Chapter Text
12 years. 12 forsaken years on the Hail Mary ship. To say I was scared was an understatement. There were no blaring sounds, no celebratory “you made it to space” nothing. One minute I was on Earth, next minute I was strapped into my death bed.
Not only is that kind of thing all sorts of disorienting, it is really fricken terrifying if you asked me. I am not built for space, no matter how many people say otherwise.
This is not the life I thought I’d live, but, when has my life ever been uninteresting? Even when I was born, I was- am, just an alien to them. Just some- experiment, barely above a zoo animal, if I hadn’t shown signs of sentience, if I wasn’t able to learn- I’m pretty sure they would have dissected me. I really don’t want to dwell on that thought.
I’m in space. And I am alone.
At least we were in the Tau Ceti system now. Several light years from my home, trying to fix an Astrophage problem that, frankly, I don’t know if I can actually fix. I barely had time to figure out Astrophage as it was before I was being packed away like luggage.
I am not an astronaut.
I am not meant to be out here.
The Hail Mary ship felt abysmally tiny, even more so than my normal overly protected dome structure I had back on earth. Which is not saying much, since I never really had that much space back on Earth to begin with, maybe a few hundred feet worth at most. I never really measured it.
I never really cared to.
I’m sure it would have been considered entrapment of some kind by literally anyone else’s standards if the roles were reversed, but I try not to dwell on that either. Most of the ship was supposed to be run by my crew anyway, so most the space was dedicated to them.
Still, it doesn’t make me feel any better that I only had about a quarter’s worth of the entire ship’s space, it doesn’t matter how small I am, it’s inhumane.
The real problem is, both Yao and Ilyukhina are dead, something I couldn’t predict or prevent from happening on my side of the barrier. Even if I wanted to save them, which I did, don’t take me for some murderous alien here, there was a multitude of problems I couldn’t have gotten past.
When they died, I was in my sleep cycle, a cycle that can’t be prevented or interrupted, unlike humans. It wasn’t as strong as the coma that they were put under, but it’s pretty dang close to one. It took years for anyone to understand that my biological clock is just different from theirs, and anything short of hitting me with electrical currents won’t wake me up. And even that was dangerous, it could kill me if done incorrectly.
I also don’t think their deaths were instantaneous either, I have a rough theory that somewhere along the way, their coma resistant gene was just not as full proof as Stratt made it out to be, and they slowly atrophied away, which I had no clue how to fix and neither did the robot arms that played nanny to the two unconscious humans.
This wasn’t Star Trek; this was just normal human technology. You can only do so much with an untested theory. Still, that doesn’t matter much, I honestly have no clue how they died, my theory could be wrong.
Then there’s the most glaringly obvious issue, I wasn’t even in the same holding space as them. I was in a completely different corner of the main dormitory. Not close enough to reach them, just close enough to hear when their breathing stopped.
I can’t cry like they can, but I sure as heck cried when they died. I still mourn them.
The nanny bot that watched over Yao and Ilyukhina could still reach me, but it only ever cared to give me food.
I feel like a freaking dog sometimes.
For as much as Earth trusted me, they still didn’t want me to sabotage this trip.
Could they blame me? I don’t care if I’m an Alien to them, I was raised on Earth, it is just as much my home as it is theirs. I didn’t want to be sent out on a suicide mission several light years away from my home.
I’m not an astronaut!
Seriously, how the heck am I the one most suitable for this trip? I teach people for crying out loud! I don’t belong in space, I belong in my classroom, in academia!
But of course, as Stratt is, she gave me no warning and no other choice. I’m still mad about that, really mad. I couldn’t even say goodbye to anyone. I guess they cared more about saving the earth than the alien they raised.
I tapped the floor anxiously with one of my claws, Yao and Ilyukhina’s lifeless bodies were just outside the range of my echolocation, I couldn’t see or hear them, but I knew they were there.
I wanted to give my crew proper burials, they deserved it, even if it was just cycling their bodies through the airlock, at least then they can rest among the stars, and not in this death trap with me.
But, here I am, stuck in this absolutely tiny section of the Hail Mary, and I’m not even sure if I can do anything about it. I have access to my lab equipment, food, and sleep area and that’s about it.
I’m not even sure I knew how to make more of the structure walls around me, or if I could somehow cycle out the oxygen for ammonia. The ship would hate it if I made myself at home, it was already barely hanging on as is with two vastly different environments in her hull.
Plus if I cycled out their atmosphere for mine, my crew’s corpses would burn up, and I don’t want that. I don’t think they’d want that either.
Maybe they wouldn’t have minded it, we were pretty close, all things considering. It doesn’t matter; I care too much about them to not want to burn their bodies with my atmosphere.
A frustrated note escaped me as I try to wrack my brain with ideas of what to do here. I was essentially in a prison right now and I had zero clue on how to get out.
I need to get a grip; I am a 40 something year old- whatever I am. I can handle this. Maybe there was something in the lab, knowing Stratt, she wouldn’t have left two crew members and an alien alone on a ship without backup wall material, it would have been needlessly dangerous not to do so. If one wall had even a hairline crack, it would have been game over for everyone.
I took one last ‘look’ at my crew, I’ll be back for you, I promise. Then made my way to the main lab.
Or, at least I attempted to, not only did one of those robot arms activate when I started moving around, it kept asking me stupid questions.
“What is two plus two?” It had asked in a monotone voice, robot arm at the ready to grab me. “Four” I chirped back at it, already feeling irritated by being stopped from completing my self-appointed mission.
“Correct. What is the square root of eight?” It asked again. Does it think I’m stupid? My brains haven’t turned to mush over the last twelve years. “Two.” I grumbled at it, not feeling particularly snarky right now.
“Correct. What is your name?”
Luckily, this thing was programmed to understand my clicks and whistles to be words, and not utter nonsense, I don’t think I would have been able to get very far if it wasn’t programmed.
“Doctor Ryland Grace” I told it with zero flourish; I wasn’t in the mood for this. I’ve got bodies to get rid of. Yikes, isn’t that a dark thought? Maybe I am a psychotic alien that everyone tries to make me be.
Luckily, it finally seemed satisfied to let me go. Such a simple machine. I don’t think this thing could fight its way out of a paper bag, and yet it was somehow trusted to keep all three of us alive.
It utterly failed at that too. I don’t blame it though; it wasn’t the machine’s fault. You’re doing your best Armando.
Yes, I’m naming it, it’s the closest thing I have to a companion right now, bite me.
It is a bit concerning that Armando was programmed to understand me, either Stratt had been planning on me going to space for much longer than I initially thought, or they just threw some hasty data into the computer software system, that’ll probably break or bug out at some point.
Humanity, everybody.
Once I got past the flimsy nanny bot security, I was finally free to get to the lab. Or not. What the heck was this? These tunnels were tiny! And I’m not a big guy, I know I’m only a few feet across, but this? This was painstaking, I feel like I’m crawling at an absolute snail's pace to get anywhere! Someone must have seriously messed up the measurements of my tunnels somewhere along the line because they are tight as all heck to get through. Ugh. People.
I swear, if I somehow figure out how to get home, I will have so many choice words for whoever built this ship.
Everyone sucks.
Everything sucks.
Oh hey, I made it to the lab.