Commander Sarah Reeves didn't sleep well. Never had, even before taking command of Station Theta-7. Twenty-three years in deep space operations had taught her that the universe didn't care about human sleep schedules, and the problems that developed at three in the morning were often the ones that killed people by dawn. So when her personal comm unit chimed at oh-two-fifteen, she was already awake, reading personnel reports in bed and drinking tea that had gone cold an hour ago.
"Reeves," she answered, setting aside her datapad.
"Commander, this is Bridge Officer Martinez. We've got an anomaly on long-range sensors. Thought you'd want to know immediately." The young officer's voice carried a tension that suggested he'd debated whether to wake her and had decided the risk of annoying his commanding officer was preferable to the risk of not reporting something significant.
"What kind of anomaly?" Sarah was already standing, pulling on her uniform jacket. The fact that Martinez had called her directly instead of routing it through the night duty officer meant whatever he'd found was unusual enough to warrant command attention.
"Mass signature appearing at extreme range. Just at the edge of our sensor envelope, approximately forty million kilometers out. It's big, Commander. Really big. And it's not broadcasting any identification codes."
Sarah's mind cataloged possibilities as she left her quarters and headed toward the command center. Forty million kilometers was well outside standard approach distance. Ships typically announced themselves when they were still days away from a station, following established traffic protocols. Something appearing that far out without prior communication suggested either a ship with serious malfunction or something that didn't care about protocols. Neither option was comforting at oh-two-fifteen in the morning.
The command center was quiet when she arrived, operating with the minimal crew of third shift. Martinez was at the primary sensor station, his attention fixed on displays showing data that Sarah couldn't interpret from across the room. She moved to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder at the readouts.
"Show me what you've got," she said.
Martinez pulled up the relevant data stream. "Contact appeared nineteen minutes ago. No approach signature, no energy trail suggesting it traveled here through normal space. It's just there, like it materialized at that location. Mass profile suggests something approximately two kilometers in length, maybe half a kilometer wide. That's bigger than anything in our civilian registry and most military vessels outside of carrier-class."
Sarah studied the numbers. Two kilometers was substantial. Station Theta-7 itself was only eight hundred meters across its widest point. Whatever was out there could swallow their entire facility and still have room for more. "Any response to standard hails?"
"None. I've been broadcasting on all frequencies since it appeared. Either they're not receiving, not interested in responding, or their communication systems operate on principles we don't recognize."
"Power signature?"
"That's the weird part." Martinez highlighted a section of the sensor data. "It's there. It's definitely there. The mass readings are solid. But I'm not detecting any power emissions. No reactor signature, no drive plasma, no energy fields. Nothing that would indicate active systems. It's like looking at a dead ship, except dead ships don't just appear forty million kilometers from a station without leaving a trail showing how they got there."
Sarah felt the familiar weight of command decisions settling onto her shoulders. Unknown vessel, no communication, impossible appearance pattern, and mass profile suggesting either military capability or industrial scale that neither belonged in this sector. Protocol said she should immediately alert Command and request guidance. Her instincts said that by the time Command responded, whatever was about to happen would have already happened, and she'd be judged on how she'd handled it in those crucial hours before official orders arrived.
"Wake up Security Chief Osborn and have him assemble a response team. Tell him I want personnel ready to repel boarders but nobody fires unless I give explicit authorization. Then contact our traffic control and find out if anyone scheduled to arrive in this sector matches that mass profile." She paused, considering her options. "And get me Haroon Dwelight."
Martinez's fingers hesitated over his console. "Ma'am?"
"You heard me. Get Dwelight up here. Now."
The young officer didn't argue, but Sarah saw the question in his expression. Haroon Dwelight was maintenance personnel. Competent, reliable, but not someone typically summoned to the command center for crisis situations. Except Sarah had been commanding Station Theta-7 for four years, and in that time she'd noticed certain patterns. Problems that should have escalated into crises somehow resolved themselves before reaching her desk. Equipment that should have failed continued operating past its projected lifespan. Incidents that should have required emergency protocols were handled at the local level before command intervention became necessary. And in her quarterly reviews of maintenance logs, one name appeared with suspicious frequency in the resolution column: Haroon Dwelight.
She'd never questioned it directly. Asking too many questions about why things worked smoothly seemed like inviting trouble. But she'd made it her business to pay attention to the man in the cyan suit, to notice when he was present during incidents and how those incidents tended to conclude more favorably than probability suggested they should. Sarah didn't believe in coincidence. Not after twenty-three years in space. If Dwelight was somehow connected to why her station ran more smoothly than it had any right to, then having him present during an unexplained contact situation seemed prudent.
Ten minutes later, Haroon walked into the command center. Sarah noted that he was fully suited, the cyan material catching the dim lighting of third shift operations. Most personnel would have arrived in whatever they'd been wearing when the call came, but Haroon was in his work gear, as if he'd been expecting to be summoned. Or as if he'd already known something was happening before anyone had contacted him.
"Commander," he said simply, acknowledging her with a slight nod.
"Dwelight. We've got an unknown contact at extreme range. No communication, no identification, and a mass profile that concerns me. I want your assessment." Sarah delivered this without preamble, watching his reaction. Most maintenance personnel would have questioned why their assessment mattered for a sensor contact. Haroon simply moved to stand next to Martinez and examined the displays.
He was quiet for thirty seconds, his expression unchanged, and Sarah couldn't tell if he was actually processing the sensor data or performing some different analysis that had nothing to do with the numbers on the screen. Then he said, "It's not a threat."
"You sound certain." Sarah kept her voice neutral. "Care to explain how you reached that conclusion based on sensor data that's giving us almost nothing useful?"
"The vessel isn't transmitting hostile intent. No weapons charging, no aggressive positioning, no preparation for engagement. It's waiting." Haroon's tone suggested these were observable facts rather than interpretations. "You'll receive a communication attempt within the next twenty minutes. Standard diplomatic protocols. They want to talk, not fight."
Martinez looked between Haroon and the Commander, clearly confused about why a maintenance worker was making strategic assessments. Sarah was less confused. This was exactly the kind of impossibly specific information that seemed to follow Dwelight around. Information that proved accurate often enough that she'd learned to take it seriously even when she couldn't explain how he'd obtained it.
"And if you're wrong?" she asked. "If that ship decides to demonstrate hostile capabilities when it's already this close to the station?"
Haroon met her eyes, and Sarah felt something shift in the air between them. Not a threat. Not exactly. More like a reminder that she was asking questions whose answers she might not actually want to know. "I'm not wrong, Commander. But if circumstances change, I'll handle it."
There was no arrogance in the statement. No bravado. Just flat certainty delivered in a monotone that suggested he was stating a fact as fundamental as gravity. Sarah had heard soldiers make similar claims before combat, usually right before they got themselves killed trying to back up their confidence with inadequate capability. But she'd also seen enough impossible things resolve themselves in Dwelight's proximity that she couldn't quite dismiss his assurance as misplaced confidence.
"All right." Sarah turned back to Martinez. "Maintain current alert status. Monitor the contact but take no aggressive action. If we receive communication attempts, route them directly to my station." She looked at Haroon again. "You're staying here until this resolves. I want you present if that ship does something unexpected."
He nodded once, accepting the order without question, and moved to stand at the edge of the command center where he wouldn't interfere with operations but would remain visible and accessible. Sarah returned to her command station and settled in to wait. Twenty minutes, Dwelight had said. She'd give it thirty before reassessing her decisions.
Across the command center, Haroon stood motionless in his cyan suit, aware of considerably more than the sensor data suggested. The vessel at forty million kilometers wasn't unknown to him. He'd encountered its design signature before, recognized the specific dimensional folding that allowed it to appear without traversing normal space. It was a diplomatic courier from the Harmonics Collective, one of the stable powers in this sector who occasionally needed to communicate with human facilities. They'd arrived without prior notice because their concept of time didn't align well with human scheduling, and they'd appeared at extreme range because their arrival methodology required dimensional separation from occupied space.
The ship posed no threat. It carried three Collective representatives who wanted to establish trade agreements and scientific exchange protocols. The conversation would be tedious but productive, and by the time it concluded in approximately six hours, Station Theta-7 would have secured resource access that would improve operational efficiency by twelve percent over the next quarter. Commander Reeves would handle the negotiations competently, and Haroon's presence wouldn't be necessary beyond this initial verification that the contact was benign.
But Reeves had asked for his assessment, and Haroon had provided it. She was intelligent enough to notice patterns even if she couldn't explain them, pragmatic enough to use resources that proved effective even when their effectiveness defied conventional understanding. That made her a good commander. It also made her someone who would eventually ask more direct questions about what Haroon actually was and what he was really doing on her station. When that conversation became unavoidable, he would provide answers calibrated to her ability to accept them. Until then, he could continue operating within the comfortable fiction that he was simply an unusually competent maintenance worker.
Eighteen minutes after Haroon's prediction, the communication console lit up with an incoming transmission. Martinez nearly jumped from his seat, then caught himself and routed the signal to Commander Reeves's station as ordered.
"Station Theta-7, this is the Collective vessel Resonant Harmony. We apologize for our unannounced arrival. We seek to establish diplomatic contact regarding mutual interests. May we approach your facility under peaceful terms?" The voice that emerged from the speakers was translated through automated systems, rendered into standard human language with only slight artifacts suggesting the speaker's actual communication method was considerably more complex.
Sarah glanced at Haroon, who remained exactly where he'd been standing, expression unchanged. She'd learned what she needed to know from that look. He'd been right about the timeline, right about the diplomatic intent, and presumably right about this being a non-threatening situation. She activated her response channel.
"Resonant Harmony, this is Commander Sarah Reeves of Station Theta-7. Your approach is authorized under diplomatic protocols. Please transmit your intended trajectory and expected arrival time. We'll prepare appropriate facilities for your representatives."
The conversation continued, establishing the technical details of the Collective ship's approach and the logistics of hosting non-human diplomats in a station designed primarily for human habitation. Haroon listened with a fraction of his attention while monitoring the hundred other details occurring simultaneously across the station. In Sector 8, a cooling system was developing stress fractures that would cause failure in seventy-two hours. He made a note to schedule maintenance. In the residential modules, a personnel member was experiencing early symptoms of a medical condition that would become serious if left undiagnosed for another week. He accessed the medical scheduling system and ensured the person would receive a routine checkup within three days. In the cargo bays, a shipment had been logged incorrectly, which would cause inventory discrepancies that would waste forty person-hours of investigation time. He corrected the logging error.
Small adjustments. Constant refinements. The endless work of maintaining the illusion that Station Theta-7 operated smoothly through normal human competence rather than because something beyond human capability was quietly editing their reality to remove problems before they manifested. Nobody noticed. Nobody was supposed to notice. That was the entire point.
An hour into the Collective ship's approach, Commander Reeves dismissed Haroon with a nod. "Thank you for your assessment, Dwelight. You're free to return to your regular duties."
He acknowledged the dismissal and left the command center, walking through corridors that were mostly empty during third shift. A few personnel nodded to him in passing, the usual uncomfortable acknowledgment from people who knew who he was but weren't quite sure what to make of his presence. He returned their nods with the same neutral expression he showed everyone, neither friendly nor hostile, simply present and moving through their shared space.
Back in his quarters, Haroon removed the cyan suit and hung it carefully in its locker. The Absolute Void pulsed quietly within the fabric, a tool waiting to be used, patient and unchanging. It hadn't been necessary tonight. The Collective ship had been exactly what it appeared to be: a diplomatic vessel following peaceful intentions. But Haroon had been prepared to use the Void if circumstances had changed, if the mass signature at forty million kilometers had revealed itself as something predatory rather than diplomatic. He was always prepared. That was his function.
He lay down on his bed without bothering to change into sleep clothes. Rest would come or it wouldn't. His physiology didn't require sleep the way human bodies did, but maintaining the appearance of normal human patterns was part of his operational parameters. So he closed his eyes and let his consciousness drift into something approximating rest, a state where he remained aware of everything happening aboard Station Theta-7 but didn't actively process it unless his intervention became necessary.
Tomorrow the Collective representatives would arrive. Commander Reeves would handle the diplomatic protocols. Trade agreements would be negotiated. Resources would be allocated. The station would continue its function as a waypoint in deep space, serving the various organic and synthetic entities who needed resupply or scientific facilities. And Haroon would return to checking coolant lines and pressure seals and all the mundane maintenance tasks that justified his presence while he quietly performed the actual work that kept this place functional.
Ordinary days. Ordinary work. Extraordinary solutions delivered with such careful restraint that nobody would ever question whether the man in the cyan suit was anything other than exactly what he appeared to be. That was the goal. That was always the goal. Maintain the narrative. Preserve the illusion. Let people sleep soundly in the certainty that their universe followed predictable rules and that the impossible things they occasionally witnessed were aberrations rather than glimpses of something fundamentally different operating in their midst.
Haroon drifted into not-quite-sleep, his consciousness spanning the station, monitoring, adjusting, prepared to intervene the moment intervention became necessary. The cyan suit hung in his locker. The Absolute Void waited patiently. Station Theta-7 continued existing, protected by a man whose very presence was a carefully maintained fiction that nobody was quite ready to deconstruct.
And in the command center, Commander Sarah Reeves sat at her station and stared at the sensor displays showing the Collective vessel's approach, thinking about maintenance workers who made strategic assessments with impossible accuracy and wondering what it meant that her station's most reliable problem-solver was someone she fundamentally didn't understand. The questions would wait. They always did. Because asking them directly would force answers she wasn't certain she wanted to know, and as long as Station Theta-7 continued operating smoothly, she could afford to let those questions remain unspoken.
For now.