Beyond the Veil – NASA ID: PIA13885 (original link: https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA13885 )
The night went on forever. Dorothy let one leg fall over the side of the small shuttle’s edge as she sat astride the open airlock, enjoying the cold. At just over five Kelvin, she could feel the chill in her bones. She remembered days growing up where her breath created mists during Philadelphia winters. This felt about like that; if her lungs still needed breath, she would exhale to see if it would crystalize before evaporating into the vacuum.
She missed the stars twinkling in atmosphere. Out here, the bright points of light burned steady from a thousand, thousand sources. She looked down-well toward the star her fleet had taken their last stand around, tracking the slightly larger, mildly yellow pinpoint as the ship she sat in slowly spun, and felt the draw of the planets that way.
Each sung with gravity, magnetism, and solar wind eddies.
Life filled one of those planets. Thinking life. Her parasite wanted it. A simple push out and she could let gravity take her there.
What’s a decade of falling with all that food at the end?
Vibrations shook the polymer surface she leaned against. Morse code wasn’t the fastest communication, but in space, no one could hear you scream. She had needed some screaming time away from Shuttle-Nine. Who now was checking in.
Longer and shorter vibrations continued until the message was complete: Forty-eight hours.
She slapped her hand down hard once for “Yes” to indicate she received the message. The action sent her drifting up.
Pausing for one last look, Dorothy let her soul swallow its fill of the impossible dark littered with stars, the real ones leftover from the largest explosion of all time and the small ones scattered from man’s poor imitation of the infinite. Two armadas destroyed forty-eight astronomical units away from the nearest star. Hulls, and the bodies, equipment, and munitions which used to be held within them, drifting aimlessly under gravity’s weak control.
Her hunger turned her eyes back down-well as the ship’s spin returned it into view. A body reheated for blood didn’t satisfy at the level eating the living did. She yearned for the planet of sentients. A monster waiting in the night.
Dorothy stepped back from the edge and thumbed the lock shut.
Shuttle-Nine filled the enclosed space with air and heat, bringing the small area up to two hundred fifty Kelvin; a toasty negative ten degrees Fahrenheit.
“Did you have a good break?” her machine companion asked. Greeting number two of seven it varied for her sanity. It preferred the options with questions, as its programming indicated interaction elevated mental survival health.
The vampire smiled. Shuttle-Nine tried so hard to appear fully sentient, but it didn’t make her parasite hungry. Not like that budding civilization out there. “Yes, thank you. Did you figure out where one of the parts we need to finish rebuilding the fabricator is?”
“Calculations have come back. There is a three point nine percent chance Road Less Travel might have screw style seven, lith-nick alloy within the transit conduit based on the partial design plans you restored from maintenance ship Forum and Folly; the missile did not explode until it hit crew quarters a hundred and nineteen meters further in from the conduit. While the transit conduit was destroyed by secondary explosions, parts might be recoverable. There is an additional one point two percent chance of a plate of carbon tubing within the hydroponics area as no direct hits to that area is visible to what my sensors could process.”
“Has the course been plotted?” Dorothy asked as she made her way to the food bank and set one to warming for blood flow. Only six bodies left, nearly time to go pull more in. It should be fairly easy to pick up some near the deceased cruiser; expelled bodies didn’t travel far from their point of origin.
“Time of travel will be eighteen days at present state of repairs.”
“Implement.” Her sensitive ears heard the wires hiss and pop, feeding the magnetic coil she had attached to the left outside gravity plate. Nothing sounded different from the previous trips they had slowly made through the debris field since she had rewired the jury-rigged system six years ago.
The carbon tubing, even if the plate was warped would be a blessed bonus. Poor Shuttle-Nine’s artificial intelligence was operating with only a thimbleful of traditional calculators in support. Creating the choice limitations for the next stage of their search had taken her a week to program, a partially melted user manual being a poor substitute in lieu of the advance education needed for the task, especially when read by someone trained to be a janitor in 1940, and who knows how long it had taken to run. She had waited three days before deciding to step out and enjoy the night. With some functional tubing, she maybe could reconnect the navigation bank properly to the AI’s core, quadrupling its traditional calculating power. She had been stockpiling those types of manuals, both in physical and in electronic form.
Forcing down the stagnant blood barely meeting the needs of her parasite, she mentally prepared for the month crawl through another ghost ship haunting the empty night.
(words 874; first published 9/9/2026 – For a writer’s group prompt: What are the sounds at night? Describe them.)
