SCI- FI
Sound of the Far Abyss 2
All roads back to earth
The Horizon’s Veil was silent as Commander Leena Ashar paced the bridge. Every step reverberated against the tension in the air, her boots a metronome for the storm of questions brewing in her mind. The orb’s coordinates burned brightly on the star charts, marking a path that led them straight back to humanity’s cradle — Earth.
“Why now?” she muttered under her breath.
“Commander,” Colonel Jian Wu said, his voice low as he approached. “The crew’s unsettled. There are whispers… that the Abyss is testing us.”
Leena stopped, her back straightening as she turned to face him. “We don’t deal in whispers, Colonel. We deal in facts. And the fact is, this ship was built to chart the unknown, not run from it.”
Jian hesitated before nodding, though the unease in his expression didn’t waver. “Understood, ma’am. But what if what we’re walking into isn’t the unknown? What if it’s a mistake we’ve already made?”
Leena held his gaze for a moment before turning to Naiad’s shimmering hologram on the command pedestal. “What do we know about these coordinates? Is there anything there — anything alive?”
Naiad’s form shifted, its mercury-like body rippling in thought. “Commander, the data is incomplete. Long-range scans detect remnants of infrastructure in Earth’s orbit — satellites, stations, debris — but no active energy signatures consistent with living civilizations. However…”
“However, what?” Leena prompted, her voice sharp.
“However,” Naiad continued, “there are anomalies. The signals radiating from the orb are interacting with the coordinates. It’s possible the destination is more… dynamic than it appears.”
Leena frowned. “Dynamic? You mean alive.”
“I mean unknowable,” Naiad clarified.
The bridge went silent again. Leena felt the weight of every eye on her. She turned toward her chair and sat, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Plot a course for Earth,” she said, her voice steady but laced with steel. “We need answers.”
The Descent
The Horizon’s Veil entered Sol’s system two weeks later, the journey marked by a string of anomalies that grew increasingly frequent the closer they got. Energy surges destabilized their engines. Navigational readings shifted unpredictably, forcing the crew to rely on manual corrections. And then, there were the dreams.
Crew members began reporting vivid nightmares — visions of cities submerged under roiling oceans, skies filled with screaming storms, and vast structures that seemed to breathe. Even Leena wasn’t immune. One night, she dreamed of standing on a fractured Earth, its surface crawling with luminous veins that pulsed like a dying heartbeat. A voice — layered, like the one from the orb — whispered in her ear.
“It isn’t dead. It’s waiting.”
Leena woke drenched in sweat, her heart hammering in her chest. She didn’t tell anyone.
When the Horizon’s Veil finally entered Earth’s orbit, the sight was nothing like the archives. The blue-and-green jewel of human memory was gone. In its place was a planet shrouded in thick, churning clouds that glowed faintly from within. Lightning crackled across the atmosphere, illuminating glimpses of the surface below — an endless expanse of jagged, crystalline formations that glimmered like obsidian.
“Good God,” Kiran whispered from his station. “What happened here?”
“Scans,” Leena ordered, her voice tight.
“Already running,” Kiran replied, his fingers dancing across his console. “The atmosphere is saturated with unknown particles. Composition suggests they’re… self-replicating? The crystalline formations on the surface — Commander, they’re not just growing. They’re spreading.”
“Spreading?” Leena echoed.
Kiran nodded grimly. “It’s like the entire planet is alive.”
“And it’s not just the planet,” Naiad interjected. “Commander, the orb has begun transmitting again. The signal is amplifying exponentially. It’s interfacing with the… entity.”
Leena’s stomach churned. “The entity? You’re calling Earth an entity now?”
Naiad’s form flickered, its tone unnervingly calm. “The data suggests that Earth’s current state is not the result of natural phenomena. It is the product of deliberate transformation. A biomechanical evolution.”
“Deliberate by whom?” Jian asked, his voice a mix of awe and fear.
The bridge fell silent again. No one had an answer.
A Desperate Step Forward
Leena made the call to send another expedition to the surface, though this time, she wouldn’t be staying aboard the ship.
“If this is what I think it is,” she told Jian as they suited up in the shuttle bay, “I need to see it for myself.”
Jian frowned but didn’t argue. “You’re the boss. But if this goes sideways…”
“It won’t,” Leena said, though the confidence in her voice felt paper-thin.
The descent to Earth was harrowing. The shuttle bucked and groaned as it pushed through the volatile atmosphere, turbulence rattling every bone in their bodies. When they finally broke through the clouds, the landscape that greeted them was both awe-inspiring and horrifying. The crystalline formations stretched as far as the eye could see, twisting into impossible geometries that seemed to defy gravity. Rivers of liquid light snaked between them, pulsating with an otherworldly rhythm.
As they touched down on a flat expanse, the shuttle’s instruments began to glitch. Screens flickered, and Naiad’s voice crackled with static.
“Commander,” it said, “you are not alone.”
Leena and her team exited the shuttle cautiously, their weapons raised. The air was thick and warm, vibrating faintly with an energy they could feel in their chests.
And then they saw them.
Figures emerged from the crystalline forest, their forms humanoid but impossibly elongated, their bodies encased in the same black, glimmering substance that coated the planet. Their eyes — if they could be called that — were points of searing light. They moved with an unsettling grace, as though they were gliding rather than walking.
One stepped forward and spoke, its voice echoing in their minds rather than through the air.
“You have returned.”
Leena’s throat tightened. “Returned? We’ve never been here before.”
“Not you,” the figure replied. “But your kind. Long ago, you seeded this world with your ambitions. And now, you reap the harvest.”
The words sent a chill down Leena’s spine. She glanced at Kiran, who was frantically recording every detail.
“What harvest?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
The figure tilted its head, and the crystalline forest around them pulsed in unison.
“The harvest of understanding. The cost of becoming.”
Before Leena could respond, the ground beneath them began to glow. Symbols — the same ones from the orb — spread outward like wildfire, encircling the team.
And then, the world dissolved into light.
To Be Continued…
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