Void Protocol: Beyond the Screen
Void Crew Chapter One
Part One: Into the Deep
Grant sat in the middle of his ship’s bridge—the banana ship as they’d taken to calling it—looking down at his hands on the console, which was lit with all sorts of indicators he didn’t recognize. On the viewscreen outside there was only the violet smear that marked the Void Tunnel ahead.
“Captain’s chair is in the middle,” Grant said aloud. “Symmetrical on left and right. One floor. Pretty basic.”
“Meta preserve us all,” Mitch said behind him, sounding a little like he’d just eaten some bad sushi or something. All of them were a little like that—they all felt weird, being inside the game instead of outside it, not having to look through their screens but looking out instead.
The ship itself was kind of odd too. It wasn’t broken or anything, but it felt new. Like when you bought your first car and didn’t know yet where the blindspots were. Grant’s hands went to the helm controls as he tried to remember how all that worked: Z dip, C strafe, charge up the void drive—he could almost feel himself saying those words like a mantra.
“Rob, are you a gunner also?” Evan asked over the comm. “Are you sitting down?”
“Do what? Launch time. Sit, don’t mind if I do.”
“Rob, are you a gunner as well?” Evan tried again.
“Uh—” Rob’s voice sounded confused on the other end of the ship—he’d probably been in the gunner’s area. “I don’t know. Do what?”
Grant let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. This was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos. Five friends who had spent countless nights running dungeons and raids together, now suddenly responsible for an actual spaceship hurtling through a dimension that existed somewhere between the fabric of reality and a video game developer’s fever dream.
“Everyone seated?” Grant asked aloud. That was kind of important—he’d read somewhere on one of those loading screen tips that if you weren’t sitting when the tunnel locked in, you got injured or died, which sounded dumb and made no sense but he figured better safe than sorry.
“I’m seated,” Evan reported back.
“Seated.”
“Seated.”
Bigdog — Rob, Grant corrected himself, Rob — didn’t respond. Instead, a sound came over the comm that was unmistakably the clatter of someone mashing buttons on a controller they no longer held.
“Rob?” Grant asked carefully, even though it seemed pointless. “Where are you right now?”
“I’m shooting the gun,” Rob said in his confused voice. “And then… I don’t know. I thought we had to jump down before he jumped again.”
“We need everyone seated for a void jump,” Trey explained patiently like he was talking to a child. “When we jump, everyone has to be sitting.”
“What happens if you’re not?” Mitch asked.
“You get injured or die.” Rob’s voice was flat and unemotional.
There were some sounds of scrambling and cursing and then—finally—a chorus of people saying they were seated now.
Grant gripped the helm. “All right, boys, here we go.”
The void jump wasn’t at all like it had been in the game. In the game there was a loading screen; you’d see where you wanted to go and hit enter, and then three seconds later—poof!—you were there. But this… This was different. The ship seemed to shudder as reality folded into itself and Grant’s stomach tried to crawl out of his throat while the Void Tunnel swallowed them up like a whale eating plankton.
“Void tunnel stability one hundred percent,” the voice came from somewhere in the ship—it wasn’t even really an AI, but it was what they called it. “We have locked onto the beam.”
“Slipping through the void,” Grant whispered, and the words felt strange in his mouth. This was no longer a game. The HUD glowing before him, the tactical display showing threat vectors and power levels — these were real now. The hollow fighters that had been distant specks on the scanner were real. The progenitor facility they were headed toward was real.
And the oxygen depleting in their suits during EVA? That was very, very real.
Part Two: Progenitor Wreck
The facility—well it looked like some kind of wrecked creature—and there was no way he could ever describe what it really looked like because the architecture didn’t seem to belong to either humans or hollows; it predated them. The progenitors were supposed to be their predecessors, Grant remembered reading in one of those game loading screen tips when he’d had time to read anything that wasn’t a manual for his controllers.
The progenitors—or whoever built this facility and made the hollows—had been granted immortality by the universe’s greatest gift: metempsychosis. Souls could be transferred between bodies, which meant you never died but instead just moved on. The Garden had made it possible to do that; somehow they’d figured out how to make souls work through machines.
And then the hollows came along and…
It was a wrecked facility. Its power cells were dead; its data was still there to download after centuries of being offline. It was supposed to be a simple mission: fix up the maintenance systems, get some power going back in there so they could download the data. The reality was probably going to be anything but.
“All right,” Rob’s voice came over the comm as he maneuvered himself through the facility—he’d already been inside it while Grant had been on the ship and seemed to have found his way around pretty well. “I opened that up, and if you see any items in here or whatever throw them outside and then Grant can come by and get them.”
Grant maneuvered the ship closer to the facility’s docking bay, his hands moving across the helm with increasing confidence. The banana ship responded well, better than he’d expected given its ridiculous nickname and even more ridiculous paint job. Meta preserve us all, he thought, and the irony of the prayer wasn’t lost on him. If there was a Meta, if there was some greater force watching over them, they were doing a hell of a job.
“Mitch, I’m going to need you to reload the gun,” Trey said as he started working on the ship’s systems from his seat in front—the engineer was starting to get into things pretty well. “And we’re going to have to fabricate some ammo.”
“Fabricate ammo?” Mitch replied. “Where does it show how many shots I got?”
“It’s right there,” Grant offered, though he wasn’t entirely certain himself. “I’m going to watch some of your screen because I don’t even know what you usually do on this stuff. I don’t usually do this.”
“True,” Evan said with a laugh, but not a very happy one; the kind that came from knowing you were about to go into an extremely dangerous situation and there wasn’t anything you could do about it.
The facility was full of corridors and maintenance shafts and Rob had already navigated through all of it once while Grant stayed on the ship—but this wasn’t a game. The shadows were deeper, the silence more profound; when he heard Rob’s voice over the comm again it sounded different than normal.
“Rob, if you see any items or anything,” Evan said again, this time sounding professional and practical instead of concerned like he had been before, “just throw them outside and Grant can come by and get them.”
But it wasn’t that easy. The hollow fighters were the first thing they encountered—a swarm of them coming out of a void rift that opened up right in front of them with an audible sound as reality tore itself open. Grant’s fingers flew across the helm controls before his brain even knew what was happening and he banked hard to port, trying to get himself into position so he could keep those fighters under weapons arc.
“Dipping down,” Grant said aloud; it wasn’t like he needed a navigator but it was kind of reassuring to say something. The banana ship dropped beneath the formation of hollow fighters with surprising grace for such a bulky-looking vehicle that didn’t even have any visible weapons on its hull. “Rob, when you get in there and see what’s in here let me know because I’ll jump out.”
“Roger,” Rob said from inside the facility—his voice still sounded calm and professional like he’d been doing this all his life.
The fight was chaotic, disorganized, exactly what you’d expect from five people who’d never actually crewed a spaceship together. Mitch fired wildly, his shots going wide more often than not. Trey kept the shields up, his engineer’s instincts kicking in as he allocated power where it was needed most. Evan provided covering fire from the gunner station, his laser carving bright lines through the void as he tried to keep the hollow fighters from swarming their position.
“Easy,” Grant said aloud. “Just one EVA. We just have to shoot shit.”
But the facility was proving more difficult than anticipated. Rob had found the power cells, but getting them back to the ship required navigating a maze of corridors that seemed to shift and change with each passing moment. And then there was the oxygen problem.
“I’m low on oxygen,” Evan said, his voice tight. “Do I need to run home?”
Rob’s response was immediate: “Oh, well, yeah, you might.”
In the game, oxygen depletion was just a progress bar. Here, it was something else entirely. Here, it meant drowning in your own helmet while your friends watched helplessly through a screen they could no longer touch.
And then, a moment later: “This area that Evan has trapped me in, there’s nothing in there, so that’s great.”
Grant felt his heart rate spike. He could see Evan’s vitals on the ship’s display — oxygen at 44%, then 20%, then 5%. The EVA suit’s HUD was probably screaming warnings at him, red lights flashing, alarms blaring in that helmet that suddenly felt less like equipment and more like a coffin.
“I’m at 2%,” Evan’s voice cracked. “I’m coming. We’re going to be fine.”
But he wasn’t fine. His oxygen hit 0%, and for one terrible moment, Grant thought they were going to lose him. The ship’s sensors showed Evan’s life signs flatlining, the familiar game mechanic of oxygen depletion translated into something terrifyingly real.
And then, somehow, impossibly, Evan’s vitals flickered back to life.
“We’re fine,” Rob said. “Oh, you’re fine. I’ve got 44%, so… I’m all right.”
Grant didn’t ask how it had happened. Maybe it was the game’s mechanics, some residual mercy from the developers who’d never intended for players to actually suffocate. Maybe it was something else, some unknown factor that had saved Evan’s life in that moment. Whatever it was, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“I was literally at zero,” Evan said still sounding shaken. “That was…”
“I know.” Grant replied. “I know.”
Part Three: The Download
The data download took forever—the facility’s systems were old and corrupted by years of neglect and Trey had to do a lot of things that looked like engineering miracles just to get the power running back through where it needed to go, but at least they did have time for it since the hollow forces kept coming after them in waves. It was a fight with fighters first—and then bombers and snipers as well.
“Hollow sniper to our three o’clock,” Mitch said over the comm, his voice tight.
“I see him,” Grant replied, banking hard to bring the ship around. The sniper was far out of effective weapons range, a tiny speck on the viewscreen that somehow managed to be the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen. In the game, snipers were annoying — a nuisance, mostly, more of a distraction than a genuine threat. But here, watching that distant glint of hostile fire arc toward them with deadly precision, Grant understood why the game had warned players to prioritize snipers above all other targets.
“God he’s out of range,” Mitch groaned; his shots were going wide most of the time and it wasn’t working well. “I can’t hit him.”
“I’ve got him.” Evan said, using the gunner station to keep targeting systems locked onto him even though they couldn’t actually see them on the screen very well at all. “Got him. Got him.”
But there were always more. The hollow forces seemed endless, pouring through void rifts that opened and closed with maddening unpredictability. Grant found himself weaving through dogfights that felt more like dances than battles, the banana ship moving beneath him like an extension of his own body. Or maybe it was the other way around — he was becoming an extension of the ship, his consciousness merging with its systems in ways that should have been impossible.
“Void drive’s not charged,” Trey said, sounding confused. “Someone charge the void?”
“I’m trying to weave right now.” Grant replied; he didn’t know what that meant but it sounded important.
“Oh, you’re good,” Mitch said, and there was something in his voice that Grant hadn’t heard before — respect. Real respect, earned through shared struggle rather than idle chatter.
The data finally downloaded. The facility’s core pulsed once, twice, three times, and then a cascade of information poured into the banana ship’s systems — schematics, star maps, something that looked suspiciously like a weapon design. Grant didn’t have time to examine it; the hollow forces were closing in, their destroyers and bombers converging on their position with the kind of determination that suggested they weren’t going to take no for an answer.
“We got it,” Grant said aloud because he didn’t know what else to say; the data had been downloaded and they weren’t dead yet either way. “We got it. All right we’re about to jump. We’re jumping.”
“Woo!” Mitch yelled, sounding like a man who had finally found relief after suffering for hours. “We got it!”
“New gun,” Grant said, half to himself, half to the universe at large. “We’re about to get a new gun.”
Part Four: The Upgrade
The base was a station of sorts, floating in the void like a tumbleweed that had somehow found its way into space. It was bare-bones — fabrication stations, a few storage crates, and not much else — but to Grant, it felt like paradise. They were alive. They’d completed the mission. And now they had loot.
“Nano alloy,” Trey said as he went through the materials Rob had scavenged from the facility. “We can take this over to fabricator put in there recycle it.”
“It’s just currency, I guess,” Mitch added, though his tone suggested he was still processing everything that had happened.
Grant moved around inside the base’s systems with a growing sense of confidence, his fingers finding buttons and levers as he started getting familiar with how everything worked. The banana ship was sitting on its docking bay; there were scrapes across it from all sorts of things hitting it during battle but nothing major. They’d gotten lucky—maybe more than that, Grant thought.
“Which gun do you want?” Mitch asked over the comm while looking at various schematics for what they could put onto their ship now that they had loot and materials to work with; he was still sitting in his seat behind the guns which Grant hadn’t been able to see before but didn’t know how else they’d have gotten into it. “I think what’s available is level one carronade or cannon.”
“A cannon is like a light gun,” Grant offered, recalling the weapon specs from the game. “And a carronade is a heavy gun.”
“Let’s put a carronade on,” Mitch said finally. “See what that’s like.”
Grant agreed, and soon the banana ship had a new weapon mounted on its rear wing — a massive, brutal-looking piece of hardware that looked like it could tear a hollow fighter apart with a single shot. It was joined by something even more valuable: a kinetic point defense system.
“Ooh, kinetic point defense,” Grant said aloud as he read what the systems description was on it. “Destroys incoming missiles and proximity mines. That may not be bad.”
“That’d probably be smart to put up front though.” Trey replied. “Do we have a blank spot in our front?”
“We do have a blank spot.” Grant confirmed. “We want defense on front.”
It took hours—longer than it should have taken because they were installing new weapons and stuff but this wasn’t a game anymore so it was actually having to install the hardware, reroute power systems around, recalibrate targeting sensors; Trey had taught him all of that step by step as he’d gone through how to do it.
“It’ll just make it easier,” Trey said, referring to the defense system’s automated targeting. “I can turn them on and off if I need to. Because if we don’t have anything that’s kinetic, we’ll just leave it off.”
“Got it,” Grant replied; he finally understood what that meant. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also said the other one is directional so maybe the other one’s just kind of automatic.”
They finished the upgrades just as the base’s proximity alarms started going off—hollow fighters were coming up and not just a few but more like dozens this time. Mitch was sitting in his seat behind Grant; they all had their hands on things now and it felt normal.
“Everyone seated?” Grant asked aloud even though he knew the answer to that one.
“Seated.”
“Seated.”
“Seated.”
Grant powered up the helm controls—the banana ship’s engines whining as he did so. The void jump signature was starting to form already, that familiar swirling mass of impossible colors and shapes that would carry them away from this battlefield and back to wherever they were going next.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” Grant said aloud.
And then they were gone, slipping through the void like ghosts in a haunted house with nothing behind them except hollow fighter wrecks and memories of a battle they’d won somehow by luck alone.
Part Five: The Storm
The second mission was supposed to be easier. An escort mission—protect a freighter while it went from one place to another; deal with some hollow fighters along the way and collect rewards at the end. Grant had read the mission briefing before starting this session, noting that the difficulty level was labeled as “normal” so he figured it would be good for letting the crew rest up after their first experience of actually doing something in this strange new world.
He was wrong.
“Electric storm,” Trey said into the comm. “Incoming.”
Grant saw on his sensors a moment before it hit; massive electrical discharge rolling through space like waves across water. The banana ship shuddered as the first tendrils of the storm reached them and electrical arcs ran across its hull while systems started failing.
“Shields are failing,” Mitch yelled—he was in the gunner’s position now since they had all moved around a bit from their initial positions but he’d been behind Grant so far. “I’m getting hit hard!”
“Shields at sixty percent.” Trey reported—his voice sounded strained, as though he were concentrating very hard on something else and having to remember to answer back over the comm. “I need to reroute power but—”
The storm hit in earnest and for a few seconds there was nothing left except noise and lights and Grant’s own internal struggle to survive; his hands worked at the helm controls, wrestling with the banana ship through turbulence that seemed endless while he fought against it as if by instinct alone. Somewhere behind him, someone was screaming — not in pain, but in sheer, unfiltered terror
“Trey.” Grant shouted over the chaos. “Can you fix this?”
“I can try.” Trey replied; his voice was almost too faint to hear over whatever else he had going on inside his head, what with fighting a storm and working on repair systems and stuff. “Normally you wouldn’t be able to go out during this though; they’d damage you. But I can because of my class.”
“You’re going EVA?” Grant could hardly believe it was happening—he knew about the player classes now but he hadn’t thought anyone would actually want to do that in a situation like this. “In the middle of an electric storm?”
“I have to.” Trey said in response; there was something grim and determined in his voice that Grant had never heard before. “The hull’s breached and I need to seal it or we’re all going to die.”
Grant didn’t argue with him since he couldn’t anyway—the banana ship had started tumbling from the storm’s electromagnetic currents, spinning out of control; he put everything the helm controls could give into a hard turn trying to keep Trey safe while listening as the engineering bay’s airlock hissed open behind him.
“Point defense.” Mitch said with something like awe in his voice. “Oh you can repair us while we’re jumping? So fancy.”
“I’m going to take a little bit of damage,” Trey replied; his voice was strained as he worked on repairing systems outside the ship where even the suit’s protective systems were barely holding up against the storm. “Not—”
The sentence cut off with an electrical surge that ran across the hull and made Grant feel like something inside the ship broke under the stress; the helm flickered out of existence for a moment before coming back on again.
“Shields at forty percent.” Mitch reported. “Trey, we need more power to shields!”
“I’m working on it,” Trey’s voice was almost a growl now as he worked with all sorts of repair systems inside the ship. “Just give me a second.”
The next few minutes were by far the longest Grant had ever experienced and somehow he kept the banana ship steady while he fought against an instinctual terror that wanted him to scream at the top of his lungs; Mitch and Evan gave covering fire from their guns as more hollow fighters emerged out of the storm. And Trey… Trey repaired systems with a skill that looked like it came from thousands upon thousands of hours of experience, far beyond anything that could have come through just playing a game.
“Shields back up,” Trey finally said; Grant heard some relief in his voice. “Hull breach sealed. We’re clear.”
Grant let out breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding onto. “Good job everyone, let’s get the hell out of here.”
But the storm had scattered them and they were now off course from where they needed to go; the void jump signature was all wrong as navigation systems kept screaming errors that Grant didn’t understand. And somewhere in the distance the hollow forces still remained.
“We’ve got fighters coming,” Evan said over the comm—his voice sounded almost normal again, calm and professional like he hadn’t just been fighting a storm while his entire team fought for their lives to survive it. “Heavy fighters.”
“Then let’s fight,” Mitch replied, and there was a note of grim satisfaction in his voice that Grant recognized — the sound of someone who’d found their footing in the midst of chaos, who had stopped being afraid and started being dangerous.
The battle that followed wasn’t like anything they’d experienced before. The hollow forces came at them in waves—fighters, bombers, snipers and destroyers; all of them getting deadlier the more of them there were. Grant wove the banana ship through it with a grace that surprised even himself since he hadn’t realized until now how much of this was instinctual instead of something he had to think about or concentrate on; Mitch and Evan worked as a team, their gunner stations carving lines across empty space while they systematically destroyed enemy formations. Trey kept the ship together as well by working hard with engineering systems that did everything from repairing hull breaches to rerouting power.
“Suck it fighters!” Mitch shouted over the comm while his guns found targets. “Suck it!”
“Got heavy fighter at our four o’clock, bitch,” Evan added and Grant could hear a grin in his voice.
But the snipers were the worst of them all; they stayed back out of effective weapons range and destroyed systems one by one with laser sight that seemed to come from nowhere. Grant found himself having to weave constantly while he tried to keep the banana ship away from their targeting solutions but still get close enough for his team members’ guns to work effectively.
“God he’s out of range.” Mitch groaned at one point. “I can’t even hit him.”
“I’ve got him,” Evan replied and then a moment later the sniper went quiet.
And there were always more, coming in waves until finally a hollow destroyer emerged from behind all those other forces; its massive hull blocking off the stars as it came towards them with terrifying purpose.
“Hollow destroyer.” Grant said aloud—he didn’t know what else to say. “Everyone fire on it.”
The battle that followed was brutal, desperate, and somehow — somehow — they won. The destroyer’s hull fractured under the combined assault of their weapons, its systems cascading into failure as the banana ship’s rounds found purchase in its critical systems. It listed, spun, and finally exploded in a cascade of light that briefly outshone the stars themselves.
“Nice shooting,” Grant breathed, not quite believing it.
“Good job, everyone,” Mitch added, and the pride in his voice was unmistakable.
They gathered their loot next; crates and containers had been scattered by the storm and they were able to scoop up a lot of resources while Rob provided covering fire from behind as he sat in the gunner’s chair.
“There’s a minigun right there,” Rob said, pointing out one crate which still looked untouched. “That might be actually worth scooping up.”
“Just throw it at it,” Mitch suggested, and despite everything, Grant found himself laughing.
The void jump back to base was uneventful, which was exactly what they needed. Grant sat in the captain’s chair, his hands still trembling from the adrenaline, and let himself process everything that had happened. They’d survived. Not just survived, but won — two missions completed, new weapons installed, valuable resources gathered. It was more than anyone had a right to expect from their first real foray into this strange new world.
“So,” Grant said finally, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over the crew. “What do we do now?”
“Now?” Mitch’s voice was light, almost playful. “We upgrade our stuff, obviously. And then we find out what else this galaxy has in store for us.”
“Sounds good.” Grant replied; it was the first time since they’d been brought into this world that he actually meant it.
The banana ship hummed beneath him, its systems operating at peak efficiency, its crew more coordinated than they’d ever been. Outside, the void stretched out before them, full of mysteries and dangers and opportunities beyond imagining.
They were ready.
Chapter 2
Void Crew Chapter Two
Part One The Loadout Problem
The banana ship’s crew huddled around the fabricator station, looking over schematics and gun plans on their screens. Outside was the void; inside, five friends trying to figure out how to load their guns.
“I’m telling you, if we have all of our automatics turned on, we’ll have one gun we can use,” Mitch said from his position by the fabricator console. “One.” He looked like a man who had learned that lesson too many times already. “Just one.”
Grant nodded, rubbing his hands after being thrown across the room again in their last void jump. The sensation of space folding around you when it happens— your stomach wants to leave your body and take a vacation while everything outside your ship is rearranged— was always weird.
“We’ll just pull out light caliber from whatever’s automatic and put that into our minigun,” he said, going through the modification menu already. “I’d rather be able to fire something.”
Evan perked up when Grant mentioned the word ‘minigun’. It always got his attention. “Oh, a minigun? Ooh, baby.” He rubbed his hands together like a man about to feast. “You point me where to shoot. You tell me what I’m shooting at.”
Grant smiled; it was hard not to smile sometimes when you were friends with Evan. Just give him something that looks like fun and he would be happy.
From the engineering bay, Trey laughed. He had his hands in a conduit of some kind, re-routing cables through the ship’s power grid. “Because we can only have three of the guns on,” he said without looking up. “That’s about all we could do. And then the energy ones are better against shields and the kinetic ones are good for— you know— once the shields are down.”
“I see,” Mitch said, still skeptical. “Magic.”
It was a decent system, Grant had to admit; energy weapons tore through shields like paper, but once they were down, kinetic weaponry delivered massive damage with sheer projectile velocity. The problem was that the banana ship’s power systems weren’t infinite and running all the automatics would make you have guns you couldn’t fire.
They argued for another ten minutes before finally deciding on a loadout, their voices overlapping each other in familiar patterns like only friends who knew too much about one another could. Rob made grunts of agreement as he sat at gunnery station; he looked half asleep already.
“Does it matter which side we put the thread out?” Grant asked, indicating the banana ship’s asymmetry. “I mean I don’t know if you get hurt if I jump into void with someone not sitting down.”
“We’re not sure,” Trey said from engineering. “It could be nothing or anything; best to not find out.”
Rob jolted awake as if he had been asleep. “Wait, what? Oh, right— need to sit down. Sorry.”
The thing was this whole situation they found themselves in was something none of them knew how to do. They’d never crewed a spaceship before; it didn’t matter if it was virtual or real, they just hadn’t done it and the game seemed simple enough when you were clicking buttons on your screen and watching sprites move around and shoot pixelated enemies at each other. Now? Now every button press mattered, everything had to be coordinated and the line between “game over” and “actually dead” had become terrifyingly thin.
“All right,” Grant said as he sat in the pilot’s seat and looked out through the console display that lit up under his touch. “Everyone seated?”
He got affirmations from everyone and felt that familiar flutter of anxiety before void jumps; the violet smear of a tunnel forming on the screen and thinking— again, not for the first time— how amazing it was that something so dangerous could be so exhilarating.
“Here we go,” he murmured, pulling the lever.
Part Two The Conduit
The void tunnel swallowed them whole and Grant felt his consciousness stretch across impossibly long distances as the ship shuddered around him. Space folded in on itself in ways human minds weren’t designed to comprehend but he held onto the helm and when they exited into normal space, he found exactly what he’d been hoping to avoid..
“There are baddies already,” he said, which was always his way of saying we’re about to have a fight. “All right, there’s a conduit 1.8 kilometers ahead.”
“Holy shit, so many of them,” Evan breathed from the gunnery station. The tactical display showed at least a dozen enemy signatures converging on their position, red dots against the blackness of space.
The hollow fighters emerged from the conduit like wasps from a nest and swarmed around the banana ship; they had argent hulls that glowed in the light of distant stars as they moved with perfect synchrony, each one seemingly controlled by a central intelligence. Grant’s fingers flew over his helm console and he banked hard to port as the ship responded beautifully— it handled like a dream for something its size and shape should be able to do.
“Dipping down,” he said aloud, because that seemed to work best; the ship dropped in altitude and Grant realized with surprise how well it handled. They’d upgraded the engines after the storm last mission and he was glad they had spent so much on them now.
“Rob, you can probably man a gun right now if you want,” Trey said from engineering as he worked power distribution. “We need all of our guns.”
But Rob shook his head without looking up at him; he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping for quite some time. “Fighters are way far away, right? I’m almost out of battery.”
“We’re running low on power,” Mitch agreed from gunnery station as the guns powered up with a soft whine. “I’ve got about three minutes of heavy fire left in me.”
Grant grimaced; that was another problem with the banana ship— they could run their weapons hot but their systems had a very limited amount of sustained output and the fabricator would make more cells, just slower than what you needed at battle time.
“All right, coming up to this one,” Grant said as he brought the ship around to engage the first hollow fighter. “Let’s stop these guys real close.”
The ensuing fight was a whirlwind of chaos; hollow fighters swarmed around them like metal clouds and their weapons tore through the banana ship’s shields with impunity. Evan and Mitch laid down covering fire from gunnery station and tracers cut bright lines across space as Trey worked feverishly on power distribution, rerouting it to keep their shields up.
“Summoner on our three,” Grant said without looking at the tactical display; he knew by shape alone when a summoner was coming. Summoners were bad news; they could call in reinforcements from anywhere in system with a single command.
“I got him,” Mitch replied and his shots found home. The summoner exploded into sparks and debris, its signal gone.
“Nice job,” Grant said as he fought the ship to engage one of their pursuers. “All right— now we’re in conduit. Everyone hold on.”
The void conduits were tunnels of folded space that shimmered with energy and made sensors twitch; Grant held tight to his helm as the ship dove into the mass, all sense of direction gone.
They exited into a killing field.
“Hollow sniper at our six,” Evan called out over the comm, his voice strained.
“Got Sniper,” Mitch said and moments later the sniper vessel exploded in a cascade of fire and debris.
But there were more coming— always more. The hollow forces seemed endless as they swarmed around the system; Grant wove through them with desperate skill, his instincts guiding him through maneuvers he didn’t know how to execute.
“Now purge the infestation,” he said grimly. “Thought you’d never ask,” Evan replied and even in that moment, he managed a smile.
“Proximity mines!” Trey warned as the sensors picked up their deadly signatures.
“Ahh!” The ship lurched and Grant felt it shudder as one detonated against its shields; he pulled the vessel into a hard roll trying to shake off any remaining ones before they could do more damage.
“I can’t hit them,” Mitch groaned. “They’re too close.”
“Turn your gun off if you do,” Evan suggested. “Or else you’ll just keep setting them all off.”
“Good call,” Mitch agreed and his guns powered down; the remaining mines passed harmlessly by as the banana ship burned clear of their field.
They pushed through hollow fighters, bombers, destroyers— Rob scavenged from destroyed ships when he could, his EVA suit glowing as he moved across the debris. Evan laid down covering fire from behind with his minigun, its sound constant as it chewed through ammunition at an alarming rate.
“I’m out of light ammo for my minigun,” Evan reported grimly.
“I’ll orbit these crates,” Grant said, bringing the ship around to give Rob access; he could go pick up more supplies. “Someone shoot this crate right in front of me.”
Rob’s response was affirmative and moments later it exploded into pieces as his shots hit it; Grant engaged the scoop system and began pulling materials and supplies from space.
“All right, we’re ready for a scoop,” he said with satisfaction but noticed that Rob wasn’t responding to him. The EVA suit battery readout was flashing red— he was running low on power.
“Rob, you need to get back in here,” Evan said as the same data appeared across his console; it was obvious they were both concerned about their friend’s well-being. “You’re almost out of battery.”
“Yeah, I’m almost out of battery,” Rob confirmed, his voice sounding tired and distant over the comm.
Grant felt a twist of unease in his gut, but there was nothing for it — they had to finish the mission, and Rob had to survive to finish it with them. “No, get back in here,” he said. “Let’s wrap this up.”
They pushed through their remaining foes in a coordinated fashion, having gained some skill from fighting earlier; Grant found himself moving along with his crew, anticipating their moves and covering for them as needed. Trey kept the ship together with engineering brilliance that had him rerouting power on the fly to keep systems up; Mitch and Evan worked well together as gunnery specialists, each complementing one another’s weapons.
“Void conduit,” Grant said as it appeared on his sensors. “Let’s go home.”
Part Three: The Matriarch
The base station was a welcome sight after their mission; its familiar bulk floating in space while they brought the banana ship back into its docking bay with a sigh of relief, feeling the tension leave him as the engines powered down.
“We did it,” Mitch said, his voice sounding stunned. “We actually did it.”
“First things first,” Trey said, already moving toward the fabricator. “We need to upgrade our power situation. We’re running way too hot.”
Grant nodded and pulled up the ship’s status on his console; the banana ship was a mess of minor damage and systems down— more than he’d realized. “We have major hull breaches,” he reported. “I mean, our paint got scuffed but we also have structural problems.”
“We only need four alloy to fix it,” Trey said as he began deconstructing unneeded equipment. “Let me see what I can recycle.”
The next hour was a symphony of fabrication and modification; they took apart the heavy caliber guns they hadn’t used, converting them into useful materials while Grant watched with awe as Trey worked his engineering magic, turning scrap and salvage into usable upgrades.
“I’m going to recycle this heavy caliber stuff because we haven’t used it,” Grant said as he fed unused weapons into the fabricator. “Not getting any war flashbacks right now.”
“Good,” Trey replied without looking up from what he was working on. “Save those for later.”
The upgrades took shape— a new power generator to replace their overtaxed system, an arc shield to add another layer of defense and modifications made to the existing guns that increased their effectiveness; Grant felt the ship respond differently as they installed them, its reactions sharper and systems more stable.
“All right,” Mitch said after the final piece was in place. “I think we’re ready for our boss run.” He looked at his mission board. “You guys want to tackle Prison Matriarch?”
Everyone agreed— it was what this had all been about, really; the Matriarch was a legendary boss that guarded some of the most valuable treasure in the galaxy and defeating her would mark them as real spacefarers, not just lucky amateurs who happened to stumble into a war they didn’t ask for.
They chose their loadout with care— Grant kept his payload launcher because if he missed with it, “I’m going to be hard to be around.” Trey installed Mark II laser on Evan’s gunnery station and Mitch configured the arc shield for maximum coverage while Rob double-checked all of their systems before they jumped.
“Y’all ready?” Grant asked as he sat in the pilot’s seat.
“All right,” Mitch replied, his voice taking on a certain tone that meant they were about to have a big fight.
Rob nodded but said nothing; he looked like he was exhausted and not much more than half awake. “Please.”
The void jump took them to where the Matriarch resided— a region of space marked by strange glows from captured starlight and the skeletal remains of destroyed ships; Grant recognized it immediately as they exited into normal space. The Prison Matriarch hung in space like a dark star, its hull covered with the same strange architecture the hollows seemed to favor; it was surrounded by a constellation of small ships and defense platforms.
“Oh, whoops, helm isn’t on,” he realized, scrambling to power up his weapons systems as they engaged the enemy. “All right— everybody ready to exit jump?”
“We’re all good,” Mitch replied. “Just so we know, I took out the automatic thing and put the bullets in the minigun.”
“Correct,” Grant replied. “The automated gun did not have bullets, just FYI.”
“Got it,” Trey said. “Let’s get this party started.”
They exited into their enemies’ field of fire with weapons hot and shields up— immediately engaged by the Matriarch’s defenses. The battle was immediate and overwhelming as hollow fighters swarmed towards them in greater numbers than he expected; Grant wove through them, his ship responding beautifully to his commands.
“Shields are on too, right?” he asked while fighting their way past the barrage of enemy fire.
“Powering on,” Mitch replied; “there now.”
But something was wrong— despite his assurances, shields weren’t up and the ship shuddered as enemy shots found its hull.
“Damn,” Grant cursed. “This echo is blasting us.”
“It’s not fun to defend it either,” Evan agreed although his shots were finding their mark but doing very little damage against shielded foes.
“I’m working on it,” Trey said without looking up; he was busy rerouting power and running diagnostics as they fought through the enemy fighters, taking cover behind hulls that blocked them from view. “Something’s draining our power. The electromorphs.”
Grant’s eyes widened as he understood. The Matriarch wasn’t just a ship — it was a fortress. And around it, providing its invulnerability, were dozens of smaller beacons that the hollows called nodes.
“So there are a lot of little beacons around it maintaining its shields,” he said, his voice tight with the urgency that came from being in command and realizing you were about to get killed. “We have to kill all those on the outside before we do anything to the matriarch.”
“Alpha’s down,” Evan reported as one went down; “new alpha. Yeah, there’s so many of them.”
The battle became a systematic destruction of the Matriarch’s defenses; Grant flew his ship around it in circles while he targeted shield nodes on his tactical display and Trey worked frantically to keep their power up— feeding energy into shields and weapons as they went through ammunition at an alarming rate.
“Bravo’s down,” Evan reported. “Charlie next.”
But there were always more coming; Grant realized with horror that the Matriarch was regenerating its defenses faster than they could destroy them while the electromagnetic interference from remaining nodes drained their power, threatening to shut down the whole ship.
“These electromorphs,” he shouted over the noise of battle. “These electromorphs are draining us. Shoot them, shoot them, shoot them!”
“Light it up, light it up, light up, light up!” Trey chanted while he worked on systems; his engineering magic kept their electrical system running even as power was diverted away from other areas.
And then just when they were about to be overwhelmed by the Matriarch’s defenses, a new voice spoke over the comm.
“Room for one more?”
Part Four Sleepy Arrival
Christian had come into the fight dressed in pajamas and holding what appeared to be coffee; his sleepy voice came over the comm as he did it. “Oh, hey,” Evan said without looking up from gunnery station. “Hi.”
“Hello,” Mitch replied with a grin on his face. “All right.”
Grant felt relieved that they had help but even more than that, Christian looked like he was going to pass out any minute and so the battle continued— it wasn’t time for formalities.
“Light it up, light it up, light it up,” Grant repeated because there were too many things happening in their fight right then to have a proper welcome; this was what came of being friends with them.
“God, I love these boys,” Christian murmured over the comm. “I feel like shit and I’m very sleep-deprived.”
Mitch laughed; his voice sounded bright against the noise of battle. “Chin’s voice is just so sleepy. It’s so comforting.”
“I miss your musk,” Christian continued in a dreamy tone as he sat at gunnery station with no real idea what was going on around him. “You come back and we’re opening up a gas station together.”
“Turns out that actually means fuck you in their language,” Mitch replied without missing a beat— his guns still firing.
The fight continued with renewed vigor; Christian manned the gunnery stations, his sleepy demeanor hiding his skill behind it all. His shots found their mark and the systematic destruction of the Matriarch’s shield nodes resumed.
“Alpha’s down,” Christian reported in a whisper. “Bravo next.”
But the Matriarch wasn’t finished yet. As the last of its shield nodes fell, the massive vessel activated another defense; a wave of electromagnetic interference that threatened to overload their entire electrical system.
“I’m out of power,” Mitch said as his guns powered down and the interference hit.
“Echo’s down,” Evan replied after taking one of them out but they still had two more. “We got this.”
“Charlie,” Grant called out as he spotted it on his screen; “Charlie three.”
Christian’s shots found their mark and the Matriarch’s defenses came down. For a single moment, the massive vessel hung there, its shields gone and hull exposed.
“Now!” Grant shouted.
The banana ship unleashed everything they had— payload launcher roaring with warheads that struck vital spots on it, laser beams cutting through its hull like hot knives through butter and minigun chattering an endless stream of destruction. Even the point defense systems were active now, targeting critical systems with surgical precision as their weapons tore into the massive vessel.
“It’s basically one shot, one kill with this,” Mitch breathed as he watched the Matriarch health bar go down.
The massive ship shuddered; its structural integrity failing under the combined assault and for a moment it hung there— in that instant before destruction. And then it exploded in an incandescent cascade of light as their final shots found the core of the machine and set off detonation inside itself.
“Nice,” Trey said quietly; “yeah, we’re not done yet.”
But they were— Matriarch was dead, its pieces scattered through space like dark confetti. And after that moment passed and the adrenaline had worn away from their victory, a strange silence fell over the comm.
“Woof,” Grant said finally. “Confession psalm.”
“Metam preserve you,” Christian murmured, his words barely coherent.
“Meta preserve you,” Mitch corrected gently.
Part Five The Loot
The aftermath of a battle was always familiar to them; they gathered loot, scooping up crates and containers that had been scattered by Matriarch’s explosion while Christian continued his sleepy commentary.
“Where’s the storage at?” he asked with another voiceless question as Grant looked over their inventory.
“Here,” Evan said from gunnery station. “Over here.”
“Where be the closet?” Christian wondered aloud, still not quite awake enough to understand what was happening around him.
Grant laughed; it was hard not to laugh when you were friends with them. “Y’all ready to jump?”
They sorted through their loot in practiced efficiency— Mark II laser was an awesome prize and would serve them well in the future while system upgrader allowed them to push their ship’s modules even further than they had before.
“Ooh, system upgrader,” Grant said as he read its description. “That’s kind of hot.”
“These relics are like Joker parts in Balatro,” Mitch observed while holding one of the strange artifacts that were common loot after fighting bosses.
“Wooah,” Evan breathed; “rumored last year.”
“Steve Jobs presented it on stage five years ago”, Mitch joked and even Christian gave a sleepy laugh.
“Our void stability is bad,” Trey observed while he looked at his console; “it’s like hovering in the 70s.”
“OK,” Grant said finally. “I’d say this might be a problem.”
“That’s worse than mine,” Mitch admitted; “I think as you play it, it gets lower.”
They spent the next few minutes assessing their situation— Christian continued his sleepy commentary, trying to get oriented to the ship’s systems and failing miserably.
“I feel like shit and I’m very sleep-deprived,” he admitted but this time there was self-awareness in what he said; they had learned a lot about him over the last month or so.
“We got Mark 1 beam caster,” Grant explained while Christian looked at their inventory. “Now we have Mark 2, so we can just replace that thing.”
“Energy damage,” Christian repeated with slurred words and nodded slowly like someone who was falling asleep as he spoke; “that’s my speed.”
They made the swap— replaced Mark 1 with upgraded Mark II laser which was a significant improvement to their arsenal.
But there were more problems; the ship had taken a beating that resulted in major hull breaches while Trey got to work finding materials and preparing repair kits.
“We have major hole breach on 3 o’clock,” Grant reported from his console. “There’s also stuff we need to fix inside the ship.”
“How do you scan for breaches?” Christian asked with another question as he continued to be confused by everything around him.
“Your HUD,” Grant explained; “it’s all there.”
Trey took charge of repairs and his engineering expertise showed in what he did; it was clear he had done this before. “We only need four alloy,” he said as he checked the materials they would need for their repair kits. “But we don’t have enough plates.”
Grant nodded grimly— they were running low on resources and repair costs were higher than expected. “Here, I’m going to recycle this heavy caliber stuff because we haven’t used it,” he said while feeding unused weapons into the fabricator; “yeah, we didn’t use these bullets.”
“Recycle it,” Trey agreed. “We could probably get four plates from that.”
It took a few minutes of work but eventually their ship was spaceworthy again and Grant ran final diagnostics to check systems.
“All right,” he said finally. “Ready for roll on?”
“Roll on,” Mitch confirmed.
Christian let out an affirmative while his voice faded; “hang on, I’m posting my mortal score.”
Grant laughed— the sound bright in the quiet cockpit of their ship. “OK, we’re good.”
But they were interrupted by Rob’s voice over the comm; it was thick with sleep.
“Guys,” he said slowly. “I’m falling asleep. I gotta go.”
The words hung in the air like a sudden chill. Grant looked at the others, seeing the same expression of surprised sadness reflected in their faces. Rob had been with them from the beginning — through the chaos of their first mission, the terror of the electric storm, and now this, their greatest victory.
“Love you guys,” Rob’s voice was barely audible now. “Bye.”
“Good night, Rob,” Mitch replied, his voice unusually gentle.
“Love you too, Rob,” Christian added.
Grant’s throat tightened. “Bye.”
The comm went quiet, and for a moment, no one spoke. They were crew — more than friends, really, bound together by shared danger and triumph. And then Rob was gone, his station empty, his presence fading from the comm like a ghost.
Part Six: The Repeat
The loss of Rob hung over the crew like a shroud, but there was no time to grieve. The mission continued, and the reborn Prison Matriarch waited.
Second run at the Matriarch was supposed to be easier; they’d already done it once so they should know how everything worked, their strategies and tactics— what could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
“I triggered it by getting in the pilot’s seat,” Grant realized when he saw the interface of boss encounter on his console again. “We’re still here.”
“Oh, I wasn’t sitting and I died,” Mitch groaned. “I think.”
The void tunnel was unstable; their previous jump had left them caught inside a feedback loop that dumped them right back into Matriarch’s domain but this time the enemy was ready for them.
“Now vulnerability nodes have shields,” Grant reported while he looked over his console. “And they move around.”
“Yeah,” Evan agreed with a grim tone; “Jesus.”
The fight was brutal— similar to their first encounter, only different in key ways; shield nodes now had defenses of their own that had to be destroyed before taking out the Matriarch itself and it responded faster this time, more aggressively.
“Going after Charlie,” Evan reported as he targeted one of the moving shield nodes.
“Alpha,” Grant replied while checking his tactical display. “New alpha.”
Christian tried— but even he was exhausted; his shots went wide and his reactions were slow. “Trying to hit alpha but it’s pretty far away,” he admitted in a tired voice that carried frustration.
“It’s OK,” Grant reassured him; “just focus.”
But the fight slipped from them as Matriarch’s defenses proved stronger than expected while their ammunition was running low; Trey worked frantically at keeping power systems up and his engineering brilliance kept everything going but it wasn’t enough.
“Ammo, light caliber,” he called out. “I don’t know what to deconstruct— let me see, put that over there.”
“Tell me what I already know, bitch,” Mitch replied, his voice carrying the particular frustration of someone who’s been repeating themselves for hours.
And then Matriarch did something completely unexpected; it launched one last desperate attack and sent waves of electromagnetic interference washing over their ship like an invisible wave— overloaded systems and sent alarms screaming from every console.
“We’re not done yet,” Grant shouted as he fought to keep his ship steady— the whole vessel shuddered dangerously.
But it was too late. The void tunnel wasn’t charged, their systems were failing and Matriarch still stood; they had to jump away or else die in a fiery explosion.
“Get us out of here,” Evan begged. “Get us out of here!”
Grant’s fingers flew across the helm console— he desperately tried to initiate a void jump as everything on his console flickered and threatened to shut down but then, impossibly, the tunnel opened.
“Jumping,” he shouted and the void swallowed them whole.
They emerged in normal space; battered, broken, barely holding together under strain from what they had been through.
“How many major breaches outside?” Trey asked while running diagnostics on his console.
“We won’t be able to fix all of them,” Grant replied grimly.
“Is there anything we can recycle that would buy us some more plates?” Grant asked; he already knew the answer was probably not but it didn’t hurt to ask.
“Probably,” Trey said as if reading his mind. “Probably.”
And so they did what they always did— salvaged what they could, recycled what they didn’t need and prepared for another go at it.
It wasn’t a defeat, Grant told himself; it was just a setback. They knew the Matriarch’s secrets now; its weaknesses; next time they would be ready.
“Look how stable that void is though,” Evan noted while looking over Grant’s console— stability readings were good, an unexpected blessing at this point in their situation.
“Not getting any war flashbacks right now,” he said with a hopeful note in his voice.
As Grant looked around his banana ship , all scraped hull and upgraded weapons and mismatched seats he knew that this was home now.
Not a game.
Not a fantasy.
Just five friends trying their best in a universe where everyone wanted them dead.
And succeeding.
The void would have to try harder than that.