Odyssey’s Journey – Edge of Extinction - Chapter 1 – The Hunters
6 Months Prior To the Verya’s First Contact
The void was never truly empty, not in the coreward fringes where the stars grew sparse and the darkness between them thickened with both possibility and danger. Aboard the Vorrak heavy cruiser Krag'thul, Captain Vorath-Kai stood on the command deck, his broad, armored frame casting a long shadow under the harsh crimson lights.
The Vorrak were built for war: squat, heavily muscled bipeds with thick gray-green hides scarred from ritual combat and plasma burns, four-fingered hands ending in blunt claws, eyes like polished obsidian set deep in ridged skulls. Their ships reflected that nature—brutish, angular, plated in ablative ceramic, bristling with railguns and kinetic lances. No elegance. Only function. Efficiency was for the weak.

The tactical holotank flickered as a sensor ghost solidified into certainty: a single ship, sleek and elongated, accelerating hard toward the hyperspace threshold. Unknown design. Not Vorrak. Not one of the fractured Accord remnants they usually hunted. No weapons signature, no heavy armor. Just speed—and now, impossibly, acceleration that mocked their own engines.

Finally, they had located the ghost ship they had hunted for six time frames. All previous efforts had failed until a ground party stumbled upon it by accident, searching for loot in the bombed-out ruins of Ruka-Kng. Fortunately for them, their absence had been noticed. They were already marked for discipline.

(Of course, the K4 system the mystery ship was headed for is Earth. Will The Vorrak Follow?)
Scheduled for September 2026