“My God,” Aris whispered. “It’s not a message. It’s a location .”
Ensign Vay nodded, fingers flying. “Standard Caesar? ROT13 gives ‘f5uk osi’… gibberish. ROT5 for numbers, ROT13 for letters… nothing.”
They aimed the array at the coordinates. Silence. Then, an image formed: a derelict ship, human design, but impossibly old. Its hull was etched with one phrase in ancient English: s5hx bfv
Aris looked at the time stamp of the first transmission. Five hours ago, the star at the center of that sector had gone dark. Not collapsed. Deleted .
s5hx bfv —
The void was coming. And their five hours had just run out.
“Try ROT3,” Aris said, though his voice wavered. “My God,” Aris whispered
Dr. Aris Thorne stared at the screen. For seventy-two hours, the deep-space array had been catching the same odd, repeating pattern from a dead sector of the galaxy: s5hx bfv .