The *Odyssey’s* hull groaned as it pierced the planet’s thin atmosphere, crimson dust swirling in eddies around the vessel. Captain Mara Voss tightened her grip on the control panel, her boots pressing into the grated floor as the ship shuddered. Outside, the sky was a bruised purple, streaked with veins of amber lightning. The planet’s name—*Kael-9*—had been scratched into the mission logs with a desperation that made no sense. No one remembered why they’d come here.
“We’re descending,” said Rian, the pilot, his voice flat. His fingers danced over the console, adjusting the thrusters. The *Odyssey* listed to the left, then stabilized. A low hum filled the cockpit, vibrating in Mara’s bones.
“Check the comms,” she ordered. “If this place is still broadcasting, we’ll know.”
Rian didn’t answer. He was staring at the screen, his jaw clenched. The feed showed a vast, desolate plain stretching to the horizon, dotted with jagged spires that looked like broken teeth. No signs of life. No signal. Just static.
Mara exhaled, her breath fogging the glass. “Everyone, suit up. We’re going down.”
—
The air outside was thin, biting cold that seeped through the seals of their suits. Mara led the team across the cracked terrain, boots crunching over brittle rock. The ground pulsed faintly beneath her feet, as if the planet itself was breathing. She ignored the unease curling in her gut. This was a routine survey, nothing more.
“This place is a graveyard,” muttered Jax, the engineer, kicking a rusted metal plate. It clattered across the ground, echoing in the silence. “No sign of the *Vanguard*. No distress calls. Just… nothing.”
“Maybe they’re in the structure,” said Lira, the biologist, her gloved hand brushing against a spire. The material was smooth, almost organic, but it reeked of ozone and decay. “If they were here, they’d have tried to contact us.”
Mara scanned the horizon. The structure loomed ahead—a massive, skeletal framework of dark alloy, half-buried in the dust. It looked like a carcass, stripped of flesh. “We find the signal,” she said. “And we find them.”
—
Inside, the air was heavier, thick with the scent of rust and something sharper, like burnt copper. The corridor stretched endlessly, its walls lined with flickering lights that cast jagged shadows. Mara’s helmet light cut through the gloom, revealing scorch marks and strange symbols etched into the metal.
“This isn’t a research station,” Jax muttered, running a hand over the symbols. “It’s a prison.”
“Or a tomb,” Lira added, her voice barely above a whisper. She stepped closer to a wall, her light catching on something embedded in the metal—a human skull, its eye sockets empty, its jaw frozen in a silent scream.
Mara’s pulse quickened. “We keep moving.”
They found the first body in a chamber filled with shattered screens. The man’s suit was torn, his face contorted in terror. His hand clutched a data drive, its surface cracked. Mara picked it up, her fingers tingling as she touched the metal. A faint hum resonated through her gloves.
“What the hell is this?” Rian asked, crouching beside the body. His helmet light illuminated the floor, where deep scratches marred the metal. “It’s like something dragged him here.”
“Or someone,” Lira said, her voice tight. She pointed to the scratches. “These aren’t animal marks. They’re too precise. Too… deliberate.”
Mara turned to the data drive. If the *Vanguard* had left anything behind, it was here. But as she inserted it into her scanner, the screen flared with static, then went black. A low vibration rattled the walls, and for a moment, the lights dimmed.
“Did you do that?” Rian asked, his voice sharp.
“No,” she said. “But whatever’s in this place doesn’t want us here.”
—
The deeper they went, the more the structure seemed to shift. Corridors twisted in ways that defied logic, walls that had been straight now curved like ribs. The air grew colder, and the hum in Mara’s bones intensified. She could feel it now—a presence, vast and unseen, pressing against the edges of her mind.
“We should turn back,” Jax said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “This place is wrong.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Mara replied. “If the *Vanguard* is still alive, we find them.”
They reached a massive chamber, its ceiling lost in darkness. At the center stood a monolithic structure, its surface rippling like liquid metal. Around it, bodies lay scattered—some intact, others reduced to tangled heaps of flesh and bone. The air reeked of blood and something metallic.
“This is where they died,” Lira whispered. “But why? What happened here?”
Mara stepped closer, her boots crunching over broken glass. The monolith pulsed, and suddenly, the room was alive with voices—whispers in a language she didn’t recognize, overlapping in a cacophony of pain and desperation. She clutched her helmet, trying to block it out, but the voices seeped into her thoughts, unraveling her mind.
“Mara!” Rian’s voice cut through the noise. “Get back!”
She stumbled, her vision blurring. The monolith was no longer just a structure—it was a living thing, its surface writhing like a wound. And then she saw it: a figure, half-formed, emerging from the metal. It had no face, only a shifting mass of shadows and light. It moved toward her, slow and deliberate.
“Run!” she screamed, but the word felt distant, as if spoken by someone else.
—
The figure caught her before she could move. Its touch was cold, like ice sliding into her veins. Mara’s vision exploded into light, and she was no longer in the chamber. She was somewhere else—somewhere vast and empty, filled with the sound of endless screaming. The figure loomed over her, its form shifting, and she understood: this was not a creature. It was a memory, a fragment of something ancient that had been trapped here for eons.
“You should not have come,” it whispered, its voice a thousand overlapping tones. “The silence is final.”
Mara fought against the pull, her mind grasping at fragments of her own identity. She thought of the *Odyssey*, of the crew, of the life she’d left behind. The figure’s grip tightened, and for a moment, she felt herself dissolving, becoming part of the silence.
Then, a spark. A memory: Rian’s laugh, the way he’d joked about the planet’s name. Lira’s curiosity, her fascination with the symbols. Jax’s stubbornness, his refusal to back down. They were still out there. They were still fighting.
With a roar that shook the void, Mara pushed back. The figure recoiled, its form flickering. The chamber snapped back into focus, the voices fading into a low hum. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath.
“Mara!” Rian’s voice again, closer this time. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, though the weight of the encounter still pressed against her chest. “We need to leave. Now.”
—
The return trip was a blur of movement and fear. The corridors no longer made sense, twisting in ways that defied logic. They stumbled through the structure, their suits flickering with static, their breaths loud in their helmets. The monolith’s presence lingered at the edges of their thoughts, a reminder of what they’d seen.
They reached the *Odyssey* just as the sky began to churn. Dark clouds roiled overhead, and the ground trembled beneath them. Rian slammed the hatch shut behind them, sealing out the planet’s eerie silence.
“What the hell was that?” Jax asked, his voice shaking. “What did we just leave behind?”
Mara didn’t answer. She stared at the data drive in her hand, its surface still warm. The *Vanguard* was gone, their fate sealed by something beyond comprehension. But the silence below had left its mark on them all.
As the *Odyssey* lifted off, Mara glanced one last time at the planet’s surface. The spires stood like broken teeth, and the sky remained a bruised purple. Something was still down there, waiting. And she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the core, that it would never be silent again.
