Chapter Text
Tau Ceti-E was gorgeous. Clouds with varying shades of green and orange swirled about miles and miles below our orbit. The view made it hard to focus on setting up the astrophage sampler. “Wish you could see this, Rock.” I call through the radio.
“Rocky can see.” He replies. His actual voice of music notes is just barely audible under the computerized voice translating for me. “Boring.”
“What?” I ask incredulously, sliding the plates into place. “This is not boring.”
“Name of planet: Tau Ceti-E. Same name as star, plus E. Boring.”
Well, he’s not wrong. “I guess it could be a little more… evocative.”
“Astrophage sampler in position, question?” I can hear him tap twice against his xenonite ball.
“Yep.” I sigh. “Trays are live lookin’ both ways.”
“It is… time go.”
I chuckle lightly. “It’s time go.” I push off to the side where I won’t be blocking any astrophage and close my eyes, savoring the weightlessness. My first experience with zero gravity was not the best, and neither was my first EVA, but now that I’m not confused, stressed, or in a rush, I'm having a much better time. Spinning around next to the sampler, I can almost convince myself that I'm just swimming, maybe in that pool Stratt had me testing EVA tools in. But then the absolute silence outside my helmet reminds me of the vacuum of space waiting for a single mistake to claim my life. But after getting used to my stomach doing flips, the floating is addicting. I can almost understand why real astronauts keep going back into space.
I'm startled out of my thoughts by Rocky's voice. “What is Grace doing, question?”
“I’m having a moment.” I say softly, eyes still closed, reveling in the zero g feeling for a few more moments. “You know, back on Earth if you discover something, you get to name it. You were technically the first one here, so…” I trail off, sliding the trays on the sampler back in and unhooking it from where it was attached to the ship.
“Yes, er, name is…” He hesitates for a moment. “Medium-Rough Texture Circle Planet.”
I blink, my lip twitching upwards. “‘Kay. Well, if Medium-Rough Texture Circle Planet was taken, well, just have a backup.” I attach the sampler to my suit and start pushing my way to the airlock. “Maybe go with something personal.”
“Per-son-al…” Rocky says slowly.
I pull myself to sit on the side of the airlock, not wanting to look away from the planet just yet. “What was your mate’s name again?”
The computerized voice almost seems to brighten. “Name is-” he breaks off into a long string of chords and melodies, before I cut him off.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I remember.”
He hums. “Need human word for Rocky mate.”
I think for a moment, still admiring the planet. Do I name his mate after a movie character? “Adrian.” I decide.
“Is beautiful!”
I smile, taking one last look at Adrian, and swing myself into the airlock. I close the door and start to pressurize the room, when the ship shudders. I can hear alarms and Mary’s voice giving warnings over Rocky’s radio. The ship then stills, the alarms all stopping at once, and leaving us one last warning from Mary: “Foreign contaminant detected.”
I raise my hand to the side of the helmet. “Rocky? What was that?”
“Sensors stop working. Say need to be recalibrated.”
“Okay, did anything important stop working?” I check the repressurization progress, willing it to go faster.
“That is not main issue.” The computer’s voice somehow sounded shaky. “A human. In dorm. Very leaky.”
I freeze. “What?! How did-”
“I not know. Appeared when ship shook.”
I take a breath, cursing how loud the airlock was. Without actually cursing, that is. Eventually it repressurized, and I went for the door before pausing. “Rocky, where is the human?”
“Still in dorm.”
“Are they alive?!” I hadn’t considered that they might be-
“Yes. Heartbeat very fast.”
I sigh in relief, quickly wriggling out of the EVA suit and the white under layer, leaving me in my yellow flight suit. I open the door as quietly as I could and push myself around the corner and into the cockpit. Rocky was still in the xenonite ball I had strapped into the co-pilot’s chair, the most motionless I have ever seen him. He was always fiddling with something, but now he was unnaturally still, listening for danger. He slowly points a claw at the straps and I quickly unbuckle them, pushing the now floating ball over to the xenonite tunnel. Rocky climbs out of the ball and points again, this time down the hallway.
I shake my head vigorously. I’m not going down there! What if the human is dangerous? What if it’s actually an alien? What if it’s here to hurt us?
“Grace,” Rocky says quietly. “Grace Rocky have to check. I think human injured.”
I take a deep breath. He’s right. We wouldn't be able to hide for very long on the tiny spaceship, and if they really are injured, we need to help them. I nod and we slowly descend through the ship.
I pause in the lab, looking around at the supplies I left to float in zero gravity. Maybe I could take something to defend myself with. I consider the items around me before plucking a large beaker from the air. Stratt made sure to send the most indestructible glassware that she could find, since having actual glass in a spaceship is a terrible idea. Beakers were also pretty cheap, so I’m sure there are more if I manage to break this one.
I push myself towards the ladder to the dorm with Rocky right beside me on the other side of the xenonite. How an alien made of rocks moves so silently is beyond me.
At the doorway, we slow down and I peek my head in. It looked like a horror movie. The room smelled like iron and a large blood splatter stained what would be the ceiling when we use the centrifuge. Small beads of it were floating in the air, weightless in zero g. There were smudges of it in what looked like hand and foot prints of someone pushing themselves around, but I didn’t see anyone there.
I could feel my heart in my throat as I slowly pushed further into the room. “Rocky? Where…?”
Rocky’s musical voice played out softly, but there was no translation. Right. I left the computer with the translation software up in the cockpit.
He points further into the room, so I follow his finger. I creep in, beaker raised in my right hand, and guiding myself with my left, getting closer and closer to the blood. There was so much of it. I was no medical expert, but losing this much blood was surely lethal. Whoever left it must need help. Armando sat dormant in the corner of the dorm. Maybe they could help?
I turn back to Rocky to ask for the location again, but he lets out an ear piercing screech and before I can react, an arm wraps itself around my neck.
I cry out, drop the beaker, and claw at the arm threatening to cut off my air way. My fingernails slip on the blood covered sleeve and I can feel more of it soaking through the back of my flight suit. I thrash, sending us spinning about in zero g.
Distantly, I can hear Rocky’s musical voice along with his fists against the zenonite barrier separating us. I throw my elbows back, hitting ribs, and I kick my feet, trying to push off the walls and dislodge my attacker. The only thing I accomplish is a few pained grunts and a tighter hold.
Suddenly, I spot Rocky in his hamster ball flying into the room right into us, and we sail into the wall in a tangle of limbs. Rocky normally stays on his side of the barrier in zero gravity, since moving the ball is extremely difficult, so building up enough momentum to do that is crazy. The impact is jarring enough to loosen the arm around my throat, and I take full advantage, prying it off and throwing myself as far away as I can get.
I spin myself around to survey the situation, only to see the figure flying right for me again. The man, now that I could see him, looked to be a little shorter than me, but seemed to have a lot more muscle. He had wavy shoulder length hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. His face was contorted in rage and desperation and… fear? My eyes leave his face and my stomach roils. He’s missing an arm. It looked like it had been torn clean off.
My back hit a wall and I was preparing to push off again, away from the man, when movement caught my eye. Armando. It was holding a needle in one of its hands. The robot had probably detected the injured man. If I could just get the man over there, Armando could help him.
Before I could overthink anything, I launch myself towards the man, surprising him. I slam into him and we hit the wall near Armando. I hold him there as the robot brings the needle closer.
The man flails. “No! No, please! Please! You promised! You promised my freedom! Please… please…” his words slowly petered off as he succumbed to the sedative.
I shakily take a breath and back away as Armando takes him over to the nearest bed to start operating on him. I look down at my trembling, blood covered hands. Something in my brain flickers with pain, desperation, and fear, before fading just as fast. Oh my god. Oh my god. What just happened? He just… appeared? Who is this? What happened to him?
“Grace, question?” Rocky’s computerized voice called from the ship's speakers. I could see that he was holding one of our microphones. He must have grabbed it when he got his ball.
“Yeah, bud?” I asked quietly.
“Grace hurt, question?”
I slowly brought a hand up to my neck. It didn’t hurt. Well, not as much as I expected. I guess he was trying for a hold, not trying to choke me. I’m not sure what his end goal was, but he wasn’t going to kill me. Other than that, all I had were some bumps and bruises from the scuffle. “I’m fine, Rock. Just… shaken.”
Rocky hums wordlessly. I turn to look at the room. If I thought it looked like a horror movie beforehand, it looked even worse now. The struggle left blood splattered all over the walls, floor, and ceiling and there were even more blood droplets floating in the air than before. Where in the world did this guy come from?