Chapter Text
Grace felt the corners of his mouth quirk upwards as he watched his shoe laces float around in zero g. Maybe being back in space aboard the Hail Mary should’ve terrified him, but instead it felt like the comforting echo of the womb one gets when curling into the fetal position under a nice warm blanket.
He’d never be particularly grateful for being shot out twelve light-years in space to die against his will, but if he had the choice to reverse it all today, he wouldn’t change it for the world; only because it had all worked out so well with the whole not-dying business and the meeting an intelligent alien race thing. But those perks were no thanks to Eva Stratt. Lucky for her, he’d never be back to give her a piece of his mind, and he couldn’t very well leave her a strongly-worded Yelp review from 16.3 light-years away.
It had been a rebirth in a sense—not just because of the involuntary suicide mission and drug-induced amnesia bit—it was here he’d met his best friend, and here he’d decided that his life wasn’t worth living without Rocky. He could spend time pretending he’d done it to save Erid, but that would never be true. He could say he’d done it to save Rocky, which was true, but mostly it was because he couldn’t bear to be without him. There was nothing for him on Earth.
It was also a relief to be out of the absolutely bone-crushing 2.09 G gravity on Erid. That was why he and Rocky had decided to lead the mission in the first place. After 4 and a half years on Erid (earth years because, like Rocky says, he’s terrible at math), the gravity had already started causing his joints to deteriorate, and he was only about… 43 years old (probably. If his math is right). Thankfully, the Eridians are crafty people, and they figured out how to synthesize vitamins to help with his bone density and joint problems when they were learning to support all his nutritional needs, but they could only do so much.
The Eridians hadn’t insisted that Grace and Rocky lead the first Star Angel mission; this wasn’t Statt’s Vat, but they’d made a dang-good case for it. Grace could get a solid 5 years relative time away from Eridian gravity, and they were able to launch the program much earlier by flying the Hail Mary rather than taking the extra time to design a new interstellar ship with the radiation shielding and scientific equipment Grace already had.
The Star Angel program was devised by Eridian species consensus that they have a responsibility to use the discovery of Taumoeba to assist other star systems likely to have intelligent life. Somehow, they developed a system based on the combined knowledge of their species and Grace’s massive bank of human intellectual resources to predict the likelihood of intelligent life occurring in nearby systems.
Epsilon Eridani was the closest they identified, only about a 5-year round-trip relative time for those on the mission and around 13.8 years on-world until the mission returned, which, for creatures with a 689-year average lifespan, is not very long at all. It was the perfect length for the first mission launch—close enough that any major issue with the new additions they made to the Hail Mary wouldn’t leave the crew indefinitely stranded in space. But Grace doubted there would be any issue with the tech. If Eridians were good at anything, it was engineering.
“Grace Rocky analyze planets now, question?”
Grace swiveled around in the pilot chair to check the navigation screen. They were in a stable orbit around the star Epsilon Eridani.
“Yeah, looks good,” chimed Grace.
He turned his attention to another screen and, with the engines now disengaged, fired up the Petrovascope.
Now in the Epsilon Eridani system, Grace could observe for himself the two additional planets in the system, the Eridians had informed him his Earth information systems were missing. That was probably because Earth had yet to discover said planets before the launch of the Hail Mary. Maybe they knew of them now, but to Grace, the only confirmed one was the gas giant Epsilon Eridani b. He’d just have to name the other two.
Unfortunately, the humans had already decided on a boring name for the gas giant, which would make the innermost planet to the star Epsilon Eridani c and the farthest out Epsilon Eridani d. He’d have to come up with something more interesting eventually, but he didn’t have the capacity right now. They had a job to do.
The Petrova line led, as expected, from the star to the closest planet, Epsilon Eridani c. Of course. Planet c appeared to be similar to Venus from Grace’s home solar system, likely a hot and dense atmosphere with plenty of CO2 for the Astrophage to breed.
Before they could set course to planet c to sample the atmosphere and seed it with the proper strain of Taumoeba, they wanted to complete a full scan of the other two planets in the system. The Eridians had identified the system as a possible host of other intelligent life after all, they may as well see what’s what.
Grace flicked off the Petrovascope and switched to the new Spectral Sensing Array the Eridians had equipped the Hail Mary with by melding his own telescope technology with the Eridians' advanced sonar and radio sensing equipment.
He activated the automated panoramic sensing sequence, letting the ship spin itself around on several different axes, accurately pinpointing their position and trajectory in the system and noting the general surface of the surrounding planets, moons, asteroids, etc. It was amazing what the Eridans were able to do with the technology just 4 years since Grace and Rocky arrived from Tau Ceti.
As the sensing system passed across the gas giant planet, Epsilon Eridani b, the array came up with some really weird irregularities on one of the planet’s many exomoons.
“Huh,” Grace remarked quietly.
“What is wrong with moon, question?” Rocky added, noticing the same on his own textured versions of the control panels (another improvement made to the Hail Mary, Rocky could control the ship directly from within his own area).
Grace focused the sensing array on the area to try and get a better reading.
“Anomalous narrowband signal detected.” Stated the ship computer Grace had lovingly dubbed, Mary.
That doesn’t sound good.
Grace turned to the control panel displaying the array radio map. Sure enough, there was a clear narrowband spike, too significant and precise to just be regular noise.
He scowled and flicked on the ship’s regular radio transmitter and tuned it to the specific frequency that had indicated the anomaly.
First, there was only the soft buzz of static. Maybe there was a problem with his instruments. But then came a clear signal spike again. Three short beeps, followed by three long, followed by three short. Then a long pause.
That couldn’t be right. Grace recognized the sequence immediately. But it was impossible.
It was SOS in Morse code, a universal—undeniably human—distress signal.
There, in no way, should be a human space station anywhere near the Epsilon Eridani system. Sure, it had been what? 36 years on Earth since the launch of the Hail Mary, but at least 24 of those should have been spent in utter chaos due to the dimming of the sun, hardly the ideal time to develop more advanced interstellar travel, much less the capability to install interstellar moonbases.
The signal came through the radio again, the same as before.
··· — ···
“Oh my god,” breathed Grace.
“What? What is problem, question?!” Rocky demanded, shifting nervously around his command deck.
“That’s a human distress signal.”
“Humans on Epsilon Eridani moon, make no sense.” stated Rocky.
“No. No, it doesn't make sense at all.” He agreed.
Grace flipped between data points on the array map, knitting his brows together as the signal, once again, came over the radio frequency. There were also irregular formations on the surface of the exomoon that the radio signal was coming from—angular, like something man-made, and an entire section of the moon wasn’t returning data at all, leaving a massive blank section in the digital map.
“Rocky, would the intelligent life occurrence prediction system pick up something like a human space station from another system?”
“I not know. Is all done by Astronomy Hive scientists. I am not scientist.” He said with a pointed jab at Grace, who didn’t acknowledge it at all. He seemed to be deeply distressed.
“I don’t know how people from Earth would possibly be here, but if they’re sending that signal, something is very wrong.”
“If humans in trouble, Grace Rocky must go help. Earth are friends,” Rocky remarked, shifting his carapace insistently.
“Not all humans are friendly, Bud. But I bet they will be if we’re saving their butts,” Grace conceded.
Grace had already begun charting the course to the planet b moon. Luckily, the new Eridian-designed Spectral Sensing Array was made to streamline the navigation calculations so they no longer had to spend days checking and rechecking the math to get anywhere.
The computer spit out the navigation statistics. It would be an estimated 16 hours to reach the Epsilon Eridani b exomoon from their current position. Hopefully, whoever was out there sending the distress call could hold out that long.
—
The closer they got to the moon, the more they were able to make out of the surface data returned by the sensing array. There were buildings, no doubt about it, and something probably more concerning—there seemed to be a massive body of water on the moon's surface. That also made no sense.
The moon itself was fairly large, clearly the largest in Epsilon Eridani b’s orbit, and the magnetosphere of the gas giant itself could potentially stabilize a body of water like that to some extent, but there would have to be an immense atmospheric pressure on the moon for an ocean, because that’s what it was, to exist.
Once in stable orbit, Grace was able to see the ocean itself through the hull cameras of the Hail Mary.
“That’s very strange," He remarked.
“Not very. Look at mountain ridges. Moon mountains release gas. Enough atmospheric pressure for ocean,” countered Rocky.
“It’s not that,” began Grace, “It’s red.”
“That not normal color for ocean, question?”
“Not normal," he replied
It’s only a theory, and it's certainly far-fetched, scientific method and all that, but Grace’s gut was telling him something was terribly wrong with that ocean. It may not be water at all.
It could be some kind of microorganism or sediment affecting the color of the liquid, but it looked abnormally thick and visceral.
“Right. Rock, you mind calculating the landing trajectory? I’m gonna suit up.”
“I run calculation now. What proximity to moonbase structure you want, question?”
“Uhh, get me on this side,” Grace leaned over the control panels, gesturing to the side of the structure opposite the ocean’s shore, “as close as you can get without blowing them up or anything, alright?”
“Yes, Grace go get ready.”
Grace pulled himself through the laboratory section of the ship and into the dormitory. He grabbed a small tank of emergency oxygen they had in storage and the Xenonite Astro-torch rocky made for him, and a Geiger counter from the lab, just in case, before pulling them up into the airlock.
Grace carefully lashed the spare O2 tank to the side of the Orlan EVA suit and stowed the tools in its belt before climbing into the suit and checking the radio.
“How’re those numbers looking, Rocky?” He said over the radio.
“Numbers ready. Launch module ready for Grace entry.”
Grace nodded and cycled the airlock. Outside the Hail Mary, Grace made his way around the hull of the ship using the numerous handles and tethers until he reached the small craft attached to the underside of the crew compartment.
Just then it fully hits him that this is an incredible risk to be taking. He could nearly hear Stratt in the back of his head telling him the logical decision would be to ignore the distress signal and complete the mission. He’d ignored that voice many, many times during his adventures in the Tau Ceti system. At least now, if his stupidity got him killed, he wouldn’t be dooming two planets full of people. This wasn’t Stratt’s mission.
The landing module had been added entirely by the Eridians to the exterior of the Hail Mary when they’d un-suicided his suicide ship, in case he needed it to land back on Earth.
He unlatched the module’s outer command panel and unsealed the cabin hatch before re-fixing the outer panel and clambering inside. Grace situated himself snugly inside the capsule, fastening the various straps and belts securely before sealing the hatch.
“Everything looking good on your end?” He called to Rocky over the radio.
“Yes. Module ready to launch. All good on Grace side, question?”
Grace flicked through the extremely basic instruments on his little control deck.
“Yeah. Looks good.”
“Prepare for launch in ∀…” Rocky began counting down.
Grace felt like his chest was going to leap into his throat as the adrenaline hit him. He may have grown used to changes in gravity and all other manner of insane things he’d experienced in space, but this was new.
“...+...”
When arriving on and departing from Erid, they’d used the Eridians space elevators, for lack of a better word, to get in and out of orbit. They’d never had to design a launch module before and had done so mostly using designs from the Earth infobank Grace had provided them with. And they’d never used this module before.
“...λ…”
Despite all his self-sacrificing and his acceptance that the immense gravity on Erid would no doubt lead him to an early grave, he was still a coward.
“...V…”
He tried to steady his breathing. At least Rocky would be safely orbiting in the ship and likely be unaffected if anything went wrong on reentry. Unless, of course, the module blew up while still attached to the hull. And now he was thinking about that. That, and the Soyuz 11 and the Columbia and–
“...I…”
As Rocky reached one in his countdown, Grace was able to pull himself from his spiraling thoughts with the same thing he’d exclaimed when he rescued Rocky’s ship all those years ago. Yep. I am so going to die!
“...ℓ”