While Michael was deep in his workshop, meticulously refining a batch of high-purity chemical reagents, the galaxy was screaming.
Keith had wasted no time. He went straight to Admiral Brent Snocom, presenting Khador's sensor data and the terrifyingly familiar profile of the Void Mothership. Snocom's face went pale. He didn't just listen; he acted. The Admiral immediately sent a priority-one alert to all four factions. Those who had spent the last week laughing at Gunant's "hallucinations" were suddenly paralyzed with terror—especially the Midorians, who realized a planetary-killer was parked right on their doorstep.
A task force was assembled within hours. Led by Keith, a group of veteran Terran pilots jumped back to the border system. Among their fleet was a heavily armored Rhino, specifically outfitted with a high-end Code Breaker designed to bypass the complex cryptographic lattices of Void technology.
They approached the silent, monolithic Mothership like thieves in the night. The Rhino docked with a jagged maintenance hatch, and the Code Breaker hummed to life. After a tense few minutes of binary warfare, the alien locks hissed open. The group moved inside, weapons drawn.
Inside the Mothership, a high-pitched, crystalline alarm suddenly shattered the silence.
Michael stopped mid-experiment, his eyes flashing with violet light. He was more confused than afraid. He wondered if his kin followed him from the Void space.
There were no active wormholes in the sector, and he was the only being in existence who possessed the Void Drive. Furthermore, the Mothership's internal doors were programmed to never bar a fellow Void; if it were his people, they would have walked right in.
He reached for his Plasma Assault Rifle—a weapon of his own design that made standard military gear look like primitive toys. He didn't know who had managed to crack his codes, but he wasn't about to let his sanctuary be defiled. He stepped out of his lab and moved toward the docking bay to greet the intruders.
******
The Terran strike team moved with the tactical precision of elite soldiers—for exactly three corridors. After that, the sheer scale of the Mothership began to take its toll. Unlike the cramped, utilitarian designs of the Terran Federation, Michael's sanctuary was a labyrinth of colossal hobby rooms, chemical vats, and galleries of moon-etched art.
Keith hissed, though he was just as disoriented. Without access to the station map, the group was wandering blindly through a maze of dark matter and crystalline architecture.
Michael, watching through his internal sensors, felt a flicker of amusement. He was glad he hadn't bothered to upload the station's schematics to the local data-stream; let the primitives get lost in his art galleries. He had no intention of killing them, but he needed them neutralized.
Switching his Plasma Assault Rifle to stun mode, Michael began his hunt. Using the internal teleporters—systems keyed only to Void physiology—he blinked across the ship in flashes of violet light. It was a one-sided ambush. A stun bolt would crackle from a shadow, a soldier would collapse, and by the time the others turned, Michael was already in another room.
One by one, the veterans of the Terran-Vossk wars were silenced.
When Keith Maxwell and the rest of the task force finally woke up, they were no longer in the corridors. They were in one of Michael's sprawling laboratories, bound securely with energy binders. The entire group was present, groggy and trapped.
As their vision cleared, the room fell into a terrified silence. Standing before them was a figure that defied every war story they had ever heard.
Michael stood tall, his insectoid form shimmering with a dark, chitinous luster. His multi-jointed limbs and compound eyes were exactly like the nightmares from the war, yet he didn't move with the mindless twitching of a hive-drone. He stood with the poised, deliberate grace of a scholar. For the first time in their lives, they were seeing the true face of a Void species up close—not behind the cockpit of a fighter, but as a living individual.
The Terrans began to whisper frantically among themselves, their voices thick with panic. They spoke in their native tongue, assuming the alien couldn't understand their "primitive" dialect. They didn't realize that Michael's human soul meant he understood every word of the English-based Terran language.
Though his own heart was racing.
Michael stepped forward, his compound eyes reflecting the laboratory lights.
His voice a smooth, modulated English that felt strangely out of place coming from an insectoid throat.
The group froze, their eyes bulging in shock. The Void wasn't just standing there; he was talking. And he sounded more like a disgruntled professor than a galactic conqueror.
******
The return of the task force was not the triumphant homecoming the Terran Federation had expected. When the fleet arrived back at the command center, the air was thick with tension, yet the veteran pilots stepped off their ships looking more bewildered than battle-scarred.
Admiral Brent Snocom met them on the hangar deck, his face a mask of grim determination.
The Terran operatives looked at one another, making faces as if they were trying to solve a complex math problem with no answer. None of them seemed to know how to begin.
Finally, Keith T. Maxwell stepped forward, rubbing the back of his neck.
Snocom's expression shifted from terror to utter confusion.
Keith spent the next hour detailing their encounter: the stun bolts, the teleporters, the insectoid scientist who spoke perfect English, and the sprawling art galleries and chemical labs they had stumbled through. He explained that Michael wasn't an invader; he was a polymath who had simply moved to the "suburbs" of the galaxy to be left alone.
As the story unfolded, Snocom's fear evaporated, quickly replaced by a mounting sense of annoyance.
Keith shrugged, a smirk tugging at his lips.
The Admiral sank into his chair, the weight of the anticlimax hitting him.