Alone Among The Stars

The alarm shut off.

I lay there, breathing hard. My palms were cold against the deck. The floor had a fine, pebbled texture, designed to keep people from sliding in low gravity - or perhaps to keep equipment from sliding. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.

A panel beside the coffin blinked with symbols. Some were familiar. Others looked like meaningless scratches. I reached for the largest one.

The panel displayed a word.

MEDICAL.

That made sense. Medical bay. I was in a medical bay.

A second word appeared beneath it.

PATIENT: UNRESPONSIVE.

I stared at the letters.

“Not anymore.”

My voice sounded thin and unfamiliar.

I pushed myself upright. The effort left me shaking. My knees folded, and I caught the edge of the coffin before falling again. A clear bag hung from a bracket near my shoulder, nearly empty. A line ran from it to the needle taped into my arm.

I pulled the needle out.

The room tilted sideways.

I closed my eyes until the walls settled. When I opened them, the medical bay remained exactly as before: two recovery coffins, a bank of cabinets, a sink, and a sealed hatch in the far wall. Everything was compact and rounded. No sharp corners. No windows.

Two coffins.

The second one sat three meters away.

Its lid was closed.

I took one step toward it.

My foot drifted strangely before touching the floor. Low gravity. That knowledge surfaced without effort, as if it had been waiting behind a locked door. I knew the ship had gravity, but not much. I knew the medical bay was built for long-duration care. I knew the coffin beside me was a coma pod.

I did not know my name.

I reached the second coffin and placed both hands on its lid. A strip of glass showed a face beneath it.

A man.

His skin was gray. His eyes were closed. A thin film clouded one cornea. Tubes ran from his nose and throat into the machinery below his head.

I searched for a name. Nothing came.

“Hey,” I said.

The man did not move.

I slapped the lid. “Hey! Wake up!”

No response.

A control panel at the coffin’s side glowed red. I pressed the first symbol, then the second. The display flickered.

PATIENT STATUS: TERMINAL.

The word seemed to punch through the fog in my mind.

“No.”

I tried the release control. The lid unlocked with a mechanical clunk, but it did not rise. I pulled it open manually. The seal peeled apart with a wet sound.

The man’s head rolled toward me.

His mouth was open. Black fluid had dried at one corner.

I stumbled backward. My shoulder struck a cabinet.

“No, no, no.”

I touched his neck. The skin was cold.

There was no pulse.

The alarm began again, softer this time. A warning tone, steady and patient.

I searched the panel for a way to revive him. Defibrillator. Oxygen. Medication. The words came to me as I saw their icons, but none of them mattered. His body had already gone still in the way bodies did when they were no longer waiting.

I shut the lid.

The motion required both hands. My arms trembled so badly I nearly dropped it.

One dead.

The thought formed cleanly.

There was another coffin.

I turned.

The third pod was recessed into the wall opposite mine, partially hidden behind a folded medical screen. Its lid stood open. Inside, straps hung loose over an empty mattress.

For several seconds I could only stare.

Then I saw the dark smear on the floor.

It led from the open pod to the hatch.

I followed it.

The medical bay hatch had a manual wheel beside the control panel. I gripped it and turned. The mechanism resisted, then gave way with a groan. The hatch slid aside, revealing a corridor no wider than my shoulders.

The lights beyond it were failing in sequence.

One bright. One dim. One dead.

I stepped through.

The corridor curved gently to the left. Handholds ran along both walls. Bundles of cables had been strapped beneath the ceiling, some of them wrapped in silver insulation, others patched with black tape. A ventilation grille rattled overhead.

I put one hand on the wall and moved forward.

The smear continued for several meters, then vanished at a junction. Three passages branched away from me. One ended at a sealed door. Another sloped upward. The third contained a faint blue glow.

My body wanted water. My mind wanted answers.

I chose the blue light.

Halfway there, the ship lurched.

Not much. A shudder, followed by a deep metallic thump. But my feet left the deck. I struck the wall and spun, catching a handhold just before my head hit a junction box.

The lights went out.

For a moment, there was only darkness and the sound of my breathing.

Then emergency strips flickered on beneath my hands.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Stay calm.”

The words sounded absurd. They were also useful.

I pulled myself forward. At the end of the passage, a door stood open onto a cramped compartment filled with consoles. Blue light came from a monitor mounted above a chair.

A chair.

I crawled toward it and hauled myself into the seat. A harness dangled beside my hip. I fastened it without knowing why, then pressed the largest illuminated control.

The screen brightened.

A map appeared. Lines, numbers, and symbols filled the display. I recognized the shape of a spacecraft’s internal systems, but the labels blurred whenever I tried to focus on them.

One line flashed red.

POWER DISTRIBUTION FAILURE.

Another followed.

LIFE SUPPORT: DEGRADED.

A third appeared beneath it.

CREW STATUS: TWO UNCONFIRMED.

I stared at the words.

“Two?” I said.

My voice broke.

The empty coffin came back to me. The dead man in the second pod. Two crewmates. The phrase carried no personal memory, but it fit the ship with terrible precision.

I searched the console for crew records. My fingers moved over the controls with clumsy familiarity. A menu opened.

CREW.

Three names should have appeared.

Only two entries were visible. Both were marked with red symbols. I could not read the names. The screen distorted, or my eyes did. I rubbed them hard.

The first entry resolved for half a second.

DEAD.

The second did the same.

DEAD.

I gripped the console.

“No.”

The ship answered with another distant thump.

I forced myself out of the chair. The control compartment had a second hatch leading forward. I opened it and entered a larger chamber.

The control area.

Three seats faced a broad instrument panel. The central display was dark. The left seat had been torn from its mount and lay crooked against the wall. The right seat was occupied.

I knew before I reached it.

The body wore a flight suit. The helmet lay on the floor, its visor cracked. One arm hung over the restraint, fingers curled around nothing. The face was turned toward the forward display.

I moved closer.

The man’s skin had the same gray cast as the one in the medical bay. A dark line ran from his temple into his hair. Blood had dried along the collar of his suit.

I searched for a pulse anyway.

Nothing.

I looked at the empty left seat, then at the body in the right.

Two crewmates.

Both dead.

The realization did not arrive as a scream. It settled over me, dense and cold. The ship was quiet because no one else was alive to make noise.

I backed away until my legs struck the central chair. I sat hard.

“What’s my name?” I asked the dead man.

The question hung in the control area.

I looked at the instrument panel. A small display near the center seat glowed weakly. It showed a single line of text.

PILOT: RYLAND GRACE.

I read it twice.

“Ryland Grace,” I said.

The name felt almost familiar. Not comforting. Not mine, exactly. But it was the only thing I had.

I leaned toward the display. Beneath my name, more text crawled into view.

MISSION STATUS: ACTIVE.

I touched the screen.

The ship’s external cameras came online one by one. Stars filled the forward display, impossibly sharp against blackness. No Earth. No moon. No familiar sun bright enough to identify.

A distance readout appeared in the lower corner.

The numbers meant nothing to me at first. Then the scale resolved.

Millions of miles.

I stared at the stars until my eyes watered.

The nearest human being was light-years away. I knew that without knowing how I knew it.

Behind me, somewhere in the ship, a pump coughed and stopped.

The control panel flashed another warning.

LIFE SUPPORT: DEGRADING.

I placed both hands on the console. They were shaking, but they were mine.

“Fine,” I said to the empty seats. “I’m awake.”

The mission remained unknown. The ship was failing. Two bodies waited behind me.

The console displayed my name again.

RYLAND GRACE.

I reached for the mission records.

The screen went black.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 9,937 words in the full book.