CHAPTER 07: EMILY - ADVENTURES IN SPACE
"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."
— The Fourth Doctor
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity."
— Amelia Earhart
"Space is the place," Emily Smith declared cheerily, flipping switches in the cockpit of their small spacecraft as it hummed to life. They were en route to deliver critical supplies to an outpost on the Tesii asteroid, deep in the Horror Vacui. But things hadn’t gone according to plan, and their mission had reached an impasse.
"It certainly is," Zimmer replied, his voice catching as he tried to hold back sobs. He failed and hiccupped twice.
"Brave heart, Zimmer."
"I know, ma’am. It’s just… I might never see my mum again."
"Oh, come on, you don’t know that," Emily said, adjusting the thrusters with practiced ease.
Zimmer sniffled again.
"As soon as we rinse this rank kerfuffle, we’ll be off to a do, us. Tickety-boo," she added with a grin, trying to distract him.
Satisfied with the overhead adjustments, she crouched beneath the console and popped open the faceplate beneath the controls. The tangled mess of multi-colored cabling spilled out like a techie’s Christmas lights. Emily gleefully dug in, her fingers flying as she sorted through the wires.
"Orange-white, orange. Green-white, blue. Blue-white, green. Brown-white, brown…"
Zimmer watched her, wiping his eyes. "What are you doing?"
"Being the one who’ll make sure you get to see your mum again," she said, grinning despite the situation.
Zimmer suggested that maybe they could just stay put, wait it out, and escape in the pod if the aliens took their ship.
"Horses for courses, Zimmer."
He blinked. "What does that even mean?"
"It means," Emily said, "you’re for giving up, and I’m for getting away." She didn’t wait for him to respond. "Now, unless you’re done coming over all peculiar, I haven’t got all day."
Beyond their cockpit, far off in the void, floated the black mass of a rozovoi Q-ship. It resembled a sinister black urchin with jagged spikes jutting out from its core, blinking with small, neon lights that danced across its surface. It was no innocent celestial ornament—no, it was a pirate ship. The rozovoi were notorious space scavengers, known for rigging cargo ships with hidden weapons to trap and plunder unsuspecting vessels. The bioluminescent patterns blinking on the Q-ship’s surface had misled Emily and Zimmer into thinking it was harmless—until they’d come within 100,000 kilometers and got snared by its tractor beam.
The corvette’s engines screamed at full throttle, but they were still being dragged toward the hostile alien ship. It was slow going, the ship’s propulsion struggling against the tight electromagnetic grip. They had time, but not much.
"Emily," Zimmer asked shakily, "how do you know they won’t let us go?"
"Zimmer, have you ever heard of rozovoi pirates operating under a false flag?"
"No."
"Exactly." Emily smirked as she fiddled with the last of the wiring. "One spanner in their works, and we’re rinsed."
Zimmer’s eyes widened. "What have you done?"
Emily popped up from under the console, pulling her goggles back from her eyes and taking a deep breath.
"We’re currently caught in a collimated beam of tightly-coiled solenoidal electromagnetism," she said, almost gleefully. "It’s essentially a high-energy tractor beam, pulling us toward certain doom. It works by compressing magnetic coils to create a force that pulls us in. Right now, our repulsors are trying to push us away, but all that does is squeeze the coils tighter."
Zimmer frowned, still not quite following. "And?"
"And," she said with exaggerated patience, "I’ve just reversed the polarity of our ship’s graviphoton emitters, converting our repulsors into attractors."
Zimmer blinked. "You’re betting our lives on theoretical physics you just made up?"
Emily’s eyes sparkled. "Oh, come on, Zimmer. This is super-science! Just a bit wonky for you? Think of it like this: the repulsors were making the beam’s coils tighter, right? Attractors should pull them apart, letting us slip through the gaps."
"That’s nonsense, Emily!" Zimmer’s voice was shaky. "This is all insane!"
But Emily wasn’t fazed. She hit the attractor switch with flair. "And away we go."
The corvette shuddered, the pull of the tractor beam weakening. Emily grinned as the beam diffracted, and their ship was suddenly free. With deft fingers, she took over manual control, accelerating them as far away as possible from the hostile ship.
Once they’d put a comfortable 200 million kilometers between themselves and the alien vessel, Emily relaxed, leaning back in her seat.
"And Bob’s your uncle, Zimmer."
But the quiet hum of the ship was the only reply.
"Zimmer?"
Her heart sank. Emily glanced at the console and saw the flashing alert: the rear compartment had ejected as an escape pod. Somewhere in the frantic seconds between their freedom and escape, Zimmer had bailed. She stared at the blinking light, her mouth open in disbelief.
"Zimmer?" she repeated softly.
There was no answer.
"What is that rank smell, Emily?" Prudence asked, her voice muffled by the sound of the engines. They were on a test-flight for Aerospace LogiX, running the first trials of a new space drive, designed to revolutionize propulsion through the vacuum. The ship was sleek, fast, and—so far—holding together. But the air in the cockpit had suddenly taken on a bitter edge, sharp and chemical, cutting through the recycled atmosphere like a toxic whisper.
Emily sniffed, her face wrinkling in distaste as she tilted her head toward the air vent. "Urethane and polyurethane, I’d wager. The noise-canceller between the cockpit and Bessel beam-emitter must be burning. Oh, my giddy aunt... now we’re in it. Hats on." Her tone remained casual, but her hands moved swiftly, fastening her clunky helmet to her spacesuit, snapping the seals into place with a series of clicks. As soon as the helmet was locked, her breathing switched over to the suit’s internal microbial filter.
“I’m gonna scrub it," she announced.
With her finger pressed down on the emergency scrub button, the ship’s toxic air was evacuated, leaving the automated filtration systems to work on keeping the interior safe. Emily's attention was laser-focused on the procedure, her eyes scanning the indicators on her heads-up display. But something felt wrong. The distinct, acrid smell lingered in the back of her throat, despite her helmet’s filter. It wasn’t clearing fast enough.
She glanced over at Prudence, hoping for confirmation, a reassuring nod, anything.
But Prudence wasn’t moving.
At first, Emily didn’t react, her brain sluggish in processing the scene before her. Prudence’s body was slack, head resting back against the seat in an unnatural tilt, eyes half-closed. A thin wisp of condensation had formed on the glass of her helmet-less suit, where the cold air had rushed in from the failing filtration system.
"Prudence?" Emily’s voice cracked as she checked her rear-view screen, panic creeping into her chest like an invader. It became clear then: Prudence didn’t have her helmet on. Not even close.
"Shit, shit, shit," Emily muttered under her breath, a cold sweat breaking out across her forehead. She hadn’t realized how quickly the air had become dangerous. She didn’t think Prudence had either. Prudence, with her easy grin and endless curiosity, always trusting Emily to handle things.
Emily's stomach churned as she pieced it together. The damn propulsion system must’ve overheated, burning straight through the sound-dampening material. That bitter chemical stench? It was the cushioning, melted down by the Bessel beam-emitter’s unregulated heat output. Toxic gases from the undercarriage had seeped into the cockpit in a silent, invisible invasion.
Prudence must have taken a lungful before Emily had even switched her own air supply.
"Come on, Prudence," Emily whispered, unbuckling herself from her seat with trembling fingers. She leaned over her friend, futilely shaking her shoulder. "Wake up, love." But she knew. The slackness of Prudence's form, the complete stillness—it was all too clear.
Prudence looked like she was asleep, peaceful even, but Emily knew better. There was no waking her up. The cockpit had already been scrubbed of the tainted air, but the damage was done. No helmet, no air supply. Not in time.
Emily sat back in her seat, feeling the weight of failure pressing against her chest, heavier than the gravity the ship skimmed across. A flaw in the design, she thought numbly. We found it the hard way.
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She pulled herself together long enough to flick open the ship’s comms system and send a signal back to the command team at Aerospace LogiX. They needed to know. The propulsion system was flawed, dangerous. It wasn’t just faulty—it had taken a life.
"Test-flight ASLX-942," she spoke into the mic, her voice steady despite the chaos in her head. "We've got a critical malfunction in the noise-cancelling and filtration system. Propulsion overheating—air contamination. One fatality. Repeat: one fatality."
Her hands hovered over the controls, but she didn’t hit send immediately. Instead, she took a deep breath, forcing the grief to stay beneath the surface. It wasn’t the time. She had to get back.
Emily cast one last glance at Prudence, her best mate on this mission, slumped in the seat beside her. She closed her eyes briefly, a small tribute in the silence, before she turned her focus back to the cockpit.
With a grim determination, Emily set a course for home.
“I am so, so sorry, Lann,” Emily said, her voice barely audible over the soft hum of the ship’s failing systems. She gripped the handle of the prog saw, its red-hot, vibrating edge glowing faintly in the dim cabin light. With grim determination, she drew the blade twice across Lann’s leg, just above the knee—once forward, once back—severing the appendage in a matter of seconds. Each pass of the saw hissed as it burned through skin, muscle, and bone, cauterizing the wound instantly. The smell of charred flesh lingered in the air, thick and oppressive.
Lann winced but didn’t scream. Whether from shock, exhaustion, or a resigned acceptance, his face remained eerily calm, though his eyes reflected a quiet, hollow despair. Emily swallowed hard, trying to push down the knot of guilt tightening in her throat. She carefully lifted the severed leg, feeling the dead weight of it in her arms, and carried it to the airlock. Without ceremony, she pressed the button to open the hatch and flushed it into the cold vacuum of space.
The limb spiraled into the void, disappearing into the infinite blackness, joining the other refuse scattered across the stars.
Emily stood there for a moment, watching it vanish, her hand lingering over the airlock controls. She wished she could throw her guilt and desperation out with it, but there was no room for such luxury. Not out here. Not with what was at stake.
She turned away and moved to the control console, checking the ship’s planning-screen with a weariness that had settled deep into her bones. A number blinked on the display, mocking her efforts.
“We’re still 0.44 kilograms over the weight limit, Lann,” she sighed wistfully, her voice carrying a note of hopelessness. “I am so, so sorry. These are the cold equations of space travel.”
She glanced over at Lann, sitting in silence, staring at the stump where his leg used to be. Blood no longer flowed from the wound—Emily had made sure of that—but the look in his eyes made it clear the pain went far beyond anything the prog saw had done.
"I wish it didn’t have to be like this," Emily continued, feeling the pressure of the situation crashing down on her again. “If those damned space vikings hadn’t attacked, we could’ve fueled up, planned properly. But they left us no choice. And now, we don’t have enough fuel to make the jump unless we shed more weight.”
Lann didn’t respond. His eyes remained fixed on the empty space where his leg had been. He hadn’t spoken much since the attack, not since Emily had explained the impossible choice they faced. Every gram counted, every sliver of mass determining whether they lived or died—and whether the vaccines they carried would reach the sick colonists in time to save thousands of lives.
The ship’s engines groaned beneath them, barely maintaining the course Emily had plotted. They couldn’t stop now, not with so little fuel. Not with time slipping away.
“If I remember correctly,” Emily said, breaking the heavy silence, “a hand weighs just a little less than half a kilo. You right or left-handed, lad?”
Emily’s heart broke all over again. She didn’t want to do this—she had never wanted to do any of this. But the cold, merciless equations of space travel didn’t care about what she wanted. They only cared about balance, about fuel efficiency and mass limits. About survival.
By the end of the journey, Emily, and most of Lann, delivered the vaccines to the sick people who needed them. Thousands lived because of it.
Emily’s craft decelerated within visual range of Earth, the blue-green marble of her homeworld hanging in the black void, just close enough to see Luna’s familiar contours. Her eyes traced the moon’s surface until they rested on the grand silhouette of the Palace of the Universal Prince, perched there like a monolithic reminder of where it had all begun. It was from that very location, what now seemed like a lifetime ago, that she had launched on this grueling mission—a mission that would see her break records, push human endurance to its limits, and leave her questioning why she had ever started it in the first place.
Beside her, in the cramped confines of the cockpit, her companion Warid Sanderson sat motionless. He had been her constant ally on this impossible journey, a steady hand and a quiet mind in the chaos of space. Together, they had aimed to become the first pilots to circumnavigate the entire solar system non-stop—starting from Earth, past every planet, looping around Neptune’s distant orbit, and finally making their way back past Mercury and Venus. The ambition was grand; the reality, though, was punishing.
They had spent months trapped in this small space shuttle, not moving except for the occasional stretch, barely speaking as the toll of isolation and unrelenting space gnawed away at their psyches. At some point, they stopped being two individuals and became like ghosts haunting the same ship—drifting together in silence, living only to see the finish line.
Now, the finish was in sight.
Emily, too exhausted to feel the triumph she knew she should, whispered hoarsely, “I bet you never thought you’d actually circumnavigate the Solar System, eh, Warid?”
But Warid didn’t respond. She had known for hours now—perhaps days—that he wouldn’t. Somewhere between Venus and their final leg, Warid had succumbed to the slow, creeping exhaustion that had dogged them both. It wasn’t just the journey that had drained him; it was the endless nothingness, the slow leak of vitality that comes from being confined for so long in the dead quiet of space.
He had told her, maybe fifty or sixty hours ago—time blurred together now—that he needed more water.
“I know,” Emily had replied. That was the last exchange between them, the last real conversation before Warid had slumped back in his seat, intending to “rest all the way home,” as he had put it.
She had glanced back at him a few times, at first believing he was simply sleeping. But sleep didn’t leave your eyes wide open, staring unblinkingly into the void.
Now, she looked over at him again, the moonlight casting long shadows across his lifeless face. His eyes, once sharp and full of purpose, were dull, fixed on nothing. The cockpit’s oxygen-recycled air felt stale, oppressive even. Emily’s throat tightened, but no tears came. She had cried them out long before, in the depths of space where no one could hear her but the cold vacuum outside.
Touchdown would be soon. She could see the preparations unfolding beneath them—people milling about, banners raised, celebrations ready to begin for her triumphant return. History would record her as the first pilot to circumnavigate the Solar System. It would be a grand spectacle. Flashing lights, cheering crowds. They would call her a hero.
But none of them would know the real cost. None of them would understand what she had given up—not just months of her life, but pieces of her soul, fragments of herself lost somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, fragments she might never get back.
Warid had paid the ultimate price, and no one would know until the celebration was over.
Emily stared out at the moon, her mind blank, her body aching with a weariness so deep it felt like it had become part of her bones. Her hands trembled as she guided the ship into its final descent.
The moment she touched down on Luna’s surface, the cheers erupted, the excitement palpable even from inside the cockpit. Cameras flashed, banners waved, and voices shouted her name as she became the celebrated hero of the hour. Yet she remained seated, staring ahead, waiting for the noise to die down.
It wasn’t until the crowd’s excitement had reached its peak, until the procession had run its course, that Emily finally allowed herself to speak. Her voice was quiet, almost lost amid the lingering cheers.
“Warid didn’t make it,” she said flatly, barely audible. “He likely died from dehydration…hours ago.”
The words hung in the air like a lead weight, unnoticed by the adoring crowd.
A year after that, Emily was with her companion, Noah, investigating military base ruins on Ceres that had been transformed into icy catacombs since their abandonment. Sponsored by an entertainment producer into AVP Replays of unique reality experiences, they were tasked with finding a story among the frozen remnants.
“Good thing we’ve got our jim-jams on, Noah, 'cause it’s brass monkeys out here,” Emily said, glancing at the readings on her instrument.
Their thin full-body cold suits resisted the harsh temperatures, but her comment was more about the dismal conditions of their expedition. The derelict structures only vaguely resembled former human habitats, now buried beneath gargantuan mounds of snow and ice. As with most reality entertainment productions, their circumstances were semi-manufactured; while nothing was scripted, they were pushed to find something interesting in this frozen wasteland. The producer wanted to market the program under "military history" and encouraged them to find anything left behind by the long-gone forces that once occupied this icy installation.
Noah, ever the explorer, suggested they check the interior of one of the buildings encased in a network of icy tunnels. With his background in cave diving, he wriggled through a frosty crevice, crawling into the labyrinthine passage. Emily watched as he disappeared from view, giving her a thumbs-up before vanishing into the darkness.
Time passed, too much of it. Emily called out to him but only received garbled sounds in response. Then her AVP buzzed, notifying her that Noah was trying to share his experience with her. She accepted at total-immersion level and was suddenly transported into his point of view. She felt her chest constrict as if being squeezed by the tight passage, her breath hitching as panic set in. Reflexively, she scaled down the simulation to just observation, not wanting to feel the full weight of his situation.
Noah was stuck. He had ventured too deep into a narrow passage—just 25 by 45 centimeters wide—facing headfirst into an icy squeeze that had no exit. He had worked his way down the tunnel, attracted by a strange pale glow at the bottom of a multi-story shaft. The fissure had looked promising, but now he was trapped, his body wedged upside down, unable to move forwards or backwards.
Emily, studying his progress through the AVP Replay, watched his hologram as he painstakingly wriggled through the frozen canals. The glow he had been chasing was visible through dark layers of webbed ice, yet the passage he was stuck in had revealed itself to be a dead end. Now, with his chest constricted by the narrow walls, Noah couldn’t even take a proper breath.
Emily followed his path through the tunnels, crawling along the icy trail until she reached the mouth of the same tight tunnel that had trapped him. Her holographic image manifested in front of his face, offering what little comfort she could.
“Now there’s a Kent face,” she said softly.
Noah's face was flushed, his skin tinged violet from the pooling blood in his head and torso. Gravity was against him, and while his cold suit would keep him warm, his trapped position meant his chances for survival were growing slim.
Hours passed as Emily worked tirelessly on a solution, keeping Noah company through her hologram as she calculated rescue attempts on her flexipad’s CAD program. She devised pulley systems and other mechanical contraptions, but each solution seemed doomed to fail. Time was running out, and she had already sent instructions to the ship's fabricator to build the necessary tools, but it would take hours.
Emily tried to keep Noah’s spirits up. "After this, Noah, you and I are gonna go for a few jars," she promised, though the weight of her words felt hollow.
“What about help? Is anyone coming?” Noah's voice trembled with hope.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “The producer is watching everything, but with our AVP under an NDA, there’s no one we can call. Even my flexipad’s locked down. We’re in this alone.”
“He wouldn’t leave me like this, would he?” Noah’s voice was tinged with desperation.
Emily wanted to reassure him, but deep down, she wasn’t sure.
Almost as if in answer, the producer, Huis, messaged Emily on her flexipad. "There’s a note from Huis, Noah!" she said with a glimmer of hope.
Noah tried to make a happy noise, but his position stifled any real response.
Emily read the message aloud. “He says we shouldn’t heat the ice—if we do, it’ll turn into fluoroantimonic acid. It’ll melt anything it touches.” She paused, her voice trembling. “Why weren’t we told about this earlier?”
Her message to Huis went unanswered for a few minutes, then another note arrived. The nearest rescue was 32 hours away, while Noah only had 24 to 28 hours before suffocation or cardiac arrest.
She asked Huis what she was supposed to do, but his final message was simple and cold. "You're already doing it."
Emily kept Noah company for as long as she could, but in the end, there was nothing she could do. After Noah succumbed to his position, Emily returned to the ship. She equipped herself with a heat ray and began burning a path through the frozen structure, heedless of the producer’s warnings about the acidic ice.
Once the path was clear, Emily finally reached the bottom of the dead-end shaft Noah had died for. The source of the glow? An ancient battery-powered vending machine that had once sold contraceptives.
She let out a bitter laugh as she coddled her tea back aboard the ship. The irony was unbearable.