That is, until now, as he stood in front of an observation window on the Argus—though “observation” was generous. He squinted and pressed his face closer to the glass to get a better look at … nothing.
But not the nothing of a moonless night or the barren space between solar systems or galaxies. This was the nothing of the Divide, of the edge of the universe. An invisible barrier formed millions of years ago when the collective mass of the cosmos finally balanced out the dark energy, slowing and eventually halting the previously ever-expanding universe. A border that separated all matter from the void that lay beyond—the literal edge of nowhere.
He’d never seen anything so … dark. Yet it was a blackness that somehow went beyond dark, beyond vacuum or abyss or void, or any word that could even begin to aptly describe it. There were no twinkling stars, hundreds or thousands or millions of light-years away, unreachable by practical means, but still present, still proof of something millennia gone. There was just … nothing. And there never had been, and there never would be. It was terrifying.
A hand patted him on the back, jarring him from his reverie. A tall man with bronze skin and a shaved head stood next to him, grinning out at the vast emptiness.
“View’s better inward,” the man said. “In my humble opinion.” He tapped the black band on his wrist, activating a small holographic screen above his forearm. “My nexus says … Cavalon? No last name?”
“Just the one.” Cavalon breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that despite how poorly his meeting with the EX had gone, she’d still not put his surname into the system.
“I’m Puck.” The man took Cavalon’s hand in a firm grip. “Circitor Amaeus Puck. Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Cavalon eyed him warily. He didn’t want to be paranoid, but he felt like the man was being too nice. “Sorry, did you say inward?”
“Yep. There’s pretty much exactly two directions out here.” Puck jutted his narrow chin toward the window. “Outward—toward, you know, literally nothing.” He pointed a lanky finger the opposite direction. “And inward, the general direction of, well, everything. Like civilization and our galaxy and actual matter.”
Cavalon swallowed. “Right…” Legionnaires loved their jargon. He’d add that to the list of terms he’d probably forget.
“Upward and downward too, I guess,” Puck added, pointing either direction with the opposite hand. “Along the plane of the spiral arms, as one does. You remember that from back home, surely.”
Cavalon sighed. “The spiral arms which are a hundred million light-years away?”
Puck grinned broadly. “Those’re the ones.”
“So you’re my, uh, commanding officer?” Cavalon asked.
“Sure am. Walk and talk with me. I’ll show you around.”
Puck took off down the hallway, and Cavalon hurried to fall in line behind his long strides.
“How was the trip?” Puck asked, leading them through a narrow doorway and into a main corridor.
“Perfect. Traveling to the edge of the universe was exactly how I wanted to spend three months of my life.”
“Oh, they slow-boated ya, huh?”
“Can you get here any quicker?”
“There’s an Apollo Gate run from Legion HQ that takes about six weeks, but it depends where you’re coming from, I suppose. Where were you stationed?”
“Nowhere.”
Puck laughed. “No, now you’re nowhere.”
“Right … I mean, I’m not Legion.” Cavalon scratched under the metal chain of his dog tags, already chafing the skin at the back of his neck. “I wasn’t Legion.”