Chapter One: The First Seeds

The earsplitting alarm vibrated through the empty, metallic corridors, drawing her consciousness to her body. She struggled to regain her faculties, her senses overwhelmed by the cacophony of sounds, the blurred brightness of dancing sparks, and the pain radiating from her cranium. With great effort, she attempted to raise herself into a seated position; the heavy smoke that filled the air caused her to cough and gasp for breath. She winced as her fingertips gingerly touched her injured scalp, and her hand came away drenched in vivid crimson. She pulled her black t-shirt over her head, carefully avoiding her gushing wound. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she pressed the fabric tightly against the gash. Using the console for support, she pushed herself upward. A broken seatbelt jostled with her movement, reminding her of the spacecraft's hasty acquisition. Gathering her bearings, she made her way towards the First Aid kit, blood dripping from the saturated shirt.

She retrieved a packet of clotting powder with bloody, trembling hands, scattering it over the deep, profusely bleeding wound. The empty package fell to the floor as she hastily reached for another and another, relentlessly applying the powder until the bleeding slowed enough to allow for more secure bandaging. In the spacecraft's small bathroom, she wiped away the blood in her eyes with a wet towel as best she could with her weakened arms.  She was breathing rapidly, and her skin was clammy and quite pallor; she had lost a significant amount of blood and needed a transfusion stat. Going back to where she left the First Aid kit, she grabbed bags of Synth Blood and Normal Saline. She brought the bags, blood tubing, and a Large-bore IV Cannula to her bunk. She ripped at the sheet from the bunk above hers and used the strip to tie the bags to the top of the basic welded metal bunk-bed frame, which made her pant and groan in pain. Carefully, she connected the tubing to the bags of synthetic blood and saline.  Next, she primed the intravenous line with salt water, clearing any air bubbles and ensuring the pathway was ready for the vital infusion. With an unsteady hand, she located a suitable vein in her non-dominant arm and inserted the cannula a few times until she got it right. Initiating the transfusion, she watched as the fluid slowly entered her bloodstream.

“Mamma!!! …  Mamma??...”

She jerked awake with damp skin, stuck on the words in her dream. The synth blood bag was almost empty.  Once the transfusion was complete, she flushed the tubing with Normal Saline, ensuring no precious droplets were wasted. With restored life, the astronaut  carefully put her helmet on and trudged out of the airlock, taking a reading of the atmosphere. With a sigh of relief, she detached the helmet and pulled it up over her pounding head, revealing a crop of emerald hair. Gravity was heavy and pulled on her bones. The astronaut looked out at the small, barren planet from the open outer airlock. Home...

The word rang out in her mind, and her gut wrenched tightly. Great sorrow came slowly to the hazel grey eyes. She was alone. The astronaut fought the tide of emotion moving up from her gut. Tears welled in her eyes, which she desperately blinked back. She must survive.  She must find him. Shaking the intrusive thoughts out of her head, she listed the things needing to be done. She must do an inventory of supplies, the camp had to be set up, and then the dom box should be unpacked.  A diagnostic had to be run on the now only smoking ship, too. She was lucky the hull was not breached, and the medium-sized transport craft’s computer was still functional, but it couldn’t fly, and communications were down. She blinked at the setting sun, still hot on her pale, colourless face, and turned back into the ship. She’d have a ration bar tonight, use another IV saline bag, maybe try to clean herself off some, and get a clean pair of clothes.

In the morning, she was feeling much better despite localized pain in the gash on her head. She had more color to her skin and had most of the dried blood cleaned off her body and hair. She wore a clean, white tank top with an army green flight suit, its arms tied around her waist, and black combat boots. After she had eaten another raw ration bar from the survival kit, she took off to survey the dust heap she had crash-landed on. The white dwarf shone down harshly on the planet, and she figured it was one of the closer planets. She tracked her walking with the pad and drew  a makeshift map with the included stylus. With her still recovering from the crash, the walk was difficult, and the heat radiated on her pale skin, covered by a sheet blowing in the wind gently. Her hand clutched at it, covered in scabs and bruises, and she began to notice no life at all. No plants, no land animals or flying ones… nothing. Just dust, dirt, and rocks. She decided that when she gets back to the ship, she’ll see if the probes are working, try to get the system online if not, and send one up to survey the planet in full. There must be some life here, she thought.

The day after,  she  pulled out all the supplies she had that the ship didn’t need to function. The the survival kit with a few weeks worth of ration bars, a gun, and someone, probably Volkov, had put a flask of what she thought was home made vodka in there, the Med Kit, the extra bedding, torn apart bunkbed frames, welding goggles and torch, and the Crash‑Landing Domestication Kit otherwise known to spacers as the Dom Kit, which was for just such occasions as this. She stripped the transport bare and created an inventory on the pad while thinking of Volkov and his sacrifice for her escape, wishing he had come with her. A tear escaped her hollowed eyes. No sense in grieving the dead. There were so many. She shook her emotions away. Sighing from a galley chair under the awning, she eyed the old transport vessel Volkov had worked so hard to fix up. “Ok, gram…” she said to it, “... Let's get you checked out.” She got up and stretched, aching from pushing her recovering body for the past few days. She’d need a day of rest soon and was worried about what thoughts would arise without the busy work of surviving.

She was in luck, the pre-diagnostic ensured the damage diagnostic routine was optimal. She sighed in relief and started a ship-wide damage diagnostic. The countdown of remaining time flashed onto the screen. “Eight hours!!” she kicked at the base of the console and cursed. After a pause, she sighed again and patted the console. “I’m sorry, Gram. It’s just you and me now, and this isn’t your fault.” She decided to spend her time experimenting with the ration bars for an early dinner and to have a rest period. Thankfully, the ship, named Babushka‑Zarya, had a galley, and she had previously cleaned it up and reorganized the disheveled supplies. She had only kept a single table and two chairs, placing one outside by her dom-garden. There wasn’t really any food on board, as she didn’t have time to pack anything; she had been running for her life back on Earth.

Collage of crashing space shuttle by Rachel Beeson Art

There were a few dried herbs and spices, a two-burner stove, a single-basin sink, a dishwasher, dish soap, a small oven, and an empty refrigerator. She pulled out a pot, a bowl, and a ration bar, which she had previously stored in the kitchen. She filled the pot partially with sink water, which came from the water tank and the reclamation system. She shuddered thinking about that, glad there were a few spare filters on board that she found as part of her inventory. Setting the pot down on the smaller burner on the stove top, she clicked the knob to high heat and added a little salt to help it boil faster, then covered it with a lid. She then peeled the metallic-looking, but actually plastic, packaging off the ration bar and started tearing it into pieces, placing them in the bowl. When the water was at a boil, she added the small chunks to it and added a few spices and herbs, hoping it would make the ration bar taste better. Scientifically, they were the perfect meal for the human body; to the human taste buds, though… Blech! She shuddered at the memory of the flavor and texture.

She turned to address her bandaged head as her pot simmered, peeling back the dirty bandage to look at her head in the bathroom mirror. She was worried about infection but also bleeding again, so she used more sterile rinse from the med kit, thinking about how she should boil and then cool water for this tomorrow, so she doesn't use up supplies.  She would have gotten stitches if she were at a hospital on Earth, looking at the small, gleaming white bit that was now showing her skull, where the skin had been peeled away in the crash. She was glad for a moment that she wasn’t around others. People were so harsh and critical about looks, no matter how much you tried. Now, it doesn't matter. She just has to get back home. Staring into her own eyes for a second, then taking a sharp inhalation, she took a fresh bandage and wrapped her head again, extra gauze on her slowly healing head wound.

Later that night, sitting with a steaming pot of ration stew in hand, she stared up at the planets and stars. Looking down again with a bare, dirty-nailed finger on star charts, she slowly became aware of the fact that she was in uncharted space. Pushing the preceding thoughts from her weary mind, she tested the bland-smelling gruel with a pinky. Choking down huge spoonfuls as she ladled the food into her mouth, she tried to remember the last time she ate something hot, which she figured was before the attack. She sighed heavily and looked back up at the strange, unfamiliar sky. “No moon”, she thought as a cool wind blew through her short bob. Then, in her bunk in the silent ship, she blinked slowly asleep.

In the morning, she decided to halve the rations despite the suggested serving sizes on the labels. She checked the diagnostic outcome while chewing on the nutrition-dense bar, washing it down with a small cup of recycled water, and it gave a weird metallic vitamin taste in her mouth. Babushka‑Zarya needed patching in a few areas, including a portside window, but the main issues were the electromagnetic thruster on the starboard quarter, and the Aetherium Flux drive was fried. She sighed, wishing the damage had just been superficial. The electro-thruster would be easy enough with the tools and supplies she had, but because the A-drive was fried, she couldn’t tell what components it needed, and some of them were super rare. She was going to be here for at least a month “Macgyvering” parts together. Time for the Dom-kit if she were to stay alive.

Later that afternoon, she had a makeshift awning up, created from unused sheets stitched together and some of the bunk framing. A little garden was planted in the sandy soil underneath it, and she hoped it would survive and grow. She had used the soil test kit included in the Crash‑Landing Domestication Kit, or Dom-kit, as spacers call it, for compatibility, and it was faint, but still a positive.  The domestication kit was designed specifically for crash landings where fixing the ship or a long survival period was required. Those often resulted in makeshift colonies occasionally being discovered generations later and reconnected with humankind. It included genetically modified seeds for Kale, Swiss chard, Lettuce/arugula mix, Carrots, Beets, Bush beans, Peas, Cherry tomatoes, and Dwarf peppers, specifically designed to be more adaptable to different soil types and weather conditions. There was also a sheet of cloth made from altered Syntrichia caninervis moss, originally developed by Chinese researchers ages ago. It was a mesh‑like fabric that pulled water from the air, which could be collected. The old ecologists called the original moss something in Mandarin, which translated to ‘moss that drinks the sky,’ and the nickname stuck in the farming colonies of old. Over the decades, spacers coined it ‘Sky‑Drinker Mesh.’

She hung it up vertically on the sun-setting side of the awning as a thin wall, with a plastic collection trough under the mesh. That led to a small filter, pump, and some piping, which fed the water into a few stretchy bladders made from a bio‑engineered polymer. She then took a small packet of round leaf-like seeds in her hand and placed them in the last of four holes freshly dug in the corners of the veg patch. She sometimes wondered why Chinese Elm seeds were included in the long-term survival kits, but now she understood, and she heard they are naturally very adaptive to different soil types. She planted them in each of the corners of the awning. She felt a small, insignificant twinge of hope as she patted the soil down over the last hole, the empty seed packet next to her. Surely some of the seeds will take root.

She jolted awake as the sun was setting that evening, startled that she had fallen asleep, sand on her cheek and in her hair. She was glad there weren't any predators here, but she'd kill for some meat to eat. Collapsing back onto the sandy dirt, she closed her eyes and thought about her favorite foods.  “... but honestly, cold cucumber sounds so perfect right now… and watermelon…” She smacked her lips and realized she was parched. Her eyes shot open, and she pushed her unhappy body up off the ground. Glancing at her garden, she got herself water from the galley and gulped heavily, thinking about water and her hope of plants. The ship had a moderate water tank, since this was a transport vessel equipped with a shower and a full galley. She had noticed a port on the outside of the ship the other day that said water. With another cup of water in hand, she sat down at the table and pulled the ship schematics over to her. Shaking sand and dirt out of her hair, she confirmed there was an external valve for the water with a two-way pump. She rejoiced inside, but her face and body didn’t show it.

Clanking and whirring were the only sounds heard through the next week, as she worked on the damaged ship. She had already connected the ship’s water system to the garden’s water system and had decided half of her water should be stored in the bladders for the plants. She scheduled nightly watering so the water wouldn’t evaporate before reaching the seeds. Some patching and sealing had already been completed as well, and she was glad she had collected the scraps from the crash. They had become useful in the smaller repairs. Babushka‑Zarya looked even worse than before this impromptu trip. Her rudimentary repairs made Gram look patchy and even older than she was. “A great-grandmother, not a grandma,” she thought and chuckled to herself, "Sorry, old gal. I’m doing my best”. The starboard quarter electromagnetic thruster was a surprisingly easy fix. Volkov, true to his engineering nature, had stored extra parts in preparation for his planned trip. Her stomach gurgled. She was hungry and physically exhausted, and now her stomach was having trouble digesting so many dense rations bars at once. She yearned for some real food.

Taking a bite of the ration bar stored in one of many jumper pockets, she scratched her still sandy head in confusion. She was no engineer, and an Aetherium Flux drive was the only piece of updated equipment on board. She had no fucking clue what to do. She was hoping there was some schematic or diagnostic tool that could help her through the repair like all the others, but this was aftermarket. “More like after a few lifetimes,” she thought and sat down on the metal decking heavily. “What the hell am I supposed to do?!” Tears filled her eyes, effortlessly spilling out, and she sat there, dirty, aching, wounded, and grieving a lost home planet, the death of her people, everything she had gone through in the last six months. And she wept deeply for the first time in a long time.