The journey out of Cryo-Bay 17 was a descent into a mausoleum.
The corridors, usually bustling with crew and civilians, were empty and dark. Emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows that played tricks on his mind. He'd brought a heavy-duty maintenance lumoglob, its beam cutting a shaky path through the gloom. Every echo of his footsteps sounded like an intrusion.
He found a transport cart at a service bay, its battery nearly dead. He managed to get it running, the electric whine another alien sound in the silence. Mother guided him via the holographic map projected in his vision, overlaying the best route to the engineering decks.
"Mother, what caused the anomaly?" Kaelen asked, his voice echoing in the cramped cart. He needed to focus on something, anything, other than the tombs he was passing. He saw a café, tables still set as if the patrons had just stepped away, a fine layer of dust covering everything.
"Sensor data from the event is fragmentary," Mother replied. "It appears to be a localized spacetime distortion event. It bypassed all shielding and targeted the cryo-systems specifically. Your pod, Pod 737, was on a isolated maintenance sub-circuit due for diagnostics. This isolation may have protected it from the cascade failure."
"So, I survived because my pod was faulty?" The irony was bitter.
"In essence, yes."
They passed a viewport. Kaelen slowed the cart to a halt. He pressed his face against the cold transparent aluminum, his breath fogging the surface. The stars outside were wrong. They were unfamiliar, sharp and cold. And there, dominating the view, was a planet. It was a vast, swirling marble of blues and greens and whites, achingly beautiful. Elysian's destination. They had arrived.
"The planet… we're here."
"Correct. The Elysian achieved parking orbit 34,912 years ago. Planetary scans from that time indicated a viable, though unstable, biosphere. Current scans are limited due to power constraints."
He was orbiting a living world, the dream of a billion people, and he was the only one to see it. The weight of that loneliness threatened to crush him again. He thought of Sarah Lin in her pod. She had dreamed of cultivating alien soil. Now, her dreams were dust.
He pushed away from the viewport and guided the cart back into the depths of the ship. The silence was beginning to morph. It was no longer just empty; it was watchful. He started seeing things—a flicker of movement down a side corridor, a distant clang that Mother assured him was just thermal contraction of the hull.
His destination was a primary maintenance lift that descended the spine of the ship towards Engineering. The lift doors, when he reached them, were sealed shut, a red "Power Failure" light glowing above them.
"Great. Now what?"
"Manual override is possible. There is an access hatch in the ceiling of the service conduit to your left. It will be a physical climb down the lift shaft."
Kaelen groaned. Of course it would. He was a maintenance worker; he was used to crawling through ducts and shafts. But that was when the ship was alive, when the hum of machinery was a comfort. Now, the shaft was a dark, vertical grave.
He pried open the hatch and peered down. His lumoglob beam was swallowed by the darkness below. He could just make out the top of the lift car, far, far down.
"How far?"
"Approximately two hundred decks."
Kaelen felt a wave of vertigo. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I do not kid, Steward. Your physical conditioning is adequate. The ladder rungs are rated for this purpose."
Swallowing his fear, he slung his tool satchel over his shoulder and began the climb. The only sounds were his ragged breathing, the scuff of his boots on the rungs, and the occasional groan of the ship around him. He tried not to think about the sheer drop below him, or the fact that if he fell, the Elysian would truly be dead.
An hour into the climb, he found the first body.
It was a skeleton, still clad in the tattered remains of an engineering officer's uniform. It was sprawled on a small service platform, one arm outstretched towards the ladder, as if the person had been trying to climb out when they died. A rusted datapad lay nearby.
Kaelen's blood ran cold. This person hadn't died in cryo-sleep. They had been awake. They had been trying to get somewhere.
"Mother… who is that?"
"Biometric scan via your optical feed is inconclusive due to degradation. The uniform insignia indicates a Lieutenant Commander in the Engineering Corps."
"What were they doing out of cryo? I thought the anomaly affected everyone."
"The anomaly caused the cascade failure. It is possible a small number of crew were awakened during the initial event or by subsequent system failures. Their fate was likely sealed when life support became unstable in the non-cryo sectors."
This changed everything. He wasn't just waking up to a silent ship. He was waking up to the aftermath of a slow, agonizing death for anyone who had survived the initial event. How many had been awake? How long had they lasted? The loneliness was now peppered with ghosts.
He carefully stepped around the skeleton, a profound respect and horror settling in his gut. He took the datapad, but its screen was cracked and dark. He tucked it into his satchel. It felt important. It was a story. Maybe the only other story besides his own.
He continued his descent, the image of the skeleton burned into his mind. This was no longer just about survival. It was about bearing witness. He was the Steward, not just of the ship, but of its history. Of its dead.
The climb felt infinitely longer after that.