Knocks in the Void

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. While we might ignore one voice in the void, the death cry of an entire planet wasn't as easily lost.

It was our grandparents that heard the message from beyond our world. A primal cry that ripped into the minds of all organic beings in our solar system, from the mining ports of Saturn's rings to the vast fields of factories on Mars, and deep in the heart of earth.

Our history is full of stories of first contact with our own kind. It wasn't until after this shared event that humanity realized how small we were in the grand scheme of things. The vast forest of stars harbored life, and something had just cried out for help. In an unprecedented move for our kind, we left the safety of our shelter to come to their aid.

My grandmother boarded the original ships that had brought me to this planet. This place where we attempted to prove we had grown past the predators we once were. We arrived at the source of the message, generations later, and life times too late.

At the moment that humans were supposed to turn from villains of our own story to the white knights of another's, silence spoke to us. High on the idea of our own admiration, we had never questioned our abilities.

The planet was an aggressively dense forest that had turned to stone. Two suns danced with each other while several planets spun around them. The one we had landed on had a name, not one we had known, but the ruins on its surface whispered it. Late into the nights, on the warm winds, it begged for you to hear. Speaking in an alien language, the planet attempted to tell its stories.

It was these alien voices and feelings that rode on the winds that led us to the first of the gates. Fossilized trees that moved and parted like mechanical doors, a technology that resembled magic. The stairs within led down to cities that blurred the line between organic and machines, an entire metropolis grown from the plants. A painting with an unknown artist. These cities were once alive, but now turned to stone, twitching carcasses, hollow.

After years of venturing through this underground oasis, we had yet to find the origins of the message, the creators of these now dying structures. An entire civilization was fading right in front of us, turning to ruin as we grasped its walls. This disease was terminal, and we could not find the patient.

"They look like street lights." Femca remarked. Staring down the street of towering buildings. Branches grew from them and shined down white lights. Perfectly spaced and all illuminating in uniform.

“They host a bio-illuminance fungi inside self-contained ecosystems.” I explained.

She didn’t seem to retain anything I said. Just stared down the empty street, allowing the silence of the dead city to engulf us. Being a small flickering of light in the darkness, she turned to speak. Stopping for a moment, taking in the stillness of the air, before she polluted it with the sound of ignorance. Not one born of hate but that of an immeasurable lack of knowledge. She was trained to point her weapon, and not allow anything on the other side to take her life. She was a primal truth, the law of survival.

“Is that the same stuff that turns the ceiling into day?” She ask while scanning the windows that surrounded us.

“No actually! That is a type of leaf that reflects and bounces the light from the surface…” mid explanation, Femca stepped towards me and pressed one of her finger on my lips. She smirked and bit her bottom lip, debating on violating the silence with a different type of primal truth.

"Bica, just a simple 'no', would work." She said, removing her finger. A slight hint of the scent of metal trailed behind them.

“But you asked.” I said, rubbing my thumb on my lower lip. A nervous tick I had developed when dealing with the more abstract minded people.

“My mistake. It was more of a fleeting thought, something that attempted to put some mystery into the world.” she said, scanning our surroundings once again.

“That doesn’t make any sense. We are here to solve the mysteries of this world, not contribute to them.” I also scanned the windows as we walked, for a very different reason. While she only evaluated threat levels, I tried to understand.

Things like growing these structures, the science it took to program nature to one's will. While the questions created by my surroundings burned, the answers soothed me. The height of the buildings and rooms told stories of the people that had once lived here. It told me about their height, their social structure, culture, and even possible diets.

Some people, like Femca, could look into the void and see magic. I needed to raise my hand when facing the impossible depths of the unknown, and ask, "But why?”

Most of the time, there was no direct answer. Knowledge was obtained by finding the things that were out of place, disruptions in the forest. Broken branches, smeared dew, and scuffed leaves. Femca could hunt men, I tracked the truth.

I looked over at the tall woman. Her body was a mass of lean muscle and shear will power. There was no one ever as adapted to her craft as she was. Her father had questioned why she chose someone like me. A rabbit, courting an alpha with genetics more valuable than any of my lab equipment. I wasn't even at the top of my field.

Hyper focusing on the curve of her lips, and questioning if I was worthy of such a gift, I didn't notice at first. Her eyes, a hunter's focus.

Like we trained. I stepped behind her. Hiding my head behind her massive body and placing one of my hands on her shoulder.

“Identify.” She barked, while shrugging her shoulder forward.

I popped back and forth twice before mustering the courage to poke my head out from behind her. She had noticed that several of the streetlights were flickering. It wasn't a chaotic failure of a system, or erosion of machines. They were motioning towards a building's entrance. Inside, there was an audible humming.

“It’s a moment for science.” I said, moving out from my cover.

“Oh no, we report this.” Femca easily pushed me behind her with one hand. When I tried to stand my ground, she didn’t notice.

“We can’t get a signal through this!” I argued. The plants on this planet were designed in such a way that they absorbed all radio waves, laser communication, and somehow even fold space transmission. The planet had the ability to silence all technology outside of itself.

“Then we walk.” Femca spoke without the slightest change in her voice. Still pointing her weapon at the anomaly.

I raised my hands and pressed them against her lower back. “No! We don’t have the time.” My argument was as ineffective as my pushing.

“Wait.” I protested, trying to dig my heels into the ground. Even with my back pressing against hers, we were still retreating.

“Stop, Bica.” When I tried to keep pushing. She just reached back and gripped me by the belt. Lifting me on her shoulder with one hand. Usually I would be flustered with lust by that display of strength, but this wasn’t fun time, this was science time.

“We meet the enemy!” I yelled. Femca stopped. “No matter where they stand, we meet them. We tell them who we are!”

She lowered me back to the ground. It wasn’t my words that changed her mind. They were hers. When her family and friends told her I wasn’t worthy, when the doctors told her that they wouldn’t merge our genetics, and when the world told us we were wrong.

“This isn’t the same.” She said.

“That’s my battlefield. You have fought enough for us. Let me prove myself.”

She was a statue, still focused on the lights in front of us.

"You don't hear it, do you?" She might have thought that would scare me, but the fact she heard the planet's whispers only fuelled the fire, the need to discover.

"I knew it! It's just a humming for me, but you hear their voices." My excitement was momentarily squashed, the realization that this planet ignored me. "Possible neural passages we have yet to path. It was the warrior cast that first heard the original voices. The ones most focused on self-preservation. A primal urge…" Femca saved me from spiraling into deeper thought, with a finger on the lip, my heart stilled.

"That look." She didn't stare into my eyes. She dug deep into my soul, just watching as it was lit ablaze. "I don't want to be the person who steals it away.”

"Then don't." I said moving her hand away. "Please."

"You don't need to prove yourself, not to anyone." She meant that. The stern tone, the stillness in her expression. She really felt like I was enough, and for her, I was.

"I need to prove it to myself." I responded. Rubbing my lip with my thumb.

After a pause, that felt much longer than it truly was. Femca nodded her head. The slight movement sent waves of warmth and excitement through me, and for a moment I swore I heard something.

It wasn't anything I could make out, but there was a word spoken. A muffled language I did not understand.

"What is it?" Femca caught the change in my expression. But by the time I had realized I had heard something, it was already gone.

"Moment for science." I whispered. Collecting myself, I turned away from the door where I heard the sound, and back to Femca. "Let's find out. We go together." I said, reaching out for her.

"Promise?" she said, with a smirk that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

"Yes, I'll protect you." I said, flexing my sad excuse for biceps.

"My protector." She meant it both to be playful and to claim her territory.

We moved forward again. This time I had felt less like the rabbit courting the wolf, and more like a fox, baring its teeth alongside its more massive canine.

When our people had not yet established communications back home, and this world was dead. The less than flattering nature of humans had resurfaced within our ranks. The Warrior cast had rallied behind a banner of might, claiming this planet as their own, and the rest of us as a separate faction from Sol.

This Military base society wasn't one that cared for the weak, leaving many of my Scholar cast to die in the elements, or demoting them to Builder cast. My parents had died during these dark times. If not for Femca's father and his uprising, I would have surely died as well. He ended those three years of madness. With his daughter and a select few elite soldiers by his side.

I had seen Femca fight, watched as she systematically dismantled another human. In my eyes and many others, she was an abnormality. The still face of unfeeling stone when she killed someone did not match the woman I know. To me, she was kind, warm, and even someone not as equipped for humor as I was, had found her to be funny. So when her expression changed, even just slightly. I knew something was serious.

This is a woman that went into a room of over twenty grown warriors when she was just entering her teen years. When they refused to lay their arms down and give up their empire of ignorance. She educated them. Slow to learn the mind of a bigot is, and eventually, she was the only one to leave the room.

I attempted to mimic her bark. “Report.” My command sounded more like a yelp when compared to hers.

“It’s saying do not go.” She spoke with a rasp in her voice, a sign she was fighting off pain. Anything that could even cause the mildest of discomfort in her was a thrilling discovery.

“Physical reactions. The voice is not just an audible form of communication. There are reports of isolated tribes of humans dying out after the first message. Those more in touch with nature were lost. We had first assumed that it was caused by the advancement of time. While we had fixed our climate, it was still difficult to know how much this had affected their environment.”

Femca rolled her shoulders back and tensed. I knew this as a sign of lost patience. She wasn’t focused on the science of it, just its threat.

I knew she needed the details and not the theories. “Not a threat, at least I believe not.”

“They believe otherwise.” She grunted back.

“Wait, are you hearing actual voices? Like you can make them out? In common speech?” I could feel my toes wiggle, the sensation crawling up my feet, until I let out a small involuntary kick.

“Negative. I think.” Hearing the uncertainty in her voice was like listening to her trying to wrap her tongue around a new language.

We were close to the door now. The light started to flicker faster. Until we were right next to the window that led into the building. That’s when I noticed her sniffing. Her finely tuned sense had become more important than any of my research tools.

“Vegetation.” She whispered back.

I looked around at the city/ forest hybrid that both surrounded and encased us. The perfect merging of nature and design. “Accurate?” I stated, rubbing my lower lip.

“Stay behind me, understood?” She clarified in a breath of winter’s air.

“Yes.”

“Living vegetation.” She stepped off from the fossilized tree that held the building together. Using her body to better block an impulsive urge to turn the corner.

“What!?” and like that I gave away our position.

Without hesitating, Femca turn on one heel and slammed her other into the ground. The force of her boot hitting the stone sounded like a gun shot. Loud enough to shake my body. She was facing inside the building and pointing her rifle into the window.

“Identify yourself!” she barked into the building before firing two shots upwards. The weapon’s arc rail sizzled with electricity as the two energized rounds zipped through the air and shattered the glass.

I dropped to the ground and covered the back of my head. Memories of warriors storming my work camp flooded my mind. Their bullets were raindrops in the monsoon of horror.

"Imprisoned." The word was a thought, or a feeling. The longer I tried to think about it, the harder to understand it was. It was inside my mind, yet as foreign and elusive as a dream.

“Clear.” Femca had stepped into the large room and scouted it out before coming back to me. My wolf was an experienced master of its hunt.

"Why did you fire!?" I yelled. She pulled me up and sat me against the building.

“Hey, look at me.” she spoke softly. My Femca was back, not the stone cold killer that had just cleared the room behind us. “Let me see those pretty violet eyes.” She requested, while lightly patting my cheeks.

"They shot mom." I said, still stuck in the memory.

“Hey, I’m here. Just say it and I will take you from this place.” She stood up and reached her hand down. A reflection of that night, when we had met. When she saved me from the rains.

"No." I said, wiping off my tears. These emotions had never been so overwhelming. "We need to see this through.”

"Together." Her words anchored me.

"Promise." I said, grabbing her hand.

With a pull strong enough to lift me up to my feet and a little off. She had me back up. Before I could go into the room and see what this discovery was, Femca looked me over. Her gaze was not only welcomed, but calming.

"I'm fine."

"Yes, you are." she smirked again.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. Get in there. You will want to see this."

I quickly pushed aside the invasive thoughts when I remembered the possibility of living vegetation. When I turned into the room, it was like stepping through a moment in time.

The inside of this building was untouched by the disease that was turning the rest of the planet to stone. Its walls were still a lively green, flowers bloomed, and insects hummed. Even the air was rejuvenating. The last two weeks of living out of a tent and sleeping on stone washed away. Muscle soreness, joint pains, and even hunger, was just gone.

"I need samples." I said, reaching back into my pack.

"There will be time for that." Femca stepped into the building. In response to her, the plants moved. A vine dropped from the ceiling, glowing a bright white, following her as she progressed further inside.

"Low power function? Or a night setting." I speculated, trying to figure out why the rest of the room wasn't lit.

"Promise not to be mad." She requested.

“Yeah." I said, mostly distracted by taking notes. If I had just dwelled for a moment, I would have never agreed not to be angered. Especially when she lifted the corpse of a human size plant and moth hybrid.

"The voices stopped after I neutralized it." She unceremoniously dropped the specimen.

"Ha!" I laughed, then shrugged, and as the realization settled in, I felt a punch in my gut. "You killed the last of the living beings here?" I tried to smile, pleading with her to clarify it was a joke.

"Elves!" Femca referenced one of my rants from a week ago.

"Excuse me?" My voice hit a higher note than I had intended.

"It's a moth. You ranted about doors the other day. A humanoid person, similar build as us. Why else would the doors be so much like ours? Remember, your table experiments?" She pleaded her case.

The image of Femca sitting on chairs repeatedly, and pushing my seat into the tables, while I pretended to be royalty, was partly an experiment but mostly me picking on her. After the seventh seat she looked visibly annoyed, yet she entertained me. The thought of these moth creatures doing the same seemed silly.

"Care takers." I whispered, while moving its wing over. Its exit wound bleed out a thick green liquid. If I was the betting type, I would put money on the theory that this was the same fungal energy source used in the lights.

“Maybe.” Femca reached down to me again. She dare not interrupt something this important, unless she had a greater discovery for me. “Or a Warden.”

That’s when I knew. “Imprisoned.” The look on her face clarified my assumption. She had heard it as well.

“There is a metal door.” We had never come close enough to the surface of the planet to see actual ores. “Same grade as a warship’s.” her words were impossible.

"No. That suggests a separate technology. Possibly another civilization. Wait, civil war? Biochemical weapons would explain the plant's disease. Imprisoning the survivors, mutual destruction. That's just one theory." I started thinking about the plants being the invaders, space spores. Even the thought of ancient beings reawakening crossed my minds. The ideas came at me like gun fire.

“Over here.” she waved me down the hall.

When the light of her plant reflected off the lifeless steal, everything we had learned about this planet had just changed.

“Machine Elves?” the theories were whipping out of me, trying to hook on to any facts I could find. We had never recovered a body, these creatures could have been plant hybrids or cyborgs for all we knew. The questions were a raging sun, exploding and burning inside me. Threatening to turn me to ash if I did not open the door.

“Doesn’t matter. We won’t be able to open that anytime soon.” As if hearing Femca’s taunt, the ancient door sounded off. Roaring to life with turning gears and twisting metal.

I leaned forward while keeping myself behind my wolf. She lined up her weapon and scanned the growing entrance. Gasses merging with the surface air poured into the hall and to our feet. Thick enough that my boots disappeared within it.

Femca stepped back, giving ground to the fog. "I don't like this. Too many unknowns." As she spoke, a large stair case appeared behind the thinning gasses.

“Forward.” I suggested, lightly pushing her back.

Despite her reservations, she marched. With me close behind. The walls of the stares continued to open, until we found ourselves in a large glass chamber. The technology changed, it was no longer this alien utopia of intelligently designed nature. It gave away to the soulless being of metal and wires. Nothing like the rest of the planet. At the end of what looked like an observation station, lights began to come alive. We approached the squared screens that loaded up.

“There.” Femca pointed at a green flashing button. A symbol that resembled gears turning into a tree was displayed on the screens behind it.

“This isn’t right. If they had computers, why would they send such an organic message? We have tech like this, almost exact.” I approached the button, imagining the beings that once stood exactly where I was. Did they know this was how it was going to end up?

“Maybe the bio-tech reached further?” Femca’s explanations were simple. She wasn’t ignorant, just viewed problems differently, more straight forward.

“No. The tech they developed would be like turning on a light house to attract the blind. While at the same time owning a fog horn. It just doesn’t make sense.” I half heartily explained. My eyes were fixed on the button.

“Don’t.” Femca knew me.

“It seems like the lights to the facility. We will be able to see into the bunker.” I said.

There was a chance I was correct, but that didn't truly matter to me. I needed the reaction and the knowledge that followed the plunge. Just outside the glass in front of me could be anything. A bunker full of art, technology, or even sleeping survivors.

"I don't like this." Femca's instincts were rarely wrong. Despite that, I pressed the button.

"I'm sorry! Sorry!" I said, raising my hands up and surrendering myself to her lectures, a smile on my face the whole time. None of my wildest theories could have prepared me for the aftermath. So caught up in the romance of the moment, I acted on impulse. I was a sly fox, in love with a wolf, just trying to impress her.

"What did I say?" She had never used that tone with me before. So harsh and distant.

The lights around us turned on, sounds of machines in the distance rang out. Neither of us had the time to speak before we saw it. Both of us watched as a large reactor started up a few miles away from us. Moment's later street lights lit up under us. Hundreds of feet down from the tower we were in, a city awakened.

"They were like us." I pointed out, pressing my hands against the glass. It was a city that stretched far past the horizon.

Then a loud screech cried out from the glass under us. Before we could ask, the platform explained itself. Blacking out the floor, and then the walls and ceiling.

"Did the lights go out?" I asked in a panic.

"No, I can still hear the reactor starting up." Femca pulled me close.

Between us, stars appeared, being projected by the technology that surrounded us. Something instantly filled the room with space. Constellations, planets, gas clusters. All of it in perfect details.

“We don't have the ability to map space like this." I pointed out to both Femca in myself.

"There might be a reason for that." Femca pointed at something in the distance.

One planet was blinking green. It was a small exoplanet, sitting cozily in the goldilocks zone of its solar system. When she pointed, we travelled millions of light years to it. Its history unfolded in front of us. We watched as cities formed and satellites launched into orbit.

"Its historic recordings!" my involuntary kicks started again.

"Keep watching." Femca demanded, as the planet sent signals out into the universe.

We zoomed out. And just outside of its solar system, something heard it's cries. It slowly approached its prey, a shadow on the other side of the planet's sun.

"Blind spot." Femca kept watching, understanding.

Then we watched as the shadow pounced over millions of miles in an instant. It engulfed the planet in war and in the blink of an eye; it was done. That’s when the shadow left the now desolate rock.

"What happen?" my mind didn't want to accept it.

"It hunts through technology." Femca raised her weapon, and based on memory, started moving us through the darkness, towards the exit back up the stairs.

"But this planet covered itself.” I explained, now understanding why it absorbed our communications.

“Move!” Femca ordered again.

“We have to figure out what’s down here!” I protested. “They might know how to fight it.”

“They wounded this planet, waited until it called out. It’s a trap.” Femca turned to face me as she spoke.

“How could you know that?” I asked.

“I love you.” She had never said the words. It was just a silent truth.

"What? Stop that, it's science time.”

“Say it back.” For the first time since we had met, I heard fear in her voice.

“I love you.” The words felt exhilarating, in a fluster I turned around, trying to hide my blushing. “Why now?” I asked. It took all my strength to stop the wiggling in my toes turning into an embarrassing kick.

"Because we sprung the trap." She said, kissing the back of my head and pushing me out of the room. Instantly, the lights on the stares were blinding.

"Hey!" I said, turning around.

“Run!” she screamed. Firing her weapons into the shadows that engulfed the room. To my horror, it screamed out in pain. The darkness was alive. We had been in the belly of our enemy, and I was none the wiser. It recoiled into a solid form and readied to pounce at my wolf.

“No!” I stepped forward.

"Damnit, listen to me!" she commanded, spraying more rounds into the shape shifting being. It formed blades and launched at her. Losing parts of itself to her attack. The screech of the creature awoke something in the tower below us. The sound of the enemy approaching was deafening.

“We go together!” I screamed so loud my voice cracked and tears sprayed from my face.

“I will always be with you.” She coughed out, putting ten more rounds into her attacker. It flew past her. Even as she attempted to roll, it was able to slash deep into her side.

I wanted to run toward her, wanted to pull her to safety. Even though she had killed her foe, that wasn't possible. The door on the other side of us broke open. A deep abyss blackened the entrance.

“Promise!” I yelled.

"Promise." She said, her voice tired, blood leaking from her mouth. Sitting up, I could see her holding her rifle in one hand and charging a miniature nuke in the other. "Now… Run!" she commanded again. This was her battlefield.

I ran as fast as my feet could take me. Until the firing of her rifle was just distant snaps. And when I exited the prisons gate, I turned just in time to hear the explosion of a low grade nuke.

I screamed and dropped to my knees as the gate closed. My cries carried into the nothing. With no one around to hear them, other than the devouring Abyss.