Chapter Text
Poke.
“Grace. Grace. Grace.”
Poke. Poke. Poke.
“Rocky, I swear to–”
“Grace does not swear. You are boring like that.”
Grace grumbled as he slowly sat up from his cot, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Rocky was perched on his chest, the new Xenonite suit allowing him to practically mold himself onto Grace’s body. He wasn’t complaining, though. Rocky was a surprisingly comfortable heating pad. It helped that the Eridian was very conscious of his weight around Grace, never exerting too much force. Of course, those lessons had been learned painfully, at least on Grace’s part. The four year trip to Erid had been filled with many, many Rocky-induced bruises. Nowadays, at least, it was less of an issue.
Waking up in the Hail Mary again felt strange, but not bad. Currently, he and Rocky were on a short trip off-planet to spread the Taumeoba to some of the stars surrounding Threeworld–(the star that Erid orbited)–in an preemptive measure to prevent remigration of any excess Astrophage that the first Taumeoba probes hadn’t dealt with. They’d been travelling for about a week, and had already deployed another two probes. Grace had analyzed the sample they’d gotten back to make sure everything was in working order, and for once in his life, luck seemed to be on his side. He hadn’t doubted that the Taumeoba would work, but he also hadn’t had much faith in things going completely smoothly. There were always road bumps, and they seemed to pop up more frequently where he happened to be.
Now, he and Rocky only had one more star to visit. It would take another week or so to get there, and then another two to return to Erid after deploying the last probe and analyzing the samples. All in all, it would be around a month round-trip, which for space travel was very, very quick. On Erid, only six months would pass.
Adrian had not been pleased when Rocky and Grace volunteered to go into space again, but as a scientist they knew that this trip was very safe. That didn’t mean they had to like it, and both Rocky and Grace had been on the receiving end of many a rant. Rocky had made a poorly thought out joke about the trip, dubbing it a work vacation, which had not gone over well.
“Going on a vacation without Adrian? I see how it is. A vacation to space, but I am not allowed, not wanted. Rocky likes the squishy, leaky alien more than his beautiful mate.”
At one time, there might have been genuine insecurity in those words. But enough time had passed that Adrian and Grace had sorted out their differences and had become confident in their place in Rocky’s life. Now, the trio was rarely seen without one another. Rocky and Adrian had even moved into Grace’s biodome. Another modular structure had been built into the side of Grace’s beach house, separated by a clear Xenonite wall so that they could all converse without having to slip into Xenonite suits to see each other. Of course, the suits were worn practically every day regardless, with Adrian and Rocky slipping in and out of Grace’s half of the oddly shaped construct, but it still allowed a certain degree of hominess for the Eridians.
Grace had gotten used to all of the space his biodome had provided. He’d been worried that the Hail Mary would feel suffocating, especially with the grim memories attached to it. But now, having lived in it again for a week, it felt lighter. Homey. The fact that they could return to Erid quickly made it feel less like a coffin. And the memories surrounding it weren’t all bad. On the trip back to Erid from Tau Ceti, Grace and Rocky had done just about everything a person could think of to keep from going stir crazy. Movie nights, board games, language learning (Grace was now fully fluent in Eridian, yipee), charades (Rocky was better at this one on account of having five arms), card games (Grace was better at this one on account of having eyes), et cetera. Those memories were ones Grace cherished, and he knew Rocky felt the same. That feeling allowed Grace to feel more comfortable in what was once his to-be resting place.
Well, comfortable emotionally. He certainly wasn’t comfortable right now, with Rocky’s claw digging into his forehead intermittently.
“You couldn’t have let me sleep for a few more minutes? It’s not like letting me sleep is going to make Mary move any slower, y’know.”
Rocky let out a self-satisfied chirp. Grace rolled his eyes, then stretched his whole body out in an exaggerated way, his hand extended out on Rocky’s carapace (through the suit), pushing him away. Rocky stumbled, awkwardly landing on his “butt,” legs splayed out like an octopus plushie. He chirped in alarm while Grace snickered, sliding off the cot and towards the “kitchen area” of the dorm.
“Mary, food.”
“Mary, ignore Grace.” Rocky skittered over to him, still grumbling. Grace groaned, putting his hand to his temple and arching an eyebrow in question.
“Grace did not say please.” Rocky knew Mary wasn’t alive. He was just being difficult.
If Grace was honest, the fact that he and Rocky could even joke about food, nevermind delaying food, was a testament to both of their mental strength. Starvation was no joke, and food had been a touchy subject for a long time. Near the end of their trip back to Erid, it had been really touch and go, and it had taken a very long time for the two to feel comfortable being separated. Even now that was still true to an extent, though it was demonstrated in less extreme ways.
With a sigh, and a poorly disguised fond expression, Grace acquiesced.
“Mary, food, please.” He turned his head to look down at Rocky. “Is that acceptable for you?”
“Yes, yes. Good manners are important." Rocky moved his carapace back and forth, clearly pleased with himself.
Grace decided not to mention the fact that, for an Eridian, Rocky was considered pretty rude and pushy. That was fun to find out when he’d first come to Erid. He’d gotten so used to Rocky’s harshness and blunt words over the years they’d come to know each other that he’d been expecting every Eridian to be like that. He was very surprised when it turned out that most Eridians were more easygoing. It didn’t really matter–he preferred Rocky just the way he was.
Today’s breakfast was a meburger, as it always was. Over the two years he’d lived on Erid, he’d gotten used to consuming his own (cloned) flesh. He wondered how cannibals back on Earth would think about him. Would they even consider him a cannibal? Or was he just the cannibalistic equivalent of a vegan? Why was this the first thing he was thinking about on a Sunday morning?
Grace finished his meburger, got ready in the bathroom, changed into his Hail Mary branded jumpsuit, and then headed up to the cockpit, Rocky trailing after him. He checked some of the readings while he sat in the pilot’s chair, sighing with impatience.
“One week left, then we get to head home. I’m beat.” Grace yawned, leaning back.
“You just woke up. Grace is a lazy, sleepy human.” Rocky chittered. Grace just rolled his eyes at the teasing. It was comforting, actually. If Rocky ever let an opportunity to tease him pass, he knew there was something wrong.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, you excited to go back after this? I’m kind of dreading it.” Grace said.
“Why?” Rocky tilted his carapace in question.
“The meetings. Not all of us can thrum and be done with something in an hour.”
“Rocky will make sure they don’t pester you. It is inefficient to have Grace reiterate information that I can provide in a thrum.”
Grace huffed.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, buddy. They’re going to want both of us to report back to make sure they get all the information straight. It’s not the end of the world–”
“—yes, the end of world was solved, go us!—”
“—it’s just annoying.” Grace finished. If he was being honest, he wouldn’t even have complained if he wasn’t already so bored. Complaining was surprisingly entertaining, and even though Rocky liked to rib Grace about his “weak human tendencies,” Rocky complained just as much. Really, Adrian is a saint to put up with the both of them.
Rocky dipped his carapace in acknowledgement. Yeah, they probably weren’t going to get out of meetings after this. Turns out the universal language wasn’t math—it was bureaucracy.
The two fell into a comfortable silence for a bit, with Grace looking at star charts and Rocky in the corner hammering at some xenonite.
After about thirty minutes had passed, the lights on the ship flickered and the console started beeping. Grace immediately tensed, as did Rocky, his legs scraping against his carapace as he stood up.
“Mary, what was—”
“Anomaly detected,” Mary’s voice cut Grace off. Rocky chittered in concern.
“Grace, check the—”
“Already on it,” Grace said. He started looking at the sensor readings, but to his surprise, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It all looked perfectly kosher. There didn’t seem to be any anomalous celestial bodies or space debris anywhere near them. The closest star was the one they were heading to, a week away. Grace kept on switching readouts. Nothing was showing up. He tried the plasma spectrometer, the astrometric channel, the cosmic ray subsystem, the polarimeter, and a wealth of other scientific scanning instruments. Even the petrovascope showed nothing unusual.
“Mary,” Grace began, “what kind of anomaly was detected?”
“Anomaly detected.” Mary said, helpfully. Grace groaned.
“You didn’t find anything?” Rocky asked, knowing Grace well enough to intuit the situation just by reading his body language. He couldn’t see the readouts since he’d left his screen-to-texture instrument in the Don’t Go Crazy Room.
“Nope.”
“Weird. A glitch?”
“I guess so…? I flipped through basically every scanner we have, and Mary gets her information directly from those systems. So unless she suddenly gained sentience, it has to be a glitch. Probably just a false reading.”
“Hmm…” Rocky sounded skeptical, and if he was being honest, Grace felt the same. After spending so long in space, they’d both learned that letting things go, or assuming the best, was a recipe for disaster.
“I’ll check again, just in ca—”
A tearing noise, not unlike the one they’d heard years ago during their fishing trip, crooned through the thick metal of the hull. The lights went out, the red of the consoles being the sole illumination of the room.
The ship began to shake, knocking Grace into the console harshly. He pushed himself away with a groan, memories of Tau Ceti flashing in front of him. Rocky, he had to get to Rocky, he had to get the switch, the fuel was migrating to Adrian, Earth would die, Erid would die—
“Grace—”
Another shake knocked Grace the other way. He cried out as his wrist was crushed by the force, a horrible snapping sound that knocked him out of his memories.
Rocky screeched for him, but he didn’t have time to comfort his friend, they needed to get out of here, out of whatever was causing the ship to—
Another hard shake caused Rocky to be forced across the room toward Grace, stumbling in his xenonite suit. Was the gravity malfunctioning? Was whatever that was out there somehow able to influence it?
Grace reached out for Rocky, trying to pull him over on instinct, but it was no use. Even if the ship hadn’t been quaking, the Eridian was far too heavy for him to heave over. Rocky somehow managed to crawl towards Grace regardless, and perch onto the captain’s chair above Grace in an attempt to shield the more fragile of the two. Grace could barely hear over the blaring alarms and screeching metal that overlayed Rocky’s terrified warbling. The shakes continued, jerking them back and forth and up and down. A different type of shaking had also started up, a rumbling in the hull of the ship, vibrating through Grace’s flesh and Rocky’s carapace. The rumbling grew louder and louder.
“Rocky, hold on!”
“Grace!”
“Rocky—”
And then there was nothing.