Bryn

The hair on my neck bristles – frigid air pumps through the ventilation and floods the deck, pressure building up inside my head until I wriggle my jaw and my ears pop painfully. The breather isn’t useful anymore, so I pull it down around my neck and I heft Truthseeker with determination.

Nano-seconds later, the doors whoosh open and the eight Mediators swarm in, batons raised and shoulders packed ear-high with armour, as if we’re a ninja battalion armed to the teeth, and not two freaked out teenagers, a robot cat and a cheeky AI called Nate who looks like a big round teched-out light bulb, rather than a catalyst that promises to change our lives.

The additional armour makes them bulky and slow.

I shift my weight and wait for the first Mediator to come within reach, engaging my battle mindset. I dart forward with a shout, using the bokkun blade to smash against their visor while a well-placed foot has them tripping and landing hard on their back. I can feel the reverberation as their head bounces off the floor. Strike first. Strike hard. A lot more to go, but they’re warier now.

“Greyson! You got it sorted yet?”

Greyson’s still sitting in the command chair, the surrounding screens and panels a protective barrier. He’s arguing with Nate while tapping through the ship’s systems as if the answer lies somewhere amongst all those ones and zeroes.

The odds of me defeating all these Mediators isn’t great. What would Jonas do?

I bring up my mode display with a double blink and an instant later, I’m streaming live video to everyone I know, which is sadly not many. But hang on, since when did Lenora Friend me? I don’t recall accepting any request, but maybe Zipper or Lenora’s Imaginary Friend had something to do with it? I don’t bother checking my rank. I see Chevette’s still my Friend and, between her and Lenora, I can imagine my live link rippling out as it’s shared, like a pulse through a nervous system.

Thanks, Chevette, I say, as I kick a Mediator in a knee. I didn’t think we were still Friends.

I couldn’t not be your friend. What’s going on?

In a nutshell? We’re saving the Triumph. Or destroying it. Can kind of go either way, I reply and, with a soft grunt, I duck and push up underneath the arms of the Mediator closest to me, driving my shoulder into their wide girth and sending them tumbling into the one behind them like a solid, reinforced domino. They land hard enough that they shouldn’t get up again too soon. I take my advantage, darting past them, to reach the inner platform. Greyson’s oblivious in his chair behind me.

Greyson, I say through gritted teeth. What’re you doing?

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Nate’s being right stubborn, Greyson growls, frustrated, and apparently Hugo’s no help.

Hugo?

Greyson ignores me, holding up a finger as he mutters something under his breath and his fingers dance across the screen. “There’s something hidden. Wait … what in sky?”

From the centre console, something shimmers into being. A hologram of the Guardian, about three feet tall, but he isn’t wearing his usual short-brimmed cap and dark blue uniform sagging heavily on the right side from the rows of medals and ribbons. This Guardian isn’t smooth-cheeked with a smile bright and beguiling, eyes uncovered and trustworthy. He wears a one-piece dark blue jumpsuit, threadbare at the cuffs and knees, his face heavily marked, not with age, but stress and exhaustion, eyes dark as olive pips.

“… ship Eight Triumph. I repeat. This is Guard Ian Sullivan of the Seedship Eight Triumph.” His voice is as dry as gravel, and he clears his throat with a sharp cough.

The Mediators trapped on the other side of the stations freeze as if their joints have locked up, the Guardian’s control overridden by this new program.

That’s not the Guardian, I realise, and Greyson, hands hovering over the control panel, is just as stunned. He snaps his jaw shut and readjusts Nate in his lap. The AI is strangely quiet.

It’s the ship’s log. We’re looking at the original Guardian. Or, it seems, Guard Ian.

“This may be my last recording,” the man yawns so wide I can see his back molars. “Our ship was one of twelve when we left Earth, set to travel thousands of years to the new world, but we’re all alone now. Two hundred and twelve rotations ago our engines began to malfunction and we were unable to accelerate on schedule. We dropped from the formation twenty-two rotations later. We lost track of the rest of the ships almost fifty-two rotations ago. It’s all here in my log.” He pats his chest pocket before reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose.

Lenora, are you getting this?

She sends me a stunned affirmative.

“The problem is,” the guard hesitates. “It’s been so long and the skeleton crews have been cycling through so many cycles, asleep then awake, over and over, but something’s gone wrong. They’ve stopped waking up! I suspect it’s the tech – it wasn’t meant to last this long! – and we’re centuries behind schedule.”

Skeleton crews? I wonder.

The guardians of those in deep sleep, Zipper answers.

How long’s it been? I send feebly. We’ve been taught we’d fled Old Earth three hundred and sixty-seven years ago, yet that’s a lie too. When did we really leave Earth?

“God, the ghastly quiet outside this shell is oppressive!” Guard Sullivan’s voice is haunted, and it leaves a hollowness inside me. As if by some genetic memory, I can sense that loneliness, the dread of isolation, the silence of space.

“I’m the only one left, and I fear when I sleep I won’t wake up.” The man’s clearly terrified, however it’s an exhausted kind of terror. One he’s been feeling for so long he can almost ignore it, yet his body reveals it through the shudders in his limbs and the constant tugging of his cuffs, as if his fingers wants to curl up and lose themselves inside the material.

“I’ve set protocols, an AI I’ve designed to safeguard this ship, which will ensure we stay true to our course. On arrival, whenever that may be, the resurrection procedures will begin and this recording will trigger the ship’s landing. I hope I’m there watching this now, but this journey’s been fraught with problems since we first moved out amongst the stars … the … the stars…” The recording breaks down and Guard Ian Sullivan flickers on the console, his mouth twisting as he repeats the stars the stars the stars over and over again. It doesn’t matter, though.

The whole station has heard it.