Hercules Cluster 4210 When I rounded the last of the shattered unformed webs of nebula and neutron star derelicts that skirted the darkness at the edge of the galaxy, I came up upon the big Hercules cluster. I could see the final void of intergalactic space just past the Echo City mines and the alloy camps of Phlegra station. Into that labyrinth of red and black smelters and dark skeletal forms looming against the void I shot. The casts then were nearly silent but for a maddening background of static and wailing signals like the ghosts of the Predecessors warning doom. Empty casts, I knew what that would mean.Corpses and busted shields, empty silver starships drifting in the charcoal wastes, in the cold and radiation....