Draft 2

Month 2, Day 2: 08:00 hours. The Persephone.

Helen walked down the port-side corridor, keeping pace with Janet and Magnus next to her.

“I swear to everything holy, my teeth are vibrating.” Magnus pressed the heels of his hands against his temples, his gait stiff.

Janet held a medical scanner up to his neck. “That’s what happens when you drink a beverage brewed in a subterranean mining colony. It wasn’t whiskey, Magnus. You essentially paid for flavored industrial solvent. Next time, pay more attention to what you’re drinking.” She lowered the device and tapped the screen. “As soon as we clear the docking ring and we’re on our way, meet me in the med-bay. I need to hook you up to an IV and flush those toxins out before your liver completely shuts down.”

“That solvent cost me fifty credits a glass.” Magnus winced as the overhead lumen-strips sputtered. “My wallet hurts worse than my head.”

Unit Seven hovered over Magnus’s right shoulder, his blue optic zooming in and out.

“Medical Officer Wilson is correct. My chemical analysis of your exhalations indicates a forty-two percent match with the active ingredients found in standard Omni-Corp engine degreaser. I strongly advise against standing near any open sparks. Your blood-alcohol content is currently flammable.”

“Shut up, you flying toaster.” Magnus swatted at the drone.

Seven easily ducked the swipe and zipped over to Helen’s shoulder. “Humans possess a fascinating drive to poison themselves for recreation. I will prepare a fire extinguisher just in case.”

Helen laughed.

“Don’t encourage the drone, Chief,” Magnus said. “And for the record, I wouldn’t have been drinking the fifty-credit engine wash if I hadn’t lost my spending money at the betting tables in Sector Two.”

Janet sighed. “You bet your hazard pay against frontier ice-miners? I should be scanning your brain, not your liver.”

“It was rigged. Those magnetic dice were loaded. I know it.”

Seven pivoted in the air to face Magnus again. “Statistically, the house edge in unregulated Charon betting parlors sits at roughly eighty-nine percent. Factoring in local corruption, you would have yielded a higher return on investment by throwing your physical credits directly into the ship’s primary incinerator.”

“I really am going to dismantle you,” Magnus grumbled.

“He has a point,” Helen said. “Next time, stay on the ship and drink the synthesizer ale. It tastes like wet paper, but it won’t melt your stomach lining.”

“I just wanted one good night before we hit the void. Months of nothing but the slip-drive hum and corporate nutrient paste. A guy needs a memory to hold onto.”

Janet slipped her medical scanner into her scrub pocket. “Some of us managed to make pleasant memories without suffering acute chemical poisoning. I found a hydroponic vendor near the medical exchange. I traded some synthesized antibiotics for real chamomile tea leaves. I plan to brew a proper cup the second we cross the solar boundary.”

The door to the starboard elevator slid open ahead of them. Claude stepped out into the corridor.

“Morning, Dr. Kinskey,” Janet said.

“Good morning, Medical Officer.” Claude nodded politely and fell into step beside them.

Magnus squinted at him. “You look pretty shiny for a guy who just spent two days on a frozen mining rock. Did you find a corporate spa down in the slums?”

“I found a quiet corner to conduct my business, Mr. Cantarini. I leave the recreational self-destruction to the manual laborers.”

Magnus stopped walking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we have a launch window to catch.” Helen stepped between them. “Let’s get to the bridge.”

Magnus glared at Claude’s back as the science officer continued down the hall and into Flight Command.

The bridge was alive with the hum of active consoles. John sat in the captain’s chair, and beside him, Ingrid was running the pre-flight thruster checks.

“I’m just saying, John,” Ingrid said, pulling back on the gyro-yoke to test the tension. “If we had stayed at The Last Drop for one more round, Higgins would have tried to charge us double for the docking fees. Good thing you dragged me out of there when you did.”

John chuckled. “Higgins is a pirate with a clipboard. You have to know when to fold your cards with him, Ingy.”

Helen took her seat at the engineering station behind them. “Engineering is present, Captain.”

John spun his chair around and smiled at her. “Glad you could join us. How are my fuel tanks?”

Helen pulled up her schematics. “Full. Even with the purging, we’ve got enough cryo-fuel to run the slip-drive for six months straight.”

“Excellent.” John turned back to the viewport. Outside the hyper-glass, Charon Outpost was a jagged wall of gray rock and ice, dotted with thousands of industrial floodlights.

“All stations, lock in,” John said. “Gyros are stable. Slip-drive is spooled to eighty percent and holding.”

Ingrid flipped a row of toggles above her head. “Charon Control, this is the Persephone. Requesting umbilical release and departure vector.”

A static-laced voice crackled over the bridge speakers. “Copy, Persephone. Clearance codes accepted. Detaching umbilicals now. Safe travels, Captain. See you on the trip back.”

Beyond the viewport, the frost-covered hoses clamped to the ship’s hull released. The Persephone groaned as the clamps retracted. Without the outpost’s gravity tethers holding them steady, the freighter swayed like a heavy ship hitting open water.

Helen flipped the main breaker. “Switching to internal power.” Her board lit up. For a split second, the air scrubbers kicked on high, pushing a gust of air through the bridge vents. The air smelled damp at first, but the scrubbers quickly leveled out, returning the climate to a sterile neutral.

“Thrusters engaged,” John said.

The physical force of the main engines pushed Helen back into her seat. Through the viewport, Charon Outpost began to drift backward.

“Pitching up four degrees,” Ingrid said. “Clearing the moon’s gravity well.”

Helen watched her monitor as the dark-matter reactor hit its stride. The ship shuddered, the vibration rattling the coffee cups in their holders, and then smoothed out as they broke into open space.

Charon shrank rapidly, transitioning from a gray sphere to a tiny speck of light against the infinite black.

The radio channel, which had been filled with the background chatter of dockworkers, mining rigs, and outbound freighters, slowly dissolved into static.

John reached up and killed the comms channel.

Unit Seven unlatched from the console and hovered up to Helen’s eye level.

“Madam.” Seven’s audio feed routed into her earpiece. “Long-range telemetry has officially dropped to zero. We have lost all contact with Earth relays and Charon Outpost.”

Helen looked at the viewport. No stars passed by, there was only the swirling distortion of the slip-stream.

“I know, Seven.”

“We have entered the Dead Zone. We are entirely isolated. Current estimated time until we can transmit or receive an external communication is one hundred and eighty-two days.”

Helen stared out the viewport. Six months. Millions of miles of empty, radiation-soaked space between them and the next colony.

If anything went wrong out here, there would be no distress calls. They were entirely on their own.

A looping video of the Persephone navigating slip-space within the Dead Zone.