Chapter Text
Launch Day Is Just Panic With Better Lighting
The world ended quietly.
Not in fire. Not in screaming. Not in some cinematic collapse of civilization with red skies and cities folding in on themselves like paper. There were no monsters at the gates, no final broadcast from a trembling anchor, no dramatic countdown to extinction.
There were only numbers.
Temperature rise. Food collapse. Ocean acidification. Crop failure percentages. Oxygen depletion projections. Fuel reserves. Population displacement estimates. Years left.
Humanity had always been dramatic enough to imagine its death as a war.
Instead, it arrived as a spreadsheet.
And somehow, through some spectacular failure of judgment, four people had been chosen to argue with that spreadsheet in space.
Remington Crocus stood in the communications bay of the Argosy-7, staring through the reinforced launch window at the blue-white curve of Earth below them.
The planet looked peaceful from orbit.
That was the worst part.
From up here, no one could see the flooded coastlines, the failed harvest belts, the cities with power rationing, or the refugee zones glowing under emergency floodlights. From up here, Earth looked like a polished marble held up to the light.
Remi adjusted the collar of his flight suit and leaned toward the recorder blinking on the console.
“Mission Log, Communications Officer Remington Crocus. Time: twenty-seven minutes before final departure burn. Morale aboard the Argosy-7 remains… questionable. Engineer Cortado has threatened to dismantle the coffee recycler if anyone calls it ‘cute’ again. Mission Specialist Van Voughn has personally checked the navigation systems three times, which is either dedication or a very elegant mental breakdown. Commander Alder is currently missing.”
A pause.
He glanced behind him.
Still no commander.
“Correction. Commander Alder is not missing. Commander Alder has chosen to become a problem for later.”
From somewhere beyond the corridor, something metallic clanged.
Then a muffled voice shouted, “I found them!”
Regal Cortado’s voice followed immediately. “Please don’t touch anything else.”
“I’m the commander.”
“That does not make you immune to touching things wrong.”
“I touched it correctly.”
“You were holding a spoon.”
“Tools come in many forms, Engineer.”
Remi closed his eyes.
“Further correction,” he said into the recorder. “Commander Alder has made contact.”
He turned off the log just as Aria Alder came floating through the doorway upside down.
She had one hand on the frame, long orange hair drifting beneath her helmet cap in a way that made her look far more angelic than anyone with her chaos record deserved. Her sunglasses were tucked against her forehead even though there was no sun in the ship, and the black mask across the lower half of her face gave her a severe, intimidating look.
That effect lasted exactly three seconds.
Because in her other hand, she was holding a silver packet of freeze-dried pudding.
“Crocus,” she said solemnly, still upside down. “Emergency.”
Remi stared at her.
“No.”
“You didn’t even hear the emergency.”
“I’ve served with you for six months. I know the shape of your emergencies.”
Alder rotated slowly in the doorway, bumped her shoulder against the frame, recovered with a tiny offended sound, and then held up the packet.
“This is labeled vanilla.”
Remi waited.
“It is clearly banana.”
“That is not an emergency.”
“It is if you hate banana.”
“Do you hate banana?”
Alder looked down at the packet.
There was a long, thoughtful silence.
“No,” she admitted. “But I enjoy justice.”
Regal appeared behind her, pink hair messier than regulation allowed, eyes narrowed in the exhausted way of a man who had already repaired five things before breakfast and trusted none of them. He grabbed Alder by the back of her flight suit and gently pulled her down so she stopped floating upside down like an ominous ceiling decoration.
“Commander,” Regal said. “We have twenty-five minutes before we commit to the departure burn that takes us past lunar orbit and into deep trajectory. Could your battle for pudding integrity wait?”
Alder’s eyes widened.
“My crew’s trust in food labeling is the foundation of long-term mission stability.”
Valentina Van Voughn walked in with a tablet in one hand and her helmet tucked beneath the other arm, violet eyes moving across the navigation projections with terrifying calm.
“It is banana,” she said without looking up.
Alder pointed at her. “Thank you.”
“It is also not an emergency.”
Alder lowered her hand. “Betrayal.”
Valentina smiled, faint and pretty. “Put it in the complaint log.”
“We have a complaint log?” Alder asked.
Regal and Remi answered at the same time.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Regal snapped his head toward Remi.
Remi shrugged. “I’m communications. Technically everything you say near me can become a log.”
“That’s deeply unsettling,” Regal said.
“That’s why I chose the job.”
Alder drifted toward the center of the bay, hooking one boot beneath a restraint bar with the air of someone who had practiced that exact movement only because it looked cool. Unfortunately, she overdid the momentum and had to windmill one arm to avoid spinning.
Valentina reached out without looking and caught the back of Alder’s suit.
Alder stilled.
Then, with all the dignity of a woman entrusted with the survival of humanity, she whispered, “Thank you.”
Valentina’s smile grew.
Remi watched them for a moment, then leaned back against the console.
The four of them had been trained to function as a unit. In simulations, on paper, before cameras, in front of world leaders who spoke of sacrifice like it was a clean and noble thing.
Commander Aria Alder, number ninety-nine. Tactical lead. Psychological resilience rating absurdly high. Decorated disaster-response pilot. Known for impossible decisions, terrifying calm under pressure, and once putting googly eyes on a classified drone because, allegedly, “it looked lonely.”
Engineer Regal Cortado, number seventy-two. Systems architect. Mechanical specialist. The only reason the Argosy-7 had not shaken apart twice during testing. He spoke to machines like they were difficult relatives and to people like they were machines he had less patience for.
Communications Officer Remington Crocus, number twenty-seven. Linguistics, long-distance transmission, Earth liaison, emergency diplomacy. Former field investigator. Current professional regret collector.
Navigator and Mission Specialist Valentina Van Voughn, number forty-four. Orbital mathematics, planetary survey protocols, tactical navigation, expedition planning, resource modeling. She came from one of the wealthiest families still standing, had walked away from comfort, and now wore a mission suit like couture and a death sentence like jewelry.
Together, they were the first crew of Project Arkline.
Humanity’s great shining answer to the end of the world.
Or, as Remi had written privately in his own unsanctioned notes:
Four people locked in a metal tube and flung toward hope because Earth finally ran out of better ideas.
The mission itself sounded almost romantic when the public relations department said it.
The Argosy-7 would travel beyond the inner system using the first stable fusion-sail drive, aiming for a chain of pre-selected exoplanet candidates identified by decades of deep-space scans. Their task was to confirm habitability, establish relay beacons, locate viable settlement zones, and transmit colonization data back to Earth.
Simple.
Heroic.
Practically a poster.
The classified version was uglier.
Earth was not asking them to find a new world someday.
Earth was asking them to find one soon.
Because if they failed, there might not be enough time for a second ship.
Valentina knew that better than any of them.
Remi had seen her reviewing the numbers at night, long after the others pretended to sleep. She never said anything. Never complained. Never let the pressure show except in tiny ways, a longer pause before answering, her fingers pressing too hard against a tablet screen, the faint crease between her brows when she recalculated a route that had already been checked by three separate systems.
She carried catastrophe elegantly.
That made it worse.
Alder clapped her hands once.
The sound was small in the bay, softened by the pressurized walls and humming systems, but everyone looked at her.
“All right,” she said. “Crew meeting before departure.”
Regal crossed his arms. “We had a crew meeting forty minutes ago.”
“This is a different one.”
“How?”
“That one had officials.”
“So?”
Alder pulled herself upright and planted her boots on the floor as the artificial gravity adjusted in the bay. Her posture shifted in an instant, silly edges folding away into something clearer. Not gone. Never gone. Just tucked beneath command.
“So now it’s just us,” she said.
The room quieted.
Outside the window, Earth turned slowly beneath them.
Valentina lowered her tablet.
Regal’s expression softened by half a degree.
Remi stopped leaning.
Alder looked at each of them in turn. Her mask hid most of her face, but not her eyes. That was the dangerous thing about Aria Alder. She could look ridiculous one moment and then, without warning, make you remember why entire rooms fell silent when she stood.
“I know what they told us down there,” she said. “I know what the speeches sounded like. Destiny. Duty. Survival. All of that heavy stuff people love saying when they’re not the ones leaving.”
Remi’s mouth twitched.
Alder pointed at him. “No comment from communications.”
“I said nothing.”
“You breathed sarcastically.”
“That’s just my respiratory style.”
She ignored him with practiced ease.
“We are going farther than anyone has ever gone. We are going to lose normal contact. We are going to be scared. Bored. Irritated. Probably sick of each other by week two.”
“Day three,” Regal muttered.
“Day three,” Alder agreed. “But we are not going out there as symbols. I hate that. Symbols don’t need snacks. Symbols don’t panic at weird noises in the maintenance shaft. Symbols don’t argue over shower time. People do.”
Her gaze moved to the window.
“And people are what we’re trying to save.”
Valentina’s fingers tightened around her helmet.
Alder looked back at them.
“So here is my first official order outside Earth oversight. You are allowed to be people here. Not heroes. Not martyrs. Not perfect little mission profiles with pulse rates. People. You are allowed to be afraid. You are allowed to miss home. You are allowed to have bad days. You are allowed to tell me when you are not okay.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“And if any of you hide a medical issue, mechanical concern, psychological breakdown, or suspiciously labeled pudding from me, I will become very annoying.”
Regal sighed. “You are already very annoying.”
Alder nodded. “Then imagine me with purpose.”
Valentina laughed softly.
It was not a big laugh. Not bright enough to break the tension entirely. But it was real, and for a moment, the room breathed around it.
Then Mission Control crackled through the comm line.
“Argosy-7, this is Earth Command. Final systems confirmation begins in two minutes. Crew, report stations.”
Remi glanced toward his console.
There it was.
The line between before and after.
Alder inhaled once.
Then she grinned with her eyes.
“All right, stars and disasters,” she said. “Let’s go make history before history files a complaint.”
Valentina slid into the navigation seat, fingers moving with immediate precision across the glass controls. Holographic star maps bloomed in front of her, pale blue and silver, bathing her face in cold light. She looked calm again. Too calm.
Remi took his station and brought the transmission channels online.
Regal strapped into engineering control, already muttering to the ship like he was warning it not to embarrass him in front of company.
Alder moved to command.
The bay shifted around them. Screens awakened. Systems aligned. The soft hum beneath the floor deepened into something alive.
“Navigation?” Alder asked.
Valentina’s voice was steady.
“Trajectory locked. Lunar slingshot window confirmed. Fusion-sail deployment sequence standing by.”
“Engineering?”
Regal tapped through the diagnostics. “Drive core stable. Radiator arrays responsive. Fuel pressure balanced. Coffee recycler still personally offending me, but mission-critical systems are green.”
“Communications?”
Remi watched the signal bands pulse between ship and Earth.
“All channels open. Earth Command receiving. Public broadcast delayed by twenty seconds in case someone says something stupid.”
Alder turned her head slightly.
“Why did you look at me?”
“No reason, Commander.”
“You wound me, Crocus.”
“I’ll log it.”
“Good.”
Earth Command returned, crisp and formal.
“Argosy-7, you are cleared for final departure burn. On your commander’s mark.”
The silence after that was enormous.
Full of every person watching from Earth. Every family in dim apartments. Every child in cities with ration lights. Every scientist who had built pieces of this ship with shaking hands and impossible hope. Every person who had looked up at the sky and wondered whether salvation could really be launched on a pillar of fire.
Remi thought about his old life.
Rain on Los Santos pavement. Bad coffee. Police radios. Unfinished books. People leaving. People staying. The strange ache of wanting something only after distance made it unbearable.
Regal thought about every bolt in the ship. Every weld. Every emergency bypass he had installed himself because trusting factory standards felt like flirting with death. He thought about how ridiculous it was that the fate of humanity depended partly on whether he had tightened a coolant valve at three in the morning while half-asleep.
Valentina thought about maps.
Not the star maps glowing in front of her, but old paper maps from her father’s archives. Coastlines that no longer existed. Cities with names that had become memorials. Routes once used for trade, leisure, war, escape.
She thought about how humanity had always drawn lines to convince itself it knew where it was going.
Now she had to draw one into the dark.
Alder thought about pudding.
Only briefly.
Then she thought about the fact that every person on Earth expected her to be brave, and how bravery was mostly just being scared with better posture.
Her hand hovered over the command panel.
She looked once at her crew.
Regal, pretending he wasn’t tense.
Remi, pretending he wasn’t sentimental.
Valentina, pretending the weight of the entire sky wasn’t sitting in her chest.
Alder smiled beneath her mask.
“Argosy-7 to Earth Command,” she said. “Final departure burn on my mark.”
She lifted her hand.
“Three.”
The ship seemed to hold its breath.
“Two.”
Valentina’s fingers hovered over navigation confirm.
Regal’s eyes stayed locked on the drive readings.
Remi kept the channel open, recording every second.
“One.”
Alder pressed the command key.
“Mark.”
The Argosy-7 ignited.
Not like a rocket.
Not like the old launches archived in museums and history feeds.
The departure burn began as a tremor deep beneath them, then bloomed into force so immense it pressed their bodies into their seats and turned breath into labor. The fusion-sail drive unfolded beyond the hull in vast metallic petals, catching controlled fire and bending it into motion.
Earth tilted behind them.
The moon slid into their path like a pale witness.
The ship screamed without sound.
For one terrible, glorious moment, they were no longer people.
They were velocity.
Then the burn stabilized.
The pressure eased.
Systems chimed green one after another.
Valentina exhaled first.
“Trajectory confirmed,” she said. “We are past abort threshold.”
Regal stared at his console.
“Drive core stable. No structural damage.”
Remi swallowed, then opened the broadcast line.
“Earth Command, this is Argosy-7. Departure burn successful. We are… officially committed.”
There was a burst of sound from the other end.
Applause and cheers, someone crying openly before the feed cut itself back into professionalism.
“Copy, Argosy-7. Godspeed.”
Alder leaned back in her chair.
For a second, she said nothing.
Then, very softly, she whispered, “Oh, thank goodness.”
Regal turned his head.
“Were you not sure that would work?”
Alder’s eyes widened. “Of course I was sure.”
Remi leaned toward his mic, deadpan. “Mission Log amendment. Commander Alder was completely sure, which is why she just thanked several deities and possibly the pudding.”
“I said that off-record.”
“You said it near me.”
Valentina covered her mouth, shoulders shaking slightly.
Regal groaned, but there was relief in it this time.
Alder pointed at Remi. “This is why I’m creating a complaint log.”
“You can create it,” Remi said. “I’ll archive it.”
“I outrank you.”
“And yet I control the official wording.”
Alder gasped. “Mutiny in the first hour.”
Regal glanced at the mission timer. “Technically, we are forty-three minutes into active deep-space mission.”
“Even worse. Late mutiny.”
Valentina finally laughed properly.
It filled the command bay like oxygen.
The sound was small against the vastness outside, but it changed something. It reminded them that they were not only leaving disaster behind.
They were taking each other with them.
Outside, Earth became smaller.
A soft alert appeared across Valentina’s navigation display. She tilted her head, reading the numbers.
Remi noticed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing dangerous,” she said quickly.
Too quickly.
Regal looked over. “That’s the tone people use before something becomes dangerous.”
Valentina enlarged the projection. A chain of light appeared ahead of them, marking their plotted course past the moon, beyond Mars orbit, toward the first relay point.
And beyond that, the long dark.
She touched one section of the route.
“There’s interference near the second beacon corridor. Minor, but strange. It wasn’t in the last scan packet.”
Alder leaned forward. “Radiation?”
“Possibly.” Valentina’s eyes narrowed. “Or debris.”
Regal frowned. “There shouldn’t be debris that far out.”
Remi looked at the projection. “Space has decided to personalize our welcome basket.”
Alder tapped her fingers against the armrest once.
The silly softness in her expression did not vanish, exactly. It sharpened.
“Can we adjust?”
Valentina nodded. “Yes. I’ll have a cleaner alternate course in twelve minutes.”
“Take twenty,” Alder said.
Valentina blinked.
“I only need twelve.”
“And I am ordering twenty because we just launched, you have not eaten since morning, and I saw you sneak three extra nav checks before departure.”
Valentina opened her mouth.
Alder pointed at her.
“People, remember?”
The words landed gently.
Worse than an accusation.
Valentina looked down at her tablet.
Then, quietly, she said, “Understood, Commander.”
Alder nodded, satisfied. “Good. Regal, check long-range shielding in case our debris has personality. Crocus, prepare a very boring update for Earth Command that does not include the words ‘strange interference’ or ‘space welcome basket.’”
Remi sighed. “You take all the poetry out of my work.”
“I’m saving humanity from your metaphors.”
“That may be beyond your mission scope.”
“And yet I persist.”
Regal unstrapped himself and pushed toward the engineering corridor. “I’m going to check the shielding before you two make me regret surviving launch.”
Alder called after him, “Bring back coffee recycler data.”
“No.”
“That’s an order.”
“That’s an abuse of power.”
“It’s morale-related.”
“You are morale-threatening.”
Valentina smiled faintly as Regal disappeared down the corridor.
Remi watched her for a moment.
She noticed, of course.
Valentina always noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“That was not a nothing look.”
“It was a communications officer look.”
“So intrusive by profession.”
“Exactly.”
Her smile softened, but only for a breath before she turned back to the star map.
Alder stood from command and stretched like a cat that had successfully fooled everyone into thinking it was a lion.
“All right,” she announced. “New rule.”
Remi looked pained. “Already?”
“Every successful near-death milestone gets a snack.”
“We launched. We did not nearly die.”
Regal’s voice echoed from the corridor. “Statistically debatable.”
Alder held up the pudding packet again.
Remi stared at her.
Valentina stared at her.
From engineering, Regal shouted, “If that is banana, I’m spacing myself.”
Alder looked at the packet.
Then at her crew.
Then at Earth, shrinking behind them.
Her voice became solemn.
“Humanity has endured worse.”
Remi turned the recorder back on.
“Mission Log, supplemental,” he said. “First confirmed crisis of deep-space travel: banana pudding. Crew morale uncertain. Commander optimistic. Engineer hostile. Mission Specialist amused. Communications Officer requesting hazard pay.”
Alder tore open the packet.
The smell hit the room.
Regal shouted from engineering, “I CAN SMELL IT FROM HERE.”
Valentina laughed again.
And for a little while, flying away from a dying world did not feel like the end of everything.
It felt, impossibly, like the beginning.