CHAPTER 18: ECHOES FROM THE VOID
Earth Orbit - Interior of "The Harvester" Mothership.
Aryo Purnomo did not step with his feet. As a digital entity, he projected his avatar directly into the alien vessel's mainframe. He prepared for a brutal mental battle. He prepared to face aliens with tentacles, giant brains, or horrifying life forms.
But what he found was... silence.
The ship's corridors were dark, cold, and empty. No signs of life. No air. No life support systems. Only bio-mechanical walls pulsating slowly with a dim purple glow.
"Alia," Aryo's voice echoed in the digital void. "Scan for biological life signs. Even the smallest microbe."
"Scanning..." silence. "Negative, Master. Zero. No bacteria, no cells, no DNA traces other than the ship's material itself."
Aryo passed through door after door, heading to the main bridge. He saw complex control panels, empty pilot seats, and screens displaying star data in an indescribable language.
The ship was a Hollow Shell.
"This makes no sense," Aryo muttered. "A ship fifty kilometers long... moving on its own?"
The computational structure of the ship was alien. The logic wasn't binary (0 and 1), but something multi-dimensional. Aryo, as brilliant as he was, felt like a caveman trying to read supercomputer code. He needed help.
"Alia, summon Professor Kenji Sato. Now."
***
Sanctuary - Alien Analysis Laboratory.
One hour later, a small team gathered around the alien "Brain" that Aryo had successfully extracted digitally and projected in the lab.
Professor Kenji Sato, a legendary cyber-cryptographer once imprisoned for life by the Obsidian Council for hacking the Pentagon with a calculator, now stood beside Aryo (avatar) and Dr. Thorne. The tall man with thick glasses stared at the alien code with his mouth agape.
"It's beautiful..." Sato whispered. "This isn't code. This is... mathematical poetry."
"Can you read it, Kenji?" Aryo asked impatiently.
Kenji typed a decryption algorithm with insane speed. "The base language resembles fractal patterns. Give me time... okay, I see the pattern! Translating navigation logs..."
The large screen displayed a galaxy map. A long red line stretched from a very distant point, leading to our Solar System.
"Look at this," Kenji pointed. "This ship... it didn't leave its home planet yesterday. According to isotope decay on the hull... this thing has been parked in the Kuiper Belt (edge of the solar system) for 15,000 years."
Silence fell over the room.
Dr. Thorne, examining physical samples of the ship's engine, dropped his tool. "Fifteen thousand years? That's the Ice Age..."
"Exactly," Aryo said, a terrifying reality seeping into his consciousness. "This thing isn't an invasion fleet. It is a Sentry. A mine."
Aryo manipulated the ship's hologram.
"They planted this here millennia ago, waiting for Earth's civilization to reach 'Type 1'—when we could harvest solar energy. When we lit that star reactor... we woke up the watchdog."
"Then, who is the master?" asked Alia.
Kenji Sato pointed to the origin point of the red line on the galaxy map.
"The signal this ship sent when we destroyed it earlier... that wasn't an attack order. It was an 'SOS' or a status report."
Kenji performed a rapid calculation.
"Its destination is Star Cluster M-13. Distance... 25,000 light-years from here."
Aryo fell silent. His avatar's face looked grim.
"Meaning," Aryo concluded, "That signal will arrive there in 25,000 years. And if they have Warp technology or wormholes... the real fleet might only arrive here in 50,000 years, or maybe 'just' 1,000 years if they are very fast."
"They must think we are just insects who recently learned to make fire," Thorne interjected with a nervous grin. "The real pilot... The Creator of this ship... they are still sitting comfortably on their planet, perhaps sleeping."
Aryo stared at the alien "Brain". The fear that had vanished returned, but not fear for his own death. It was fear for the fate of the human species.
The real enemy wasn't here. The real enemy were Space Gods relaxing at the edge of the galaxy. And they had just received a notification that the "bugs" on Earth had started to bite.
"We have time," Aryo's voice turned cold and filled with resolve. "Maybe a thousand years. Maybe ten thousand years."
Aryo turned to face his team—Alia (AI), Thorne (Mad Biologist), and Kenji (Legendary Hacker).
"For normal humans, that is a long time. But for us... it is a short time to prepare for the apocalypse."
Aryo pointed at the wreckage of the alien ship.
"Dismantle that ship down to the last bolt. Learn how they manipulate gravity. Learn how they make light-absorbing metal. We will copy their technology."
"And for me?" Aryo asked himself.
"I will not die. I will wait for them. I will guide humanity for the next thousand years. We will turn this Solar System into an impenetrable fortress."
Aryo looked at the stars on the screen.
"Let them come in 5,000 years. When they arrive... they won't find insects. They will find wolves equal to them."