Chapter Text
Prologue
— — —
[Start of decrypted message]
Congratulations, Comrade! You've survived 3000 cycles, reaching the final phase of the Penrose Program. With the end of the operational lifetime of your Replika unit approaching, it is time to prepare for the final phase of your mission.
If you have not found a suitable world for landing at this point, accept that you will not. Find solace in the thought that others might be successful where you failed.
As you are probably aware, your ship’s spare parts and rations will be depleted. Life support systems and reactor shielding will soon begin to fail, and radiation may begin to leak from the cooling system.
We recommend that you do not prolong your suffering by reusing old filters or rationing supplies. Instead, make peace with your fate. We suggest that you ask your Replika, while it is still functional, to spare you a slow and agonising death, or that you take permanent rest in the cryogenic pod.
Remember, you will die having served your Nation by partaking in the glorious demonstration of our power.
[End of decrypted message]
— — –
Chapter 1
The Penrose-512 crashes onto a sandy beach. For a while, nothing alive moves. The sounds of waves crashing against the metal hull of the ship are the only sounds that can be heard, for now. Ariane wakes up. Thankfully, she’s alive and wearing an exoplanet suit, but she hopes that her partner also survived, preferably without any critical injuries as well. She gets up and tries to balance herself on the crooked wall. She thinks she might have fractured a rib or two, but nothing serious. At least, she hopes so. Walking slowly, she heads towards the LSTR cryo-chamber room. The cryo-chamber itself is sealed off by whatever radiation-shielding filters were salvaged long before the crash.
Ariane calls out, “Elster?”
At first, nothing. Then, the pod opens. An LSTER Replika unit slowly steps out, as if just woken up from a bad sleep.
“I’m ok,” Elster answers her, barely a whisper.
Ariane rushes to hug her. “Oh, thank goodness. How are you feeling?”
“I’m not going to lie, I’m a little dizzy. But that should wear off in a few minutes. I can walk.”
“Let’s take it slow. We have time.”
She helps Elster move to the cockpit. The Penrose is mostly buried in sand from the looks of it, but from the top, a wide ocean is visible. Now, whether this is liquid water is up for debate until they can test it. Plus, they don’t know if the atmosphere is breathable or not.
Elster gets in her exoplanet suit and heads out. The sand is soft like powdered opal.
“Wow, it’s like an uninhabited Vineta,” says Elster over the telecom.
“I guess I can see that. There’s no other land in sight, I think.”
“Shouldn’t we report to the Nation about this?”
“Hmm, no. It’s clear from their message that we basically did the impossible. We weren’t actually supposed to find suitable planets for habitation. It’s just a propaganda ploy.”
“Then... what ARE we going to do?”
Ariane shrugs. “I don’t know. Live here, I guess. It’s not like the Nation can reach us here anyway. Why not live out the rest of our lives doing what we’ve always been doing on the Penrose?”
Elster smiles. “I do like the sound of that.”
— — —
After several hours of testing, the molecule detection tools that were still operational on the ship confirm that they ARE stranded on a habitable planet. Or at least, this part of it is. The ocean is water, but it’s interestingly much fresher than Vineta’s, according to Elster. The air is breathable. Most of the atmosphere appears to be argon, a noble gas, so it’s theoretically safe to breathe in so long as there’s enough oxygen available.
Ariane takes off her helmet outside, which startles Elster.
“Ariane, what are you doing?!”
“Testing to see if our theory is correct,” says Ariane, almost snarkily.
“Come back inside! We don’t know how long each of us can last out there without a helmet.”
“Ugh, but I’m fineeee—”
Elster runs outside, grabs her arm, and pulls her into the ship.
“You can’t scare me like that. I almost had a heart attack.”
“Sorry...”
“Let’s do some more testing, alright?”
“Okay. Then can we go run and frolic around the beach?”
“Yeah, sure.”
— — —
It is Day 2. Ariane and Elster are sleeping until some strange noises wake them. Elster gets up.
“Whereareyougoing?” Ariane mumbles.
“I’m going to check to see what is making that noise. I’ll be back quickly.”
Elster takes the emergency shotgun just in case. You can never be too careful, and none of them know what’s out there.
The noise seems to be coming from the roof of the ship. It’s like something is pecking and rummaging through its parts. When the Replika reaches the source, the hatch in the ceiling is warped, leaving a gap large enough for a large animal to squeeze through. In front of her is a quadrupedal creature with tentacle-like spines and a four-eyed head with a long snout, eating the food rations.
“What the fu—”
The creature turns around and bears its teeth, opening a giant spiked frill and letting out an ear-piercing hiss. Instinctively, Elster shoots at it in the head, and the animal screeches as it falls, squirming on the ground. Elster quickly puts it out of its misery with her hooves.
She hears Ariane running up, out of breath, with a pistol in hand.
“What the hell is happening?! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. The alien lifeform that ate some of our food rations is not.”
“THERE’S WHAT?!”
“I just killed it, so we’re good as long as we don’t touch it. Hopefully.”
“Elster, there’s blue blood all over you. You should go take a shower.”
“I’m on it.”
—
It’s a miracle that the shower still works after the crash. The soap and warm water wash off the blue alien blood from Elster’s metal exoskeleton with ease. At least the blood is not corrosive.
Elster walks back upstairs, where Ariane is trying to discard the corpse with a long metal stick. The carcass is still too heavy for her to remove it alone, though, so with the Replika’s help, they chuck it out of the ship through the other exit. Once they get back to the storage area, it’s clear that about half of their food rations are contaminated.
Shit, Elster curses in her head. That’s already a month’s worth of food gone because of that stupid motherfucker. They have to deep-clean this entire area if they don’t want to contract some mysterious alien disease that they have no cure for.
Once that’s done, they salvage whatever’s left of their rations. They’re going to have to figure out aquaculture soon if they want to last any longer. There’s just another problem: they don’t know what’s edible on this planet, if there IS anything edible. Ariane had said before that she smuggled some vegetable seeds in case they really found a habitable world on their mission, even though she wasn’t supposed to. It’s one such example of her rebellious nature being quite beneficial to them. Once they get a decent food supply up and running, then it should theoretically last them for life if there’s no major catastrophe that fucks that up.
— — —
They get to work with their different duties of maintaining the ship. They already turned off the reactor before the crash, so they’re relying on backup batteries at the moment. Elster works on setting up improvised solar panels to charge the batteries while Ariane renovates a dedicated space for agriculture. It takes them a total of about a week to complete. The plants will still take a few months to grow adequate food, of course. Ariane has occasionally wondered to herself if those weird alien creatures are possibly edible, but she’s not daring enough to try them herself.
There’s not much alien flora on the island that they’ve crashed on. Most of them seem to be in the ocean. If the Penrose were equipped with a larger lab, they would test the safety of everything that they could get their hands on. Unfortunately, the Penrose only has the tools to detect breathable atmospheres and liquid water. There’s not much they can do about anything else.
Ariane goes outside to feel the afternoon breeze. This time, she takes Elster with her without making Elster panic. She does feel bad about the time she took off her helmet without checking in with her first. As much as she brushes it off from time to time, she finds it endearing that Elster cares this much about her. She should take it into better consideration. They are partners, after all. It’s only fair on her part that she doesn’t make Elster worry sick whenever she does something reckless.
“What else do you think is out there?” Ariane asks Elster with a smile. “Maybe we can convert the Penrose to a boat and see for ourselves. What do you say?”
“It’ll be tough to do, but it’s definitely possible. I’m up for a six-month- long project.”
“Then let's get to it soon, shall we?”