They hadn't received any word from Brooks for some time now, and Urle did not like it.

He and Jaya were in agreement that something was suspicious about their contact with Brooks, and he wanted to get real, physical contact with the man as soon as possible.

Progress on drilling through the temple was stalled; even getting stronger drilling lasers out there had netted them only two meters. They couldn't get any deeper than that.

"We are firing, seeing damage," Cenz told him in frustration. "But when we measure it, we find almost no change. The lasers are not scattering, nor is this distance enough that they should be diffusing significantly. I cannot explain it except to say that the qualities of this stone are quite peculiar."

Lasers weren't their only option. Cenz was strongly against the idea of using the coilguns, and Brooks had ordered them not to. Largely because he did not want to damage the station. The danger to their people, if they did it right, should be almost non-existent.

But it was not zero . . . There were objections over that, too.

"We do not shoot our weapons towards our people," Rachel Zhu protested.

Urle would have to make the final call. The officers would accept it, even if they did not like it.

But it was not a choice he could make lightly.

He didn't want to take too long on it, but he had the advantage of being able to speed up his cognition, and spend only a minute or two on it in the perceived time of others, while he really deliberated for far longer.

And after what felt to him hours, he made a decision.

"Warm up the coilguns," he finally said. "I want to try a soft shot first. I know that this will transfer more energy to it and maybe cause cracking, but we're going to take a test shot onto a far edge to see what happens."

There was a flurry of activity, but Cenz stood suddenly, rising so fast that his seat actually crashed back, nearly hitting an officer behind him. The woman yelped, jumping, and all eyes went to Cenz.

Alarms suddenly blared, and the call came through the Command Center.

"Tenkionic disturbance detected . . . Tenkionic disturbance detected . . ."

Cenz's face was in a completely neutral state, unable to read the collected emotions of his polyps.

He pointed upwards, into the view of space. "We have . . . we have just detected Leviathans."

"All crew, prepare for action!" Urle said. "Cenz, you said Leviathans? Plural? How many are there?"

Cenz was quiet for too long. Urle started to speak again.

"Millions," he said, his voice soft. It came again, and his speaker screeched as if flooded with too many signals. "There are millions of them."

If Urle's knees had been made of flesh and bone, he would have fallen.

Someone put it on screen, and Urle saw it.

At least a portion; there were Leviathans, far out to the port side of the ship. A line of them, heading away from them and curving in. Seemingly around nothing.

No, not nothing, he realized. They extended so far that they were . . . encircling not simply the station, but the entire area that it appeared to orbit.

Extending out in a circumference, he calculated, of over a hundred billion kilometers.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Looking to the other side, he saw that there were more on starboard. They were on an even keel with the Craton and the temple.

He did sit down. His knees could not grow weak, but he could not comprehend that.

"Get me an estimate of their numbers," he said. "Confirm that this . . . isn't a trick of the sensors."

But he could see them. They were there, strange shapes that were elongated or just roughly spherical. Rife with protrusions whose function was unknown.

Their images were blurred; an automatic reaction of their sensors. It was to protect them from seeing too much about something that could hurt you just by seeing it.

"Take the image down," he ordered. They shouldn't even stare too long at these.

This was more Leviathans than anyone had ever seen. No one had ever seen more than one at a time.

They'd guessed that there were maybe dozens across the whole of their galaxy, based on how rare their occurrence was.

But millions? How could there be millions?

Cenz spoke. "We estimate . . . that there are three-point-seven million Leviathans extending in a loop around a central point a little over 15 billion kilometers away. The Leviathans are . . . holding positions equidistant from each other. There is an average of 27,000 kilometers between each Leviathan."

"How close is the nearest one?" Urle asked.

"We are equidistant, Captain, from the two on either side of us. They are both approximately 27,000 kilometers away."

Urle's blood ran cold. "We are filling a spot in their . . . line?"

"There is no Leviathan near us to fill our space, it seems," Cenz said. "They are giving us a wide berth . . ."

Another alarm suddenly blared. Urle's mind raced, trying to bring up which Leviathan was moving towards them, if one had just appeared on top of them.

But it was neither of those things. It was the temple.

"Captain, we are reading a sudden increase in gamma radiation-"

The front of the temple, the massive slab that blocked it, was suddenly gone, as a glow of light overpowered even the Craton's sensors.

"What the hell is going on?" he called.

"Gamma is off the charts!" someone yelled. "We've got . . . oh my god."

The entirety of the Craton shook. Standing members of the crew were knocked off their feet, some thrown to the floor, others grabbing chairs or consoles and holding on.

"What is it?" Urle yelled, holding onto his seat.

"It's a stellar-level gamma ray burst," Cenz cried.

Impossible, they should be dead instantly if it was that, Urle thought. Yet the scanners, those that hadn't been blinded entirely, seemed to confirm it.

The burst of energy was the kind of thing produced by a supernova, an active black hole, or a pulsar. And from these readings, it was local.

Which made no sense. Yet he was seeing it and feeling it.

If they weren't dead yet, then they may be irradiated. Looking at the sensors, he saw that there were no lethal spikes.

They hadn't been hit, not even glancingly - except by stray photons, spilling out from the edges of the beam.

That was it. What had hit them - the diffused edge of the beam had simply brushed near the Craton, but the original beam had been so colossally powerful that even that had thrown off every system on the ship.

"Captain, the Raven's Ghost-" Zhu called. "It was in the path of the beam, it-"

There was no time to even bring it up on the screen - as it appeared, it was already just a glowing ball of light, as it was disintegrated.

They lurched again, throwing more people to the floor. Urle was nearly taken out of his chair.

"Something else?" he called.

"Debris of the Ghost has impacted the hull! Multiple points of contact and breaches!"

"Get Response Teams mobilized!" Urle called. "Damage report?"

"Reactor Three is destabilizing!" an engineer called.

"We have hundreds of casualty reports incoming!" medical yelled.

"Over 70% of sensors disabled by the gamma!"

"Maneuvering thrusters on that side are down, and gravity-generators across the ship are going on and off!"

"Zerodrive is disabled, repeat, disabled!"

Not just the gamma, he knew. The damage it had done to them had caused a gap in their magnetosphere, and let radiation pour in. And now, impacts. All together, and the Craton . . .

The Craton was deaf, blind, and dying.