The Core: The Dark Enemy

43. Into the Darkness

The first thing I noticed when coming through the heart of the star was a slight warping sensation, not just in my vision but in my sense of spatial awareness as well. It felt, oddly, like I had just shot myself over a great chasm and landed perfectly and smoothly on the other side. For a brief moment I paused, worried by the random thoughts that suddenly entered my mind. What if the transition had not been smooth? What if I had entered a dimension made entirely of plasma or something that would rapidly kill me? I needed to create safety protocols for any future dimensional travel, or one such trip might simply delete me from existence.

I saved the plan in my memory and set it aside as my vision adjusted to the strange sight around me. Odd objects were scattered around the hole to my dimension. It looked like a ship graveyard. More precisely, a tube ship salvage graveyard. Some of the less damaged ships were still functioning too. I flew upward, taking in more of the surroundings, and watched several hundred ships go about their business, scrapping and pulling parts from countless others laid out in neat rows stretching as far as I could see.

"Holy cow, that is a lot of ships," I muttered as I took it all in and began to idly count the rows. Just from rough estimation, there were three times as many tube ships here as the massive fleet that had invaded our galaxy.

"The Hive Mother sure put up a hell of a fight, it seems."

I flew toward the closest ship on salvage duty and watched it for any sign of intelligence or hostile intent. Besides getting swiped several times by a green beam that had no effect on me, the working robot simply continued its task without pause. The beam seemed to be set on a timer. It fired at set intervals without fail.

It was only when I raised my hand into the light of the beam that I realized my swarm, acting as my space suit, was actually being affected by the harmful energy released by the weapon. My suit was practically melting off me. Because of the impervious shell surrounding me, I could not feel any of it. As for why my swarm did not warn me, it sent a mental note saying it was not harmed, only drained, and that I would have figured it out and handled the problem on my own anyway.

I quickly flew upward, out of the aggressive range of the ship, and let my swarm recover. It was like watching clothes go through a dry cleaning cycle as the folds and wrinkles forced themselves out in real time.

"How odd that the ships don't seem to have any intellect of their own," I said to the swarm as I looked around. I could tell which way was up, or rather which direction led toward the barrier surrounding the hole where the Void lived, simply by the feeling that emanated from it. The last time I had been here it had felt different, far more intense. This time it felt more like a dark cave that seemed dangerous rather than a definite pit of death.

"Everything feels so different." I said as I drifted over the orderly scrapyard. My swarm pulsed at me before I could go any farther, sending flashes of concepts it wanted to explore.

"Go ahead. Do what you think you need to." I said as the upper half of my suit detached and dropped toward the rows of damaged tube ships. The idea it carried was simple. Assimilate and Absorb the technology. Strengthen the swarm.

I watched what had been my shirt disappear into the husk of a vessel and a question rose to the surface. "So why did none of this work earlier while we were fighting in our own dimension?" I asked the swarm that made up my pants.

They answered with a series of images. Components melting the moment my swarm touched them. Zones marked with invisible proximity rules that no one was allowed to cross. The enemy had designed their systems to collapse rather than offer anything up. My swarm could not take from something that was willing to destroy itself to stay out of reach.