Work Text:
I’m not sure I was ever supposed to find it, but there it is. I’ve been on Erid for a few years; I was on the Hail Mary for more than a few years. How I’ve managed to never find this until now is completely beyond me, but I’m not above chalking it up to being more than a little busy saving two planets and then being very busy not dying.
Rocky asked for copies of the schematics for the Hail Mary, something about the research thrum wanting to see how they could use the data for Eridian ship designs. He mentioned Hail Mary repairs too, but thinking about the Hail Mary being refueled, or fit enough to launch again, gives me a queasy feeling I don’t want to spend time thinking about.
I was poking around in the dregs of the Hail Mary’s media logs when an odd folder made itself known. Inside is just one thing.
The file I’ve found is named: Grace Don't Look Until Beetles Launched
Creepy. Ominous, even. There’s a little code attached to the file that hides it from a system search. The only way I could have found it was an accident.
I open the file and a video log pops up. The play button blinks mockingly. The date at the corner of the log is two years before I first woke up on the Hail Mary. It would have been recorded when I was deep in coma-sleep. When everyone on board should have been deep in coma-sleep.
Ilyukhina’s slightly pixelated visage is sprawled across a pilot chair and she’s mid-chew on a twizzler.
I press the spacebar and the log starts to play.
Ilyukhina takes an exaggerated bite. Her face scrunches up like she’s disgusted but trying really hard to enjoy the candy. After another bite she gives up, tossing half of it away and sinking further into the chair.
“Okaaay, so,” she drawls, swiveling the chair back and forth. “We have problem. I am awake!”
“It is advisable that you return to the crew quarters and enter into another medicated coma, Engineer Ilyukhina.” It’s the Hail Mary’s voice punching through the background.
“I’ll die,” Ilyukhina says simply. “If I go into ‘nother coma, I won’t wake up.” She tilts her head. “Probably.”
I slam my hand down on the spacebar and Ilyukhina freezes on the screen. I shove the monitor away, too, for good measure. I can feel my heart rapidly gaining pace and my hands becoming numb. My throat starts to burn. My eyes, too.
I sob. I don’t even try to hold it in. She was alive. I mean, she was alive when we were all loaded onto the Hail Mary, I know that. But she was awake. She made a log.
She -
She named it -
I tumble out of my chair, curling in on myself. I can hear myself weeping, but it’s like watching myself from outside of my own body. I can’t bring myself to stop or do anything other than grieve for someone I thought I had already grieved for.
I don’t know how long I’m on the floor. It can’t be that long because suddenly Rocky is there in his little xenonite suit emitting a shrill wail that’s too overwhelming for me to translate.
He shoves at my shoulder until I’m turned enough to look at him.
“Grace,” he sings, the layered chords of his voice warble dangerously. “Grace dying, question.” The standard two-tap question mark is fierce and sharp.
Behind Rocky, Adrian’s massive carapace pokes through the front doorway. Their xenonite suit makes them too large for the door, but they draw as close as they can, humming out something in a low resonance. The notes are so low, they rattle the walls of my house. It’s the same low tone they use when they talk to pebbles. I almost hate how it instantly works on me.
“N-no,” I manage to say after sucking in a shaky, hiccuping breath. I gesture pathetically towards the monitor. Towards Ilyukhina’s video diary. “Found - f-ound-”
Rocky rumbles with worried impatience. “What find, question.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart hurts. Another wave of sobs forces itself out of me.
“Grace,” Rocky presses, “What find.” I can hear him tapping around nervously. His nervousness makes me cry harder. Guilt at not being able to control my reaction to seeing a dead friend, at being so miserable in front of my best friend.
“Harmony,” Adrian chimes. “Gentleness is needed.”
Rocky honks indignantly, and amazingly it makes me laugh. It’s a very sad, wet, feeble laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
“Savior Grace,” Adrian’s hums swirl through the air. “You are safe.” They intone something that must be gibberish - noise for noise sake. It’s a nice distraction, and Rocky never speaks when Adrian makes any sort of sound. Adrian often starts signing nonsense to make Rocky slow down, and they found it works for me, too.
As I take in more breaths, each less shaky than the last, Rocky settles, too. He’s got one claw against my chest, pressing firmly as if he can regulate my breathing and my heart himself.
When I feel calm enough, I sit up. Adrian takes this as a cue to sit down, tucking their arms and legs underneath their carapace.
They chirp a little, before speaking again. “Found something that caused great distress, question.”
“Yes,” I say, wiping at my face roughly. I have to be very disgust to the both of them. My face is soaked with tears and snot, so much that my shirt is also wet from when I was curled into a fetal position. “A crew log,” I point to the computer. The monitor is turned away from me, but I know that Ilyukhina is still there grinning about her not-in-a-coma problem. “It surprised me.”
Adrian’s carapace wobbles sympathetically. Rocky’s tilts in confusion. He tiptoes over to the monitor and swings it around to face me again, pointing his light-to-sound gun at it. I was right.
Ilyukhina is frozen in time, pondering the likelihood of her death during coma #2.
“Grace only Hail Mary crew,” Rocky says. “Other crew die, statement. Other crew in coma before dead, statement. Cannot make coma log.”
“Assumed, question.” Adrian muses. “Most probable event sequence, but not only possible event sequence.”
I bury my face in my hands.
If Ilyukhina was alive and awake on the Hail Mary while Yao and I were still comatose, she decided to not wake us up. She decided to voluntarily go back into a coma, because I saw the death notification log on her bunk when I commended her to the stars. That was at least a year after the date on this recording. She made this log for me.
Grace Don’t Look Until Beetles Launched.
Was Yao already gone? Did she not want to be alone for the last two years of the journey? She could have woken me up. Did she know I’d have no memories post-coma?
She knew I’d launch the beetles, though. She knew I’d figure enough out to send the beetles back to Earth. I take in a sharp breath, hoping sheer determination will be enough to get through whatever Ilyukhina has to say to me.
“Press the spacebar, Rock,” I sit up more. It selfishly draws me closer to Rocky. I let myself lean against him as he reaches out a claw to unpause the log.
“I don’t really want to die, Mary,” Ilyukhina says. “Not before we save the world, at least.”
Rocky and Adrian make the same lilting note. Who?
“Ilyukhina,” I say, eyes trained on my old crewmate. “Olesya Ilyukhina.”
“Though,” Ilyukhina sighs dramatically. “I may have no choice!” She turns her head towards the camera. It’s like she’s suddenly staring me down. She has a sort of grim defiance etched into her expression. “Grace! You are here for a reason! Not because no family or dogs. Those are just excuses. Things that make the world feel better about asking us to die.”
I’m holding my breath. Rocky’s carapace is warm against my side. He taps a claw against my ribs, urging me to breathe again. I can’t look away from the screen, even if I feel the burn of tears in my eyes again.
“Leaky space blob,” Rocky coos.
“But there is a reason, Grace.” Ilyukhina suddenly sniffs, mouth moving into an extreme frown. It takes a moment for me to realize that she is crying. Rather that she’s trying to not cry. “Maybe reason is not on Earth. That is fine. Maybe reason is with us, or in the stars. I hope you find it, Grace.”
She settles back into the chair. “Problem is: not enough food for me to stay awake and then have enough food to complete research. Problem is: your coma food line is damaged so you don’t have enough food to make the trip to Tau Ceti. Commander’s still in coma, but his vitals are not good. He will probably die. But there’s chance he won't.” She huffs, crossing her arms. “I am not doctor. I do not know.”
“I am an engineer!” Ilyukhina says with pride. Rocky also straightens up with a whistle, like calling to like. “So, I will engineer. I will make it impossible for you to break Hail Mary. Fail safe after fail safe. You could rip the lights out of the walls, I will make sure you don’t break her.”
She shuffles around in the chair, digging into one of the many cargo pockets of her flight suit before pulling out a small thumb-drive. “And! I will fix Hail Mary. She is so boring, I will make her more like me. Right, Mary?”
“It is advisable that you return to the crew quarters and enter into another medicated coma, Engineer Ilyukhina.”
Ilyukhina sighs defeatedly. “See? Only thing she’s said to me, no whimsy to her at all.”
I laugh in spite of myself. Rocky and Adrian chitter beside me. I reach a hand out to press my palm against the monitor’s screen.
“Then,” my crewmate says, “I will redirect all my coma slushie to you, because you are the best chance we have. I will rig Commander’s line to yours. If he dies his food will go to you, too.”
Rocky presses harder against my side.
“You will have enough food. You will live.” She nods to herself and her brilliantly suicidal idea. And then she just sits there, still and silent for so long I think the video is over.
But it isn’t. I watch, powerlessly, as Ilyukhina’s confidence slowly fades and her face crumples and sobs wrack her shoulders. She covers her face with her hands with a pitiful noise that quickly turns into a wail. It’s so loud and haunting that Rocky skitters away from the monitor as far as he can without leaving my side.
“You have to live, Grace,” Ilyukhina cries. “This can’t be for nothing.” She lets one more awful howl pull itself out of her before her resolve is back. Her jaw is tight and her eyes are bloodshot and she’s still trembling, but she looks at the camera again and smiles.
“Okay,” she says. “I feel better.” She leans forward, reaching for the computer and then she pauses, poking at the keyboard below the camera. “Oh, he should not see this until he wins, yeah. We do not need him depressed, Mary.”
“It is advisable that you return to the crew quarters and enter into another medicated coma, Engineer Ilyukhina.”
Olesya Ilyukhina rolls her eyes and tells me, “I’ll fix that, don’t worry.” Then the feed cuts off.
I sit there, leaning against my best friend, in stunned silence. Rocky lets me be quiet, and he keeps his fidgeting at bay until I pull away from him.
“She saved me,” I tell him.
I’d never even thought about how much comaslurry I had at my disposal. Making the trip from Tau Ceti to Erid would have been impossible without it. I’d never thought about how easy it was to re-rig the Hail Mary, or pull out components I needed, or how Mary herself had become a companion - especially on the long trip back to Rocky after the Taumoeba leak.
I just... accepted it as it was.
“Grace was not alone on Hail Mary,” Rocky whistles. He taps his claws, quick little snaps in rapid succession, the motion he does when he’s about to ask something he really cares about, or when he’s thinking very hard. “Did Grace find reason, question.”
Adrian hums an echo of the question.
I look out the window to the ocean the Eridians made for me, to the rocky shore and the foggy sky and towards my classroom cave. I look at Rocky settled beside me and at Adrian curled up in my doorway.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I did.”