The gate was massive. It was a giant, metal ring, suspended in space. It took years to build it and it required a equivalent amount of stormakers equivalent to a whole fleet to power it. But it was worth it. In theory, it would allow a ship to travel through the upper layer of clouds in the Underspace, using its energy to accelerate the ship to a almost infinite velocity. This ment that the travel would be nearly instantenous. It would require a another gate to slow it down and exit the Underspace, but it wouldn’t pose much difficulty.
Amon was put in charge of this project, called “Stormeye”. He was a part of the Diplomatic Core, but he dedicated his life to the study of Underspace. This would be a major brakethrough in the understanding of this strange dimension. He was giving off a faint smell of excitement, but nobody was close enough to smell it. He was standing on the flagship of the fleet dispatched to this project, giving him an excellent view on the gate.
Streams of ligt blue energy started swirling inside the ring, giving off a strong glow in the middle, lightning coming out of it. The streams started slowing down, eventually stopping and forming a clear surface, showing the reflection of the fleet and the planet behind it. After a couple seconds, the reflective surface shattered. What remained, was a clear view of the Underspace in the gate. Dense light blue clouds, made of Stormaker particles, cracling with lightning. Dimply beautiful.
“Send in the probe,” ordered Amon.
This was a major breakthrough indeed. The gate worked! The entire room was filled with the smell of excitement, produced by everyone inside.
The small, circular probe was equipped with several transmission antennas and other scientific equipment and a singular engine sticking out of the back. It was almost at the gate. It passed smoothly through it into the Underspace. It activate the engine and a second later it vanished in the clouds at an incredible speed. It was transmitting a steady stream of scientific data.
“Good job team. Test nr. 1 fully succesfull,” said Amon. He did not know how wrong he was.
Amon was enjoying a well deserved break togheder with the rest of his team. The gate worked! This was a major success for the Comissariat. Then, he received a transmission from one of his assistants, who stayed and monitored the situation.
“We lost communications with the probe, sir. We are also getting strange readings from the gate.”
“I will be there right away,” answered Amon.
When he got to the main deck, the situation wasn’t good. Stormaker clouds were spilling out of the gate, alredy starting to cause damage to the projection ring. If it malfunctions, the gate’s horizon will collapse, causing immense damege.
“Deactivate the gate! Now!” He shouted.
Fear and stress were already filling the entire room. A quite good representation of what Amon was feeling.
Every team tried something. They tried to deactivate the projection ring, shut down the reactors and even send drones to disconnect the power. It all failed. The gate wasn’t responding and it alredy started reacting with the stormakers.
“Admiral, get us out of here. But use the quantum drive. Going into the Underspace is a very bad idea right now,” ordered Amon, trying to at least look like he is calm.
“I cannot, sir. The quantum drive isn’t working, just like the engines and storm shields. Everything else is perfectly functional.”
This didn’t sound like a coincidence. Something, or someone, wanted to keep them here and make them voulnerable. A transmission from one of the teams interrupted his thinking.
“We have a transmission from the probe, sir.”
“Put it through”.
The transmission consisted of only one sentence. But this sentence filled everyone with fear.
This was very bad. Underspace was supposed to be lifeless. But it wasn’t. And that someone living there wasn’t happy about Envari building the gate.
The admiral already was assuming command.
“Everyone to your battle stations. Power up weapons and shields. I know that the formation isn’t the best, but try not to hit each other,” he was commanding.
At that moment a giant lightning shot out of the gate, vaporizing one of the battleships. A large cloud of stormakers started emerging from the ring, crackling with lightning.
But those were not just random lightningbolts. There was a pattern in these signals. A quick scan confirmed Amon’s theory. And it showed something more. These electrical signals were identical to those in brains of several creatures.
“It’s the cloud!” He shouted. “It’s alive!”
“Open fire on the cloud!” Shouted the admiral.
But their efforts were futile. The kinetic and plasma shots just went through it and drones were getting rapidlybshot down by the ever-present lightning. Only succes was with missles, which dispersed the cloud upon exploding. That is if they even reached it. They had no chance.
“Projection ring status critical!”
“Try to contact the command base, they must know what happened here,” calmly ordered Amon. He accepted his fate. He will die here and now, just like the rest of the crew. But he made a major discovery just before that. He wouldn’t want his life to end in any other way.
“The communications are offline sir.”
The projection shattered just in front of his eyes. It released a giant wave of lightning, vaporizing the gate, fleet and the nearby planet.
The rift from which he came was gone. Vluur was trapped in the Void, this horryfic dimension from which these weird metal creatures came. He could tolerate them when they just traveled through his home. But creating a permanet rift, that was too much. He devided to teach these Voidwellers a lesson.
He found one of them, sending signals to the rest. So that was how they comunicated. They clearly did not understand him, but he could use this little one to transmit his tjoughts to them. Amd they weren’t very nice.
Their weird defence mechanisms were weak, no match for Vluur’s power. But, it wasn’t him who finished them. It was something else, coming from the rift. After that, the rift was gone.
Vluur was stuck in this weir empty space, without clouds, only spheres of rock and fire. But he would find his way out. He shouted it through the whole Void, through the corpses of defeated Voidwellers, which still could transmit.