Chapter Text
It wasn’t the fact that there were very clearly aliens approaching him that bothered Rocky.
It was the fact that he was so gosh-darn apathetic about it all. So much so that it actually surprised him once he realized that he was. He thought he would be feeling a lot more anticipation, or at least fear, but now it’s just. Eh. Every day he checks on the steadily growing petrova-wave light source, finds that it’s exactly where he expected it to be, and then goes to have breakfast.
If this was going to end in his total annihilation, then there was nothing he could realistically do about it. If this was going to be the Hail Mary he had been praying for all this time, there also wasn’t anything that he could do about it until the ship stopped decelerating.
Rocky might as well spend all that time waiting with something more productive.
One of those tasks had been determining that it was, in fact, an alien craft.
Whatever it was doing was controlled and on purpose. This was not the movements of a cluster of mad cells or a fault in the readings from his ever-dying equipment. It was an astrophage powered thing that had been decelerating for the last few months, and some back-of-the-napkin math tells him he has about a week and a half before the two meet: if Rocky has no intention to move out of the way.
He didn’t, of course. It would simply be a waste of fuel to try.
It almost looked like it could have been a brand new Astrophage craft sent from Earth. Rocky had no way to even consider how much starship technology had improved since he left. Why sit and wait for B.L.I.P.-A’s results to come back when you can go and get it yourself?
The only problem was: that it was coming from the entirely wrong goddamn star. Oh, he checked his maths! He checked his maths and checked his maps and even moved the ship a few times to get a better look, whatever this thing was it wasn’t coming from the direction of Sol. Either it was from Earth and someone had royally screwed along the way up, or it wasn’t. Simple as that.
Whatever it was also hadn’t radioed him, or made any other attempt to make itself known. Hell, it probably didn’t even know that he was there. How could it? Any sensors that the craft had would only see a beam of IR light from its own engine so bright it would destroy its equipment - no matter how fancy.
Rocky had no intention of making the first move, at least for now.
He dipped his finger in his room temperature ‘cup’ of water, used it to clean the salty sleep out of his eyes, and ordered the ship to enter into spin mode. The buttons to do so were so worn down from the oils in his skin that none had any colour.
Having no gravity was good for the ship and some of the instruments, having gravity was good for others and for the crew. Rocky had been so used to switching between the two it felt weird if the ship stayed in one mode for more than a day-or-so. He drank the rest of the water as he half floated, half walked back down to the crew compartment. It would take 23.4532 minutes for the gravity to return, so he had time before the work day officially began.
He put the ‘cup’ back where it lived, and moved down to what could be generously described as an en suite.
Rocky was too far gone at this stage to care about his appearance, but he hadn’t exactly been Mr Universe to begin with. Years ago he had tried to keep his hair in knots and self-done dreads, but the work it took to maintain it all wasn’t worth the effort.
Rocky dug out an old portable clipper with plastic tubing covering the outlet, checked the battery percentage, and buzzed his dark hair short at an even length. It was short enough that it wouldn't bother him for a while, but still long enough that he didn’t look totally bald. He had been lucky to still have most of his hair at his age. He didn’t need to touch the stubble on his face today, but he might tomorrow.
The ‘mirror’ (a reflective bit of polished metal, real glass mirrors are a shattering hazard) was just barely reflective enough to see yourself in.
He looked …old. Nothing more than middle aged, no, but it wasn’t an arbitrary number that bothered him. It was the crow’s feet that weren’t there when the ship first launched. It was the healed scars that should have been given to someone else. It was the accidental stick-and-poke tattoo on his cheek given to him when a free-flying zero-g pen almost took an eye out during the first year that he was truly all alone. He had long run out of his own shirts, they had all been worn so much and repaired so many times that there was nothing left to keep but rags.
Rocky had forgotten who had originally owned the shirt that he was currently wearing, and that hurt to admit. It used to have a horse on it, he thinks, but the art had long since faded.
The ship chimes a happy chime, letting the crew know that they were back to zero-G, and Rocky goes back to working on the kitchenette’s air filter.
He would only check the status of his Hail Mary twice until the next morning. Once just after a late lunch as he floated by the monitor, and another right before his evening prayer.
It took three goddam weeks for the alien ship to make contact once it stopped decelerating.
Three!
Who knows what it was doing in all that time - probably something important - but it was still exhausting to have to be there for every minute of it. You’d think Rocky would be an expert at waiting - and you’d be right - but that doesn’t stop it from being a slog. Maybe he was doing it wrong.
Being passive was getting him nowhere. And being glued to these monitors 24/7 was making him go crazy.
Rocky adjusted the collar of his undershirt so that the strap of his safety belt wouldn’t dig into his neck as much. He had done the maths in his head, checked it over on the computer, and spent most of the afternoon moving the B.L.I.P.-A into a better position. He had moved pretty slowly at the universal scale, , being as careful as he could not to scare his new company. After a couple of hours of watching the alien ship on the screen stay as it was, Rocky considers the odds, and moves the ship closer.
They’ve been like this for almost 17 hours. If Rocky went outside right now, he could probably see the other craft with his naked eyes. It was big - really big - and full of weird juts and jitters that looked like someone went mad with a greebling simulation. Sharp corners and odd-triangles seem to defy the laws of basic pressure vessel design.
Unless it’s a robot? A probe that doesn’t have to worry about having a living crew inside?
Big robot, if so. Why bother?
There are what appears to be robots skittering all over the hull of the other craft. Robotic arms, like the ones that help build cars, run along tracks that criss-cross the hull without any sense of direction. Each has at least 3 points of articulation, with a claw-like ‘hand’ on the end. Some of them appear to have radar dishes instead of hands, and like to position themselves around supervising the workers. At least three of these ‘observer’ robots have been facing the B.L.I.P.-A, but they may just be untouched from the last time the ship needed to analyse something on the port side. It was impossible to tell.
A small machine in the room behind the controls beeps loudly. Rocky breaks out of whatever trance he had found himself in and scoots over. The B.L.I.P.-A is experiencing zero-G at the moment, Rocky uses the head rest of the chair to propel him forward.
The machining done, Rocky dusts the loose swarf off the small metal piece and studies it over, careful to collect the shavings in another container so it wouldn’t float into the air filtration system. It’s rudimentary, yes, but combined with some of the 3d-printed items it should be exactly what he needs to get this ball rolling.
He tucks the model of the local star systems into the aluminum container, fills the remaining space with some 3D printed models of the ships and an astronaut, and secures it closed with a satisfying click. Rocky puts the container in the collar of his shirt, and pulls himself back up to the control room.
The aliens ship has moved.
Oh shit.
Rocky scrambles to strap himself back into the pilot seat and opens up the main control system, unintentionally strapping the container in with him. In the 10-or-so minutes that he was away, the alien ship has rotated along the axis - if by some miracle down for him is the same down for the alien ship, the flatter ‘belly’ is now facing the B.L.I.P.-A with the bulk of the greebling sat. Many of the observer robots have moved down into position to face him properly. Rocky swears to himself, finalizes control, and then hesitates.
This is a bad idea.
He taps the trigger controlling the ship's thrusters with his ring finger. Tap, tap, tap. Each press was less than a second. He was in rhythm, but it wasn’t machine perfect. No longer with perfectly matched inertia, The B.L.I.P.-A begins to slowly move towards the star.
Thrust, thurst, thurst, goes the other ship, mirroring his movements exactly. Rocky puts his ship to a stop with the forward thrusters, and the other craft does the same. There is a pregnant beat, and then the other craft takes its turn. Short, long, short. Rocky copies it the same as before.
Rocky basically jumps out of the chair and forces himself down the ladder to the airlock with as much inertia as he can. He gets there so quickly that he’s still ‘upside down’ as he puts on his spacesuit.
The alien craft is even more impressive in person. Even hundreds of meters away, the glass-orange ship takes up his entire field of view. It’s moved again since they last signaled to each other, but corrects itself with small thrusters as Rocky tries to deal with the airlock, the container snug in the crook of his arm.
Being careful to make himself as visible as possible, Rocky waves to the other ship with his free arm, and then passes the container to it like a football.
The hull robots watch the capsule travel head over tail like the universe’s most important golf ball.
One estimates the perfect position for it to be in to catch it, finely adjusts its place along the railing, and then decides that the track a meter higher is better aligned. A second worker robot on the track just above quickly takes over goalkeeper duty, and eagerly awaits with its claws open. It’s like whatever is controlling the system shares a single mind, all working together so that they don’t make a bad first impression.
The second hand waits, waits, waits, and then catches - just about. Switching to the higher arm seemed to have been a mistake.
And then, swear to god, it almost seems to wave to Rocky as soon as it was satisfied that the container was secure in its grip. The robotic arm rotates back and forth on the ‘wrist’ a couple of times, and then quickly zips down on its rails to another part of the ship, hands it to another robot-in-waiting, and this repeats two more times until the final robot disappears into a crevasse towards the centre of the ship.
Now we wait.