“So are you finally going to tell us what it is?” Lussa asked. “Or are you going to leave us guessing all the way up until the moment we can actually see it?”
“If I’m right, you’ll want to wait,” Vichna said. “This should be impressive. I hope.”
“We’ve still got some distance to go yet before we’ll even be able to make out details,” Gregs said. “Want me to space fold until we’re right next to it?”
The captain looked like they were about to okay this, but Vichna stopped them. “No! There… there might be some danger if we show up too suddenly.” The captain shrugged. If anyone was upset at the idea that what they were here for might be dangerous, nobody showed it. They were usually paid for danger, after all, and they also had the mini-arsenal that her sponsors had paid to be brought along with them in the hold of the ship.
It took several more minutes before they were able to see anything with the naked eye, a problem caused by both the distance and the near-total lack of light. They had to rely on sensor images for most of the approach even as they got closer, and Vichna had the sensation of a large, invisible mouth approaching from ahead. Finally, they were close enough that the measly amount of light given off by their ship could be seen against the side of the approaching…
“Whoa,” Merton said. “What even is that?”
“That” was a matte-black, blocky structure floating in the emptiness for no apparent reason. The design didn’t look like anything special, or even functional for that matter. It looked like the designer (as the thing was definitely man-made) had simply taken a cube and then haphazardly continued to add smaller cubes to random places on its sides until the entire thing resembled a heavily-pixilated peanut. It would have seemed ridiculous if not for the enormous size of it. Gregs’ estimation that it was the size of an asteroid wasn’t far off, yet the thing still dwarfed their ship by a magnitude of about twenty or thirty. And even now, it was still hard to see, as whatever material it had been made out of was pure black and absorbed everything but direct light shined right upon it. Vichna looked to see if the structure had any thrusters or engines, something to indicate how it had been moved here in the first place, but there was nothing. She supposed it could have been built directly in this spot, although it was hard to imagine any construction team being able to stay sane in the emptiness long enough to finish it.
“This is really what we were hired to come out here and find?” the captain asked.
“Yes, this is it,” Vichna said, not that she had ever seen it or even found a proper description of it. No one had, even if it was a fairy tale that everyone had heard at least once in their lifetimes. “It has to be. There’s nothing else it could be.”
“Well?” Merton asked. “Are you finally going to grace our ears with whatever secret you’ve been keeping?”
Vichna took a deep breath, less because she needed it and more for dramatic effect. “It’s the Void.”
Three of the four other people on the bridge reacted exactly the way she’d hoped they would. Captain Lersson turned to her with an expression that clearly said they didn’t believe her. Gregs also stared at her but with his mouth agape. Merton just kept staring at the image on the screen in front of them. He was the only one on the ship with skin light enough for Vichna to see him visibly pale. Only Lussa looked confused.
“The Void?” she asked.
Vichna was about to answer but Merton beat her to it. “A space station. The space station. The one used by Captain Melissa Harvey.”
“Oh,” was all Lussa could say. That name she clearly recognized. Vichna would have been shocked if she hadn’t. It did, after all, belong to the worst mass murderer ever known to the human race, a woman responsible for the complete genocide of eight entire star systems.
They all stared at the station floating outside their ship, a creation that most people only knew as something out of their nightmares. For many seconds, no one spoke.
Finally, Gregs said, “I thought it would be bigger.”
Copyright
Copyright 2016 Sean-Michael Argo
Edited by TL Bland
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