Chapter Text
“Blip-D detected.”
“Blip-D detected.”
“Blip-D detec-”
Simon paused what he was working on, soldering iron in hand.
This was odd, the computer was programmed to filter out space debris from the shield detection system. Nothing should be getting flagged, especially this deep into space. They had been flying through an astrological dead zone for a good few weeks now, and Simon had been more than happy to take a break from steering around debris and stray matter. It was like his own little vacation, minus the fact that he was trapped and had literally no other option. Thanks again, Stratt.
He set his project down , pushed himself away from the table, and stood up. He stretched the tension of sitting for hours out of his arms and legs, shaking them as if to give them new life.
“Blip-D detected.”
“Yeah yeah, I know, Mary. Just gimme a sec.” He muttered, more to himself than as an actual command to the ship. His right leg had fallen asleep while he had been working, giving an uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation all along his right calf. Yeowch.
He made his way from the workshop to the pilot room, ducking underneath precarious xenonite infrastructure along the way so as to not hit his head.
“Did Simon hear ship computer, question??”
Adrian turned the corner and skittered to a stop at his feet. Their fanaticism was endearing most of the time, but he’d been feeling cranky since he woke up and generally was not in the mood for this nonsense.
“Don’t worry everybody, Simon’s got this shit under control! Relax for a minute, ok?” He said to no one in particular. He reached the pilot room in good time, ducking underneath the door and swinging himself into the seat with one quick, practiced motion. There were only so many exercises you could do in confined artificial gravity, so calisthenics became something of a hobby for Simon to sneak in wherever.
Adrian followed in soon after using the xenonite tunnels that Simon had constructed for them, and settled in their own spot next to the pilot’s seat. Simon flicked the control panel to stand-by mode. He turned on a few more lights and navigation equipment, the panels surrounding him flickered to life.
“Blip-D detected.”
Simon ignored her this time, reaching over the arm of the pilot’s chair to get a read on what this mysterious new blip was. He pulled the screen closer to him.
It took a few seconds, but the radar reading finally procured an image. Well. It certainly looked like a blip from this angle. He brought the screen closer to his face, having a hard time discerning the edges of the blip from the rest of empty space.
It seemed to be a pill shaped object, floating stationary in the dark. It was large, but compared to the Hail Mary it dwarfed in comparison. It certainly wasn't an asteroid, or any other planetary detritus for that matter. It was too smooth and too still.
“Hmm, this isn't an Eridian satellite, is it Adrian? We’re in the right neighborhood for it.”
They chittered thoughtfully before answering. “No, too far from Erid to be Eridian-made. Also shape is off. Is human structure, question?”
“Definitely not, but it looks human-made… wanna take a look?”
“Oh yes yes yes! If Simon slows ship down, Adrian will prepare visual scope for Simon.” Adrian stood up and moved to put on their atmospheric suit. They had been forever thankful of Simon for welding it for Adrian, it was truly a marvel of engineering,
He typed a few commands into the pilot deck, telling the ship to slow down to a fraction of its relative velocity. The computer took this command and input it slowly for the sake of the living crew members aboard, but the sudden jolt from 1.5 g’s to a steady decline always made his stomach a little sick.
Some loose curls had come undone from his hair tie and began to float in front of his face, so he took a few seconds to fix it back up into a half-up style. It’s not like Adrian cared what his hair looked like, but he couldn’t stand the feeling of a short hair cut.
The ship’s gradual decline in speed finished, giving Simon a proper window to look at this new blip. Adrian, bless them, had prepared the visual scope as promised, and the live feed began to stream through one of the ship's control panels. They held their light-sight gun up to the panel in anticipation.
Simon took the time to recalibrate the visual scope, inputting the coordinates of the alleged blip until it came into view. Floodlights on the ship’s exterior came to life to illuminate the space junk, and… well…
Hm.
That looked like a human-made craft all right. Simon puzzled over this, zooming the scope in until the blip filled the entire screen.
“What Simon see, question?”
“It’s…. holy fucking shit Adrian, that looks like a submarine.” He couldn't believe it.
It was, by all accounts, a submarine. It was rusty, decaying, and the welded iron was covered in something flakey and red but it was a god damn submarine in the middle of deep space. It was stationary, moving with the slightest tailspin but no other method of propulsion could be seen. As the submarine rotated, Simon could spot an engine compartment, as well as a propeller on what he assumed to be the stern-side of the ship.
He was dumbfounded. That was unmistakably a submarine. He remembered building a mini-sub for a science fair project in his youth, or at least he thinks he remembers building one. Medical slurries unfortunately tended to round out the edges of one’s brain.
There was no way this was a human-made submarine this far into deep space.
“What is submarine, question??” The translator didn’t catch Adrian’s uncertain tone.
“Its… well….shit.” Simon leaned back in the pilot’s seat, resting his arms behind his head and taking a second to think. “Its a human-made craft used to go underwater. It’s not meant to be in space.”
They perked at this answer. “Human-made? Maybe human still inside, statement!!” They chittered and bobbed their carapace up and down excitably. Adrian had detailed to Simon in length about their desire to see more humans. He had always humored their desire, mostly because there were only so many samples that he could willingly give to Adrian before a line was crossed.
“Adrian, man, I don’t think that's possible.”
“Does not hurt to try to try radio!!” They tended to use English phrases when trying to persuade him. He hated that it works.
With a sigh, he reached for the comms system behind the seat. Despite his reluctance to believe another soul existed out here, he still set the broadcasting frequency for the most common receiving channels. The knobs were dusty, they hadn't been used in quite a while.
He licked his dry lips and put on the best ‘yes im an experienced pilot with a shit-load of confidence’ voice, and projected into the handheld receiver.
“This is Captain Simon Butcher of the Hail Mary, is there anyone aboard?”
Nothing breathed in the room except for the crackle of empty radio signals. He tried again.
“Again, This is Captain Simon of the Hail Mary, is there life in this vessel?”
Silence.
He turned to Adrian’s side of the room. “See, man? I didn’t wanna get your hopes up, but why the hell would there be-”
The radio began to crackle.
Holy shit.
He sat straighter in his seat, thoughts racing. “Hello? Is anyone there? This is Captain Simon of the Hail Mary, do you need assistance?” What a stupid question, of course whoever was in there needed assistance. If there was anyone in there.
The radio continued to crackle, growing coarser and coarser in texture. Simon could tell out of the corner of his eye that it unnerved Adrian.
To his utter surprise, life came from the speakers.
“H-...Help m…pl…”
Oh my god, there’s a person in that thing.
He slowed the Mary to a full stop while holding the broadcast button on the receiver. Objects in the room went flying towards the other wall as the momentum-induced gravity ceased.
“Holy fucking…Listen, stay where you are, were gonna dock onto your ship and get you out, ok?” His hands trembled as he worked the center stick, slowing the craft down and using the side sensors to line the airlock up with the submarine. If he hadn’t been so acquainted with the ship he would have never executed the maneuver so steadily. Despite his anger, he admitted that Stratt had a point for making him the emergency engineer replacement.
As soon as he was sure that the airlock was as lined up as possible, he jumped out of the chair and clambered across the ship in zero-gravity. By the time he had made it to the airlock, Adrian was already there, chittering words of “Faster faster hurry hurry hurry go get the human” over and over again. He didn’t need the translator for those words, he heard most of them too often to not remember their meaning.
He couldn’t get into his EVA suit fast enough, he nearly tripped over the tether before he remembered that he would need to cut this mysterious figure out of the vessel. He turned around, grabbed his EV tool kit, and stepped into the airlock. Adrian watched in anticipation as he sealed his suit’s helmet on, cycled the airlock, and unlocked the hatch into open space.
Simon didn’t give himself credit often, but he allowed it this time; he did a damn good job of parking the ship next to this mysterious submarine.
And how mysterious it was. It looked about the same in person as it did through the visual scope, though now that Simon was closer, he could see more of whatever was coating the hull of the vessel. It was a deep red, and quite sticky. If he didn’t know any better, Simon would have thought it was congealed blood.
He tossed that thought away, he was never very good with handling gore.
He got to work, soldering bits of structural rebar on the surroundings of Mary’s airlock and connecting it to what he assumed was the port side of the vessel. He made quick work of it. Maybe it was the adrenaline of having someone’s life in your hands, or maybe Simon was just desperate for human contact. Either way, he finished the structural rebar installation in record time.
Next, came the fun part. Adrian had let him rummage through their crew’s building supplies one night. They reasoned that they had no clue how to use any of the material, that it would be more useful to the mission in Simon’s hands than in Adrian’s.
This device was part of that lucky find. There was no direct translation for the name, despite Adrian’s best efforts, so Simon switched the name around depending on how he felt that day. It was an aerosol container, designed for external space hull use, that sprayed out this cream-colored packing foam. He took a canister out from his toolbag and began to fill in the rebar spacing with packing foam. This was the hard part, he made sure to fill every crack in with the spray, with areas that he couldn't reach by hand, he used some scrap metal and smeared the spray into the cracks. It puffed up the longer he let it sit, which meant that it was working.
After a bit of waiting, the foam hardened, and Simon knew from extensive testing that it would hold the gaseous pressure inside just fine.
He triple checked the seal on all sides, and tried very hard not to think about how he just blocked his only exit to the exterior of the Hail Mary. This left him staring at the wall of the submarine, thick and imposing in front of him, and covered in some reddish substance that he still couldn’t decipher.
“Mary, fill the exterior of the airlock with point-two-five atmospheres of pressure.” He could hear the air pumps hissing behind him.
“Exterior of airlock at point-two-five atmospheres of pressure.”
He checked the reading on the electronic panel next to the airlock doors. It seems like the seal is holding. Good.
He turned once more to the seal and spoke to the intercom again. “Mary, equalize interior and exterior pressure.” He awaited nervously, but the seal still held.
“Equal pressure and atmospheric composition.”
Alright, next step.
He pounded on the side of the submarine. “Hey Listen! I don't know if you can hear me, but I’m about to cut through this wall.” His shouting was more than likely lost to the ethereal void. “You need to move away if you can! Hang tight!”
Seriously? The best he could say is ‘hang tight’? What kind of dork was he?
Whatever. He reached for the fiber laser cutter. Despite his urgency, he took the time to set up the portable ventilation unit, aiming the nozzle right where he was about to start cutting.
The fiber laser cutter was fairly simple to work with, he just had to be careful that he didn’t slice a hole in his crude foam sealing. He worked slowly, taking his time to cut out a rectangle that was more than big enough for him to get through. The seconds dragged on to minutes until he was finally able to pull the cut rectangle out and let it float out and to the side. He turned the laser cutter off and let it float away.
What he saw was horrifying.
The little headlamp attached to his helmet’s suit illuminated the inside of the submarine for him. Every surface, from floor to ceiling, was covered in blood. Layers upon layers of blood, some spots dried, others slick and wet, but no spot in the interior remained uncovered. It was absolutely revolting.
Simon just may throw up. There's no way anyone alive is in this thing.
As if on cue, movement stirred in the back corner. A cough that meandered into a wheeze could be heard from the heap.
He steeled his nerves and pushed himself into the submarine. To his left, something that looked like a navigation panel stuck out from the front side of the vessel. A small, barely functional porthole stood as the visuals for the navigation. To his right, a workbench lined the entire rear side of the ship. Test tube vials, microscopes, and other pieces of lab equipment lined the bench. Besides the blood, it all looked so dilapidated Simon wondered if it was even functional.
There, behind the workbench chair, handcuffed to its base, the same movement stirred. It was the man! Scientist? He wasn’t quite sure.
As Simon pushed himself off the wall and closer to the scientist, he could see that he had wedged himself under the workbench. He was curled into a tight ball and seemed largely unconscious. He had definitely been breathing, which he assumed meant that the atmosphere was safe for Simon, but the amount of viscera coating the inside of the vessel made him rethink taking off his helmet.
He knelt down to the unconscious man and oh boy, it was bad. He was wearing some sort of thick, blood-soaked jacket that tapered off at his elbows, medical wraps covered the rest of his exposed skin to the knuckles of his fingers. He couldn’t see the rest of the man’s body, but the handcuffs that kept him from moving away from the workbench looked like it had been digging into his wrist. Simon decided to make quick work of that, grabbing the fiber laser cutter from his toolkit again and making one quick incision where the locking mechanism connected the two joints together. He took every care to not cut the man while he worked.
Once free, he set the cutter away again, and grabbed the scientist underneath his arms and dragged him into the light. It was an awkward and uncomfortable angle, but he paid it little mind.
He pushed off of the workbench, unconscious mystery man in tow, and into the safe sterility of the airlock. It closed around them and went through the cycle of automatic repressurization, though he knew it was just a formality since he repressurized the submarine.
In the light of the airlock, it took every ounce of Simon’s being to not throw up in zero-g as an entirely new horror greeted him.
The man he was holding was missing his leg. And it wasn’t an old wound either, meaty tendrils of muscle still hung on to the stump, floating around carelessly as he pulled the man away from the wreck and into safety. He couldn’t tell where the blood of the man’s ripped off leg ended and where the ambient (blood should never be described as ambient) viscera of the submarine began.
Hooooooly shit dont throw up dont throw up please not in the space suit at least please please-
The gate hissed open, introducing him to the rest of the ship. With his EVA suit still secured on, he dragged the man, being careful not to hit him with any wall corners, into the medical bay and Armando’s awaiting arms.
The robot had been freaky to begin with, and despite Simon's love for all marvels of robotic engineering, having a robotic arm invade every one of your orifices was not a pleasant experience at the start of his journey. He regretted having to give the man to Armando, but whatever he had been through was out of Simon's pay grade and experience.
He gave the unconscious scientist a final push, and with that the robot snatched him from the air and quickly got to work laying him down on the operating table. The robot, with medical shears in hand, moved towards the man’s limp body. It began to swiftly cut the clothes off of him, starting from the head and working its way down, then it cut through each sleeve. The ease at which it slipped the torn rags out from under him shocked Simon, but he supposed it made sense. There weren’t any human personnel to help prevent bedsores during the 11 year trip, it had to be fully automated.
Still made it creepy though.
The mechanical arm replaced the scissors it was holding with an oxygen mask. It carefully lined up the mask and slipped the elastic around the scientist. It then got to work cleaning the exposed body. The sight of this stranger’s bare chest twisted something in Simon’s heart, and the closest thing he could pin it down to is that he felt despair at how skinny this new guy was. No fat padding existed anywhere on his body, Simon could count how many ribs this guy had.
Wait. He counted the guy’s ribs. He was missing one on his left ribcage.
12 on the right side. 11 on the left. With a neat little scar where the twelfth rib should have been.
He tried to recount, because his math definitely must have been off, but the combined visibility issues of his EVA helmet and Armando’s constant nursing had made it difficult.
He anchored himself to the floor by hooking his boot around one of the table legs and twisted off his helmet with his gloved hands.
‘Oh my god’ Simon thought. ‘The smell is worse than just looking at it.’
It was bad. Despite Armando’s efforts to wipe the scientist off and discard the clothes into a proper contamination receptacle, the pungent stench of ferric viscera remained throughout the ship.
It was too much for Simon. Conveniently, the medbay had plenty of vomit bags for his own comfort. He blindly reached for one off of the shelf next to him and doubled over, his eyes watered as he heaved his breakfast into the bag in front of him.
Oh well. It’s a good thing they packed enough food for three people, or Simon would’ve felt bad about wasting a meal.
He finished his...business with as much grace as he could muster, and held the bag up for Mary to take away. “Mary, full vomit bag.” He said, dejectedly.
A robotic arm dropped down from the ceiling and whisked the vomit bag away into the trash receptacle where Simon would never have to think about it.
“Simon ok, question?” Adrian peeked around the corner, where he knew they had been listening to everything very intently. This question was just them testing the waters.
He let out the breath he had been holding. “Yeah man, I’m good. It just smells like shit in here.”
They skittered further into the room. Adrian had long since understood that ‘smelling like shit’ did not literally mean ‘it smells of feces’. That had been a hard one to describe.
“What smell like, question?”
“Just…blood. It’s overpowering. And uncomfortable to be around for a while.” He curled tighter into himself.
“Adrian have difficulty hearing inside submarine, is blood reason for this, question?”
Now that Simon thought about it, the submarine must sound so weird to them. All that semi-dried blood must give off crazy acoustics to Adrian, no wonder it’s hard to hear.
He began to take off the rest of his EVA suit. “Yeah I bet, it’s literally covered in it.”
They strung a few worried notes together, contemplating, before stating the obvious. “...Adrian doesn’t like implications of blood all inside submarine. Scary thought.”
He stopped wrestling with the suit and glanced at the unconscious body on the table. “Yeah man, I don’t like it either.”
Armando had taken care of the worst of it by now. The blood had mostly been wiped off, revealing deep bruises that ran up his arms and splotched his torso. The medical arm had pulled out a few thick shards of glass from the man’s left forearm. The shards were stored in an examination container by the operation table.
Simon was still in shock. They were closer to Erid than to Earth at this point, but it was still deep space. No living thing should be out here, let alone a half-dead guy welded inside a submarine that definitely wasn’t suited for space travel. Why all the science-y equipment, and why the handcuffs? He had no way of figuring any of this out until their new friend woke up.
It looks like he wasn’t going to get answers for a long, long time.