Datumcore: Echoes of the Null Vector

Pine-scented air sluiced through his armor vents, oddly calming after the acid of coolant fumes. Somewhere overhead a maintenance fan rattled, ticking like a metronome counting down unseen doom.

He advanced three strides, boots magnetizing with soft clacks. Inspection drones spiraled above, blue beams skating across the hull. Each time the lights passed the Caliper rings a glint of silvered fracture winked back – jagged crystals of stress where reality itself had scraped the metal.

– Hull deviation point three, – one drone chirped in neutral monotone.

Vorl’s gauntlet snapped up. A single tap on his visor muted the report; he had no time for mechanical hand-wringing.

Kaelen waited beyond the safety barrier, lean frame wrapped in slate fatigues too thin for station chill. His cybernetic iris revolved like a tide clock, emerald glyphs swimming clockwise.

– Seventeen point four chance of a clean departure, – he stated.

His voice resembled static softened by velvet, a sound better suited to bedtime stories than catastrophic math.

Vorl halted, towering.

– My legion taught me to round up, – he answered.

Half a smile quirked Kaelen’s lips, gone before it settled.

Behind the analyst, three other figures emerged from sliding partitions.

Zyra strode first, stride a taut percussion. Vermilion combat tattoos lit her cheekbones like neon war paint, and she twirled a flight helmet as if it were a grenade pin.

– Those odds need the touch of a reckless artist, – she said. A tiny spark danced between her teeth when she grinned.

Elara followed, braid drifting behind her like a comet tail. Her eyes whirled iridescent, constantly refracting ambient light into pastel storms. She paused beside the Straylight, palm hovering inches from the cracked Caliper ring.

The final arrival made no sound. The Hollow, clad in dusk-gray Chrono-Ablative armor, stood still enough to trick the eye into skipping over him. Even the station lights seemed to dim around his outline.

Two technicians hurried past pushing a cart stacked with meal canisters: noodle pouches, pickled hyphae, and a steaming tureen of barley broth that filled the air with honest kitchen warmth. Their chatter – debate about rugby playoffs broadcast from the far rim – drifted like harmless birdsong through the hangar.

Normal life, Vorl mused, persisted even as universes planned autopsy.

An inspection bot hovered too close to his left pauldron. Its scanner lens flicked red, preparing deeper probe.

– Access denied, – Vorl muttered.

The Mnemosyne Blade flicked out an inch, silent as night rain, severing the sensor stalk.

Sparks flew, smelling of burnt cinnamon insulation.

Servo feedback trembled up his arm in reprimand. He ignored the ache but noted the reduced torque in his bicep actuators, a compromise that would cost him milliseconds in combat.

– You just failed the welcome protocol, – Kaelen observed dryly.

Vorl gestured at the ring of hovering drones.

– Their curiosity endangered schedule.

– A schedule now constricted, – Kaelen replied, pointing toward the outer view-panes.

Through thick glass, a seam of bruised violet cracked open against star-specked black. Electric arcs licked its edges. Familiar dread pressed on Vorl’s sternum: Causal Stitch entry burn.

Alarms did not blare – the station prided itself on silence – but yellow strobes pirouetted across gantry rails like flamenco dancers robbed of music.

Zyra cracked knuckles.

– Coherence destroyers, by the paint pattern, – she said.

Elara’s gaze unfocused, pupils dilating until irises dissolved into prismatic fog.

– Three vessels, maybe four. Their threads slide tight, – she whispered.

The Hollow cocked his head, mute assent, visor reflecting distant lightning.

A dock officer bustled up, uniform starched into algorithmic perfection. Sweat glistened at her hairline despite frigid air.

– Captain Vorl, your transponder still claims Surveyor status. Explain that breach, – she demanded.

Vorl’s helm tilted a fraction.

– Administrative glitch, – he said.

Before she could retort, the pine-scented ventilation coughed, lights flickering. Overhead monitors flashed an amber rune: perimeter compromised.

– Glitch acknowledged, – the officer murmured, eyes widening. She turned and sprinted toward command lifts, abandoning further paperwork.

Zyra laughed. The sound carried metallic edges, like coins rattling in a tin.

– Bureaucracy evaporates faster than coolant, – she quipped.

Two consecutive tremors rippled through deck plates. Small dust plumes burst from ceiling vents, smelling of ozone and antiseptic.

Vorl toggled internal comms.

– Nomad-Seven, status.

A reply floated through his auditory channel, glitched yet melodic.

– External threat index high. Recommend immediate undock.

Kaelen cued a holomap. Green vectors spiraled outward from Straylight’s berth, most dotted with red x’s.

– The station’s defense grid activates in ninety seconds. After that, comm silence and auto-lock. If we’re still attached, we become shield ballast.

– Then we depart earlier, – Vorl said.

Elara’s hand finally touched the cracked Caliper ring. A soft lavender pulse burst beneath her fingertips.

She inhaled sharply, pupils contracting.

– The fracture is growing, – she warned, voice barely above breath.

– Growth rate? – Kaelen asked.

– Two percent per stress cycle, maybe faster if we jump wrong.

– We have one ship and one path, – Vorl stated, walking toward the boarding ramp.

He felt the servo lag in his thumb again. His grip on the rail felt distant, like handling tools through gloves two sizes too large.

The group filed inside. Synthetic gravity engaged as doors sealed, but the air still smelled of lemon cleanser and fresh circuitry.

Zyra tossed her helmet onto a chair, caught it on the bounce.

– I fly, you fight, numbers-boy counts beans, rainbow girl mends reality, – she summarized.

Kaelen rolled his shoulder in half a shrug.

– Acceptable taxonomy, given crisis.

The Hollow remained in cargo bay, motionless sentinel. Only the faint shimmer of time-refracted air around his armor proved he wasn’t a statue.

Vorl keyed cockpit access. Consoles bloomed cyan. Internal lights dimmed to combat readiness, painting everyone in submarine gloom.

Straylight’s AI greeted them with calm monotone.

– Dock clamps unlocked, thrusters at standby.

– Kaelen, feed new escape vector, – Vorl ordered.

Fingers danced across holographic keys. A silver line shot across the tac display, weaving through Coherence approach cones like a thread pulled by anxious tailor.

Outside, K-46’s main screen darkened, then flared white as defense lasers commenced burn-in tests.

– Thirty seconds, – Kaelen muttered.

Elara reached cockpit threshold. She paused, hand braced on bulkhead as if the air had thickened.

– There is a door, – she whispered.

Zyra looked over her shoulder.

– I see only hull and vacuum.

– Not a ship door. A door in cause and effect. It’s thin, fragile. If we fly through, the destroyers will search an empty coordinate.

Kaelen’s iris flickered a storm of numerals.

– Probability unspeakably low. Give me a decimal.

Elara closed her eyes.

– Seventeen point four.

Kaelen frowned.

– You quoted my earlier figure.

– Because his path and mine coincide briefly, – she replied, gesturing at Vorl.

– Cost? – Vorl asked.

She met his gaze; for an instant her eyes showed plain brown human fear.

– My mind may not stitch back clean.

Three heavy thuds echoed – a faint delay suggested external shockwaves kissing the hull.

Vorl weighed the statement. In war, minds broke regularly; still, he trusted her assessment.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. Armor chilled her skin through fabric.

– We take the door.

Zyra slid into pilot seat, gloveless fingers tracing throttle grooves like a pianist reacquainting with ivory keys.

– Strap in, children. The symphony begins.

Vorl secured harness. Kaelen settled into systems chair, muttering a prayer to actuarial tables. Elara knelt on the deck beside the Caliper chamber, chalking concentric sigils with a stylus of quick-draw light.

The first Coherence volley arrived. Hull sensors screamed red, mapping shock waves along outer docking collar. Shield drones on K-46 blossomed in pale flares, then winked out.

– Contact inboard, – Nomad-Seven reported, voice now sharpened glass.

– Burn main thrusters, – Vorl commanded.

Engines ignited – rich cobalt glare filled aft camera feeds. The ship slid free of the bay, plating vibrating as space welcomed it back with indifferent chill.

Kaelen read numbers aloud, voice flat.

– Velocity four hundred, collision sector six clear, frigate intercept in eighty seconds.

Inside engineering, the Caliper rings began their low rotation, humming a minor chord that rattled teeth. Each ring’s damaged segment glittered like frost in starlight.

Elara extended both hands, palms up. Filaments of translucent lavender spun outward, wrapping the rings in a cocoon of luminous thread.

Her breathing hitched; crimson beads blossomed at her nose, hovering before tearing free.

– Energy surge tying her nervous system to ring motion, – Kaelen warned.

– Sustain, – Elara whispered, voice quake-ridden.

A docking bot, left behind on station authority, suddenly latched to Straylight’s ventral hull, cables unspooling. Its mechanical arms brandished cutters meant to sever illicit lines.

– Unwelcome passenger, – Zyra noted.

Vorl keyed rear lasers. Beam flicked, slicing tether, but not before the bot’s diagnostic spike jabbed a comm port. Telemetry spiked, injecting garbage code into navigation buffer.

The subtle sabotage manifested immediately: attitude thrusters pulsed unevenly, ship yawing six degrees.

Harness straps tightened painfully across Vorl’s sternum as inertial dampers lagged. His breath caught, lungs registering iron tang of clotting fear.

Kaelen fought console recalibration, fingers splaying.

– Null packet worm. Tracing.

– Overwrite direct, – Vorl barked.

Kaelen slammed a palm against manual reset, sparks popping from access panel. The thruster misfire ceased, but faint smoke curled, smelling of charred plastic and seaweed.

Kaelen’s right hand trembled, fingertips reddened by micro-burns. He shook it once, then forced calm.

– Destroyer broadside preparing, – Zyra said. Her tone remained playful, but a vein twitched at neck edge.

Vorl studied tactical. White cones swept across map like searchlights. He toggled comm.

– Nomad-Seven, mirror Beacon One, false echo three klicks starboard.

The AI responded with clipped efficiency.

– Decoy spawned; enemy targeting shifted.

Outside, a luminous phantom of Straylight appeared, racing away at mock velocities. The nearest destroyer swung, firing normalize lances toward the mirage. Violet light skewered emptiness, crackling out of existence.

For seven heartbeats the real Straylight remained hidden in shadow of K-46’s upper comm mast, drifting under thruster silence.

Elara groaned, palms shaking. Threads tightened around rings; one filament snapped with an audible zing, whipping backward and scoring floor plating.

– She’s at threshold, – Kaelen warned.

– Execute Stitch, – Vorl ordered.

Elara screamed, a note both human and digital. The lavender shroud contracted, pulling Caliper rings into perfect synchronization.

Space outside flexed – stars flattened into spectral bars. The cockpit shook; hairline fractures spidered across viewport glass, shining like lightning trapped in quartz.

Every joint in Vorl’s armor stung as if iced, actuators grinding molecular grit. An urgent alarm flagged that internal fluid viscosity was dropping; he would feel the stiffness during blade strikes.

Sudden stillness.

The ship coasted above a pale dust moon nowhere on Kaelen’s maps. Sensors read emptiness: no destroyers, no station, just broad silence.

Vorl exhaled.

– Status.

Zyra wiped sweat from lips.

– Alive, far as I can count fingers.

Kaelen checked diagnostics, left hand still twitching.

– Caliper integrity seventy-two, fracture widened. Route to Vectorate uplink open.

Elara slumped, breathing shallow. Blood droplets floated like garnets before recycler vents inhaled them.

Vorl unstrapped, boots magnetizing with audible clacks. He knelt beside her, careful not to touch radiant threads still fading.

– Can you stand?

She tried and failed.

– Vision… doubled. Time echoes… clashing, – she murmured.

– Med-bay, – Vorl said.

Zyra popped harness.

– I’ll carry her.

Vorl nodded silent gratitude.

As Zyra lifted the Weaver, Vorl returned to cockpit. Outside, the dust moon’s horizon glimmered gold with sunrise. For a fragile moment, the universe resembled peace.

He opened a comm on private channel.

– Nomad-Seven, run deep scan for lingering normalization residue.

– Residue detected in memory bank four. Purging will remove thirty seconds of mission data.

– Purge, – Vorl said.

Bit streams vanished. He sensed the absence like missing syllables in a litany.

Kaelen stood behind him, cradling burned hand.

– That shortcut cut your options, – the analyst said quietly.

– Options were illusions anyway, – Vorl replied.

– Not to me. I enumerate them.

Vorl’s helm turned.

– Enumerate new ones, then. The war isn’t pausing for us.

Kaelen’s synthetic iris calmed, glyphs settling into reluctant acceptance.

– I’ll try.

A proximity ping interrupted. A single blip, faint, emerged behind the moon.

– Friend or foe? – Vorl asked.

– Unknown drive signature. Class negligible, – Kaelen replied.

Vorl’s hand hovered near blade hilt just the same.

Footsteps echoed; Zyra returned without Elara.

– Weaver stable, med-gel pumping. She’s whispering about more doors.

Vorl searched Zyra’s eyes for fear. Instead he found feral excitement.

– She says the next one leads straight to the Gutter Star, shaving days.

Kaelen whistled low.

– Days removed from models equate to unpredictable variance.

Zyra shrugged.

– I worship variance. Keeps the blood quick.

The cockpit lights flickered, shifting from combat red to soft amber. Nomad-Seven spoke.

– Low-level power fluctuation traced to coolant siphon. Field repair advised.

Vorl remembered earlier sabotage. He toggled engineering view: coolant pressure dipped, residue from bot attack.

– I’ll fix it, – he said, already turning.

Corridor lighting overhead rolled in pulses, each beat reminiscent of heart rhythms. Within engineering, vent steam clouded gauges. He donned insulated gloves, approached coolant manifold.

A manual valve refused rotation. His servo-lagged thumb flared pain akin to electric ice.

He forced the wheel anyway. Metal groaned, bone or steel unclear. Warm coolant hissed through pipes again.

Walking back, he felt micro-tremors in thumb actuator, slight delay in blade command channel. He recorded note: close-range combat margin now narrower.

Hull sensors chimed – unknown drive signature resolved: a battered cargo shuttle, ID tags burned off.

Kaelen frowned at screen.

– Derelict?

Zyra tapped nails on console.

– Scavenger maybe. Could tattle our location.

Vorl weighed risk.

– Ignore. We have bigger storms.

Silence stretched. For once, no alarm cried. The dust moon spun slow under them, vast plains shimmering pale rose.

Vorl finally spoke.

– We gather crew, we reinforce Caliper, then we hunt the shard. Everyone clear?

Zyra saluted with two fingers.

Kaelen nodded.

From med-bay comms Elara’s weak voice drifted.

– Threads align. I will mend.

The Hollow remained silent, but a faint metallic tap sounded – knuckles on armor, or perhaps acknowledgment.

Nomad-Seven queued a soft chime.

– Incoming message on Legion frequency.

Vorl stiffened.

– Source.

– Indeterminate. Content: five words only.

– Play.

Speaker crackled:

– Memory is the final battlefield.

Kaelen shivered.

– Someone else knows that mantra.

Zyra rotated in chair.

– Could be bait.

Vorl stared at stars, whispering to himself.

– Or a summons.

The dust moon glowed like a muted pearl, and far off, sunrise painted the glass in quiet coral.

Then sensors screamed, and a second Stitch seam yawned behind them.

First Stitch

Vorl drove toward survival with every ticking heartbeat, intent on punching the Straylight through a newborn hole in causality before the Coherence barrage arrived.

Zyra’s sharp fingers fluttered over the holo-yokes, her tattoos pulsing crimson with each correction. Clouded nebular light flickered across the cockpit glass, painting her grin savage. Engines vibrated like caged animals behind them, straining for permission to leap.

Kaelen hunched at the systems console, emerald numerals spinning across his synthetic iris at dizzying speed. Static washed his voice.

– Impact in forty seconds, – he announced, tone too calm for a man predicting obliteration.

Elara balanced on the grated observation gantry above the Caliper chamber. She looked fragile, yet threads of pale aurora bled from her open palms, probing the fractured rings like curious butterflies. A faint copper odor – fresh blood – wafted down each time the filaments snapped back against her skin.

Vorl felt far heavier than his armor’s mass. Hydraulics in his knees groaned under rising G-stress as Zyra pitched the corvette into a corkscrew meant to disperse missile locks.

– Weaver, prepare, – he ordered, voice metallic in his helmet.

An alarm siren keened through the bridge: a single note, flat and relentless. Red glyphs scrolled across the tactical array, each naming a different incoming ordnance.

Missiles streaked behind them, white spears dragging violet tails.

Zyra broke into a laugh that sounded manic and musical, then cut main thrust without warning. Everyone lurched forward; Vorl’s chest harness bit deep, sending a painful spark across healing ribs.

– They’ll overshoot, – she said, fingers already powering engines again.

The sudden deceleration threw Vorl’s gyros into jitter. Sensor ghosts danced across his visor until self-correction routines rebalanced.

Creaks echoed through the deck: Caliper rings started their counter-rotation, each black arc shimmering with hairline cracks. Sparkling dust drifted from the ceiling vent, tasting of scorched polymer.

– Rings at sixty percent sync, – Nomad-Seven chimed, its voice fragmented like old vinyl.

Vorl tapped the console with gauntleted knuckle. A flutter of pain spread from his damaged thumb actuator, dull and icy, lingering longer than he cared to admit.

Cold sweat dampened the small patch of skin left on the back of his neck. He focused on his goal: open the door, flee, survive.

A micro-quake rattled underfoot; one of the missiles detonated prematurely, painting the viewport with a silent sphere of violet fire. The explosion’s light strobbed across interior bulkheads, revealing dust motes hanging motionless.

Kaelen’s numbers spiked. His single organic eye widened.

– Forty becomes twelve, – he muttered, recalculating.

Vorl’s internal cooling fans roared, trying to vent heat generated by his own rising adrenaline. He smelled burnt ozone mingled with pine – the scent stolen from K-46’s air recyclers still clung to Straylight’s filters.

Elara’s song began – no language, just pure resonance. The sound was half chime, half human exhalation. Threads brightened, slipping between Caliper rings, weaving a cocoon that shimmered like oil on water.

Vorl’s vertebrae vibrated with each note; resonance sent phantom pins along nerve grafts.

Missiles corrected course, cutting arcs of white fire.

Zyra cursed softly.

– They painted us again.

– Hold vector, – Vorl said. His voice cracked into static before equalizers compensated.

Metal groaned behind them as Kaelen rerouted auxiliary power to inertial dampers. He hissed when his burned hand brushed a live conduit, the singed scent of flesh momentarily overpowering pine.

– Probability of hull breach is now twenty-seven percent, – he reported, voice tight with pain.

Elara faltered; a thread snapped, lashing her cheek. Blood beaded, caught in zero-g, ruby against pale light.

Vorl felt the moment demand decision.

– Weaver, now, – he commanded.

She closed her eyes and exhaled sharply. The threads tightened, forcing the Caliper rings into perfect alignment.

Space beyond the viewport warped. Stars layered over themselves, translucent like pages misprinted atop one another. An intense ultraviolet flash bathed the cockpit. Every console display inverted, letters glowing sickly green against black.

Gravity flipped. Vorl’s stomach lurched into his throat, then dropped somewhere below the deck. Kaelen gagged, bile spattering the console.

Zyra’s grip never wavered; her focus bordered on religious.

Magnitude slammed the corvette sideways through existence. Hull plates screamed, a sound too low to be heard by unaugmented ears. Vorl caught it as a bone-deep vibration, like a distant choir repeating one mournful note.

Pain lanced his skull; memories burst in shards – childhood at a frozen lake, legion oaths shouted in summer barracks, a face whose name was gone. The shards dissolved before he could grasp them.

A loud ping resounded from the Caliper. One of the cracks spiderwebbed across an entire ring. Micro-cameras reported structural integrity drop; a silent alarm flashed amber.

Nomad-Seven’s motes swirled above the navigation pillar, coalescing into a trembling humanoid outline that flickered every second frame.

– Causal debt exceeded projection, – it whispered, voice slicing into Vorl’s neural feed like fine wire.

He ignored the pain and scanned aft sensors. Coherence missiles disappeared mid-flight, unable to resolve target coordinates. The pursuit vector behind them turned blank.

Kaelen wiped vomit from his lip with a ration wrapper and forced his voice steady.

– We… we’re clear for the moment.

The corvette shuddered again, this time with a softer knock; the price of their passage settling into hull struts.

Elara collapsed onto the gantry grate. Threads retracted into her skin, leaving faint phosphorescent scars across her palms.

– Sanity is… expensive, – she murmured, half-conscious.

Vorl unclipped his harness and vaulted up the ladder toward her. A new servo lag stuttered his left leg mid-jump; he landed harder than intended, steel knee denting the deck.

Pain radiated through synthetic musculature, echoing dull across genuine bone.

He pulled a stimulant injector from belt storage, pressed it against Elara’s neck.

She jerked, pupils dilating, then focused on him with grateful confusion.

– Drink, – he said, handing her a squeeze tube of mineral water looted from K-46’s emergency kit.

The tube was flavored with artificial peach.

Elara sipped weakly.

– Threads stable now, – she whispered.

A soft blue glow fell over them as emergency lights recalibrated. The hull alarms downgraded from red to amber; the change felt like a cautious sigh.

Zyra kicked the console with her boot heel.

– Who wants a celebratory caf?

Her joke eased tension, but not for long.

Nomad-Seven’s avatar tilted its fragmented head toward Vorl, data motes swirling faster.

– Anomalous code detected in memory banks, location near command buffer.

Vorl’s stomach clenched. He accessed internal logs; dozens of new subroutines glimmered where none should exist, all timestamped within the last forty seconds.

Kaelen’s good hand danced across keys.

– I read them too. Could be leftover normalization hooks.

– Or bait, – Zyra added grimly.

Vorl linked his own neural port to ship diagnostics, intent on quarantining the unknown code.

A shock zapped through his cortex – sharp, icy, immediate. Visual static scattered across sight; he tasted copper.