Chapter 11 : The Unknown Horizon

  The stars looked… wrong.

  Devon Brooks stood at the viewport, arms folded across his chest. “Okay,” he muttered, voice low and controlled. “Someone tell me what the hell just happened.”

  The wormhole had spat them out violently. For what felt like minutes, the ship tumbled through darkness, gravity spinning, time warping. Then—stillness. Silence. No Mars. No Sol. Just a new sky.

  “I’ve recalibrated the nav systems three times,” said Arjun Rao, hunched over a glowing interface. His voice was unsteady, glasses slipping down his nose. “Nothing matches. Not a single star in our database. We’re not in the solar system. We’re not in the galaxy. I think…”

  He hesitated.

  “…we're somewhere completely new.”

  Talia Monroe floated beside the hydroponics bay, breath fogging against the glass. “This isn’t possible. Wormholes don’t just open. That would take energy levels on the scale of a dying star.”

  “Well,” Kai Sato piped in from the ceiling where he was tightening a loose bolt, “maybe we found one having a bad day.”

  Amara Vélez sat silent at the center table, journal open, pen stilled. She stared at the starmap slowly populating with unknown constellations. Her eyes burned with questions she hadn’t figured out how to ask yet.

  Kai dropped to the floor with a soft thud and gave her a quick smile. “Still sketching future rocket designs, Ma'am ?”

  She didn’t reply, but her fingers resumed moving, tracing a circle around a system with three suns. Just a guess, but it looked oddly symmetrical.

  Then came the locket.

  Arjun turned in his chair. “By the way… I made something.”

  He pulled a small pendant from his pocket—smooth silver, palm-sized, shaped like a crescent.

  “It’s a personal project. I was bored.”

  He tapped the back, and with a soft mechanical click, tiny panels unfurled. A miniature drone no larger than a hummingbird emerged, hovering silently above their heads.

  “It has a solar charger, long-range mic, live video transmission, even low-g spectrum scanning. Thought it might be fun to make a ‘field recorder.’ Or, y’know, spy on Kai talking to his plants.”

  Kai mock-scowled. “That was one time.”

  Suddenly—the lights flickered.

  Then dimmed.

  And for the first time since launch, the AI didn’t speak.

  “ORION?” Devon called out.

  Silence.

  Talia was already at the console. “Power levels are fine. But the AI core... it’s dormant.”

  Devon’s brow furrowed. “So we’re on our own.”

  Outside the ship, stars shimmered like reflections in deep water. Unfamiliar gravity fields warped their sensors. They were floating in a system filled with scattered debris, planetary fragments, and two enormous bands—a ring of glacial ice chunks, and another of slow-turning asteroids. Both stretched across space like planetary tattoos.

  “Are those… planetary rings?” Amara asked, voice quiet.

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  “No idea ” Arjun said. “ Long distance scans are down . These rings are too massive. They wrap around like belts. One icy, one rocky.”

  “Where the hell are we?” Devon murmured.

  Then, from the window, something moved.

  A flicker of light, too straight to be natural. A shimmer, as if metal caught starlight.

  Kai leaned forward. “Guys… I don’t think we’re alone.”

  The crew crowded around the observation viewport. Out there, amidst the slow-turning debris of the icy and rocky belts, a small light flickered. Then it moved again—deliberate, cutting across the black like a needle through silk.

  “Zooming in,” said Arjun, fingers dancing across the console. The screen magnified—once, twice—until the object sharpened into view.

  It wasn’t a ship. At least, not one built by human hands.

  The thing floated in the void with unsettling grace, its surface smooth and curved—oval, almost perfect. Faint ridges lined its length, pulsing with dim, bioluminescent light that throbbed like a heartbeat. It didn’t emit thruster trails or any sign of propulsion, yet it moved with purpose, gliding silently toward something massive in the distance.

  Talia leaned closer. “Wait... is that…?”

  Her breath caught.

  “It’s an egg,” Kai said flatly, the words falling from his mouth like a stone.

  The crew stared in stunned silence.

  “It can’t be,” whispered Amara. “That size—it’s easily the length of a plane . ”

  “Organic structure confirmed,” Arjun stated . “Exterior composed of unknown compound. Internal thermal activity detected. Object is radiating faint biological signatures.”

  Devon’s face was stone. “You’re saying it’s alive?”

  “Possibly,” Kai replied. “Or something inside is.”

  Then they saw it.

  A planet.

  It loomed in the darkness, crowned in icy halos, orbited by nine moons and cloaked in scattered storms. One of the massive belts—the icy one—wrapped around its equator like a celestial river, glinting beneath its thin ring of auroras.

  Arjun’s mouth went dry. “That’s a planet. Enormous. At least fifteen times Earth’s mass. And… that thing—whatever it is—is heading straight for it.”

  A deep silence fell. Only the gentle hum of auxiliary power accompanied their thoughts.

  Then Amara noticed something else. Her heart skipped.

  “Why are we moving toward the planet?”

  Arjun froze. “What?”

  Arjun looked out the viewport again—and saw it. The planet was no longer distant. Its curvature had changed. Clouds churned visibly now. Moons moved past in real-time.

  “We’re being pulled in,” he said. “Fast.”

  “Check our thrusters ! ” Devon snapped. “Get us off this trajectory, now!”

  Talia’s hands raced across the flight system console. “Main thrusters are offline. Backup’s unresponsive. We’re in a freefall.”

  “No, no—manual override!” Devon ordered. “Arjun, Kai—you’re with me. We’re fixing this now. Amara, Talia—keep mapping the approach vector and find me a way to decelerate manually.”

  They suited up in record time.

  The airlock hissed open, and Devon, Arjun, and Kai stepped into the void—weightless, but aware of the titanic gravity slowly building in their bones.

  The ship’s rear thrusters were dark, cold, unresponsive. Arjun scrambled to access the power couplings while Kai connected a fusion-cell reroute.

  “It’s like someone shut down the ship out entirely,” Kai said through the comms.

  Devon gritted his teeth. “Just get it online.”

  Sparks flew. Wires fused. The system pulsed once—then again.

  A low roar built from the ship’s rear. The thrusters coughed, sputtered—

  “They're on!” Arjun shouted.

  The three of them scrambled back inside as the ship shook beneath them. Talia was already at the controls, trying to realign their trajectory.

  But it was too late.

  “We’ve crossed the event horizon of the planet’s gravity well,” Amara said. Her voice was calm, but laced with dread. “This world… its gravity is nearly twenty times Earth’s. We’re falling.”

  Devon slammed a hand against the console. “Then we control the fall.”

  Suddenly—

  A tone.

  Soft. Rising.

  Then a voice, familiar and mechanical, glitched once… then solidified.

  “Commander Devon Brooks. I am… awake.”

  “ORION!” Talia nearly jumped from her seat. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Devon stepped forward. “Status report. What happened to you? Why did you shut down?”

  A flicker of static crossed the ship’s interface screens. ORION’s voice came through, strained but recovering.

  “The wormhole event… exceeded operational parameters. My core systems were not designed to process spatial-temporal distortion at that magnitude. Emergency hibernation was the only viable protocol.”

  “You were offline,” Amara said, frowning. “We were flying blind.”

  “Correct,” ORION confirmed. “I deeply regret the gap in support. I am currently reinitializing full protocols, but we are running out of time.”

  Devon stiffened. “Explain.”

  “Hull integrity is holding. Structural damage is within tolerances. However—” ORION’s voice deepened slightly, “—you are approaching impact velocity with a Class-X gravitational body. Atmospheric re-entry is imminent. Full analysis will be available… shortly.”

  Devon snapped into command mode. “Give me a detailed report now. I need to know what’s still working and what’s not.”

  There was a brief pause.

  Then ORION spoke again—but this time with urgency.

  “There is no time for a standard report. All personnel—please initiate Chronolok synchronization immediately. I will brief you through the neural interface. You must prepare. Impact countdown: T-minus nine minutes, twelve seconds.”

  The crew exchanged glances, understanding the gravity of the situation. They closed their eyes, focusing inward to enter Chronolok—activating the neural interface implanted during their training.

  A shared stream of data and imagery flowed into their consciousness, providing real-time updates on the ship's status and the impending descent.

  Devon’s voice echoed through the neural link. “Let’s move. We’ve got limited time to brace for impact.”

  The team sprang into action, guided by ORION’s directives transmitted through the Chronolok.

  Outside, the massive planet loomed closer, its gravitational pull accelerating their descent.

  As the atmosphere thickened around them, ORION's voice resonated through the neural interface.

  “Brace for descent,” ORION said. “But there has been a change. I’ve adjusted your trajectory to avoid populated regions.”

  Devon’s thoughts sharpened. Adjusted?

  “You’re now heading toward a mountain-dense region covered in high-canopy forests. Unmapped terrain. Nightfall.”

  “Why?” Amara asked .

  "Survivability metrics are higher in this sector. I calculated a 17% increase in odds of safe touchdown. Additionally… I detected unusual thermal signatures in other regions. This zone remains stable."

  The viewport darkened as clouds swallowed them. Lightning danced across the atmosphere, casting strobe flashes over the enormous peaks below.

  “Altitude falling fast,” Arjun called. “Velocity peaking—this is going to be rough!”

  The ship trembled violently. Internal lights flickered.

  Kai gripped his restraints. “I vote we don’t die today.”

  Devon’s eyes locked on the descent feed. A single breath. Then—

  “Impact in ninty seconds.”

  No one spoke.Outside, the clouds gave way to jagged silhouettes—massive peaks cutting

  into the night like teeth. Lightning illuminated thick forests below, black and swaying under storm winds.

  In the neural link, silence hung heavy—no time for questions. No time for fear.

  Only the outcome.