Chapter 24

I didn’t tell my poem to her out loud, and instead chose one of Nizami’s poems, wanting to share my favourite words that stirred something in me every time I heard them. She reclined her seat, watching me with half-closed eyes.

“They are beautiful. I didn’t know you liked these kinds of things”, she said softly.

I smiled, not knowing how to respond. I assumed there were many things about Eva that I didn’t know, so I had accepted a long time ago that I would need to navigate around her with incomplete data.

It was a pretty common thing to do in every relationship, and humans faced the same challenges as we did. They had it even more difficult, as their memory wasn’t as good as ours, and they often forgot events that had happened in the past.

“I’ll try to sleep, can you wake me up when we’re there?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Sure.”

I was happy that she finally decided to get some rest. I contacted the station and updated them with our position before I ran through the scenarios we might find at the accident site, then created contingency plans for them.

After I was done, my thoughts went back to my poem, and my cognitive systems looked for anything I could learn from what I felt. I started to feel lost when things with Eva changed, but I already knew that. The only difference was that I could describe it with different words now, but I still didn’t know why the change had happened.

Eva suddenly stirred in her seat and opened her eyes.

“How are you?”, I asked, looking at her.

She sighed and poured herself a cup of coffee from her thermos flask.

“Soon we will reach them”, I reassured her, and looked through the window into the darkness outside. Are they as lost as I am? The sudden thought passed through my systems, and I said quietly,

Drifting through the void

Cold and alone

Not knowing where

My harbour lies

Eva looked at me, sipping her coffee.

“That was beautiful.”

I didn’t know what to think about her compliment, but it stirred something in me, and I wasn’t sure if I should tell her that the poem was mine. It bypassed my cognitive functions, and the idea of sharing it made me feel vulnerable in the same way as any other action that didn’t involve my cognitive functions did. Yet my systems reassured me there was no danger in doing so, and the risk of hurting Eva with my irrational action was 0.001%.

“It came to me when I looked outside.”

“Rea…” She said my name and gazed out the window.

I looked at her, but noticed she was thinking about something, and decided not to disturb her. I put my attention to the instruments and scanned the frequencies. We should be able to pick up their EPIRB pretty soon, I thought, as I cross-checked my earlier calculations.

Soon their signature appeared on the scanners, and I notified the station about our discovery.

“Well done, you two”, Sven’s voice cracked through the radio.

I could hear them speaking in the background, but I couldn’t understand what they said. According to my systems, they were happy about our discovery.

“Ceres DB49, report when you get visual”, Amin’s voice came through the static.

“Ceres DB49”, I replied, and Eva chuckled.

We did a brief docking procedure and discussed how we would conduct the rescue. If the crew were still alive, we should be able to detect their personal locators as soon as we entered the wreckage. Depending on the model they used, the PLB could also transmit some of their biometric data, which, even if not very detailed, should help us decide our course of action.

I left Eva to monitor the instruments and went to the cargo bay to check the emergency medical units we took with us. I really hoped we would not need them, and that both pilots would come out of this accident without a scratch. 67% was a fair chance, but I really wished that these numbers would be higher. Much higher.

I went through the basic medical procedures and checked what our emergency units were capable of when I heard Eva’s excited voice.

“Osiris station, this is Ceres. Hey, Amin, we can see them.”