Ogygia - a Reverse Big Bang fanfic
Title: Ogygia
Word Count: 4,057 (aprox.)
Rating: PG-13 for
Pairings, Characters: hinted Linkara/Jaeris, Harvey Finevoice, 90's Kid, Ninja Style Dancer, Margaret
Warnings: Brief reference to attempted rape, scars, undefined mental condition due to progloned isolation.
Summary: Linkara is an astronaut exploring distance space for habitable planets with a small crew. he crashlands on one of the planets.
Prompt: RBB art prompt by dragoninadream
“Oxygen levels at 13% and falling.”
Linkara forced his legs to move forward. Pollo the exploratory shuttle would be around this next bend. Had to be. His emergency supply of oxygen would be there, in a nice little canister, ready to be attached to his spacesuit and inhaled by his burning lungs.
Pollo had to be around the next bend. Because if Pollo wasn’t …
“Oxygen levels at 10% and falling.”
Linkara’s helmet was fogging up with condensation. He could barely see. He could barely breathe. His legs felt like lead. If he fell down …
“Oxygen levels at 7% and falling.”
The ground was soft, soft red dust, as soft as any Earth bed.
Linkara’s vision blurred the expanse of alien planet, and he blacked out.
~*~
Three days earlier
“Wakey-wakey, kid!”
Linkara wriggled free of his sleeping bag, which had been floating in his little bunk area, tethered to the wall.
“Not a kid, Harvey,” he told the older astronaut, smiling at the nickname.
Harvey was on his last tour, with a record-breaking seventeen missions into space to his name; he’d more than earned a retirement. He was only about ten years older than the rest of the crew, but in such a small environment, such differences were enhanced.
“Duuuuuuuuude, the solar flares last night were awesome!”
Such as the differences between the oldest member of the crew, Harvey, and the youngest: Josh, aka “90’s Kid.” Josh had been picked right out of flight school, not even old enough to legally drink, and put into the spacecraft on this away mission after having demonstrated remarkable talents in navigation. As loud as he got, he finished his work perfectly, and in a tiny ship drifting through space, perfect was what they needed.
“Were they?” Linkara finally got free of his sleeping back and drifted down the hallway. “Sorry I missed them.”
“I took a video!” 90’s Kid grinned.
“And already broadcast it to the kiddies back home.” Harvey added, carefully eating his breakfast and hovering off to 90’s Kid’s left.
Such broadcasts were part of an educational program, getting kids interested in space travel and explaining the purposes of the away missions. Spending months in a tiny ship seeking out habitable planets for more Earth colonies, and analyzing deposits of precious minerals on distant moons and asteroids, might not sound as exciting to kids as other jobs, but NASA needed more recruits. If silly videos with 90’s Kid’s old music set even one kid on the path to becoming an astronaut, that was a success.
“So, what’s on the schedule today?” Linkara asked. It was his turn to explore the latest planet, take samples and readings, and return. Trading off broke up the monotony and kept things interesting.
“Er, what was it again?” Harvey squinted at the screen. “Ogygia. Good, none of that XVI-34b mess from last week.”
“That was super-lame,” 90’s Kid agreed. “They’re like, totally radical planets and planetoids, you gotta give ‘em cool names! At least like, a hot chick’s name the scientist wanted to impress.”
Linkara smirked, and Harvey shook his head in mock exasperation.
“I’d better suit up. We know anything about this Oggy-place?”
“Three major land masses, suspected water at the poles, atmosphere level 5, weather patterns observed, suspected Earth-compatibility at 75%, but we all know that don’t mean a thing.”
It was true. Scientists could speculate all they liked, but it wasn’t until a real human went down onto the planet’s surface in a shuttle and took samples that their speculations could be confirmed or denied. Linkara still hadn’t forgiven mission control over sending him down onto a “placid and calm” planet that turned out to be generating a hurricane the size of Texas. It had taken him two hours to be safely extracted, and they had lost a entire case of testing equipment.
“Hey, Ninja,” Linkara said as he drifted down the length of the ship towards the area that held the away-mission suits and tools.
Ninja said nothing, which was normal. The engineer had earned his name by speaking not a single word on the entire mission. It wasn’t clear whether he was mute, didn’t speak English, or was simply going for the world record of Quaker’s Meeting. He understood English, and liked dancing in the weightless hallways, but that was about all the other astronauts could figure out about him. Ninja was currently floating by a control panel and rerouting wires, buried in the black hoodie he was never seen without. He raised a hand to Linkara and continued with his work.
As Linkara suited up, and the video chatscreen that linked them back to Earth blinked to life.
“Hello, spaceman.” Margaret said.
Linkara beamed, raising a hand in greeting. “And how’s my favorite dispatch officer this fine morning?”
“Sleepy,” Margaret held up a steaming mug of coffee. “It’s about 3am back here in the desert.”
Linkara squinted at the screen. Margaret had a green streak in her hair now, different from the pink in previous weeks. “That a new color, Dispatch?”
“Keen eye, spaceman. That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“Do I win a prize if I guess what the next color is?”
“I’m going through the rainbow, not exactly many options left,” Margaret drummed her fingers on her desk. “Hmm … how about … if you guess right, I arrange for something special in the next food shuttle. And if you guess wrong, you gotta record a birthday message for my big sister Nimue.”
“Deal.” Linkara tightened the straps of his extra oxygen tank. “Any news from mission control?”
“Same old same old: find habitable planets, find mineral deposits, continue sending regular reports … I swear they just copy/paste the emails at this point.”
Linkara finished stowing his gear. “Well, in that case, I’m about to head down to this Ogygia, see what the weather’s like down there. Can I get you anything, Dispatch?”
Margaret’s smile was like a beacon broadcasting through space. “Get me one of those tacky paperweights, I love those things.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Linkara gave his shuttle a final check. “See you later, Dispatch!”
“See you, space cowboy!” Margaret saluted, and the screen went dark.
~*~
The landing was easy, at least at first.
Then, it turned out that the easy beginning had been a deception. The planet’s atmosphere roiled, rocking the exploratory shuttle from side to side. Linkara’s navigational systems blipped in and out due to ions in the atmosphere scrambling his coordinates, his radio signal went to static, and, worst of all, the minute he broke cloud cover he was practically face-first with a mountain.
Emergency lights flashed and warnings blared in five different languages. Linkara managed to steer himself clear, but a gust of the strong wind knocked the shuttle off course, sending him sailing over an expanse of sand and craggy rock formations.
The flaps weren’t working, he wasn’t losing speed fast enough, if anything he was gaining it. And the steering column was starting to fail.
The shuttle struck one of the formations, then another. Linkara hit his ejector seat and sailed away from the out of control shuttle, deploying his parachute quickly. He landed hard, smashing into another rock formation.
The shuttle spiraled through the air and vanished behind another outcropping in the distance.
Linkara fought to catch his breath, as his parachute settled around him.
Then, he heard a hissing sound.
Linkara sat up and checked his suit. No leaks, no tears, nothing. Then he slipped off his backpack. Linkara watched in horror as, almost in slow-motion, his oxygen tank cracked and continued venting its supply into the planet’s atmosphere.
He stood up slowly, carefully, on the sand.
He was out of range.
This was bad. Very, very bad.
Linkara fought to keep calm. This was what all his training had been for, keeping calm in terrifying situations like this. All he had to do was find the shuttle, and the emergency oxygen canister, and return to the ship to repair his suit. Linkara had to move fast though, he couldn’t afford to get lost in these craggy rocks. One wrong turn would be the end of him.
“Oxygen levels at 25% and falling,” warned his suit.
Linkara started walking, planting his feet carefully and praying that his helmet wouldn’t shatter.
Blacking out ten minutes later, Linkara’s last coherent thought was that he really hoped the others would retrieve his body. He didn’t want his bones to remain on a planet far from home.
~*~
Before he opened his eyes, Linkara heard the sound of something being dragged through sand. It took him a very long time to realize that the sound was him, his suit sliding over the sand of the planet. Light and dark flashed over his eyes, and he slid in and out of consciousness.
He woke with a start, terrified for some reason that he couldn’t exactly place.
That was when Linkara saw his helmet, sitting on the ground several feet away.
He was breathing the planet’s atmosphere. The planet’s untested, unknown atmosphere.
Linkara panicked then. He’d held it together through everything else, but this, breathing in god knew what, because science hadn’t classified it yet, was sending him right over the edge.
“Stop.”
Another human voice. Another human voice that wasn’t Harvey, 90’s Kid, or Margaret.
The sheer shock of that made him pause.
“The air’s fine. I been breathin’ it for near six months now.”
The voice belonged to a man, pale and skinny and dressed in ragged grey clothes. His blond hair was long, shaggy, and almost white in the darkness of the space they were in, which seemed to be some kind of cave of the craggy rocks Linkara had seen during the crash.
“Well, I say near six months, but I can only guess. Sun don’t work the same here. Days is longer. I kept a calendar but then I … lost track …” the man blinked slowly, concern flickering across his face. Then he shrugged. “Ah well, time don’t matter, not anymore. Not since I been stuck here.”
“Who are you?” Linkara coughed, throat dry.
“No one,” the man said. “I don’t … I been … been no one, for so long? You ain’t yourself, not without other folks around, right?”
“Right,” Linkara nodded slowly, speaking slowly and carefully. It seemed those movies with cases of space madness hadn’t been that far off after all. “Well, um, I’m Linkara. I’m an astronaut from NASA, I’m on a mission to explore planets and locate habitable ones for human colonies, and detect mineral deposits for mining operations.”
The man’s eyes shone with feverish hope. “You got a station nearby? Supplies? A way back to Earth?”
“Um, well, my shuttle crashed, but if we can get it working, yeah, I don’t see why not.” They’d have to ration the food, and head back right away, cut the mission short, but this was a rescue mission, that trumped mining rights on distant rocks any day as far as Linkara was concerned.
“Good. That’s … that’s real good …” the man looked close to tears. “Let’s, uh, let’s go find your shuttle. Get it fixed, get … back …”
Linkara followed the man out of the cave.
~*~
They found the shuttle after a good two hours of searching. It had landed well.
The damage to the shuttle wasn’t as dramatic as Linkara had feared. It had landed on sand, and banked at an angle. Perhaps the flaps had created enough drag to coast it into a safe landing,
“Can you radio your people?” the man asked.
Linkara poked some buttons and eventually got a strong signal. “I think so.”
The man’s entire body relaxed significantly.
Linkara gave the thumbs up and closed the cockpit, sealing himself inside. The radio wouldn’t work otherwise, and he didn’t want to be overheard. He called up the station. “Mayday, mayday, this is Linkara, broadcasting from the planet Ogygia.”
The response was almost immediate. “Kid? Kid is that you?!”
“Yeah, Harvey, this is me. I’m ok.”
“Kid we haven’t heard from you for nearly six hours! We thought you were dead!”
Linkara quickly explained how the shuttle had crashed and he’d had to eject. “I only just go back to the shuttle, threw me pretty far.” He eyed the blond man through the window. “And there’s something else. I’m not alone down here. There’s another human. He’s been stranded here a long time. We gotta get him back to Earth.”
“How’d he get all the way out here?” Harvey asked. “There’s nothin’ for nearly an entire system!”
“I know, it’s weird, but … well, there he is.”
“… kid, this is gonna sound funny, but … what’s he wearing?”
Linkara blinked. “Er, grey jumpsuit lookin’ thing. Why?”
“Black symbols around the cuffs and across the front?”
“Yeah.”
“Kid, there’s something else in this system, farther out. Prison colony. Well, there was one, until recently. They moved last year. There’s nothin’ there but empty barracks now. Grey jumpsuits were their uniforms. You got yourself an escaped convict there.”
Linkara’s blood ran icy cold. “Well, you don’t … you can’t know that, for certain … and I mean, it’s not the really serious offences that get you sent out to the black …”
“Yes, kid, it is. They’re too dangerous to keep on Earth so they get shipped out to start pre-colonization labor, digging foundations, starting farms, that kind of thing. When there’s no citizens around to attack. And if he escaped from one of those places, he’ll be smart and deadly.”
“There’s only the one shuttle, Harvey,” Linkara said, mouth going dry. “I’m … I’m stuck here.”
“Yeah, you are, kid. You sleep with one eye open, yeah? And get yourself back up here as soon as possible. Get me his name and description, try and find out what he did, at least. But that’s all I can do.”
Linkara waved and gave a thumbs-up to the man outside, who smiled back.
“Ok, thank you Harvey. I’ll be careful.”
“You’d better be. You’re the … the closest thing I’ve … just get back safe, ok?” Harvey managed.
Linkara stared at the radio in shock. “Harvey …”
“Get me that bastard’s name, so I know who to hunt down if he touches so much as a hair on your head,” Harvey growled. The transmission cut out.
~*~
“You wanna take a swim?”
Linkara shook himself. “What?”
“There’s a creek on the way back to the cave. It’s been a hot day, can’t imagine that spacesuit is especially well ventilated.” The man shrugged. “I’m gonna swim. You can too. Or sweat. Your choice.”
Linkara intended not to swim. But he was sweaty in his spacesuit, and he hadn’t taken a proper bath in months, only the quick showers on the station, and how many chances would he get to swim on a barely habited alien planet? He started pulling off his suit as the man was slipping out of his jumpsuit.
That was when Linkara saw the scars.
Some were the small, puckered wounds left by knives. Others were long jagged things, healed gashes. Others looked like whip marks, over the man’s shoulders and back.
Linkara stared, he couldn’t help it.
The man dove into the creek wordlessly.
Linkara cautiously dipped his toes in. It wasn’t as cold as he’d feared. He was down to his boxers, leaving his suit and clothes to air out on the rocks.
The man was floating in the water, long hair fanning out around him.
“I ain’t gonna miss this planet, but I am gonna miss this,” the man said, lazily kicking his feet. “Been so quiet out here. My life was so … loud … I’m gonna miss the quiet. Nothin’ tryin’ ta fill it, just … silence.”
Linkara stretched out his arms and floated too. He didn’t dare close his eyes, for fear that the man would attack him, but he did his best to relax.
Staring at the man, he thought of the stories the astronauts would tell each other sometimes at late night conventions, the few times astronauts could gather when not in orbit. Stories about people who stayed out too long in the black, who started to hallucinate, seeing beautiful women in distant expanses of void. “Angels,” they’d say, “we saw angels.”
Linkara shook himself and swam to the other side of the creek to clear his head.
~*~
After a restless night (for Linkara) and a peaceful night (for the man), they dragged the remnants of the man’s crashed ship to Linkara’s shuttle, to begin repairs.
Linkara guessed that it would take about a week.
They set up a makeshift awning so as to be able to work on the ship in the daylight without baking in the red sunlight.
“It’s Jaeris, by the way.”
“Huh?” Linkara asked.
“My name: Jaeris.” The man leaned against the shuttle. “So you can tell your friend up there what my name is, and he can find my file.”
“You … how did you …”
“Cockpit ain’t soundproofed, most of it was muffled but I could make out the gist.” Jaeris crossed his arms. “I can just tell you, why I was in the prison colony. As a prisoner.”
Linkara made himself stay very, very still. “Uh … I … ok?”
“You’re gonna laugh,” Jaeris said, shaking his head sadly. “You’re all scared, of me, and it’s ridiculous. You know what I did, that landed me out here? Downloading music. Without payin’ for it.”
Linkara blinked. “Wait … what?”
“Yeah. Not many people get prosecuted, but, lucky me, I was one of the happy few. And they wanted to make an example of me, for my, you know, heinous crime.” Jaeris held up his hands. “So I got shipped out, with the murderers and arsonists and rapists and cartel captains. As you can imagine, I was very … popular. There was quite a lot of interest in me, from the others, from the guards, anyone. So I had to get a reputation quickly for not being someone they could just push over.” Jaeris rubbed at his shoulder. “I did whatever I could to piss them off, got shivved … I honestly lost count? And they like to do things the old way on the colonies. I acted out, the guards would whip me. I’m sure you saw that.”
Linkara felt his face heating up, his shame probably visible from space.
“Well, I decided enough was enough, joined a ridiculous escape plan. It was doomed to fail, of course, but they needed someone to pilot the ship. I could do that, I had done it before. Too bad my navigator was one of the few who hadn’t been deterred by my reputation. He tried to grab at me, we fought, the others abandoned ship in the escape pod and left us to it. I crashed us into the first planet I found.”
Linkara tried to think of something to say, but all he managed was “I’m sorry.”
Jaeris shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed.”
“It’s not unusual, really. And it’s not like I expect a warm reception back home. But better a cell on Earth than a planet where I’ll never see another human soul for as long as I live.” Jaeris forced a smile. “And besides, I’ll be famous then. The criminal who went to space and came back again. I get into a few fights, nobody’ll give me any trouble.”
Linkara scowled. “You saved my life. The life of an astronaut. NASA should be able to get a pardon for you. I’ll … I’ll make them get you a pardon.”
“That’s awful kind of you, Linkara, but don’t go promisin’ what you can’t guarantee.” Jaeris smiled ruefully. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a pardon for a homecoming gift.”
“Gift!” Linkara sat up straight. “That reminds me!”
He spent the next fifteen minutes collecting enough rock samples to fill all of his specimen jars, and wrote on one “present for Dispatch Officer Margaret” on the lid.
“Promise I made to a friend,” he said, at Jaeris’ curious look. “She likes novelty paperweights.”
“Paperweights?” Jaeris shook his head. “Haven’t thought about those in years.”
“I’ll buy you a desk just for paperweights. You can stare at them every damn day, in your house, while you’re out and free.”
Jaeris laughed, but Linkara could sense the longing behind it.
~*~
Linkara sent Jaeris’ name and description to Harvey that night, who confirmed the story pretty quickly. Jaeris had indeed been convicted for illegally downloading music, been shipped out as an example to others, and gotten into many altercations with fellow prisoners and guards alike which had earned him many disciplinary actions, before he ultimately escaped for parts unknown. Some of the other prisoners had been recovered, but not the shuttle he’d escaped in. The authorities were not concerned about him and had long since shuttered the case aside.
Harvey said he would ask about the pardon, as Jaeris had saved a NASA astronaut’s life.
“But no promises, kid,” Harvey warned. “And just because he didn’t go to prison for violent crimes don’t mean he’s not capable of them now.”
“Yes, dad,” Linkara responded, the humor drained from the old joke now.
That night, after successfully fixing the faulty steering lever, Linkara found himself lying on the bank of the creek beside Jaeris, on a ragged scrap of blanket looted from Jaeris’ crashed ship.
“You know the story of Ogygia?” Jaeris asked.
“What, dumb astronaut crashes his expensive rover onto it, Stardate Whatever Last Wednesday Was?”
“No, I mean the first one. The one from the Greek Myth.” Jearis stretched his arms. “Odysseys, right? He was travelin’ home, but he kept getting’ knocked back by Poseidion, I think, and it took him decades to get back. So he ends up on this island at one point, with this nymph on it, and she seduces him, and keeps him there for ages. Eventually the gods have to intervene and force her to let him go, and keep adventuring, and eventually go back home. But sometimes, I wonder, y’know? What if he’d stayed? Nice private island, somebody who loved him, nobody to tell him what to do or how to do it. Peace and quiet …”
Linkara turned to face Jaeris, propping himself up on his elbow. “You talk about that a lot, the quiet.”
“Prison is loud.” Jaeris shuddered. “I know that sounds strange, but it is. Especially in solitary. A bunch of men crammed into tiny cells, nothing to do, 24/7, no one to talk to, they just … they start bangin’ on things, rattling things, yellin’ and screamin’ until it’s nothing but noise. It’s not the silence that gets you, really, it’s the noise, from everyone else, who don’t like the silence.”
They stared at each other for a long time, longer than Linkara had looked at anyone in years.
Finally, he reached out and took Jaeris’ hand in his.
~*~
It felt so strange to be back on the station. Linkara found himself touching bits of the walls, lingering in hallways, trying to readjust.
Introductions were stilted and unnecessary, but Linkara made them anyways. Ninja shocked them all by saying “Greetings” to Jaeris before floating off to his sleeping space. 90’s Kid was clearly restraining himself from asking Jaeris about prison. Harvey kept shooting them suspicious glances, but said nothing.
“Ground control to Major Tom?” Margaret flickered onto the viewscreen, smiling. Her hair now had streaks of pure white.
“Guess I’m doing that birthday recording after all,” Linkara smiled. “And I even got you a paperweight!” he held up one of the rock samples from Ogygia.
“You remembered!” Margaret beamed. “Are you ok, Linkara?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just glad to be back on the station. That was a long vacation.”
“Well, the ride back will be even longer. Hope you’re good at charades.”
“I think we’ll manage.” Jaeris drawled.
Harvey made a spluttering sound behind them.
“Well, it’s clear skies and all sunny days back to Earth. Happy travels, gentlemen,” Margaret saluted, and signed off.
Linkara turned to the monitors, Jaeris’ hand on his shoulder.
“Ok, crew,” Linkara said, reaching up to take Jaeris’ hand in his. “Let’s go home.”
Word Count: 4,057 (aprox.)
Rating: PG-13 for
Pairings, Characters: hinted Linkara/Jaeris, Harvey Finevoice, 90's Kid, Ninja Style Dancer, Margaret
Warnings: Brief reference to attempted rape, scars, undefined mental condition due to progloned isolation.
Summary: Linkara is an astronaut exploring distance space for habitable planets with a small crew. he crashlands on one of the planets.
Prompt: RBB art prompt by dragoninadream
“Oxygen levels at 13% and falling.”
Linkara forced his legs to move forward. Pollo the exploratory shuttle would be around this next bend. Had to be. His emergency supply of oxygen would be there, in a nice little canister, ready to be attached to his spacesuit and inhaled by his burning lungs.
Pollo had to be around the next bend. Because if Pollo wasn’t …
“Oxygen levels at 10% and falling.”
Linkara’s helmet was fogging up with condensation. He could barely see. He could barely breathe. His legs felt like lead. If he fell down …
“Oxygen levels at 7% and falling.”
The ground was soft, soft red dust, as soft as any Earth bed.
Linkara’s vision blurred the expanse of alien planet, and he blacked out.
~*~
Three days earlier
“Wakey-wakey, kid!”
Linkara wriggled free of his sleeping bag, which had been floating in his little bunk area, tethered to the wall.
“Not a kid, Harvey,” he told the older astronaut, smiling at the nickname.
Harvey was on his last tour, with a record-breaking seventeen missions into space to his name; he’d more than earned a retirement. He was only about ten years older than the rest of the crew, but in such a small environment, such differences were enhanced.
“Duuuuuuuuude, the solar flares last night were awesome!”
Such as the differences between the oldest member of the crew, Harvey, and the youngest: Josh, aka “90’s Kid.” Josh had been picked right out of flight school, not even old enough to legally drink, and put into the spacecraft on this away mission after having demonstrated remarkable talents in navigation. As loud as he got, he finished his work perfectly, and in a tiny ship drifting through space, perfect was what they needed.
“Were they?” Linkara finally got free of his sleeping back and drifted down the hallway. “Sorry I missed them.”
“I took a video!” 90’s Kid grinned.
“And already broadcast it to the kiddies back home.” Harvey added, carefully eating his breakfast and hovering off to 90’s Kid’s left.
Such broadcasts were part of an educational program, getting kids interested in space travel and explaining the purposes of the away missions. Spending months in a tiny ship seeking out habitable planets for more Earth colonies, and analyzing deposits of precious minerals on distant moons and asteroids, might not sound as exciting to kids as other jobs, but NASA needed more recruits. If silly videos with 90’s Kid’s old music set even one kid on the path to becoming an astronaut, that was a success.
“So, what’s on the schedule today?” Linkara asked. It was his turn to explore the latest planet, take samples and readings, and return. Trading off broke up the monotony and kept things interesting.
“Er, what was it again?” Harvey squinted at the screen. “Ogygia. Good, none of that XVI-34b mess from last week.”
“That was super-lame,” 90’s Kid agreed. “They’re like, totally radical planets and planetoids, you gotta give ‘em cool names! At least like, a hot chick’s name the scientist wanted to impress.”
Linkara smirked, and Harvey shook his head in mock exasperation.
“I’d better suit up. We know anything about this Oggy-place?”
“Three major land masses, suspected water at the poles, atmosphere level 5, weather patterns observed, suspected Earth-compatibility at 75%, but we all know that don’t mean a thing.”
It was true. Scientists could speculate all they liked, but it wasn’t until a real human went down onto the planet’s surface in a shuttle and took samples that their speculations could be confirmed or denied. Linkara still hadn’t forgiven mission control over sending him down onto a “placid and calm” planet that turned out to be generating a hurricane the size of Texas. It had taken him two hours to be safely extracted, and they had lost a entire case of testing equipment.
“Hey, Ninja,” Linkara said as he drifted down the length of the ship towards the area that held the away-mission suits and tools.
Ninja said nothing, which was normal. The engineer had earned his name by speaking not a single word on the entire mission. It wasn’t clear whether he was mute, didn’t speak English, or was simply going for the world record of Quaker’s Meeting. He understood English, and liked dancing in the weightless hallways, but that was about all the other astronauts could figure out about him. Ninja was currently floating by a control panel and rerouting wires, buried in the black hoodie he was never seen without. He raised a hand to Linkara and continued with his work.
As Linkara suited up, and the video chatscreen that linked them back to Earth blinked to life.
“Hello, spaceman.” Margaret said.
Linkara beamed, raising a hand in greeting. “And how’s my favorite dispatch officer this fine morning?”
“Sleepy,” Margaret held up a steaming mug of coffee. “It’s about 3am back here in the desert.”
Linkara squinted at the screen. Margaret had a green streak in her hair now, different from the pink in previous weeks. “That a new color, Dispatch?”
“Keen eye, spaceman. That’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“Do I win a prize if I guess what the next color is?”
“I’m going through the rainbow, not exactly many options left,” Margaret drummed her fingers on her desk. “Hmm … how about … if you guess right, I arrange for something special in the next food shuttle. And if you guess wrong, you gotta record a birthday message for my big sister Nimue.”
“Deal.” Linkara tightened the straps of his extra oxygen tank. “Any news from mission control?”
“Same old same old: find habitable planets, find mineral deposits, continue sending regular reports … I swear they just copy/paste the emails at this point.”
Linkara finished stowing his gear. “Well, in that case, I’m about to head down to this Ogygia, see what the weather’s like down there. Can I get you anything, Dispatch?”
Margaret’s smile was like a beacon broadcasting through space. “Get me one of those tacky paperweights, I love those things.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Linkara gave his shuttle a final check. “See you later, Dispatch!”
“See you, space cowboy!” Margaret saluted, and the screen went dark.
~*~
The landing was easy, at least at first.
Then, it turned out that the easy beginning had been a deception. The planet’s atmosphere roiled, rocking the exploratory shuttle from side to side. Linkara’s navigational systems blipped in and out due to ions in the atmosphere scrambling his coordinates, his radio signal went to static, and, worst of all, the minute he broke cloud cover he was practically face-first with a mountain.
Emergency lights flashed and warnings blared in five different languages. Linkara managed to steer himself clear, but a gust of the strong wind knocked the shuttle off course, sending him sailing over an expanse of sand and craggy rock formations.
The flaps weren’t working, he wasn’t losing speed fast enough, if anything he was gaining it. And the steering column was starting to fail.
The shuttle struck one of the formations, then another. Linkara hit his ejector seat and sailed away from the out of control shuttle, deploying his parachute quickly. He landed hard, smashing into another rock formation.
The shuttle spiraled through the air and vanished behind another outcropping in the distance.
Linkara fought to catch his breath, as his parachute settled around him.
Then, he heard a hissing sound.
Linkara sat up and checked his suit. No leaks, no tears, nothing. Then he slipped off his backpack. Linkara watched in horror as, almost in slow-motion, his oxygen tank cracked and continued venting its supply into the planet’s atmosphere.
He stood up slowly, carefully, on the sand.
He was out of range.
This was bad. Very, very bad.
Linkara fought to keep calm. This was what all his training had been for, keeping calm in terrifying situations like this. All he had to do was find the shuttle, and the emergency oxygen canister, and return to the ship to repair his suit. Linkara had to move fast though, he couldn’t afford to get lost in these craggy rocks. One wrong turn would be the end of him.
“Oxygen levels at 25% and falling,” warned his suit.
Linkara started walking, planting his feet carefully and praying that his helmet wouldn’t shatter.
Blacking out ten minutes later, Linkara’s last coherent thought was that he really hoped the others would retrieve his body. He didn’t want his bones to remain on a planet far from home.
~*~
Before he opened his eyes, Linkara heard the sound of something being dragged through sand. It took him a very long time to realize that the sound was him, his suit sliding over the sand of the planet. Light and dark flashed over his eyes, and he slid in and out of consciousness.
He woke with a start, terrified for some reason that he couldn’t exactly place.
That was when Linkara saw his helmet, sitting on the ground several feet away.
He was breathing the planet’s atmosphere. The planet’s untested, unknown atmosphere.
Linkara panicked then. He’d held it together through everything else, but this, breathing in god knew what, because science hadn’t classified it yet, was sending him right over the edge.
“Stop.”
Another human voice. Another human voice that wasn’t Harvey, 90’s Kid, or Margaret.
The sheer shock of that made him pause.
“The air’s fine. I been breathin’ it for near six months now.”
The voice belonged to a man, pale and skinny and dressed in ragged grey clothes. His blond hair was long, shaggy, and almost white in the darkness of the space they were in, which seemed to be some kind of cave of the craggy rocks Linkara had seen during the crash.
“Well, I say near six months, but I can only guess. Sun don’t work the same here. Days is longer. I kept a calendar but then I … lost track …” the man blinked slowly, concern flickering across his face. Then he shrugged. “Ah well, time don’t matter, not anymore. Not since I been stuck here.”
“Who are you?” Linkara coughed, throat dry.
“No one,” the man said. “I don’t … I been … been no one, for so long? You ain’t yourself, not without other folks around, right?”
“Right,” Linkara nodded slowly, speaking slowly and carefully. It seemed those movies with cases of space madness hadn’t been that far off after all. “Well, um, I’m Linkara. I’m an astronaut from NASA, I’m on a mission to explore planets and locate habitable ones for human colonies, and detect mineral deposits for mining operations.”
The man’s eyes shone with feverish hope. “You got a station nearby? Supplies? A way back to Earth?”
“Um, well, my shuttle crashed, but if we can get it working, yeah, I don’t see why not.” They’d have to ration the food, and head back right away, cut the mission short, but this was a rescue mission, that trumped mining rights on distant rocks any day as far as Linkara was concerned.
“Good. That’s … that’s real good …” the man looked close to tears. “Let’s, uh, let’s go find your shuttle. Get it fixed, get … back …”
Linkara followed the man out of the cave.
~*~
They found the shuttle after a good two hours of searching. It had landed well.
The damage to the shuttle wasn’t as dramatic as Linkara had feared. It had landed on sand, and banked at an angle. Perhaps the flaps had created enough drag to coast it into a safe landing,
“Can you radio your people?” the man asked.
Linkara poked some buttons and eventually got a strong signal. “I think so.”
The man’s entire body relaxed significantly.
Linkara gave the thumbs up and closed the cockpit, sealing himself inside. The radio wouldn’t work otherwise, and he didn’t want to be overheard. He called up the station. “Mayday, mayday, this is Linkara, broadcasting from the planet Ogygia.”
The response was almost immediate. “Kid? Kid is that you?!”
“Yeah, Harvey, this is me. I’m ok.”
“Kid we haven’t heard from you for nearly six hours! We thought you were dead!”
Linkara quickly explained how the shuttle had crashed and he’d had to eject. “I only just go back to the shuttle, threw me pretty far.” He eyed the blond man through the window. “And there’s something else. I’m not alone down here. There’s another human. He’s been stranded here a long time. We gotta get him back to Earth.”
“How’d he get all the way out here?” Harvey asked. “There’s nothin’ for nearly an entire system!”
“I know, it’s weird, but … well, there he is.”
“… kid, this is gonna sound funny, but … what’s he wearing?”
Linkara blinked. “Er, grey jumpsuit lookin’ thing. Why?”
“Black symbols around the cuffs and across the front?”
“Yeah.”
“Kid, there’s something else in this system, farther out. Prison colony. Well, there was one, until recently. They moved last year. There’s nothin’ there but empty barracks now. Grey jumpsuits were their uniforms. You got yourself an escaped convict there.”
Linkara’s blood ran icy cold. “Well, you don’t … you can’t know that, for certain … and I mean, it’s not the really serious offences that get you sent out to the black …”
“Yes, kid, it is. They’re too dangerous to keep on Earth so they get shipped out to start pre-colonization labor, digging foundations, starting farms, that kind of thing. When there’s no citizens around to attack. And if he escaped from one of those places, he’ll be smart and deadly.”
“There’s only the one shuttle, Harvey,” Linkara said, mouth going dry. “I’m … I’m stuck here.”
“Yeah, you are, kid. You sleep with one eye open, yeah? And get yourself back up here as soon as possible. Get me his name and description, try and find out what he did, at least. But that’s all I can do.”
Linkara waved and gave a thumbs-up to the man outside, who smiled back.
“Ok, thank you Harvey. I’ll be careful.”
“You’d better be. You’re the … the closest thing I’ve … just get back safe, ok?” Harvey managed.
Linkara stared at the radio in shock. “Harvey …”
“Get me that bastard’s name, so I know who to hunt down if he touches so much as a hair on your head,” Harvey growled. The transmission cut out.
~*~
“You wanna take a swim?”
Linkara shook himself. “What?”
“There’s a creek on the way back to the cave. It’s been a hot day, can’t imagine that spacesuit is especially well ventilated.” The man shrugged. “I’m gonna swim. You can too. Or sweat. Your choice.”
Linkara intended not to swim. But he was sweaty in his spacesuit, and he hadn’t taken a proper bath in months, only the quick showers on the station, and how many chances would he get to swim on a barely habited alien planet? He started pulling off his suit as the man was slipping out of his jumpsuit.
That was when Linkara saw the scars.
Some were the small, puckered wounds left by knives. Others were long jagged things, healed gashes. Others looked like whip marks, over the man’s shoulders and back.
Linkara stared, he couldn’t help it.
The man dove into the creek wordlessly.
Linkara cautiously dipped his toes in. It wasn’t as cold as he’d feared. He was down to his boxers, leaving his suit and clothes to air out on the rocks.
The man was floating in the water, long hair fanning out around him.
“I ain’t gonna miss this planet, but I am gonna miss this,” the man said, lazily kicking his feet. “Been so quiet out here. My life was so … loud … I’m gonna miss the quiet. Nothin’ tryin’ ta fill it, just … silence.”
Linkara stretched out his arms and floated too. He didn’t dare close his eyes, for fear that the man would attack him, but he did his best to relax.
Staring at the man, he thought of the stories the astronauts would tell each other sometimes at late night conventions, the few times astronauts could gather when not in orbit. Stories about people who stayed out too long in the black, who started to hallucinate, seeing beautiful women in distant expanses of void. “Angels,” they’d say, “we saw angels.”
Linkara shook himself and swam to the other side of the creek to clear his head.
~*~
After a restless night (for Linkara) and a peaceful night (for the man), they dragged the remnants of the man’s crashed ship to Linkara’s shuttle, to begin repairs.
Linkara guessed that it would take about a week.
They set up a makeshift awning so as to be able to work on the ship in the daylight without baking in the red sunlight.
“It’s Jaeris, by the way.”
“Huh?” Linkara asked.
“My name: Jaeris.” The man leaned against the shuttle. “So you can tell your friend up there what my name is, and he can find my file.”
“You … how did you …”
“Cockpit ain’t soundproofed, most of it was muffled but I could make out the gist.” Jaeris crossed his arms. “I can just tell you, why I was in the prison colony. As a prisoner.”
Linkara made himself stay very, very still. “Uh … I … ok?”
“You’re gonna laugh,” Jaeris said, shaking his head sadly. “You’re all scared, of me, and it’s ridiculous. You know what I did, that landed me out here? Downloading music. Without payin’ for it.”
Linkara blinked. “Wait … what?”
“Yeah. Not many people get prosecuted, but, lucky me, I was one of the happy few. And they wanted to make an example of me, for my, you know, heinous crime.” Jaeris held up his hands. “So I got shipped out, with the murderers and arsonists and rapists and cartel captains. As you can imagine, I was very … popular. There was quite a lot of interest in me, from the others, from the guards, anyone. So I had to get a reputation quickly for not being someone they could just push over.” Jaeris rubbed at his shoulder. “I did whatever I could to piss them off, got shivved … I honestly lost count? And they like to do things the old way on the colonies. I acted out, the guards would whip me. I’m sure you saw that.”
Linkara felt his face heating up, his shame probably visible from space.
“Well, I decided enough was enough, joined a ridiculous escape plan. It was doomed to fail, of course, but they needed someone to pilot the ship. I could do that, I had done it before. Too bad my navigator was one of the few who hadn’t been deterred by my reputation. He tried to grab at me, we fought, the others abandoned ship in the escape pod and left us to it. I crashed us into the first planet I found.”
Linkara tried to think of something to say, but all he managed was “I’m sorry.”
Jaeris shrugged. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed.”
“It’s not unusual, really. And it’s not like I expect a warm reception back home. But better a cell on Earth than a planet where I’ll never see another human soul for as long as I live.” Jaeris forced a smile. “And besides, I’ll be famous then. The criminal who went to space and came back again. I get into a few fights, nobody’ll give me any trouble.”
Linkara scowled. “You saved my life. The life of an astronaut. NASA should be able to get a pardon for you. I’ll … I’ll make them get you a pardon.”
“That’s awful kind of you, Linkara, but don’t go promisin’ what you can’t guarantee.” Jaeris smiled ruefully. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a pardon for a homecoming gift.”
“Gift!” Linkara sat up straight. “That reminds me!”
He spent the next fifteen minutes collecting enough rock samples to fill all of his specimen jars, and wrote on one “present for Dispatch Officer Margaret” on the lid.
“Promise I made to a friend,” he said, at Jaeris’ curious look. “She likes novelty paperweights.”
“Paperweights?” Jaeris shook his head. “Haven’t thought about those in years.”
“I’ll buy you a desk just for paperweights. You can stare at them every damn day, in your house, while you’re out and free.”
Jaeris laughed, but Linkara could sense the longing behind it.
~*~
Linkara sent Jaeris’ name and description to Harvey that night, who confirmed the story pretty quickly. Jaeris had indeed been convicted for illegally downloading music, been shipped out as an example to others, and gotten into many altercations with fellow prisoners and guards alike which had earned him many disciplinary actions, before he ultimately escaped for parts unknown. Some of the other prisoners had been recovered, but not the shuttle he’d escaped in. The authorities were not concerned about him and had long since shuttered the case aside.
Harvey said he would ask about the pardon, as Jaeris had saved a NASA astronaut’s life.
“But no promises, kid,” Harvey warned. “And just because he didn’t go to prison for violent crimes don’t mean he’s not capable of them now.”
“Yes, dad,” Linkara responded, the humor drained from the old joke now.
That night, after successfully fixing the faulty steering lever, Linkara found himself lying on the bank of the creek beside Jaeris, on a ragged scrap of blanket looted from Jaeris’ crashed ship.
“You know the story of Ogygia?” Jaeris asked.
“What, dumb astronaut crashes his expensive rover onto it, Stardate Whatever Last Wednesday Was?”
“No, I mean the first one. The one from the Greek Myth.” Jearis stretched his arms. “Odysseys, right? He was travelin’ home, but he kept getting’ knocked back by Poseidion, I think, and it took him decades to get back. So he ends up on this island at one point, with this nymph on it, and she seduces him, and keeps him there for ages. Eventually the gods have to intervene and force her to let him go, and keep adventuring, and eventually go back home. But sometimes, I wonder, y’know? What if he’d stayed? Nice private island, somebody who loved him, nobody to tell him what to do or how to do it. Peace and quiet …”
Linkara turned to face Jaeris, propping himself up on his elbow. “You talk about that a lot, the quiet.”
“Prison is loud.” Jaeris shuddered. “I know that sounds strange, but it is. Especially in solitary. A bunch of men crammed into tiny cells, nothing to do, 24/7, no one to talk to, they just … they start bangin’ on things, rattling things, yellin’ and screamin’ until it’s nothing but noise. It’s not the silence that gets you, really, it’s the noise, from everyone else, who don’t like the silence.”
They stared at each other for a long time, longer than Linkara had looked at anyone in years.
Finally, he reached out and took Jaeris’ hand in his.
~*~
It felt so strange to be back on the station. Linkara found himself touching bits of the walls, lingering in hallways, trying to readjust.
Introductions were stilted and unnecessary, but Linkara made them anyways. Ninja shocked them all by saying “Greetings” to Jaeris before floating off to his sleeping space. 90’s Kid was clearly restraining himself from asking Jaeris about prison. Harvey kept shooting them suspicious glances, but said nothing.
“Ground control to Major Tom?” Margaret flickered onto the viewscreen, smiling. Her hair now had streaks of pure white.
“Guess I’m doing that birthday recording after all,” Linkara smiled. “And I even got you a paperweight!” he held up one of the rock samples from Ogygia.
“You remembered!” Margaret beamed. “Are you ok, Linkara?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just glad to be back on the station. That was a long vacation.”
“Well, the ride back will be even longer. Hope you’re good at charades.”
“I think we’ll manage.” Jaeris drawled.
Harvey made a spluttering sound behind them.
“Well, it’s clear skies and all sunny days back to Earth. Happy travels, gentlemen,” Margaret saluted, and signed off.
Linkara turned to the monitors, Jaeris’ hand on his shoulder.
“Ok, crew,” Linkara said, reaching up to take Jaeris’ hand in his. “Let’s go home.”