Growing up, I always struggled to socialize. My family wasn’t from Tryci, the supercity I grew up in; we moved there when I was still only a child. The language was not their first, so I often had to translate for them, being the only one to have grown up around it. They couldn’t get any desirable jobs, so my father ultimately took on the job of being a courier–, transporting cargo between unconnected underground cities, by travelling across the surface. The job had a high mortality rate; over the course of years travelling above ground, invariably couriers would develop some form of radiation disease. Few other options existed for us though, so my father took on the role. I rarely saw him, and so I was usually in the custody of my grandmother, who would regale my young mind with tales of the darkest days, growing up in the decades immediately after the bombs, trying to rebuild.

“You had to always stick with the handful of people you knew you could trust. It was all we had back then… people didn’t care about rebuilding, they just wanted to survive. People robbed and killed each other… you couldn’t avoid it. Sometimes, you had to find any place to sleep, even if it meant being naked in the cold. There were nights… that I thought I wouldn’t wake from. Never take what you have for granted.”

She was always a stickler for being unwasteful; she would always reuse every container no matter how worn down and useless, and when food was burnt or otherwise ruined, she almost always made me eat it anyway. Nothing could go to waste, she always told me, even though the worst was behind us. If history books were anything to go by, the pre-war days were glorious, paradisiacal even. The world we lived in now was a far cry from those days… but we had food, water, and shelter. Even if it wasn’t as nice, it wasn’t like I had ever experienced the old world’s luxuries for myself.

Grandmother was from my mother’s side; Father believed that in my mother’s absence, someone on the other side of the family from him should be present in my upbringing. And besides, someone had to watch me when Father was gone.

One night, Father woke me from my bed. He looked even older than he should have, his work undoubtedly putting its toll on him. Yet he never complained. He told me to quietly get dressed, and not to wake Grandmother. He had something to show me.

I still remember the feeling of the rough wood floor against my scales, slithering across quietly, following his instructions. He brought me out of our dwelling, and to the service elevator that carried his rover. This time, it was empty, as he was not due to go out again for a few days. I wondered why he would want to go outside again; he should try to spend every moment he could underground with us. But, it was nighttime, so perhaps it was okay to visit the surface if only for a moment. He lifted me into the rover’s cargo bay, covering me with a blanket.

“It's cold,” he told me. “Do you trust me?” I nodded my head. He closed the cargo hold with the opaque, hard shell that blotted out any visibility. “Wait in here,” he told me.

I felt the elevator lurch and take us up to the surface. The electric motors of the rover’s wheels turned, and my father drove out into the surface of the world for miles.

Is he taking me to see the surface? I know what it looks like, we took the journey when we first moved here… I wondered to myself. The journey was far too long to just be to see it, he could have just shown me as soon as he drove out of the elevator. I couldn’t tell how long it was, but it felt like hours. I was already drowsy from being woken up, and with the blanket around me, I fell asleep again, hugging my own tail in my arms.

Eventually, the vehicle came to a stop. My father gently roused me from my nap, gently stroking my face. “Hey… we’re here.”

I groaned, my body had finally found some modicum of comfort in the back of the rover, but he was insistent. “Come on Yunda, I didn’t take you all this way just for you to get grumpy on me now. Don’t make me grab you by the tail.”

I took a breath, noting the chill of the air. It was pitch black, only the faint glow of the rover’s cab providing any light. I could just barely make out my father’s dull, keeled scales. I grabbed onto him, and he lifted me out of the cargo hold. He placed me down– loose, unkempt soil beneath my tail as I slithered around the side of the rover, my father’s hand in mine. We were in the middle of nowhere, not even on one of the roads. He leaned into the cab, and shut off the lights. We were left in total darkness.

“Why did you take me here? We’re in the middle of nowhere… and I can’t even see anything! Did you bring a light?” I asked him. Father hushed me, and gently moved me to lay down, my back against the soil.

“Look," he said.

The sky above me was clear, not a trace of smoke or fog or dust. No lights illuminating the area, just total darkness, and the night sky. As my eyes adjusted, I saw it.

“What is this?” I asked him.

“That’s our galaxy. And every single one of those stars? That’s a sun, just like ours. Maybe they even have other worlds there, like ours.”

“Maybe… even… other people, like us?”

My father gently placed his hand on me. “Maybe.” He said.

//////////

My work shift was over, and the commander had encouraged us to unwind and socialize. This was a time for celebration after all; we were on the final part of our journey, and we would be far too busy setting up camp to celebrate once we arrived. I had slipped into a far more comfortable uniform, a soft and loose fabric that covered parts of my tail. It made movement trickier; the soft material against the smooth, hard metal lacked a lot of the friction needed to slither, but after spending so many hours in that reactor corridor, I didn’t care. I just wanted something soft on my scales. Most of the crew were celebrating; flavored drinks and games abound. I spotted Hybeto, playing a card game against Aiyin, and by the looks of it was winning. “What!? There’s no way you had that!” He shouted. Hybeto had that grin he always made when he won. “Cards do not lie, my friend.” “I demand a rematch!” Hybeto shook his head, “Oh don’t be so sore about it. I’ve had enough cards, I think I’m going to go get something to eat.” Hybeto’s eyes lit up as he spotted me, slithering out of the rec room.

“Hey, look who it is!” I rolled my eyes as he called me out. “You’re always playing games,” I told him. “No, no, I pull my weight just as much as anyone! You just don’t ever have any fun!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He was right, honestly. I just didn’t have a lot of friends growing up; I instead elected to bury myself in my research, but it got me here, one of the 252 chosen to go where none had gone before.

“What are you up to, huh? I barely ever see you in casual clothing!”

“I’m going to get something to eat, Hybeto.”

“Me too!” he replied, though of course I already knew. “You eating by yourself?”

I chuckled. “I never said that.” There was that smirk again.

We ended up heading toward the galley together. It was on the other side of the habitat ring, so it would be a ways away regardless. I wouldn’t ever admit it, but I really did enjoy his company. His orange-brown scales reminded me of the soil back home, smooth and uniform; he took pride in his appearance, he told me, and he wore his work gloves and kept his goggles around his neck almost all of the time, even when he wasn't working. "They're distinguished! There's always something that needs fixing, and you never know when you'll be called upon!" His voice repeated in my head. I was pretty sure he just wore them because he thought they looked good on him though.

“Sooo… whats the first thing you’re gonna do?” He asked.

“What?”

“You know, when we get there! What are you gonna do first?”

“Uhh… help set up base camp and get the mini-reactors going?”

“Oh come on Yunda, you know that's not what I meant! When everything is all said and done, when we get everyone down safely, when everything is stable and we have time to enjoy our new world!”

I thought back to my daydreams.

“We aren’t going there to enjoy it. We’re going there to find data on that force from a new vantage point, and be the Plan B if it fails.”

He frowned at that answer. ‘Yunda…”

“Sorry. I uh… I guess I’ll feel what the sun is like when it doesn’t kill you. Yeah, that’s my answer.”

“I want to see the alien life, study it, log it all, I mean, a whole alien ecosystem, completely untouched,” he said, seemingly already in awe. The probe did see birds and fish, presumably there would be so much more.

I snickered. “Isn’t that the biology team’s job?” He turned back to me, “Hey! Come on, I get to be excited too!”

We passed by the hibernation pods as we talked, Crews 1 and 3 in a long nap. Our crew was separated into thirds, with only one active at any given time. This kept the interior space relatively small compared to its population, and prevented anyone from spending too much time awake during the 11-year-long journey.

Hybeto nudged one sleep-pod with his elbow. “Bet it sucks to be those guys, they miss out on the big event when we finally reach orbit!”

We finally reached the galley, and admittedly I was starving. We each punched in our crew codes and received a standard ration; a tasteless and colorless fist-sized slab of synthetic meat, surrounded in a nutrient gel, with calcium powder and a flavor packet off to the side. We sat at a table with our trays, skewering the meat with the included two-pronged utensil. Mixing the gel with the powder and flavored dust, the meal was just edible. What mattered was that it was extremely calorie dense and nutritious.

I swallowed one chunk. “Think we’ll get something real to eat when we land?”

“Pretty sure we’ll have to,” Hybeto replied. “Most of the resources we’ll be relying on will need to be on-site and in-situ, and I imagine the food supply would struggle to feed all of us at once, since we’ll all be awake. Just have to make sure its actually edible.”

“Hope so. I don’t want to eat this stuff for the rest of my life,” I told him.

“What, don’t you know you ought to be grateful?” He said in a mock old-person voice.

“Oh no Hybie, don’t-”

“Why, I remember when we would kill each other over a pail of clean water! No one had pets anymore, because we all had to eat them!”

“Hybie stop, stop, I can’t-” I had to hold back my laughter. “Come on, not while I’m eating.” We both chuckled, but then something odd happened. The food… got heavier. Actually, everything was.

Hybeto noticed it too, he was looking around, confused. “Hey… do you… feel something?”

The gravity was getting harsher… rapidly harsher. And then, suddenly-

BOOM– and we were weightless.

//////////

The lights went out almost immediately. There was confused yelling all throughout as I grasped for something to hold onto, my tail finally wrapping around what I think is one of the table legs. The lights flicker back on to a dim red, but there's still no gravity. A siren blares through the loudspeakers, and everyone is yelling. We exited the galley through zero-g, the emergency handholds thankfully extending out from the walls and floor. The reactor and engine teams were scrambling, trying to figure out what had just happened. I could overhear them, though they weren't exactly being quiet.

"Reactor 2 is unresponsive! Reactor 1 is in a forced shutdown, we are on emergency power!"

"What about the engines!?"

"No response from any of them. All primary power is offline and communications are down. There was a brief deceleration in velocity before a complete shutdown of all engines."

"Exterior sensors are reading heightened radiation levels, cameras are down, we can't see what's outside."

There was some deliberation between them as they debated on what to do. Commander Riys joined them, and issued his verdict.

"We need to send an EVA team out immediately. This may be a time sensitive problem, and we cannot afford to lose time not knowing the full situation. There isn't time for pre-breathing, use the mixed tanks."

//////////

No camera feed was available, emergency power only permitted voice to be transmitted. Four crew members were now making their way across the exterior hull of our ship.

"All personnel have egressed. We're making our way toward the reactor assembly now."

"We can… see a large quantity of liquid vaporizing rapidly, from what appears to be Reactor 2… we are going to have to detour to avoid it. We should have a clearer view soon."

…

"Reactor 2… uhm… Reactor 2 is…"

"Reactor 2 is completely destroyed. There appears to have been a… pressure differential resulting in a rupture inside R2's main coolant tank. Reactor 1 still appears intact, but fuel and coolant is venting out rapidly from the shared tanks."

Riys quickly called on the communicator, "isolate the main tank from R2 immediately. Same for the engines, and keep only enough flowing to sustain R1 in standby mode."

"Copy," came a small voice.

The EVA team spoke up again. "Venting is reducing… the reactor is broken into fragments… most have cleared the work area though. We're going to attempt to get a closer look at the engines."

"... mobile access platform is out of commission. We will have to travel manually."

"Negative," Riys told them. "That's too far to travel."

"Sir, with all due respect, the engines were the first to malfunction. We need to know their current state, if we powered them back on without seeing what damage they may have, then…"

Riys thought for a moment. "Fine… but be careful."

"We will sir."

//////////

We waited for what felt like an eternity. The team did not say much, and nothing could be seen visually until they reached the very aft end of the ship.

A crackle came in as the communicators came back on.

Through the line was what we were all afraid to hear.

IHV-101 has six antimatter-fusion engines. It can still perform its insertion burn with missing engines, it was designed with redundancy after all, that's why it had two reactors. The ship can lose up to two of its engines and still have enough power to decelerate.

The sullen voice on the other side spoke.

"Engines 2, 3, and 5 are irreparably damaged."

We're screwed.