Chapter 3: Course Unknown
Karl woke to the soft chime of the navigation computer, a sound so polite it felt sarcastic. He opened his eyes inside the dim cockpit, helmet still sealed, visor fogged into a narrow crescent of clear glass. For a moment he forgot where he was—then the heaters clicked off and the metallic groan of cooling hull reminded him: still aboard Folly, still inside the skin he had patched yesterday, still alive by a margin too thin to measure. He wiped the fog with a gloved thumb and checked the wall chronometer. Six hours since he had fallen asleep strapped to the broken pilot chair. Six hours without a new alarm. That was a record.
He straightened, vertebrae popping even in micro-g, and rolled his neck until the suit collar creaked. The nav screen blinked amber, waiting for acknowledgment. He tapped it. A thin yellow line wandered across a star-field diagram: Folly's drift vector. The line ended in empty space, nowhere special, no station, no planet, no rescue. Just deeper black. Velocity read fourteen kilometers per second relative to local star-field. Bearing: vector five mark two. He stared at the numbers until they became words in his mouth: fourteen klicks a second toward nothing, carrying forty-two hours of air, forty days of food, and a reactor that could scram if one epoxy seam coughed wrong. The math tasted like rust.
Karl unstrapped, pushed out of the chair, and drifted to the sensor console. The optical scope still worked—its lens had been shielded behind the rad shield when engine two blew. He powered it up, let the ship's slow rotation sweep the field, and watched the feed. Stars slid past, sharp as pin-pricks. Then something else: a faint dot moving against the background, parallax shifting faster than stellar drift. He froze the frame, measured angle over five minutes, and got distance: two million kilometers. Angular velocity suggested large, slow, and on a shallow convergence course. Not a rock, not a planet, maybe a derelict, maybe a station. Maybe a ghost ship like his own.
His pulse quickened, a feeling he had almost forgotten. Convergence in thirty-six hours at current drift. If he used the newly repaired attitude thrusters he could shave distance to one million, maybe less. But thrusters cost fuel, and fuel was finite. He opened the tank gauge: forty-two percent remaining. Enough for a gentle nudge, not enough for a second mistake. He plotted a burn: ten-second burst, vector adjustment two degrees. Minimal, conservative, reversible if the target turned out to be junk. He set the timer for one hour to give himself prep window, then pushed toward the comm rack.
The comm array had been shredded by the same blast wave that killed engine two. Only two whip antennas remained intact, bent like fishing rods but still carrying voltage. He spliced spare coax from a reel labeled NON-ESSENTIAL, soldered fresh joints, and wrapped them with insulation tape. The radio powered up, static hissing like surf on a beach he would never walk again. He tuned through civilian hailing frequencies, emergency beacons, automated telemetry. Nothing but cosmic background and the occasional pop of distant lightning across Jupiter's bow-shock. Either the object was dead, or it was running silent, or it was too far. He left the receiver on auto-sweep and called it good.
Next prep was weapons. The ship carried one rail-rifle, two magazines, and a belt of explosive darts designed to punch holes in hull plate. He retrieved the rifle from the cockpit locker, checked the rails for carbon scoring, cycled the bolt. The action moved smooth, oiled by desperation. He loaded one magazine, chambered a dart, and set the weapon in the rack beside the pilot chair. Not a threat yet, but the void did not forgive the unprepared. He also pulled the emergency flare gun, three flares left. Distress signals or last-ditch deterrence, depending on the welcome.
Third prep was silhouette discipline. If the object hosted hostiles he did not want to be obvious. He powered down non-essential systems, dimmed running lights to five percent, and set the reactor to whisper mode. The Folly became a shadow among shadows, a rusted predator pretending to be debris. Karl felt a twist of guilt at the deception, then remembered the last time he had trusted a stranger: a cargo hauler that had promised spare filters, then demanded ammo and water in trade at gun-point. He had walked away with nothing but a bullet graze across his helmet. The memory tasted like copper and frozen screams. He sealed the emotion away and focused on numbers.
With one hour burned he returned to the cockpit, strapped in, and initiated the nudge. Thrusters exhaled a ten-second sigh, gentle push against the seat. The star-field shifted a finger's width. Navigation updated: new convergence in twenty-two hours, distance nine hundred thousand kilometers. He cut the thrusters, let momentum ride, and logged the fuel spend. Tank now thirty-nine percent. Acceptable. He stared at the closing dot and felt the old cocktail of fear and curiosity stir in his gut. He had survived alone this long by treating every unknown as threat first, opportunity second. But opportunity was the only way out of slow death.
He ran a quick survey of internal stores. Food for eleven days at half ration, water for fifteen if the recycler behaved, oxygen for twelve if he stayed solo. The numbers were shrinking, but slower than before. The repairs had bought him time, and time was currency. If the object carried spare filters, food bricks, or even a working shuttle battery, the trade-off could extend his life by months. If it carried pirates or plague, the same visit could end it in minutes. He weighed the balance and found it even. The void always dealt fair odds: fifty-fifty, live or die.
Karl set an alarm for four-hour intervals and began a rotation: scan, eat, inspect, rest. Between cycles he wrote short logs, voice only, in case the ship outlived him. He spoke of repairs, of starlight, of the sound metal makes when it cools. He did not speak of the crew. Their names belonged to silence. As the hours folded the dot grew from flicker to shape: a dark elongated hulk, no running lights, no thermal signature. A derelict, perhaps decades old, skin pocked by micrometeor impacts, antennas bent like broken fingers. No visible weapons, no engine glow. A corpse, but a corpse might still have pockets.
At two hundred thousand kilometers he fired a second nudge, smaller still. The Folly slid into a parallel drift two kilometers off the object's port side. Karl donned his helmet, sealed the suit, and drifted to the airlock. He brought the rail-rifle, a tether reel, and the portable printer now charged to thirty percent. If he found usable alloy he could patch the Folly further. He cycled the lock, stepped into vacuum, and pushed away. The derelict filled his visor, a wall of scarred steel against the stars. He activated the helmet cam and whispered the time-stamp. "First contact, unknown hulk, no response, boarding in progress."
His boots touched the alien hull with a soft clank. The metal felt colder than space, if that was possible. He engaged magnets and walked slowly, looking for an entry. A maintenance hatch appeared, rimed with frost. He heated the rim with the cutter bar until ice sublimated into glitter, then pried the wheel. The hatch sighed open, revealing a dark corridor within. He clipped his tether to the hull, switched on the rifle light, and stepped inside. The beam swept across empty halls, walls lined with pipes that had burst and frozen into crystal chandeliers. No sound but his own breathing. No movement but the drift of dust.
Karl advanced, rifle ready, printer slung across his back. Every fifty meters he paused, listened, marked the wall with a chalk stripe. The ship felt abandoned, yet too intact for explosion or decompression. Personal items floated in side compartments: a boot, a data pad, a sealed photo frame showing faces he did not look at. He moved deeper, following the schematic his suit built on the fly. At the core he found a cargo hold, doors cracked open. Inside lay rows of sealed containers, each marked with corporate codes he almost recognized. He approached the nearest, pried the lid, and stared. Inside: vacuum-packed nutrient bricks, hundreds, expiration date ten years from now. Water bladders stacked like gold bars. And tucked between them, a single spare filter cartridge for a standard recycler.
Karl's knees felt weak. He leaned against the container and laughed once, a short sharp bark that echoed inside the helmet. The sound startled him. He keyed the comm. "Jackpot. Food, water, filters. Enough for months." He began transferring bricks to a sample bag, enough to test for tampering later. He also grabbed the filter, cradling it like a relic. Then he swept the rifle light across the hold and saw something else: a rack of battery modules, same model used by the Folly. Half were missing, but six remained. He checked charge levels through the indicator glass. Two read ninety percent, the others above fifty. He laughed again, softer this time. The void gave, rarely, but when it did it gave plenty.
He secured two bricks, one bladder, the filter, and the best battery to his tether, then started back. The return walk felt shorter, the corridor less threatening. At the hatch he paused, looked back into the dark. "Thank you," he said, not sure to whom. Then he stepped outside, pushed off, and drifted toward the Folly. The tether reeled him home. Inside the airlock he cycled pressure, removed his helmet, and smelled the faint metallic warmth of recycled air. He stacked the salvage on the cockpit floor and stared at the modest pile. Not a fortune, but a future.
Karl logged the find, time-stamped it, and updated the inventory. Food extended to forty days, water to sixty, oxygen filters to twenty-one. The new battery went into the rack, green light steady. He ran a balance test, saw the meters rise, and felt a weight lift from his chest he had carried so long he forgot it was there. Outside the derelict continued its silent orbit, a drifting larder that might yet yield more. He plotted a return visit tomorrow, after tests confirmed the bricks were safe. For the first time since the explosion he saw days ahead instead of hours.
He floated to the cockpit window, placed a gloved hand on the glass, and looked across at the dark hulk. "We're not done yet," he whispered. The words came out fierce, almost a shout. Somewhere inside the metal answered with a faint creak, as if the Folly agreed. Karl felt the old grin tug at his mouth, cracked lips bleeding a little. He wiped the blood away and tasted iron like promise. Course still unknown, destination still blank, but the ship had time, and time meant options. In the grim ledger of survival, that was the closest thing to victory.