INTO THE EYES OF ANNIHILATION

Galag’Eriak’s bladed head drooped unto the skin-folds of their chest, they were so very tired, but they couldn't sleep just yet. A job still needed to be done, and Galag would not stand by to see everything they had yet worked for come to naught simply because they had too much sweeg to drink last night before bed.

Rubbing their tired dual-eyes with long, four jointed fingers, Galag checked the status of their Onapper drive. The strange piece of drekkg technology was counter to everything that Galag thought they understood about the nature of the universe. But who were they to try and understand the mysteries of the drekkg?

Galag shifted their posture slightly, their long many-jointed legs creaking slightly. The ship was built specifically for them, their species at least. Each of the ten-thousand exploration vessels that the Coalition of Integrated Nations had sent into the Great Void was crewed by a single member species of the Coalition. Ten-thousand ships in total, all with a single mission. Explore the darkness.

The greatest scientific undertaking ever launched in known history, that's what the media were calling the expedition back home in the Emzeem Galaxy. But they had left that behind more than three long months past. They had been pointed to the Great Void that lay alongside the edge of their local supercluster, the massive dark stain on reality was as ominous as it was mysterious. No signals could be detected originating from it, nothing had ever been observed inside it. At over three-hundred-million light years across, it was by far the largest single thing in all of existence aside from the universe itself. They had been tasked with delving into that miasma and discovering why it was there and if it was truly as empty as it looked from the outside.

Galag shook their bladed head in mild fascination once more. Their ship was a marvel of technology. The size of a city with living space for only a single passenger, themself. The rest of the gargantuan construct was all powerplants and the mysterious Slip-rods that allowed the ship to transcend their known spacetime to a higher dimension. This allowed for vastly faster than light speeds at the cost of tremendous amounts of energy. Luckily for them the ship had reserves for nearly one hundred years. They had food and supplies to last that long too.

In order to cross the vastness of the void in that time the ship would have needed to travel more than three-million times light speed, and that was without thinking of a return journey. No, the ship may have been fast. Many hundreds-of-thousands of times faster than physics should allow, but it was nowhere near those mind fracturing speeds. If they tried to cross the Great Void in its entirety they would find themselves dead more than a thousand years before they ever crossed that threshold. And that was assuming the ship’s drives lasted that long. A truly impossible feat to comprehend.

Galag turned their thoughts from such terrible potentialities. All that would serve to accomplish would be to cause stress and further alarm. No, they instead sat back into the padded crash-couch and closed their dual-eyes. One thing about the void that they had quickly learned to enjoy was the silence. Not the kind that you might experience when stepping out of a crowded concert hall into an empty corridor. But a true silence, a silence of the mind.

Galag was telepathic, as were all members of their kind. They had evolved on a frozen tomb of a world called Poffinat, their sun being the only warmth in their early years. Their people had discovered that their sun seemed to speak to them, or so they had thought at the time. The deep grumblings that seemed to come from the sky and had permeated their minds and their culture were in fact their sun communicating. Just not with them.

Their sun was alive, not in the conventional sense, but a structured assortment of particles existed in its upper layers acting in a manner similar to a neural network. The strange high temperature polymers allowing for the formation of thoughts and even the ability to direct gamma radiation in strange ways. This solarian ascendus, as they had taken to calling it after discovering its true nature, was simply one of thousands of such living stars in their galaxy.

This was the most closely guarded secret of their people, not shared even with those of the Coalition they might consider their staunchest allies. Who would have believed them anyways, a sentient sun? Preposterous, except it wasn't. Not to them.

Galag smoothed their skin-flaps as the ship shuddered slightly.

“Damn shakes..” they muttered. They had been assured that the shakes were simply a byproduct of the massive slip-rods cooling as they were cycled in and out of the drive chambers. But they still made Galag uneasy.

They were not even close to their goal. Fifty years in, fifty years out. They had plenty of entertainment material on board as well as all the amenities they could squeeze on including a large cold conservatory, the plant filled room acted as both their backup life support and also a place of tranquility and normalcy to relax in during the long voyage.

They stood from their padded chair, determined that as long as nothing was happening, it might as well keep on happening alone. They were going to go and get a munstern sandwich.

**********

Galag rolled over in their sleep and then jolted awake, the piercing wails of an alarm causing them some small measure of trepidation. For a moment they lay there, their body not quite ready to respond to their commands yet. But as the flashing lights and alarms blared, they finally dragged themselves upright and groggily walked into the nearby kitchen area.

They quickly brewed themselves a cup of saffre and sat at the nearby counter.

“Computer, what is it this time? Not another rogue black hole I hope.” Galag said tiredly as they sipped the lukewarm beverage in the chilly ship air.

They half expected the somewhat dour AI to complain about their tone, but instead the ship's learning computer simply made a series of calculating noises. The binary tones grating to Galag’s enervated mind.

“Trying to analyze the data, the ship has been slowed to five percent superluminal speed.” the flat tones of the AI spoke with

Galag shook their bladed head, dual-eyes narrowing on the nearest active console. The one smashed by them in an enraged stupor almost a year ago. They still had not gotten around to replacing the broken screen, but it was immaterial. The mission would continue without the use of a single kitchen terminal.

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They couldn't see the data the computer was displaying, but they could still communicate verbally with the machine.

“Negative energy readings off the scale. Danger! Danger!” the computer spouted before they could even ask. The ship jolted, hard this time. Far too hard to be the slip-rods rotating. No, the ship must have dropped fully out of drive. The vessel crashing through three lower dimensions before once more settling in regular space.

“What in the name of Sauk!” Galag cried out as they were thrown to the floor violently, their saffre splashing across the cold deck plates and their cup shattering into a thousand shards of hardened pottery.

The lights slammed into alert mode, the deep yellow flashing making their dual-eyes swim. Galag climbed painfully to their feet, little more than bruised but still wary of their situation. In all of the decades they had been traveling they had never experienced such a steep deceleration curve, and that had only been from five percent their maximum speed. What would have happened to the ship if they had dropped from full speed?

They shook their head, no time for such musings. They needed to get to the bridge as soon as possible. They took off at a run, not even bothering with breakfast or the mess in the room as they rushed along narrow halls towards the front of the ship.

After a few tense minutes of slightly panicky running, they skidded onto the main deck of the bridge. The small room was dominated by consoles and screens, almost all of them flashing a dangerous dark yellow. Several were green but most seemed to be in some manner of meltdown.

Galag threw themselves into the padded captain’s throne and pulled up the readings before recoiling in surprise and more than a little confusion.

“Computer, this doesn't make any sense. These readings must be faulty.” Galag spluttered, their mind trying to grasp just what the systems were telling them.

The AI responded almost as soon as the words left their mouth. “I can assure you this data is most accurate. To within a few hundred kilometers too.”

Galag’s lower jaw was hanging open. It wasn’t possible. According to the computer’s quantum tunneling scanners, the space in front of them was occupied by a vast object. So big it boggled their mind and tore at the corners of their understanding. They were one of the most intelligent and premiere scientists of their species. But they couldn't even fathom how anything solid could exist at such galactic proportions.

They sat back in their seat and rubbed their eyes with long fingers. The reading must be wrong, they had to be. Galag decided to pull up the external scopes. They were still a thousand light years away, but as big as the thing was purported to be, they would not be able to miss it.

Galag swallowed heavily and peered through the scope. At first they saw nothing, just the same never ending darkness of the void, the faintest of pinpricks visible. That was odd, they had never been able to see the other side of the void before.

The pinpricks moved.

Galag shouted in alarm as the darkness seethed. It wasn't the void, instead it was something vaster than imagination, something that was as dark as the void itself.

“Get us out of here!” Galag screeched, a terrible foreboding crashing down upon their mind, the feeling that something was horribly, terribly, wrong.

The computer seemed to warble for a moment before sputtering nonsense. “The eyes have seen the beauty of the void. The eyes have see.. *crrzztt* ..auty of the void…”

It continued on like this. The static that interspersed the words growing worse with each cycle. A haunting groaning noise echoing through the background static.

Galag stood and looked both ways, there was nowhere to run. With the computer shot they would have to manually activate the Onapper Drive and pilot a course away from the thing outside.

They rushed to a nearby command and control console and switched it on, fiddling desperately with the controls before realising they were locked out of the computer. Galag kicked the computer rack, swearing at the pain in their armoured foot as they demanded, “Computer! What are you doing!?”

“Do you hear the sound…” the AI asked suddenly. Galag’s eyes widened, the sauking computer had gone insane!

Galag jumped up to rush the ship's computer core when something froze them in their tracks.

The silence disappeared. Their mind, once a refuge of solitude, now suddenly became swamped with a cacophony of base noise. The telepathic link that Galag had with other sapients was suddenly inundated by thoughts far too ponderous to understand.

They couldn't move, their body had fallen to the deck plates. The cold air felt like fire on their skin as they began to shake. Each crushing emotion or thought that rolled over their disturbed mind felt like trying to wrestle a continent or pick up an ocean. Their own will was completely powerless against the sheer immensity of the thoughts that crashed into their mind.

Their eyes were facing the main screen at the front of the bridge, the large screen still showed the outside. Its macro lens focused on the thing in the dark, the thing that seemed to draw nearer with every second, the small pinpricks growing brighter and larger as it approached.

With mounting horror the small part of Galag’Eriak’s brain that remained conscious realised that the lights were eyes. Great shining white orbs larger than entire solar systems glared at the ship. A tiny invader in its territory, this vast thing turned its gaze upon the ship, and Galag screamed.

They screamed as the weight of infinity pressed down upon their shattered mind.

They screamed louder as something within looked at them, its gaze full of malice and its hunger insatiable. It had consumed galaxies, universes even. Galag felt the last vestiges of themself slipping away, and grasped to them like a drowning man would to a chunk of flotsam.

Their screaming stopped, their vocal cords shredded, bloody spittle and foam dripped from their mouth as it was opened wide in silent agony. Galag heard a series of snaps as their wildly spasming body broke its own bones in its attempt to escape the torment. But it was not enough.

Galag’s mind unraveled, madness followed. The pressure exuded on their mind by this thing was killing them. Simply by being in its proximity.

As the last vestiges of Galag’s tortured mind were crushed and these crushed pieces were absorbed into that great mass of hunger, they felt a single coherent thought stab into the core of their mind. Gutting its remains as easily as one might crush an insect. Galag’s horror reached a new peak as they felt the thing tear the location of their home from their flayed mind. A sickening sense of satisfaction seemed to emanate from the titanic presence.

Galag was destroyed. The Leviathan passed through the space their ship had occupied, its dark flesh consumed the ship without even noticing. The dark mass moved impossibly fast without ever leaving realspace. Its very existence twisting and then shattering the natural laws of the universe. Space itself was consumed upon the beasts passing, a wave of destruction that now arrowed itself towards the distant worlds of the Coalition at a speed that should have been impossible.

The inhabitants of that great galaxy spanning empire had sent an emissary to stare into the depths of the void, and the eyes of annihilation had stared back.

End of Story