Chapter 20 – The Silence Between Worlds
The Xytherion broke the void with the slow majesty of a living mountain. Mars gleamed below — no longer the barren sphere it had been, but streaked with veins of industry, faint auroras of heat and movement. Orbiting above, two leviathans waited in stately formation: The Veyra-Tel and the Torvahn, their hulls vast and pitted with the scarring of atmosphere entry.
The return of the third completed the triad. The Acheli fleet — three living relics of their exodus — now circled the red planet like moons of their own design.
Within the cathedral core of Khor-Vael, Dorrin watched the arrival through the holo-vault. The image unfolded in silence, scaled to the chamber’s vast proportions. From the heart of the holographic projection, the Xytherion’s hull glimmered in the ghost-light of Sol, its shape half-organic, half-engineered — the expression of a civilization that no longer separated the two.
“Veydril’s signal confirms orbit,” said a voice beside him.
The speaker was Tareth-Kael, Chief Engineer of the Expansion Forges — a quiet, compact Acheli whose mind was sharper than alloyed steel.
“The Xytherion brings new core reactors and additional seeding vaults,” Tareth continued. “The construction of the new colony-carrier nears completion. Its birthing chamber has already detached from the forges of the Horizon.”
Dorrin turned, his mantle shimmering faintly with the reflected light.
The humans have not yet claimed their own moon. It remains a void — unshaped, unguarded. The carrier will deploy there first, to establish a forward bastion. The Horizon had deployed all colonizing modules during its first pass through this system; most on Mars and the remaining modules on Jupiter’s moons. More modules will be needed to seed the remaining worlds in this system – starting with Earth’s moon, and then onto the moons of Saturn and Neptune.
Outside, the shipyards glowed — orbiting skeletons of half-formed vessels, scaffolds stretching into the thin Martian light. The Acheli had wasted no time. In mere months, they had turned a dead world into a living foundry.
Dorrin nodded, though his gaze drifted toward the distant speck of Earth visible through the viewport. “And the humans?”
“Still unaware of the depth of our reach,” Tareth said. “Though they watch the skies more closely now.”
Onboard The Xytherion, Veydril stood before the communion array, the immense crystalline arc through which the fleet shared its awareness. Data streams pulsed through the structure — telemetry from Thrall-units on Mars, scans from orbital sentinels, and now, something new.
A signal.
“It originates from Earth,” Selvek reported. His voice carried a tone of detached curiosity. “Multi-band transmission. Encoded audio. Visuals embedded in structured sequences.”
Veydril gestured. “Translate.”
Glyphs cascaded down the air in front of them — human words reconstructed, cross-referenced, analyzed. The Acheli translation algorithms parsed thousands of phonetic patterns, building the first coherent interpretation of humanity’s voice.
“It appears they possess many languages,” Selvek observed. “Fragmented dialects — much as we did before the Unification.”
“Do they comprehend what they speak to?”
“Unclear,” Selvek replied. “Their message is… a request. An offering of peace. They claim no hostility. Their leaders appear to speak as one — an attempt at unity.”
Veydril studied the playback. Dozens of human faces appeared — varied, earnest, unaware that their signals were being studied by minds far older than their species. The Acheli gathered in the communion chamber, their crests dimly glowing in the soft green light of the ship’s pulse.
Aor-Kesh’s voice echoed through the hall, low and resonant. “They reach out,” he said, “as children once did — from the dark, toward the flame.”
“Shall we answer?” one of the elders asked.
A silence followed, long and heavy. The Acheli had debated such questions before — in other systems, over other worlds. Each time, the answer had shaped their destiny.
Finally, Aor-Kesh turned his gaze toward the burning red world below.
“Not yet,” he said. “Let them speak into the void a while longer. Let them believe they are the first to reach outward. When they are ready to listen — truly listen — we will no longer need words.”
The communion lights dimmed. The signal from Earth continued to echo through the void, unanswered — a fragile human voice lost amid the silence between worlds.