Among Stars

Arrival

A sort of strange disc-shaped object, mostly white with some shiny metallic parts here and there. Part of it is broken, or unfinished. A shallow inverted-dome shaped in the middle, looking like a giant satellite dish. All around it, strange wavy lines in every color of the rainbow, and more. It seems like it's floating in a sea of colorful light.

At one part of the rim, in stylized letters, one word: Sunstar.

Below it, a string of letters and numbers, partly scratched away. In parts where the dish is incomplete, bits of it are floating nearby, like it was scattered, or the bits were never connected at all. For a space station, it's rather small. For a non-natural object in space, rather large. Maybe a couple hundred meters in diameter, maybe a bit less. Just a few tens of meters thing, not more than thirty. It looks like a giant broken porcelain plate.

Nearby, the strand of light wavering more and more. Then, a disturbance, like an object falling on water, ripples go through the waves of light. In the middle, suddenly an opening, and an object pops out. It flies slightly zigzagging, and then stops. Stays hovering in one spot, unable to be completely still, like an excited bee.

It looks like someone connected a couple of toilet-paper rolls to a mutant soda bottle. On the side of it, text: "ISS Travelstar", and below it "Sirius Corporation F-202M1." Inside, its pilot, sweat drops forming on her forehead, she's dishing out several words that are not applicable for publication.

"Daew!" Naina yelled. "That was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life! Did not expect these blasted things to move and morph so much when you're inside of them," she muttered.

"Volatile cosmic phenomenon not being static seems like a surprise alright, Captain Melcey," Quera said flatly.

"Shut up," Naina muttered and wiped her forehead dry and fell into the pilot's chair, almost panting. She looked around at all the blinking red lights and warning signs on almost every possible display. The ship lurched and hobbled forward at irregular intervals, while the engines made sounds that reminded her of a documentary about dying animals.

"I might have taken a bigger bite than I can chew," she said sadly. "I don't think Travelstar can take another trip like that without extensive repairs and resupplies."

"I am detecting systems going offline, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "There is a 12.7% change that the ship will explode in the next five minutes."

"Daew," Naina said flatly. "At least I can try to take her down to the station and see if we have any hopes," she said, put her hands into the ship's controllers, and twisted them.

Travelstar screamed and whined like an old animal forced to run. A sudden pop and a smell of smoke later, Naina landed her in what seemed to be a gigantic landing bay. You could have fitted fifteen Travelstars there, with room to spare for a large cargo liner.

"This thing is huge. Why do they need such a larg-- Oh wait, this isn't a hangar!" she yelped. "This is just a space that hasn't been built at all. It's just all framework. Daew. How unfinished this thing actually was when they put scientists here? And why?" she wondered, scratching her left ear tip.

"Quera, keep the ship powered on minimal, but keep communications out," Naina said and rose up from the chair. "I'm going to go look for... for something. I don't know what. Try to diagnose Travelstar and let me know if we can repair her."

"Acknowledged, Captain Melcey," Quera said.

Naina grabbed her space gear and walked out of the ship via the airlock. She wandered around the immense area, looking for anything interesting. After a few minutes, she spotted doors leading further into the installation.

She made her way to the door, opened it and was presented with an airlock. She closed the door behind her and hit the 'cycle' button. A satisfying hissing soon filled the small room, and the door on the other side opened. Naina glanced at her wrist and smiled. She opened her helmet and drew in a lungful of air.

"At least the life support is still running," she mused. "We won't suffocate, at least. I have enough food and drink to last for months, so at the very least I'll die of boredom before anything else," she said and tried to laugh with minor success.

Wandering along the hallways, she passed multiple info plaques that told her that this platform was bigger than it looked from the outside, and was designed to house almost five hundred people, once it was fully running. She made not of the locations of laboratories, Habs, and landing bays.

She stopped in front of a console interface and tapped it a couple of times. The screen stayed as dead as the metal it was made of.

"Quera," Naina said. "Can you access the station's network at all? Is this just a dead console, or is the entire station offline?"

"There seems to be minimal functions running, Captain Melcey," Quera said. "Communications network is offline, as is life support on multiple levels. Laboratories and most of the cargo areas are offline and blocked. It seems someone has been turning things off manually at some point. There are no traces of a system running that would have automated this."

"Weird," Naina said and scratched her ear tip. "Who would turn things off? Didn't they all go back to the pods?"

She walked for a few minutes until she found an elevator that seemed to work. Most of the floors were unpowered, but one floor was active. Naina pressed the button, and the elevator swiftly took her there.

Stepping out of the elevator, Naina discovered herself facing an area that was previously intended to be a hallway or a lobby. It was now made into a semblance of a space to live in, and there were chairs, tables, beds and various items lying everywhere, with little regard to looking neat or organized.

On one chair sat a tall man with a long, unkempt beard. He had very dark brown skin, and he was wearing a worn military uniform. He looked so very tired, but he managed to summon a semblance of a smile when he straightened in his chair.

"Welcome, stranger," he said in a voice that had once been commanding and even harsh, but was tired and almost whining now. "I watched you arrive. I have no idea how you did it without Mizuni's magic, but boy, am I glad you did," he said. "My name is Perez. I was the captain on the ship we arrived in, the ISS Infinity."