#gracexoc

As he was securing the fresh gauze in place, his focus was drawn to the glint of her necklace again. She had it tucked into the tank top she was wearing, leaving it exposed only where it laid on her upper chest. He almost paused what he was doing when he realized that two of the links were different. Instead of the clean silver of the rest of the chain, these two were gold.

And they were sitting atop a blue bruise.

“What happened?” he blurted out.

Lacking any context, Hope just raised an eyebrow at him.

“There’s a bruise,” he tacked on immediately—both to elaborate and somehow save himself from the fact that he was technically caught staring at her chest. Hope tipped her chin down, wondering what bruise he was referring to. She’d felt the tenderness when she woke up, but she didn’t really pay it much mind.

“The door,” she clarified, pressing her fingertips against the discoloured skin. It was a dull pain. She knew nothing was broken underneath. The chest piece of the suit took most of the impact. “It doesn’t hurt much. I wouldn’t be surprised if your back has a bruise or two as well. It was basically the force of getting hit by a car.”  Both remembered how hard that door had swung open.

He pretended not to notice how she purposely adjusted the chain, so the two golden links were tucked under her shirt.

Hope pulled her hand back. The tensor wrap was in place, Grace’s job finished. He’d basically just been holding her fingers. “Come on, Rocky’s probably waiting.”

They may have been a few minutes late.

He made sure to point it out to them, grumbling and stomping as he ranted. Some of the words were caught by the translator, but they hadn’t gone through nearly enough to know all of what he was grumbling about. He shook a fist at them—Hope tried hard not to picture Abe, yelling at the building’s kids for trampling his garden.

It was very apparent that Rocky preferred punctuality.

She couldn’t blame him. If he had been waiting for them the entire time, she’d have been cranky, too. Though, as she peeked through the xenonite, it looked like he’d taken some time to go into his ship and grab some supplies. From this distance and angle, she had no way of deciphering what they were, but she assumed they were components from his ship.

“Sorry, we’re sorry!” Grace tried to placate him.

Rocky stomped again before he quieted down.

Hope was carrying their translator contraption—the computer and tablet now covered in several layers of tape thanks to Grace—as he tried to find a flat place to put the table he’d decided to bring out. They already knew they’d be spending a lot more time in the tunnel, so why not make their lives a bit easier?

They’d taken the time the night before to exchange the usual beginning words, including names. Rocky’s long, sing-song name was definitely simplified by Grace’s decision to name him ‘Rocky’. Not that they had any hope of ever accurately saying the Eridian’s name in his own language.

Grace had been deeply disappointed to hear that ‘Grace’ in Eridian was basically a grunt.

Hope didn’t fair much better, though her name sounded more like a sharp whistle. She’d take that over the grunt that her companion got, anyway. Even though it did sound like someone trying to recall a dog.

They’d also tested how Rocky’s sight worked.

It wasn’t quite echolocation, since he actually had the ability to see through walls. Or hear through walls, as it were. It’s how he knew that Hope was distressed while she was in the control room of the Hail Mary. To a point, he’d likely been able to detect how she’d moved when she punched the monitor.

It explained why he fixated on her hand when she came out, constantly pointing at it when she waved or used her right hand.

Grace had used their little mimic game and held his fingers up in a sequence of numbers. One, one, three—no more than three, since the Eridian only had three digits on each hand. Rocky easily repeated the sequence. Once Rocky had the idea of what Grace wanted, the scientist repeated the actions but this time he’d hidden his hand behind Hope’s back, where it was out of direct line of ‘sight’.

Two, three, one.

Rocky had mimicked back to him with zero issue. Two, three, one.

They came to learn that Rocky’s atmosphere was indeed ammonia and was the equivalent of twenty-nine times that of Earth. They’d be killed instantly if they were to enter Rocky’s half of the tunnel, even if they were wearing their EVA suits. They weren’t designed to handle such external pressures.

Hope pointed out how much more impressive that made their use of xenonite. They used square or flat shaped airlocks, like the drawer that he used between their two sides and the entrance to the ship. Humans used round or circular shapes for their spacecrafts for a reason, it allowed for better containment of the pressure inside.

Working with Rocky to add to the translator, they took turns staying in the tunnel whenever one of them had to go back inside. Grace even brought a stool from the lab to go with his table. In her usual fashion, Hope preferred sitting on the floor or on the sections of the xenonite wall, but Grace lingered at the table like he was a teacher in his class of one.

Some words were more complicated to convey than others and had even required a strange game of charades by the two humans.

When Hope punched Grace on the arm—after he’d used her height to document short vs tall—he’d used that moment to demonstrate ‘anger’. That had earned him another punch. Which led to ‘hurt’.

Rocky had been the one to supply ‘no’ after Grace had confirmed that the jazz-hands he did meant ‘yes’. Apparently, when the Eridian tapped his fists together, he meant no.

Grace took over the bulk of the work. He had a better understanding about teaching, so he had a basic idea of how to approach certain words. Opposites helped, like yes and no. They translated basic emotions and sentiments, like happy, sad, sorry, thankful. When he kept questioning the differences between Hope and Grace, it led to the discussion about how humans have gender.

Their height and hair were immediate differences that were enough to placate Rocky for the time being, but he’d definitely bring it up again. Since he could basically see through walls, it was a no-brainer that he could see through clothes. He knew there were other things that differentiated them.

When Hope pointed this out, Grace had turned as red as his flight suit. He’d even shucked the material down to tie it around his hips, like it would create more of a barrier below the waistline.

The warmth in the tunnel had Hope keeping to just her tank top. Her own flight suit had stayed tied low since she’d woken that morning.

Hope started the idea to have a Show and Tell and brought out some of her tools or other bits from inside the ship. She and Rocky sat across from one another, comparing the two. Grace had lingered nearby, adding new words to the program when they came up. Mostly, he was watching how Hope interacted with Rocky.

When it came to adult humans, she wasn’t the most patient. She used the term ‘dumbing down’ a lot while they were on Earth. Not that she used it as an insult or thought of others as inferior to her, but more that she struggled to simplify certain concepts in order to make them easier to understand. If Hope ever went into teaching, it would definitely have been at the doctoral level.

Early on, when he asked questions about the ship, he had to discretely go and ask one of the other engineers later because—what? He hadn’t wanted to seem like he didn’t know what she was talking about, so several times as she’d ranted, he’d just nodded his head while making a mental note to ask someone about it afterword.

He’d assumed she was doing the same with his science lessons, up until she’d bitten the head off of his old rival and proved to him that she didn’t just understand the science; she was using it to build her ship.

As painful as the thought is, Stratt had picked the perfect person for the alternate. If something happened to him, or if he was never on the ship and something happened to DuBois, he had all confidence that Hope would figure it out.

With Rocky, she never lost her temper or got frustrated when something wasn’t translating quite right.

She looked like a kid on Christmas morning when he demonstrated how he uses liquid xenon to create the models he’d sent them. Hope likened it to braiding or knitting. There were several techniques he showed her, but she described it as knitting the material together. Like a 3-D printer, but more complicated.

Over the course of that first day, they added over a thousand new words to their translator.

“I think he’s alone,” Grace finally voiced.

The two were in the lab. Grace had decided it was time to bring them up to date on what’s most important—Astrophage. It also powered the Blip A, so they had to be aware of what it was. Time to figure out how much the Eridians knew.

“Why haven’t we seen anyone else? It’s only ever been Rocky.”

Hope sighed, fiddling with the strip of xenonite Rocky had given to her after he’d shown her how he was able to manipulate it. “I think you’re right. But a ship that big? Was he always alone? Or did something happen to his crew?” She looked to the scientist beside her. “Are we prepared to ask that question?”

He nodded, understanding her conern. “First things first.”

He lifted the test tube of Astrophage that he had picked out from the lab’s supplies. The thick black substance that was singlehandedly eating stars and killing planets. They stared at it for a moment. Something that looked so useless, like a blob of black tar, was capable of so much damage.

Returning to the tunnel, Grace sat on the stool he’d brought while Hope lingered past his shoulder. Their computer setup remained sitting on the table after Hope had pulled more wires in make sure it had a charger. Rocky was working on the components from his ship, fixing them. He kept himself busy whenever they left the tunnel.

The tube with the black sludge inside was held up closer to the wall. “Recognize this?” he asked, getting Rocky’s attention.

As soon as the Eridian spotted what Grace was holding, he flinched back with a sharp tone of distress, hunkering down slightly.

“We call it Astrophage,” he elaborated. “It means ‘star eater’.”

Rocky responded with an abrupt series of low tones—it sounded scared.

Hope typed Astrophage into the program.

Rocky continued; he repeated Astrophage, before continuing on. Hope could recognize the repeated words before they even came up on the computer.

Grace read it aloud as the translation popped up, “’Astrophage on me star. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad’.” He sighed, “Yeah.” He motioned to himself and Hope, referencing their situation. “Same.”

Rocky continued. “You come from where, question?”

It was one of the grammar quirks they’d picked up so far. When Rocky was asking them a question, he would always end with the word ‘question’. Even when he was declaring something, he tacked on ‘statement’ at the end. He didn’t always do it, since he was picking up on English so quickly, but it was a little bit of his own language sneaking in.

“Earth?” Hope asked. It was a word they’d already covered, so she wasn’t sure why he was bringing it up.

Rocky tried again. “Your star is what name, question?”

“Oh!” Grace realized. “Sol. Our star name is Sol.”

The Eridian responded by telling them the name of their star for him. Hope typed in ‘Sol’. “Our name for your star is Eridani,” she provided. Technically, it was 40 Eridani but that bit of information really wasn’t relevant to the current context.

Rocky gave them the name of his star. Hope typed it in.

She watched the program update to the newest information. Grace rolled the vial of Astrophage in his fingers as he watched her type. Rocky, in turn, watched the two of them. The way Grace kept close to Hope. The strange wrap around Hope’s hand. The soft jingle of metal that alerted him to the decoration she wore around her neck. Did it have a particular meaning for humans? Why did Grace not wear one?

He spoke up, soft tones singing through the otherwise silent space.

“Rocky happy not alone.”

Well…that’s one way to get that information.

Hope’s heart hurt as he confirmed what they’d already suspected. Rocky was the lone Eridian on that massive ship. She reached out to gently press her fingers into Grace’s shoulder. He nodded without looking back at her, also understanding.

He looked over his glasses to where Rocky had remained on the other side of the xenonite, not returning to his work. “Why are you alone?”

Rocky’s fingers twitched as he sought for the right thing to say. A way they would understand. Hope and Grace waited patiently.

Both were painfully aware of their unintentional advantage. Though there were many questions and several hiccups along the way, they weren’t alone. They still had each other.

Rock finally answered, using his hands as he talked to elaborate further. Hope was able to detect the use of several numbers before the translator had even caught up. “Was twenty-three Eridians on ship. Now only one.”

“Twenty-three?” Grace repeated quietly, reading from the screen. “Wow. Uhm…what happened to them?”

As Rocky spoke, he slowly laid down. Demonstrating. Grace bowed his head sadly. It wasn’t a word they’d used yet, but both humans were aware of what he was telling them. Slowly, Hope reached out to fill in the translation.

Died.

“I’m sorry, Rocky,” she said softly.

Grace, unsure, scratched at the side of his head. He wanted to ask more, but he also didn’t want to overstep. However, Rocky was the one who’d brought up the current topic of conversation, so he had believed the Eridian wouldn’t mind the questions.

“How did they die?”

“Rocky not know. Only Rocky not died. Rocky could not fix.”

Hope could feel that last statement in her soul. Someone who could build and repair and fix things hated to be faced with a situation that they could not fix. It solidified her belief that Rocky was a mechanic on his ship. It was his role to fix things. But you can’t fix death.

“How many humans on Grace Hope ship, question?”

Grace cleared his throat. “Oh, uh—”

“There were four,” Hope answered for him. “We lost two on the way here. We don’t know how, but they died in their sleep.”

“It was almost just me,” Grace added on, trying to add some levity to the heavy conversation as he distracted himself by cleaning his glasses on his shirt. “But Hope’s just too stubborn to leave me in charge of her ship.” She gently flicked his shoulder. “So, just us.”

“Us,” Rocky repeated, but he rotated his arms to motion between him and the humans. ‘Us’ included him.

Grace sat back, nodding. He leaned into Hope’s side as he did, subconsciously searching for her. “Correction.” He mimicked Rocky, pointing between the two of them and Rocky in a rolling motion. “Us.”

Rocky spoke again, motioning upward with an open hand. “Grace Rocky Hope save stars.”

Hope smiled, shifting her weight to nudge Grace. He was smiling, too. Tipping his head backward to knock it against Hope’s chest, an acknowledgement to her nudge, he pushed himself up from the stool in the next motion and stepped closer to Rocky. He pressed his fist against the xenonite. Rocky looked down at it, unsure, before he slowly copied the action and pressed his closed fist opposite Grace’s.

“Deal,” he declared, keeping his first pressed to the panel for a moment longer.

Hope smiled as she watched them, reaching up to fiddle with the chain around her neck.

Rocky, without even moving his head, watched the action.

She dropped it before Grace could turn around.

“Called a fit bump, by the way,” he clarified as he stepped back. Rocky responded in his sing-song words.

Abruptly, Hope started to laugh before Grace had even returned to the computer, doubling over with the effort it took. Her cheeks went red with the exertion, and her hands braced on her thighs.

“Fist me” was translated on the screen.

~

He’d caught the few times Hope’s head had tipped, snapping back up immediately when she registered the movement.

Their current vocabulary with Rocky did not include ‘exhausted beyond measure’ so he just had to convey that they’d be back. They’d been awake all ‘night’, so it was currently 5:12 in the morning. He let Rocky know to expect them back at 9 am, even applying another piece of tape to the outside frame of the clock—which was now taped to the wall of xenonite. Rocky knew that when the small hand reached the 9 they would return.

Barely any time to actually rest, but they still had so much to figure out. There was going to be time for sleep later.

Hope waved a tired farewell to the Eridian as she half-stumbled back toward the airlock. Grace grabbed the back of her suit to help balance her, carefully avoiding the long braid that hung down her back.

“You need a haircut,” he pointed out.

“Tomorrow,” she grumbled back.

The airlock sealed behind them, air rushing around the two as the ship carried through with the usual procedure to pressurize the room. Technically it was unnecessary, but Hope hadn’t completely disabled the feature. It was still best to let it do its job, even if the pressure was already correct.

Hope pulled the braid back over her shoulder and pulled the small tie free from the end. As they made their way back toward the dorm, she slowly unwove the braided strands. Knots had already formed from the number of times she’d been in and out of her EVA suit or the thermals, constantly causing friction on the strands.

Grace hooked his glasses around one ear and rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired they felt like sand whenever he blinked. The bunks on the Hail Mary weren’t the most comfortable, narrow and thin, but he was looking forward to crashing onto one.

But first—

“Bathroom,” he grunted, beelining for the small room as soon as they entered the dorm.

Hope didn’t even acknowledge him, immediately shuffling back over her to bunk. She called out to the ship computer as she went.

“Mary, set a wake alarm for 8:45 AM.”

“Command confirmed. Alarm set for 8:45 AM, three hours and twenty-six minutes from now.”

While Grace disappeared behind the sliding door, she toed off her running shoes as the cot slid out from its place in the wall and lifted herself onto the assigned bunk. She should probably wait to use the bathroom as well, but she was so sleep deprived her body didn’t even register that it had a bladder anymore.

Armando ambled over, holding another tube of her post-coma paste, but she was already curled up and dozing when the medical robot reached her.

The arms flailed for a moment, unsure what to do. Finally, it just placed the tube on the cot a few inches away from her head. It wasn’t going to go bad in the time she slept, so she could eat it when she woke up.

Just like on Earth; when Hope crashed, she crashed hard.

She was already well and truly asleep when Grace returned from the bathroom.

Afterall, she was fresh from a coma, and she’d been awake for nearly 18 hours by the time she laid down—a nap in the control room hardly counted.

It was rough that her first day awake was also when Rocky’s ship appeared. When he first woke up, he got through maybe three hours before he crashed for another solid sleep, especially because he gravitated back to where Hope was still unconscious.

Lying in his bunk allowed him to keep an eye on her but also made it easy to slip back to sleep while his body was recovering.

Now, she was curled on her side, still wearing the red flight suit she’d pulled on when she first woke up. Her hair was curled and wavy from the braid, pooling around her head on the small pillow they were provided. Her next meal was sitting next to her head, waiting.

Her bandaged hand was pulled up near her face while the other was pressed under her chin.

He lingered near her bunk, watching her face. Fully relaxed, peaceful. It almost reminded him of when she was still in the coma. Except there were no tubes, no leads, no machines to keep her breathing.

Grace had to remind himself that she was alive.

It helped that she was sleeping like she used to, back on Earth. Tucked in tightly to herself, knees pulled up and arms drawn close to her face and chest. On numerous occasions, he caught her in that exact position in her workstation or whatever couch was available. She didn’t sleep flat—at least, not that he’d ever seen.

There was probably a therapist on Earth who made a fuss about how she seemed to prefer the fetal position when she slept.

It helped him differentiate the Hope who’d last slept on this bunk.

The one he’d feared would never wake up.

Gently, he pressed his palm to her back. As exhausted as she was, the touch did nothing to rouse her. If he focused, Grace could feel the thump of her heartbeat. Her torso moved with each breath, ribs expanding and elevating. Diaphragm rising and lowering deep within her chest to let her breathe.

He looked down at her hand again.

She’d been so angry on his behalf that she’d broken something. Not only that, but it had been something on her ship. A true testament to her rage.

The reminder of what she’d found made his stomach coil uncomfortably.

All along, it had been intentional.

To include a directive like that, Stratt had to have done it before they left. The why was going to drive him crazy. And he may never remember. Their assumptions about his memories returning were based on the amnesia being from his coma, not drug induced.

Did he remember Stratt as a kind and forgiving woman? No. But his memories also didn’t paint her as some kind of cruel villain.

Did something change? Something he was yet to remember?

The same something that apparently had Hope put in an early coma?

Subconsciously, his thumb stroked her back.

He wasn’t sure if the thought had crossed her mind, but Grace was left to wonder if the alterations made to Hope’s planned coma had been the reason for her negative reaction. Did they somehow cause her to have respiratory failure because they forced her under too soon?

Truthfully, he didn’t think she’d come to that conclusion. Her anger when she’d told him had been centered around what they did to Grace. When she mentioned her accelerated coma schedule, it had never included what that might mean for her. It did support her assumptions that something bad had happened before the launch.

His other hand gently caressed her head, the soft strands of her hair still clean and smooth. She made a soft humming sound at the contact but didn’t wake up.

Those assumptions centered more around what had happened to Grace and the original crew, but not what it could mean for Earth.

Perhaps he was playing devil’s advocate, but there was the possibility that he was sent because of the Astrophage’s affect on Earth. Maybe their math was wrong. Maybe the planet was dying sooner than they had anticipated.

Or Hope could be correct.

Their only chance to ever know the truth was based on his broken brain—or, apparently, his drugged brain.

He almost wished she had not found that file. This only brought about more questions, and even fewer answers.

Sighing, he pulled back to let her sleep.

Their time was all turned around now. The ship was in daytime mode, leaving brighter lights on throughout the Hail Mary. It meant that Grace could watch her from his bunk. Even with her back to him, he could see that she was breathing.

He wasn’t sure if she had intentionally left her cot projecting out from the wall, but he appreciated it none-the-less. If she’d returned it to its bunk slot, he wouldn’t have been able to keep an eye on her.

Eventually, his own fatigue caught up with him and he slept.

Their exhaustion made sure the two slept clean through. Armando lingered nearby, monitoring them. Neither of the remaining crew so much as twitched as the hours slowly crept by. Shortly before the alarm Hope had set was due to go off, Armando placed another burrito on Grace’s cot. This way, both would have food when they woke up.

Hope awoke to the smell of coffee.

Bleary and confused, she lifted her head and looked around herself. Disoriented. Still Exhausted. Each blink took actual effort to do. She’s on the Hail Mary. In Tau Ceti. Her chest ached and her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth—which tasted foul, she realized a moment later.

Had she brushed her teeth before she went to bed?

Could she actually call this a bed?

Slowly pulling herself up onto an elbow, she looked around for the source of the coffee smell.

Armando was waiting at the head of her cot, two cups of coffee in ‘hand’. The two cups of coffee were similar, nearly identical in colour, with the exception of the cups they were served in. She already knew that one was going to be far sweeter. For as much as Grace enjoyed candy, that didn’t extend to his coffee order.

Next to where her head had been, two more tubes of food had been left. Likely, one was from the day before, one she’d missed, and the second was for her breakfast.

“Bathroom first,” she mumbled, sliding off the bunk and giving the robot a ‘one second’ gesture as she passed it.

She took the time to brush her teeth and properly rinse out her mouth, removing the thick taste of sleep from her tongue. Her coffee was probably going to taste terrible after the mint, but she’d live with it. She decided to leave her suit tied around her hips after using the toilet. The ship was warm enough and the tunnel kept a steady temperature thanks to Rocky. Her arms were bare and her necklace disappeared under the material of her tank top.

The alarm that she had asked Mary to set sounded while she was still in the bathroom, likely waking Grace up.

Taking a moment longer to twist her hair up and tie it in a sloppy knot on her head, she finally returned to the main room with the intention of devouring her food and coffee.

She was greeted with the sight of Grace frantically looking around. He twisted in place to look back toward the bathroom as she stepped out, spotting her immediately. The stricken look on his face made her pause.

He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Hope!”

The man rolled off his bunk so suddenly he didn’t even have the chance to catch himself, hitting the padded flooring with a thump. She jumped at the sound.

He bolted up and charged toward her.

She nearly flinched away, his abrupt run at her making her body tense up in preparation, but all he did was grab her shoulders, then her face, then her shoulders again. He was looking over her like someone checking for battle wounds. His breathing was rapid and his hands shook when they made contact with her skin.

“What’s gotten into you?” she asked quietly, not sure how else to react. She just held still, letting him grab and touch.

“I…you—you weren’t—”

With his hands framing her face, Hope could do little more than blink at him.

“I what?”

Grace looked over her face. Looking for something.

“You weren’t there,” he finally breathed out. His body deflated, leaning forward until he was resting his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. Warm. Warm and soft and breathing and alive. “Sorry. It’s stupid,” he tried to dismiss, even though he still hadn’t let her go.

Hope reached up to hook her hands over his elbows, anchoring him rather than removing him.

“Ryland, what is it?” Did he have a nightmare?

Grace swallowed before he took a deep breath. She smelt like mint. “When you were still asleep, I could just roll over, and you were there. I could tell you were alive. But I—I woke up and…you weren’t there.”

Oh.

Hope’s heart ached all over again. “You thought I was dead.”

His grip flinched around her ears, twitching with tension for a moment. “After Yáo and Ilyukhina…I at least knew that if I looked for you, you’d be there. Your bunk wasn’t empty. But I woke up and—” he had to stop, forehead pressing down against hers with just a bit more force. “Sorry.”

Hope wanted to shake her head, but between the grip he had on her face and his forehead leaning on hers, she didn’t have much choice. Instead, she adjusted her hands to instead mirror his hold and gently take his face between her hands. The scruff on his jaw prickled her palms. He wasn’t wearing his glasses yet, left behind on his bunk.

“Don’t apologize. I understand.” Her thumbs stroked along his cheekbones gently.

Grace tried hard not to focus on how her breath was warm against his lips. She smelt like mint, so she’d probably cleaned her teeth when she woke up. For once, her hands were actually warm. The kind of warm one carried when they woke up, sleep-soft and pliant. The pads of her thumbs were smooth—old callouses having long since healed during her coma.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone,” she continued a moment later. Grace couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. It felt like he’d be intruding on a moment—regardless of him being a part of that moment. “But I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Neither acknowledged the fact that, eventually, they’d both have to go. They didn’t have a means of going home. They didn’t have food to survive forever in Tau Ceti.

Eventually, one of them would have to leave the other.

~

“Ryland Grace, if you break one more thing on my ship, I will eject you out the airlock!” To get her point across, she had grabbed his ear and pulled. He may have squealed at the sudden burn. He would deny it forever.

“We need to see better in the tunnel!”

“Then ask me! Don’t just start ripping out wires and lights!”

He kept the table between the two of them once his ear was free, hiding in the lab. Hope on a warpath was the exact last person you would want coming after you. He’d seen her angry.

Grace lingered out of reach as she flitted around the lab, collecting equipment. There were several storage drawers with extra engineering equipment—among them were rechargeable LED work lights with magnetic backs. They could be clipped to the EVA suits or mounted to the holds on the Hail Mary’s hull. They wouldn’t be able to magnetize, but the risk of them detaching and floating away wasn’t worth it anyway.

The NASA logo on each of them confirmed that they were specially designed for work in a vacuum, so they wouldn’t break in the rigors of space. Temperatures could swing from extreme heat to extreme cold, so a regular old light would not survive the job.

“You can’t do hull repairs in the dark. We packed plenty of ways to see.”

Additionally, she hauled out a long bundle of extra wiring and a tool pouch.

Whereas Grace had just grabbed one of the mounted lights and pulled, sending sparks flying as he scrambled to get his hands on any light available, Hope actually detached them properly. It only took her a few minutes before there were several lights that they deemed unnecessary throughout the ship.

The lab remained untouched, since it was going to be the central hub throughout the mission. But so many lights through the corridors or in the dorm weren’t required.

Irritated, Hope lifted up the light he’d torn off.

Unlike the others, this one had several wires sticking out the back of it. Sloppy and damaged.

“I know you’re no slouch when it comes to basic wiring. You’re going to be the one to fix this.” She tossed the light at him. The zero g meant to floated directly into his hands. Grace gaped at her. “Don’t look at me like that, didn’t you hold your students responsible when they broke things?”

“But…you’re an engineer! You could fix this in two minutes!”

“I’m not the one who broke it,” she reminded. Green eyes narrowed at him.

Finally, he looked a bit bashful. “I’m sorry…I was a bit excited.”

Though, he would much rather be watching the feeds as their new alien friends retracted the tunnel and started doing additional work on it. Hope noticed that they’d left behind the handles they’d installed on the Hail Mary’s airlock, so they were going to come back.

“I’ll even make your life easier and turn on the centrifuge,” she placated a moment later, using one of his ropes to send herself toward the corridor leading to the control room.

The little rock alien had told her to turn on the centrifuge, and she could only imagine they had one reason. They were intelligent, so they likely understood why the centrifuge existed. They knew it made gravity. And if they were intending to reattach the tunnel, it was very likely they were going to orient themselves with the Hail Mary so both ships would spin in unison, giving the tunnel gravity as well.

Their ship was smaller, and likely easier to manoeuvre in those small increments. So, Hope would adjust the positioning of the Hail Mary so when she turned on the centrifuge, the ship would still be in a position that allowed the Blip A to attach their tunnel.

Now, she just dearly hoped they had a damn good pilot because that meant they’d be reattaching the ships while they were actively in motion.

Doing some quick calculations in her head, she manoeuvred them around appropriately before she engaged the centrifuge. She had to turn off the alert from the computer regarding the proximity to the other ship; it did not want the centrifuge engaged while so close. The triple tone warned Grace that it was coming on before the soft shudder travelled through the ship as they disconnected from the engines.

By the time the centrifuge was fully engaged, the Blip A had mimicked their movement and was spinning around in a similar rotation.

Initially, they were off by several meters. Since the Hail Mary could no longer use thrust to alter the placement of the ship, the Blip A took over and carefully lined themselves up until they mirrored each other perfectly.

Grace joined Hope in the control room shortly after gravity came back. Together, they watched through the window and the monitors as the tunnel extended a second time. Their accuracy was spot on, again, and soon the familiar clunk and groan of the ship’s anchoring together sounded along the hull.

Hope waited with bated breath.

She already disliked the unknowns of being attached to the other ship by their hull, but now while they were in active movement?

Thankfully, everything settled and no further sounds came through from the airlock or the rest of the ship to suggest something was tearing or broken.

Grace bumped her shoulder. He was already vibrating with excitement.

“Round 2!”

They were getting faster at their EVA suits—the gravity helped exponentially—and short minutes later they were standing in their airlock with the new light setup that Hope had rigged together. It was now hardwired into the panel of the EVA room. Several of the ship’s lights would be placed near their airlock, providing light but not needing to drag them all the way to the dividing wall. That was where the portable work lights came in hand.

She clipped one to Grace’s shoulder and handed him a second that he could use as he pleased, then did the same for herself.

Before she moved to depressurize the room, Grace picked up one of the wrenches that was mounted to the wall. Of course, he chose the largest of the set. Holding it like a baseball bat, he seemed to test the weight of it in his hands as Hope watched on.

When he finally looked at her, she was scowling at him through her helmet.

“What?”

“A wrench? Really?”

He blushed. “It’s just a precaution!”

“Please, don’t start an interstellar incident with an intelligent alien race.”

“There is nothing wrong with being prepared. I probably won’t even need it.”

She motioned back to the rig that he had taken it from, the other equipment left in their assigned slots. “Then don’t bring it. It’ll only slow you down if you need to run.”

“Why would I need to run?”

“Why would you need to hit something with a wrench?”

He pulled the wrench in closer to himself. Clearly, it offered him some peace of mind. So, she’d let it go. But she still sighed and shook her head as she turned back to the control panel.

She wouldn’t voice it, but the man looked like an electrician about to go on the strangest job of his life. Thick bundles of wire were looped over one shoulder with lights dangling freely, all lit up and casting the EVA room in bright LED light. This was on top of with the portable work lights she’d attached to him, the two regular flashlights he’d found in the lab and stashed in the pocket on his thigh, his headlamp, and now a wrench.

With her back to him, she didn’t bother fighting the smile from how amusing he looked.

“Set?”

“Set.”

The room depressurized around them, preparing them for the same environment they’d encountered on each excursion so far, and the panel lit up green.

Hope popped the seal on the door and was slammed backward.

The outer airlock door flew open from the abrupt pressure change, flinging wide and directly into the Engineer. She was thrown back, directly into Grace, lights and all, and the two went down hard against the inner door. The collision knocked the air out of both of them—they were left lying there, stunned, as their lungs fought to function again.

One of the lights was digging painfully into the back of Hope’s hip, forcing her to arch and roll. This shoved her helmet back against Grace’s, who hitched and gasped as air tried to return to his lungs. He watched as Hope rolled onto her knees beside him, quickly assessing the front of her suit to make sure the door hadn’t caused any damage to the front panelling.

She wobbled, disoriented.

“Owwww,” he groaned, slipping further down the door now that she wasn’t pinning him. He was still draped with lights, but the two flashlights had gotten flung out of his pocket in the turmoil and somehow he was now sitting on the wrench.

Hope may be small, but the velocity of the door swinging open and throwing her backward made it feel slightly like he’d been hit by a car.

“What happened?”

Hope looked down at the reader strapped to her arm. It allowed them to monitor their suit integrity, oxygen levels, pressure levels, and temperature. Currently, the readings around them were sitting at 22°C with an exterior pressure of 21.1 kPa.

Momentarily baffled, she looked between the readings on the screen and the now open airlock. “They pressurized the tunnel,” she breathed out.

“What?” Quickly, Grace looked at his own suit’s readings.

She was right. The current pressure that had rushed in from the tunnel was an exact pressure to what was usually aboard the Hail Mary. Not quite Earth’s pressure, but one they could safely survive in.

“That’s why the door blew open,” she grumbled, rocking herself slightly to the side and stretching. She could feel something pop near her sternum, likely some rib cartilage righting itself after she took a solid double-hulled aluminum door, with nearly 3 tons of pneumatic force behind it, straight to the chest. “They pressurized the tunnel to match ours.”

Leaning back on her hands, she tried to take a proper, deep breath. Her diaphragm spasmed, causing her inhale to stutter.

“That hurt.”

Grace nodded along. “Definitely going to leave a mark.”

Slowly, the two pulled themselves back up. Hope recollected the lights had had been lost when they slammed back into the inner door. Thankfully, none appeared to have broken. Grace reclaimed the wrench again and Hope refrained from making a comment. He had broken her momentum with his body, she’d let him have the wrench.

Hopping down into the tunnel, only a short few feet of distance, felt strange. She’d become accustomed to the smooth surface of the ship, designed to have flat inner panels to walk on when gravity was engaged. The tunnel was bumpy and uneven, disrupting her footing.

Less gracefully, her companion followed with his bundle of wires and flashlights until he basically slid out of the airlock. He reminded her of a toddler learning how to climb off the couch safely.

“Leave a bunch here, just point them in,” she directly, slipping some of them from his shoulder to help.

He was still carrying one of the loops, which would be able to make it several more yards in before he ran out of slack. At the last minute, he’d also remembered to grab one of the cameras throughout the ship, technically used for the video logs. It, too, was connected to the remaining bundle of wires.

Hope looked further in, toward the wall, once several of the lamps had been placed. “Grace, look.”

Turning his entire body to face into the tunnel, the light had provided enough view that they could see the barrier wall they had encountered last time. Except it was now made up entirely of the clear, glass-like material. One giant window through to the other side.

Grace gasped. “Well, that’s new.”

The uneven surface of the xenonite tunnel slowed them down a bit, but it was still faster than trying to move around in zero g. Grace placed the camera where they’d be able to see the wall before he approached it, while Hope took the time to place one of the work lights that she’d had hooked to her suit.

It wasn’t as smooth as glass. There were ripples and grooves throughout the surfaces. It was still done in panels, as well, so it had a flow to it that looked more like clear glacier ice.

Grace found one of the nooks that was created naturally in the wall and placed his light there, aimed down so they’d be able to see whatever came forward. He kept the wrench in hand.

The way the light caught the xenonite threw rainbows across the surface. It was strangely beautiful.

Hope crouched to inspect the lines and connections of each of the panels. There weren’t any lines that looked like weld points. More like each of the pieces had been glued together. Likely, they’d used the same adhesive that kept the handles they placed on the Hail Mary’s hull.

When he wasn’t able to spot anything on the other side, Grace knocked on the surface.

“Anybody home?” he called, looking around. Hope stayed crouched a few feet away, running one hand over the panel. It was hot, even through the resistant gloves of the suit. Was that because of the process of them making it, or was their atmosphere detectable even through the xenonite? “I like what you’ve done with the gravity,” Grace continued, pointing back at their side of the tunnel.

Then, same as before, he gave their elusive neighbours a thumbs up.

To Hope’s shock, he lifted up a bundle of ramen. Where had he been keeping that? She was so focused on how he looked like a lightbulb factory thew up on him, she hadn’t even noticed anything else he was carrying.

“I made you a ship,” he declared, holding up some taped together ramen that looked like a very loose representation of the Blip A. No acknowledgement came from the other side. “It’s ramen.”

He looked around, unable to see where he could put the little Ramen A. Hope, already perplexed with the entire situation, decided to just go with it. She had learned pretty early on that Ryland Grace was someone you needed to just go with the flow; his brain was a twisted mess of thoughts even before the amnesia, and trying to keep up with him was pointless.

Aside from their obvious size and height difference, the belt around Hope’s hips was the easiest way to tell the two apart from afar. Several things were clipped onto it, one of which was a roll of duct tape hanging near her hip, that could always come in handy during an emergency. She freed it from its clip and held it out to the scientist. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I had to give them something,” he whispered back, like their new friends would hear them through their helmets and comms.

“Ramen?”

Grace shushed her, taking the tape and waving her off. She huffed out a laugh, watching him carefully tear off a strip of tape and use it to secure the Ramen A to the wall. “I only made one,” he kept going, ignoring the engineer in favour of securing his gift. “I’m not sure how many of you there are.”

Thankfully, the camera Grace had brought was recording the entire exchange.

If they succeeded, Earth would get to enjoy watching the absolute lunacy they had decided to ship off to space to save them.

~

The two non-astronauts peeked through the port window of the inner door, helmets smacking together until they actually took turns, to see only blackness throughout the second window of the outer door. When no additional noises came from the direction of the tunnel, Hope released the airlock on their side.

“Do we just…open the door?” Grace mumbled finally, unsure what to do next.

He’d been so amped for the thought of meeting an alien, he didn’t actually consider how that would work.

“Like, are they in there waiting for us?” he asked in a near whisper.

Hope moved to the second door and tried to peer into the tunnel. Inky blankness stared back. Even when she angled her helmet so the light on the side shined through the port hole, it only allowed her to see a few feet ahead. It mostly just reflected off the window.

“I mean…I guess? We can’t just stay in here. The entire point of cutting a hole in the ship was to make contact with them.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Probably not.”

Fair enough. He held a grudge against another scientist for years after he lost his job. He couldn’t fault Hope for being cranky that she had to cut a hole in her masterpiece.

She pulled back from the door and motioned toward the tunnel. “So, shall we?”

Grace hesitated. “Maybe…you should stay here? I mean, one of us should stay on the ship unless this goes sideways, right?”

“Under normal circumstances, I’d agree. But we’re literally fused to them now. And I have no clue how to detach us from this tunnel. If they’ve got ill intentions, there’s no getting out of it now.” She accessed the panel to release the second airlock, careful with the large gloves of her EVA suit. Thankfully, the screen was designed for easy access while wearing such bulky equipment. “Stop stalling.”

“I’m not stalling!”

He was. He was totally stalling.

She gave him a deadpan stare through her helmet as the room depressurized, equalizing them with the tunnel outside. It was the same ‘air’ that had been in the vacuum before the tunnel was attached, so the system recognized it as just another EVA.

As Grace opened the door, she engaged the lights outside. It wasn’t much, more as a way to act as a beacon for an astronaut on an EVA, but it would at least give them a bit more light than just their headlamps.

Neither would admit how much their hearts were racing in that moment.

"Ready?" Grace asked one last time.

In response, Hope pushed out of the airlock. A leap of faith.

Grace panicked slightly, reaching out to grab her boot but missing her by a hair. “Hope!” he whisper-shouted after her, like he was afraid their new neighbours would hear him. “You’re supposed to be the one that’s super cautious and has a plan for everything! I’m the bone headed one who leaps without looking!”

She floated slowly into the tunnel, rapidly creating distance between them. Both still wore a tether, if only for making it back to the ship faster if anything did go wrong, and Grace was sorely tempted to grab hers and yank her back.

He hesitated a moment longer, lingering in the door of the airlock, before he heaved a deep exhale and latched his tether to the outer clip next to Hopes.

The engineer was already a few yards deep, now pressing her hands to the ‘floor’ of the tunnel. She was inspecting the material they had made the tunnel out of, leaning in as close as her suit would allow. She could feel the heat pressing in on them through the suit. “I think this is xenonite. It looks a little different from the other pieces they sent us, but maybe it’s because it’s a different mixture.”

“Makes sense,” Grace breathed out. He was still trying to get his bearings, moving into the tunnel with significantly less enthusiasm than his counterpart. “This was a much bigger scale than the models they sent. That was probably more ‘pure’ than this.”

Using the wall like a rock climber, Grace eased his way along to get closer to Hope. She was using a similar technique, but it looked more like she was hand-walking along the floor. His lizard brain still tried its best to keep him oriented in ‘up’ or ‘down’ while Hope seems to have grasped that, without gravity, there was no such thing.

Grace pushed off the wall in an attempt to meet up with Hope. Instead, he flew past her and collided with the opposite wall.

As he collected himself and adjusted his hold on the grooves in the xenonite, he looked toward the other end to see if he could spot anything. A few more feet in, a solid wall completely blocked the tunnel. It wasn’t the other ship, it was too close, so it was deliberately placed there by the aliens as they were building it.

“Hope, look at this,” he called, somewhat breathless.

She looked up from where she had been examining the tunnel walls, her light joining his in illuminating the blockade in the middle of the tunnel. “Oh…that’s smart,” she mumbled, pushing herself in his direction. “Our atmospheres are so different, they created a barrier between us. The other end of the tunnel must be pressurized and suited for their environment.”

“But it’s solid,” he pointed out. “How do we even know if they’re there?”

Each section of the wall differed from another. Colours and textures, even the size of the panels. It’s like they were trying to show off what their technology was capable of.

Hope carefully grabbed Grace’s arm, pulling in close to the wall for a better look. Each piece had texturing added in. She wasn’t sure if it was just a natural result of the process from creating it, or if they were some sort of engraving that had meaning. It didn’t look random, but it could just as easily be a mark from whatever machine created it.

While Hope was distracted with the process of how the wall might have been made, Grace was inspecting the different sections. As he was looking near the lower section of the wall, he spotted the clear piece that resembled a panel of glass.

He nudged the engineer.

She turned immediately, leaning around his shoulder to see what had caught his attention. Her eyes widened.

“It’s clear!”

It was one of the smaller panels. If they placed a hand on it, even Hope’s hand would cover the majority of the panel’s surface. Grace swiped his fingertips gently across it, picking up the faintest bit of texture through the gloves. Not only was it clear, it was much smoother than the rest.

Hope moved to his other side, getting a better vantage. Her hand stayed resting on his shoulder, using him as her anchor point so she wouldn’t drift away.

Decided to go for it, Grace tapped his fingers against the clear xenonite. Not too hard, but with enough force that it made a knocking sound.

Then, they waited.

Movement.

The Eridian’s three-fingered ‘hand’ slaps down onto the other side of the panel, creating a thud they could hear even inside their helmets. A high pitched, rhythmic tone followed the movement. Grace yelped, immediately throwing himself backward from the shock.

Unfortunately, Hope was directly behind him. She didn’t even have the chance for her own instincts to kick in before he slammed into her and sent them both tumbling backward toward the Hail Mary. Hope corrected first, grabbing onto the jut-out of xenonite with one hand and Grace’s tether with the other. It brought him to a solid halt as well and yanked him back toward her like he was on a bungee cord.

For a moment, all they could hear was one another breathing through the comms in their helmets.

Hope’s heart raced at the abrupt scare, but she forced herself to take deep breaths as she waited for Grace to get his bearings.

They shared a silent glance across the tunnel before slowly easing back along to the wall, returning to the small section of clear xenonite.

This time, Hope stayed low and out of Grace’s path if he flinched back again. Not that it would do them much good—their tethers were crossed and nearly tangled from the number of times they’d overlapped one another. If he took flight again, she’d be pulled along for the ride. He lingered close to her shoulder, letting them both see through the small window.

The appendage appeared again. Slower this time.

Softer trilling sounds reached their ears. Muffled within the suits, but it seemed to be how the Eridian’s were able to ‘talk’.

The hand looked like stone, tapering down into narrow digits that folded out from the end. It had three ‘fingers’, all perfectly closing in together to create a blunt end. One of the digits opened up, knocking on the panel. Copying what Grace had done a minute prior.

Hope smiled. They liked to mimic.

“Hello,” she mumbled. Not sure if they could hear her, but it felt odd not to say something.

Reaching forward slowly, she tapped one of her fingers against the panel. There was barely any force behind it. She didn’t need to get their attention, it was more of a reply than anything. After, she pulled her hand back but opened her palm with her fingers spread out. Almost a wave, but without the back-and-forth movement.

The creature on the other side copied her, opening the three digits. She smiled.

Then it pulled back into the darkness, disappearing for a moment. The two humans waited silently, wondering what it would do next. Already, their minds were reeling over what they’d seen. Even though they had basically seen only the equivalent to a hand, it was amazing how different the Eridian looked in comparison to them.

The stone-like exterior explained how they could survive such an intensely hot atmosphere.

Their new friend returned, holding what looked like a little man made of xenonite pinched in its claw. While Hope knew it was meant to represent them, Grace recognized that it was also the pose he had made when he caught the first canister. He’d thrown an arm up, triumphantly holding up the package to show them that he’d gotten it. They mimicked the way he’d stood and created a little metal man to represent him.

“Is that me?” he mumbled.

One of the digits moved, still holding the xenonite Grace between the other two, like he was pointing at them. It reminded Hope of someone trying to show a ‘what you said’ gesture.

Another of the alien’s arms appeared, this time holding a model of the Hail Mary. It even had the new tunnel attachment as part of the model. It let the model float in their view, before tapping it gently and making it spin. It was in the exact direction that the ship would rotate when they used gravity.

“They want us to turn on the centrifuge,” she pointed out.

Bringing the xenonite Grace back, they watched as it showed him travelling along the tunnel and back to the Hail Mary. “I don’t understand,” Grace said first, pushing closer to the panel. He was nearly lying on top of Hope, but she said nothing.

“Go back inside,” she answered for them. A chirping sound seemed to echo through the tunnel, likely coming from their new companion. The same digit as before pointed at her.

Yes, it seemed to say. What she said.

To drive the point home, it repeated the movement of xenonite Grace moving back along the tunnel and stopping at the ship.

To clarify, Grace motioned between the two of them, then back toward the airlock. “You want us to go back in our ship?” More sounds came through from the other side of the panel. It was almost musical, not creating actual speech like a human’s vocals. “But we just got here,” he tried to argue.

The sounds deepened and the alien was clearly growing impatient, repeatedly demonstrating with his little figurines that he wanted them back in their ship.

“Okay, okay,” Hope agreed first, lifting up a hand in a very human, placating gesture. “We’ll go in.”

Grace, not knowing what else to do, lifted a hand and gave the Eridian a thumbs up. He looked at his own hand and realized what he was doing. There was no way they knew what a thumbs up was, especially in terms of agreeing.

“Okay, we’ll talk to you later.”

Backing up to give Hope space, the two slowly pushed away from the wall.

They could still see the little stone hand as they pushed backward, waving to them through the clear panel. Hope turned away first, grabbing Grace’s tether that was now tightly tangled with hers, and pulled him along as she used the jut-outs on the bottom section of the tunnel to ‘run’ toward the airlock.

Grace let himself be pulled along. It was much faster than trying to follow her pace. He let Hope glide into the airlock first while he caught himself on the edge and took a moment to unclip them from the hull. Even as he closed the airlock door, he kept looking out through the port to try and keep an eye on the wall.

It was in vain, though, since they were too far away for the headlamps to properly illuminate that far.

Hope was floating behind him when he turned around, the EVA room hissing as it repressurized to the Hail Mary’s atmosphere.

She was smiling. “We just met an alien,” she stated calmly.

Grace, the professional scientist that he was, was not calm.

“We just met an alien!”

The EVA room repressurized and Hope scrambled to take off her helmet. Her hair was a mess once it was off, her braid rapidly coming undone from the rubbing of her trying to move her head inside the confined space.

“Why engage the centrifuge? Do they realize what it does, and they want gravity?”

“But we can’t do that with the tunnel attached,” he pointed out, having a bit more trouble getting his helmet off as he tried not to push his glasses into his eyes.

“Maybe they’re going to disconnect first?”

They wouldn’t get any answers in the EVA room. They still had camera feeds that would show them the exterior of the ship, though. So, the two rapidly stripped out of their EVA gear—hanging everything up properly at Hope’s insistence. It will just take longer to put on if you have to scour the room for a runaway glove.

Back in just their thermals, they crowded around the monitor again to watch as the strange machine they used sheered the tunnel off of the Hail Mary. It retracted rapidly, putting space between them again.

“What are they doing?” Grace mumbled, leaning in closer to the screen to try and get a better look.

Hope hummed in thought. “It must have something to do with that wall. Did you notice how all the pieces looked different from one another?”

“And how did they make a clear one?”

“I really want to ask. But I think we’re a little bit away from having those discussions.”

~

The first log they made was to explain what had happened, as far as they were aware, to Yao and Ilyukhina. Grace did most of the talking, keeping it extremely brief as he explained how he had found them and how he had given them the best funeral he was capable of while on an interstellar ship. Hope summarized what the medical file said regarding her own coma struggles, as Grace sat quietly off to the side.

The next important piece of information to share was their new friend.

“We’ve been learning to communicate. You know, enough to order at restaurants,” he explained, turning the laptop contraption they’d created around to face toward the camera. Hope was in the background, wiring a new microphone after Grace had accidentally yanked on the last one in a bout of excitement. He was reapplying the layers of tape he used to keep the tech together. “This atmosphere would kill him and his would kill us. But I like to keep a wall up in my relationships anyways,” he ended with a shrug.

Hope scoffed. “That clearly doesn’t translate to your belongings because your shit is literally everywhere. Can you keep a wall up around that?” She leaned back to look at the camera, raising an eyebrow.

Grace twisted to look at her. “We talked about the language.”

“Ah. You said I couldn’t swear in front of Rocky, you said nothing about the video logs. Besides, what can they do? Fire me? They’re 11.9 lightyears away.” Without a care, she took a sip of the coffee Armando had brought to her when they came back on board.

It was officially at a point that both surviving humans were able to eat proper food. Hope wasn’t sad to leave behind the coma sludge. It had been good to start, but one very quickly gets tired of slurping down their food. Especially because she had to watch Grace eat actual food—jealousy does tend to fester.

She could live with never seeing him put mustard on dry ramen again, though. He did it in a half-asleep haze the day before, just needing to eat something, but she was horrified.

Grace just shook his head, turning back to the camera. “Anyway; we’re pretty sure he’s a mechanic. He understood a lot of the tools Hope brought out to him, like they were familiar to him. He uses a metal form of xenon; he can basically make anything.” He fumbled with the camera for a moment, moving it so he could show them the metal strip he’d given to Hope. “Look at this! We’re calling it xenonite.”

While he was holding the camera up, he went looking for other things to show.

“And when I can’t understand what he’s saying, which is most of the time, he puts on a little puppet show for me and my tiny brain. He and Hope are ganging up on me, because she usually has a better idea of what he’s talking about, so now I have two mechanics on me about things I don’t understand. And you know what? I don’t mind it. Hope’s less cranky when she has someone who understands her—ow!”

A bright orange wire nut bounced off the back of his head.

“You know I mean that with only respect.”

“Next one’s a socket wrench, Grace.”

With his back to her, he mouthed at the camera ‘see what I mean?’ as he dramatically opened his eyes wide.

Remounting the camera, Grace sat back on the stool as he hid his smile. He couldn’t necessarily say he enjoyed getting pelted with random things, but he was glad to have Hope acting like Hope.

“Anyways, he’s growing on me—at least he’s not growing in me, you know? Which was a concern for a little while. Hope was going to lock me in the airlock and suffocate me if that happened.”

Hope spoke up from behind him, unseen by the camera. “For the betterment of humanity.”

Grace didn’t acknowledge her this time. “His sun is dying, too. So, maybe we can help each other.”

Hope stepped up from behind him. “He’s got very different technology than ours, so we’re hoping they’ve been able to figure out something we can’t.” She looked down at Grace. One of the few times she was taller than him was when he was sitting down. “Maybe he knows something we don’t. We’re still working on getting to a point that we can actually have that discussion.”

He nodded along, crossing his arms as he looked up. “We need to make sure nothing’s lost in translation. Which is difficult, all things considered. Hope used a waveform analyzer on his vocals—”

Hope cut in, realizing where he was going with this. She was now leaning against the desk, only part of her still in frame. “Eridians have the ability to vocalize multiple notes at the same time. So far, the analyzer has been able to distinguish up to five.”

“Honestly, it will take a lot of repetition to pick up their language without the translator,” he commented, resuming his fiddling with the piece of xenonite he’d showed the camera.

“Probably easier for those who are more musically inclined,” she pondered. “Having an ear trained to pick out select notes.”

The two continued to summarize their days so far, explaining everything that had occurred since they each woke up.

Neither mentioned the file Hope had found about Grace’s amnesia.

Hope was sincerely tempted to go off on one of the logs, addressing it specifically to Stratt to air some of her anger at the woman. Except, it wasn’t just Stratt would who be seeing those videos. These were basically the historical documentation that Earth would, hopefully, receive about the Hail Mary and its findings.

There was still a high possibility she’d send back a personal one addressed to Stratt, but there was time yet to decide on what to say.

It felt like a blink that several days had passed since meeting Rocky the Eridian. Their ability to communicate improved daily. Grace and Hope decided to make a bit of a schedule so they could stay with Rocky when he was in the tunnel. Sometimes, they did nothing more than work on their own things while sitting on the other side of the wall.

Knowing that he was alone, they felt it was the least they could do to give him someone to spend time with.

Even when they weren’t actively working on the translator, Hope would sit on the other side of the wall with him, working on her computer or the smaller components of the Hail Mary while Rocky was working on his own devices on his side.

She’d often catch herself just watching what he did, trying to figure out how his tools worked.

It was during one of those situations, only the two of them, when Rocky stopped what he was doing and tapped at the wall. Hope looked up from her tablet to give him her attention, sitting up straighter to show she was listening. She had taken to sitting over the airlock ‘drawer’ that Rocky had installed.

Grace teased her about it being the equivalent to a cat sitting on top of the dryer for warmth.

It kept her close to the wall, and—yes—it was warm. She could easily communicate with Rocky when necessary, and she was able to look over to the nearby computer to see what he said if he spoke to her.

“What that, question?” Rocky asked as he tapped at the panel, pointing at her.

Hope looked down, unsure what he was referring to. She was wearing one of her henley’s and a pair of cargo pants instead of the flight suit. Nothing was on her shirt, and her hair was braided out of the way—finally cut down to an appropriate length—and she hadn’t dropped anything from her pockets.

“What?” she asked, looking around.

Rocky motioned in front of himself, pinching his fingertips together in the vicinity of his ‘chest’ before he pointed at her again. “That. Hang metal. Sings.”

He was hearing her necklace! Hope leaned back to pull the chain from inside her shirt. The titanium links jangled against each other, but it was the rings and recently added charm from Stratt—Hope had been dearly tempted to melt it down when she found Grace’s medical report—that sounded the most when she moved.

She was so accustomed to wearing them, she usually forgot how much sound was actually put out by the necklace.

Lifting it up for Rocky to see, still looped around her neck, the two rings clanged together as the engraved coin swung next to them.

“What mean, question?” he asked, pointing again.

“The necklace?” she asked, tugging on just the chain. “Or the rings?” She tapped her finger against her Iron Ring.

He opened his hand and made a grabbing motion. All of it.

“This is a small chain, a piece of jewellery. It’s called a necklace. It’s a decoration that humans wear. These are rings, we usually wear them on our fingers.” She spoke slowly, making sure he was able to keep up with any new words. As he repeated them, she added them to the translator.

“What purpose, question?” he repeated.

“Humans wear rings for several reasons. Marriage, promises, sentimental, rewards. This,” she held out her Iron Ring. “I was given this when I learned enough Engineering to meet their standards. It reminds us of the values we learn as Engineers.” She bypassed her wedding ring for the one Stratt had given her. “This is a gift from Earth, when I came here to try to save our star.” Finally, she held up the chain. “I made this myself, out of Titanium. It was a way to demonstrate how proficient I am with metal.”

Rocky tipped his body slightly, like when he was thinking. “That one?”

He meant the ring she hadn’t shown. Her gold ring. Even tucked into her shirt, of course he could see it.

“This is a marriage ring,” she explained quietly, holding it up. “When two humans marry, they are promising themselves to each other. They wear rings to represent that promise.”

“Mates!” Rocky declared. That was one of the topics that came up when he was asking about the differences between Hope and Grace. They’d been able to side-step that one for the most part.

“Yes, mates would wear these. Here,” she tapped her left ring finger.

“Not you,” he pointed out. His tone was gentle, quiet. Not quite questioning, but he’s smart. Rocky knows that there’s a reason she doesn’t wear her ‘mate’ ring on the designated finger.

Hope just smiled. It was sad and small. “No. Not me.”

Rocky made a soft, sad sound. Understanding. It wasn’t quite a word, more of a tone that suggested how he was feeling. She noticed how he stroked one of the gems on his lower arm.

He didn’t ask her why she wasn’t wearing her ring properly. It stayed on her necklace instead of the finger she had pointed out. He didn’t ask her why she tucked the necklace away, hiding it beneath her shirt again.

Rocky pointed again. “Hope hurt.”

Her hand had healed enough that she wasn’t wearing anything over the cuts on her knuckles anymore, instead letting the scabs breathe and heal. It hadn’t been a bad laceration, but the constant flexing of the knuckles and movement of the skin meant she split the scabs open regularly.

Grace warned her they were likely to scar if she kept re-opening them.

Her hands, however, was littered with scars. Her career was not one that meant soft hands. Little lines peppered her fingers sporadically from years of getting pinched, clipped, cut, burnt.

Rocky, most likely, was picking up on the rough, raised edges of the scabs.

“I’m okay. They’re almost healed.”

“Hope angry.”

She nodded slowly. He had heard her. “I was. I found out someone on Earth did something bad, and it made me angry. My emotions get the better of me; I acted in anger.”

“Grace fix.”

“He did what he could. My skin just needs to heal, now.” She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers. The skin didn’t protest the action this time, and all scabs remained in place. “Only minor. It’s okay.”

Rocky shook his body. “Humans too delicate.”

She laughed softly. “I agree. We are engineered horribly.”

Although it was a better topic than the previous one, it was still not a conversation she wanted to continue. So, she pointed to what Rocky had been working on. “What are you making?”

“Tau Ceti,” he answered simply.

It was in pieces right now, but as Hope looked at it, she realized that there were several spheres that must represent the planets and Tau Ceti itself. More strong wires sat aside, curved in varying degrees of arc.

“Hope Grace make model,” he encouraged a moment later. “Need plan, statement.”

She nodded. Her nail tapped against the metal of the laptop. “You’re right. We need to make a plan.”

It’s not as though they were actively delaying it. Understanding Astrophage, the Petrova line, Tau Ceti; they needed to be sure they could understand each other before they dove that far into the science. However, Hope was confident that they had enough vocabulary between them that they could start.

She looked at the time on the computer. Grace had gone inside to take care of himself for a bit. Eat, shower, shave. Hope didn’t think on it much more than that. It was a small ship, considering, so any amount of time the two had privately was appreciated.

Although, both had the habit of looking over their shoulder with the expectation of the other being there. She’d caught herself a couple of times wanting to say something to Grace during her interactions with Rocky.

“Alright,” she agreed, unfolding herself from where she’d been sitting. “Let’s start on a model.”

Unfortunately, she’d been spoiled during the Project’s construction. She was used to having whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. If she needed tools, or parts, or materials, she could just go and grab them or ask for them.

It had already been an irritation when she realized she couldn’t patch the hole in the hull like she wanted, it would always be imperfect, but now she had to make-do with spare parts. It would be amazing if she had the ability to make things like Rocky could with his xenonite—and she was sure if she asked him, he’d make her what she needed to build a model of her own.

Thankfully, the lab did have some of what she needed.

She didn’t even need to ask before Rocky was passing over several spheres of xenonite, the same web-like pattern as the little Petrova line he’d sent them in his first container. Her welding gloves were always nearby so she and Grace could remove items from the drawer without burning themselves.

Knowing it was easiest to build from the center, outward, she started with the largest ball to represent Tau Ceti and made her way outward.

Rocky alternated his focus between Hope and the model he was creating. She was sitting on the floor of the tunnel, the laptop still in reach if she needed it, and was carefully bending wires that she’d brought in from her ship. She could use a spiral pattern for the wire, so technically the entire model would be connected.

Obviously, it wouldn’t be to scale. But it gave them a visual.

The jingling of her rings drew Rocky’s attention again.

She wore a ring meant as a promise to her mate, but not in the correct place. She hid it away. Not out of shame…more like she was trying to protect it. Preserve it.

Grace wore no such things.

No necklace. No rings. No promise. Yet, like Tau Ceti and its planets, they gravitated around each other.

~

Armando sprayed her hand down with a disinfectant that burned, before Grace took over and wrapped her knuckles in crisp, white gauze. He followed the bandage up with a tensor wrap, cutting a small strip out of a longer piece to wrap around her hand and keep the gauze in place. And, hopefully, prevent her knuckles from swelling too much.

As he was wrapping her hand, Grace told her about his decision to name the Eridian Rocky. The little creature had introduced itself with a very long, musical name that they had no hope of repeating, so Grace gave him an English one.

He also basically forbade her from the control room for a while, so she could work on the program out with him and Rocky as he tried to use the clock to communicate numbers. Initially, this irritated her. She had work to do, and she didn’t get the chance to do the digging she wanted. However, he wasn’t wrong. If she went and parked herself in front of those screens again, any level of calm she’d obtained would likely deteriorate.

Although, she made him agree to give her the chance to replace the busted monitor with one of their spares. It was better to just get that over with than to come back some time later and be left to look at the broken one again. While she was doing that, he’d been cutting out pieces of tape and placing them on the outer plastic of the clock in the corresponding places.

She sat nearby and watched as he finished the last few numbers. Grace appraised her of what had happened with Rocky so far. “He basically just played with the measuring tape, and their side of the tunnel is still completely dark. Plus, no face. No eyes. It makes sense that they have a different way of seeing.” He lifted up the clock. It was patchy and the numbers were much too big to accurately tell time with it now, but that wasn’t important.

“So, you’re thinking echolocation?”

“Yup. We’ll find out if he can actually see this.” Then, he pointed at the computer she’s picked. “From there, we can record his version of our words. Boom, Eridian translator!”

Hope already had all the equipment she’d need, including a microphone that would usually be clipped to their clothes while they were doing logs, so the audio was recorded properly. They should probably start doing that.

However, the important information that needed to go back to Earth was about Astrophage and the Petrova line, not Eridians. They’d get to that later.

“Alright, let’s go!”

Another tote bag was slung over Grace’s shoulder—he’d absolutely refused to let Hope carry it herself—and he was brandishing the clock in his hand.

The tunnel was brighter than the last time she’d been inside, the lights set up more carefully for optimal results. The large glass-like wall remained, and Rocky was curled up and waiting on one of the jut-outs that made a sort of shelf.

Instead of the original wall they’d encountered, this one was full of gaps and ridges. Places he could climb across or stand so he was at eyelevel with them—even if he didn’t have eyes. There even looked to be a place that if they were to sit on it, it would allow them to be side-by-side through the xenonite.

Rocky jumped back up as soon as they entered the tunnel, trilling excitedly at their return. Grace rushed ahead, waving the clock over his head.

Hope, getting to see the tunnel properly for the first time, was distracted by the intricacies of the xenonite. No helmet or bad lighting to make it difficult. “It’s a spiral,” she mumbled to herself. The tunnel was formed in a spiral pattern, building onto itself like a coil. This told her that the machine that created the tunnel worked on a rotating track, not just a forward and backward one that she had first assumed. It didn’t create the tunnel one section at a time, but instead in one continuous movement.

Turning in a circle as she followed the spiral, she got a better look at where the xenonite was fused to their hull.

Miraculously, the aluminum showed no signs of melting or damage.

“Hope, come meet Rocky!”

Right.

Turning back on her original path, she carefully tracked over the uneven ground to reach the wall. Rocky was bobbing excitedly, chittering and singing in his language as he watched her approach. Grace stood to the side, smiling.

Even in the short amount of time he’d been with the Eridian before, they’d seemed to have forged an understanding with one another.

“Hope, meet Rocky. Rocky, this is Hope,” the scientist introduced, motioning between the two.

As Grace motioned to Rocky, the Eridian brought two of his legs together and sang out his name in a long symphony of sounds. On his arms were the carvings they’d seen before. Likely, they were markings that proclaimed who he was. Especially if they did use echolocation, the carvings would allow other Eridian’s to literally read who he was.

Hope lifted a hand in a small wave. “Hello, Rocky.”

With a chirp, he mimicked her and lifted a hand with the three fingers spread out. Then he pointed at her hand with one finger, before he waved again.

Not sure what else to do, Hope just waved a second time before she clasped her hands behind her back.

Grace was back to business. “Sorry for the wait, I brought this!” He lifted the clock up again. “Echolocation! Right? You need surfaces to see. Try this.” Holding the clock up in front of his chest, he pointed at the tape. “You see the numbers?”

Rocky seemed to take a moment to focus on the device. Grace had tried to show it to him earlier and got basically no reaction. True, he’d been entirely enamoured with the tape measure at the time, but other than the hands that moved, it wouldn’t just been a flat disc with no purpose.

This time, Rocky brought up two of his hands and started waving them, wiggling his digits as he made happy tones and chirps.

Hope smiled at the reaction, watching as he turned in a quick circle while still waving his hands.

“What’s that?” Grace asked, mimicking the movement with his free hand. “Is that good? Jazz hands means good?” As Rocky calmed down again, the scientist tucked the clock under his arms and gave Rocky a double thumbs up. “We do this. Your version of this,” Again, Grace mimicked the happy dance—he even folded down his ring and pinky fingers, so it was only done with the other three, “is our thumbs up.”

Rocky proceeded to give Grace a thumbs down.

Hope snorted.

“No, that’s thumbs down,” he corrected. Rocky chirped at him. “You need the thumbs up.” He exaggerated the movement of rotating his arm so his thumb was pointing upward. Rocky only did another thumbs down.

Grace’s shoulders drooped slightly. Hope laughed. “Grace, he doesn’t have wrists. I think we can forgive the thumbs down.”

He sighed but shrugged. “It’s close enough.”

Then, to copy what Grace had done when he was returning to the ship to check on Hope—and fix the clock for Rocky—the Eridian held up one digit in a ‘wait one second’ gesture.

“You want me to wait?” Rocky excitedly paced in place, using a different arm to repeat the ‘one second’ gesture before he jumped off of the xenonite wall and scrambled deeper into the darkness of his side of the tunnel. He made quiet tones as he marched off, like someone muttering to themselves.

Hope stepped in closer to the wall, trying to see better as he scrambled back through the darkness. She was wondering what kind of airlock the Eridian’s used for their ship. When he reached the Blip A, a square door opened and Rocky slipped inside easily. Another square. It was remarkable how they were able to contain so much pressure.

Grace continued to talk like Rocky could still hear him, so she moved to the tote bag he had set aside and grabbed the laptop. Her hand pulsed with discomfort, a reminder of her actions that had shame coiling in her stomach.

She chose a somewhat smoother section of the tunnel floor to sit down to work. Legs crossed and laptop sitting across her knees, she looked up to watch as Grace paced slightly with impatience. He was holding the clock behind his back, rocking on his heels, as he avidly watched the tunnel for the return of their new friend.

“Did you teach him that?” Hope asked as she waited for the computer to boot up.

“Hm?”

She lifted her good hand and raised one finger, using her good hand.

“Oh! Yea, I was trying to relay that I was going to be right back when I was going back inside. He kinda copied me then, too. Picks up on everything super fast!”

In that moment, Rocky returned from his ship.

Like Grace had done with the clock, he was proudly holding something up over his head.

Hope immediately abandoned the laptop. It wasn’t nearly as important or interesting as seeing something Eridian. Rocky placed it on the xenonite jut out that he’d been standing on and gently slid the item closer for them to see. It was a cylinder shape that flared outward on either end—it was basically the inverted shape of the canisters he’d been sending them.

It sprang open with a metallic grind.

Hope’s hand stopped Grace’s head as he flinched backward, halting him from going too far. She had a feeling he wasn’t just putting a simple cylinder in front of them. Something was bound to happen. Her palm cupped the back of Grace’s head, helping to calm the momentary panic that coursed through him when the device sprang open.

“I’m good. Everything’s good,” he assured, more to himself than the other two in the tunnel.

Dropping her hand as he stepped in again, she leaned closer as she watched the little device with rapt attention.

“It’s a clock,” she realized. She smiled as she turned to Grace again. “He brought you a clock.”

He nodded slowly as he lifted the one still in his hands. “I showed you a clock, and…and you’re showing me a clock.” They watched as the dials on the cylinder moved. Symbols were etched into the surface that must have represented their number system. “We’re clock bros.”

Hope pulled a permanent marker out of her pocket—she hardly ever went anywhere without one—and yanked up her left sleeve. As it moved, she wrote on her arm. She copied down each of the symbols and marked how and when they moved.

As she was writing, eyes still fixated on the Eridian clock, Rocky started to sing and chatter excitedly. He motioned to the clock, moving his hands around and pointing them at his own etched symbols on his arms.

Grace, at a loss, had no clue what the little guy was saying.

“Wait, uhm…I gotta be honest…I’m not sure I’m getting all of this.” He looked over at Hope, wondering if she was fairing any better.

She was still staring fixatedly at the clock, rapidly writing on her arm. The cap for the marker was held between her teeth. She never once looked down at what she was writing, but somehow, she kept it fairly concise and clear.

Grace watched the marker glide across her skin. Is she doing long division?

“Uh, do you want some paper?” he finally asked, seeing how she was running out of unmarked skin on her left inner forearm. She ignored him.

It had grabbed Rocky’s attention, however, and he stepped around the clock to be closer to Hope. He seemed to focus on her writing hand, the movement allowing him to somewhat see what she was doing. He reached out to tap the panel between them, pointing at her hand.

Finally, she stopped.

“The use a base 6 number system,” she finally explained, looking at Grace. “Nothing higher than a five on that clock.” She motioned to the symbols she’d written on her arm, matching the ones on the Eridian clock.

His eyes widened. She had been doing the math!

“One Eridian second is 2.366 Earth seconds.”

Apparently, he was starting to rub off on her, because after doing the long division along her forearm, she’d written the answer and circled it with several exclamation points. Hope didn’t do that. She did the math, got the answer, and that was that. Grace was the one who added unnecessary points of enthusiasm.

“Did you just teach yourself Eridian time on the fly?”

“You said we’d communicate with them through numbers. We need to learn theirs, too, if we plan to do that. Plus, I’m an Engineer. Math is literally my job.”

Grace huffed a small laugh. “We really need to work on the translator. It’ll take us years to get to a point of science related discussions if we keep going at this pace.”

Hope looked back at the laptop she’d abandoned. The screen was lit up now. It had powered on while she’d been distracted by the clock. “Alright. Divide and conquer!” Going back to the tote bag, she pulled out a tablet. “Using just the laptop is possible, but we need something to record him with, something to store the recordings, something to translate in real time, and something to store the translations. The laptop has the storage, but all that at once is going to slow it down and we might miss something important, so…”

She handed the tablet to grace.

“We’ll do the waveform-analysis on the tablet and use the laptop to translate. It’s not going to be the classiest setup, but it’ll do the job.” She pointed at the tablet now in his hands. “That will give us a better understanding of how he talks, too. It can analyze the sounds and tones he uses. Maybe someday we’ll be able to recreate the notes and speak to the Eridians in their language.”

They set themselves up in front of the xenonite wall, Rocky watching them curiously, and started on their individual tasks.

Hope didn’t even have to dive into the code for the translation program, it had a built-in feature that allowed her to basically create a new language. It would receive the data from the tablet after they recorded a sound and feed it through the program. Even as they were able to build the vocabulary and have larger conversations, the program would automatically select sections of what Rocky said as ‘unknown’ and flag it for translation.

This way, they wouldn’t need to individually record every word one at a time. Especially since it’s unlikely Eridian had precise word-for-word translations into English.

The program, over time, would even learn Eridian grammar and sentence structure, allowing it to recognize different inflections and even tone.

Running a connector between the tablet and the laptop, Hope filled out the parameters for the language before she looked over to Grace and nodded. “All set, let’s give it a try.”

He was already armed with the microphone, which was also plugged into the tablet—thankfully, they had better technology than Apple, because they’d have run out of ports two cords ago.

“Alright, Rock, check this out! We’re going to record you,” he started to explain to the Eridian, lifting up the small black microphone toward the divider wall. Rocky, clearly unsure what was being held up, ducked back with a sound of distress. “Oh! No, no! It’s okay! It’s a microphone,” Grace assured, tapping the microphone and speaking into it to show that it wasn’t going to do anything harmful.

Hope watched the interaction with a small smile.

During their time working together, his teaching background came out fairly often. But seeing how he was with Rocky was different than how he spoke to the rest of them on the project. He knew he was dealing with adults, many older than him, and toned down the basic explanations as much as he could.

With Rocky, and their limited way of communicating, the ‘teacher tone’ was coming out.

“We’ll start with one.”

Since Grace was already juggling the tablet and microphone, Hope lifted the clock up and pointed at the one. “One,” she declared, then lifted up one finger.

Rocky made a short, higher pitched sound as he said his equivalent of one. The recording came up on Grace’s screen, before it followed through to Hope’s a second later. She typed in the corresponding ‘one’ in the translator.

Then, she played it back.

Rocky’s vocals came through the speaker. He jolted, surprised to hear himself. Grace smiled as he lifted one of his fingers. “One!”

~

Unfortunately, the way the tunnel sealed to their hull blocked any of their exterior cameras from being useful. He did still bring the one camera in with him to document the encounters he had with the little alien, but it wasn’t set to a live feed for her to watch.

Once he was out of view, she marched toward the control room.

He was distracted and outside the ship. She didn’t know when she’d get the chance again.

She had access to deeper parts of the ship’s computer systems than Grace did. Obscure corners that he wouldn’t know where to look, which would likely be locked tight against him regardless of him accidentally finding them.

Deep diving into those dark corners when he could possibly walk into the control room was out of the question. Until she knew what could potentially be found, she didn’t want to risk Grace overhearing or reading it.

Hope wanted to scour the system to find out if Stratt had provided additional information regarding the sudden crew change. In her mind, it made sense to send something that would clarify the change once everyone woke up. Why was Grace on board instead of either of the planned scientists? What happened to cause the abrupt change?

And why the fuck was Hope not told when it happened?

Unfortunately, the message might have been sent along with Yáo to deliver personally. If that’s the case, she’d never get her answers. At least, not until Ryland regained his memories.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

Again, since she could run it in the background, she turned on the diagnostic for the current status of the ship. The tugging on their airlock was definitely more than she was comfortable with. Once it was running, she turned to the old diagnostic and hunted down the alert that it had found.

It was a multi-page medical report.

It started on March 15th, the day she was meant to wake up the first time. A summarization of the crew. Basically, it was supposed to be the start of them waking up and would provide a base for their health as they woke up and progressed through the first few days post-coma.

Except she hadn’t woken. Two of them were dead. And Grace didn’t remember a damn thing.

Everything had gone wrong.

MEDICAL LOG: ONBOARD AUTONOMOUS MEDICAL UNIT

PATIENT DATA

Patient Name: Emrys, Hope (Dr.)

Assignment: Eng / Sci-backup. Alternate.

Age / DOB: 36 / 1987-10-04 (biological)

Date of Report: March 15, 2032

Current Status: Medically Induced Coma (Prolonged Stasis)

INCIDENT OVERVIEW

AMU attempt to initiate awakening sequence, resulted in acute respiratory failure. Patient failed to transition to autonomous ventilation and experienced immediate deterioration.

· 8:00 – Initiation: AMU began micro-dose reduction of neuro-sedative agents to resume autonomous brainstem activity.

· 8:06 – Respiratory Distress: Patient exhibited rapid, shallow, erratic breathing (tachypnea, 42 breaths/min). Oxygen Saturation plummeted from 98% to 74% within 45 seconds.

· 8:07 – Autonomic Storming: Patient experienced extreme tachycardia (heart rate 165 bpm) and acute hypertension (210/115 mmHg), signaling intense neurological stress/stasis induced panic.

· 8:08 – Airway Compromise: Severe laryngospasm detected.

· 8:09 – Emergency Re-Sedation: Aborted awakening protocol. AMU administered a rapid-sequence bolus of neuromuscular blocking agents and high-dose sedatives to paralyze the vocal cords and arrest seizure-like activity.

· 8: 12 – Stabilization: Mechanical ventilation successfully re-established at 100%. Vital signs stabilized to baseline status parameters.

Hope slapped her hands over her face and leant back in the pilot’s seat.

There’s a video.

The medical robot had recorded the entire process.

Seizure-like activity.

Did she actually want to watch that? No. No she did not.

The two following pages were Yáo and Ilyukhina’s; unfortunately, it shed no further light on what happened to them. Aside from the same blurb on their Patient Data, the following summarization was Deceased. No cause, no date. Just that they were gone.

Whether the robot had malfunctioned or just encountered a problem it couldn’t solve, they’d likely never know.

The following page was Ryland Grace’s.

Most of the information she already knew, but Hope skimmed through it rapidly.

PATIENT DATA

Patient Name: Grace, Ryland (Dr.)

Assignment: Primary Science Officer

Age / DOB: 35 / 1988-03-01 (biological)

Date / Time of Report: March 21, 2032

Current Status: Awakening Protocol – Successful

INCIDENT OVERVIEW

Successful completion of awakening protocol. Transition from prolonged status to autonomous proceeded with optimal parameters.

At first, it looked like a basic report that broke down how Grace was brought out of his coma. The entire procedure had taken roughly an hour, with no adverse side-effects. At first glance, nothing popped out. Good oxygen, good blood pressure.

Except—

· 9:15 – Amnesia Protocol Administration: Per Project Command directive, the Retrograde Amnesia Protocol was initiated prior to patient extubation. Midazolam and NMDA receptor antagonists administered successfully.

Hope froze.

Hope screamed.

Hope punched the monitor with enough force to shatter the surface. The Medical Report immediately black screened then glitched with a series of colours across the cracked, inky surface. Her hand exploded with pain instantly.

“Stratt!”

She nearly punched another screen as rage oozed through her like a poison. Blood dripped hot along the back of her hand, but Hope ignored it as she curled in on herself, drawing her knees up and squeezing her arms in against the sides of her head like it would somehow contain the fury that made her want to tear the ship apart.

Mary’s voice came through the speakers, talking about distress and calm breathing.

It was Stratt. Of fucking course it was Eva Stratt that caused Grace to have amnesia when he woke up.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, honestly, but the fact that the German woman would actually go as far as to deliberately damage Grace’s mental and physical health was a new level of insanity.

Hope threaded her fingers behind her head, ignoring the flare of pain it caused through her knuckles, and squeezed her arms together so all sound was muffled around her.

What possible reasoning could Stratt have to cause her Primary Science Officer to suffer amnesia? As the lone scientist—excluding Hope’s backup knowledge—Grace was the one who basically carried the outcome of the mission on his shoulders. Even if their crew had all survived intact, Yáo and Ilyukhina wouldn’t be of much help and Hope, in comparison to Grace, had mediocre knowledge around science and how to best study what they might find.

Regardless of her reasoning, Stratt could very well have doomed her own mission.

Hope felt sick.

There was no telling how temporary or permanent Grace’s amnesia would be. For all that woman knew, she was sending him off to space to wake up like a blank piece of paper with no hope of recovery. The brain wasn’t predictable. Anything could have happened after those drugs were pumped into his system.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

“Hope? Hope! Oh, my god!”

Hands grabbed her elbows and pulled her arms away from her head, unmuffling her ears, and Grace’s face appeared inches away from hers.

She’d hadn’t even heard the airlock alarm when he came back in. Was he trying to contact her through his earpiece? She had no clue.

“You’re bleeding! What happened?” he demanded frantically. He turned her hand over to examine her knuckles, two of which were busted open from the force she’d used to punch the monitor. Said monitor was spazzing and glitching, no longer legible with any information and very obviously destroyed. He probed gently at her fingers, shifting them around. No abnormal movement, so she hadn’t broken them.

The pain made her twitch.

More blood rushed out of the small gashes.

Grace looked between her hand and the screen, eyes wide and face pale. “Why would you do that? Come on, we need to clean this.”

“It’s her fault,” Hope mumbled. He stopped tugging on her but kept her wrist held gently in his palm. He was warm. Always so warm. She must feel like ice against him.

“Who’s fault? For what? Hope, I don’t understand. What did you see?”

When she finally looked at him, green eyes catching blue, her rage constricted through her chest again. “Stratt. She roofied you before you woke up.”

She didn’t wait for his reaction. Using her free hand, she turned to one of the other monitors and pulled up the same files she’d just been reading. Bypassing the first three, she stopped on Grace’s and pointed directly at the Amnesia Protocol that was performed minutes before he was extubated.

Grace’s jaw went slack, his hand momentarily restricting around her wrist, as he read the same words that had caused her to lash out. It momentarily felt like someone had doused ice-water though his veins.

He could do nothing but stare.

Hope’s hand clenched into a first again. He could feel the flex of muscles and tendons under his palm as she did so. A few drops of blood fell to drip on the floor. One marked the pants of Grace’s flight suit, immediately soaking into the red fabric. The others dripped through the grating under his feet, unnoticed.

“Whatever happened before we launched, she’s hiding it. Something bad happened on Earth before we left, something that took DuBois and Shapiro off the crew roster and got you added to it. And she does not want us to know.”

Grace pulled his attention away from the screen to look at Hope again.

When he’d initially seen her, curled up in the chair with blood dripping down the back of her hand, he’d assumed she’d been scared. Like a child curls in on themselves when they’re afraid, like a defense mechanism.

No. She was furious.

He can remember her irritated. He can remember her angry. This? This was something he had not seen before.

Her face had red splotches flushed to the surface of her skin, like her rage was trying to literally boil her from the inside. She was tensed inward, even her chin was tucked down, in an act of self-restraint. A restraint that apparently came too late, because she’d definitely punched the screen in an initial fit of it.

That was the part that surprised him the most. This ship was her baby. Every bolt was precious. But…she’d broken something. Her emotions had gotten so high from what she’d read that she’d lashed out at the ship.

For him.

And Grace? He felt…hollow.

Numb.

There was already the constant feeling of something missing. He didn’t remember his childhood or his youth, his family. He didn’t remember school, or old friends he might have had over the years. He had disjointed memories of his kids, his work, his time on the Ganzu. But it was like someone had taken an eraser to the rest of his memories. He was stuck with the annoying ‘there’s a word on the tip of my tongue’ feeling all the time. It was all there, just out of reach.

And all along, it was intentional.

Why?

What could he have done to prompt Stratt to deliberately flush everything out of his head upon waking up?

“What did I do?” he asked. He’d never sounded so timid before.

“No!” Hope shouted. He flinched in surprise at the volume, eyes widening. Her good hand fisted in the material of his shirt—she didn’t pull on him, but she held him in place. “Don’t you dare try and turn this onto yourself! I don’t care what excuse she had; no one deserves to have their brain manipulated while they’re unconscious.”

“But what if I agreed to it?” he asked quietly. “I don’t remember anything about joining the mission. Maybe…the amnesia was planned? I might have agreed to it.”

Hope pointed aggressively at the screen that still showed the file. “Per Project Command!” she snapped. “That’s Stratt. Not you. She gave the directive that you were supposed to be administered a drug before you woke up that would induce amnesia. She’s hiding something. That’s why my coma was induced early. That’s why ground control acted all weird before I went under. Something happened.”

Then, she winced.

Her knuckles pulsed with her heartbeat, throbbing in time with each pump of her heart.

Grace refocused.

“We need to get you to Armando. Clean this up and bandage it.”

“It’s fine, I’ll do it,” she tried to dismiss; she deflated slightly as some her anger started to bleed away. She finally released his shirt. “Why’re you in here? I figured you’d be teaching the Eridian analytical geometry by now.” Grace wouldn’t let her pull her hand away.

“He started freaking out and pointing back at the ship,” Grace answered. He looked between Hope’s face and her hand as he explained. “I think they use a form of echolocation to see. He needs texture on a surface to read it. I’m guessing that means their hearing it pretty good, too. I think he heard you in here.”

He lifted her arm above her head suddenly, bringing it over her heart to lessen the blood flow, before he grabbed the front of her suit and yanked her out of the pilot’s seat. Hope grunted in surprise, not accustomed to being suddenly man-handled.

“He seemed really frantic about something, so I came to check.”

Great. The rock alien was privy to her outburst.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. When I read what she did...I just...”

Facing one another in the opening of the control room, Grace’s hand still holding her wrist to maintain her hand’s place above her heart, Hope suddenly looked so small.

For a woman who was only a few inches over five feet tall, she easily had the ability to dominate the space around her. She was loud. She was confrontational. Even when she tucked herself away in the corner, she never actually looked small. She ran circles around the other techs and engineers, and she didn’t back down when someone tried to argue with her—not even Stratt.

Hope gave the impression of someone larger than life most of the time—try as she might to be the opposite. Regardless of how she hid herself, she wasn’t able to disguise her success or her intellect.

But she was human.

And it was on his behalf that she so thoroughly lost control of her temper.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in against his chest. The movement was so instinctual, she was already pressed in against him before he even realized he was reaching for her. She flinched initially, but relaxed instantly against him. Familiar.

Grace smiled. “Well, as appreciative as I am that you felt the need to defend me, let’s use our words next time.”

Her words were muffled into his shirt. “I still have one good hand.”

“Meh, it’s your left. That’ll be a gentle—OW!”

She pinched him. Right where the thinner skin of his hip covered the bone. Just above the waistline of the suit tied around his hips. It wasn’t actually that painful, more of a warning than anything. A silent don’t try me. It was more of a shock than anything.

“That hurt!” Not really.

“I’m the one bleeding.”

“Your hand! Armando!”

~

Unfortunately, that alternative meant that they needed to pave over a quarter of the Sahara Desert. The black panels, per model, were not as effective as Grace’s. However, his were designed for efficiency. Not scale. The black panels were easy to duplicate and, unfortunately, the Sahara was perfect for the location.

He didn’t like it. It would severely damage the ecology throughout Africa, and likely even Europe. However, as Redell had pointed out, the coming ice age was far worse.

Stratt had liberated Redell from the prison and, temporarily, brought him back with them to the Ganzu. Once they could confirm the production of the black panels, they’d be sent off to be mass produced. During that time, she’d have to deal with the very valid uproar that would come about when they started to destroy the Sahara.

Grace didn’t even wait as he hopped off the helicopter and basically ran away from the others he’d been stuck with for the past 13 hours. He knew that if he’d hung around, Stratt would likely have saddled him with tour duty. He didn’t feel like being shuttled off with Redell for any longer than necessary.

His negligence may have been the cause of the homicides, rather than being an axe-wielding psycho, but that didn’t mean Grace was more inclined to be in the man’s company.

His flippancy toward his actions—past and present—also grated on him.

Instead, he went straight for the lower level.

Hope had been on his thoughts since he left.

Stratt was also acting weird. She was more power-trip-y than usual, glaring down the guard at the prison when he demanded she put aside the taser she brought with her. Grace had to force himself between the two and play peace maker before they also ended up in a prison cell.

But Stratt had conceded and handed over her taser. That was nearly as surprising as her initial power-trip, because Grace couldn’t remember a time when she’s willingly stepped down.

Hope was acting weird. Stratt was acting weird. He didn’t like the timing, and he did not think it was a coincidence.

Dodging the other occupants of the ship, he made his way past the lab and workstation Hope was normally occupying—only stopping long enough to drop off his bag and coat in the lab.

It was empty. The computers were all turned off, no monitors lit up or equipment powered on. If he was lucky, that meant he made it back before they finished with the chamber for the Spin Drives. He’d get to see Hope weld!

Not that he didn’t want to experiment more with the drives—they were an important part of mission equipment. He’d seen her when it came to the more theoretical, planning side of the job. The Engineering side. The Master Technician side was the one he hadn’t gotten the chance to see yet.

He wasn’t involved in ArcLight, so her work there was an unknown for him.

Slightly out of breath, he arrived at Dimitri’s lower level in record time.

Normally, there was a steady flow of movement and workers throughout Dimitri’s denizens. Now, however, there was a large pack of bodies clustered in near the chamber.

Grace went up on his toes for a moment, trying to see who was inside. Not that he’d be able to tell, since whoever was welding would be in a thick suit. His best guess would have to be on the fact that Hope is small, but that’s assuming the other welders brought in were all bigger than her—if they showed up at all.

Hurrying his pace, he walked a wide circle around the majority of the crowd. Everyone was watching the process, it seemed. He wasn’t the only one. Grace wasn’t sure if that made him feel better, or annoyed. She was his friend; he had a reason for wanting to watch her work. Why were they here?

Dimitri spotted him first. “Ah! Dr. Grace! You’ve returned!”

He was nearly yanked through the bodies of people, closer to the front of the crowd. There was actually more open space around the chamber than he’d first assumed. Everyone watching was keeping a good fifteen feet back from the structure. Those closer to the argon chamber were clearly working, monitoring the equipment and the welder inside.

Several tubes were fed through the chamber, including what he assumed was an oxygen line that would attach to the suit like an umbilical.

They were covered in sweat.

Heat bled off the entire structure like standing in front of a massive oven with the door closed.

Dimitri clapped him on the back. “Very good timing! We estimate that we finish very soon! Hope welds now.” He motioned over to where several other men were sitting, watching the inside of the chamber avidly.

Each worked for a few hours at a time, with roughly an hour in between to give them a chance to cool the room. They’d put water-jacket backings throughout the Spin Drive chamber, constantly circulating heat out of the room and flushing cool water back in. It was slow, but it helped bring down the temperature in the room. It was most effective when they weren’t actively welding.

The heat was a big part of why they need to work in shifts. Even if they had cooling tubes running through the suit—which he assumed was one of the other lines fed through the chamber—the temperature inside the suit climbed rapidly. Not only was the suit too thick to dispel heat naturally, closing it inside with the welder, but the exterior temperature from the TIG welding would add to it as well.

Grace returned his focus to the chamber.

Hope was working on the far wall, directly behind where they would place the block of metal that Dimitri wanted to melt in order to test the drives.

The panels higher up were already completed, leaving the ones she was working on easily in her reach. At the moment, she was kneeling nearer to the floor with her back to them. He could see where the umbilical line hung down her back, clipped to the suit so it wouldn’t be accidentally pulled when manoeuvring around the room.

There was loud music blasting from a speaker nearby. It was in Russian, so it wasn’t anything he recognized.

“Are you torturing Hope with Russian music again?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the knelt figure.

The bright blue light that was cast off from her work nearly silhouetted her. Even without looking directly at the light, he had to squint in his eyes.

The other man laughed. “She hears nothing from out here. Her own music plays in her helmet,” he explained, motioning over to where one of the workers close to the chamber was sitting. They had a computer set up in front of them. At a glance, Grace realized they were also monitoring the stats in the room and her suit. The current temperature inside the argon chamber was 250 degrees.

There was a slight concern that Hope’s suit temperature was sitting at a toasty 38 degrees. While that may be a healthy temperature for the human body, it was not the best for a body’s surroundings.

He couldn’t see anything on the screens that would tell him where they were playing her music, but he didn’t doubt she’d insisted on it.

“Isn’t that a bit hot for her?” he asked after staring at the stats for a moment.

Dimitri glanced over as well, reading what Grace was. He hummed in thought.

“We monitor it. If it goes too high, we bring her out. Shifts never exceed an hour.”

He nodded to himself. “Efficient. How’s it been going?”

“Good, very good. Spin drive test should begin in the next 48 hours. New Zealand was good?”

Grace made a face. “Yea. They have a new plan to breed the Astrophage for the mission.”

Dimitri side-eyed him. “You do not look pleased by this.”

“They need to pave over two trillion square meters of the Sahara Desert,” he explained bluntly. He kept his eyes trained on Hope. Focusing on her made it easier not to think about how insane Redell’s idea actually is.

The taller man was quiet next to him for a moment. “Unfortunately, Dr. Grace, we do not get to decide what is good or bad anymore. Sometimes, these things must be done.”

Grace ground his teeth. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

Doesn’t mean he had to like it. Or agree with it.

Inside the chamber, the TIG welder shut off. The sudden lack of bright blue light drew the attention of the crew around them, prompting people back to their tasks. Hope stood up and carefully returned the equipment to the table set in the room, a sturdy metal one that would hold everything they needed and withstand the temperature.

While she was out, they’d cool the room as much as they could before sending the next welder in.

They couldn’t wait too, long, though. Time was of the essence with getting this chamber built.

Dimitri nudged Grace’s shoulder, silently pointing over to where the airlock for the argon chamber was. Where Hope would exit.

He didn’t need to be told twice. The scientist quickly left the Russian behind and headed over to where Hope was already inside the inner airlock, the air cycling through to flush out the argon and replace it with safe, breathable oxygen.

A small team was waiting to help her out of the suit, with a rack to the side of them where it could be hung up for her next turn. Each one was wearing heat resistant gloves, considering how hot the outside of her suit was.

When they pulled the helmet off, her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. It was braided back as usual, a Dutch braid this time. Grace wondered if she did it herself or if someone helped her with it. She usually kept things simple, a basic plait that started at the base of her skull.

She met his gaze as soon as the helmet came up.

“Well, look who’s back from his vacation,” she teased tiredly. Sweat dripped off her nose, and she was flushed red from the heat.

The familiar teasing was a welcome balm after the past four days. The trips he took with Stratt weren’t usually for so long. He realized how much he’d become accustomed to having Hope nearby. To talk to, to listen to. Even just to sit with. A companion among the craziness regarding the current situation.

For someone who didn’t like being around people, she had a remarkably grounding presence. Sitting with her just felt…solid. Comforting in its own way.

The team continued to strip her out of the suit, removing the straps and vest that anchored it to her torso, resting the weight of the rig on her shoulders. “I wouldn’t call it a vacation,” he replied simply. “It was a prison, after all.”

“Did you and Stratt jail break someone?”

“Unfortunately,” he muttered. She looked at him quickly out of the corner of her eye, one brow lifted curiously, before she stepped completely out of the suit.

Grace couldn’t help it; he reached for her once she was clear of the other hands and pressed a palm against her forehead. She was hot to the touch, but that was expected. “Do you know how dangerous it is for the human body to remain for long periods of time in extreme temperatures?” he scolded, keeping his voice low.

Batting his hand away, she moved back. “Stop, I’m gross.”

He shrugged it off, wiping his hand on his jeans. “It’s sweat; it’s mostly water.”

She was dressed for the extreme heat; a tank top and a pair of shorts, leaving a lot of skin bare. The sweat covering her caught the light, making it impossible to ignore. One of the workers lifted her braid to tuck an ice pack against the back of her neck, resulting in a flinch from the engineer, as another one handed her a damp towel.

The weight of the rig must be uncomfortable, because he watched as she rolled her shoulders backward and forward. A small series of pops sounded with the movement. As she shifted, he could see the indents and irritated areas of skin where the harness had pressed and chaffed.

Unbeknownst to the two, Dimitri and several of his closer crew played interference. The other welders had tried to beeline toward Hope once she exited the airlock, only to basically be body blocked by the Russians.

One of them even turned the music up, masking any chance of them catching Hope’s attention by yelling for her. Not that they had much chance to begin with. Hope had been dodging them for days. As far as they’d seen, it was innocent. Just professionals trying to converse with another of their own. Except today was different.

Now, there was Grace. Even indirectly, Grace had a special ability when it came to drawing Hope’s focus. She’d actively ignore others, but she’d seek him out if she knew he was around. Not that she would ever admit to it.

Grace squinted his eyes at her. He knew Hope well enough by now. “You need to eat. When did you last eat.”

She avoided looking at him in favour of accepting her discarded coveralls, cool and dry.

“Hope.”

“I had breakfast!”

“Coffee does not count.”

He didn’t need her to admit it. He already knew it was likely dinner—if not lunch—the day before.

“Come on, we’re going to the mess deck,” he declared, leaving no room for argument. Not that she seemed to have the energy for that.

They’d curtained off a section near the airlock, basically just tarps hung precariously, to form a makeshift changing room. Hope slipped behind the plastic, coveralls and boots in hand, as Grace stood awkwardly near the entrance. He politely kept his back to the small gap, just in case.

To fill the silence—which really wasn’t silent, considering all the noise around them—he started to tell her about New Zealand. They hadn’t taken any time to really enjoy the country, going right to the prison to meet with Redell. He mentioned briefly that Stratt had been on a bit of a power-trip, but he could practically hear Hope roll her eyes through the tarps.

When she emerged, she’d taken a moment to pull her hair out of the sopping wet braid and pull it back in a tangled bun, instead. The redness from the heat was dissipating rapidly from her face, and she was back to wearing her usual coveralls tied around the waist, her tank top changed for a fresh, dry one.

She followed him without prompting, heading toward the nearest stairs that would take them to the upper levels close to the mess deck. “Wait, so you two actually broke a guy out of jail?”

“He’s here. On the ship. Somewhere. I clean my hands of it!” He exaggerated dusting his hands off, making a loud clapping sound.

She huffed a laugh—even that sounded tired. “Good luck with that. For a carrier, this ship is surprisingly small.”

Grace pinched his fingers and thumb together, like telling children to be quiet. “Shh! Don’t pop my life-raft.”

Hope only shook her head, smiling.

Considering the time of day, an odd hour in between meals, the mess deck was mostly vacant. The ship had started to keep the kitchens going at all hours since nobody worked the same schedule as another. Some worked all night, some worked straight through the routine mealtimes and would sporadically pop in for quick snacks.

It was easier to keep a steady flow of food. And with the vast number of workers now on the carrier, it never went to waste.

Hope nearly melted into the metal table as soon as they sat down. A long sigh escaped her as she rested her cheek on the cool surface. There was still a flush to her skin as her temperature tried to regulate while out of the suit.

Joking and teasing aside, Grace looked at her more closely. “You’re exhausted.”

It was one thing to sleep as little as she did, but another to do a job in extreme heat while running on no sleep.

“Almost done,” she mumbled back, not even lifting her head.

He’d convince her to sleep later. For now, he’d make sure she ate something.

One of the crew working in the mess hall came over to their table, completely unprompted, and placed a tall pitcher of ice water and an empty glass directly in front of Hope. “Drink,” he ordered, a thick Mandarin accent coating the word.

It would seem this was not the first time she’d nearly passed out on their table after her welding shift.

Hope hummed in acknowledgement, enjoying the cool metal against her cheek. The man didn’t take offense, only grunting as he turned to leave again.

“While you get started on that,” Grace began, motioning to what was likely sixty-some ounces of water as he stood, “I’m going to get us some food. I’d say stay put but I doubt you have the energy to move.”

She only grunted in reply.

~