Chap 1

  Nathan sat slouched in his chair, his attention transfixed to the screen in front of him. An expression of slack-jawed horror plastered across his face as he watched one of the aliens in the long-range telescope tear a ship apart. A destroyer, he had to make a guess. The vaguely octopus-like creature or vessel of metal, roughly the size of a freaking carrier, was tearing into the ship like some sea creature pulling open a crustacean.

  The light of the system primary played eerily over the alien and its prey, casting odd shadows that would make a horror filmmaker proud. With a lazy toss, it discarded roughly half of the destroyer. The vessel slowly floated away in an irregular spin, casting its inner debris everywhere. One of the tentacle-like structures of the alien ship plunged into the open carapace, searching for its innards. The ponderous movements of the alien were due to scale, not speed. It pulled something from the wreckage and stuffed it into its maw, no doubt the power core or rift drive. That’s what they seemed to desire as they tore through everything the system had to throw at them. With its meal complete, it pushed away from the corpse of the destroyer, its weird tentacle-like structure stiffening as it activated its propulsion and started moving. Nathan continued to stare at the screen as the alien disappeared into a green and blue rift nebula, disappearing from the system and leaving behind destruction in its wake. The corpse of the destroyer lazily floated, spinning in opposite circles as the two halves separated from each other. The smaller debris field created little sparks in the system primary light as Nathan’s mind tried again and again to do anything other than numbly watch.

  Nathan jumped, startled by a small yellow blinking light in the bottom right periphery, snapping him out of his dazed funk. He opened the notification simply by habit. It expanded into a translucent blue box that filled his vision. You’ve earned a title. Check your character sheet for more information. Nathan just blinked at the notification. He’d never gotten a title before, and he wasn’t exactly sure what he had done to achieve it.

  He dismissed the window and brought up the character sheet.

  Name: Nathan Korman.

  Titles: The Great Filter.

  Humanity has drawn the attention of the Wardens. Space is quiet and empty. Now you understand why.

  Nathan could only blink, staring at the words as if they made no sense, despite the fact that they actually did. He continued looking over the rest of his character sheet just to see if anything else had changed. He wasn’t expecting much.

  Race: Human.

  Level: 8, Mechanic.

  Attributes…

  Strength: 11.

  Endurance: 12.

  Agility: 10.

  Perception: 11.

  Intelligence: 12.

  Will: 11.

  Charisma: 10.

  Luck: 9.

  Goal: Fix and maintain mechanical systems.

  Available perk trees? Human, Mechanic.

  Nathan dismissed the character sheet, having not changed at all. He took one more look at the screen and turned it off, pressing his palms to his eye sockets and pushing. He gave out a groan and stood up.

  “Julia, what’s my task list?”

  ***

  “The environmental systems require immediate maintenance. After that, I would suggest getting some sleep.” Nathan let out a harsh chuckle, which sounded manic even to his own ears. Sleep. Now that was a joke. He wasn’t going to be sleeping without any... without some serious drugs.

  “Right, then. Environmental maintenance. Because that one’s important.”

  He moved awkwardly to the counter and grabbed his toolkit, wincing at the low gravity. Emergency power meant no artificial gravity, and being one?sixth his own weight was going to mess with him drastically. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think, he told himself before addressing his personal AI.

  “Julia, let me know if anything comes up.”

  “An emergency distress beacon has been detected,” she said, almost immediately—making him wonder if she had been withholding that information, or if it had just been coincidence that it popped up now.

  “From the moon?” His voice sounded hopeful, though he certainly didn’t feel it.

  “No. From a space?borne asset, likely a remnant of one of the ships.” “Okay, bring it up on the screen.”

  The screen he had previously turned off reactivated, this time showing a map of the system. There were two beacons—and as he was about to mention that there were two, three more turned on, and then twelve. Soon, the screen was populating with hundreds of SOS signals, slowly expanding outward as their signals finally caught up to him after the light?speed delay.

  “Well, fuck.” Nathan stared at the screen for a little while longer, blinking slowly and feeling even more depressed.

  “Turn it off,” he ordered Julia, before forcing his mind back to the task at hand.

  Maintain the damn auxiliary life support so he didn’t die. The only thing he could do right now was not become a distress signal—and take away any help heading toward any of those other ones.

  He set his focus on the task at hand.

  Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Keep moving, don’t stop, don’t think. That was the mantra going through Nathan’s head as he made his way across the barren white and grey landscape of the moon. To the east, the gas giant—with its green and white swirls—was rising. Normally a breathtaking view, but in the current situation it was just mindless backdrop.

  The heavy spacesuit only granted him about a third of his normal weight, and so he loped in the weird, awkward gait of a man desperately hopping toward what should be the main body of the listening post. Nathan’s arms, legs, head, and lungs hurt. His helmet was full of the sounds of his ragged breathing, his heartbeat, the fan desperately trying to keep him cool, and the occasional chirp from his internal comms unit restarting its scan—restarting its fruitless scan for any other comms channels to connect to. The ubiquitous spree was starting to get broken up by various pieces of metal, plastic, and concrete. The chances of finding anything at the main body of the listening post were extremely small. The aliens had lobbed a single bomb at the heavily shielded base as if it had been broadcasting a beacon.

  Nathan had felt the hit. The listening post’s meager defenses were unable to stop the projectile. He’d felt the impact even from his location on the far end, surviving only through the sheer dumb luck of needing to change a fuse.

  Nathan slowed as he crested a ridge. The little nav point that Julia had put on his heads-up display pointed to a small spot in mid-air where the airlock for the main base was supposed to be. All there was was a crater, the bottom covered in bits and pieces of broken concrete, metal, and glass. Most of the debris had been scattered to the northeast, suggesting an angle to the strike. His breaths came faster, but he didn’t feel like he was getting any air. He doubled over a bit, resting his hands on his knees and staring at the large hole.

  “Your blood oxygen level is getting low. Try taking deeper breaths,” Julia unhelpfully suggested.

  “The base is gone,” Nathan said between breaths. “What should I do now?” he asked, offloading the thinking to Julia. Partially because his last fitful few hours of sleep had been over 30 hours ago, and partially because if he started thinking now, he might just open his helmet and let in the vacuum, joining the other hundred billion souls that called the Eris system their home. “I would suggest checking the auxiliary hangar bay,” Julia offered, updating the nav point on the heads-up display to a point in the western direction away from the crater.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  There was at least the possibility that the other four people in the base had managed to see the oncoming missile—the oncoming projectile—and started down the tunnel toward the auxiliary hangar. It was false hope. It was likely false hope. But it was hope. Another hour of loping across the moon’s surface, now in the temporary darkness of the Jovian eclipse. Nathan found himself staring at the nav point, wondering where the door to the hangar bay was. Obviously it was shielded and covered in faux stone to make it look like the rest of the surface.

  It took a moment of prodding before he found the fake pieces of rock and tore them away to find a hatch. He plugged a cable from his suit in and entered his personal identification—only to have nothing happen.

  Of course nothing was happening. There was no power. It took his addled mind entirely too long to realize he had to open it manually. The pressure gauges stated that the other side was under vacuum, so he set about trying to open the damn door. The thing was held tight, possibly cold-welded.

  Fortunately, he happened to be a mechanic and had his tools. It didn’t take long to cut the door open and set it aside. He was going to have to weld it closed to get rid of any air gaps, but the other door indicated that the hangar bay was also under vacuum, so that process was pointless.

  He manually opened that door—much easier—and, much to his relief, found that the hangar bay, despite being completely dark and a bit spooky, held a vessel. Unfortunately, the ship being unpowered likely meant that his comrades had died at the main base. He made his way over to the hatch, plugged his connector from his suit into the vessel, and again tried to use his credentials to activate and open the airlock.

  He was again met with failure due to the fact that the vessel was unpowered—which should have been obvious considering it was supposed to just sit here waiting for an emergency. This certainly qualified as an emergency.

  Unfortunately, unlike the hatch to the hangar, the door stated that the other side was pressurized. He had to hope the whole thing wasn’t… He had to hope that it was just the… He had to hope it was just the airlock and not the entire vessel. Slowly, he bled the pressure, releasing the precious oxygen out into the vacuum. With that done, he opened the hatch manually, entered inside, and was relieved to find that the main section of the vessel was indeed pressurized—and that he hadn’t just bled out all the O?. Creepy is what one called a dead ship sitting in a dead hangar. Still, he made his way to the rear, opened up the hatch for the reactor core, and started the startup sequence. A few minutes later, small LED lights started flickering on, beginning at the reactor core and spreading outward as other systems activated.

  Soon, he was sitting in the pilot’s chair, staring out the windshield—staring out the front viewport at the closed hangar door.

  “What now?” he asked, more to himself than to Julia.

  “I would suggest getting some sleep.”

  Nathan shook his head. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat. “No, we should check the other auxiliary post. Then maybe get supplies from the one I was in. Then get on an intercept course for the nearest distress signal. Then maybe sleep.” He said it out loud, trying to organize the thoughts in his head as he spoke them. It felt like he was being pressed against the wall, his eyes not wanting to reopen.

  “First, we gotta figure out how to open the door.” He tried very hard to pry his eyes open. He got one before sitting up and standing. If he stayed sitting for too long, he might actually fall asleep.

  “There should be a manual override.”

  Nathan winced at Julia’s comment. A manual override for a large-ass hatch—a large-ass hangar door—was likely to be a lot of work to open.

  Chap2

  Nathan opened his eyes and stared at a ceiling panel he wasn’t particularly familiar with. He tried to figure out where he was based on the dim lighting and the fact that every joint in his body hurt.

  Turning his head to the side, he looked across the short walkway area to another bench on the other side of a small room.

  Right—the shuttle.

  He had gotten it out of the hangar bay, managed to check the far side of the outpost (which had been crushed by the falling debris), picked up some things from his side of the outpost, and then headed off into space to move toward the closest distress beacon.

  He rotated himself so that he could sit up. Placing his elbows on his knees and his palms against his eye sockets, he pressed and took a deep breath.

  God. Everything that had happened the last few days pressed its way into his mind and threatened to break him. Eris 4, glassed. Fifty-plus billion people wiped away. Everyone he had ever known throughout his entire life—friends and family, his siblings, his cousins, his nieces and nephews—all gone.

  Fifty-plus billion people. The numbers themselves didn’t even seem real.

  “Try to take deeper breaths,” Julia unhelpfully said. Her cool monotone, completely at odds with the situation at hand.

  Nathan tried to hate her for it. But he just… couldn’t manage the emotion. Inevitably, he listened, taking in far more precious O? than he deserved. But it calmed his nerves.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Approximately six hours and forty-three minutes,” Julia replied instantly.

  “And how far out are we to our first pickup?”

  “Nearly three hours. However, the latest ping has shot back an error code, and I am unsure if the occupant is alive.”

  “What about the second pod?”

  “The second pod is showing that the occupant is alive, and everything is functional.”

  “If we stop to collect the first pod, does that put the second at any risk?” Nathan asked, because he had to prioritize the sure thing over the maybe.

  “Unlikely, unless it’s hit by something.”

  Nathan grit his teeth. Space was massively vast, and hitting something was extremely rare. However, space was also now littered with the debris of literally everything humanity had. So that did drastically increase the chances—though not by all that much. “Alright, stay on course for the first distress beacon,” Nathan said as he got up to use the head—the tiny head near the front of the shuttle.

  Once that task was completed, he opened up one of the prepackaged MREs and stared at its contents.

  Chicken spinach salad.

  Whoever idiot thought this was edible needed to be hung or shot or something. It didn’t matter much. He couldn’t really taste it. “We’ve picked up a radio signal. Would you like me to play the message?”

  Nathan looked up from his inedible meal and cleared his throat. “Of course.”

  A moment later, a vaguely feminine voice came over the comm.

  “Is anyone out there?” were the only words—the person sounding like they’d been asking the question for hours.

  He put his meal off to the side and scooted up to the console. “This is Specialist Nathan Korman, Eris Navy Reserves. I hear you.” “Oh, thank the stars,” came back a voice considerably more lively. “Please tell me you have a ship and you're coming to pick me up.”

  The lag time told Nathan she was quite a ways out there.

  “Well, I’ve got a shuttle, which is better than nothing, and I’m still triangulating your position now. What’s your situation?” “Oh, I’ll take a shitty shuttle any day of the week,” came the voice, half?crying, half?exuberant. “I’m literally out here in a fucking environment suit, just drifting through the empty nothing. It’s so empty.” “I’m hungry, I’m cold, I have two hours of O?, and I need to use the bathroom.” “ETA is just over five hours,” Julia reported, marking the person’s location on the computer’s display.

  Nathan could feel his guts sink. He stared at the open comm channel and the delay it was taking. “Hey, I didn’t get your name,” he said to the person on the other end of the comm, before muting it and turning his attention back to Julia.

  “Does that include us stopping to pick up the two pods?”

  “No,” replied Julia. “It does not include the time it would take to pick up both of the escape pods.”

  “Oh, fuck.” “Kay Spielman. Crewman First Class. Eris Navy. Hey… do you know… how is Eris?” By Eris, she no doubt meant the planet and not the actual star. The blue-green gem, the habitable world, had been glassed—bombed so badly that the atmosphere had been stripped, leaving it a barren wasteland. Almost as bad as the moon Nathan had escaped from.

  “Well, keep in mind I’m on a shuttle, and this thing doesn’t have good optics or anything. I can tell you the planet’s still there, but I can’t tell you its condition,” Nathan lied.

  Well… sorta. The shuttle wasn’t particularly good at knowing the state of the planet. He just wasn’t going to tell her what he already knew. “Julia, give me the ship stats, please.”

  There was a moment of delay before the stat sheet popped up on the screens. Name: Eris Navy Shuttle C-0048306. Frame: Small.

  Type: Shuttle.

  Drive System: S-5 grav drive.

  Armor: None.

  Shield: None.

  Weapons: None.

  Power Core: S-6823.

  “Okay, Julia, if we burned all the rocket’s fuel and redlined both the power core and gravity drive the entire way, what are the chances we can make it before she runs out of O??”

  There was a moment of silence while the AI calculated.

  “About six percent.”

  Nathan cocked an eyebrow.

  “As long as nothing goes wrong, about sixty percent.”

  Nathan cocked an eyebrow again. It was actually a lot higher of a percentage than he had expected. Of course, it was realistically zero percent. There’s no way that redlining anything for two hours straight would survive. “So what’s that ETA?” Crewman K. asked over the comm, with a slight nervous chuckle at the end, as if she knew the answer was going to be all kinds of bad news.

  If it was him, he’d want to know.

  “Five hours. I’m looking at ways to reduce that. But if there’s anything on your end you can do to increase the amount of time we’ve got, that would be great.” Nathan winced. That would be great. What a stupid way to end a sentence. “No, I can’t fucking increase the amount of time before I run out of oxygen!” Kay yelled, ranting on about how he better hurry up and increase the speed at which he was going to rescue her, and a few other things, and a bunch of profanities.

  Nathan wanted to tell her that yelling wasn’t going to help, but nothing was going to help. She was dead. The universal timeline just hadn’t caught up to the facts.

  He just sat and listened. For the next two hours, he listened to her, staring at his discarded chicken–spinach-salad mush. She cried, pleaded, accepted her fate, cried some more, and went back and forth. He kept all his responses neutral, not wanting to give her any hope, and also not leaving her to die completely alone.

  He turned off the comms thirty minutes after she had gone quiet. The only sound was the circulating fan on her helmet, no doubt pushing around the carbon dioxide. “We’re approaching the first distress beacon,” said Julia, snapping Nathan out of his… day.

  “Okay, well, line us up and I’ll— I guess I’ll do the fine-tuning.”

  ***

  Unfortunately, the first pod was kind of a bust. Really worse than a bust. The low?grade officer had been wounded when he’d gotten into the pod—so much so that he hadn’t actually fastened in fully before dying. The blood escaping his body had drifted around in the microgravity, splattering across practically every surface, making it look like the occupant had exploded.

  And Nathan was torn between the simple utility of dumping the body and reusing the perfectly fine but very disgusting pod, or just pushing the pod and the person out the airlock. In the end, he settled for anchoring the pod down in the cargo bay and attempting to float the corpse out. Surprisingly, it actually worked. And it wasn’t long before he was on his way to the second distress beacon, while staring at another radio signal waiting for him to listen in. He took in a deep breath before hitting the play button, then winced and considered not responding when the message started playing.

  “Hello, this…” “This is Aya Kowalski of Corbid Refinery Systems,” said a calm female voice with a slightly Slavic accent. “I and four others are trapped upon a section of the former refinery that has been disconnected from the rest of the facility. We have power and gravity; however, life support systems are failing. We require assistance or extraction. Most computer systems are down, and no one here has any practical mechanical experience. Again, we are requesting assistance or extraction.” Nathan rubbed the bridge of his nose while slumped in his chair.

  “Julia, how far out are we from that radio signal?”

  “Current triangulation puts it at about fourteen hours.”

  “And how long until we get to our second distress beacon?”

  “Roughly twenty?three minutes.”

  “Okay, let’s keep on course. And then I guess I’ll call these people back.” “This is Specialist Nathan Korman, Eris Navy Reserve. I’m fourteen hours away from your position and will be en route.”