Chapter One: The Silence Between Stars
The stars never blinked this far from Earth.
From her station on Outpost Orion, Commander Elara Voss sat in the observation dome, watching the velvet-black void stretch infinitely beyond Neptune. Even after years in space, the silence still unnerved her. It wasn't the absence of sound, but the absence of life.
Behind her, the low hum of life-support systems droned like a lullaby on repeat. The automated lights overhead flickered every few minutes—a glitch she'd meant to fix but hadn't gotten around to. Her boots clanked softly against the metallic floor as she stood and stretched, her joints stiff from another night of restless sleep.
She hadn't heard from Earth in six days.
That, in itself, was impossible.
"RAI," she said, voice hoarse. "Status check on Earthline Alpha."
A soft chime echoed through the dome, followed by the synthetic, genderless voice of the station AI:
> "Still no response, Commander. Signal relay to Earthline Alpha remains active, but no incoming data stream since Sol Event 345-N."
Elara exhaled slowly. The solar flare had been strong—stronger than any in recorded history. It fried satellites, glitched relays, and knocked entire sectors into radio blackouts.
But Earth had backup systems. Thousands of them. Military-grade. Hardened.
So why the hell was it still silent?
She turned to the main console and scanned the logs again. No messages. No updates. Just endless loops of deep-space radiation noise, static, and the occasional ghost signal—echoes of transmissions that had bounced across the galaxy long before she was born.
Until now.
The console beeped. Once. Then again.
A red light blinked — an incoming signal. But it wasn't from Earth. The origin pinged from somewhere… beyond Pluto, further than any human satellite had ever reached.
> "RAI, decrypt incoming," she ordered, heart rate rising.
> "Attempting decryption... This may take several minutes."
The signal was broken, fragmented—like someone whispering through shattered glass. Static hissed in her ear, then...
> "Don't... trust... the signal…"
> "They're already... here…"
Her breath caught.
She stared at the screen.
And the stars, unblinking, stared back.
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