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Chapter 4 - The Will to Survive

The ship hummed quietly as the crew finished another system check, the emptiness of space pressing softly against the hull.

Ren let out a frustrated groan, kicking lightly at a panel near her seat. "We don't have anything to mine ice. How are we supposed to get water if we can't even break off a chunk to melt?"

Elan glanced back, raising an eyebrow. "Calm down, Ren. We'll figure it out."

"I am calm," she replied, arms crossed, glaring out at the drifting stars.

Max tapped a finger against the console, eyes lighting up. "What if we go to a rocky dwarf planet, or even a large asteroid, and gather materials to make some basic rock tools? Then we can mine some ice and get H2O—"

"SEE! HE'S ANNOYING! HE'S SAYING H2O JUST TO ANNOY ME! WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SAY WATER?! WATER!" Ren said angr— calmly, her eyes blazing as she pointed at Max.

Max blinked, then smirked. "Water, then."

Elan chuckled softly, shaking his head. "If it makes you feel better, Ren, he's been like this since Earth."

Ren huffed, looking away, but a grin twitched at the edge of her lips. "Fine. But we better find something soon."

Max turned back to the console, marking scan zones on the star map. "We will. It's time we stop drifting and start gathering what we need to survive."

Outside, the stars continued to drift past as the crew prepared for their next step: finding a rocky world to build what they needed to keep moving forward.

Elan leaned back against the console, stretching his arms before glancing at the siblings. "Oh, well, I've been thinking… what are your names? We've been calling you 'hey' and 'you' for days now."

The girl blinked before letting out a small laugh. "Did we forget to introduce ourselves?"

She straightened, brushing back her hair. "My name's Shizuka Tanaka."

The boy nodded beside her. "And I'm Kenta Tanaka."

Elan repeated their names softly, committing them to memory. "Shizuka and Kenta. Got it."

Shizuka glanced at her brother before looking back at Elan, her expression turning serious. "So, what I was talking about earlier… We should leave the spacecraft Kenta and I came in. It's hard to maintain two ships, and it's wasting Fluxine we can't afford to lose."

Max looked up from the console, nodding thoughtfully. "She's right. Two ships mean double the fuel management, double the maintenance, and more points of failure."

Ren crossed her arms, sighing. "Yeah, but it also means less space for us to spread out."

Shizuka smiled faintly. "It's fine. We'd rather be cramped and alive."

Elan nodded, the hum of the engines filling the small silence that followed. "Alright. We'll anchor your ship to ours and drain what Fluxine we can into the main tanks before shutting it down."

Outside, the quiet stars continued to drift past, while inside, the Tanaka siblings took one last glance toward the small craft that had carried them this far, ready to leave it behind in the void as they moved forward together.

The crew moved through the narrow docking corridor, connecting hoses between the Tanaka siblings' small craft and the main ship. The soft hiss of pressurization and the quiet vibration of pumps filled the silence as they drained every drop of usable Fluxine from the abandoned ship.

Ren leaned against the cold metal wall, arms crossed, eyes distant. "How many days has it been since we left Earth?" Her voice cracked with a small, exhausted laugh that quickly turned into a quiet sob. "Why did this happen to us?"

Elan paused, looking over at her. The pumps continued their steady hum, the only reminder that they were still moving forward.

Ren wiped her eyes roughly, trying to pull herself together. "On the first day when we left, we had, what, a month and a week of fuel, right? Now… how many days do we have left, including the fuel from Shizuka and Kenta's ship?"

Max glanced at the console, watching the readout slowly increase as the last of the Fluxine transferred. "We've been drifting for twelve days."

He tapped a few buttons, calculating, the numbers reflecting in his tired eyes. "With what we've gathered, we're back to about twenty-eight days of fuel, maybe thirty if we keep low thrust and drift as much as we can."

Ren sighed, pressing her forehead against the cold wall, tears drying on her cheeks. "Thirty days to find something… somewhere."

Elan placed a hand on her shoulder, grounding her gently. "That's thirty days more than most people got."

Ren closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before stepping back, nodding slowly. "Yeah… okay."

The pump clicked, the indicator turning green. Max disconnected the hose, sealing the tanks.

They stood in the corridor for a moment, looking at each other under the cold, humming lights, before Elan finally spoke. "Let's move."

Together, they left the abandoned craft behind, its lights dimming as it was powered down, drifting into the silent dark while their own engines rumbled softly to life, carrying them onward with their precious thirty days of hope.

The engines pulsed softly as the crew drifted closer to a large meteoroid, its surface glinting with faint reflections of ice under distant starlight. It was the first promising sign of water they had seen since leaving Earth.

Shizuka peered through the viewport, her breath fogging the glass slightly. "There… you see it? The ice veins."

Kenta pressed closer, eyes wide. "We could get water from that, right?"

Max checked the scanner, verifying the rotation of the meteoroid and its drift. "It's slow enough. If we can break off a chunk, we can melt it down."

Ren was about to respond when the proximity scanner beeped, a faint but persistent signal.

Elan froze, eyes narrowing as he adjusted the scanner's focus. A cold tension filled the cabin.

Drifting past the shadow of the meteoroid, partially hidden in its wake, was another ship. Sleek, patched together with scrap plating and painted markings, it hovered quietly like a predator in the dark.

"The Scavengers," Max whispered, his hand hovering over the thruster controls.

Ren's breath caught, panic in her eyes. "Do they see us?"

Elan held up a hand, watching the scanner carefully. The Scavenger ship drifted, turning slowly, its lights scanning the ice but never pausing on their position.

Seconds stretched into long, silent minutes as the crew barely breathed, engines idling low, using the meteoroid as cover.

Finally, the Scavenger ship adjusted its course, drifting away, engines pulsing as it moved off into the darkness, unaware of the small crew hidden just behind the ice.

Everyone exhaled at once, the tension breaking.

Ren slumped into her seat, her voice a shaken whisper. "That was too close…"

Elan nodded, eyes still on the scanner. "But we're alive. That's what matters."

Max glanced back at the ice, then at the fading signal of the Scavengers. "We'll come back for it when it's safe."

Outside, the meteoroid continued its slow dance through the void, the precious ice glinting in the dark, while the crew turned their ship quietly away, carrying their fragile survival onward into the stars.

The ship drifted in silence as the Scavenger vessel faded into the dark, engines pulsing softly as they moved away.

Elan watched the scanner, his jaw tight, thoughts churning before he finally spoke.

"I've been thinking," Elan said, his voice low, "as we're unnoticed, and we haven't gone too far… shouldn't we ambush them as soon as their gates open? They probably have mining equipment too."

The others turned to him, stunned.

Ren opened her mouth, about to protest, but Elan raised a hand, eyes sharp. "Now, now, don't give me things like 'ethics' here, not in front of the Scavengers. More importantly, it's the 'survival of the fittest' out here."

Max folded his arms, considering. "You're serious about this?"

Elan nodded, eyes never leaving the scanner's fading blip. "They wouldn't hesitate to take what we have if they found us first. We're running out of time, and resources. If they have mining tools, food, or even Fluxine…"

Shizuka swallowed, glancing at Kenta, who looked pale but determined.

Ren clenched her fists, turning away for a moment before whispering, "If we do this, we can't go back to pretending we're different from them."

Elan's gaze hardened. "We're not them. But we won't survive if we're too soft to act when it counts."

Max checked the scanners again, marking the Scavenger ship's heading. "We'd need a plan, and we'd need to be fast. Hit them before they know we're there."

Shizuka took a breath and nodded. "We'll need to be ready."

Outside, the stars drifted silently as the crew began planning, the quiet hum of the engines underscoring the harsh truth of space: only those willing to fight for survival would live to see another sunrise among the stars.

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