Effect & Cause

By HCLeung

Prompt: Stumbling across an intact alien ship was the salvage find of a lifetime, enough to set youwdhenning up for life. But the ship had a mind of its own (prompted by wdhenning).

Normally, action leads to consequences. But on this alien vessel, nothing is normal.

We call it alien because the massive, unidentified object lurking outside the Magellan System defies everything we know. Spanning over a mile and shaped like a cigar, it drifts in space and emits no heat signature. For God knows how long—years, decades, centuries even—it has been stalking our colonies like a shadow, until one day, it broke the silence with an intense 12-millisecond radio burst.

The burst sounded like an angel's trumpet. It blared just after midnight and triggered our planetary defense system. By the time we tracked the source, it had gone silent and surrendered to the deep, starry night.

The initial alarm gave way to guesses and hypotheses. Was it a merchant ship sending a distress call, or worse, a Federal warship's call to arms? Twenty years after the Exodus, living in the galaxy's most obscure regions, had we been discovered?

Either way, the Colonial Defense Forces weren't going to sit around and do nothing. So, we boarded the Medusa and departed at the crack of dawn. The source of the fast radio burst was not hard to find. Honestly, I suspected it had been waiting for us.

Now, we have arrived. The strange, unidentified object is within visual range and soon engulfs our sight.

The boarding party I command consists of twelve astronauts and, against my wishes, an autonomous HaulerMite. We set foot on the star vessel's surface and find it brittle to the touch, like eggshells.

Since you cannot smash anything open in space without pieces flying everywhere, we breach the surface using a laser cutter. Then, one by one, we cautiously enter. Strangely, there is air, light, and gravity inside.

We gather inside a passageway, able to discern down from up, and right from left. Our surrounding environment mesmerizes us at first glance, as it folds and folds into an infinite geometric pattern. I ask myself, "What is this place?"

Guns trained forward, sensors dialed up. My team and I proceed to explore the rest of the vessel's hull if you can even describe it using structural terms. Our mission: assess the threat posed to our colonies. But honestly, I don't even know what Command expects us to find. Treasure, perhaps?

The eight-legged HaulerMite trails closely behind us. I didn't want to bring that rust bucket with us, but top brass insisted. Drones are trouble. I had fought alongside them during the Exodus, and this is what I've learned: they will fail you when you need them the most.

Come to think of it, I was never asked to inspect the HaulerMite's cargo before the mission. What exactly is it hauling inside that fat, porcelain-white torso? And why was I not informed?

Three hundred yards into the vessel, we still have no contact with any life forms. No sound, no movement, nothing on our heads-up display. The place reminds me of the Necropolis back in ancient Egypt. Right now, the comparison seems fitting.

Yes, in times like this, I think of Earth, its beauty, and history, to keep my mind focused. Our entire generation might have traveled afar to flee the Federation's tyranny, but we still yearn for the blue-watered planet. It is our homeland, our spiritual beacon, the guiding light that quenches our thirst and feeds our souls.

At five hundred yards, we encounter pitch black. It is as if we have drawn closer to the ship's core drive, which could be so dense that it consumes all the light.

The boundless void has swallowed everything, with no bearing to guide us out of here. My team's EKG is rising on my HUD. "Keep it cool, guys," I say. But when darkness is all there is, nothing can keep you calm.

I tap my should-mounted sensor module, to no avail. "Is anyone getting a signal?

"Negative," says Lena Walters, my squad sergeant. "Sonar, radar, lidar...nothing works. We should fall back, captain." Lena and I share a bond, but we never show our feelings for each other. Certainly, not in a mission like this.

"Agreed." I raise the comms channel. "Medusa, this is Bushwhacker 1-2. We are encountering strange and unexplainable phenomena in our immediate surroundings. Unable to proceed with exploration. Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission. Requesting extraction, over."

There is no reply from the other end. The radio hisses with static and keeps us waiting.

"Medusa, do you copy?"

My teammates are starting to lose control of their emotions as their pulses and heart rates spike. "Captain, we're not feeling well here. We should leave. What are we waiting for? Captain? Are you there, captain?"

"Gentlemen," Lena yells, "calm down!"

"Sarge, we're lost! We're going to die here if we stick around! Order us to turn back now!"

Lena raises her rifle and fires three shots upward. For a moment, order is restored. "We'll fall back when we hear from Medusa. Roger that?"

After the gunfire sound trails into the black void, the radio crackles to life. "Bushwha...this is Medusa...there is ano....vessel next to yours...out of nowhere...do you have visual?"

My heart pounds as I scan the area, eager to find a way out. "Repeat, Medusa, what other vessel? We have no visual contact with just about anything. Requesting immediate extraction, over."

"Wait...it's mo...it's on the move! The other vessel is moving! Look at that acceleration...it's near light-speed!"

"Medusa, do you copy? This is Bushwhacker 1-2. Do you read?"

"The light...the light...it's exploding!"

The transmission ends abruptly and leaves us with nothing but static hisses.

I keep calling into the comms channel, but by now it is clear that the voice on the other end is lost, like a severed kite that can never be retrieved.

Without warning, the ground beneath us starts to tremble. The shaking worsens as if the vessel is being struck by an earthquake.

"Take cover!" I shout. We frantically search for anything to hold on to, but in the darkness, it is futile.

"Cap!" Lena yells at me. "Need to use that HaulerMite!"

"Fine! Punch it!" Asking the drone for help is the last thing I want, but we have no choice right now.

Lena taps some buttons on her ArmPad, and the eight-legged Arachnid Unmanned Ground Vehicle whirrs to life. It anchors against the quaking floor and activates its powerful sensor array, beaming light onto our immediate surroundings and visualizing them with glowing and pixelated contour lines.

As the earthquake intensifies, debris starts to fall from above. The alien vessel is almost coming apart at its seams, yet we still don't know what's triggering it. A deafening roar fills the air, and the hull structure starts to warp and twist as if God is wringing it dry.

The HaulerMite identifies the nearest exit point and pings it on our HUD. Without delay, it scuttles ahead in a bid to shepherd us to safety. "Move out, everyone!" I command, urgency lacing my voice. "Move, move, move!"

Clutching our weapons and gear, we fight to stay on our feet as we navigate through the never-yielding darkness, struggling to keep our balance as the vessel seems to be capsizing against the entire universe.

We push forward, huffing and puffing, while the ship's hull structure continues to shriek with agony. Finally, there is the exit point, sealed shut behind a somewhat thick, glass-like surface. "Someone cut this door open!" I order.

My breacher specialist Mike Junior Kazinski deploys the laser cutter. Sparks fly as humanity's sharpest tool incises through a surface of unknown thickness, chemical composition, and origin. The glow of the laser lights up our worrisome, sweat-covered faces.

Finally, the door gives way and collapses. "Unbelievable," I think to myself. "What a miracle!" Then a strong, white light gushes out from the other side and nearly blinds us.

Once we enter this adjacent chamber, the earthquake disappears. It is as if we have entered a different universe, one that is serene and unbothered. There are walls, ceilings, and columns that together speak the language of architecture. It is man-made.

"What the Earth..." Junior murmurs.

"Spread out and clear the area," I instruct. With a nod, Lena breaks up the squad into smaller fire teams and delegates them to cover different sectors of the chamber.

We activate electro-camouflage and fan out with well-rehearsed precision. The HaulerMite crawls amongst us, bolstering our fighting formation.

A black dot appears out of nowhere and stops us in our tracks. Either we and our surroundings have shrunk, or it has enlarged, but the dot transforms into a Schwarzschild black hole that is about our height, floating in mid-air and shimmering with liquid-like edges. Inside its gut, or belly, or whatever it is called, there are thousands or millions of flickering stars.

Quiet, patient, and somewhat sentient. I believe the black hole is trying to convey a message to us.

"What do we make of this?" asks Lena. Her aim is steady, her finger firmly resting on the trigger.

"I think this black hole is what's keeping us safe here," I reply. "There's so much gravitational pull, time from our perspective is pretty much frozen relative to the outside."

"Fortunately, unfortunately," Lena comments on the duality of our situation. "Call me crazy, but are the stars blinking at us?"

"That's what I thought," I acknowledge. "Let's have the HaulerMite walk into that hole and transmit whatever it sees back to us. It's the only way to get an answer."

"Are you sure, cap?"

"Look around, this chamber is clearly man-made. What is it doing posing as an alien ship outside our system? We've made it all the way here; the truth is right inside that black hole. Can't turn back now."

"Very well." Lena enters a string of keystrokes into her ArmPad, asking the autonomous drone to embark on a suicide run. We step aside to give it space, and it crawls steadily toward the strange phenomenon without delay.

When the HaulerMite crosses the event horizon, it slows down and soon comes to a full stop. The black hole is disturbed, and its edges flare up as if reacting to the intrusion.

"Take aim!" Our 7.62mm rifled guns are locked and loaded, ready to spit fire the second the target becomes an active threat.

But what effect would ballistic weapons have? It's like attacking a bear with wood sticks. We are primitive and foolish when compared to this unexplainable presence hovering in front of us.

The HaulerMite is now under time dilation. It might still be falling into the black hole, but from our vantage point, it is slowly down infinitely. Fortunately, Lena is still able to maintain radio contact with the robot.

"Anything?" I ask.

"I'm getting a ton of data," Lena replies. "It's massive. I think it has what you're looking for."

"Bring it up."

"Copy. Engaging augmented reality mode."

Lena redirects the data stream over a wireless connection to all our HUDs. A virtual world is illustrated over our eyes, one that is in motion and immersive at the same time.

The world brings us back to a time when Vesuvius, a new Federal warship, was constructed in a sub-orbital shipyard over Earth and launched into space. Representing the pinnacle of science and carrying the high hopes of its creators, Vesuvius was meant to do one thing – accelerate to the speed of light and break through dimensions so it could jump freely between the stars. That way, the Federation could dominate the galaxy and hunt us wherever we are.

But during its first space trial, Vesuvius was lost. It lost contact in sub-space and was never heard from again.

Decades later, it reappeared outside the Magellan System, our home. Stretched, deformed, and mutated - Vesuvius had been commandeered by an otherworldly entity, its crew forcibly removed and violently consumed.

The Entity has no name, no history, existing constantly between the temporary and eternity. It is not confined to one timeline; instead, it constantly moves between dimensions, swallowing organic matter wherever it goes.

Now Vesuvius is Frankenstein's monster, changed beyond recognition. It watches us, studies us, and sends fast radio burst every 120 solar years to update its master. In Eastern astrology, there are ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches, making up the universe's rhythm and heartbeat. Even though the concept originates from Earth, it is still applicable to the Magellan System.

Therefore, the Entity is part of that harmonious, yin and yang cycle – whereas the cosmos breed and create, the Entity devours.

With the last radio burst, Vesuvius completed its mission. The colossal vessel must return to the otherworld to summon its master and bring it back to our system for a feast.

The virtual world before our eyes stops and vanishes as HaulerMite's data connection is severed. We stand still, speechless, our shoulders feeling the new burden of the truth.

"Captain, there's another thing you need to know," says Lena. "According to the drone, this ship has already departed. It's now traveling at light speed. WE are now traveling at light speed."

"So there was no second ship," I deduce. "Medusa saw the future version of us."

"We flew so fast," Lena adds, "that the photons we emit as lightwave fell behind. If we were the ones observing our photons, it would appear as if we're traveling backward in time."

"That means the whole thing has been set in motion the minute we boarded Vesuvius." I now realize the severity of the situation as if it wasn't already. "My goodness, it's too late to stop this ship."

Without warning, the black hole is enraged, opens wide, and sucks all of us in. The light turns dark, millions of stars spiral, and the wind of the worm tunnel howls furiously. We are shrunk and stretched and deformed while being cast into the abyss of the otherworld.

Lena holds onto my arm while the rest of our team dissipates into non-matter. I know she has always cherished me like I have cherished her, but our career never allowed us to show affection to each other. Alas now, I'm glad we're together in our last moments.

"The drone has a nuclear warhead!" she yells. "That's the secret cargo Command didn't want to tell you!"

"And you knew? From the get-go?"

It was a one-way trip, and Lena had known it all along.

But I don't feel betrayed. At this point, after all that we've been through, it doesn't matter anymore. I feel complete and I feel at peace. All the answers are here. She is here. Death is not my concern.

While we spiral downward to the infinite bottom, facing a certain doom, Lena and I lock hands and press the detonation button on her ArmPad together. The instant white light binds us together, and I surely hope it saves our system.