The Maelstrom
A Chronicle of Ever Present Chaos
There is no such thing as routine out in the void, the infinite darkness, home to the impossible rarity of life, usually the single-celled type. Anything greater. Anything approaching man is so scarce it borders on fiction. Out in the void there is only death, like the ancient days of Gaia where everything was in a permanent battle for survival. Life on Gaia is little different now, the players have changed but the game has not. All life evolves for this war. The plants, the insects, the mammals, the large and the small, the microscopic and the giant all locked in a perpetual war for survival. To witness excellence, a lifeform not just surviving but thriving, is like searching the oceans for a cloud. Even the most careful sweep of the universe would yield no results, not even an anomalous sensor reading.
That is why, when a beacon uploads an anomaly it must be investigated. This anomaly is no different. A burst of gamma rays followed by a sequence of garbled nonsense radiation, not from a star or black hole or even some vessel of Chaos but from a random speck of dark matter between systems in the great nothing that is ninety-nine point nine per cent of space.
I, Periander, Navarch of Saint's Terror, stand aboard the bridge of my battleship built above the glimmer of Eden that is, was, and could be again, Gaia. I purge my mind of how far from home I am, it does not bode well to dwell on such things. All I trust are my men, the priests, and my sword. I distrust my pulsecannon for the time it jammed and overheated. Machines, no matter how straightforward, are fickle things that know nothing of duty, honour, or dependability. A warrior may think his machine dependable because of good maintenance and care but that is a mirage easily shattered.
We orbit the sight of the anomalous readings, a patch of dark matter like all the rest. Our sensors continue to catch the strange radiation, with no discernable pattern or timing. If this is a new tactic from the forces of Chaos then I would prefer forty battleships rather than the one and an auxiliary that I have. Fortuna is a trustworthy ship, its crew more so than the ship itself, but it is a mere auxiliary, good for a fast strike and terrible in a drawn out confrontation. Though, unless this anomaly is the opening of a worm hole, I do not foresee a battle but rather something far more mundane.
'Sweep the sector again, I want to know if even a comet is out of place,' I order.
The Observators began the task, scanning viewfinders with augmented eyes while the machine minds do the same with code. The men and women, heads shaven, eyes shining blue and silver stare, skin ashen and sunken, into the spherical screens of black nothingness. Cables and tubes burrow under the skin of their shoulders, back of the neck, and stomach. Priests patrol the bridge in pairs, hands always on their books, their symbols, ever on the lookout for signs of corruption. The void is the plaything of Chaos and even the staunchest faith and guardedness can be overcome.
The Chant rumbles up from the belly of Saint's Terror reaching a crescendo that washes the mind and steels the crew. My shoulders dip as a brief moment of weightlessness overcomes me. It does not last long but the moment of relief is priceless.
'Nothing new to report,' an adept says. 'Anomalous radiation readings same as before.'
'Anomaly expanding,' a second adept reports. Her face twitches with surprise, shock perhaps but it is hard to say what those ashen expressions mean, some think the movements mean nothing, that they're involuntary. 'There's... there's...'
'There's what, adept?'
'I don't know, Navarch.'
'On main viewfinder,' I flick my wrist up and an orb rises from the deck and begins projecting a three-hundred and sixty degree image. There in the centre is a swirl of space. A vortex. At its centre a speck of white no bigger than a distant star, but it is not a star, it is not anything we know. The readings streaming alongside the image are garbled nonsense. As the dark matter begins to spin and ripple the light from stars a million light years away bends to create a black and white spiral in space. 'Auxiliary Fortuna, this is Navarch Periander, reposition to starboard side of Saint's Terror and observe anomaly.'
'Navarch Periander, this is Navarch Balen, order received,' the signal is mired by static, interference from the growing anomaly no doubt.
The swirl grows. What was an odd spiral expands into a whirlpool. Dark matter becomes water-like, rushing, splashing, and flowing as it widens and widens. The Fortuna is only halfway to Saint's Terror yet her engines burn blue. There is a force dragging her backwards, I'm sure of it. 'Helmsmen, Full reverse.' I fear it may be too late.
The whirlpool rages and the depth of it is a pure white spot that undulates like a mirage. Fortuna tips over the edge of the whirlpool as a shock of electricity crackles out from the depths. I am watching a maelstrom in space. The bones of my ship creak and the engine whine drowns out The Chant from the Choir sequestered deep in the ship.
'Navarch, we're being pulled in,' the helmsman speaks in a flat tone suitable to his station. Panic never helped anyone.
Fortuna dips beneath the rim, her stern dragged forward until she is riding the waves of dark matter and curling light like a dingy trapped in a storm. I never thought I would see water in space. Only it isn't water, merely behaving like it. Our auxiliary performs a full circuit at the highest level of the maelstrom, gradually sinking deeper into its maw. We will follow it.
'Navarch, something is emerging from the anomaly,' the Observator speaks with a fractured lilt. Confused. The readings make no sense and her life up till this point has had some regularity. Light behaves like light. Gravity like gravity. Even Chaos operates according to principles nothing but its most potent beings can alter.
I flick through the viewfinders but none show the depth of the vortex anymore. A plane of swirling water lies ahead of us and dives deep into the black of space. We can see its sides but the raging dark matter is impenetrable to sight. 'Connect to Fortuna's viewfinders.'
'Not possible, there's is too much interference, too much radiation. Though gravity remains within normal bounds and the cosmic rays emitted from the focal point of the anomaly aren't cosmic rays. If I had to guess there is no order to the energy being emitted.'
'We do not guess, Observator.'
'Forgive me, Navarch.'
'Take us in, helmsman.'
'Right away, Navarch.'
I can hear the collective inward gasp but if we are to stop whatever this anomaly is then we need to see it, sensors and readings aren't enough. The ship groans and lurches ahead the moment the engines are relaxed. We sail towards the thrashing rim of the maelstrom as a fork of lightning explodes from its maw. Saint's Terror tips over the edge, shuddering and rocking like a sail boat, and crashes into a wall of dark matter and bent light that splashes around us. The forward viewfinders focus on the bright white spot at the centre of the anomaly, its edge an undulating mirage. From the centre there are silver cubes building upon cubes in long trailing lines only to dissolve into nothing and rebuild into a hand or pincer of some kind. 'What is that?'
'Don't know, Navarch, to us it appears as quarks that combine and break apart at a whim.' The hand of silver cubes reach out from the focal point, crashing against the dark matter and spitting up a wash of silver foam that dissolves into the anomalous entity. The hand grows larger. 'The entity ate... absorbed... a cluster of dark matter. I...'
'I don't need you to interpret, Observator, only gather,' I say. Thinking would lead to panic. Alien does not begin to describe this phenomena. I focus on the white spot, enlarging the image until I see little black dots amidst a sea of white. A trail of cubes tethers the entity to the anomaly, each level growing smaller and smaller until it is microscopic either because of distance or form.
Out in the void it is best to assume all encounters are violent, aggressive, and that all entities hostile to our form of life. I grasp my pendant and whisper a prayer to the Agnostos Theos, that He will see us through this trial and steel our hearts.
I open my eyes to see the Fortuna sinking further, her engines burning blue yet unable to climb out, while the entity reaches forth with its three fingered hand. 'Open fire,' I roar but it is too late. The tip of the entity's middle finger grazes the hull and the ship dissolves. The bulkheads break apart and evaporate, the towers crumble into nothing, and all signs of life are snuffed out. Our pulsecannons launch a salvo along the length of the thing's “arm” yet all it does is grow in size. Fortuna becomes a cloud of prismatic dust that churns around the anomalous entity. More cubes appear, strengthening and lengthening it.
'Navarch, our weapons have no effect on the entity.' We are dragged along the waves, the arm opposite us cresting on that which traps us.
'Cease fire. How is it moving?'
'It just is.' We sink a little further.
The entity crashes down onto the waves of dark matter, reaching higher and higher on the opposite wall to Saint's Terror. 'No it's using the movement of the maelstrom. Cut all engines, dead stop.' The entity wishes to catch us but is bound by the maelstrom. Why or how is unimportant.
The helmsman flinches in his seat and side-eyes me for a second. 'Dead stop,' he inputs the order and the engines fall silent. The Chant is crescendoing on a haunting melody, a most effective piece at containing Chaos, but I feel we are encountering something other than Chaos.
'Guide us out of the maelstrom, helmsman.'
'Without power, Navarch?'
'Without power.'
If the entity absorbs the matter of the universe, smashing it into its basic parts, then where did it come from? I gaze into the white region and its black dots. An inversion of our reality. It has long been thought the void has an opposite, just as matter has anti-matter, fire has water, as stars have black holes. Creation and destruction, emitting and absorbing. Yet what sort of being would come from such an anti-space to be able to manipulate our space so readily? 'Launch a gigaton atomic into the white maw.'
The order is heard and carried out in the time it would take to confirm it. The projectile is insignificant in the backdrop of thrashing dark matter and anomalous entities, yet nothing halts its path. The weapon falls into the white maw and shrinks to nothing. There is no grand explosion, no burst of fire, no shockwave, not even radiation.
Saint's Terror uses the energy of the maelstrom to climb out of its grip. The force is not downward but upward yet the forces required seem reversed, engine thrust causes us to “fall” while nothing causes us to “climb”. As we crest the higher waves the dark matter thrashes and warbles. The entity attempts to leap across the gap, unable to catch us by swirling around the vortex, but it is too late. The gigaton atomic has detonated, not that there is any sign of it, and the cubic being is disintegrating. Cubes break apart into mere squares and then into prismatic dust, drawn towards the white maw. The entity crumbles as it leaps across the expanse and is reclaimed by anti-space.
Saint's Terror arcs above the waves as the anomaly begins to shrink, dark matter loses its water-like quality, and light ceases to bend. Soon there is nothing left of the anomaly save our vast quantities of data. The void has returned to its more routine self and yet too many questions were raised with few answers to soothe us. There is silence aboard the bridge. Some will wonder if they were dreaming, others if it were a trick by our multitude of enemies, and a few will understand that man now has a new opponent in the struggle for survival.
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