Muster

To the average person, rec hall might be defined as an open area, specifically one enclosed but spacious room where games and activities can be held. These could also be indistinguishable with gymnasiums or other such multipurpose spaces.

Distant Horizon Logistics, however, maintained a more liberal definition.

The ISV Wayfarer had been built for long-haul crews who needed somewhere to pretend they weren’t trapped inside a metal cylinder held together with duct tape, chewing gum, and a prayer for at least two years at a time. So, at the far end of Section C, the ship’s living quarters, a large room had been allocated in the claustrophobic blueprints and designated the Rec Hall.

If only cryosleep was actually feasible instead of being purely sci-fi, then the company wouldn’t even bother with hiring as big as was needed to keep the ship floating in a straight line.

It was a domed chamber ringed with padded benches, their paired tables bolt to the deck scattered around the room. Along the curving walls stood shelves lined with board games and other entertainment items, relic books and outdated electronics from bygone eras, likely purchased for pennies on the dollar. Several monitors had been inset directly into the walls, each looping public-domain movies playing on endless rotation.

Under normal lighting the room almost resembled a modest diner.

That illusion, however, was offset by its most interesting feature.

The ceiling itself was a pixelated projection of the sky over Earth, an artificial attempt to mirror the day-night cycle that the ship followed. When it was day at its home port, the projection shimmered with brilliant blue broken by streaks of silvery cloud. At night, it shifted to a deep black with faint pinpoints of flickering white.

With much of the ambient lighting replaced by emergency lighting, the effect felt less like a sky and more like a surreal, roofless bunker.

Ward stood at the center of the room in front of a wide circular table that dominated the space. He was standing steady again, using the crutch only as something to lean on when standing still.

He scanned the room, studying his crew he hadn’t seen since he had lost consciousness the day before. They were spread around the central table in uneven clusters.

Keller stood to his left, arms behind his back in parade rest. A little to Ward’s right sat Navigation Officer Malik, his forehead resting against folded hands above the table. Further around the table was Petrov with his arms crossed over his chest like a barricade. Next to him, Head Electrician Valdez turned a schematic over several times before marking it with a highlighter. Beside her, almost across from Ward, Cook Jones silently nursed an already cooled mug of coffee. A little farther along stood Quartermaster Ngeyun with a data pad tucked under one arm. Completing the circle were two general laborers, Rodgers and Hughes, both sitting stiffly and glancing at the tense faces around them.

The Rec Hall had never felt this small before.

For a moment, no one spoke. The hum of the ship’s compromised systems seeped in faintly through the halls.

“We’ve lost five.”

No one flinched. They all knew better than the Captain that was far too true.

Aside from Ramani, who was still tending to Ibarra in the infirmary, several others remained unaccounted for. Seeing the remains of his crew hit Ward hard in the gut. His throat dried as he tried to swallow the reality he had just spoken aloud.

A moment passed in silence, a sign of respect for their fellow crew mates currently assumed dead out in the vast coldness of space. Jones lowered his head. Malik gritted his teeth. Rodgers rubbed the back of his neck.

Ward turned to Keller.

“Report.”

“Yes, sir.” Keller nodded. “Jeannie if you will.”

A hologram of the Wayfarer flickered into existence above the table. Sections of the stern port side were highlighted in red.

“At 2143 Ship Time we registered an impact.” Keller began, reading from a paper, “No prior warning. No tracked object on approach. It wasn’t on any of our scopes.”

“Status.”

“Sections E through G are currently sealed. Petrov and I pulled the bulkheads ourselves. They’re inaccessible for the moment, but Maintenance is working on the repairs. Section H, the right thruster, is isolated and non-functioning. The left thruster is still operational, but we can’t maintain a straight vector. We’re drifting.”

“What’s our trajectory?”

Malik slid over a paper without lifting his head.

“Currently near point two degrees off course. We corrected it best we could.”

“You’re positive?”

“I’ve run the numbers hundreds of times.”

“Will we still meet our destination?”

A pause.

“No.”

“What’s in that direction?”

Another pause.

“Nothing for light years.”

“Distress calls going out?”

Valdez spoke up. “We started them as soon as we could. Jeannie’s broadcasting constantly in all directions.”

“Good,” Ward answered, setting the paper back down, “Keep them running twenty-four seven whatever power we can muster. This is still a common route. We aren’t far enough off course to disappear.”

“Captain,” Ngeyun cut in, her eyes sharp, “we need to discuss supplies.”

“Yes?”

“Two storage modules were vented,” she answered, pulling up figures on her data pad and angling it toward him, “Food, water, oxygen reserves remain within acceptable margins for now. But if repairs take longer than expected–”

“They will take as long as they need to, Ngeyun.”

Everyone turned to Petrov as he huffed. He leaned forward with both arms locked straight against the table, his weight resting on them. His glare met Ngeyun’s without flinching.

“We are working as fast as we can,” Keller interjected between the two, “We need to be careful. Another mistake could cause another breach.”

“Oh, now you get it?” Petrov snapped, turning to the younger officer.

“Petrov,” Ward raised his voice lightly.

Petrov pushed himself upright again and folded his arms back across his chest.

And silence settled over the table once more.

Ward leaned forward on his crutch. “Jeannie,” he called out.

A soft chime from the ship signaled the AI was listening.

“Display structural status.”

The holographic display rotated and expanded until only the port half of the ship hovered above the table. The wire frame geometry revealed a deep scar carved into the hull, plunging inward like a needle driven too far before being violently torn back out.

Rodgers let out a low whistle.

Petrov shot him an annoyed glare. The young worker immediately shrank back into his seat, face turning beet red.

“Primary navigation array offline,” Jeannie began, “Port-side external sensor cluster destroyed. Seventeen percent of internal sensor network unresponsive. Structural integrity at sixty-two percent.”

“Those numbers are just extrapolated at best,” Petrov muttered, his jaw tightening.

“Correct,” Jeannie replied in her always even tone, “Data sets are incomplete.”

“We’ve rerouted the power from nonessential systems,” Petrov continued, his accent thickening with irritation, “Life support stable. Heat exchange is compromised, but next on our list. We’re working inward from intact sections towards the sealed zone.”

“When will full reports be ready?” Ward asked.

“Depends,” Petrov shrugged, flicking a hand dismissively, “Depends on what we find when we open more walls.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“Then you won't like the answer.” Petrov’s tone was flat, his stare narrowing. “When we reinforced everything, we used foamed sealer. It’s hardened like stone now. Even chiselling at it barely makes a dent.”

A murmur rippled through the crew.

Ward nodded once, “Understood.”

He stepped closer, resting his chin against the top of his crutch as he studied the projected wound in the ship.

“Do we even know what hit us yet?”

Silence answered him. The crew only exchanged tense looks.

Then Jeannie spoke again.

“Captain, video data is corrupted. Partial visual feed recovered.”

“Show it.”

The wire frame dissolved, replaced with a three-dimensional render of the space outside the Wayfarer. Stars gently twinkled along the edges of the view. The image was grainy, but recognizable. The stabilizers shifted and settled. Routine. Quiet.

Then a flicker.

Ward wasn’t sure what he was seeing. It wasn’t an object. Not even a clear shape. Just a distortion. Something not there, then suddenly present. He wasn’t a man of science, but the best explanation his mind could form was that whatever it was, it was bending light around it for a fraction of a second.

Then the image tore sideways.

Static flooded the field. The camera shuddered violently, spinning as the hull buckled. A bloom of vented atmosphere crystallized briefly in the starlight.

Then nothing.

Just black and cascading system errors.

“That’s it?” Hughes quietly breathed, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“That is the entirety of the recoverable footage,” Jeannie answered.

“What on God’s green Earth even was that?” Jones leaned closer, his brow tight, disbelief thick in his voice.

“Remember,” Malik lifted his head just enough to meet Jones’s gaze. “We aren’t on Earth anymore.”

“Jeannie,” Ward cut through the rising tensions, “What was the approach vector?”

“Negative. No object tracked prior to impact.”

Petrov shook his head. “Something with mass hit us. That’s just simple physics.”

“You sure about that?” Malik gave a wry smile.

Ward was about to step in before the exchange escalated. But something caught everyone’s attention.

“Captain,” Jeannie chimed, “Motion detected in Section E.”

All eyes snapped back to the projection as the display shifted again to the wire frame schematic. The image zoomed automatically. Inside the red-lit compartment, three small indicators blinked into existence. Deep within an area that should only be an empty corridor and the vacuum of space.

“Confidence level: fifty-eight percent.”

“What’s going on?” Ward asked, unable to look away from the display.

Valdez grimaced, glancing at her schematic again. “Probably should’ve mentioned that sooner. We’ve been getting odd readings like that off and on.”

“The sensors are damaged,” Petrov rolled his eyes. “The internal ones aren’t rated for vacuum pressures. It’s all just garbage data.”

“Jeannie, details?” Keller pressed on, ignoring Petrov.

“Thermal readings: negative. Atmosphere pressure: vacuum maintained. Biological sensors: negative.”

A beat passed.

“Motion detected. Confidence level: Sixty-one percent.”

“We know the network is still functioning,” Valdez added, “but until we can physically access those nodes, we are basically running blind.”

“I don’t know why we're even discussing this,” Petrov muttered, tilting his head back, “It’s static bouncing off bent metal and getting twisted in your broken circuitry, Jeannie.”

Keller turned to his senior officer.

“What should we do, Captain?”

The whole of the crew waited for the Captain to speak, to give the order that would decide how they would proceed.

But only silence followed.

“Captain?”

Ward’s eyes were locked on the projection. The blinking indicators moved. Slowly. Creeping from one end of the sealed compartment toward the interior bulkhead that separated them from vacuum.

“Captain?”

“Hmm?” Ward snapped back to the room. He felt every pair of eyes settle on him. “Keller? Readings?”

“Uh… negative?” Keller blinked, uncertain how to respond.

“R-right.” Ward straightened up again, clearing his throat before continuing. “How far are we from accessing that sector?”

Petrov’s shoulders sagged as attention turned back to him again. He shook his head with his hands on his hips.

“Don’t know how many times I have to say this. We’re working on it. Structural supports near D are warped, if we cut through too early and something shifts, it’s lights out.”

“And if there's structural collapse deeper inside,” Valdez added, “we won't see it until we open it.”

Ward nodded once. “Petrov, you and I will inspect the inner bulkheads tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? If you insist, Cap’n,” Petrov gave a small nod in reply, “I’ll show you what we are dealing with.”

From there the meeting broke apart slowly. Chairs scraped. One by one the crew drifted away, returning to the quiet, relentless rhythm of survival work.

Ward remained standing.

His gaze never left the projection.

“Captain,” Jeannie’s voice cut in once more. “Motion detected. Confidence level fifty percent.”

The red sector on the hologram flickered once. Then disappeared again.

Somewhere behind the sealed bulkhead deep within the ship, something shifted. Something…