True Dead
The ping came in the third hour of daywatch.
The Glade had turned to show its night side. She’d run out of things to check an hour ago.
She dismissed it.
Old frequency, the kind the ship hadn’t broadcast in decades. The signal was barely there. A battery ghost, flickering at the edge of range.
She pulled the coordinates anyway.
Small craft. Night-Seeker registry. She ran the number twice without meaning to. The hull was damaged along the starboard face, damage that had been there long enough to lose its edges. Not a collision, something slow, something that had given way incrementally. She held the scan longer than the numbers required. Hull that old meant it had been out here before them.
Proximity scan: one occupant. Female. Life signs: none. Personal log beacon active.
She could note it and move on. There was a protocol for recovered vessels.
She played the log.
Craft systems nominal except portside atmospheric seal, degraded to sixty percent. Hull integrity compromised at three points along starboard. Repair beyond my capability without supplies. Distress beacon active. Awaiting extraction. The planet is visible from here. Greener than I expected. Larger.
The entries were not continuous. She had left gaps between recordings. Days, sometimes longer. Evie read the timestamps as she listened. The first entry was dated before they had launched. Her hand came off the panel. She checked it twice.
She did not look at it again.
She kept listening.
– the blood feels different now. I don’t have a better way to say it. At the breach points, when the cold gets through, something changes. I’ve tried to describe it precisely and I can’t. It doesn’t hurt the way things hurt. It’s more like pressure, from inside. Like my veins are making a decision I haven’t made yet. Thirsty since the third week. There is nothing here.
The planet is still there. I can’t reach it.
– I’ve stopped keeping count. The log is the only voice and it’s mine, which has started to feel like a problem. I’ve been talking to the planet. I know that’s not a useful thing to do. I do it anyway. I’ve given it a name. Not the designation in the manifest, something else. It looks like home from here. At dawn the edge of it goes gold before it goes green. I don’t know if it does that on the surface. I think about that.
– I’m not afraid. I want that on record. I thought I would be and I’m not.
I just… I want someone to know that’s not what this is.
I know what I’m doing.
The log ended.
She turned off the beacon.
She pulled up the incident report and filled in the fields. Vessel registry. Position. Condition. One occupant, female, true dead. She left the cause field for last.
Personal log recovered and attached.
She attached the log to the report.
Pulled it back. Moved it to her personal terminal. Reattached a notation: personal log: unrecoverable.
She pulled up navigation. Gave the craft a course – not back toward the ship, not adrift. She pointed it at the terminator line. The side the girl had described from the other direction. It would burn on entry. It was something.
The course filed. The report filed. Evie turned back to the scan.
The Glade continued its slow turn below. Daywatch had three hours left.
The edge of it went gold, then green.
Evie went back to work.
