As Debra Hilds piloted Hopper Three inside, Hopper Two left the hatch and followed. With tunnel lights on, both hoppers descended toward the center of the sphere, where all the columns converged. Upon reaching the center, Hilds decided to circle it first, weaving in and out between the columns to observe from all sides before landing.

  Temperature probes indicated that the center mass was several hundred degrees warmer than the shell or the columns. As the hoppers neared the three-quarter mark of their orbit around the center, they spotted a column much larger than the others at its base—yet with no noticeable difference at the other end. Grid coordinates confirmed that this column was directly beneath the dish structure on the surface.

  Hilds orbited twice, searching for an entrance, but found nothing. Sapps suggested they could cut a thirty-foot opening between the column bases, as they had done on the shell. But Hilds hesitated. The temperature variance suggested the presence of another energy source. Instead, she proposed a smaller opening—two meters—allowing two of her team to enter while two remained in the hoppers, ready to assist.

  She toggled the comms. “Sam, we’re not going in full force. A thirty-foot cut is too risky.”

  Sam Kohan’s voice crackled back. “You don’t think the damn thing already knows we’re here?”

  “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” Debra countered. “Either way, the temperature readings are off, and I don’t like it. We go in small—two meters, just enough for two of us. You and Tony stay outside, cover us.”

  A pause. Then Tony Calvin’s gruff voice cut in. “I don’t know, Deb. Feels like we’re poking a sleeping bear.”

  Greg Alvich, silent until now, finally spoke. “And we’re already inside its cave.”

  Hilds exhaled sharply. “Exactly. So let’s not start swinging.”

  Sam sighed. “Alright, your call. You and Greg go in. Tony and I will be your safety net.”

  Debra nodded, adjusting the controls. “Good. Let’s get this done.”

  But the moment Debra activated the plasma cutter, the decision became irrelevant.

  A flash—blinding, searing white light. Even as she squeezed her eyes shut, it burned through her eyelids, searing into her vision.

  Aboard the Argus, scientists watching through the monitors were also blinded by the intense flare. As their vision returned, chaos erupted. The sphere was rotating.

  Commander Sapps, his sight clearing, stared in horror as the dish structure locked onto his ship. A single word surfaced in his mind, dredged from history: weapon. And he knew, with absolute certainty, that’s exactly what it was.

  "Computer," he barked, voice taut with urgency. "Course to Charon, one-tenth C—initiate!"

  Too late.

  As the Argus turned and accelerated, a beam of pure white light engulfed the ship. An instant later, both were gone.

  No one was left to witness the “hatch” moving outward from the sphere’s hull. No one saw the three-inch cables snap as the edges of the hatch reformed, sealing itself seamlessly. Every core hole drilled into the sphere vanished. The severed cable pieces were absorbed into the alien structure.

  Inside their hoppers, silence hung thick and suffocating.

  Debra Hilds’ hands were clenched so tightly around the controls that her knuckles had gone white. The hum of the instruments, once a comforting backdrop, now felt eerie—hollow.

  Greg Alvich broke the silence first, his voice a low whisper. “Tell me someone still has a connection to Argus.”

  Sam Kohan’s fingers flew over his console. “Nothing. No telemetry, no pingbacks. It’s like—” He stopped, staring at the screen as if sheer willpower could change the readings. “It’s like they never existed.”

  Tony Calvin let out a slow breath. “That flash—what the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Debra muttered. “But I know what it looked like.”

  No one spoke. She didn’t have to say it. They were all thinking the same thing. A weapon. A killing shot.

  Greg swallowed hard. “We should’ve seen debris, some kind of energy signature—something. But there’s nothing. Just us.”

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  Debra glanced at the hatch that had sealed itself as if they’d never been there. The smooth, seamless surface mocked them. It had fixed itself, erased their intrusion like an immune system wiping out an infection.

  She licked her lips, forcing her voice to stay steady. “Alright. Until we know what happened, we stick to protocol. Battery conservation, two check-ins daily. No unnecessary power usage.”

  Sam’s laugh was humorless. “Until we know what happened? Deb, we know what happened. Argus is gone. And unless we figure a way out, we’re next.”

  Silence again.

  Greg exhaled, his breath shaky. “I don’t like this. I don’t like any of this.”

  Tony sat forward, eyes locked on the sealed hatch. “That thing—this sphere—whatever it is, it knew we were here. It reacted.” He turned toward the others. “So what happens when it decides we don’t belong at all?”

  No one had an answer.

  Debra’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. They had three weeks of life support. Maybe less if their stress burned through oxygen faster. No tools, no engine power. No one outside to come looking for them.Just them and the silent, watching void.For the first time since she was very young, Debra Hilds wept.

  As far as she knew, no one was coming to save them. Every United Worlds (UW) science station monitoring Argus' mission—along with the Science Council in Geneva—had received the telemetry images of the ship’s destruction. The technicians and scientists gathered around the screens had no doubts about what they had witnessed. This wasn’t an accident. This was murder.

  Since the Terra Twin first detected the object, a handful of researchers had trained their largest scopes on it. Now, every scientist worth their pay was monitoring it constantly, analyzing the faintest changes. The data was indisputable: the sphere was moving. Slowly at first—but accelerating. Its trajectory pointed straight at Mars.

  Mars, in this age, was the heart of solar system commerce and transport. Lower gravity made it ideal for launching missions. Its central location meant it was a hub for trade and travel. If anything happened to Mars, Earth and Venus would be cut off from their outer colonies—and worse, they’d be within striking distance of an enemy force stationed on Mars.

  The UW Security and Science Councils convened immediately. There was no time to waste.

  “They provoked it.”

  The voice belonged to a younger scientist, his tone uncertain but firm. “The sphere was inert until Argus’ hoppers entered it. What if they triggered a defense mechanism?”

  Across the table, the head of the Science Council folded his hands and exhaled sharply. “If the sphere was disturbed by the hoppers, why did it allow them inside in the first place?” His voice carried the weight of experience, his gaze unwavering. “If it had the capability to destroy a 250-ton space cruiser, I doubt it was ever afraid of two 25-ton landers.”

  The younger man hesitated. “Then… why destroy three ships? Two inside, one outside? If it wasn’t provoked—”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t destruction,” the chairman interrupted. “Perhaps it was curiosity. The two crafts inside may not be destroyed but taken—hostages, if you will.”

  A murmur rippled through the room. The idea was chilling.

  Another scientist, an older man with thinning hair, shook his head. “But the sphere was dead—lifeless. No energy emissions, no signals, no movement. If it was intelligent, why didn’t it show signs before?”

  The chairman lifted a hand, silencing the room. “We do have the data on energy absorption to consider. Just because this entity doesn’t waste energy into space like we do doesn’t mean it isn’t aware. Don’t assume silence means absence.”

  A heavy pause settled over them before he continued. “And the more I examine its structure, the more convinced I am that it came from much, much farther away than we initially thought.”

  A different scientist leaned forward. “That doesn’t fit with the object's estimated age.”

  The chairman gave him a sharp look. “And how do we measure age in space?”

  The younger scientist scrambled for an answer. “All known meteors, asteroids, and planets have been dated by their background radiation—traced back to the core explosion that formed them.”

  The chairman’s lips curled slightly. “And what if you took raw materials—iron, nickel, elements from dozens of different celestial bodies—and smelted them together?”

  The younger scientist hesitated, realization dawning on his face. “That… that would make dating impossible.” He frowned. “But why mix so many samples together to build one ship?”

  “Maybe,” the chairman said, his voice grave, “they don’t want us to know where they came from.”

  A chill ran through the room. The implications were staggering.

  “Three of our best minds in quantum energy were lost with Argus,” the chairman continued, his voice softer now. “But Dr. Hopewell and Professor Sackett have been analyzing the data. They have something to show us.”

  The lights dimmed. At the front of the room, a massive thirty-foot viewscreen flickered to life. Dr. Ernst Hopewell stepped forward, his face lined with exhaustion but his eyes sharp with focus.

  “Professor Sackett and I have been analyzing the same data you all have,” he began. “Most of it comes from the two hundred core samples collected by Terra Twin’s preliminary survey.”

  The hologram lit up—a massive blue sphere, overlaid with points of color representing different core samples. “We assigned colors based on relative age,” Hopewell continued. “And when we mapped them—”

  The image shifted. Across the sphere, distinct regions glowed with different hues. Around the dish-like structures and track formations, the material was between one and two thousand years older than the rest of the sphere.

  “Some of these cores exhibit dual age readings,” Hopewell said, pointing at a highlighted cross-section of metal. “The outer surfaces are significantly newer than the inner layers. The ship, gentlemen, wasn’t built all at once. It was added to—gradually, over time—as it moved through space.”

  The murmurs returned, louder now.

  “Now, let’s talk about energy absorption,” Hopewell continued. “Frankly, it’s astonishing. This craft absorbs seventy percent of visible light. But that’s not the part that concerns me. Except for the dish and track structures, it absorbs one hundred percent of ultraviolet and infrared light.”

  A few people sat up straighter.

  “I’d bet good money that if we tested for it,” Hopewell said, voice tight with tension, “we’d find it absorbs one hundred percent of neutrinos and cosmic rays as well.”

  A sharp intake of breath.

  A long, stunned silence.

  Then, somewhere in the back of the room, a low whistle.

  And the weight of what they were facing settled over them like a shadow. Sub