Wanderers

Romance at this moment was not in passionate glances, but in quiet solidarity. Andra, standing by the terminal, felt someone come up beside her. It was Mark. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the fractured crew, and on his face was a strange expression — not gloating, but almost guilt. He quietly said something the translator didn’t catch. But Andra understood the tone. “Forgive me.” For bringing such truth. For shattering their world.

Without looking, she whispered back: Better a bitter truth than a sweet lie called ‘hope,” right?

He didn’t understand the words, but seemed to grasp the meaning. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

We vote, Elia announced, clenching her teeth. Procedural democracy in a situation of total amnesia seemed the height of absurdity, but there was no other legitimate way out. Who is in favor of changing course, accepting their coordinates as a possible option?

Doctor Weil’s hand went up first, calmly and confidently. Behind him, several others. Andra, after a second’s pause, also raised her hand, feeling Raider’s hateful stare. Traitor, he whispered.

Who is against?

Raider’s hand, the security officer’s, and five others shot up like spears.

The rest abstained, Elia stated, looking at the frightened, indecisive faces. Her heart clenched. This was worse than defeat. This was capitulation to the void. The majority… is in favor of changing course.

They had just voluntarily renounced the only meaning they had, however phantom it might have been. They had become a ghost ship in the fullest sense. Without a past. Now without a future.

Elia looked at Scorpa. He met her gaze and gave a barely perceptible nod. There was no triumphant gleam in his eyes. Only the satisfaction of a predator watching its prey walk into the cage itself. Or was that just her imagination?

They stood on a threshold. Not a geographical point, but an existential one. Who were they without their mission? Clay in the hands of strangers, to be molded into whatever they wanted? Or did they still have a chance to mold themselves — from fear, mistrust, and this new, monstrous emptiness that had become their shared home?

Beyond the viewport, the stars slowly began to shift. The ship started to turn.

CHAPTER 6: THE LANGUAGE OF MACHINES

To an outsider’s eye, it would have seemed the height of boredom: two people bent over control panels in the semi-darkness of the reactor room. Only the hum of the Kepler’s thermonuclear heart and the flickering of screens. But for Andra and Mark, this was the most captivating and quietest of battles, a dialogue and a dance light-years ahead of the sterile arguments in the mess hall.

They had been assigned to ‘joint technical maintenance.” Formally — so that Mark could help adapt the Kepler’s systems to the potential needs of the base, and Andra could make sure he didn’t blow anything up. Informally — it was exile for both of them. She was exiled from her outraged colleagues, he from his suspicious comrades.

The first half hour passed in strained silence. Andra, teeth clenched, introduced him to the diagnostic system. Mark looked at the schematics, and his eyes went round, as if he were seeing not blueprints but sacred texts. He touched the engine’s hologram with a finger, bringing up a pop-up menu, and immediately muttered something under his breath. Andra automatically corrected: No, not ‘plasma stabilization circuit,” that’s the neutron damper cooling channel. See the difference in topology?

He, of course, didn’t understand. But he saw how her finger traced the hologram, highlighting the finest difference in the flow structures. And he nodded. Not out of politeness. Out of understanding.

The turning point came when the system threw an error in the gravity compensation module of Section Delta — right where the Scorpion was welded in. Andra grumbled, launching a deep scan. Again, your barbaric docking methods are coming back to haunt us. Now vibrations will run through the whole frame like kettledrums.

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