It is the Void

I must warn whoever finds this log from ever exploring further the things I have seen. Things that, even as I record this, haunt my memories and create nightmares that make me fear to sleep. In this Post-Spaceflight era we live in, we humans continue to think that we are the dominant ones. I cannot stress enough how dangerous and ludicrous this line of thinking is, especially given what we've already encountered in the centuries since we have expanded among the stars. The only reason I am recording this story is to incite some sort of caution in my species. We are not ready to know everything about this universe; we do not have the capacity in our meager minds to know the machinations of entities greater than ourselves. All of this is meaningless unless I explain from the beginning what occurred. Perhaps greater thinkers than I will decipher something that I could not, though I still urge them to not go down that endless road.

My name is Chief Officer Tarina Atanas, I have served aboard the ISV Void Skimmer for the better part of the last decade. In earlier times of history, we would be considered "privateers" of a sort. We are independently contracted to explore "Outland Sectors", portions of our galactic map that are unknown and uncharted. We report habitable planets, signs of intelligent life, and resource-rich areas for different parties to take advantage of for their own purposes. It is a dangerous, yet rewarding, career. Or so I believed until recently.

We had been approached by a contractor we had never been acquainted with before. The manner in which they spoke clearly indicated that they were not human, and we had done enough dealings with the Kethk in the past to understand their mannerisms and intricacies. Despite humanity's relative distrust of the other sapient beings we have encountered, my captain and I found that they are amenable as long as one can communicate with them. No easy or cheap task, translators are scarce and incredibly expensive, but in our line of work, we cannot afford to be overly selective.

The Kethk we spoke to wished to explore an Outland Sector far from their home planet, all the way in the Luverian Fringe near the galaxy's edge. Closer to Dark Space than we would have preferred, but the payment was too good to decline. Whatever resources they had to start their own exploration were going unused, and would be presented to us as payment for our services.

We did not pry into why they could not do this excursion themselves, assuming it had to do with some aspect of their strange culture we have yet to understand. It is possible the Sector holds some amount of religious significance or perhaps their leaders have plans for construction there. I shiver at the thought that perhaps they sent us to our doom on purpose. However, even as alien as the Kethk can seem, they do not compare to what we witnessed within that formless abyss.

Make no mistake, I have served proudly under Captain Erravi for many years, and we have witnessed truly awe-inspiring phenomena under her leadership. Enormous stars in the midst of collapsing, planets with such strange and alien landscapes that I can scarcely even describe them with words, creatures both great and small with intelligences to match. But we had never ventured so deep into the Vast Darkness than we did on this mission. The Universe appears as a blur no matter where you are going when the Space-Fold thrusters activate, so when we emerged from our initial launch the utter darkness took us by surprise.

To call the stars that we saw from one of our starboard viewing rooms distant would be a gross understatement of the situation. There was nothing... just an unbelievable expanse of nothingness. How such a void in our galaxy exists is still beyond me, to the point that I can hardly call the area natural. Certainly, no one aboard the Void Skimmer believed their eyes either. Chief Engineer Yoris, an ex-military man that had seen more than his fair share of close calls among the stars, was the only one to comment as we all stood awestruck at the expanse that lay before us. The man hardly spoke at all in his time aboard our vessel, his monotone and raspy voice caught the rest of us off guard.