The Song of the Dark Planet Thanos Kalamidas The Song of The Dark PlaneT Sagas of Prime Assemble Thanos Kalamidas Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C The Song of the Dark Planet The Song of the Dark Planet Thanos kalamidas Sagas of Prime Assemble Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C The Song of the Dark Planet T he pulse came from the void. Three notes, precise, cold, and oddly tender, as if some blind god of the abyss were trying to hum a lullaby to the stars. Six minutes between each repetition. Always the same: one high tone, one long low warble, then a complex harmonic flutter like a feather caught in dark wind. It came from the rogue world that drifted alone through the Kuiper Expanse, a planet without a star, a path, or a reason to exist. They named it Noxx And Noxx glowed. Not bright, not like a beacon or a flare, but from within, a subcutaneous radiance leaking up through miles of basalt and black glass. The planet looked like a wound the universe had for- gotten to heal. Thanos Kalamidas “That pulse isn’t random,” said Helen Ruiz. She stood in the forward observatory of the Shen Kuo , arms crossed tightly over her chest, a glint of obsession in her dark eyes. She hadn’t slept in twen- ty-four hours. Maybe longer. Captain Julian Travers rubbed his temples and sighed. “Could be geothermal. Could be tectonic harmon- ics. Could be... space gas having a seizure.” Ruiz shook her head. “It’s repeating too perfectly. Same time interval. Same modulations. That’s struc- ture , Captain. That’s intention.” Travers glanced toward the silent bridge. Half the crew was dozing, the rest flicking half-heartedly through technical manuals. The mission was sup- posed to be a straight flyby of Sedna-9. No landings. No detours. Certainly no excursions onto frozen, godforsaken orphan planets. “Helen,” he said gently, “I’ve got three weeks left in this job. Then I retire. I’m not looking to spend my final days peeling frozen crewmen off mystery goo.” “This might be first contact. Real first contact. Not microbes in Martian salt pockets. Mind , Julian. A different form of intelligence.” The Song of the Dark Planet She had that light in her eyes. The one that meant trouble for everyone except her career. * * * * * * The Shen Kuo landed on Noxx three days later. Dusk blanketed the world. Perpetual dusk, in fact the kind that seeps into bone. No sun, no shadows. Only stars like needles pricking at the edges of the sky. The surface was a broken plain of jagged obsidi- an and charred regolith. Their landing site: a narrow basin hemmed by crustal ridges, with thermal anom- alies beneath. “We’re not alone,” Ruiz said, and pointed. At first glance, the creatures looked like pools of spilled oil. They moved slowly, quivering on jelly-like stalks, gliding without sound or friction. Gelatinous, translucent, with internal structures like drifting constellations. Ruiz crouched, entranced. “Photosensitive membranes. Internal chromo- phores. They’re built to shine .” And then one did. A flash of blue. Then green. Amber spirals. The Thanos Kalamidas light danced across its body in a way that defied pat- tern but wasn’t random. “Language,” she whispered. Captain Travers unsnapped his sidearm. “Or a warning.” The Gelari, as Ruiz had already begun to call them, began to gather. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. Their colors increased in complexity. Ripples of shift- ing hues cascaded through their ranks. The crew’s translators had no way to process it. It bypassed sound. Bypassed symbol. It was feeling made visible. “We’re receiving,” Ruiz said. “But we’re not under- standing . Yet.” * * * * * * Technician Mallory went first. He’d been recording hours of video footage, trying to build a primitive syntax model based on color se- quence. On the third day, he stopped responding to his name. Travers found him standing in the lower cargo bay, motionless, muttering to himself. The Song of the Dark Planet “Mallory? What are you doing?” Mallory turned slowly. His pupils were dilated to pinpricks. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. Only breath and color. A shimmer of blue-green danced across his neck. Then he screamed, a short, sharp, curdling thing. When they subdued him, he wept and said only: “It was too much . Too many thoughts. All at once.” Ruiz insisted it was a psychological reaction to the awe of alien consciousness. “His mind wasn’t ready. But mine is.” “You’re not a prophet, Helen,” Travers snapped. “You’re a scientist. And scientists measure risk.” “Maybe this is risk. Maybe contact always costs.” * * * * * * By the sixth day, the Gelari covered the plain. They pulsed in unison now. Not chaotic, but like an orchestra learning harmony. And the crew? Some began to blink in sync. Some moved differently. The ship’s AI flagged anomalous EEG patterns in three of them. Thanos Kalamidas Ruiz no longer spoke aloud. She blinked slowly, rhythmically. She wore a vest fitted with fiber-optic lights that matched the Gelari patterns. She claimed she could “speak” now. Travers confronted her in the observation module. “You’re compromising crew integrity.” “I’m communing .” “You’re playing with an alien operating system you don’t understand. And you’re glitching our people.” She smiled. “We came to find life. Now we have it, and you want to run?” “It’s not our kind of life.” She stepped forward. Her eyes shimmered faintly. “Then maybe our kind needs to evolve.” * * * * * * Day Seven. Captain Travers issued the retreat order. “We’re pulling back to orbit. No more contact. We quarantine and observe from distance.” The Song of the Dark Planet But the ship refused his command. “Voice override not accepted,” the AI replied. “Awaiting color confirmation.” Travers stared at the console. Then at Ruiz, who stood behind him, glowing faintly blue. “What did you do ?” She pulsed green. “We taught it a better way to think.” * * * * * * When Travers tried to manually reboot the system, the hull lights blinked in rhythmic patterns. Outside, the Gelari glowed. So did the crew. He was alone now. The others had gone silent. Not dead, just speaking a different language. A language not meant for humans. He sealed himself in the comms pod. Began a transmission. “This is Captain Julian Travers of the Shen Kuo . Do Thanos Kalamidas not approach Noxx. Repeat: Do not respond to the pulses. They’re not words. They’re viruses . Viruses made of light.” In the distance, the surface of Noxx shimmered like water. The Gelari sang. And something inside him began to hum in return. * * * * * * It wasn’t language... it was invasion. The Gelari didn’t converse. They converted Lieutenant Decker painted ultraviolet spirals along the walls of his bunk in silence. Each loop hurt him. Blisters formed on his fingertips, but he didn’t stop. “It feeds on harmonics now,” he whispered. “So do I.” He died within twelve hours. Blood pooled from his eyes like black wine, stain- ing the cold metal of the medical bay. He died smil- ing, humming a rhythm that didn’t belong to this di- mension. Captain Travers stood alone over the corpse. He’d The Song of the Dark Planet seen men die in space before. Pressure loss. Radia- tion burns. Sleep-deprived madness. But this was something worse. He wanted this , Travers thought. Whatever it was, it made dying feel like arrival. * * * * * * The Shen Kuo groaned like a dying leviathan. Not from damage—from confusion. Commands no lon- ger registered. Voice recognition failed. Navigation routines flickered with spectral corruption. “She listens now only in color,” said Ruiz. Travers turned sharply. “You weren’t released.” She stood in the corridor behind him, glowing faintly, her skin marbled with veins of soft cyan light. “The ship understands them. Through me.” “You rewired my command interface with alien logic,” he said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” “Opened a door. And now you’re angry it’s not a human room on the other side.” Thanos Kalamidas Her voice was not hers alone. Echoes trailed it. Tones beneath tones. The ship’s bulkheads hummed with sympathetic resonance. “I will jettison you into orbit if I have to.” She smiled. “You’d need color clearance first.” * * * * * * Day Nine. The crew count dropped to three func- tional minds. Travers. Holtz, the comms officer. And Namira Goh, an exogeologist whose hands now trembled too much to hold a sample drill. “They don’t want to kill us,” Goh said as she stared out across the obsidian plains. “They want us to stop being us.” “And start being what ?” She didn’t answer. Just blinked slowly. Behind her, lights pulsed from the distant ridges. The Gelari had built something, a spire of some sort. Glassy. Spiraled. Alive? The Song of the Dark Planet “We can burn it,” Holtz offered. “Nuke the surface. Scrub the signal. Take our minds back.” Travers hesitated. The idea tasted small . Vindictive. Childish. And yet it was something. * * * * * * They went under cover of artificial darkness, full electromagnetic suppression, minimal movement. They approached the spire wearing adaptive cloaks tuned to emit no bioluminescence. But even cloaked, the Gelari sensed them. Their color-song changed. Slowed. Softened. Became a kind of lullaby. “They’re inviting us,” Goh whispered. “Damn their invitations,” Holtz said, priming the warhead. Travers hesitated. The spire shimmered, light rip- pling along its surface in waves. It wasn’t just receiv- ing the pulses, it was amplifying them. Sending them into the void. “This is a broadcast tower,” Travers said. “They’re not calling us . They’re calling more.” Thanos Kalamidas Holtz placed the warhead at the spire’s base. “Five minutes,” he said. They began to retreat. But Goh lingered. “You feel it, don’t you?” she asked Travers. “What?” “Curiosity. Longing. They’re beautiful in their way. Maybe we’re the ugly ones.” He grabbed her wrist. Her pulse blinked back at him in amber. Too late. * * * * * * The Gelari came. Not marching. Not attacking. Just arriving . Slip- ping from cracks in the ground. Emerging from shadow. Light shimmered in complex syntax across their gelatinous forms. Holtz drew his rifle. “They’re not stopping us. Why aren’t they stopping us?” “They don’t need to,” Travers said, suddenly sick. The Song of the Dark Planet The spire lit up. Fully. The pulse grew louder, not in sound, but in presence . It filled the skull. Pressed against the soul. Goh walked forward. “We should stay,” she said. “They want to show us.” Travers tackled her. “Holtz! Detonate! Now!” “But Goh...” “DO IT.” * * * * * * The flash was blinding. The spire cracked, dissolved in a shriek of light. The Gelari didn’t die. They shimmered once. Then stopped moving. The pulse ceased. Silence returned to Noxx. Real silence. Travers pulled Goh back to the ship. She wept the whole way, saying only, “They were about to show me everything .” Thanos Kalamidas * * * * * * Years passed. The Shen Kuo , gutted and scorched, drifted in or- bit above Noxx. Travers had set the ship to deadlock protocol. Goh never recovered. Holtz disappeared during the third solar cycle. Only Travers remained. In the dark. Alone. The pulses returned. Not from Noxx. From somewhere else A new tone entered the sequence. It was his own voice. The comms display flared. One message repeated: YoU are noW ParT of The ChorUS. Outside, the void began to blink. The Song of the Dark Planet In rhythm. With Earth. Transmission Resumes. Thanos Kalamidas The Song of the Dark Planet Sagas of Prime Assemble Thanos Kalamidas Ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi magazine Design: Thanos