Chapter 7: Coast
The engines fell silent for the first time in forty-three days.
No rumble, no hiss, no metallic lullaby—just the soft, constant whine of circulation fans and the occasional pop of cooling hull plate. Karl floated free of the harness and drifted to the observation blister. Twenty-four days of steady 0.08 g had bent his posture into a permanent crouch; now weightlessness felt like slipping out of armour. He pressed his helmet—still on, visor cracked open—to the blister's plexiglass. Outside, the star-field was pin-prick steady, the Milky Way a frost trail across black velvet. Somewhere ahead, still invisible, Haven-3 orbited a dwarf star no brighter than a lantern at sea.
He checked the burn summary on the console taped to the bulkhead.
Distance remaining: 4.7 light-hours.
Velocity: 1,890 km/s relative to the system barycentre.
Brake window opens in nineteen days, two hours, thirty-one minutes.
Margin for error: plus 2 m/s.
The numbers glowed soft green, but green could lie. He copied them into the paper log anyway, writing slowly so the ink didn't blob in the dry air. Paper was backup against dying electrons; paper never forgot.
Coast protocol was simple: power everything except thrust, keep the bottle humming, keep himself from coming apart at the seams. He set the reactor to whisper—eight percent load, just enough to run heaters at twenty-two degrees and spin the gyro twice a day to stop the ship from tumbling. Then he started the real work: surviving the waiting.
Day 1 of coast was always easy. He inventoried every crate he had salvaged, re-labelled them with fresh tape, stacked them into a cube lashed against the aft bulkhead so their mass would act as improvised radiation shielding around the reactor. The nutrient bricks clicked together like plastic Lego. He counted 1,217 bricks. At half a brick a day that was 2,434 days. He wrote 2,434 on the crate in black marker, then crossed it out and wrote 81 months. Big numbers felt safer than small ones.
Day 2 he overhauled the suit. He stripped it to the liner, scrubbed the sweat-caked neck seal with a toothbrush dipped in recycled water, then baked the components under a panel of suit heaters until the stink of old fear steamed away. While it dried he floated naked through the ship, letting currents of warm air dry his skin. The freedom lasted three minutes—then the cold crept in and he climbed back into the armour of cloth and rubber.
Day 3 the silence got loud. He tried talking to the ship, but the words echoed back like strangers. He dug through personal lockers until he found a data-stick labelled "Crew Recreation" in someone else's handwriting. Inside were forty-three hours of music—pre-war jazz, blues, a single symphony. He copied everything to the flight computer and set it to shuffle. Trumpets filled the cockpit for the first time in months; he cried without sound, afraid the tears would fog the visor and get him killed.
Day 4 he began the strip list. Haven-3 needed a braking burn of 940 m/s; Folly's remaining fuel gave 950 m/s if he flew her dry. That left 10 m/s of margin—less than a sneeze. Every kilogram he could carve away translated into breathing room. He floated compartment to compartment with a grease pencil, marking items for deletion: port-side bunk frames (already gone), mess table (18 kg), damaged freezer unit (34 kg), three interior hatches (12 kg each), the entire starboard corridor lighting truss (9 kg). Total: 103 kg. He wrote 103 kg = +3 m/s on the bulkhead and circled it three times.
Day 5 he started cutting. The plasma cutter woke with a sleepy whine; sparks blossomed in slow motion, cooling into silver beads that drifted like tiny comets. He sliced the mess table free, folded the legs, kicked the bundle toward the lock. Each cut felt like amputing a finger he'd never use again. When the table tumbled into space he saluted it, a stupid gesture no one would see. The metal caught distant starlight once, twice, then vanished. He whispered, "Sorry, cousin. Margin matters."
Day 6 the nightmares returned. Engine two blew again in his sleep, fire licking down the corridor, crew screaming over comms. He woke thrashing, snapped the harness buckle, drifted into the overhead panel hard enough to crack the visor. For an hour he sat in the dark, heart hammering, counting primes until the shakes stopped. Then he wrote on the bulkhead in capital letters: NIGHT WATCH – HELMET STAYS ON.
Day 7 he cracked the encryption on Rios's personal file. Inside were two photos: two girls in Meridian school uniforms, pigtails floating in zero-g, grinning at a camera that no longer existed. He stared until the screen timed out, then copied the images to the main frame and set them as wallpaper on the nav screen. Now every time he checked course he saw their smiles, reminding him the ship had once carried lives, not just cargo.
Day 8 the first micrometeor struck. A grain-of-sand particle punched through the dorsal blister at 12 km/s, leaving a hole the size of a drinking straw. Air pressure dropped 0.3 kPa before the auto-seal gel foamed over the breach. Karl found the tiny crater while inspecting for stress cracks. He patched it with a drop of epoxy and a foil disc, then spent an hour running fingers over every panel, listening for the whisper of escaping air. Found two more pin-holes, patched them, then added a new entry: "Micrometeor watch – inspect daily."
Day 9 loneliness sharpened into physical pain. He tried talking to the girls on the screen, telling them how the reactor hummed, how the jazz trumpet sounded like sunrise. They smiled their frozen smiles. He turned the volume up until the cockpit vibrated, then shut it off, afraid their ears would hurt. Silence rushed back in like cold water.
Day 10 he began talking to himself in two voices—one asking, one answering. The question voice was calm, almost clinical. The answer voice sounded like Chief Rios, low and steady.
Q: "What happens if Haven-3 is dead?"
A: "Then we keep flying until something lives."
Q: "What if the brake burn fails?"
A: "Then we fly past, coast again, find the next maybe."
Q: "What if you die before brake?"
A: "Then the log speaks for me. Keep the log alive."
He wrote that last line on the bulkhead above the computer: KEEP THE LOG ALIVE.
Day 11 he finished the interior strip. Total mass removed: 107 kg—four more than estimated. He rewarded himself with a full brick instead of half, chewing slowly, tasting cardboard and victory. Then he cycled the lock and jettisoned the scrap, watching it glitter away like a tiny galaxy. Acceleration margin now sat at 13 m/s. He circled the number, kissed the grease pencil, and whispered, "Thank you, cousins."
Day 12 the printer woke him. Not the portable unit—the ship's internal hull printer, the big industrial box that hadn't seen power since the explosion. It chirped once, tested its feed, then chimed completion. Confused, Karl floated to the bay. The printer had extruded a single line of text across a strip of fresh alloy:
LOGS ARE ALIVE. CANDLE STILL BURNS. – RIOS
He stared, skin prickling. The machine had no data link to the reader; the reader had been unplugged for days. Yet the timestamp matched the moment he had saved the girl's photos. He touched the warm metal, felt the faint vibration of the reactor through the deck, and understood: the printer had pulled the phrase from the ship's own maintenance buffer, corrupted and reassembled like a ghost learning speech. Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe the Folly was talking back.
He peeled the strip free, folded it, and slipped it into the breast pocket of his liner—his first personal possession that hadn't come from salvage. Then he powered the printer down, but gently, like tucking in a child.
Day 13 he started the braking countdown. Haven-3 now showed on long-range optic: a faint dot orbiting a dull red star, glinting every few seconds—solar panels still catching light. The sight punched the air from his lungs. Something man-made was still alive out there. He stared until tears blurred the image, then recorded the sighting and locked the telescope on auto-track. Every hour he returned to watch the glint, reassuring himself it hadn't been imagination.
Day 14 he wrote a new entry in the paper log, letters careful and clear:
Day 57 of drift. 13 days to brake. 107 kg lighter. Margin 13 m/s. Micrometeor holes 3, patched. Nightmares still, but quieter. Girls still smiling. Printer spoke once—coincidence or conscience, doesn't matter. Haven-3 visible, panels catching sun. Objective confirmed. Will brake hard, fly true, and land with open hands. If they shoot me, at least I'll die in range of their voices. Log ends here until burn. – Karl Hasser, Captain of still-breathing metal.
He closed the book, snapped the elastic band, and floated to the cockpit. The trumpet played softly, a blues riff that sounded like tired engines finding harmony. He strapped in, visor open, eyes on the glint that grew a little brighter every hour. Outside, the void remained indifferent, but inside the ship hummed a tune that almost felt like hope.