The victory celebration on the Odyssey was short-lived. It lasted for about five minutes, which was the time it took for the first reports to start coming in. They weren't reports of attacks or invasions. They were far stranger, and far more unsettling.
Jaxon Ryder's face appeared on the main screen, his usual confident smirk replaced by a deep frown of confusion. "Ryan, we've got a weird situation developing in the Omega Sector," he said, his voice crackling over the long-distance channel. "Three planets have just… gone dark."
"Dark?" Ilsa asked, her tone sharp. "Did they lose power? Are their communications down?"
"No, that's the thing," Jaxon said, shaking his head. "They're not down. They're just… quiet. All of them. We're still getting basic life-support signals, but all trade chatter, all government broadcasts, all civilian network traffic—it's all just stopped. It's like a whole sector decided to take a nap at the same time."
