Head Chef Karmella Singleton had spent several months in a mock version of the Destiny’s kitchen during training, and her preparation was paying off. She ducked and dodged around Moon, who was vibrating about the confines of a space that left little room to spare. Trying her best to be nonplussed, the chef gathered ingredients and cutlery, composing the first solid meal for a crew that spent a decade in cryosleep, followed by a blurry week in weightless orbit, and only just felt real gravity of any kind the night before when the Destiny touched down on the surface of Dysnomia. A meal any sooner would have been poorly digested.

“Everyone else is still pretty groggy,” Karmella said, trying to drum up some angst against her intruder. She tapped at a wall panel as she slid past, and music began to play.

“Ooh, classic,” Moon said. The addition of music increased her jubilance.

“It’s not that old.” Karmella began chopping at some vegetables that she’d just retrieved from storage, unlocking the first food smell the kitchen had experienced in a decade, light and fresh and slightly musty in a garden-soil way. Not that I would have noticed back then, but Moon would have; she loved vegetable gardens. Karmella finished with a bell pepper and gestured with her knife. “I’d bet my left tit that you’re over your allowance on coffee.”

“Then you win a tit!” Moon declared cheerfully. “Hiran doesn’t drink it and he gave me his allowance. Don’t you just love coffee?”

Karmella’s attempt at a furrowed frown failed. “Of course. Just make sure you leave some for the rest of us.”

This half-hearted quip slowed Moon for a beat. A joke, I said through the aural implant. The storage inventory system says there is enough dehydrated coffee to last the entire crew for a year.

Moon’s broad smile returned. “I don’t know how you can be so – whatever,” she said, adding the wiggle of the head and half-lift of the shoulders that usually came when her vocabulary fell short. “I mean, for fluff’s sake! We’re on a new planet!”

“Hey, I’m excited. But this here is going to be the first dinner y’all have eaten in a decade. And I have to compete with all the premade garbage. Have you seen the mess hall? It’s covered in ads!”

“Oh, that crud is not as good as your cooking, Karmella,” Moon assured her.

“Thanks,” the chef said halfheartedly. “But they don’t have ads for my cooking. Anyway, my main goal with this first meal is that it stays eaten. New planet or not, people need to stop vomiting up nutrients.”

“Technically, it’s not a mess hall, it’s a cafeteria.” Seamus came into the kitchen and squeezed between the two women. “We’re not all military stock here. And technically, we’re not on a new planet, it’s a moon. And it’s not even a moon of a real planet. Eris is only a dwarf planet.”

Moon leaned in, and whispered loudly. “You do know that doesn’t mean it’s a planet full of short people, don’t you, Seamus?”

Karmella barked a laugh as Seamus’s black face pinched, causing light ridges to cross it. “What?” He looked at the chef and then back at Moon. “Of course I know that!”

She turned up her palms. “Not everyone knows everything.”

Moon had learned the lesson about dwarf planets the hard way, which meant it had stuck with her. She wasn’t bullied in school, or even picked on all that much. For one, she made a lot of friends, and for another, she was bigger than most of the kids in her classes. But once in a while, something would fly so far above her head, not even I could stop it before she revealed a gap in her grasping of a subject. When learning about dwarf planets, she had asked a teacher if there were planets for giant people as well. Like I said, rarely did anyone single her out; but there were times that Moon spilled something too hilarious for children to let go.

Seamus looked at her, brow crinkling, not quite with anger, but more with confusion. He had a way of turning his scowling eyebrows up, one at a time, and with a slight shake of the head, he was suddenly wearing his smooth-talker face. “I know more than most,” he said playfully.

“Like how to fix my oven?” Karmella said.

He angled a frown at the ceiling, aiming for unseen speakers. “Like how terrible this music is.” He turned in both directions, trying to figure out the best route to the microwave/convection unit, but was trapped between the two women, the wall, and the kitchen island. “Can one of you move?”

Karmella angled her body to let him pass. “I still don’t get that part. Why are we stopping at the moon when we could go straight to Eris?”

She hadn’t directed the question anywhere, her eyes on the vegetables she was chopping. Seamus looked at the chef and then at Moon. The three of them swallowed a quiet ignorance.

No one asked me, so I didn’t tell them. Moon had heard the explanation but it’d gone over her head. It was a matter of orbital mechanics. The Destiny’s flight plan meant accelerating past Jupiter, and she needed to slow as she approached Eris. As Dysnomia orbits Eris, it was safer to establish an outer orbit around both. This was not just the Destiny’s path, but the path of the Hope and the Threshold probes that had come before. It was tried and true by the time the Destiny launched.

And besides that, there were readings from Dysnomia that made it almost as interesting as Eris.

“Good morning!” The singing voice of Kitsuma Parker poured into the kitchen. “How are all my lovelies?”

“Hi, Kitsuma!” Moon said, reflecting the newcomer’s positivity.

“Nice to see your classical music made it to the edge of the solar system, Karm.”

The chef’s chopping didn’t lose a beat. “It’s not that old.”

Kitsuma grinned at Moon and tilted her head. “This stuff was out of style before we went to sleep for ten years.”

“Yeah!” Moon said agreeably, though her true opinion was that music from any era had its merits. Whereas most musical acts were staffed by the dozens, or even hundreds, Karmella’s kitchen system was playing works produced by trios and quartets. A throwback to a configuration popular in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Though Karmella dismissed the criticism of her playlist, I could detect her ire. I hinted such to Moon, who changed the subject. “How’s the lab work coming?”

Kitsuma’s smile faltered slightly, then renewed as she waved a hand. “It’s all setup work right now, and Doctor Wang said she doesn’t need my help.” She laughed. “And I can see why – she’s got an army of SoLiS assistants.”

“An army,” Seamus muttered. “There’s only room for one tech, they said. Limited resources, they said. But SoLiS can have as many lab rats as they need.” He looked up at Kitsuma with a flinch. “No offense, mate.”

She grinned. “None taken. I’m only a part-time lab rat. And anyway, my other part is going on an away mission. How exciting is that?”

Moon beamed back at her. “Super fluffing exciting! I’m going too!”

“Really?” Kitsuma swooped in to give Moon a hug, forcing Seamus and Karmella to spare space the kitchen couldn’t afford. “I’m so glad!”

After the embrace ended, Moon looked at Kitsuma thoughtfully. “Kitsuma, you might be the happiest person I’ve ever met.”

“Have you met yourself?” Seamus said, that eyebrow arching. His body language told me he was torn between the enjoyment of joking around with the women and the burden of the long list of work waiting for him.

“Seamus, oven,” Karmella reminded. She put her knife into its sheath, which was affixed to the counter, and turned and went to the back of the room, abandoning her half-chopped vegetables. The storeroom slid open at her voice and she disappeared inside. Kitsuma looked at Moon and Seamus with a shy smile, then lithely danced between them and slipped through the crack of the closing door.

After a moment of silently staring at the closed storeroom, Seamus huffed. “That was weird.”

Even without my help, Moon was pretty good at picking up a spark between people. She grinned and decided to keep it to herself. “People are weird,” she said with a shrug. “Believe me, I know.”

He laughed and shook his head. Then his smile disappeared. “Hey, are you really going onto the surface?”

“Yep.”

He hadn’t known at that point that he would be going as well. Either Moon missed that, or she decided it wasn’t her place to warn him. I wasn’t awake enough to ask her then. “Well, be careful,” Seamus said, turning from her to poke at the panel on the oven. He was mumbling low enough that she wouldn’t have heard him without my ability to enhance the audio. “Things would be … bad … around here. Without you.”

Schedule reminder, I told her as an internal clock struck the hour. You booked time for review of the away team dossiers.

“Oh.” Moon raised her hand to wave at Seamus, though he wasn’t looking at her. “I have prep to do. I better go. See you later!”

#

Moon returned to her quarters to work on crew evaluation. She reviewed dossiers. Tapped into their daily reports and scanned public conversations. It was all data that was accessible through the Mesh. With my help, collated. Analyzed. Patterns identified. She reviewed these things on a small terminal in her quarters. There were no red flags, but there was little to go on. Insufficient data, as Seamus would say.

It should have made Moon nervous, that there were some unknowns about the mental state of the crew about to tread the surface of an alien moon. But she was preoccupied with the thrill of getting to go herself. And back then, I didn’t have the capacity for something like nerves.

Her quarters doubled as a counseling office, and so the room was slightly larger than the others, to accommodate extra furniture. She walked from one end to the other, which still wasn’t more than a few steps.

“Almost time for dinner?” she wondered aloud. Though she tended not to use me as a virtual assistant, some behaviors were as natural as glancing at a watch.

Twenty-five minutes, I said through the aurals. I knew she wasn’t hungry, she was anxious. You haven’t watched the video mail from your parents.

“Oh yeah!”

She tapped at the terminal. There was a section for messages that were sent from outside of the in-ship mail system. Most of them were congratulatory notes, posted a decade previous, sent through space after the crew went into cryo but before the Destiny passed Mars. She viewed almost all of them upon waking, but decided to save the one from her parents for a time when her mental state was a little more stable.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The video filled the small screen. Her mother, Olivia Clay-Jankowsky, sat in the middle of the frame on a stool and waved anxiously. Her father, Jorge Westbrook-Smith, appeared from off-screen and stood next to Olivia, wrapping an arm around her shoulder while she wrapped one around his waist.

Olivia drove the message while Jorge interjected.

Hi, Toby! We miss you already! We’re so proud of you.

- so proud!

and we know this is going to be the biggest thing anyone has ever done.

- That’s right, my October Moonbeam. This is such an amazing mission. We feel so lucky to be a part of it – even if we’re experiencing it vicariously!

*laughter from both*

We just wanted to tell you how amazing you are. You are a remarkable human being, Toby.

- so amazing, so remarkable

Yes, and that crew is lucky to have you. I’m serious, they don’t know how lucky they are.

- And I know what you’re thinking, Moonbeam – I know how much pressure this is. But listen to me: you are qualified, okay? You can do this.

You can do anything!

- And you can do it well. As well as anyone can. It doesn’t matter if—

Moon stopped the video. “I’ll watch this later.”

I never really knew when she was talking to herself or when she was talking to me. She never got the hang of subvocalizing, like some people do to speak to their AIngels privately, so she always spoke aloud. And in a way, I suppose talking to me was a bit like talking to herself, because what was I if not a part of her?

There were other messages waiting for her, more recent. All text, due to the limited bandwidth. As soon as the Destiny had begun the crew-thawing process, it had sent messages back to Earth with an update: everyone was okay. So far. Those messages were propagated to families and friends, cueing them to send updates of their own. Their ten-year summaries, limited to ten kilobytes per message.

Moon had already read the newest messages from home. Either not much had changed, or they had decided to spare her some details. She knew as well as anyone that those letters would be subject to review. To revision. The last thing members of a deep space mission needed to hear were changes from home – whether good or bad news. What they wanted to hear halfway into their twenty-year mission was that everyone at home was sitting around not changing, just waiting for the mission to end and for the crew to return home safely.

And such were the text messages from Olivia and Jorge. The cats were getting on in age, but other than that, nothing had changed in ten years. According to the letter.

There was another letter. Janelle Grensk. It was the only message still marked unread. Grensk was the mother of one of Moon’s previous patients. I had no sense of curiosity back then, but like all artificial intelligences, I had a natural urge for data. I could have asked the mail system to send me those unread bytes through the Mesh, but that’s a thing that only occurs to me now, and never would have then. Instead, I held no opinion on whether she should have read the message, deleted it, or continued to save it for later.

She flipped past those and dug deeper into the messaging system’s history. Back to the saved posts from Captain Striker, during the year-long training that started on Earth and continued on a space station. She opened one that she had opened many times before. It was the one that quoted the message from the Prosperous Hope, purportedly written by Captain Joseph Short himself. As always, she scrolled past Striker’s rhetoric to find those handful of sentences that had traveled the expanse of the solar system to inspire the next mission, the mission that would send her to deep space.

There is life on Eris. Intelligent life. And it is glorious. Send everyone, and spare nothing, for this is the single greatest discovery in the entire history of human existence.

Eris changes everything.

#

September 27, 2236.

Tuesday.

The UES Prosperous Hope had made her landing on Dysnomia before moving on to Eris, that much was obvious. As planned in the original mission, a forward base had been established. Though the Hope was merely a scout ship, it had been equipped with a small number of all-purpose construct-bots. Those had been deployed, and had found lava tubes below the surface. Within, they had been able to construct a small operations center, well-protected from the solar radiation that bombarded the thin atmosphere. However, the communications officers on the Destiny had not been successful in contacting anyone or anything. Scans revealed that something was operational; and yet it seemed that no one was home.

Late into the night, an extravehicular mission was launched. The Destiny had landed close to the tunnels that led to the forward base, but a stretch of jagged, airless surface lay in the path. With EMUs and the help of some bots, a small crew extended a safety tube between the ship and one of the airlocks poking out of the ground. Throughout the night and into the early morning they pressurized and tested, until the tube was declared safe.

The away team assembled in the morning. Aside from Moon, of the United Earth crew it included Captain Christopher Striker, First Officer Christine Perez, and Political Officer Anton Petrov. Miranda Wang joined them, being the lead researcher for Slice of Life Sciences and officially the mission’s Science Director. Kitsuma Parker and Harry Broadtree were acting as their medical officer halves, though there was no doubt Wang would try to squeeze the SoLiS lab contractor side out of them should any research-related opportunities arise. There were three SecTech officers, including Chief Karl Weinhardt, and Security Specialists Sun Park and Daniel Waterstone. Finally, there were the two least qualified personnel for the mission: Sandra Olinsky, who was a correspondent for Earth Information Network, and Information Technology Specialist Seamus O’Dowd.

The dozen assembled in the lower bay, which was a relatively large space but was occupied by a single inert vehicle, a low-gravity hopper about twice the size of an average Earth utility truck. With the conduit in place, they wouldn’t be exposed to the surface, and so light environment suits were all that were necessary for protection, and only in case of an unexpected failure.

“Team.” Striker’s quiet voice killed any murmuring conversation as the crew donned their suits. “This is a monumental occasion. The forward base we’re about to visit was established almost twenty years ago. As you know, we don’t expect to find anyone there, as it seems the crew of the Prosperous Hope have moved on to Eris. However, we do expect to find their data and research. Doctor Wang will not show her excitement, but I believe we’re about to learn a few new secrets of the universe.”

He nodded at his first officer and turned to face the outer hatch. Perez nodded back, then faced the crew, her face drawn tight in comparison to the captain’s impish grin. “Alright people,” she said, her consonants slicing. “Safety check, one more time. Jane? I want to see all these suits light up.”

Jane Kinley, the Chief of the Watch, was standing off to one side tensely waiting for such an order. She had impeccable standards and had already been over the suits thoroughly, long before the team showed up, but she was just as happy to do yet one more check before the mission kicked off.

She triggered the diagnostic routines embedded in each of the protection suits, and through the Mesh I could see them all reporting nominal conditions. Moon’s hands shook slightly, imperceptible to her colleagues. Her adrenaline ran high, and I knew she was working to contain her excitement. She tended to greet new and anxious situations with lots of questions, but she was holding them in for the moment; a desperate attempt to remain respectful and grateful for the opportunity.

Satisfied with the diagnostic results, Perez turned to the hatch and activated the switch beside it. A series of clicks and whirs followed, and rods slid out of their locks. With a tug, she pulled the door open.

The narrow conduit beyond was barely larger than the opening. The tallest of the party, Seamus, had to bow his head slightly under the two meter high ceiling to avoid banging his helmet into the square light fixtures that ran the length of the twisting tube. Moon stepped through second to last, sucking in her breath as she passed from the safety of the ship and into the excitement of the passage. Security Officer Sun Park came last, closing the hatch with a grunt. They could hear the C.O.W. checking the seal from the other side.

There was a sudden silence as the constant background din of the ship was sealed off, causing the entire party to momentarily falter. Moon angled her head around Seamus’s lanky frame to look down the length of the passage. The lighting seemed to do little to help with visibility, creating shadows down the dark length of the tunnel.

Striker moved first, prompting Perez to turn back and wave. “Let’s move it, people,” her voice spiked through the speakers in the suit helmets.

Though the suits were relatively lightweight, especially so in the fractional gravity, they were stiff and travel was slow. After several minutes of tense silence, Striker slid open the reflective face guard.

“Captain, I’d advise against that,” Perez started, but he waved her quiet.

“We pumped the whole tube full of air. It’s fine.” He stopped for a moment and turned back to face them. “Open your faceplates, everyone. I know you can’t tell because we’re stuck in this steel tube, but we’re on the surface of a trans-Neptunian Object right now. Aside from the crew of the Prosperous Hope, no human has ever been here. I want to see your faces.”

Perez went rigid, and through the Mesh I could sense what her AIngel sensed: her heart rate spiked and her skin flushed. She glanced back to the crew, the mirrored surface of her still-closed helmet reflecting mirrors back at her.

A second later, Moon popped hers open.

“Yes!” the captain cried. “Thank you, Counselor. Isn’t that better, Moon?”

Moon paused for a moment, bound by the sudden attention as the others turned their mirror-faces to her. A dark tunnel full of the inhuman sheen of curved-surface-heads, and several meters away, even Captain Striker’s sky blue eyes were eclipsed by shadows.

She swallowed and sucked a breath into her belly. “Yes,” she said, loudly and clearly. “Much better, Captain!”

The mirrors turned and twisted as the rest of the crew looked at each other for support, unable to read each other’s expressions. Seamus slid his faceplate away and grunted. “Better, I guess. Not any less dark though.”

“Also,” Moon whispered to Seamus only, not wanting to derail her captain. “It kind of doesn’t smell good.”

The rest followed, revealing shadowed faces one by one. Striker nodded and smiled in satisfaction, and turned to continue the march.

“This is not advisable,” Karl Weinhardt muttered, loud enough for most to hear him.

Kitsuma Parker — on duty in her medical officer half-role, rather than lab-rat — turned her head to look back at the chief of security. “What? Opening our helmets? It’s the same air we pump through the ship,” she said, chipper as always, but with a tremor of nervousness in her voice.

“The whole thing,” Weinhardt spoke louder. “Going into this dead station. Taking untrained people.”

Untrained in what, he didn’t elaborate on, but most could guess, and looked at each other with wider eyes. Aside from the chief and his two officers, and the ship’s captain and first officer, none of them knew how to handle a weapon. Likewise, only Striker, Perez, and Weinhardt were certified to use extravehicular mobility units; not that there were any close by, except back on the ship and possibly inside the station. Doctor Wang was the only other member of the party to log EVA hours, and that had been a long time ago.

Sandra Olinsky broke the silence. “We’re all trained in dangerous situations. It wasn’t easy to get on the Destiny.” The correspondent glanced at each of the security specialists, the ever-present sidearms. “Besides, if us non-combatants didn’t tag along, who would watch the watchers?”

Weinhardt practically growled. “No one here is a combatant, Ms. Olinsky. We’re just here to make sure everyone is safe.”

The conversation fell flat as the tunnel began a long curve, obscuring the distance beyond the immediate for a few moments. Moon continued to keep the flow of incessant questions bottled up, as much as it killed her. Her mouth tightened into a straight, half-open smile as she gritted her teeth.

After eighteen minutes of mostly-quiet pacing, they came upon the door to the airlock.

“It’s small,” Perez warned. “We’ll have to go through in groups.”

“Can’t we just open up both doors?” Anton Petrov spoke up. “Isn’t it pressurized on both sides?”

“That’s not how a lock works,” she cut, answering the political officer’s question but keeping her eyes on her captain.

Striker nodded. “Fine, fine. How many will it fit?”

“Four.”

He considered for a moment. “Okay, Karl, you’re first,” he said, pointing at Chief Weinhardt. “We’ll take Harry and … you want to go, Anton?”

The political officer stepped back with a blink. “No, thank you.”

“We should take Officer Waterstone,” Weinhardt said, waving the security specialist forward.

“Fine, fine,” Striker said. “Let’s go.”

“Excuse me, Captain,” Perez said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. “I have to insist that you let me go through first. I’ll give the all-clear so you can come through with the second group.”

“Oh, come on, Christine,” he protested. “It’s perfectly safe. It’s a United Earth station!”

“Sir,” she hissed at him, squeezing his arm and leaning close. “Protocol,” she said, barely opening her mouth. “You shouldn’t even be on this away team.”

He rolled his blue eyes. “Away team. It’s practically a hotel.” She opened her mouth wide and he waved her quiet. “Fine, fine. First Officer Perez, you lead the first group through and give us the all-clear.”

Weinhardt looked at Sun Park. “Don’t let anyone through until we say so, Officer.”

“Chief,” they replied with a sharp nod. It was the first word they’d spoken since the away team had assembled. To the others, Park’s pale, rigid face was the picture of composure and focus, but I could detect micromovements belying high levels of anxiety.

For several anxious minutes, Moon and the others waited in the tunnel, listening to the clacking and groaning of machinery as the small airlock door opened, and the first group of four ducked through into the tight, white room, and then the door closed. There was no porthole and no camera, so they continued to listen as the lock sealed and other door eventually opened. Then, almost fifteen minutes of silence, during which Captain Striker periodically tapped his comm and demanded an update from First Officer Perez.

Finally, the all-clear was given. “Captain,” Perez said over the comm as they waited for the lock to reset and the door to open. “It’s a mess in here. Be prepared.”