Chapter Text
Grace
They passed the Blip B well into their trip.
The asteroid was shaped strangely enough, and Rocky was bored enough, that he listened on his Eridian devices as they approached. Then, surprisingly, he was no longer bored.
Slowing the Hail Mary enough for a nosey investigation wasm’t the best use of their astrophage and time, but come on. A symmetrical, tube-like structure that seemed like metal was way too interesting to pass up. And interesting it turned out to be.
That was a structure. And as they neared, it even had fin-like features on one end that looked an awful lot like a ship.
The Blip B wouldn’t respond to any of the Hail Mary’s attempts to cajole it into a response. (Was it an alien that used something other than light or sound to navigate the world? Was it just rude?) The Blip B no longer appeared to be under its own power, and Grace was able to awkwardly “park” Mary beside it with impatient commentary from his companion.
Its inhabitants (though the pair were increasingly skeptical it had any of those living) gave no reaction as they attached the tunnel from the Blip A. Grace briefly feared cutting a door into the ship – it had none they could find – in case it was filled with a hazardous atmosphere, but Rocky was quick to point out that a metal hull like that couldn’t withstand high pressure. Also that Grace was being a scaredy human and to go, quickly, don’t drop cutter.
Inside was horrific. Grace fled back to the Hail Mary, where he and Rocky devised a way to sanitize the suit before he left the airlock.
“We have to get out of here. The interior was coated in blood, Rock. The liquid inside me,” Grace said, perturbed. “Or at least it looked like it, I dunno. And there was a body.”
Rocky’s distressed movements paused. “Body, question?”
Grace slowed. Yes, a body. A humanoid one. Lightyears away from Earth.
They considered each other. There was no way they were leaving yet.
Rocky rolled into the tunnel and listened for signs of life from a safer distance than Grace could manage. To Rocky’s delight and Grace’s mind-numbing horror, he found some: The body had a heartbeat.
Back inside the Hail Mary, Grace fidgeted and wished he could pace.
“What do we do? That thing is alive. We can’t risk the mission. And, oh god, we have no idea whether it’s even friendly. It could attack! There’s barely anything around here; where did it even come from? There’s no way it’s getting anywhere like that. The blood, Rocky, oh my god.”
Pulling his hair, glasses askew, Grace looked to Rocky pleadingly. The Eridian had been moving nervously, too, but was uncharacteristically quiet. They were silent for a beat.
“Erid is the one at risk if we don’t get those breeder tanks back, not Earth. You should decide,” Grace continued.
They were silent again.
“So many die already,” Rocky said quietly. “No more.”
“Yeah, bud, okay. Okay.”
They would commend no more to the stars. Not if they could help it.