Inmates of the Abyss

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. In fact, that was the last thing Commander Asghar said as he sealed the containment door of our Correctional Detainment Pod. His near black eyes never wavered as they held mine and he radioed Control to send the pod soaring into the Trianthula Abyss, well beyond the last known inhabited galaxy in relation to our planet. It’s where the vilest criminals in the Urho Planetary System were sent. And I had just secured a one-way ticket for my team and me.

The takeoff was sudden and my sightline bolted straight upward and away from Asghar’s. My fittingly “space-grey” jumpsuit suctioned to my body and my loose brown hair followed. There were only four of us, so they stuck us in a Cube - a perfectly square, four-cell, silver pod with four miniature porthole windows and renowned for being the most cramped quarters for the inmates within. Inmates. How by the light of a nebula did I let this happen?

After a few moments, the violent shaking and sputtering of the Cube leveled out and we began our smooth sailing towards our destination. They’d begun launching criminals to the Abyss at top speed to eliminate even the smallest chance of escape which meant we had just a few hours until we reached the Abyss.

“Roz? Vhatska? Lenore? You guys okay?” I yelled a status check over the solid walls of my cell to the 15 centimeters of open air that connected the top of all four.

“What in the name of Urho have you done!” Vhatska yelled back.

“I’m okay,” Lenore whispered in her typical softness.

“Good here Boss,” Roz confirmed in his deep Glasiun voice.

“Seriously El, when I get my hands on you, I’ll kill you myself!” Vhatska kept on. She was thankfully in the cell kitty corner from my own which, though logically I knew her lanky Varillian body couldn’t squeeze through the space above our cells, gave me a tad bit more comfort.

“Vhatska, calm down, I’m sure she's got a plan,” Roz interjected.

The horrific thought of Vhatska squeezing her reptilian body above our cells to strangle me herself echoed in my mind as she continued on her tirade. I guess you can hear a scream in the vacuum of space - you just have to be in the same detention pod as them.

“That’s it!” I thought outloud, “Lenore, do you think you could climb up your wall and squeeze between our cells?”

“Oh! Um, maybe?” she squealed.

Lenore was Friezen, a rodent-like species that came from one of the outermost planets in Urho’s system. She and I graduated from Urho’s Academy of Planetary Defense together nearly six years ago. She had planned to work as a defense technician and remain behind a desk but I begged her to join my team in the field shortly after graduation. Surprisingly, she agreed and swiftly became known as The Fieldmouse across the precinct. Urho strike me down if she didn’t wear that nickname with pride. As she should, she’s the smartest computer and information systems technician the Academy has ever seen.

“Hey, El? You’ll never believe this!” Lenore’s voice raised just over her typical whisper from just above my cell.

“Did you make it, Lennie?” Roz called to her above Vhatska’s steady ranting.

“Uh-huh! And there’s an access panel to the pod's mainframe up here!” The excitement in her voice painted her petite smile across my mind.

“Think you can break into it?” I let my voice carry a smile back to her.

“Should be able to! Just need something to unscrew the top panel first.”

“Hey Vhatska! Any of your scales happen to be loose?” I yelled across the pod.

Her grumbling was audible but the words were all in Varillian.

“Awe, come on Vhats - we’re stuck here now, might as well help out!” Roz was always a team player and the soft spot for our team. His tender nature disputed his burly build. The Glasiuns originated on the forested planet, Terresla and had leathery skin covered in large patches of coarse fur. They were typically shorter than humans but the width of three or four combined. Their legs were stout and their hands were more like paws equipped with opposable thumbs but most were as kind as Roz. He had been recruited as the brawn for the team but his morale boosting abilities were infallible.

“I’m working on it! Gimme a minute!” Vhatska snapped back. She was nearly half a meter taller than me which put her around 192 centimeters and just shy of jumping distance to reach the top of our cells. The Varillian people all had webbed hands and feet and their bodies were covered from head to tail in multicolored illuminescent scales that molted and regrew often - comparable to my human skin cells shedding and regenerating.

“Gonna have to come down and grab it from me Lennie, I can’t reach the top of these star forsaken walls,” Vhatska yelled as she held up one of her scales.

“Thanks, Vhatska!” Lenore grabbed the scale in her mouth and crawled back up over the wall of the cell.

After a few minutes of whispered grunts and the clanking of scale on metal, Lenore made it past the mainframes cover and crawled into the ceiling of the pod.

“How’s it looking Lennie?” I called.

Her head poked out from the ceiling, “there’s a motherboard up here, but without my tools, it’s going to take me a while to crack into the system. After that, there’s no telling if I’ll even have any control over the thing…”

“How long ‘til you’re in Lennie?” I called back.

“Few hours,” she replied and disappeared back into the ceiling without waiting for a response.

“A few hours? Boss, we’ll be to the Abyss by then…” Roz’s voice quivered.

“It’s alright, Roz. Even if we cross into the Abyss, if we can get control over the pod, we should be able to navigate back out.” I strained against the quiver in my own voice.

“Should…” he repeated.

We were all silent for a moment as the word reverberated in our minds.

“Boss?” Roz broke the silence, “I’ve only ever heard rumors about the Abyss. And since you’ve been with Planetary Defense for a while now, well, you must know a bit about it…”

I sighed. Even Vhatska had stayed quiet for this one.

“The Trianthula Abyss is a sector of the universe just outside of the Urho Planetary System’s boundary. It was discovered by one of our scouting satellites half a century back. However, after a few preliminary missions, it was found that once one entered the boundary of the Abyss…it was nearly impossible to get back out. We did have one successful mission return from the boundary - which is how we gathered what little we know about the inner workings of the Trianthula Abyss. It seems to be a small, light consuming galaxy with its own gravitational pull that acts to keep anything that enters, inside. Some small meteorites and other space debris had been noted by the explorer that returned from the successful mission, but other than that, it was concluded that the Abyss was just that - a vast, black, empty vortex at the outskirts of our own territory. It wasn’t until about twenty-five years ago that the Planetary Defense made the decision to send criminals unworthy of rehabilitation there. It eliminates the chance of escape and exposure to citizens and the cost is relatively low. After the initial launch, the only real expense is sending an automated nutritional fuel pod to the Abyss which we’ve designed to be expendable and cost effective. And since there were seemingly no other inhabitants in the Abyss, the proposal was passed with virtually no opposition.”

“But if the fuel pods are expendable, how can they be sure they’re reaching the Correctional Detainment Pods once inside the Abyss?” Roz’s voice cracked.

“Once they send the food, it’s not their problem, Roz,” Vhatska’s voice was flat.

I nodded to my cell walls, “the Council of Integrity and Welfare are the people who hold the Planetary Defense accountable, and they only require proof that the pods were sent to the coordinates inside the Trianthula Abyss’s boundary and on the correct schedule.”

“So, nobody knows what happens to the inmates once they enter the Abyss…” Roz’s voice rang steady as a dirge.

Silence overtook the Cube as it spiraled towards the Abyss. Lenore worked vigorously on the motherboard and tiny clanks rang out from the ceiling every so often. Vhatska tapped her tail along the metal floor as she lay draped across her too small bunk. Roz hummed a Glasiun work song as he stared out his window and I stared in silence out my own. We stayed that way for a long while.

“How’s it going up there Lennie?” I finally called out, hoping for an optimistic progress report.

“I need more time,” she huffed louder than I’d heard her in some time.

“I’m afraid we might not have much time left, Lennie. We gotta be getting close to the boundary now.”

“I’m doing my best, El! I work much faster when I’m not busy answering questions!”

I dropped the conversation and let her concentrate on the motherboard.

“Um…Boss?” Roz broke from his tune.

I sighed, “yes, Roz?”

“I’m no expert, and uh, I’ve never seen the Trianthula Abyss before…but uh…I think we’re here,” his voice strained.

“What?!”

“There’s a wall of blackness out my window, maybe 100 meters out,” he replied.

I could hear the clamor as Vhatska got off her bed and walked on webbed feet to her porthole.

“Mother of Urho, I see it too,” she gasped.

“It’s out of my vantage, tell me exactly what you two see!” I called out.

“It looks like tendrils…black, sinuous tendrils forming a giant wall in the middle of the stars. What the nebula is that?” Vhatska’s voice caught in her throat.

“Uh, what she said, Boss,” Roz gasped, “and it’s coming in fast!”

“Lenore, get down here and secure yourself in your seat! You two do the same, there’s no telling how rough our entrance into the Abyss will be! Now!” I demanded.

“But, I’m almost there!” Lenore shouted back.

“I said, now!”

Lennie bolted down from the ceiling and back into her cell and the other two jumped to follow orders.

“Status report, go!” I yelled.

“Secure!” rang out consecutively from all three cells with my own added afterwards.

Seconds later the pod lurched into the wall of blackness and was engulfed in shadows. The Cube tumbled end over end and the ceiling panel Lenore had loosened clattered about within the ceiling. Darkness filled the portholes until suddenly, the pod evened out to a slow, even movement and white lights filtered into the windows.

“Everyone okay?” I checked.

Status reports green all around. Lenore shot up the wall and back into the ceiling.

“Boss? I thought you said there were no lights in the Trianthula Abyss?” Roz asked and I realized I was squinting at the bright lights beaming into my porthole.

“I thought there weren’t…”

“Uh, El?”

“What is it Vhatska?”

“I think those fuel pods of yours made it to the inmates…”

“I’m in! I have control of the motherboard!” Lenore shouted from the ceiling.

“What are you talking about, Vhatska?”

“Lennie?” she called, “can you turn the pod a bit? I think El is gonna need to see this for herself.”

“On it!” she yelled and the Cube began rotating 180 degrees.

I squinted intently through the lights looking for what Vhatska had seen until finally I was at the same vantage she had been.

“Urho strike me down,” I gasped.

A glistening metal arc formed entirely of Correctional Detention Pods expanded across the center of the Abyss. Lights beamed from every end. Nutritional fuel pods bustled in and out of side ports carrying inmates still dressed in their space-grey jumpsuits, wandering free and undetained.

“They formed their own planet,” disbelief painted my words.

Vhatska exhaled, “and we’re headed straight for it.”