Alarms yanked Aiden out of unconsciousness.
A sharp ringing drilled into his ears, then the whole ship bucked under him.
grrrkKrrAAANG!
Heat rolled over his faceplate. Smoke seeped into Aiden's suit filters, harsh enough that his throat still burned when he tried to breathe.
"Khh-khh---..." He coughed until his chest cramped.
Metal groaned somewhere above, uneven and strained, like the hull was twisting under stress. The deck shuddered again, and the sound of it made his stomach knot.
Then the system voice cut through the chaos.
[CRITICAL ALERT]
[REACTOR CONTAINMENT FAILING]
[CORE STABILITY COMPROMISED]
[IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION REQUIRED]
Aiden tried to sit up. Pain spiked through his ribs and shoulders so hard his vision pinched narrow, but he forced his arms to move anyway.
If the ship's core reactor explodes, there would be nothing left to salvage, including him.
He reached the control console and locked both hands on the edge, steadying himself against another tremor.
'Focus!'
Aiden gritted his teeth and forced the thought in like a command and flipped the systems into manual override.
The adaptive flow regulators were still trying to fix the breach on their own, pushing power back and forth in a loop that was making things worse. He immediately shut them down.
The moment he did, the core stopped swinging after false readings. Power spikes flattened. The feedback loop quit amplifying its own errors.
Aiden kept his breathing slow as he isolated the secondary coils, one at a time. Every movement tore at his spine, but he did not rush.
Rather, he focused even more!
Sweat ran into his eyes. His fingers slipped once, and a burst of pain shot up his forearm when he caught himself on the console.
He blinked hard until the screen stopped swimming, then punched in the next command.
The pressure spike dropped, barely within tolerable levels. He reached to his left, wrapped his hand around the red tab, and pulled the mechanical latch release.
The mechanism resisted. Pain shot up his arm, but he leaned his weight into it and forced it to move.
"Guhhh....!!! One more control!"
He slammed his palm down on the final switch.
The alarms cut off mid-tone.
Silence hit like a wall.
Aiden stayed hunched over the console, chest rising fast, waiting for the blast.
Seconds dragged by. Then a full minute.
Nothing happened.
He forced his eyes to the display.
[Energy Levels: Stable]
His lungs finally let go of the tight pressure they had been holding. He exhaled slow, then the relief broke when a cough ripped out of him.
"H-how long..." The words cracked apart as he bent forward, coughing into the helmet, tasting blood when he swallowed.
Smoke still hung in the air, thinner now but stubborn. His eyes watered anyway.
He forced himself upright and stumbled to the nearest display. The readouts lagged, recovery warnings blinking instead of full alerts.
Warped deck plating near the console still radiated heat through his boots.
He pulled up the system logs and found the timestamp.
Forty minutes.
He had been out for a little over forty minutes.
His stomach sank.
Forty minutes was more than enough for things to get worse. The emergency systems would have kept running, draining power with no one to control them.
He checked the remaining power.
Thirty percent.
Seventy percent was gone.
His hand curled into a fist, then he forced it open. Anger would not bring the energy back. He needed to think.
'First, I need to confirm what the hell is going on!'
Aiden pulled a pen from his pocket and let it fall.
It dropped straight down and tapped the deck, then rolled to a stop. No drift. No delay.
Gravity was back.
His suit hissed steadily as it fed him air, calm and even despite the damage. Thin white stress lines spidered across his chest plating, cracks that looked one hit away from splitting, but the seal indicator stayed green.
No leaks.
That eased the tight fear in his chest more than anything else so far.
"Something's wrong here.." The words came out low, almost against his will.
A moment ago, he had been in space. There should have been no weight pressing him into the deck.
He tried to sit fully upright, and pain speared through his ribs again. He hissed through his teeth and swallowed another mouthful of blood.
The suit filtration worked in the background, clearing smoke, fine debris, and chemical residue. He lifted a gloved hand toward the inside of his helmet out of habit, then stopped.
Do not break the seal.
He turned his head toward the ceiling speakers.
"J.E.M, check body vitals.."
Nothing.
Unease tightened. He tried again, louder.
"J.E.M., check my location!"
Still no response.
Cold realization settled in his gut.
His trusted ship AI was down.
"What... the hell is happening...?" he muttered.
He forced his breathing into a count. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow enough to keep panic from stealing his hands.
When the ringing in his ears faded a little, he scanned the control room.
Twisted panels, scattered debris, and a strip of torn wiring that sparked once, then died. Near the wall, half buried under fallen plating, he spotted the med kit.
He dragged himself over, every pull lighting his injured side on fire, and wrenched the kit free. The case snapped open with a sharp click.
Aiden grabbed a shard of reflective glass from a cracked panel and used it as a mirror.
His pupils reacted normally. That helped.
He pressed his fingers into his abdomen and flinched as pain lit up his side. The bruising felt deep, but his breathing stayed steady and nothing inside him felt like it was tearing.
Painful, but the way his body felt told him nothing vital was hit.
'Seems that I'm ok.... No fatal injuries.'
Aiden forced himself upright and started shutting down anything that was not essential. If the power kept draining, then even if he had stopped the reactor from exploding, the ship would still die around him and he would not be able to do anything.
Consoles went dark one by one. He shut down the labs and dropped the lights to emergency power. He wanted to save as much power as he could.
The ship grew quieter with each cut, until only the reactor's low vibration remained under the deck.
Aiden limped toward reactor containment. His steps were uneven, and he had to catch the wall twice.
He stopped in front of the secondary mechanical cutoff.
This cutoff was only used when the reactor could not be controlled by the ship's software anymore.
Aiden grabbed the lever with both hands and pulled.
It fought him for a second, then snapped into place with a heavy clunk.
The reactor stayed steady. There wasn't any power surges nor any abnormal spikes. Just the same low thrum under the deck.
He still did not trust it.
He moved to the manual suppressant canister on the wall. He gripped the handle, yanked the pin, and triggered it.
A sharp hiss filled the compartment as suppressant sprayed out. Cold rolled over his boots, and the remaining flames died almost at once.
Sparks died out and the sound of burning metal faded. The heat dropped so fast he could feel it even through the suit.
Aiden stood still and listened. The ship no longer sounded like it was breaking apart.
Only then did the adrenaline leave him.
His legs trembled. His arms felt hollow. Pain and exhaustion rushed in all at once, and his body finally called in the debt.
He leaned against the cold wall, but it did not help. His strength slipped away anyway.
Aiden slid down the metal and ended up seated on the floor, breathing hard.
"Sh..it.."
The edges of his vision blurred. His head dipped forward, and even as he fought it, the darkness took him again.
******
Aiden woke to silence.
Not the normal quiet of a ship at rest. This silence felt heavy, like something was missing.
No alarms. No vibration. No warning lights. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing inside the helmet.
He couldn't really bother checking his vitals right now. If he was awake, he was alive.
Aiden wanted to address his situation first.
He pulled up the internal timestamp.
Two days.
Two full days gone.
Fear settled in his chest. Too much could have failed in that time.
He pushed it down and went for the simplest fix first.
"J.E.M., boot."
No response.
"Damn it!"
Most of the ship ran through J.E.M. Doors. Sensors. Internal controls. Automated checks that kept the wreck from becoming a coffin.
Manual overrides existed, but they were too much of a hassle, and his body was not in shape to babysit a dying ship for long.
He forced himself to move anyway.
Aiden opened a panel and rerouted power by hand. His fingers fumbled over exposed connections, shaking from pain and fatigue.
After a few failed tries, he grabbed a spare battery pack and jammed it into the AI port. It clicked into place with more force than care, and he shoved it until it seated properly.
The display sputtered, flickered, and lit up.
[ENVIRONMENT STATUS: UNKNOWN]
[POWER LEVEL: CRITICAL]
[PROTOCOL ACCESS: RESTRICTED]
The screen dimmed, flickered once, then went dark again.
Aiden pulled his hand back and swore under his breath.
Whatever state J.E.M. was in, it was not enough to help him. Waiting for recovery was gambling with time he did not have.
He shifted to the communications panel and slowly brought it online.
The comms system was built to reach across deep space. Right now, it was his only way to find anyone to communicate to.
He sent a wide distress call first, blasting it in every direction the damaged system could handle.
"Huh? No response....?"
He tightened the signal into a narrow beam and sent it again. Then again, careful not to overload the panel.
Still nothing.
As a last measure, he activated the emergency ping, a priority beacon meant to demand attention from anything capable of receiving it.
The panel stayed silent.
[NO SIGNAL DETECTED]
Aiden stared at the message until his eyebrows creased into a deep frown.
That result doesn't make sense. This system was built to send or receive communication across several light-years. In all his training, it had never returned nothing.
Before he could delve to it deeper.....
His stomach growled, loud in the quiet room.
He winced, then let out a slow breath. He had not eaten since before the crash, and his body was done pretending it could run on fumes.
His head felt heavy. His hands were still shaking, even when he tried to still them.
He pushed himself up and half walked, half dragged his way to a storage locker.
Pain flared along his ribs with every step, and he had to lean into the wall to keep from tipping over. When he forced the locker open, he found intact rations shoved behind a bent panel, still sealed and marked safe.
Relief hit hard enough that his shoulders sagged.
He tore one open and squeezed the nutrient paste into his mouth. Thick, bitter, and meant to be efficient.
He swallowed it in one go.
He grabbed three more and shoved them into his pocket. If he had to move later, he might not have the strength to come back.
Then he slid down the wall and sat, letting the cold metal hold him up.
The control room was a mess. Cracked panels. Dead screens. Wires hanging loose. The air still carried a faint smell of smoke and overheated metal.
He opened another tube and ate slower, eyes tracking the damage like it might finally explain itself.
When the worst of the hunger eased, he forced his thoughts into simple steps.
- Assess external conditions.
- Understand what happened.
- Decide what comes next.
It was not a perfect plan but at least there was one. Especially at how wrecked he was currently feeling right now. There wasn't much leeway to do anything.
His gaze shifted to the viewport.
It was a reinforced viewing port with an armored shutter meant to seal the glass completely. The shutter was damaged now, cracked along one edge and jammed in its frame, stuck between open and closed.
Aiden reached for the handle and pulled.
The metal refused to move. It scraped loud, and pain shot through his shoulder hard enough to make him grit his teeth.
He planted his feet, braced his forearm against the frame, and leaned in with his weight.
"Haah... ahhhh... haaaa..."
The shutter finally gave.
It lurched forward with a harsh grind, and Aiden stumbled into the frame, catching himself with his forearm. His muscles shook from the effort, and the pain stayed as a deep throb that refused to fade.
Light spilled in through the opening, brighter than he expected.
He forced the shutter wider, just enough to see outside, and squinted while his eyes adjusted.
His first instinct was to scan for drifting debris, a nearby star, anything that matched the last thing he remembered.
He froze.
There was no space beyond the hull.
No endless black. No scattered stars. No pale sunlight cutting across wreckage.
There was actually..... an open sky?
A wide landscape stretched beyond the ship, dark and quiet under the night sky. The ground rolled away in uneven waves, covered in grass and unfamiliar plants that blended together in the low light.
Trees spread across the distance in strange shapes. Where moonlight touched them, their surfaces did not look like bark. What kind of tree was that?
Some stood stiff and stacked, almost like thick plates piled on top of each other. Others bent and twisted at angles that made his eyes feel wrong just looking at them.
Aiden stared through the port, trying to make sense of it.
Well, he could really make sense of anything at all!
Slowly, he lifted his gaze higher.
Two moons hung above the landscape.
One was pale and farther out. The other was larger and tinted with color, both too clear and too close for his brain to even process it as mere illusion.
Behind him, the ship creaked as cooling metal settled under stress. The sound was quiet, almost small, compared to the open world outside.
Aiden swallowed, his throat tight.
"This... where the hell am I?"