Lost in the Void Thanos Kalamidas BooK iii oF The G.s. Kronos ChroniCles Lost in the Void Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C 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 Lost in the Void Lost in the Void Thanos Kalamidas Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Lost in the Void Trav, my son, Y ou were nine when you crawled beneath Deck Twelve and stuck a spoon in the mag-conduits because you thought you could ‘listen to the stars talk.’ That stunt knocked out aux- iliary power to hydroponics for an hour, and the let- tuce never forgave you. But I didn’t yell. You wanted to hear the universe. I respected that. Still do. You’re older now. Older than I ever got to be. By the time you open this, you’ll be wearing my patch and maybe even cursing my name for the sloppy work you think I left behind. You’ll see duct-taped cool- ant lines, rewired compressors running hotter than they should, fusion cores that purr when they should growl. And you’ll think, “Elias cut corners.” But son, let me tell you what they don’t put in the handbooks. This ship isn’t perfect. Hell, she wasn’t even ready when we left Earth. Thanos Kalamidas We fled a planet with lungs full of ash and oceans that boiled like blood. Politicians kept promising tomorrows that never came. So we made our own. Kronos was patched together from the bones of failed nations and forgotten dreams. She shouldn’t fly. But she does. Because of engineers like me. And now, be- cause of engineers like you. You’re not just inheriting a machine. You’re inher- iting the last will and testament of a species teetering on the edge of its own extinction. Kronos doesn’t just carry people, Trav. She carries us, the idea of what humanity could have been , if we had just looked up before we burned it all down. I’ve kept her alive through plasma fires, solar flares, reactor seizures, sabotage, madness, and a hundred other damn things that don’t make it into the daily logs. There was a time, during Year 113, when a fuel cell cascade almost tore a hole through Deck Six. I sealed it with a pressurized suit, a prayer, and a chunk of poly-alloy held in place with my bare hands. No one else ever knew. That’s the job. And someday, hell, maybe already you’ll wake to alarms screaming like dying gods. You’ll crawl through vents dripping coolant like blood. You’ll smell burnt silicon and know someone’s not coming Lost in the Void home. And the crew will look to you, not because you have answers, but because they need someone to pretend they do. That’s the weight. That’s the truth. You’ll lose people. Friends. Lovers. Pieces of your- self. And there will be nights, alone in the engine room, when the hum of the drives sounds too much like a heartbeat. And you’ll wonder, is it alive? Is she watch- ing me? Am I just a cog in her dream? Here’s my answer. Yes. Kronos is more than hull and fuel and fire. She re- members. She listens. The bulkheads whisper. The floors breathe. And if you treat her right, if you re- spect her like an old warrior with scars and stories, she’ll carry you through things no map can name. But mark my words, son There’s something out there. We caught its scent back in Year 47. A gravity dis- tortion that twisted nav-beacons into spirals. Stars Thanos Kalamidas that blinked out like snuffed candles. A phantom signal, faint, rhythmic, like a pulse, etched into the silence between frequencies. I thought it was inter- ference. But I felt it, deep in my bones. And now I think... we were never the only ones out here. We are not the apex. We are not the authors of space. We are guests. Uninvited. You may be the one to face that truth. Or your chil- dren. But it’s coming. And when it does, you’ll need to remember one thing: Hold the line. No matter the storm. No matter the odds. You keep the power on, the hull sealed, and the people breath- ing. You remind them what it means to be human when everything around them wants to make them forget. Don’t just be a mechanic. Be the heart. And if the day comes when the void calls our name, don’t fear it. Stand tall. With grease on your hands and fire in your gut. Because Kronos never ran from a storm. We are the storm. Now get to work, son. Lost in the Void I. “In the cold black of space, silence is not the absence of sound. It’s the presence of something waiting to be heard.” —Captain Evra, Ship’s Log, Entry 15014-A The Kronos sailed like a ghost. Her hull, old but loyal, cut through the dark sector with slow grace, engines running low to conserve fuel. The naviga- tional lights flickered in blues and soft golds, the only colour in an otherwise pitch void. No suns. No plan- ets. Just nothing. And that nothing was beginning to feel personal. Rina stood at her station on the bridge, eyes nar- rowed at the screen in front of her. “I’ve got... noth- ing. No stars, no markers, not even static.” Thanos Kalamidas “That’s not possible,” Drayk muttered beside her. “The stellar map’s supposed to kick in even blind- folded. We’re either in deep space or someone delet- ed the universe.” “Maybe it needed a reboot,” Rina said dryly. Captain Evra paced in silence, her boots echoing softly on the steel floor. Her face was carved with the kind of tired certainty you earn by surviving too many disasters and learning to hide the panic behind command. She finally stopped behind Rina. “Define nothing ,” Evra said. “No thermal, no gravitational lensing, no electro- magnetic scatter,” Rina answered, tension coiling in her tone. “There’s just... blank. It’s like we’re flying through a dead screen.” Evra turned to Bri, who sat at systems control. “Life support?” “Holding. Shields, power grid, bio-scan, all green. But...” Bri hesitated, frowning at her display. “There’s something... off with the graviton readings. They’re fluctuating. Small distortions.” Evra stepped closer. “Like interference?” Lost in the Void “No. Like... space is stretching. Not tearing, bend- ing.” Before Evra could answer, a tremor ran through the deck, subtle but unmistakable. A ripple, not a jolt. As though space had exhaled. * * * * * * * Engineering – Deck 3 Trav slammed open the hatch just as the low hum began to rise in pitch. “Talk to me,” he barked, sliding beneath the pri- mary plasma manifold. “Tell me this is a false alarm.” Sol, sweat already on his brow, barked back from the control terminal. “Stabilizers are being pulled in twelve directions at once. I’ve got magnetic flux in the port array, coolant pressure dipping. Either the laws of physics are drunk, or we just hit a kink in the universe.” A wrench clattered across the floor by itself. Trav grabbed the support struts as his stomach turned inside out. Gravity was shifting, subtle, but wrong. Tools floated a few centimetres before slam- ming back down. Thanos Kalamidas “Get the secondary field dampeners online!” “They are online!” Sol shouted. “It’s not the ship... it’s outside !” The power flickered. Once. Twice. Then the lights dimmed to emergency crimson. * * * * * * * Bridge – 15 seconds later The ship screamed An alarm shrieked from the bulkheads, one they hadn’t heard in generations. An old, analog klaxon, left in the system by Elias himself. It wasn’t digital. It wasn’t part of the automated error cascade. It was manual. Meant for one thing. Uncharted gravitational collapse. Bri’s voice cracked as she yelled over the sound. “Grav-field is destabilizing! There’s a mass anomaly forming directly ahead, like a singularity, but... it’s moving ! We’re being dragged!” Evra didn’t blink. “Full burn reverse.” Lost in the Void Jax, the helmsman, shook his head. “Engines al- ready compensating. It’s not helping.” Evra hit the ship-wide comm. “All decks: brace. Secure all personnel. This is not a drill. Prepare for spatial impact.” * * * * * * * Engineering – 30 seconds later Trav was halfway through sealing the primary coil when the bulkhead warped. Warped. The steel itself bent like soft plastic, the overhead lights stretching and contracting. “What the hell is happening, Sol?!” Sol didn’t answer. He just stared, wide-eyed, as the central engine housing began to breathe. Not metaphorically, literally. In. Out. A pulse. As if the ship’s heart had begun to beat with something else’s rhythm. Trav hit the intercom. “Bridge, this is Engineer- ing. We’ve got full-scale reality distortion down here. Something is rewriting the rules.” Then it hit. Thanos Kalamidas A pull, so immense it knocked Trav sideways. Sparks exploded from the conduits as the ship groaned like a dying god. The deck beneath their feet cracked with sound and vibration. * * * * * * * Bridge – Simultaneous Jax fought the controls, veins bulging in his neck. “We’re in free-fall. Everything’s shifting!” “We’re in a vacuum!” Rina yelled. “Not just space. Not absence of matter. Absence of physics. We’re be- ing dragged into a hole where the rules don’t apply!” The screens blinked into static. Then darkness. Every panel went dead. The hum... returned. Louder now. Not electrical. Not mechanical. Organic. Pulsing through the hull. The crew froze. Lost in the Void Bri whispered, “Is that... the ship?” Evra’s voice came like flint against steel. “No. That’s not the ship.” Outside the viewport there was nothing . No stars. No light. Only black. Smooth, rippling black. Like oil across glass. Then slowly, movement In the far distance. Barely visible against the void. Shapes. Ships. Hundreds. Frozen. Dead. Hanging in the black like relics of a forgotten war. Some were alien. Spindly. Some human-built, Earth-marked. Others... unrecognizable. None of them moved. Rina, face pale, whispered: “Grav-scans show no heat. No power. They’re corpses. A graveyard.” Evra stepped forward, staring. Thanos Kalamidas “This isn’t space,” Lara said behind her. “Not like we know it.” “What is it, then?” Bri asked. Lara’s face was drained of colour. “A pocket reality. An inverted gravitational fold. Or... a trap.” Jax, staring at the drifting hulks, muttered, “Then we’re not the first to fall in.” Evra’s hands clenched behind her back. “We’ll be the first to crawl out. ” Lost in the Void II. “In the silence of death, there’s still something that whispers. Memory, or warning. Either way... you listen.” —Dr. Kelso, Personal Log Exterior – The Void Kronos drifted like a dream that had gone too far. All propulsion was offline. By choice. The stars were still absent, devoured by the pocket of reality Kronos now occupied. Around them, the graveyard remained, ships suspended in the abyss like bones in black jelly. Each one a question with no answer. * * * * * * * Thanos Kalamidas Bridge – Day Two “We should send a team,” Captain Evra said flat- ly, arms crossed, eyes locked on the forward screen. “We can’t sit in silence forever.” “No,” Lara replied. She was pale, her tone cold- er than usual. “We shouldn’t be here. We definitely shouldn’t go deeper.” “You think we’ll survive by pretending we’re not here?” Evra snapped. “We’re low on fuel. Supplies are rationed. There might be something out there, tech, data, survivors.” “Or pathogens. Or psychic contagion. Or worse: ideas.” Lara’s voice dropped. “Sometimes the most dangerous thing a dead civilization leaves behind is a question.” Rina broke the silence. “Scanners picked one wreck with partial power cells. Still holding structure. No visible hull breaches. Human configuration, design pattern pre-Earth Exodus.” Evra nodded. “That’s our target.” Drayk squinted at the readings. “It’s... old . 300 years minimum. I don’t know how it’s still intact.” Lost in the Void “Something’s preserving the wrecks,” Bri muttered. “A time dilation field? Spatial stasis?” “Great,” Sol said, appearing from the lift. “So we’re planning to board a haunted derelict floating in pocket-time while physics does backflips around us. What could go wrong?” Evra met his gaze. “That’s why you’re going, too.” * * * * * * * Docking Bay – Two Hours Later The shuttle was small, Ariadne -class. Meant for short-range recon. Trav ran pre-flight while Sol checked the containment seals. “I don’t like this,” Sol muttered. “The way the hulls don’t move. It’s like they’re not dead... just waiting.” “Then we knock quietly,” Trav said, snapping a magnetic clamp shut. Ryn joined them, armoured up. She tossed Trav his helmet. “You’re the one who said we had to stop play- ing defence. Your words: ‘Hope can’t run on fumes.’” Trav sighed, smirking. “Don’t quote me when I’m trying to be careful.” Thanos Kalamidas “You weren’t built for careful,” she grinned. Evra stood at the docking ramp as the shuttle hissed open. “Objective: data recovery. Secondary objective: salvage. You find anything that pulses, glows, whis- pers, or hums your name, leave it alone.” “Got it,” Trav replied. “If it tries to hug me, I shoot it.” “Good boy.” * * * * * * * Derelict Ship – “Eidolon” – 3 klicks from Kronos The wreck loomed, angular and silent, its name barely legible on the bow: EIDOLON . Its exterior was scarred but sealed. No bodies. No damage suggesting external attack. The shuttle latched onto a side hatch. Ryn popped the lock. The door hissed then opened. Inside, the dark breathed. They moved through tight corridors lit only by hel- met lights. Walls were lined with frost, panels half-lit. The air was cold, oxygen traceable but stale. Old.