Chapter 10 – The Empty Sky

For ten weeks, the sky had been silent. Ten weeks of anticipation, of waiting for 3I/Atlas to emerge from its solar shroud. Astronomers across the world prepared for its return as if awaiting the reappearance of a ghost.

On December 5th, the calculations promised it would show itself again. The trajectory was mapped, the predictions checked and rechecked. The Sun was calm, flares minimal, conditions ideal. Telescopes tilted across hemispheres, focused into the darkness where the rock should glide into view.

Nothing.

The next night came, and still the sky was empty. Scientists told themselves it was a matter of atmospheric conditions, of glare, of instrumentation limits. But the silence stretched on. December 7. December 8. A week. Ten days. Eyes strained, algorithms hunted, the world waited.

On December 19th, the ghost finally revealed itself. A faint point of light, wrong in its place, wrong in its time. The cheers that erupted in some observatories were quickly swallowed by the chill of what followed. Measurements confirmed the unthinkable.

Its speed had changed.

Where before it had raced at 150,000 kilometers per hour, it now crawled at nearly a third of that. Some invisible hand had reached into the void and slowed it down.

Each night the numbers shifted again. 70,000. 80,000. 100,000. Not only had the object decelerated, it was now accelerating again — a controlled burn, a deliberate course correction. The new trajectory bent toward Jupiter, but closer than anyone had calculated before.

And the glow.

Where once the faint tail of gas had pointed toward the Sun, now it streamed behind the object like fire pouring from its stern. No longer pale, but emerald — a furious green beacon lashing the sky. A thousand amateur astronomers posted images online, each grainy and overexposed, each accompanied by fevered claims.

Engines, some said.
Alien drives.
Proof.

Governments dismissed the chatter as conspiracy theories. Scientists offered half-formed theories of exotic outgassing, volatile deposits, or rotational shifts. But in the quiet corners of the White House, behind layers of locked doors and silenced phones, the truth was whispered.

Dr. Elena Park sat in one of those rooms now, the only scientist among a half-circle of men and women in suits. Military brass stood stiff-backed against the wall, faces unreadable. At the center of the table, projected in pale light, was the image.

The final gift from the Mars orbiter before it died. A grainy transmission, zoomed to its limit, showing a shape grafted onto stone. Metal where there should have been dust. Angles where there should have been none. And attached along its surface, protruding like parasitic growths, were structures too vast to mistake for natural.

Colonization ships.

She had stared at that image for hours, searching for another explanation. But there was none. And now, as officials argued about leaks, optics, and “containment of panic,” the weight of it pressed on her chest like gravity.

“What is it?” the President finally asked, his voice flat but his eyes sharp.

No one answered. No one wanted to be the first to say the word.

Elena spoke before she could stop herself, her voice quieter than she intended.
“It’s not a comet. It’s a vessel.”

The room went still.

Mars remained hidden behind the Sun, unseen, unknowable. Not until late January would its rust-red surface turn back toward Earth’s gaze. Whatever had happened there was concealed in shadow. Whatever they had done, it was already too late to stop.