Chapter 7: The Persistent Evening Light

A day after leaving orbit of Eos 3, and her appetite was returning slowly. She choked down half a serving of stew in the morning, and another at night of whatever mushy mix of  rehydrated and unfrozen food she came up with. It wasn’t as bad as the ration bars, but the texture was arguably worse. Day after day, she felt better mentally and physically, despite her tight rationing of water and food. At this point she had gotten used to the food and had a rotation of meals she would make. They were all hearty vegan stews, not by choice, but necessity. She had started to make her own cookbook because it was difficult working with limited ingredients. This included salads for when she had fresh food available, and different stews. It wasn’t much but it helped her keep track of the flavorful dishes, the nutrient dense ones, and maybe if she did ever make it back to Earth, a new book she can share with others.

She sat, resting in her double sized bed with an arm up, behind her head and a foot dangling over the side of the bedframe which was bolted to the floor. “Zarya?” The usual, “Yes Captain?” came over the speaker in the captains quarters. “I was wondering, with the planets we have already visited taken out of the equation and the types of planets taken into consideration, and the fact that the Aetherium Flux Wormhole Drive got us here in the first place, and the limited ways we are searching for it and mining things… What is the likelihood of us finding Aetheria Ore?” Extra whirring drifted down the corridor into her quarters. “Please wait.” Zarya said through her speaker in the room. After a few minutes the answer came, “Based on your calculation parameters your chance is 0.00287641834 percent.” She closed her eyes sadly and took a long breath in, “I see.” A long haul of quiet came next between the AI and the human. The only thing she could hear were the hum of the engine, the electromagnetic thrusters, and other parts of the Babushka-Zarya doing its thing to keep her alive and get her to base camp.

After finally falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion, she slept restlessly. The weight of the extremely low percent of them finding Aetheria ore and being able to go back to the Sol system was… she didn’t know a word to describe it, and she didn’t want to think about it. There was still a chance, 0.003 percent chance. She moved a chipped mug in a circle, swishing the dark contents around. The action drew up a tendril of hot steam, smelling like coffee; another remnant of home. A random-to-her Russian company name was printed on the mug with its logo which had faded by generations of use. She sighed, inhaling the familiar coffee smell, and added coffee and/or tea to the growing list of things a dom kit should have included. Maybe one day the surviving humans can make them better, and truly help colonists rebranch out into space.

She stopped her thoughts mid arch, and moved to something more productive; welding scrap together to act as compost bins. She would put one in the empty space where the passenger seating area had been, for her journeys, and the other at her camp on Eos 2. She felt stupid for not thinking of it before, as it was common practice on Earth. You can't take from the soil without contributing back into it. Humans had learned that the hard way centuries ago, but the big farms didn’t care and used chemical fertilizers and pesticides to present-day, with known carcinogens and other bio-hazards in them. Most people, at least in her area of the world, had a patch where they grew food themselves due to this, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and never ending inflation.

After the two bins were completed, she made a few small pots with drain holes and a communal trough for them to sit in for water. She had decided to start collecting seeds from the plants in her garden and trying to grow new plants from seeds in the ship. “Hey Babushka-Zarya?” she said and received a timely metallic reply, “Yes, captain?” “Do you know what kind of lighting’s in this room? Like, umm… how many kelvins and um… What spectrum of light?” She didn’t know the science behind light and light bulbs or what plants needed, but she heard that regular lights weren't as good for plants as full spectrum, whatever that meant. “The lights in the passenger area use a blue light base with a yellow phosphor coating, which creates a white light. This leaves gaps in the green, red, and violet ranges. Full spectrum light is better for plants. However captain, if you are wanting to grow food plants onboard, you must keep in mind the seeds included in the domestication kit were genetically modified to withstand harsher climates unlike Earth. The probability they will grow is better than if they had not been genetically modified.”  the speaker squealed a little at the end of Zarya’s comment. Rubbing her ear with her eye closed on the same side, she looked over the list of plants that had been included in the dom kit, and the downloaded information from the dom kit data seed, about how to harvest seeds and grow more plants.

***

She hadn’t smiled for a week. Her eyes were sunken and dark circles had formed around  them. Her face looked hollow, and her eyes were empty. Clothing hung to her bones, giving way to areas where her body once had healthy pockets of fat. Insomnia ruled her nights, making her wish for tranquilizers, sleep medication, or at least an herbal tincture. Grey eyes stared out at the stars  whooshing by as she and the Babuska-Zarya continued on their way back to their base camp on Eos 2. She blinked slowly, tiredly, standing in the cockpit holding a now room temperature half-portion of stew. “0.003… 0.003.  0.003…” She didn’t know why she should even try, or why she kept pushing despite everything working against her. Even if she did find the fucking ore, what were the chances of her finding her son back on Earth? Even less? She had learned her lesson, and decided to not ask Zarya to calculate her chances. Her bottom lip slowly curled down, twitching every so often and her eyelids quivered as tears silently filled her eyes, and she continued staring through the forward facing window into the dark of outer space. 

Closing her eyes she tried to remember her son’s face, how his green eyes had sparkled in wonder of nature and life. How his deep brown hair had glistened in the sun, and how he smelled when she held him close. On that last thought she broke down crying, standing there on that metal grated deck of that beat up grandma of a transport vessel, in an alien solar system, gods know where is the fucking galaxy. The next morning, she didn’t eat any food, drink any water, or even get out of bed. What was the point? She will die here, so why even try. The next three weeks she spent withering away in bed, spiraling into a despair so deep, she didn’t think there would ever be a way out. The silence of the ship and space was deafening and haunted her in her waking hours. 

***

Laying there in weeks old clothes and bedding, she heard the room’s speaker crackle on. “Captain, we have reached Eos 2 and are now in orbit. Do you want me to plot a landing trajectory and pilot to the base camp?” Shooting straight up into a sitting position, she croaked, “Yes” dryly. Looking down at herself, she grimaced and walked off to shower and change. After that, she felt a little better, and with a scared glance into the mirror revealing her deteriorating body, she was choking down the last few bits of food on board. She needed to get her strength back and she needed to figure out food for her longer journeys ahead. Her emerald green  hair dripped water from its hastily clipped up position, while she threw her old bedding in the wash and made her bed with new-from-storage clean bedding. Her room was a mess! There were stacked dishes with bits of old sauce and food in them, some moldy and some dry, old cups, and old dirty clothes from the beginning and middle of the trip to Eos 4.

She made herself busy preparing, as the ship's AI did the heavy lifting; plotting a course, flying the transport into the atmosphere, and down to their tiny green patch. She was exhausted by the hustle of finally being back at base camp, along with her lack of hydration and food. Despite that, she opened the air lock the moment that the landing procedures were completed. A burst of hot,dry, dusty wind hit her in the face and she coughed, walking outside. Her lungs were acclimated to recycled air, optimally set at a specific humidity, and the fresh but bone-dry air of Eos 2 was an abrupt and harsh change. The sun glared down on her harshly and her eyes struggled acclimating to the lighting change as well. Squinting, she fell to her knees in part due to the heavy gravity, and also an invisible weight being lifted from her shoulders, that had been pressing on her for months. Planetside; real ground, real gravity, a sky above her head, fresh air, and dirt, glorious dirt! Shifting to a laying position, with her back on the sand, she put an arm up over her eyes to protect them from the sun, and just breathed for what seemed like forever.

In the cool of the evening she wriggled her toes inside her boots, then moved her fingers around, and finally stretched with a yawn. Getting to her feet, she eyed her garden. Overgrown, needing harvest, a few scattered bits rotting on the ground, the water system gunked up again, and who knows what else. Grimacing at the wasted food, she remembered the compost bins, and brought one out to the garden, as planned. As she was placing it on the left side perimeter, she noticed the tree seeds she planted half a year ago had been growing slowly, and she smiled half heartedly. After starting the regular maintenance of the garden, and setting up the compost bins properly, she took another shower and ate a hearty salad, stuffing herself as full as she could. As evening turned into night, she sat amongst her food plants in a galley chair and started a journal. The last sentence in her first journal entry: “There’s no other thing to do, but try.”

As the days passed, she began to sleep better, look better, and feel better. Her extremely low calculated success rate was slipping from her mind, and she made sure to not quote it in her journal or the Babuska-Zarya’s log. Zarya had it stored in her memory, and that was almost too much already. She had collected seeds from her crops, and was working on starting to grow food plants aboard the Babushka-Zarya, in the passenger seating space, now a make-shift commons, if there had been others to share it with. A macgyvered hammock  was the newest addition to the outdoor space and she would regularly spend the nights out there, journaling and sleeping under the cloudless lavender sky. 

She was planting seeds in her sloppily welded pots, when Zarya said, “Captain? I have something  that is worth mentioning.” “Oh? Uhh… ok. What is it?” she replied. “I was going over the survey of Eos 2 and noticed there is an area on the scans that is missing all data. I recommend sending a drone out while we are here and surveying that area again.” “ Oh, is it normal for survey scans to have spaces where there isn’t data?” Her pale fingers, dirt happily under her nails, scratched her scalp. “No captain, it is most unusual. I have also gone over other planet surveys, and have not seen this phenomenon repeated. It appears to be an isolated incident. It could have been caused by a number of things including, an electrical storm, magnetic anomalies, or dense metal ore deposits.” “Ok, thank you for noticing and telling me, Zarya. Let’s do what you’re recommending and send another drone out.”

There were plant racks welded together, from torn apart seating and other furniture scraps, with pots happily sitting in water troughs with an automated water system like the one her planet-side garden had, but made out of bits and wires scrounged up from unneeded parts and systems, whether that's the motors in the ripped out passenger chairs for reclining, or wire from the personal reading lights she found in the crew quarters before making it her office. She had a few water containers, similar to the thick glass ones in the planet-side garden, and had printed a simple fertilizer to make up for the lack of nutrients in the sandy desert planet soil. Once the compost is ready, she can incorporate that in as well, and it will create better soil for her plants, and hopefully a better harvest. “Captain,” Zarya called over the comm, “the drone is back and…” A pause while the AI glanced over what the drone brought back for the third time, “... there isn’t any data, again.” 

The next morning she was already on her way to the blackout zone on Eos 2. Looking at the sun, she estimated it wasn’t mid-day yet, but it was getting hot. She was wearing an overgarment and hood made from the leanest sheets she could find in the salvage held in the cargo bay of the Babuska-Zarya. It was crudely sewn together, but airy, light and protected her from the harsh dying dwarf sun in the cloudless sky. Scraps were used to make a mask as well, covering her nose and mouth. She had a backpack on with a personal water bladder sewn into it and tubing running to her mask, making it easy access to hydration. She had packed a few containers of food, a few tools, including a rudimentary scanner taken from a drone. Her pad was on her thigh holster, under her outerwear, for logging her journey so  Zarya could analyze it on her return. The rectangle of bare skin around her eyes had a clay mud mix dried on it, except right around the eyes. Her whole body was enclosed. 

The  travois was dragged behind her, empty and gliding on top of the sand easily. Crunching came from her boots with each step forward. She stopped and checked the loaded map on her pad and surveyed the land, entering a brief, “more fucking sand” into her trek log. It seemed like forever, but it was actually just early afternoon when she began to notice the land was sloping up and had small and medium rocks mixed with the sand. Another note in the log, “sand and some smallish rocks, slight slope upward”, glanced around and noticed a spot not far from where she was with bigger rocks and small hills. She went that way. After what seemed to her to be another hour or so, she came up to the end of the rocky hilly area and there was a sand-softened drop down into… “What the fuck?” she murmured. “Is that vegetation?" Down in the shade of the buried cliff edge, there was a small clutch of what seemed to be plants to the human eye. 

She got rope out from her bag and tied it to a large rock jutting out of the top of the steep, sandy decline, testing it with her weight. Leaving the travois by the rock, she threw the rope over the edge and shimmied her way down. Rocks crumbled and rolled down from her weight but she was able to get to the lower ground safely. More notes in the log, then she took photos of the decline and the different plants.  She then tried to scan the plants, but it was still being jammed somehow. Wearing gloves, samples were cut of fruits and other food looking things, and the soil. Her backpack bulged with alien plant specimens. She might be able to determine if they were safe for human consumption with Zarya’s help. Making her way around the perimeter of the sandfallen slot canyon, she realized it was small, about four yards by three, and she tried to map the shape, but she wasn't a cartographer by any means. 

At least the plants weren't alive and trying to eat her, she thought and chuckled dryly. Between the overgrown canopy of green, she sat and leaned on a vine-choked face of the ravine. Sipping some water, she looked around and took a few deep breaths, enjoying the shade before checking the sun again. It was getting late and she needed to get back to camp. She put a hand against the compacted sand slope over the same vines she had been leaning against and suddenly fell onto that hand. “The Fuck?!” she said, trying to think through what just happened. Getting up and dusting herself off with her unskinned hand, she noticed that there was a hole in the vines where her hand had apparently punched through. Tilting her head in confusion, she pulled on the vine more and there was an opening. “Oh my gods…” It was a rectangular opening cut into the rock under the sandfall. The interior surface had waves on it, almost like water, but hard, polished, and cold.  This was not a naturally created cave.