Chapter Text
It had been almost 2 years since the last one of his crew mates died. Almost 2 years since the last time he saw another human, the last time that he interacted with someone other than the small robots who rotated around the ship's hull. He sat in a quiet corner of the ship, although nowadays every corner was quiet except for the whirring as the life support kept pumping oxygen around him. In his hands sat a Bible, obviously not his, but one of his crew mates, his name had been Milo, a devout Christian. He could not understand, how even in the face of death one could remained faithful (he had left his faith a long time ago, buried in his father's grave).
Milo had been the last one to go, the last one to fall to a mysterious illness. Before he left he had given Rocky his Bible, told him to believe that God will make his plans clear to him when the time came. Well, the time had come and go. He still had astrophage, enough to return to Earth. But what will he say? Hey, everyone! Yeah remember when you sent me to save the world? Guess what? I failed, and all my crew mates are dead. For two years he had tried his best to save the world, to maybe teach himself microbiology. They had filled the computers with enough information, that he could in theory teach himself all about the topic. However, he had never been a scientists, always an engineer. He was a smart person, he had learned some, but most of the information related to microbiology aboard the Odyssey assumed the reader already had a very strong foundation on the topics. And well, it didn't matter how good Rocky's memory was, he was only an engineer, so a big chunk of the technical aspects flew right over his head.
So here he was, sitting with a Bible in his hands: Titus 2:11–14 "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people ..."
Grace of God indeed, was it God's grace for him to fail Earth? Was it in God's plan that he will never see Adrian again? Quiet tears streamed down his face as he looked into the text, tiny droplets falling and curling the thin paper in his hands. He was so tired, lately he had been having more and more dreams, fantasies of just ending it. He couldn't save his crew, he couldn't save Earth, wouldn't it just be better for everyone if he died? If humanity thought that the Odyssey and her crew had been lost to the ravages of space, rather than knowing that Rocky had failed. Maybe then Adrian would move on... or maybe they already had. God, they deserved so much better than him, much better than a failure like Rocky.
"Object detected. I suggest evasion maneuvers." The computerized voice of the Odyssey broke through Rocky's downward spiral.
"W-what?" He stuttered as he climbed up to the cockpit, Bible quickly put away for safekeeping into one of the many deep pockets of his overalls. He fixed his reading glasses as he looked into the radar image he saw what the object was. Next to his ship about 800m away was a small dot on the radar. "An asteroid..?"
He moved his eyes from the radar to the image transmitted from one of the many robots on the ship's hull. As he clicked into the view his mouth dropped open. That was not an asteroid..
"A ship... That's a ship, another ship." The design clearly was not human, unless in the 6 years since they had left earth they had somehow managed to create technology advanced enough to get here in no time. Or maybe the isolation had finally broke his brain.
He maneuvered the ship closer to the new vessel so that one of the main bay windows was directly pointed towards the new ship. As his hand left the control he wiped his palms on his overalls. God why was he so nervous. The bay window was right under the cockpit room, so he swiftly swung his body down the stairs to face the glass. And there it was, the ship, only a hundred meters away. It was... tiny. The ship's design was highly geometrical, as if someone had welded together big sheets of metal into what resembled a space ship.
Could this be humanity's first interaction with alien life? Well, intelligent alien life. But why would another ship from a whole different civilization be here? Were these Tau Cetians (he was really bad at names during his best days)? Had he inadvertently crossed some sort of unspoken rule of space politics by entering their system? If he was being honest, he had kept the Odyssey near the Petrova line this entire time, between Tau Ceti E and Tau Ceti itself. What if this was something else? Advanced human technology, aliens from a different solar system? What were there intentions? Were they friendly or did they intend to cause him harm?
Wait, the ship was moving! It was giving small thrusts, using the Petrovascope he saw the small trail of infrared radiation coming from the ship's tail. It also ran on astrophage? Holy shit. Holy Shit. What if they were here for the same reason than he was? They were close enough to the Petrova line, and also why else would a different civilization (if they were non humans, or if they were not native to the system) be all the way here in the Tau Ceti system. He swallowed heavily, as things were he would fail to save Earth, he would either return to Earth as a failure, or die in space also as a failure. Or maybe he could return to Earth with a solution. His hands trembled on the control as he mimicked the motions of the other ship, he had to show them he did not present a threat but most importantly he had to communicate with them.
His plan had worked, he had gotten not quite a good look, but a good look either way of the alien form. And yeah, this guy was definitely an alien. Crab-like or maybe spider-like with around 5 limbs, the alien (aliens were real!) had climbed out of their ship with what look like an EVA suit made out of a glass like structure. He had caught his cylinder (he had stoked multiple of the cylindrical structures in case they needed to safely store any radioactive materials, lead-lined and double reinforced).
Although Rocky was no artists he had tried to make a replica of Earth's solar system relative to Tau Ceti with a nice Petrova line to boot. If they were to understand each other, it was important for these aliens (people? individuals?) to know where he was from and why he was here. Hopefully he had not horribly insulted them based on their culture (he would kill to have someone who was an expert on foreign relations or even linguistics here with him).
The other ship had yet to respond, so instead of wallowing on his own misery and anxiety he decided to create a small statue of the aliens. His hands trembled slightly as he tried to shape the epoxy and resin-like clay into something resembling the aliens. He, out of everyone on Earth was the first (the first human ever) to meet intelligent alien life. He could only picture the fit that NASA would throw if they found that the first human to meet alien life was a simple engineer and not some "real scientist." Rocky placed the figure into a machine that hastened the curing time. It should be done in a couple of minutes.
He had to put the Odyssey into centrifuge when he saw the other ship do something similar. It worked in his favor since most of the vessel's machines did not behave well (or did not work period) on 0G. Although he could not decide if they were also using centrifugal force to create gravity on their ship, or if this was yet another cultural thing that his human brain failed to comprehend.
The other ship suddenly stopped, and well Rocky thought it was only polite he do the same. After both vessel's were lined up, the same alien (or at least he thought they were the same, maybe all of them looked like that) exited the ship and threw the cylinder back at one of the robots on the hull who could safely bring it inside. Once he cylinder was safely in one of the pressurized hatches he was much too eager to get his hands on it, but as soon as his hands touched the surface a hiss left his mouth.
"Fuck!" It was warm, very warm. Rocky inspected his hands to see if there was any blistering but he only found redness caused by the temperature. How could something that had been in space for so long be so fucking hot. He pulled his insulated gloves from the side of his tool belt, in hindsight he should not be touching anything that had been in contact with the aliens with his bare hands, what if he caught some sort of never heard of alien virus? He sighed once again and proceeded to unscrew the cylinder. Inside, his creation, but with some not so elegant additions.
"Huh?" He looked at the star map displayed in one of the ship's computers. 40 Eridani. He couldn't help but whistle at that, "You have come a long way from home."
The star the aliens had attached to his model included a Petrova line (which was more evidence on favor of his idea that they were here for the same reason), but it also included a rectangle with some shapes carved into it he couldn't parse attached to the model. Maybe that was their writing system, and they were trying to tell him the name for their star. Well that is quite interesting.
He had an idea, if these aliens, were here for the same reason, maybe together they could find a solution and save both their stars. But to be able to communicate that he needed to somehow had a more stable method of communications (maybe connecting both ships). He knew the Odyssey had a docking compartment (it had been used to anchor the ship to the International Space Station when it was still in Earth's orbit), not only that but they had a bridge that could be used to connect both ships. He was not sure what the smaller ship was made off but he was sure he could use the pieces of sculpture to figure it out. The hull robots could also be used to ensure both sides were safely docked and that neither ship would be damaged in the process.
But for all of that to happen, he had to communicate his idea, time for more sculpting.