Chapter Text
Adrian hummed to themself as they made their way home, although it didn’t really feel like that anymore. It hadn’t truly felt like home in over 50 years, ever since that ship had left their planet’s surface, taking their mate with it. A crew of 23, majority scientists, and one lone engineer. Rocky. Their lifelong love. And with his departure, he had taken the concept of “home” with him.
Adrian wasn’t alone, now, by any means. They had their siblings, their friends, the families of the rest of the crew who were in the same position as them. Rocky’s cousins stayed over often now, to fill the silence Rocky’s absence had left in their home - and often to watch Adrian sleep. As much as they dearly loved all of their family, from both sides... it just wasn’t the same as Rocky being there. The constant sound of tinkering, the stubborn insistence that Adrian take care of themself, the tapping as he skittered around, pacing as he thought of the newest solution to a problem. The world wasn’t the same without those sounds, once something Adrian had foolishly taken for granted, now a precious memory that they would do anything to have back.
It shouldn’t have taken this long. Adrian knew that. They all knew that. The mission should have taken 6 years to get there, maybe a few years at most to devise a solution, and then another 6 years back. No more than 20 years, at the most. Certainly not more than 50. Even if they couldn’t figure it out, even if there was no solution out there, they should have returned by now. Should have come back with their findings, or a plan for a better way to examine Tau Ceti, or a report of what needed to be changed about the ship, or just... something. They should have come back.
Which meant either the crew had stubbornly decided not to come back until they figured out how to save Eridani... or the crew couldn’t come back.
Adrian had spent years stewing in that grief, considering everything that could have possibly gone wrong. An engine failure that had left them stranded. Damage to the ship from an asteroid or a piloting error or some unknown horror of space. An explosion from the astrophage, vaporizing the ship before any of them could notice what was wrong. An unforeseen degradation of the food due to being in space, rendering it inedible. Getting drawn into the orbit of the star and even the unthinkable power of astrophage not being strong enough to pull them out of it. An experiment going wrong and rendering them all blind1. Astrophage escaping the fuel tanks and sapping away all of the heat from the air until they all froze. The crew entering a thrum that lasted too long, preventing them from eating or sleeping.
A thousand different possibilities hung over them all, each terrifying and hopeless. And none of them had any way of knowing how close any of them were to reality. There was no way to perceive the ship from this distance, no way to know if it even still existed, out there.
All they could do was wait.
But Adrian had refused to remain idle while Rocky was away. There might be no way to know if their mate was dead or alive, if Eridani was going to be saved from this mission or if they would have to find some other solution to their dying star. But there were things they could do, here and now, to make life better on Erid. To make life better for Rocky when (when, not if, Adrian insisted to themself) he returned home.
So, they had thrown themself into their work. They had been an architect, before - and they certainly didn’t give that up, not now, when they were having to plan for the future changes in infrastructure if Erid began to cool - but there were other professions they could take up, too. One of the benefits of a longer lifespan and the ability to multitask was that many Eridians (not all, but a not-insignificant portion) would choose several specialties to dedicate their life to, creating an eclectic range of skills and expertise for any given individual. Adrian had never thought they would take up that path, before - they loved their profession, were fulfilled by it, were good at it; they had never seen the need to expand that range when other Eridians were already dedicated to those other paths.
Now, though, they understood perfectly. Sometimes, as much as you loved your dedicated field, it just wasn’t enough to capture everything you wanted to do, all the change you wanted to bring to the world. And, while they certainly couldn’t become a leading expert anytime soon - these things took time, after all, and Adrian was only just starting out - they could still help however they could.
They took inspiration from their beloved mate, an engineer who always figured out a way to fix things, no matter how dire. They might not be able to match Rocky’s skill (and really, they wouldn’t want to - it would almost feel like replacing Rocky, like agreeing that he really wasn’t coming back, and they refused to entertain such a thought), but they could dive down a similar field. And there was a very pertinent field of engineering as of late: bioengineering. With an alien(!) lifeform now easily bred and harvested, simply living on their planet (contained, of course) and feasting off of stars in space, the need to study the very structures of life was vital more than ever. Not to mention the need to understand how Eridian life responded to it as well.
Especially if they were going to be faring space again anytime soon. It was best if they knew exactly how Eridian bodies worked, better than ever, and what unknown effects space could have on one’s health. So Adrian threw themself headfirst into the study of bioengineering and biomedical science, hoping, believing, pleading to the stars, that they could find some way to help. Could solve this problem before things got worse. If they understood the astrophage well enough, maybe they could synthesize it. And if they could synthesize it, then they could kill it, en masse, somehow. All they would need, then, would be to find a way to deploy that solution to the Petrova Line, and voila, Eridani was saved.
Some small, secret part of them also hoped that, if they found a way to solve this, then Erid would send up another ship - not to explore the stars, but to find the first ship they had sent and bring it home. Bring Rocky home. Maybe, just maybe, if they worked hard enough, buried themself deep enough in their studies, learned how to understand alien life better than it understood itself, then they would make Erid bring Rocky back to them.
But no matter what they did - no matter what all of Erid did - none of them could figure out how to destroy astrophage. Not in scale. Not enough to guarantee it wouldn’t immediately breed back to star-eating numbers once more, forcing them to send up another extermination crew, again and again, slowly eating up their resources as they put out inefficient temporary fix after inefficient temporary fix.
And today was no different.
After a long day of trying (and failing, yet again, over and over) to understand astrophage, to determine what would make it cease, they were making their way back to a too-empty home, to rest and ponder and try to deal with the slow ache of grief, before their next sleep cycle.
But, as they grew closer to their home, there was something different in the air, a quiet reverberation that made them slow to a stop, clicking quietly in high alert, trying to hear their surroundings better.
It was quiet, at first, almost inaudible even to Eridian hearing. And then, slowly, it grew - a gentle rumbling in the ground, a murmur in the air, a growing buzz that built and built until it was a cacophony. A thrum would start soon somewhere, most likely, but that wasn’t the source of the noise - not yet. No, what they were hearing was a roar of voices speaking over each other in sheer surprise and confusion, spreading quickly until it seemed to rumble throughout the whole planet.
Adrian turned away from home, rushing towards the source of the sound, desperate to figure out what was going on, what had caused the sudden and overpowering shock that shook the world. Only halfway there, they picked up on a snippet of conversation that told them why.
“-hear that? The astronomers spotted something entering our orbit!” One voice cried out amidst the cacophony, echoed by similar sentiments from all sides.
Adrian nearly broke their claws from the speed at which they began to sprint.
It wasn’t long (though not nearly quick enough, they thought) before they reached the astronomy center, where dozens upon dozens of scientists were examining the ship in their orbit the best they could through their tools - a form of sonar they had developed to look past their planet’s atmosphere to the unknowable vastness beyond.
Most people were kept out, told to wait until an official announcement was made. They couldn’t properly use their equipment if there were hundreds of people bursting into the building2, after all. But the head astronomer recognized Adrian almost immediately, knew exactly why they were here. They were let inside without a word, though the barriers were quickly closed behind them to prevent anyone from following after.
They were brought up to speed on what the astronomers knew: there was something that had been steadily approaching for who knew how long at this point (they had been so focused on Eridani and the Petrova Line that there hadn’t been much focus in any other direction), but it was only within the past few days that they could be sure it was approaching Erid: and only today that it had begun to enter their orbit. It was a distant orbit, so far, still not close enough to make contact by any means, hardly enough to even recognize the craft at all. They could make out that it wasn’t an asteroid or any natural celestial body, but beyond that, they couldn’t make out details.
Only, just as Adrian was about to ask questions - could they make out the composition? The size? Did they know its velocity? Was it their ship? Was Rocky finally home? - there came a startled hum from one of the astronomers, and the one next to them dropped the tool they had been holding in shock.
It was a space-faring vessel, they announced, no doubt about it.
And it wasn’t the ship they had sent out.
A cacophony burst out in the room, but Galileo3 (the head astronomer) quickly silenced them all. They were all excited, all abuzz with this discovery, but they had to remain focused. Now, more than ever, might be the most vital moments in their history. They couldn’t get distracted by their own reactions, not now.
While the scientists got back to work observing and taking notes, Adrian was lost in their head. Why was this vessel here? What did they want? Was it another intelligent species? Was anyone even on that vessel, or was it just a probe of some sort? It was small, far smaller than the ship they had sent. Why would an intelligent species use a ship so small to house their people - unless, were these aliens incredibly tiny? Maybe to them, that vessel was as vast as the Eridian oceans were. Did they know about the astrophage problem? (Yes, as it turned out, the scientists quickly were able to pinpoint that the emissions to propel the ship matched the same astrophage emissions that theirs had).
Were they here to help? To find another suitable planet after theirs had died from their dimming stars? Did they even know there was life on this planet? Were they just passing through, or was Erid really their destination? From the direction the scientists had calculated, they seemed to be heading almost straight for the core of the planet - surely that was intentional, right? Or maybe they were about to correct course once they realized that there was a celestial body in the way of their path, and Erid would never see this alien craft again. If they had astrophage, were they the origin of it? Another species that had simply discovered it feasting on their star? Did they have the solution? Were they here to ask Erid for the solution? Were they friendly? Were they even truly sentient, or was this actually just some naturally-forming celestial object that had never been discovered before?
Or, oh stars, what if what they thought was a vessel was actually the alien itself? What if it was another space-faring lifeform like astrophage, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of scale - it was small for a spaceship, sure, but it was colossal for a life-form. Erid hardly knew how to handle astrophage; how in the world were they supposed to handle space giants that propelled themselves the same way astrophage did?
Adrian wasn’t sure how long they had been lost in thought, but when they were snapped back to the present, it was apparently long enough that the ship (and yes, the astronomers were sure, it was a ship) had changed its trajectory. Not entirely - it wasn’t veering away from Erid. If anything, it was slowing down as if to stop safely at Erid, decelerating as it maintained its general direction towards their orbit.
Adrian tried to remain quiet, but the whole observatory was buzzing with a quiet hum of activity, of anticipation, of curiosity that couldn’t be tamed. This vessel was slow, far slower than theirs had been, but it was undoubtedly approaching. Deliberately. Carefully.
Adrian was glad that they had not been particularly near their next sleep cycle, because it was hours (a little over a full Earth day, to be precise) before there were any new developments. Just the constant monitoring, the constant slow approach of the vessel, the constant growing anticipation as they awaited the next development.
The observatory’s radio crackled to life.