Chapter Text
~*~
“There is a hostile sky above me. Man will never conquer space. He may live in it, but he will never conquer it. The sky above is void and very black and very hostile.”
Joseph Kittinger, Space Diver
~*~
“Put us in Park, Jimin,”
“Do you ever get tired of that?” Jimin said. He arched an eyebrow at the small floating blue light over his head.
“No, I do not,” JIN said with a laugh. Jimin lined the ship up with the first gate available, humming with the accomplishment of a job well done. He tapped through a number of different commands, before he flipped the intercom system on. “Good afternoon, fellow Roostmates. Just letting you know that we are officially docked into SS-Alpha 7. Thank you, and enjoy your time.”
“You have an excellent flight attendant voice,” JIN said. Jimin looked up at him and then gave a warm smile. “Why thank you,” he said after a moment, taking a deep breath and unbuckling his seatbelt.
“Come on,” he said, snatching the light out of the air like it was a baseball and walking towards the rest of the ship.
He saw Yoongi walking towards him from the other direction, and smiled, holding the small ball of light between both hands.
“Well done, Jimin, my teeth only rattled a little bit at the last attachment,” he said, the deadpan look in his eyes unchanging.
“That may be the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Jimin said with a hug, patting his shoulder as he walked past. “I’m off-duty. If you want someone to yell at after this, I believe that Jungkook is probably up to something stupid.”
Yoongi sighed. “You know, I wish you didn’t have to say it with such certainty, but I have a feeling that you’re right,” he said, and sighed. “Dismissed. Enjoy the time in your quarters. Be ready for dinner later.”
Jimin saluted, and wandered off, leaving Yoongi alone to his thoughts.
Yoongi sipped at his coffee as he strolled towards the cockpit, sitting in a smaller, cramped seat near the back of the ship.
It wasn’t easy being captain, that much he’d learned in his five years or so out in space already. But there were some things that he never got tired of. He spun his chair around so that the hard light panels that made for the ship’s touch screen were now partially obscuring the view out into deep space.
It was funny, people always talked about how space isn't really so black and white as people made it out to be.
For a large part, that was true; space’s true ‘color’ was a light beige that was the color of coffee with too much cream (just how Jimin liked it). But when he looked out his window at any random spit of space…
He felt the inky blackness of the darkness staring back at him sometimes. It was too dark, the light being absorbed in an instant regardless of how many stars were in their immediate vicinity. Even here, near the thin point, it still seemed all wrong somehow. He took a deep breath then a sip of coffee.
But he enjoyed the view. Even if it scared the everloving shit out of him, by god did he love the view.
He watched the lights twinkle, one by one dipping in and out of his view as he worked through the docking paperwork. Yes, they were a research vessel only, yes, they had a full crew, yes they had a shackled artificial intelligence instead of a virtual intelligence. Yes, yes, no, no. Box after box after box. It was enough to drive someone insane.
But finally, after the rush of paper, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He signed his name and snapped a quick picture.
“Identity verified, welcome home, Captain Min,” JIN said in a sleepy tone over the ship.
“Mmm, don’t tell me Jimin’s fallen asleep already… are you that bored?”
“No, not bored. Splitting duties. It’s just...” JIN paused in a way that he never had before.
“Well, out with it then,” Yoongi said after a moment.
“I went through my whole network. Something.. .doesn’t feel the same as it did before. Maybe I am overthinking it.”
Yoongi looked at him blankly for a moment, and then he leaned closer to the comms. “Run it through your system the standard fifty times. If something pops up three times in a row, let me know.”
“Yes Captain,” he said. Then the lights in the console dimmed briefly.
They returned a few moments later. “Nothing conclusive… I’ll file it away for now.”
Yoongi shrugged. “That’s all we can do. Talk to you later.”
With that, Yoongi headed out of the cockpit and down below decks to the kitchen.
In the kitchen, he saw Namjoon looking at the knife block with… intent.
Yoongi paused. “Oh no.”
“Me just being in the kitchen is not a cause for concern, Captain,” Namjoon whined.
“You say that. And yet. And yet,” he said with a sigh. “What do you need?”
“I’m just thinking about maybe… surprising everyone with a nice dinner,” he said.
“Nice dinner?” Yoongi said gently.
“Yeah, maybe some kimchi fried rice or something. I can do it.” Namjoon said, picking up a knife.
“We don’t even have the ingredients for that, first of all. Second of all, what are you cutting, put that down,” Yoongi said with a sigh. “Here, move over, let me help you cobble something together.”
After a few more minutes, Hoseok walked in, taking a look at both of them. “Ah, good. He already has a babysitter,” Hoseok said with a laugh and patted Namjoon’s back.
Namjoon just gave him a look. “Yes yes very funny,” he said. “You know, I have two doctorates.”
“That’s just dumb,” Yoongi said with a snort. At Namjoon’s affronted look Yoongi shrugged. “Why would you put yourself through that twice? Just get the one and then do research in another field. That’s just… masochism at its purest form.”
Hoseok laughed. “Yeah, the rest of us were smart enough to only get one. Then you can get paid for the work you do instead of getting hazed twice.”
Namjoon didn’t manage to build up a defense against that. Hoseok nodded. “Besides, I just got the kitchen working again after your last fiasco. The engineering you put me through is… incredible,” he said with a sigh.
“You can find solutions to anything, Hobi, I’m not concerned,” he said with a smile, and pulled out a bag of rice.
While most of their meals at this point could be made with the push of a few buttons, they all still preferred to have at least one good meal together a week where they made everyone on board sit around the table and really talk to each other. Yoongi had insisted on it. He had done too many low-orbit missions with scientists to know that they ate terribly. He would not subject himself to printed food that often without some sort of recourse for it.
Soon enough, the younger crew mates also came in. Jimin came back and looked on with mild disinterest. It wasn’t that he couldn’t cook; his parents were both cooks. But all of that had made him very glad that the older members would fall over themselves to do it instead of making him do it.
Finally, Namjoon looked up to see Jungkook walking into the kitchen, having emerged from his cave.
Yoongi sighed. It wasn’t that the boy was messy; quite the contrary. Jungkook’s space was typically one of the cleanest on the ship. But he would very rarely have the lights on, more content to do his research curled up in bed in one of the biggest black hoodies he could find.
“Good afternoon,” Jimin said, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Long time no see, kook.”
“Mmm,” Jungkook said, tossing his hair out of his face and slipping onto the bench next to him. “What’s for dinner?”
“Whatever abomination Joon is trying to make this time,” Jimin said, giving Jungkook a smile.
Namjoon cut his eyes at Jimin who laughed and nearly fell off the back of the bench as he did it.
Jungkook smiled at his antics but said nothing too much himself.
Finally between Yoongi, Hoseok, and Namjoon, the five of them sat around a heaping pan of bulgogi, with a fluffy pot of white rice and two or three bowls of mixed vegetables to add in.
With the heat off and the knives away, Yoongi relaxed a lot more, and assessed the little crew that he’d been put in charge of.
Hoseok was pretty dependable -- a good engineer is always a little funny, and Hoseoki was no exception. He wasn’t sure what to make of him just yet but he definitely lifted Yoongi’s spirits and made him smile and laugh more than the last engineer they had. Competency, above all things was the most important and he was glad that Hoseok had that in spades.
In fact, that was the best thing about everyone in the room. Jimin was top of his class and came highly recommended from his last four ships. He wondered why he hopped ships so often but Yoongi wasn’t going to complain. Sometimes that was just what research ship life was like: you were hired by one lab to ferry some scientists out into space and then their funding dried up and you had to move on.
Dealing with scientists was always tricky. While Namjoon and Jungkook also seemed relatively competent, they didn’t seem to like each other too much.
Jungkook was quieter than he’d expected from an astrophysicist. Everything he knew about them meant that they a) never shut up and two) never shut up about things they were passionate about.
Which made Jungkook an anomaly, really. But it was fine, because Namjoon did enough talking for the both of them. Not that he was a blabbermouth or anything. No nothing like that. It was just that.. .well.
He seemed to just spill out information, regardless of whether anyone else asked or cared. It was all about the ‘implications’ for Namjoon.
So between the two of them… Yoongi foresaw some problems.
But, they were both adults, and men in their 20s. If they really couldn’t figure it out between the two of them he’d step in if he needed to. He just hoped he wouldn’t need to.
~*~
“I’m just glad it’s outfitted well,” Namjoon said, chatting with JIN because literally no one else was around. “Sometimes I get onto these research missions and they just don’t have any of the things we’ve asked for and it takes days to get the actual equipment we need.”
“That seems stupid,” JIN said. “If you requested that equipment specifically, wouldn’t it just make sense to give it to you?”
“That’s what I always said, but apparently they think that the instruments that we request are a waste of time,” Namjoon said, quickly organizing the rest of his diagnostic equipment into neat, tidy rows in the metal racking.
“A lot of it is useless, though.”
Namjoon turned around to see Jungkook enter from the doorway. He made a beeline straight for the large tarped object that had taken up most of the back half of the lab that butted up against the small drop doors used for maintenance on the outside of the ship.
“It’s not useless.”
Jungkook gave an almost imperceptible snort. Almost. Then he turned around and pulled the tarp off of the gigantic object, which turned out to be a small, one-person vessel.
Namjoon gaped. JIN whistled.
“What is that for?” JIN asked, darting over to it. “Do you need me in there?”
“No.. it has its own limited virtual intelligence. I don’t need something as powerful as you in there. No offense,” Jungkook said.
“Oh, you don’t need me huh? We’ll see how that works when you’re trapped in your hard-boiled egg in the cold depths of space,” JIN said, his voice clearly going into full pout.
Jungkook rolled his eyes but couldn’t help but smile when the time was right. He took a deep breath and worked his way towards the vessel, pulling out a small slate that he hooked into the panel to start running diagnostics.
“What is that for?” Namjoon repeated, stalking over to Jungkook’s side of the laboratory.
“It’s an exploratory vessel. That’s why most of your stuff doesn’t need to be here.”
Namjoon looked at it. “You realize that we’re part of an observational mission, correct? That’s it. We’re supposed to observe the object that we’ve been hired for.”
“Yes. And what better way to get a look at it then with a great big ship?” he said, slapping the side of it with a smile. “I paddle on out there. I get a look for myself. We can toss out all of the exploratory stuff right there, near the rift. And then we’ll have the best, live, up to date data that we need to figure out exactly what it is we’re looking at.“
Namjoon looked aghast. JIN whistled again. “Well, it seems as if you two have a lot of interpersonal information to discuss and that’s best left to the humans. You both have a nice day now.”
The two of them looked at the AI who slowly dimmed from the moon-shaped light box, and then back at each other.
There was a tense, few heated moments of silence between them.
Then it was a lot of talking all at once.
“The phenomenon that you’re discussing is completely unknown to us. It hasn’t been documented. Anywhere. I wrote my second dissertation on just this sort of thing. There are just so many ideas that we don’t understand and you just… you just want to go out there and poke it?”
Jungkook sighed, blowing the bangs out of his face as he looked on impassively. “Look. I get it. You did… two dissertations for some reason. That’s kind of dumb but I admire your… stubbornness. But some of the best discoveries man has ever made have come from getting quick, primary data. We need that quick and primary data. It may be dangerous but… isn’t that kind of the point?” he asked, looking around them and spreading out his arms. “Try to... enjoy this. Full funding and a great ship. I’m not going to stop myself from having something named after me just because you’d prefer to get it down on paper first.”
Namjoon sputtered, coming up to his full height, which was about a hand taller than Jungkook. “Listen to me. I’m the senior research scientist on this vessel. You’re the associate. The rest of our team is still back light years away from us. They… they are relying on those data to make their models at home. If we screw this up, the whole project may be dead on arrival before we get the full funding from the Exo-Corps. If you want to take that risk, then so be it. But you’re going to have to run everything through me. Or were you too busy being a maverick to read your actual contract, job description, and protocols?”
Jungkook stared at him, and then he sighed, turning around to look down at his diagnostic slate again. “No… I read it. Believe it or not, I’m not an idiot. But I will document everything. And if our superiors believe that you played it too safe, well… it won’t be me that will have to answer to them.”
Namjoon felt his brain working long before his mouth started. But he said something along the lines of ‘huh, well, we’ll see,” and then stormed out into the hallway…
...just to crash directly into Jimin. “Aish--hey! Be a little more careful, huh?” The pilot said.
Namjoon sighed. “I’m so sorry Jimin. I didn’t even see you there.”
“Because you weren’t looking,” Jimin said and patted his shoulder. “I am very hard to miss otherwise,” Jimin said, and gave him a warm smile as he ran a hand through his honey blond hair. “Where are you going all in a mess like this? I haven’t seen you this worked up since we left.”
“Jungkook’s going to kill us all,” Namjoon said with a sigh. He was glad the door was closed and the wunderkind was still working inside, unable to hear them. “Can I steal away in your cockpit for a bit while I go through some instrument calibration? If I do it with him in the room I’m going to pull my teeth out,” he sighed.
Jimin shrugged. “Hey, your ship is my ship. Stay as long as you like. I’m just going to be doing some checkdown stuff to make sure our flight didn’t run us into anything I missed. You’re welcome to come. As long as you don’t mind JIN and his endless jokes.”
“Did JIN come with the ship or did he come with you?”
“Oh he’s standard on these sorts of ships. But I don’t know. Something is different about this version. It’s interesting.”
JIN, or Joint Information Network, was the standard AI used by most research ships on this part of the galaxy. He had seen a few before, but… none as open or as expressive as this JIN was. “Maybe he’s a new version, who knows, but I’m sure that I’ll get to the bottom of it. He never shuts up, after all,” Jimin said, a slight tug of something resembling an emotion behind all the sarcasm.
Namjoon spent a few hours in the cockpit, going through his diagnostic panel and begrudgingly approving the perfect, precise reports coming in from Jungkook in the lab. He relayed it back to the team that was back at the last warp gate, and then signed off for the night. As he did, Jimin finally finished his own checklists, and rolled back the heat shielding on the windows. While they were flying through space there wasn’t much of a need for the large, science fiction style windows that they’d seen on all the ships. Especially when going through warp speed -- it was mostly just fire and that had a tendency to scare off some of the pilots. But once they’d settled on a position, the ship builders were aware that research missions may want to observe what lay beyond the ship with their own eyes.
Namjoon really and truly hoped that he was wrong about Jungkook, but a hole was building in his stomach. He hoped it was just a coincidence.
As he stared out into the void, he saw the anomaly.
There wasn’t really… light here. It was quite the opposite. There weren’t very many stars in the area they were in. It was relatively dark. And it had been for as long as they could remember. But all of a sudden, something had just appeared.
Now, this wasn't the norm in their line of work. When something happens, they see it all happen all at once very rarely. And whatever occurs normally occurs millions of light years away so we were just seeing the imprint of whatever had been millions of years ago.
That was not the case here..
Everything that they had measured had said that this had just magically appeared. It was here and then it wasn’t. In the span of a few hours. It was strange enough to make them rush a crew out to investigate.
But nothing happened like that cosmically. Nothing they’ve found before. So could this be the time?
Could this be the time that there really was something out there, waiting for them?