“Eagle, this is Ganymede. I repeat. This is satellite pod Ganymede…”

 

Radio silence. 1133 days lost in space with only the pinpricks of faraway stars as a guide home.

 

“They can’t hear you,” Brison said.

 

She watched as Watson snatched a handhold by the communications panel and pushed through null g to the pod’s secondary chamber. He slid into the aft deck like a plane making its final descent, meeting her where she’d nestled into the closest bunk beyond the emergency airlock.

 

“You’re awake,” he said. “Welcome back.”

 

She lifted her eyes and winced at Watson’s disintegrating physique. His muscle mass had been nearly halved, bones bulging through joints. It disturbed her more than she cared to admit. Even the dark rings under his crystalline eyes now rivaled those of Saturn — their former destination. He’d been keeping watch for over a hundred days now. That kind of isolation affected even the most resilient of travelers.

 

“If the Eagle hasn’t responded by now, it’s not going to,” she reiterated.

 

Watson offered a milquetoast grin.

 

“But HQ’s maps are still running,” he replied, “which means there’s still power. If we keep pinging, they’ll eventually spot us.”

 

Eternal optimism — one of the many reasons she’d chosen Watson as her co-pilot. It balanced her natural need for pragmatism.

 

“Whatever hit the Eagle’s reactor evaded radar,” Brison answered. “It shot through the hull like a—”

 

“Ghost?” Watson interrupted. “Yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact we left everyone to die.”

 

Brison winced harder. She knew how ugly their departure from the Eagle seemed from an outside perspective, but she’d ignored it until now, chalked it up to coincidence. Cryo helped.

 

“The asteroid ice fields needed management. We had orders to leave, Watson,” she snapped. “We did nothing wrong.”

 

Had, she thought. Past tense.

 

Watson sighed and swiveled away, so Brison divided her attention as well. She activated her control device and began scrolling through the Ganymede’s digital manifest.

 

“Dwindling food storage. Water reclamation’s struggling. Oxygen’s half capacity. This isn’t good,” she said.

 

Watson’s attention returned to her, mild fear hidden in his stare.

 

“We have enough for three months. Six if we interval cryo,” he answered.

 

She blipped the manifest shut and dropped her bleary eyes. Her own legs were now presenting the first signs of atrophy, which came as no surprise. Months of cryosleep meant no calisthenics — no routine — and she was paying for it in the form of persistent aches riding her sciatic nerve like a riptide.

 

“I know we’re in deep,” his voice quivered, “but if anyone’s out there, we need to find them.”

 

All Brison could manage was a nod.

 

1133 days, she thought. How many more before they starved? Suffocated? Went insane?

 

As if on cue, the flight deck’s communications panel sirened. She caught a glimpse of Watson’s momentary excitement before he pushed away into the cockpit, tapping a series of monitors as he passed. Brison followed.

 

Together, they watched the monitor’s download meter dissolve into a low-resolution image of a disheveled man blotting a coagulated gash along his jawline. The backdrop, Brison noticed, was a chaotic version of the Eagle’s Laboratory Division. Tipped storage bins and unconscious bodies cluttered the room, all washed in malfunctioning overhead fluorescence.

 

“Ganymede,” the man whispered. “This is Dr. Leonard Verdal, Chief Biologist of the Eagle. Destination Mars. I—”

 

The screen glitched. Daggers of static ripped through its pixels. When the feed returned, the storage bins had shifted. Fresh smears of gore rotated along the opposite wall.

 

“—outnumbered! Earth’s incommunicado. They travel waves! Kill your radio! I repeat. Kill the—”

 

Verdal’s final grunts were accompanied by a violent cracking sound, followed by a blur of movement. He screamed a string of indecipherable words before the feed’s audio abruptly cut out. A tornado of black rope-like tendrils windmilled into view, flickering faster than the camera could capture. By the time they disappeared, Verdal had been sliced into a bundle of neat segments, scattered and floating in null g.

 

Fear erupted in her like a bad chemical reaction, made worse by a sudden and unbearable shriek filtering through the pod’s overhead speakers. She ground her teeth and plugged her ears to offset the pain.

 

“Watson?” she called. “Watson! Where are you?”

 

Brison bounced expertly off the nearest wall as the pod’s computer systems squelched the noise. She uncovered her ears and heard Watson’s heavy breathing as he drifted farther into the secondary pod, an eerie disillusioned stare plastered on his face. Outside, the canvas of lonely stars roiled and danced around them.

 

When the convulsions began, Watson thrashed and clawed. Brison held him tightly in her arms until she couldn’t. Each spell grew more violent until he eventually settled, emitting an inhuman whine. The lids of his eyes opened into slits, enough for Brison to jerk away with a violent gasp.

 

“Watson,” she whispered. “No.”

 

He turned to the sound of her voice, black tendrils now windmilling outward from the blues of his exposed irises.

 

“Found you,” he hissed.

 

The voice wasn’t his.

 

She yelped, reacting with a hard kick to Watson’s gut. It sent him streaking into the empty airlock with enough time to swim for its adjacent manual override. He gathered and leapt for the hatch, but Brison snapped the door closed with a final clunk of pressurized vapor, sealing Watson inside.

 

“Ganymede,” Watson groaned. “Found you.”

 

Miniature tendrils erupted from Watson’s pores, eyes now dripping in ink.

 

“I’m…” Brison whispered, “…sorry.”

 

She slammed her fist into the outer door release and watched the mechanism slide open. It whooshed Watson’s tentacled body into the void. Hot tears forced her to look away.

 

A new cacophony of throbbing static caught her attention, then another bout of interminable shrieking. By the time her brain could process its origin point, it was already too late.

 

“The radio!” she gasped.

 

Something foreign wriggled deep inside the base of her throat.

 

Ganymede, it groaned. Found you.