised himself from the chair.

The horror stories of things out there, where things other haulers told each other at the hubs between worlds while they waited for refueling and resupply and hoping to wait long and grateful to be around others whether isolated or trapped with the same ten. One codger of a hauler was adamant that there was something out there. Something that shouldn’t be on account of the astonishing amount of evil it was capable of, or so he proclaimed. “I tell you, without doubts and without hope of rebirth, the mist is there. Wandering through space, chasing ships from port to port. Catching them. Consuming them.” He was a Juno named Joseph; his speech and dress reflected the strict eloquence stereotypical of the theocratically governed Juno. His consonants sharply crisped, and the vowels almost nonexistent, creating a rapid-fire speech pattern that for anyone unacquainted with the culture dazed by the onslaught. Dove, a spaceborn, had met a diversity of people and only needed a moment to become proficient at holding a conversation at a pace. “Outside of asteroid fleas, there is nothing alive in space proper.” Dove replied as a stereotype himself. The spaceborn were not a superstitious people. Prayer doesn’t stop a hull rupture, repair a drive failure, or stop a ship-wide plague. Intentional action based on experience and knowledge does. “I tell you again, truly, sir Dove, there is a thing in space that is beyond all understanding. An evil not created of the heavens or of hell, but born here in space.” Joseph again pressed, holding his coffee in both hands and his chin up. “Alright, alright, I’ll buy that space has further weirdness we haven’t seen, and even the best of us has seen little, but what is this thing you're selling?” Dove laughed as he spoke. He had heard of things as well, sirens living planets, and rejected them all. Joseph turned his head, deflecting the rejection. “It is called the mist, sir, the mist. It is as black as the space itself, but it moves like the mist of any planet with a vapor content enough to support a weather pattern. Haulers find it in cargo spaces, or creeping along the haul at relative speeds would tear away any such thing.” Joseph was convinced, his voice and language strong in belief. Dove’s face was unabashedly quizzical. Joseph pushed on. “Vessel 2154 encountered it, found it creeping along the drive housing, stopped him dead, and anchored him in space for three months.”

Dove considered these things, the superstitions of Joseph. They had kept in touch through long-range communication messages, Joseph sharing stories and Dove sharing advice on system maintenance. Dove still considered it to be juvenile, but entertaining. However, at that moment, his mind wandered to this specific conversation. Why? Dove stripped off his overalls down to the emergency suit that fitted the form of nearly every space-fairing professional that intended to live longer than a few years, and replaced the clothing with the heavy expedition-class suit he used for repairs and anything that might require the shielding necessary to ensure that all his limbs remain attached and his DNA unscathed. While performing the start-up on the suit-mounted wrist display and running a diagnostic on the suit's life-supporting systems the origin anchor cycle completed, and the ship groaned nearly imperceptible shifting. Dove’s eyes grew. Ships don’t groan, not like a great weight settled onto them. Like the groan of a wagon assuming a great burden. They also do not shift. When the origin anchor was active, a ship could not be moved, and the anchor would remain active for the first 12 seconds to prevent the ship from drifting, given the associated dangers of drifting when exiting the compression field.

Dove returned to the control deck, fully suited and helmeted, and he again addressed the various displays. Position was .0012 degrees in parallel on a negative y-axis to the expected arrival point. The ship had drifted, but only slightly, indicating that it had come out of cruising speed at a greater mass than the computer had calculated for. Moving to the drone deployment bay off the control deck, he initiated another scan, and again, nothing. Windows were rare, meant for specific operations where sight was required. Mainly confined to the flight deck for docking and in-flight refueling mechanisms. They were small and singular in their view. The sensor equipment was the only reliable way to see anything beyond the hull. Windows were a structural weakness. Glass and plastic, no matter the thickness, were a risk. Luxury liners for those with incredible amounts of discretionary funding were available with massive bay-style windows exposing the vision to the awesomeness of space. Also available were stories of lives lost due to rapid decompression from a ruptured window. From the drone deployment window, he could view the exterior hull through the thick transparent medium. He could see the drone hatch, and from the angle, he could not see the communication tower, not more than 200 feet from his viewing point. He triggered the exterior lighting. Every scorch and scratch mark left from hundreds of journeys through the most difficult medium was clearly visible on the gray and silver paneling of 4113. The light created an oblong glaze over the hatch with a perfect and distinct line terminating the dark. For a moment, a singular third of a breath, Dove felt more than saw a flicker. For that barely perceptible moment the shadow violated reason, pushing across that terminal between light and dark. Reason reestablished itself, and he denied that it had happened. It was only a trick of the brain or simply an object passing through the light. The rarity of an object passing through the light was only made possible by the impossibility of the shadow having will and mobility. Dove physically shrugged the unease that had been building in the place between his shoulder blades, dislodging not the unease but a comment made by Joseph: “It is a foul thing never touched by creation.” Dove moved while thinking. Checking and readying the drone for deployment, there was no creator, just a massive energy blasting out of the center of the galaxy in a stupendous and violent release. That touch gave the universe the energy necessary for its own creation.

Dove finished the inspection of the drone and backed up out of the small chute that the drone would deploy up and out of through the hatch. Like everything else in the ship, it was designed to have only enough space to complete a task. He pulled the heavy door close and turned the locking bar. The system hissed as it sealed the threshold.

Bay ready, drone online. Ensure the bay is clear before opening the hatch.

Dove watched the bay through a camera feed on the wrist display as he triggered the airlock cycle. He could hear the rapid evacuation of the atmosphere as it was pumped out of the bay, so as not to let it go to waste being vented into space. With a buzz, the wrist display announced that the bay was voided, and the hatch began to open. The camera, with its high-definition and slightly scratched lens, focused on the drone, providing a wide-angle view of the entire lower half of the bay. Dove felt his heart rate increase as a tendril or vapor, as black as the backdrop of space, drifted down into the bay from the out-of-view hatch. The tendril grew into a steady stream, matching the steady increase in Dove’s heart rate. This makes no sense, the thought ricocheted across his mind. He aborted the deployment and initiated the sequence to close the hatch.

Obstruction detected in Drone Bay hatch. Please address immediately

Part 2: Never by creation, coming soon.