Echoes in the Darklands

[legoshi]

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Callsign: Wostok
Ship: "Obsidian" – Very Heavy Fighter
Current Location: Darklands, Copernicus

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Dropping out of the Sigma-13 jumphole felt like falling into emptiness—no traffic, no comms, no horizon. Just the still, open vacuum of the Copernicus system.

Wostok leaned back, eyes locked on the HUD. Two planets registered nearby—distant orbs shrouded in silence. Their signatures came and went, no stronger than the static hum of space itself. No stations. No signals. Just ghosts.

Between him and the edge of the Darklands: 60 Klicks.
The space in between was noise—irradiated bursts, overlapping frequencies, echoes of things that might’ve once been real.
His sensors fired warnings in every direction, none of them reliable. None of them staying long enough to matter.

“Blackout area.”
“Visual collapse. Nav system degradation. No stable trajectory. No guarantee of return.”

He pushed the ship’s external lights to full, and the effect was immediate—disappointment. The beams disappeared just beyond the hull, eaten by the darkness. The nebula ahead didn’t ripple. It didn’t shimmer. It waited.

The Obsidian eased forward.

Crossing into the Darklands wasn’t a single moment—it was a change of state.
First, the stars vanished. Then the compass lost its mind. The darkness took shape.
Navigation glitched. Velocity dropped.

He was inside.

And somewhere in Qudrant G7, buried in shadow, the Livingstone lay waiting.

Wostok drifted forward, scanners maxed out—but visibility was a joke. Even his own wings blurred into shadow. Here, distance didn’t exist. Only instinct.

A flicker.
No contact. No clear signature. Just one spike of passive energy—and then nothing.
Was it a sensor fault?
Or someone else?

He cut to manual, ghosting through the mist like a diver through oil.
And then he saw it:

A silhouette.
Still. Massive.
Swallowed by the fog, but clear enough to identify—a Dromedary-class freighter. Intact. No engine trail. No response to hails.

The Livingstone.

He circled once. No breaches. No external damage.
The ship looked untouched. But the sensors were right—no life signs.
Life support was dead. Atmosphere sealed and cold.

Wostok sighed.
The Obsidian couldn’t dock with a Dromedary. No compatible ports.

Time for a walk.

He sealed the suit. Checked his tether. Stepped into the airlock.

As the visor closed, the sound of the ship faded away.
Only breath. And the hiss of oxygen.

The airlock cycled.

He pushed off, floating into the dark. The suit’s lights stabbed forward—barely five meters ahead before vanishing. Everything beyond was thick shadow.

He reached the bridge access. Forced it open. No resistance.

Inside: silence.
Two bodies in the cots—victims of the illness.
And on the bridge: the captain and his first officer. Side by side.
A weapon still gripped in his cold hand.

No escape. No rescue. Just the mission.

Wostok activated the portable scanner, located the black box.
There—behind the nav core, its green light still pulsing.

He reached for it—
A burst of static hit his comms.

A ping. Short. Unidentified.
Signal… or echo?

He froze.
Listened.

Nothing.

Maybe ... he wasn’t alone.