The Last Broadcast from the Aethelstan

The first sound was the absence of it. A silence so profound it roared in Aris Thorne’s ears. The gentle, constant thrum of the Aethelstan’s comms array, the white noise of civilization across the void, had vanished. In its place, a void of a different kind. Aris, Commander of the Aethelstan, stood frozen for a heartbeat, the scent of ozone and stale coffee sharp in his nostrils. Then, training kicked in. His fingers flew across the console, a cascade of diagnostics that yielded only negative returns. Earth was gone. Not gone, he corrected himself, silenced.

He hit the internal comm. “Rylan, Voss, report to Comms Hub One. Now.”

Jax Rylan arrived first, their usual insouciance replaced by a focused intensity. The engineer’s coveralls were smudged with grease, a smear of it on their cheekbone, and they smelled faintly of solder and citrus. Their dark eyes scanned the dead screens, then met Aris’s. “Comms are dark across the board. Every channel. Every frequency. It’s like… it’s like someone pulled the plug on the universe.”

Lyra Voss followed moments later, her movements precise, economical. Her pale hair was pulled back in its customary severe knot, but a few strands had escaped, framing a face that was calm, almost serene, belying the sharp intelligence in her grey eyes. She carried the scent of lavender soap, clean and astringent. She didn’t need to ask; the silence in the hub was explanation enough. She moved to her station, her fingers already dancing over the keys, pulling up logs, system reports, anything that might explain the sudden, terrifying quiet.

For a long moment, the only sound was the tap of keyboards, the hum of the ship’s internal systems – a stark contrast to the dead silence from outside. They were the last three awake on the Aethelstan, the rest of the colony ship’s complement sleeping the long sleep in cryo-stasis. The weight of that responsibility settled heavily on Aris’s shoulders.

“Nothing,” Lyra said, her voice low, steady. “No solar flares, no asteroid fields, no unexplained energy signatures. The logs are clean. Too clean.” She looked up, her gaze meeting Aris’s, then Jax’s. “It’s as if the blackout originated from within.”

Jax let out a harsh breath. “Internal? That’s…” They shook their head. “We ran full diagnostics before the rest of the crew cycled down. Everything was optimal. More than optimal. The Aethelstan was in perfect health.”

“Perfect health doesn’t explain this,” Aris said, his voice clipped. He gestured at the silent consoles. “Re-establish contact. Now.”

They tried. For the better part of an hour, they cycled through every protocol, every backup system, every trick in the book. Jax coaxed and bullied the machinery, Lyra analyzed every byte of data, Aris coordinated, his commands terse, his expression growing grimmer with each failed attempt. The silence from Earth remained absolute, unbroken.

Finally, Jax slumped back in their chair, running a hand through their dark hair. “It’s no good, Aris. There’s nothing. No carrier wave, no residual signal, nothing. It’s like we’re… adrift.”

Lyra spoke softly, but her words cut through the quiet. “The only way this could happen without any external indicators is if it was deliberate. Sabotage.”

The word hung in the air, heavy and cold. Sabotage. On a ship carrying ten thousand sleeping souls, light-years from home.

Aris felt a chill that had nothing to do with the ship’s climate control. “Who? And why?”

“That,” Jax said, a dangerous glint in their eyes, “is what we need to find out.” They leaned forward, their gaze fixed on Aris. “There’s one more thing we can try. A full system diagnostic. Not the standard one. A deep dive. It could tell us exactly what happened, maybe even give us a clue who did it.”

Aris frowned. “A deep dive? Jax, that’s risky. If something goes wrong—”

“If something goes wrong, we’re no worse off than we are now,” Jax countered, their voice tight with suppressed intensity. “We’re blind, Aris. Flying blind. We need to know what we’re dealing with.” They took a breath. “It could also cripple the core systems if it encounters something it can’t handle. But I think it’s a risk we have to take.”

Lyra looked from Jax to Aris, her expression unreadable. “The potential reward is worth the risk, Commander. We need answers.” Her voice was quiet, but firm. “I concur with Jax.”

Aris held their gazes for a long moment, the weight of command a physical pressure on his chest. The silence stretched, taut and fragile. Then, he nodded, a single, sharp movement. “Do it.”

The next hour was a tense, silent ballet of fingertips on keyboards and eyes glued to screens. Jax initiated the deep diagnostic, the system whirring and clicking under the strain. Aris watched, his jaw tight, as lines of code scrolled across the main display. Lyra worked beside Jax, her own console alight with data streams, her expression one of fierce concentration.

Finally, Jax sat back, their face pale. “It’s confirmed. The blackout… it wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t even an external attack.” They swallowed hard, their voice barely above a whisper. “It was sabotage. Internal. Deliberate.”

Aris felt a cold fist clench in his gut. “Explain.”

“The diagnostic found traces of a custom-written algorithm,” Lyra said, her voice low and steady. “It was buried deep in the comms subsystem. It triggered the shutdown, then erased itself. Whoever did this knew our systems inside and out.”

Jax nodded, their eyes dark with a mixture of anger and fear. “They covered their tracks well. Too well. This wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment hack job. This was planned. Thorough.”

The air in the comms hub seemed to thicken, the silence now heavy with suspicion. The three of them were the only ones awake, the only ones who could have done this. Aris felt the weight of their stares, the unspoken questions hanging between them.

“We need to find out who did this,” he said, his voice clipped, authoritative. “And why.”

They worked through the ship’s night, combing through logs, searching for any clue, any anomaly. The paranoia was a tangible thing, a current running beneath every word, every glance. Aris found himself watching Jax more closely, noting the tension in their shoulders, the way their hands trembled slightly as they typed. He remembered their impulsiveness, their tendency to leap before looking. Could Jax have done this? But why?

As the hours wore on, Aris and Lyra found themselves working in closer proximity, their shoulders occasionally brushing as they leaned over the same console. There was a comfort in her steady presence, in the calm competence she exuded. At one point, their hands touched as they both reached for the same control. Aris felt a jolt, a sudden awareness of her nearness. He looked up, meeting her gaze. For a moment, the world narrowed to just the two of them, the shared intensity of their task, the unspoken understanding that passed between them. Then Jax made a sharp, frustrated sound, shattering the moment.

“I can’t find anything!” Jax slammed their hand down on the console, their voice tight with frustration. “It’s like they were a ghost. There’s no trace, no signature. Nothing.”

Aris straightened up, turning to face Jax. “We’ll keep looking. There has to be something we’ve missed.”

Jax’s eyes flashed, the anger in them sudden and startling. “Maybe you’re not looking hard enough, Commander. Or maybe you don’t want to find the truth.”

Aris frowned, taken aback by the venom in Jax’s tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jax stood, their chair scraping loudly against the floor. “You know what it means. You’ve never trusted me. Not really. Not since—” They cut themselves off, looking away.

Aris felt a pang of guilt, remembering the night Jax had confessed their feelings for him, the way he’d gently but firmly rejected them. He’d thought they’d moved past it, but the hurt was still there, still raw. “Jax, that’s not fair. This isn’t about us. This is about the ship, about the lives of everyone on board.”

“Is it?” Jax’s laugh was bitter. “Or is it just about you being in control, like always?”

Before Aris could respond, Jax turned and strode towards the main power console. “I’m going to run a bypass on the primary power coupling. Maybe that’ll shake something loose.”

“Jax, no!” Lyra’s voice was sharp with alarm. “That could overload the—”

But Jax wasn’t listening. Their hands flew over the controls, bypassing safety protocols with reckless speed. The lights flickered, the hum of the ship’s systems rising to a dangerous whine. Aris lunged forward, grabbing Jax’s arm. “Jax, stop! You’ll cripple the ship!”

For a moment, Jax resisted, their eyes blazing with defiance. Then, the fight seemed to drain out of them. They sagged back, letting Aris pull their hands away from the console. “I just wanted to help,” they mumbled, their voice thick with unshed tears. “I just wanted you to see me.”