The alarm split the silence like a hull breach. Atmo pressure dropping: forty seconds to hypoxia. Josie’s hands moved before her brain caught up. Primary seal, where was the breach? Her fingers flew across the panel, muscle memory taking over. Seal one: green. Seal two: red and screaming. She rerouted to tertiary. One year ago today she’d fallen through atmosphere with a dead computer and lived. Tonight she’d do it again.
The helmet sealed with a hiss. As she pulled the visor down, old fractures spread. Spider-web cracks she’d been ignoring for weeks. In the broken glass: herself falling.
The memory hit like depressurization.
Tumbling. Sky-ground-sky-ground. Twenty-five thousand meters. The planet’s gravity snagging her like a grapple. Twenty thousand. Wind tearing at her suit. Fifteen thousand. Darcy’s voice between the numbers: “You’re doing great.” Ten thousand. Her suit computer died. Three thousand meters and her scream filled the helmet until his voice cut through: “Engage thrusters at one-thousand meters.”
Her hand reached for the controls. Which controls? Her stomach lurched with g-force that shouldn’t exist in zero-g. The corridor was silent. No wind. No atmosphere screaming past. Just recycled air and the alarm’s dying wail.
She wasn’t falling. Her hand hovered over the platform’s thruster panel.
One-thousand meters. Now.
She hit the thrusters. The platform shuddered, groaned, stabilized. Atmo seals locked. She’d done it. Fixed the breach, saved the platform, saved herself. Again. Her legs gave slightly. She leaned against the console.
She checked comms. Offline six hours.
Her hands stopped moving. Froze mid-reach for the next diagnostic.
Shit.
The systems rebooted around her. She pulled off the helmet and her hands shook. First time in a year they’d betrayed her. The message queue loaded. Six months of bounced transmissions scrolling past. Forty-seven failed attempts. She rechecked the atmo seals. Rechecked thruster fuel levels. Rechecked everything except the queue.
One message had his name.
Timestamp: three months ago.
Her finger hovered over it. She knew. Her finger didn’t move for ten seconds. Fifteen.
She played it.
“Josie. Hey. I’m sorry, I won’t make it back for our anniversary. There’s been a shuttle malfunction, we’re losing pressure and we’re too far from the station for pickup. I need you to tell my parents I–”
Static.
She played it again. His voice sounded wrong. The pitch off. The rhythm broken. She played it a third time, counting the seconds: twenty-three before the static hit.
The voice in her helmet during the dive. That had been different. Steady. Close. She closed her eyes, replayed the memory. Engage thrusters at one-thousand meters. She whispered it aloud. Her voice. Lower, gruffer. There. That was the voice that had saved her.
She picked up the cracked visor. Turned it in her hands. Cold. Smooth except where the fractures roughened the surface. The cracks caught the light, split her reflection into fragments. How many times had his face been there instead of hers? How often had she heard his voice giving orders her hands already knew?
Her reflection stared back from every broken piece. Not his face. It had never been his face.
She set the visor down, careful not to press the cracks. Her hands had stopped shaking.
How long had she been doing this?
The platform hummed. Life support steady. The observation bay was ten steps down the corridor. She counted them. Sat in the chair that faced the viewport. Outside: deep space.
She played his message again. The fourth time. Or fifth. She’d lost count.
Beyond her reflection in the viewport, forty-three platform lights held steady. She counted them twice to be sure. Her pulse had slowed. Breathing even. The cracked visor sat on the console in the next room, spider-web pattern catching light.
She’d left the Nautilus a year ago. Darcy stayed behind. Comms delay made conversation impossible, but they’d tried. His last message was three months old. Hers to him, four months. She’d been writing one for their anniversary. Never sent it.
She closed the message queue. Didn’t delete his message. Filed it under Personal with the other things she’d carried from their sortie.
The viewport showed her reflection and her platform lights. She didn’t look away. Outside, nothing. Inside, her breath fogging the glass. Her hands steady. Her pulse quiet. Just her.
Leave a comment