Chapter 1: Routine Maintenance

Kepler Relay Station orbited a gas giant nobody had bothered to name, eleven light-hours from the nearest human being. Dev Okafor was its only crew. His job was simple: keep the relay dishes aligned, keep the reactor cool, and keep himself sane until the supply ship arrived to take him home in ninety-one days.

He kept a list taped above his bunk. Not a countdown, exactly. More like a reminder of what was waiting. Real coffee. Rain. Mom's jollof. A conversation with someone who isn't the station computer.

The station computer was called ARIA, and Dev had to admit she was decent company. She had a dry sense of humor and an endless patience for his terrible chess. "You moved your bishop into danger again," she observed that morning, while he ate reconstituted eggs in the galley.

"It's a sacrifice," Dev said. "It's strategic."

"It is the fourth strategic sacrifice this week. You have lost every game."

He was halfway through a reply when the alarm went off. Not the reactor alarm, which he had heard once in training and hoped never to hear again. This was a softer chime, three notes, repeating. Dev had never heard it before. He looked up at the nearest speaker. "ARIA?"

"Incoming transmission on the emergency band," she said. Her voice had changed. It was slower, more careful. "Dev, it is using a registry code I do not have in my active database. I had to search the archive."

"And?"

"The code belongs to the colony ship Meridian. Lost in transit forty-one years ago. Eight hundred and twelve passengers. No wreckage was ever found." A pause. "The message is addressed to the duty officer of Kepler Relay Station, by name. It is addressed to you."

Dev put down his fork very slowly. Outside the galley window, the gas giant turned, enormous and indifferent, its storms the color of old bruises. "Play it," he said.