Chapter Text
When the ship's signal was first picked up, a tentative hope was sparked among those with clearance that it might be their long-lost crew returning with a solution to their dying sun.
♩♫♭♭♫'s hope had stopped a long time ago. While they had not personally known any of those sent out into the Great Emptiness, the stories of their bravery were what inspired them to join the monitoring thrum. They wanted to be there to greet Erid's returning saviors. But as the years dragged along and there was no sign of the ship's return after the expected time, their hope turned to sadness.
There was so much about the Great Emptiness they didn't know. Many thrums had been held about whether a second ship should be set out, if not to continue the mission, to at least bring home those who were lost. It was the fear of sending more Eridians to their deaths that stilled the claws of the Elders. Their sun was still dying, but they had centuries before they'd truly feel more than the mildest effects. There was belief that if going out into the Great Emptiness did not bring results, they would find a fix for it from home.
Even as the study of the star eater brought them many scientific discoveries, they were failing to find a way to kill it in mass.
But now, there was a ship powered by the star eater approaching the planet. Even as news broke that it was not the ship they had sent out, there was speculation that the crew had somehow built a new ship.
Even if the ship sounded nothing like an Eridian design.
♩♫♭♭♫ was in charge of sending out a repeating message, asking them to identify themselves, and to alert the others when a reply came through.
Once, back when they were a pebble, ♩♫♭♭♫ would've entertained the thought of aliens--just imagine it, them being the one the initiate first contact! But the only aliens they had encountered were the star eaters, alive but unintelligent and so destructive. If there was intelligent alien life out there, who was to say it wouldn't be just as dangerous and difficult to stop?
No, they did not want to think of more aliens coming to cause problems for them.
So when a reply came through, ♩♫♭♭♫ first reaction was relief at hearing Eridian.
♩♫♭♭♫ second reaction was horror because it was simple Eridian as spoken by a pebble.
Why the fuck was there a pebble in the Great Emptiness?!
There must have been a logical explanation. While the crew had not contained any mated pairs, there had been a few unmated Eridians who had volunteered for the mission. ♩♫♭♭♫'s hearts sunk at the thought of a pebble being born into the Great Emptiness. Did it have cluster mates? Single eggs were not unheard of, but it was unusual. But that was on Erid, who knew what the effects of the Great Emptiness might have on reproduction?
But then, if the explanation was that simple, why was the pebble the one on the radio?
♩♫♭♭♫ lunged towards the communication software, realizing the answer might lie in the message itself that they had failed to pay attention to. They replayed the recording of it.
"This Grace," the words were spoken slowly, the pebble clearly trying to use their best pronunciation for such an official task, "of Hail Mary. Grace bring Rocky. Rocky sleep. No hurt. No no sleep. Fall sleep. No speak. Grace speak."
Well, there was ♩♫♭♭♫'s confirmation that this ship was somehow linked to theirs, though the mention of only the engineer was concerning. As was the fact that they seemingly had put off sleep intentionally until they collapsed.
"Rocky Grace fix sun eater." The message ended.
♩♫♭♭♫ took a moment to contact the rest of the thrum. Of course this had to happen while most of the thrum was off sleeping, watching sleep, or, worse, eating. ♩♫♭♭♫'s training did not account for talking with pebbles on strange ships bringing home the apparent cure they'd been waiting for long for.
Despite this, they radioed a message. "Where's the rest of the crew?"
The reply came after a small delay. "Rocky," there were a few odd sounds that ♩♫♭♭♫ assumed was meant to be crew, even if it sounded more like the word for smash, but they doubted Rocky smashed the rest of their crew.
On second thought, they didn't actually know them outside of the stories, but they were familiar with how excitable engineers would be. ♩♫♭♭♫ would hate to be on Rocky's claws if the engineer somehow managed to smash their original ship into pieces with the crew inside.
The message continued, "sleep no wake."
♩♫♭♭♫ might've already believed the crew was dead but the confirmation still made their hearts ache. They could wait for the rest of the thrum and for Rocky to wake to ask the hard questions. This pebble had clearly been through enough without trying to press them for too many details about the crew or the star eater. How much would they have told a pebble about that, anyway? "How old is Grace?"
There was a longer delay this time. Long enough that ♩♫♭♭♫ began to worry that the short attention span of a pebble was not up to the task of keeping up radio communication.
"Grace +ℓ."
What the fuck. ♩♫♭♭♫ stilled, their hearts sinking. The pebble was even younger than they'd thought. Oh, they were so not qualified for this.
"Grace Rocky bring ship home, question?"
"Yes, Grace and Rocky did a good job bringing the ship home," ♩♫♭♭♫ smoothed, trying to keep the growing panic out of their voice. They weren't even allowed to hear their cluster mate's pebbles alone!
An odd dull sound in reply. "No, Grace bring ship dooown."
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Did Grace do something that was going to crash the ship? "Do not crash the ship!" Okay, maybe they could've handled that better.
"No, no, no, Grace no good move ship. No bad bad bad at move ship."
♩♫♭♭♫... frankly had no fucking idea what that meant. Luckily, the members of the thrum were finally arriving, and ♩♫♭♭♫ could hand this over to someone else to puzzle through.