So this was initially going to be a tragedy, but it turns out I am very bad at writing those.
This story may get more later since it's far from over, but for now, this seems like a good place to pause and post what I've got.
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NAVIGATION SYSTEMS: ONLINE
LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS: ONLINE
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS: ONLIME
STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: MINIMAL
Lev let out a sigh of relief. In front of him, the words on the spacecraft’s diagnostic readouts glowed green, washed out by sunlight streaming through the open hatch and filtering across the console.
ENGINE STATUS: SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE DETECTED
Of course. Of fucking course there would be something wrong.
MEDICAL SYSTEMS: SOME DAMAGE SUSTAINED
“Yeah, yeah, not the problem right now.” Lev tapped on the engine section of the readout, and engaged the audio input-output function.
“Alright, computer, how bad is it?”
“Please rephrase.” The melodic voice of the ship’s computer crackled slightly - the crash must’ve rattled the intercom systems a bit, too, Lev figured.
“What exactly does the engine damage mean for getting us out of here?”
“Esoteric geometry travel is no longer possible. Current engine damage will also become catastrophic at any speed greater than 0.1c.”
“One tenth the speed of light? Shit. And you’re sure there’s no way the ship can go any faster than that?”
“Any attempt to exceed 0.1c will result in a 100% probability of total destruction.”
Lev reached under the console, rummaging around until he found his old star chart. He didn’t really need it, but it was one of the things he’d wanted to bring with him on the journey, and had figured he might as well keep it in the cockpit. He unfolded the chart and laid it out on one of the consoles that wasn’t in use, tracing the route he and Madeline had taken.
“Right, so we started here.” He put his finger on the home they’d left. The little backwater mining colony could only persist as long as there was something to mine, and with the work all done, it had been time to go. The next freighter wouldn’t be due for another year - a whole year of sitting and waiting and watching Madeline grow up on a forsaken, dying moon - so Lev had decided to spend no small amount of his savings to rent one of the small, automated ships for people who really needed to be somewhere fast, and who didn’t want to make any stops along the way.
“And we were going there…” He tapped their destination, a star system where he had some cousins almost as old and withered as himself, with families of their own. Traveling through non-space was very quick, and had everything not gone to hell, the trip only should’ve taken a little over a month. But when the more esoteric bits of the ship’s systems failed, they had needed to drop back into plain old normal space, and head for the first world with breathable air they could find.
“It looks like we’re about halfway there, so only three light-years left to go. Which would mean, with the engines the way they are, it would take us… “
The realization hit like an icy cold wind, piercing deep into his soul.
By then, the cousins would be in their very last years, and their children would be his own age. He and Madeline could take the journey in the emergency cryo-pods, made for if the esoteric geometry drive failed, but it was hardly a cheery sort of solution. They’d wake up, not a day older than before, and step out of the ship onto a world that had long since moved on without them.
They could send a message instead - the communications systems were still working fine - and that would take just those three years to make it to the nearest populated world, the one they were heading for. From there, they could be rescued in mere weeks via non-space travel, but that would still mean having to stay alive for years in this place until the message made the journey across the stars. Lev considered, pulling up the images he’d taken of the planet as they’d come in for a landing.
He’d had enough foresight to crash the ship in the most lush-looking region, which in this case, consisted of a scattering of scrub, and a couple lonely, feeble-looking trees. The place seemed to be a terraforming project in progress, left to grow and flourish a bit before people came to stay. None of the plants seemed edible, and all he’d seen to account for animal life was a couple of bugs, and some sort of weasel-looking creature scurrying away out of sight. It was cold here, even near the equator, and the atmosphere was thin, the sun harsh and burning.
Could they survive here? There might be edible plants somewhere, but that was one hell of a gamble, and Lev wasn’t sure he’d place his bets on weasel-hunting carrying them through a month either, let alone a few years. They might make it, but an old man and a child of twelve were hardly going to be very good at toughing out that wait.
His reverie, however, was interrupted from a shout outside the spacecraft.
Lev heard the sound of footsteps on twigs as Madeline came running towards the ship, her jacket a spot of red against the browns and grays and yellow-greens of the landscape.
“Grandpa, look st this!” She came rushing into the cockpit, and Lev rose from his chair, wincing at the sudden, shooting pain in his hip. The crash had made it worse - another reason he’d have trouble keeping them alive here; he didn’t think he’d be able to run, much less lift anything heavy.
“I found this really cool rock that’s shaped like a heart and I wanted to give it to you because I love you and I know you’re really sad we’re stuck here.” She held out her hand, a smooth, gray rock in her palm.
Lev took it, admiring it for a moment. “I love it. And you. Thank you, kiddo.”
She beamed up st him, and he noticed that there was a cut running along the side of her cheek, smudged with dirt.
“You’re hurt - what happened?”
“I tripped and fell on one of those thorny bushes.”
“Well, let’s get you patched up. C’mon, we’re going to the medbay.” Lev led the way to the small room off the ship’s single corridor. It wasn’t really a medbay proper, just a room with a couple cryo-pods, and a medkit stored next to them, which was just enough to earn it the title. As they came up on the door, though, Lev paused. The metal had buckled near the top from some sort of impact. and the top hinge on the door was torn off.
He turned the handle and pulled, and with a horrible, screeching creak, the door inched open.
Lev stepped inside, and froze. In front of him, one of the two cryo-pods lay bolted to the floor, perfectly intact. The other cryo pod lay on its side - damn shoddy engineering, the thing should’ve stayed put even with all that force from the crash - with the end closer to the door smashed to bits. The screen embedded in the lid of the pod was shattered, and Lev could see bits of exposed, torn up wiring protruding from it.
“Grandpa? What's wrong?” Madeline moved to peer around him, and Lev found that even if he had wanted to stop her, he couldn’t bring himself to move. He saw Madeline’s eyes go wide at the sight, but there was no terror on her face. She doesn’t realize what this means yet.
He forced himself to move, to step forward and pick up the medkit and step out of the room into the hall. Forced himself to set the kit down on the floor, kneel down beside it, and pull out some sterilizing wipes.
Forced himself to look a little less like a man that knew he was going to die.
“Come on, let’s get that cut cleaned up.”
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That night, they feasted, eating many days of rations each. Madeline wouldn’t need them in the cryo-pod, and Lev figured a wouldn’t make much of a difference - if he did somehow manage to survive here, it wouldn’t be thanks to just a handful of days of extra food. They had made a fire a short ways from the ship, and dragged over some rocks to sit on. Between bites of steaming hot instant noodles, Lev told Madeline about the legends behind the stars dotting the night sky.
Madeline’s gaze followed his finger, pointing to a faint speck of light a few degrees above the horizon.
“Yeah, what’s its story?”
“Well,” Lev said, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips - he’d saved the best for last. “That one doesn't have any good stories yet, but I bet you’ll change that.”
“That’s where our family is. And when you get there… kiddo, knowing you and your zest for life, someday people are going to look at that star, and they’re going to say, look - that’s where Madeline grew up. That’s where she went to school, and made friends, and ate all her favorite food.”
Madeline looked down at the ground, pushing some dirt around with the toe of her sneaker, and after a moment, her eyes rose back up to meet Lev’s.
“Except, you’re not coming.”
“Yeah.” She let out a shaky breath, clearly holding back tears. “But grandpa, it’s just broken. Can’t we fix it?”
“Well, kiddo, we’d need replacement parts, and the ship doesn’t have those, or any way to manufacture them.”
“It’s just making a place really, really cold, right? Can’t we do that without all those parts?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. It took lots of people lots of years to figure out how to put travelers in stasis in a way that didn’t hurt them - all those bits in the cryo-pod are bits we need.”
“Okay, but… you can’t just stay here! Not alone. Maybe I could stay with you?” She swiped her coat sleeve across her eyes, brushing away the tears building up in them, and sudden determination swept over her face. “I could help you find food. And I could build things. And then when help comes, we can leave together!”
Lev let his face fall into his hands.
“Kiddo, you’ve got to understand - I need you to go. I need you to have the best shot at surviving - at living - as you can. And hey, if all goes well, maybe when you get there, I’ll be waiting.” He’d be ninety-seven in thirty years, but people were living to a hundred and twenty these days, and the system they were going to had some damn good doctors.
But before any of that, he still needed to survive here for three long years.
Madeline was quiet, contemplating. At long last, she spoke. “What if I want to stay with you?”
Lev felt tears welling up in his own eyes, too. “Please, Madeline, it’s my job to keep you safe. I already lost your mom last year, and I need you to - “
“But I DON’T WANT TO!” She leapt to her feet, hands clenched at her sides. “I know I can survive, and I don’t care what you think, because all you think about is what can go wrong!”
But she was gone, running away into the dark.
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Lev had considered trying to follow Madeline, but decided to let her take the time she needed. It wouldn’t get below freezing tonight according to the ship’s computer, and there were no dangerous animals around or giant cliffs or such. Instead, he’d stayed up waiting inside the ship, finally dozing off sometime in the wee hours of the morning.
When he woke in the chair he’d been waiting in, it was to the sound of pen scratching on paper. He cracked open an eye, sunlight from the open hatch flooding the room. A few feet away, Madeline lay sprawled out on the floor, intently scribbling something on a notepad.
“Morning, kiddo. Get any sleep?”
“Nope, but I made you something.” She got to her feet and passed him the notepad. “I’m almost done.”
Lev took the notepad, taking in the pages of what looked like some sort of half-decent survival plans. There were ideas for ways to trap the weasels, for water purification, even for games to play to stay entertained.
“I talked to the computer,” Madeline said. “I asked it to look through the library for things like getting water, and I know you would probably do the same thing, but I wanted to show you I’m ready.”
Lev was still trying to pull himself from the thick fog of sleep, and Madeline pressed on before he could try to cobble together some sensible words.
“I know you’re going to say that it doesn’t matter, because it’s still dangerous, so I thought about that, too. And for a while I couldn’t think of anything, but then the computer wanted a list of stuff we had on the ship to help me figure out how we could make weasel traps. And I just sort of mentioned the cryo-pod along with everything else, because if I WAS staying, then it’d be here too along eith the rest of the ship, and then I thought… Grandpa, why can’t I just go into they cryo-pod right here if it gets too dangerous?”
“Well, I…” Lev trailed off, her words fully sinking in. She actually wasn’t wrong. Had he really been so unwilling to even consider another option that he’d missed it entirely? It was, possibly, even safer, because then she wouldn’t be flying through space on a damaged ship.
He sat up a bit straighter in his chair, still barely daring to think that this could actually work. But she was right, and even if he didn’t live to join her, she would only be three years behind schedule, not thirty.
“Kiddo, you’re a damn genius.”
“Under one condition. Just promise me something, okay? If things do get really bad, you’ve got to promise to get in the pod, so that one day, you can go see the stars and tell them all about your crotchety old grandpa.”
Lev looked out the hatch, into the bright, harsh morning light. It was on him to make sure she was okay, he thought, and he’d been about to do a pretty crap job of it. He’d been so sure all they could do was accept their fate that he hadn’t even tried to fix the problem, and she’d almost been all the worse for it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen sooner.”
“It’s okay,” Madeline told him, “I know you were scared.”
