I didn’t land gracefully on the other side. I slammed chest first into the wall, the air driven out of my lungs in a pained grunt. Fear and adrenaline held me to the wall while I scratched at the hard stone for a hand or foothold. But the stone was smooth and the outer layers of my suit couldn't find purchase.

I slid lower and lower until I hung by my fingertips and a single tiny outcropping big enough for the tip of my boot. My whole body shook and I could feel the sweat coating my hands. This was it, the next moment would bring the final slip and the darkness would swallow me up. At least that final moment when I hit the ground and burst like a bug hitting a windshield would be quick.

“Euclid? Can you hear me?”

Ai’s voice nearly dropped me from the ledge. I struggled up an inch with my hands but while that made their grip stronger, it gave me less pressure to put on my foot, weakening that hold.

“Ai?” I grunted as much as said. “Kinda busy here.”

“Oh man kid, you are in a pickle,” Cyrus said, his signal spotty and full of static.

“Yep,” I said, trying to hide the note of panic in my voice as my fingers threatened to give out. I closed my eyes and just tried to breathe and think of a way up and out. But all that came to mind now were the things I wanted to say to Ai.

I searched blindly with my free foot for a better rock to push off of. I had to stretch to my limit to find anything with any grip. There was something that jutted out below and gave me a place where I could hang on for a few moments to rest.

“Guys?” I said, knowing this moment’s peace wouldn’t last, my body already straining with the stretch of trying to hold the odd position.

“Yes?”

“What’s up kid?”

“I just…” I said, cursing my brain for fumbling for words now that I had people to say them to. “If I don’t get out of this, if I fall… I just want you to know tha-“

“Stop.”

Ai’s voice cut me off completely. She had never done that with me before. I thought I could even hear the surprise in Cyrus’ silence.

“Euclid, don’t you dare say another word. I will not give you the excuse of saying some last words to me so that you can give up. If you have something to say to me, you climb up and you say them with your feet planted on solid ground.”

Her words hit me, shocked me. It was like a fire lit in my chest.

“Do you understand me?” She asked, that same fire in her voice.

“Yes.”

“Good. Now get up.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that.

I searched with my hands for another place to hold onto, leaning out farther than I had been brave enough to do before. I found the edges of my courage and at the very trembling limit of my reach there was one place where the rock formed a lip that I could hold onto with confidence. The only problem was that I could only feel it with my smallest finger from where I was. I would have to step off of my foothold to really grab it.

I took a deep breath and centered my mind on the words I wanted to say to Ai. And then I jumped.

A moment later, with the suit’s help I had pulled myself to the top of the ledge and stood on solid ground. I started to walk out of the cave into the new day’s light.

“Ai?”

“Yes, Euclid?”

Words left me again. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say. It was that there was too much to say. It felt like it was all building up in my chest and all of it too big to come out of my mouth. Finally I settled for something that wasn’t enough but it was the best I could do just then.

“Thank you.”

I never ceased to be impressed with the degree of emotion her algorithms allowed her to express. I knew she understood.

“You’re welcome.”

As I stepped out into the dim light of day I could barely believe I was really standing there, that I’d survived. And then I realized what that meant. I’d survived that danger. Now I had to move on to dealing with the next problem. Of course I had to face it after a sleepless night.

“Ai, how far is it to the next stop.”

“There is no next stop.”

That made me pause.

“What do you mean?”

“Your underground path has taken you far from where you initially fell in.”

“Kid, you’re practically there,” Cyrus chimed in.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. At your best sustainable pace, you should be able to reach the ship in just under half an hour. If you wish to go slower though, you could. You have ten hours until dark.”

“Oh. Wow, which way?”

An arrow appeared on my H.U.D. as soon as I asked.

“You won’t need that for long,” Cyrus said. I wasn’t sure what he meant but I figured I’d find out soon enough.

The cave’s mouth let out in a small valley that made it difficult to see out of. The path Ai had me on made me double back over the cave’s entrance and as soon as I came over the ridge I knew what Cyrus was talking about.

Despite the miles between me and my destination, from the top of the small hill, I could see the ship I was going to. It jutted out from the ground like a small mountain. The ship had come in hard and it was so large that it was clearly never meant to land or be in any planet's atmosphere. It was a mining ship, designed to break down asteroids and orbit moons. Despite all that, it had held together on impact remarkably well.

I knew that ship. And seeing it made me consider going back into the cave and jumping into that pit to avoid going to it.

That ship was the Reliant.

That was the ship that had brought me here.

Pieces fell into place in my head. It was no coincidence that I had found people I knew down in those caves. I had assumed they’d escaped on pods much as I had. That was still somewhat possible but they’d been able to stay much closer to the Reliant. They might have ejected later than I did. Or they just survived the crash.

But knowing that only raised further questions. The biggest and most obvious being, why go to a cave hours away and set up a camp there when there was a perfectly good ship to live in? They had chosen to leave the Reliant and everything it offered. I was sure they’d gotten stuck in the cave and that they probably hadn’t intended to live there permanently. But why go there at all?

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The people I’d found only made up about a tenth of the crew of the Reliant. Had more survived? Were they still at the ship? Did they force Joe and Tammy and the rest to leave for some reason? Maybe there was a food shortage or some other need to leave.

There was only one way to find out. I had to go there and see for myself. I had to go back to the only real home I’d ever known and see it broken and destroyed.

“Ai. Do you know what ship that is?” I asked. My voice sounded tired, so tired. It wasn’t the lack of sleep.

“No. I was unable to discern much about the ship besides its location. It was too far for my scans to be able to find out more. Why?”

I debated telling her. She probably deserved to know. The simple fact that Cyrus was being quiet told me that he was curious too. But I didn’t want to tell them. And I didn’t have to. They didn’t know exactly what I’d seen down in the caves. I didn’t have to talk about it. They didn’t need to know how afraid I was to find Rip there.

“I was just curious. Hoped you’d been able to find out more.”

“Sadly I could not. I’m sorry.”

There was something in her voice that made me think that maybe she knew more than she was letting on. But to find out, I’d have to tell her the truth. And I just wasn’t ready to do that yet.

That walk was too long and not long enough. The ship grew with every step, filling my head as much as it filled my vision. By the time its shadow fell on me, it felt as though I was carrying the weight of the entire thing on my shoulders.

“That’s an awful lot of ship,” Cyrus said as I came to stand near the ship. I felt like an ant standing next to a mansion. I wasn’t meant to stand before something this big.

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever searched anything this big before.”

“Once you’re inside, I should be able to access it for a map if there’s any way to restore power to some of the systems,” Ai said.

I probably should have told her that I knew this ship well and it wasn’t needed. But the words stuck in my mouth.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Maybe I can heat up a room to sleep in too.”

“Gotta figure out how to get in first though,” Cyrus said. I looked over the enormous mass of metal and had to agree. It wasn’t going to be terribly easy.

The Reliant had always reminded me of something like a giant castle in space. It had a blocky, wide base. From that base four towers rose up, though now they just stuck out towards the sky at an angle. Attached to that base by spokes there had been a large ring that encircled the entire structure. It had looked like a cartwheel from the right angle.

Much of that outer ring had been torn away and one of the towers was simply gone. The others were damaged too, though how it had occurred was a mystery to me. It looked as though something with claws the size of small buildings had torn into them, exposing the rooms within. One of the two towers that was still there was only partially standing upright. One of the “claw marks” had cut so deep into it that it had caused the rest of the tower to tilt and fall on its side. It looked like a giant’s elbow joint.

That actually presented an option for me. I could walk up the side of that fallen piece of the tower and get in from there. The only other option I could see would be trying to get in through the base but the damage that far down seemed to be pretty much catastrophic. Which made sense. It had landed on that part.

The more I looked the more walking up the tower seemed like my best option. The more I looked, the harder it was to pretend I’d never seen this place before. It was like breaking into your own home.

Resolved, I set off at a jog towards the point where the tower met the ground. It had smashed through the permafrost and into the dirt and stone beneath like a giant’s shovel. Since then though, snowfall had covered much of what it exposed but the ground around it had been torn up and pieces had flown far enough to make the walk treacherous as I drew close.

Climbing onto and up the tower proved more difficult than I’d expected. I hadn’t accounted for the ice that built up on the tower from snowfall. It left the entire structure covered in a slick coating that was rough and uneven where it was visible at all. It was possible to walk up it but it was going to be a long walk and if I slipped, I would slide back all the way down. Assuming I didn’t go over a side and drop a few hundred feet first.

The tower had bent when it fell, so the first half or so of the walk upward was at a somewhat gentle incline. I still had to be careful about my footing but it wasn’t so bad. The second half was at a sharper angle. I had to make my way up using both my hands and feet, the was a combination of a climb and a crawl. It was a torturously slow process.

About halfway up I trusted the wrong foothold too long and one foot slipped out from under me. My hands slipped a second later and I found myself gliding down the side of the tower. I felt like a waterbug with my arms and legs thrust out at angles, afraid to move and turn my glide into a full on fall. My foot bumped over a ridge as I went and I lost my precarious balance. My face bounced off the ice but I was able to get my hands around the same projection that had bumped my foot and keep myself from falling any farther.

After that I went even slower, my exhausted brain falling into a patient rhythm of moving one hand and then one foot, inching up the side of the tower like the world's biggest spider. At least I hoped to God there wasn’t a spider bigger than me on this planet. I made it to the top without any other incidents other than the thousands of imaginary ones that crashed through my brain the entire time I was climbing.

I reached the edge where the tower was broken and grabbed onto it. I pulled my head just over the edge and peaked down. It wasn’t a long drop. So long as I didn’t miss and fall off the tower completely. Then it would be a very, very long drop.

“Why are there so many chances to fall to my death on this stupid planet?”

“You’re just that lucky. I suppose,” Cyrus answered.

“Oh. Right. You can hear me.”

“Yep. All your grunting is kind of getting on my nerves though. You should go back to the crying. That kinda got to be like white noise after a while.”

“I hate you.”

Cyrus just laughed.

I turned myself around so that I could drop feet first over the ledge and lowered my hips over the edge. I hung there for a moment wishing I could see out of my feet, so I could drop with a little more idea of where I was going to land. Then I shimmied down a little further until just my upper chest hung on the lip. If I could just get to where I was hanging by my hands I’d be fine.

Of course, I moved an inch and fell. There was a weightless moment of pure hell before I hit the ground screaming. Then I was sliding and flailing, no idea where I was going. I went over a ledge and that was it. I was going to die.

I didn’t die. You might not know it from the way I screamed. There was a hole in the floor that I fell through and instead of going over the edge of the ship and falling to my quick, splattery death, I just fell down to the next floor, perfectly safe.

I lay there, snowflakes drifting lazily down onto my visor. The quiet was disturbed by the obviously recorded sound of someone screaming. Cyrus was kind enough to hold his laughter back to merely choked chuckles until the third time he played back my high pitched terror noises for me. With a sigh and a groan I sat up.

“Cyrus, if I’d died, you would have recorded my death just now,”

“Yes.”

“You knew that was a possibility when you started recording.”

“Also yes.”

“And you did that just for the opportunity to make fun of me.”

“Are you going somewhere with this or…?”

“You’re kind of an asshole.”

“I mean…”

He played my scream again.

“You’re not wrong.”

“Remind me again why I’m saving your life?”

There was a long moment of utter silence.

“Because you’re a good person.”

I grumbled.

“Euclid is a very good person,” Ai interjected.

I stood, brushed a few bits of loose ice and snow off of myself, and moved towards the stairwell.

“Thanks, Ai.”

“Of course.”

One more repetition of my scream followed me as I descended the stairs. Cyrus’ uncontainable laughter mostly drowned it out though.

It was terribly dark inside that stairwell. There had been an elevator as well, but without power it was useless. And that was assuming it wasn’t in the part of the tower that was laying on the ground outside. I supposed I could have gotten into the shaft but that would only have speeded up a journey I wasn’t sure I wanted to be taking at all.

Just have to get to the hanger, I told myself. I had to hope that I wouldn’t have to deal with too many dead bodies. That was one advantage of my time in the stairwell. It was meant only for emergencies and although there had been a very serious emergency, it just wasn’t all that likely that I was going to find any dead bodies of people I knew here. Although if I was lucky, the crew would have dealt with the dead before they holed up in that cave.

God, that was a morbid thought. On the one hand, I don’t think I’d have wished that duty on anyone. On the other, if it meant I didn’t have to have it myself…

For a moment I was back in that cave, surrounded by the dead. I needed to get back there, to bury them, to hide the ghosts. But first things first.

I tried to list out the things I needed to do now that I had made it here to keep my mind off of things.

I needed to get to the hanger and see what condition the ships there were in. If they were flyable I needed to find a way to get them out of the hanger. It would be fairly easy if I was able to get power restored to even a small part of the ship, but that was a questionable feat. Potentially possible for sure, depending on the condition of the ship’s power core.

But then, if the ship’s power worked there was no way that the crew would have abandoned the ship, so that made it much less likely. Assuming there wasn’t some other factor I was missing. But it was better to assume that there was such a factor.

Still, as I descended the stairs I was surprised to find that I wasn’t afraid. I had no reason to be and yet a certain dread still haunted the edges of my mind. I didn’t want to see more bodies of friends. I didn’t want to find Rip here, cold and empty.

But I wasn’t afraid of it. I knew Cyrus and Ai were with me. I had something growing inside me that gave me courage.

I wasn’t alone.

It wasn’t simply that I could talk to them now. I felt that I could walk into this place knowing that they were behind me. When it had come down to just my strength alone in that cave, they’d believed in me. If Ai and Cyrus believed I could do this, maybe, just maybe, I could rise above who I had always been. Maybe by stepping into this place I could be someone better.

A Euclid that I could believe in was down there in the darkness. I just had to find him.