Chapter Thirty-Four (1/2)

Realspace trembled with the sound. Sound could not exist in space, yet space hummed with it.

doot dee doot dee doo

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The Jotun was transversing from the Great Manufacturing Systems to the front, carrying news of the status of the Great Awakening, moving through Hellspace at an unholy clip. It computed its arrival within the next week and coudn't wait to report to...

It literally bumped into something in Hellspace. Something soft, something spongy, something that when he hit it forced him out of Hellspace and dropped him into realspace.

doot dee... huh?

The Jotun scanned. There was nothing out here. It was between two star systems, in the black gulf where there was hardly any light, any mass, any gravity. It scanned and detecting nothing but a large area of dark matter, spread out from where two currents of dark matter ran together, twisted, and flowed apart.

Aw man, I dropped it.

The Jotun rotated slowly, scanning. There was nothing. Wait, there was a curl of bosonic superstring curling up and slipping back into M-space. It was strange that one was in realspace, perhaps a side effect of the Jotun's crash drop from Hellspace?

It collated the data.

Where did it go?

The Jotun heard words again, trembling space, audible to every receptor. Something was out here, something that the Jotun couldn't detect. It fired up its engines and jumped to Hellspace.

Great, now I have to start over.

And promptly slammed into something, dropping it back into realspace.

All right, who did that?

The sound was a voice. Slightly annoyed.

Who threw that at me?

The Jotun scanned, slowly rotating to bring all its sensors to bear.

Nothing but dark matter and a few long chain wisps of gas.

Joh, you better not be screwing with me again.

The Jotun scanned again, then, when nothing came up, tried another Hellspace jump.

It dropped back into realspace as if there was a massive gravity source.

OK, this isn't funny.

It scanned again. Graviton scan was returning an odd shadow. Dark matter was peaked but that was to be expected when there was the twisted joining of two long rivers of it, wider than even red giant systems. Energy scans showed nothing more than the dark matter reactions reading as static. No drive signatures, no...

Who keeps throwing this thing at me?

The Jotun bleated in electronic surprise as a massive tentacle suddenly rose up out of the dark matter and grabbed it. A squid head, the size of a planetoid, slowly rose up out of the dark matter, completely black, completely non-reflective, only visible by the stars it blotted out.

The tentacle, the far end of it, was wrapped around the Jotun, lifting it toward the black squid head. The Jotun saw two massive eyes, the size of a Balor, open and blink, then orient on the Jotun.

What the hell is this?

The Jotun felt itself get scanned, the signal turned up so high parts of its hull vibrated.

Did someone drop this? No, it was definitely moving.

The Jotun got slowly turned over and looked at from the back.