Technology, High Quality
The lights are off when Ava wakes up, emergency ones flickering every so often. Something must have been damaged in the storm. She calmly feels around for her flashlight before going to the cafeteria, yawning and trying to wake up fully so they can repair the ship and set off for home. The others seem to be doing the same as they all meet up in the caf, until they realize that there’s a soft light angling in from nearby.
The door is open.
Not just with the airlock broken or one of the locks disengaged, but the whole door opened to the planet, with leaves and dirt and water making a mess of the ramp like the floor of the clearing outside. Her first instinct is too look around to make sure none of Will and Connor’s favored vermin got in, but they ought to figure out their next steps first.
April and Noah are already there together, and Elsa and Sarah walk in hand in hand. They’ve clearly spent the night together- Ava pretends not to notice that at all. Connor comes next, then will, and finally Crockett, who informs them that Jimmy is doing a ship inspection to find out what all is damaged and how long it’ll take for them to fix it. He doesn’t mention the open door. None of them do. But when Lanik eventually returns, he gives the open door a stern look and pulls it shut before engaging all the locks once more. If he isn’t concerned, then there isn’t a reason for Ava to be. She should relax.
“As you’ve probably noticed, the ship took some damage last night. I’ve delegated you each a handful of tasks so we should be up and running within a couple hours. Check your tablets for details.”
He leaves almost immediately after that, probably to attend to his own tasks, and so Ava is left with the others to determine their jobs. She’s supposed to sweep up all the leaves that seem to have blown all over the ship, so she grabs the broom from the supply closet at the edge of the caf and gets to work. Everyone else carries on with whatever it is they’re supposed to do. It’s a peaceful, if lonely morning spent finding wet leaves pasted to the floor all over and scraping them into her dustpan that fills often. There’s not much going on. Every so often she hears someone- it sounds like Crockett- curse when they touch the exposed wiring while trying to fix something. The ship really did take a ton of damage. Nevertheless, she focuses on her sweeping before she gets around to fixing up the medbay and checking the o2 filters. The oxygen reading on her monitors is fine, which is why she leaves it at low priority until takeoff.
Ava finds him in the lower engines.
On her way through the engine sections to sweep, she thinks it’s just mud. In fact, she’s annoyed she’ll have to mop it up at first, until the light hits it in a way that it gleams dark reddish black, glossy in comparison to the dull floor. Ava sets the broom aside to follow the smear of blood back to its source.
Connor.
Or at least, something that had been Connor at some point, but is now multiple pieces and a mutilated face that suggest he was once a man on their ship who studied fauna with Will, but no longer does much of anything besides lying there with his blue eyes staring out in fear.
The next few moments are a blur. Ava screams and falls to her knees, Connor’s blood making a mess of her spacesuit, until someone arrives and pulls her away from her body. Three sets of arms hold her. Everyone must be in just as much shock as her, but all she can do is stare and try to remember what breathing ought to feel like. Is it supposed to feel like anything at all? Is she breathing? When did she stop? Did she ever start?
“Ava, please, take a deep breath.”
She turns and hides her face against the chest of the person speaking, vibrations soothing against her cheek. She’s fairly certain it’s Sarah. The faint perfume she wears is comforting enough to help her return to normal breathing, or something close enough to it to push back the black vignette on her vision.
“Crockett, help me pick him up,” Lanik instructs. “We’ll bury him outside. Noah, Will, search the ship for anything lurking that could have done this. Kill it if you have to. Sarah-” He pauses and looks at the way Ava is wrapped up in her arms, and then at the clear panic on April’s face. “Okay, uh, Elsa, can you start to clean this up?”
Sarah leads the three of them to the dorms to try and calm down. It’s the first room the boys clear. Ava winds up sandwiched between her and April as she tries to understand what happened. Connor is dead. His blood is still on the knees of her spacesuit and the palms of her hands. It smears on the others’ clothes, on the sheets, on everything. When she tries to push her hair out of her face, it simply leaves more of the mess on her skin.
“It’s alright,” April says. “You’re safe.”
They stay there until Jimmy comes back with dirt all over him and tells them there is to be another meeting in the cafeteria. Both Sarah and April have to practically hold Ava up in the walk there, and they both keep murmuring reassurances until everyone has their seats, one empty. It will always be empty. A sob bubbles up in her throat.
“Will and Noah found nothing on the ship, so Will is checking the vents now.”
No one states the obvious. Will and Connor were closest, so he feels obligated to find whatever was responsible and kill it, and he cannot simply sit around and talk about what’s happened.
“In an abundance of caution, we’ve sealed them off save for the cafeteria entrance until we get the all-clear. I think that whatever it was is gone.” Lanik’s eyes zero in on Ava’s still bloody figure. “Bekker, you should shower when you have the chance. Either way, we’re stranded here for a couple days while we finish up fixing the ship and send a report of Connor’s death back to Earth. I expect everyone to stay calm. The sooner we get home, the sooner we can grieve. He wouldn’t want us stuck here on his account.”
After he adjourns their little meeting, Ava takes the advice on a shower, throwing her suit into the trash chute as opposed to laundry. She never wants to see it again. Let them sort it out back home; her contract is over now anyways, so it doesn’t matter if she’s short a space suit on the laundry cycle. April comes with her, just in case. They both step under the lukewarm spray to get clean, water sluicing over April’s skin and catching the light just so. She is beautiful, Ava realizes. She’s just not Sarah.
“How are you feeling?” April asks.
Her gaze is somewhere around Ava’s left shoulder, but then again it often is, so she doesn’t think anything of it as she gets soap from the dispenser and starts scrubbing the blood out from under her fingernails. The water goes down the drain in a rusty tint.
“I just want to go home.”