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Unlike the Hail Mary, the Ark Iris was meant to touch ground. It was meant to break through the atmosphere and allow for a second take-off back to Earth once the mission was over with. Extra precautions that they hadn’t even considered when they first sent those three brave astronauts to die for the salvation of humanity.
They were all brave, even if one didn’t want to see it.
Eva Stratt had no business being on this flight. Her time working for the Project was long gone, and she took her sentence in stride. She did what she had to do. There was nothing she regretted about the mission and the steps she took to save the people she loved more than anything.
No, there was one thing she regretted. But if she could turn back time, she’d make the same choice over, and over again.
In a different way, but the choice would remain the same.
A month ago, the Ark Iris had sent two broad radio wave signals to the still-distant Erid, hoping for a response within two to seven days. The first was a simple ping to alert the Eridani of incoming messages. The second conveyed a simple message: “Hello, life of Erid. We are a team of 23 humans hoping to establish friendly relations on your own turf and terms. We are estimated to arrive in the next 30 Earth days. Please respond”. Followed by an approximation of Eridian speech that the best linguists had managed to decipher from Grace’s midi files and dictionary. Friends from Earth.
Two days later, they received a ping back. A sign that their message was received, but the Eridians still had to formulate a response.
Four days after that, there was a second ping, and then-
“Welcome, friends of Erid. We are pleased to establish relations. Continue on your voyage, and we’ll take care of accommodations”
A celebration soon broke out. There were still three weeks to coordinate the arrival and everything related to it, but for the meantime, the crew opened the reserves of alcohol saved for a situation like this.
Inspired by Ilyukhina’s smuggled vodka and Grace’s subsequent partying thanks to it, surely. Grace’s ungraceful time with the alcohol had somehow trickled down the ladder after the files were recovered. Stratt had wished to keep those videos away from the masses to spare him the indignity, but someone had leaked them.
It made the hero of the Earth feel all the more real. A hint of the man beyond the Savior of Stars.
But it wasn’t enough to dismantle the ideal he had become.
Somehow, it just reinforced it.
The Hero of the Earth partied too, and so can you.
—
Eva spent the majority of the next weeks doing the same routine. Daily exercise, mandatory for every crew member. Eating.
Thinking of Grace’s sacrifice and the way Earth has continued on thanks to him. How many people died, but also how many people were saved. How her worst nightmares didn’t come true and human spirit persevered despite everything, just in time for the beetles to arrive.
Thinking of how little time she had left.
Sleeping.
Repeat.
Meanwhile, the communications grew between the crew and Erid the closer they got to the destination. As they approached, the time between sending a message and receiving a response was shortened significantly. They could send a signal and receive a response within 24 hours. Then, within 15. Then, 10. Erid was quickly approaching and the days counted down faster now that everyone had a purpose. They were coordinating movements. That’s also how they found out about the Space Elevator and that touching ground wouldn’t be necessary for the Ark, just docking. The linguists were instrumental for the comms. Every so often, they would receive messages with some English words appended with a text-to-speech, the same way the crew appended theirs with Eridian, but the majority of communication was done through each speaking the language they best handled.
It was made clear that the Eridians had the means to communicate with the crew in full English if needed, but they had gotten into this rhythm. For the crew, it served as a great way to corroborate their knowledge of the language that the eridian engineer and savior Rocky had introduced to Grace, and to untangle what was part of the original pidgin language and what were actual parts of the grammar.
Eva didn’t know if the Eridians also preferred them to speak English for the same reason, but she assumed so.
She doubted they had any way to practice with actual humans after the food in the Hail Mary ran out.
She often wondered if Grace even got to meet the people he helped save.
After docking, she would have to visit his grave.
There was so much she wanted to say.
—
“Hello Ark Iris crew.”
The radio crackled in English.
It was a human voice. Not text-to-speech. Not an advanced model far surpassing the capabilities shown beforehand.
It was an actual human voice.
A voice everyone was intimately familiar with.
Especially Eva Stratt.
“This is Ryland Grace speaking from the ♫♪♪♫♩ control room, copy.”
—
Her routine changed significantly since she received that message.
Daily exercise. Eating.
Writing and rewriting the words she would say to Ryland Grace once she saw him again.
For as much as she had prepared her words for a grave, she was not prepared for the real him. No words were ever enough or correct. No apology was right. She didn’t regret sending him to space, only the how. She regretted not packing more food. She regretted not ensuring that the systems wouldn’t fail and that everyone would wake up.
There was a lot she’d do differently. But she could never apologize for sending their Saving Grace to space.
While the crew got busier by the day, the Iris alive with activity never seen before, everyone checking everything thrice over and speaking through communications daily, Stratt barely left her room.
Writing and rewriting her words for Grace.
Thinking of how little time she had left.
Sleeping.
Repeat.
—
Eva wondered when it was that the crew decided to tell Grace of her involvement in the trip.
She wondered if he even knew the reason for her presence besides the fact she was there.
She wondered how he reacted to the news.
What he said in response.
How he dealt with it on his own time. What emotions reappeared. What he wanted to tell her.
They must have told him at some point, she knew.
Because when the airlock opened,
he wasn’t surprised to see her face.
—
Eva drank her morning coffee.
Since the apocalypse came and went, she’d had to lower her caffeine intake.
There wasn’t much of it to go around.
Coffee became scarce. A highly protected species. There was a time when getting coffee was practically impossible. They weren’t selling it. For once, it seemed like humanity was determined, despite the addiction and millions they would make, to make the coffee reserves last. They couldn’t lose that too.
Eva was glad. But it also meant she had to bid it goodbye.
When the beetles arrived and it became clear what Grace’s plans were, Eva couldn’t help but think of her ever-depleting bag of priceless coffee slowly getting consumed. Of the many plants that no longer got produced, stocked away in the seed reserves hoping for a better time. The starvation. But they still made it work, somehow. There were still enough reserves on Earth to make it work, if enough governments put their minds into it rather than devolve into chaos, and they somehow made it. Astrophage-powered greenhouses. The short-term solution to the food situation, originally under the astrophage breeding grounds in the paved Sahara. It gave back some sense of normalcy.
Many crops were still missing. Most of the crops couldn’t fit the worldwide demand. But it was something. A way to replenish food.
Grace didn’t have that luxury.
She often wondered how thin he’d have to stretch his reserves if he ever wanted to make it to Erid to drop his unlikely friend off.
Even with the untimely death of his crewmates and extra coma slurry, there wouldn’t be enough food for the entire trip. Eva knew it. And if he somehow managed to get there alive, he’d be too sick and without a way to synthesize his nutrients on time.
Dead in one way or the other. A death sentence from the moment she sent him to space.
Still, she’d hoped he’d made it despite all odds.
But now that he was alive, living as best of a life as he could in an alien planet where he could never see sunlight again or eat truly varied meals, she wasn’t sure how to proceed.
“We’ve already begun moving the farms,” a voice cut in. It was an Algerian woman designated as the head of agriculture. Before leaving, they weren’t sure how long they’d be allowed to stay on Erid, but they still brought along crops for the way there. That way, they would always have something to eat. The lady, Dr. Zahira, stared at Eva expectantly.
Eva sipped her coffee.
“We’re going to teach Dr. Grace and the biodome scientists everything that’s necessary to take care of the crops.”
Eva met her eyes.
There was a time she wouldn’t have stood for these cryptic instructions. Where the mere hint of someone trying to move her along would’ve maddened her to no end. There were more important things she had to attend to and these people were just distracting her off her mission.
But that was a long time ago.
She nodded and took another sip of her coffee.
—
It was surprising how easily one got used to being on an alien planet with double the gravity after being so long in space.
When she entered the greenhouse, they were mid-explanation already. She met eyes with the botanist currently doing the explanation, and he continued talking without missing a beat. She slipped into the background, well aware that all the Eridians in the room were well aware of her presence.
But Grace wasn’t, his back to her and taking notes on his ancient computer.
She wondered how long she could remain unseen.
It didn’t last long. The Eridian closest to Grace (how much he’d changed since she last saw him. He appeared to be in his 70s. Much younger than he should be, but much older than she would’ve ever imagined him) froze in place when she entered the room, and the longer she stayed, the more he started swaying from side to side and bouncing from one leg to the other impatiently.
As easily as she recognized Grace’s voice, there was no mistaking the figure of that Eridian for anybody else.
“Sorry,” Grace interrupted the lecture. The botanist stopped in his tracks. “What’s the matter, Ro-”
He followed Rocky’s hand and clicked his mouth shut.
As he turned to the botanist again, his expression softened with a smile. “You continue on with the lecture. My biologists may inform me of everything I need to know later.”
And so, he did.
The man's words fell into the background as Grace slid his laptop into his bag, latched onto his wheelchair. He rolled around, Rocky scuttling beside him.
Without another word, Eva opened the door and let them through before going herself.
—
“Dr. Grace.”
“Eva Stratt.”
Eva tried searching his expression. He had changed so much. The white hair, the lines across his face, his thin skin. Yet he was still wearing the same cardigan he would always wear, now practically threadbare.
“Stratt,” said the text-to-speech voice that Earth was so familiar with by now.
That took her by surprise.
Of course she knew that Rocky had followed them, but she hadn’t expected him to want to talk to her. More just offering Grace support.
She remembered just how much Grace needed support from her and Carl, back in the day. He hadn’t realized, she hoped, just how much effort went into making him comfortable in the mission, while also not letting it show just how important he was to everything. If he knew, he would’ve retreated. Not taken a step forward.
Like how he reacted when he found out about her plan.
“Rocky,” she said. It felt strange not to use a full name or a last name, or even an honorific. It felt more like a nickname, but it would have to do.
Everything grew silent for a moment.
She wondered how far away Rocky could hear his surroundings. Could he hear the conversation going on in the area they had previously left, all the way from inside this conference room, or was it so sound-proof that nothing got out?
“You-” Grace started, then stopped.
Her eyes left the door and focused back on him.
Despite sitting down, and despite being younger than her, for a moment, he felt much taller and older.
Just for a moment.
His expression softened and he looked down. Rocky made a trilling noise, as Grace let his arm fall down the armrest. “You were right.”
Yes.
Yes, she knew she was right.
But the Grace she knew would never have accepted that.
“About- everything. I was a coward.” He rested his head against his backrest, and Rocky started chirping in disagreement.
“No, no! Grace NOT a coward! Grace brave! Since I’ve known you, you were brave!”
He smiled. “I know, Rock.” He wriggled his fingers, and Rocky came closer and sat silent next to him. Despite not knowing eridian body language, Eva was sure he was barely containing himself from telling Grace all about why he was brave. It seemed like a conversation they’d had multiple times before.
“You did what you had to do.” His gaze was lost, nearly clouded over. “I didn’t want to see it.”
She shuddered a breath. Grace snapped back to her. She swallowed, and something built up in her chest, threatening to spill over.
And she laughed.
Her muscles spasmed in a way she wasn’t used to. Her eyes stung and she sniffed as she laughed.
Grace and Rocky didn’t make a sound.
Eva sighed and put a hand on her face.
After all the thinking and imagining, after all the planning she did, she never expected she’d react that way. To anything.
She thought the mission had irreparably changed her.
While the pair was stunned, Eva changed the subject.
“Earth… is much better now. All thanks to you.”
Grace took a bit to respond, but he seemed to shake himself off to respond. “I- well- I mean, it wasn’t just me and- yes, I assumed. I’m glad.” He still sounded a bit airy and baffled.
She shook her head fondly. There was the Grace she knew.
“Rocky understand why you did what you did,” he said from his sitting position. He seemed to shrink even further. “Earth too important. Grace much important too.” After a pause. “Must have been hard to send him, knowing he didn’t want to go.”
‘Must’ve been hard to send him’
“Trying to save the world is hard. There’s things you have to do and put aside how you feel about it.”
Grace furrowed his brows at her, like trying to parse the words she didn’t say.
“You…” he started saying tentatively. “Didn’t… want to send me?”
No. I didn’t. I wanted you to stay. I wanted you to keep helping me earthside and having your company.
You were always the third in line for the mission, and I was praying you would never have to go up there.
Very selfish of me
Instead, Eva said: “I had to. I didn’t factor into the equation. I knew you were the best possible candidate for the mission and that you would do your absolute best and bring results.”
He started flexing his fingers. “Even if I died.”
She didn’t want to do this. She took a deep breath and straightened her back as she felt all her muscles tensing. Rocky tilted up his carapace at her and tapped the ground twice.
“Your face was everywhere,” the words were torn from her. “Dr. and Captain Grace, the savior of Earth. The link of two worlds. The brave volunteer who won despite all odds.”
Grace inhaled sharply.
“They don’t know…”
Eva shook her head. “It would shatter the illusion. Break the cohesion. Earth has a savior, Grace, and it’s you. And no one else was allowed to know what actually happened. How you really got into that mission.”
Statues erected with your face, places renamed after you. Your name plastered everywhere.
The brave volunteer who saved everyone and befriended intelligent extraterrestrial life.
A role model.
“Only I was allowed to know that your sacrifice wasn’t your choice. Your name is everywhere, Grace.”
He put two and two together.
“Oh.”
“Is that not a good thing? People recognize Grace as brave. Grace is great. Very intelligent. Deserves the attention.”
She wet her lips. “Rocky.”
He perked up.
“Do Eridians have the concept of a ghost?”
“No. I know what they are. How are ghosts relevant, question?” he asked with two taps.
“Everywhere you look,” she started slowly. Her throat was dry and she did short breaths. “There’s the face of the man you killed, and no one knows what you did, except for you.”
Rocky’s carapace shifted uncomfortably. His voice, even through the text-to-speech, went grave and slow.
“Feel it should’ve been you in space instead.”
He didn’t tap the ground. It wasn’t a question. He knew.
Eva didn’t respond.
“Rocky sometimes wishes the others were back instead of me.”
Grace was silent looking at this whole interaction until that point. He jolted forward and opened his mouth, but shut it with a quick tap from Rocky.
Surely another conversation that came up a lot before.
“I’m glad I got to meet Grace. I’m glad we solved the problem.” He shook again. “But I hated telling my crew’s families. Horrible. Feeling I could’ve done more. If I knew, I would’ve fix it. But I didn’t know. I was too late. I couldn’t have known.”
Lastly, he stood up.
“Stratt can’t have known what to do.”
She crossed her arms. “I knew it was a possibility. I knew I had to prepare for it, and prepare Grace for it too.”
Grace flinched.
He was always the third in line.
And he only realized it when it was already too late.
“You didn’t want it to happen!” He tapped the ground with many legs.
“But I was ready to do it if needed.”
“Liar,” he nearly… growled, under the text-to-speech. “Stratt is a liar!”
“Woah!” Grace held up both hands, not touching his friend. “Woah, Rocky, calm-”
Rocky’s vents shifted. Eva could practically see steam coming from it. “Grace was a liar too.”
Grace froze in place.
“Grace knew he’d die, he lied. Grace said he made peace with it, he lied. But Grace kept going, because he was brave. He was a liar liar liar. But he was brave.”
The air left Grace at once. “Rock…”
“Stratt a liar too. But brave too. Stratt pushes others away too, question?”
She pursed her lips.
“It had to be done.”
Rocky… laughed?
“All humans are like Grace? Stubborn?”
She was not expecting that, and apparently Grace didn’t either. They both laughed.
“I guess… in a way.”
“I’m glad to meet you again, Ryland.”
“I could say the same, Eva.”