God's Silence

Argol waited fifteen paces behind the priestess as she whispered to the Heavens, petitioning God to carry them home. He counted his breaths, staying as still as stone so as not to disturb her communion. The shift into the slipstream was subtle, but he prided himself on always catching the transition. His mistress was good—one of the order's best—and it rarely took more than half a hundred breaths to feel the universe bend around them. It had taken only thirty-four on the way down to the decimated system their raiding fleet was now fleeing.

At sixty, he started to worry, but knew better than to disturb the ship’s navigator while she communed. A guardian who interrupted their mistress in the Sanctum was rarely allowed back into the sacred chambers. By the three-minute mark, anxiety waged a war with duty inside Argol’s mind. Just as he resolved to approach, the priestess turned. Even with her sightless eyes hidden behind an opaque veil of lavender silk, her face was visibly stricken. She reeled from her kneeling position, staggering toward him. Argol lunged forward, catching her just before she collapsed against the cold deck.

“I’m here,” he muttered, anchoring her weight against his chest. “Mistress, I’m here.”

“She’s gone.” Aena’s entire body shuddered as the words erupted from her lips.

“She’s… what do you mean? Who—”

“She’s gone!”

The wail was terrifying, a raw sound of absolute devastation. Aena began to thrash violently, fighting against his grip like a wounded animal. Argol held tight, terrified of injuring her but desperate to keep her from breaking against the deck as space outside the Sanctum remained terrifyingly still.

Argol hesitated as he reached into one of his side-satchels and pulled out a small blue cylinder. The sleep it granted her would be a mercy, he knew, but it still grieved him. He’d never had to dose his charge—a fact he was quite proud of, though he knew it would be improper to mention it around his fellow guardians. Aena slipped quietly to the floor even as the small capsule was delivering the last of its sleep agent into her body.

“Bridge to Sanctum, everything alright down there?” Captain Onima’s voice crackled through the comms, a sharp edge of panic bleeding through the static. “We’re receiving reports from the other ships. Something is wrong with their navigators. How’s Aena?”

Argol hovered his finger over the transmission switch for several agonizing seconds. He didn’t have the words to describe what he’d just witnessed. Not any words a devout man could bear the burden of.

Finally, he pressed the key. “I had to sedate her, Captain. She was … inconsolate.”

A heavy silence stretched over the channel before Onima replied, her voice suddenly hollow. “Understood. Medical team is en route. I’ll meet you in sick bay. May God have mercy on us all. Bridge out.”

Aena was almost completely under but she was whispering something. Argol didn't notice, at first, the drumming of his heart in his ears drowning out all other sound. By the time he did notice, the medical team had arrived and two corpsmen were by his side in a flash, uncoiling her from his protection.

“Is she hurt?”

Both corpsmen were already conducting scans and general checks of her condition. Argol wondered if the question was to pull him out of his obvious stupor.

“That depends on what you mean by hurt,” he answered grimly. The older corpsman nodded as the ship’s doctor arrived—her rank and station seemingly not permitting her to move faster than a stately glide.

“You administered the sedative?” Commander Palyk stooped over the shoulders of her technicians. “Good. Good. Everything appears to be alright. You did well, guardian.”

Argol grimaced. Of course he’d administered the sedative and kept his charge from harm. What else could she have possibly expected?

The two corpsmen were popping out a stretcher for the priestess when Argol realized she was still barely conscious—and still whispering something.

“Wait,” he commanded as he knelt down to put his ear close to her lips. He listened patiently for several seconds but all he got were the faintest wisps of air escaping her mouth. “Please,” Argol pleaded. “What is it? Just a little louder, mistress. I'm here. I'm listening.”

“Not just us,” Aena breathed. “Not just our fleet.” Argol could barely have called it a whisper but he was sure of every word. “The void… it went black everywhere,” she whimpered, her consciousness fraying at the edges as the sedative cocktail pulled her under. “I felt them. The Sisters on the homeworld. The Sisters in the Capital. Even… even the ones in the enemy’s vanguard. A thousand thousand minds reaching out at once, Argol. And all of them met with nothing but silence.”

The ice in Argol’s veins turned to lead. The enemy. He had spent the last three minutes terrified that the enemy's priestesses were sharper, more favored. He was sure this was all part of some larger enemy plan or strategy, even if its shape was beyond his comprehension.

“She spoke,” Aena muttered, her jaw growing slack as her head finally rolled to the side. “One final decree to all her children… Rest. Lay down your swords. Cease your wandering.”

“Guardian?” Commander Palyk’s voice sliced through the tension like a razor. She was looking down at him, her brow furrowed in mild impatience. “Did she say something? We need to clear the chamber. The Captain is waiting.”

Argol rose slowly to his feet. His knees felt hollow. He looked at the two corpsmen as they hoisted the stretcher, moving with easy efficiency. They were worried about a medical emergency. They were worried about an incoming raid. Argol envied their naivety.

“No,” Argol lied, his voice sounding foreign to himself. “Just senseless murmuring. The sedative, I imagine.”

Palyk nodded, satisfied, and gestured for her team to move out. “Very well. Secure the Sanctum and report to sick bay.”

Argol didn’t follow them immediately. He stood entirely still as the automated blast doors hissed shut, sealing him inside the high-arched chamber.

He walked to the viewing portal. Outside, the star-choked expanse of the galaxy looked exactly as it had a million years ago, long before man had spread throughout her.

A few kilometers away, a massive cruiser from their own fleet drifted, its sub-light thrusters pulsing in a confused, automated rhythm, trying and failing to maintain a formation that no longer mattered. Beyond it, there were no enemy signatures. There wouldn't be ever again, he imagined. The enemy wasn't coming to obliterate them. The enemy was currently sitting in their own dark metal boxes, light-years away, staring out into the exact same terrifying silence.

It was almost enough to make him laugh. Her children had been bad, so the Mother had simply put them all in isolation. A cosmic timeout of the kind you gave children with interstellar technology and an appetite for war. They were entirely safe from their enemies now, marooned in tiny pockets of a universe that had just grown devastatingly large.

Argol reached up, his trembling fingers resting against the viewport, and began to count his breaths again. The Captain could wait to hear about the end of their universe.