Chapter Text
Grace had already been awake for nearly a month, and he’d been busy. Piece by piece, fragments of his memory had returned to him. Enough to understand what was happening. Enough to realize why he was alone on an interstellar ship, eleven light-years from Earth.
Or at least, why he thought he was alone.
He had discovered an alien engineer he named Rocky, a strange creature from the planet Erid, and together they learned the horrifying truth: both of their worlds were dying.
The culprit was a microscopic organism Grace called Astrophage.
The tiny lifeform fed on stars, slowly draining their energy over time. As the Sun dimmed, Earth’s temperature would plummet, triggering crop failures, ecological collapse, and eventually a mass extinction event.
Humanity’s last hope came from one strange observation. Astrophage gathered at Venus to breed and multiply, forming a glowing ultraviolet trail between the planet and the Sun. Scientists named it the Petrova Line.
And Sol wasn’t the only star infected.
Across the galaxy, countless stars were beginning to fade—except one.
Tau Ceti.
Unlike the others, Tau Ceti showed no signs of dimming despite having its own Petrova Line. Whatever existed there had somehow stopped the Astrophage infection, and the Hail Mary had been sent to find out how.
That was the mission.
The mission Grace barely remembered.
The mission that had already killed the rest of the crew.
Or so he believed.
Because three days after meeting Rocky, while tracing power fluctuations through the ship’s medical systems, Grace discovered something impossible.
One of the stasis pods was still running.
Not dead.
Not failed.
Occupied.
Inside the stasis pod was a young woman, somewhere in her twenties. Long brown hair drifted around her face, overgrown after years suspended in chemical sleep. The soft glow of the pod’s medical lights gave her an almost peaceful appearance, like she was simply taking a nap instead of hurtling through interstellar space.
And that was the problem.
She should have awakened weeks ago. Around the same time Grace had clawed his way out of his own coma confused, terrified, and half insane from memory loss.
But something had gone wrong.
“At least she’s alive,” Grace muttered to himself as he paced the medbay for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
The pod’s monitor continued its calm, rhythmic beeping, each green line assuring him her vitals were stable. No signs of organ failure. No brain damage. Nothing obviously wrong.
She just… wouldn’t wake up.
Behind him came the metallic clatter of equipment scraping against the floor.
Rocky had officially moved into the Hail Mary.
Or at least partially. His improvised ammonia habitat now occupied nearly half the lab, all pipes, pressure seals, and hastily assembled metal panels Grace had spent the last several hours building under Rocky’s constant supervision.
“No, no. Need lower,” Rocky said through the translator. The robotic voice converted his chirps and clicks into flat English a second later. “Bad pressure.”
Grace let out an exhausted sigh and lowered the support brace another inch.
“We have been adjusting this stupid thing for two hours,” he muttered. “At this point I’m basically an alien construction worker.”
Rocky rattled happily at that.
Grace carefully stepped around the stasis pod, toolbox tucked against his chest so he wouldn’t accidentally clip the side of it. He was hyperaware of the sleeping woman’s presence at all times now. The medbay already felt cramped with Rocky’s equipment shoved inside, and one wrong bump against the pod sent a spike of anxiety through him every single time.
His eyes drifted back to her.
Still nothing.
No memory surfaced.
Which bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
His memories had slowly been returning ever since he woke up aboard the Hail Mary, fragmented pieces clicking together one at a time. He remembered Project Hail Mary. Stratt. Astrophage. The crew.
But not her.
And that made no sense.
Grace had been involved with the project close to the beginning. He remembered scientists, astronauts, military personnel, engineers—people selected because they were the absolute best humanity had to offer.
This woman didn’t fit anywhere in the memories he did have.
No uniform.
No flashes of briefings or simulations.
Nothing.
Just an unfamiliar face asleep in a pod eleven light-years from Earth.
And somehow, that unsettled him more than Rocky had.
Grace turned his attention back to assembling Rocky’s miniature biome so the alien could finally get out of the metal sphere he had been rolling around the ship in for the past two days.
Grace had privately started calling it the "hamster ball".
Not that Rocky understood the reference.
Probably.
“You know,” Grace said as he tightened another support bracket into place, “on Earth, when guests come over, we usually don’t make them build their own atmosphere first.”
Rocky’s claws clicked rapidly against the metal floor.
“Earth atmosphere bad,” the translator replied in its usual flat robotic tone.
Grace snorted. “Yeah, okay, fair point.”
The habitat itself looked ridiculous shoved into the Hail Mary’s lab. Pipes ran across the floor connecting pressure tanks together while transparent metal panels sealed in Rocky’s ammonia-rich environment. Fog gathered along the inside of the divider every few seconds, occasionally revealing Rocky moving around inside like some kind of enormous armored sea creature.
Which, honestly, was probably pretty accurate.
Grace stepped back and checked the monitor readings again.
Pressure stable.
Temperature stable.
No leaks.
Good.
Because accidentally killing humanity’s first extraterrestrial ally with bad plumbing would be a very embarrassing way to end first contact.
Behind him, the medbay remained quiet except for the soft rhythmic beeping of the stasis pod.
Grace glanced back toward it automatically.
The woman inside hadn’t moved.
Still asleep.
Still stable.
Still absolutely not supposed to be there.
A knot tightened in his stomach again.
It had been days since he discovered her pod still active. Every medical scan came back normal, but no matter what he tried, she refused to wake up.
It creeped him out.
Not because she looked dead—quite the opposite. She looked peaceful. Alive. Like she could open her eyes at any second.
But she never did.
And somehow that was worse.
“Question,” Rocky said suddenly.
Grace jumped slightly. “Ah! Man, you really need to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Starting conversations like a horror movie monster.”
Rocky rattled pleasantly.
“Ah,” Grace said. “So that one was intentional.”
“Question,” Rocky repeated. “Sleeping human important?”
Grace glanced toward the pod again.
“Considering she’s aboard the most important mission in human history?” he said. “Probably.”
Rocky shifted slightly inside the habitat.
“You know her?”
Grace hesitated.
That question bothered him more than it should have.
“No,” he admitted quietly.
Or at least… he didn’t think he did.
Fragments of his memory had been returning slowly ever since he woke up aboard the Hail Mary. He remembered Project Hail Mary. Stratt. Astrophage. Crew briefings. Fear.
But the woman in the pod?
Nothing.
The ship’s systems had identified her pod, but the name "Naomi Cross" attached to it meant absolutely nothing to him.
And that made no sense.
Grace had been involved with the mission before launch. Maybe not as one of the astronauts originally, but enough to remember most of the important people.
So why couldn’t he remember her?
“Maybe memory problem,” Rocky offered.
Rocky clicked sympathetically.
Grace looked back toward the pod one more time before returning to Rocky’s habitat controls.
The trip to the Tau Ceti planet connected to the Petrova Line would only take eleven days. Eleven days trapped together aboard the Hail Mary.
Eleven days with an alien engineer roommate.
And one mysterious sleeping crewmate who should have awakened weeks ago.
Grace sighed.
Yeah.
Things were getting weird.
Not that they’d been normal to begin with.
Together, he and Rocky headed toward the control room to prepare for departure from Tau Ceti’s orbit, while somewhere behind them the steady beeping of the stasis pod continued echoing through the ship.
X-X-X