Chapter Text
Grace can’t imagine how freaky this must be to the Eridians.
They sent out a massive astrophage-powered spaceship with twenty-three of their best Eridians with a plan to save the world, and it never returned. Now, over seventy years later, a tiny alien astropage-powered spaceship is rapidly approaching their homeworld.
Well, seventy Earth years. The Eridian year is only 42 days. And each day is only about six hours long. Grace taps his thin fingers against the armrest of the pilot’s chair, trying to do the math in his head before huffing in frustration. He can’t.
Starvation isn’t a fun way to die, he’s learning. The brainfog makes sure he can’t do even basic math like this by himself. Of course, Rocky would have insisted on using Earth units anyway, so as not to confuse Grace’s simple human brain. Grace bites his cheek to chase the thought away. He has a planet to save. Rocky’s planet. He couldn’t save Rocky, but he can make sure his death meant something and complete his job. Grace is bringing Erid Taumeoba-82.5.
He can only hope the Eridian’s radio systems can pick up on the Hail Mary’s radio frequencies. Rocky mentioned Erid used radio systems too, just like humans. Grace just has to hope they can sense the same wavelengths.
The Hail Mary is in the 40-Eridani system now. He should probably announce his presence now with a quick friendly radio message and hope that they can understand. Grace boots up his Eridian translator application and compiles a message in Rocky’s voice. He has the Eridian words and translations, but it’ll have to be in English sentence structure. Rocky adapted to Grace’s way of speaking for simplicity’s sake, but now Grace wishes he could have learned more about how Eridians do things. If they’re anything like Rocky, they should be able to make out what he’s saying anyway.
He pieces together a sentence:
Hello, Erid! I come in peace. I am from star system Sol. I have astrophage solution, statement. Can you understand me, question?
Rocky had a couple different words meant for greetings, so Grace picks the one Rocky used to greet him the first time, hoping it has a friendly, excited, and hopefully not too informal connotation. Rocky used it to greet an alien, so Grace will, too. Grace knows enough Eridian now to understand that Rocky’s word for “Sol” was just their word for “star” and a long string of identifying numbers. Hopefully this doesn’t start some kind of interstellar war. He is basically giving them his home address.
Grace breathes in deep through his nose. It’ll have to do. He taps on one of the many control screens in front of him and scrolls through until he finds the “Radio communications” button. It’s hidden within a trail of three different menu options. Grace supposes it must not have been deemed a priority, considering the Hail Mary would only need to communicate with Earth for maybe a couple of hours before it left Earth’s radio bubble.
He turns on the radio and hits record. He plays his message from the laptop, taking those few seconds to revel in the musical sounds of Rocky’s recorded voice. Once the recording finishes, Grace hesitates only a moment before broadcasting the message. He really hopes this doesn’t start an interstellar war. Or get him killed somehow. What if he accidentally said “Hello? I came to tear you to pieces! Fear me!” and now all of Erid thinks he’s come to destroy them?
Grace takes a deep breath, knowing he’s being silly. Malnutrition is known to make people more anxious, and being alone on a tiny spaceship eating goop for years hasn’t been helpful. Grace sets his message on a loop to minimize the chance it gets missed.
It must be creepy, though— to receive a choppy pieced-together message in your own language, but with terrible grammar, and in the voice of someone your species launched into space and probably presumed dead.
Oh God, Grace is going to have to explain what happened to the crew of the Blip-A. He has so much he has to tell them, from relativistic physics and radiation to how to properly handle their taumeoba. Hopefully he’ll be able to tell them everything before he croaks.
He’s stretched his food out as much as he can. He ran out of solid food years ago and has been consuming nothing but the coma slurry, but he’s alive and mostly functional, just much thinner and a little foggier. He’ll run out completely a couple months after reaching Erid, but that’s okay. He’ll give them their Taumeoba-82.5, explain what he can, and then… die, he supposes. Yao’s gun has been teasing him for the past four years since Rocky didn’t meet him in the tunnel.
It’s a scary thought, but Grace knows that’s what will happen. He’s almost out of food and Eridian food will kill him even faster than starvation.
Grace draws his quilt in closer over his gaunt shoulders and yawns. He’s always tired these days. It comes with the malnutrition and lack of a proper circadian rhythm. He leans back in the pilot’s chair.
It will take his message about twenty hours to reach Erid, and a little less for their message to reach him since he’s going towards them. “Mary,” he says, voice rough. He hasn’t spoken much recently.
“Yes, Dr. Grace?” The automated voice of the ship replies.
“Alert me if the Hail Mary senses any unusual radiowave activities.”
“Will do, Dr. Grace.” The voice responds.
He closes his eyes. Nothing to do now but wait.
—-------
Armando hands Grace his daily serving of coma slurry as Grace hits play on his laptop. He’s been passing time by binge watching TV shows and thanking Stratt for pirating every possible form of entertainment onto the Hail Mary’s main computer. Seriously, he would probably be insane without it. With no other people to keep him company, his greatest comforts these days are bad sitcoms and queerbaiting 2000s shows. He’s grown very fond of Merlin.
He mumbles into his coma slurry as the intro plays, “Alright, Grace, time for gruel. Just get it down.”
You’d think after eating it for three years straight, he’d be used to it by now, but you’d be wrong. He swears it gets grosser every day.
Grace chugs the whole ration at once and tries not to focus on the texture. Of course, focusing on not focusing on something is exactly how you accidentally end up focusing on it, so Grace ends up grimacing as the flavorless sludge slides down his throat. He sticks his tongue out in disgust and washes it down with a sip of water.
“Unusual radio wave activity detected.”
Grace nearly chokes on his water. He’s up and climbing the ladder to the lab, and then to the control room as fast as his starved body will allow. He plants himself in the pilot’s chair and scrolls through the screens until he relocates the radio communications options.
He left a laptop up here, so he quickly boots up the translator application and turns on the radio to be met by a symphony of notes and chords.
It’s a looped audio, just like what he sent to Erid. He listens to it onceover. Then again. Then three more times. It’s nice to hear another voice again, even if it’s alien and he doesn’t understand the words. It’s nice, after being alone for so long.
He writes out all the words the translator gives him on a sheet of notebook paper and rearranges them until they make sense to him:
“Hello! This is Erid place for space elevator communication, statement. We understand you. You have name, question? You meet Eridian before and record sound, question? What is astrophage solution, question? You come to Erid, question?”
Grace smiles to himself as he finally ‘decodes’ the message. They sure asked a lot of questions, just like Rocky would have. Just like humans would have, honestly. The messages have to travel so far between Erid and the Hail Mary that there’s no point in not packing in as much information in as possible per message.
Grace drafts a new message. He’s too groggy to fully understand the Eridian sentence structure this quickly, and they seemed to decipher his English structuring just fine earlier, so he sticks with that, but makes an effort to be as simple as possible to avoid anything getting lost in translation.
Gosh, where to begin? The Eridians asked lots of questions and probably want the whole story. He starts out with some basic facts.
My name Grace.
He subs in Rocky’s word for his name, which Grace learned was actually just Eridian for the word ‘grace.’ As in their word for “courteous good will.” So right now Grace is basically calling their homeplanet and saying “Hey guys my name is Mercy and I’m here to save your world.”
Well, he can only hope they don’t find that suspiciously on the nose. Grace continues the message. He forgoes using “I” or “me” pronouns from here on out, instead referring to himself in the third person. Rocky did that frequently, and Grace hopes it’ll curb the effects of the language barrier.
Grace people from third Sol planet. Planet name Earth. Sol dimming because astrophage. Earth people send spaceship to Tau Ceti to investigate why Tau Ceti is not dimming. Grace meet Eridian ship there. Rocky only Eridian on ship. Grace create translator with recordings. Translator is what Grace use to send these messages. Rocky explain crew died long time before Grace ship reach Tau Ceti. Rocky only survivor. Rocky and Grace work together to find astrophage solution.
Grace’s heart squeezes talking about Rocky, but he powers on.
Grace Rocky save stars. We find predator that eat astrophage on third planet from Tau Ceti. We take predator, name it taumeoba, and do science with xenonite breeder tanks—
(Grace decides to cut out the breeding process for the sake of simplicity. He can explain the science parts later.)
—and take to individual home planets. We go separate ways. On Grace way home, predator escape from xenonite breeder tanks. Grace catch it in time and discover taumeoba can get through xenonite. Grace turn back for Rocky, but when Grace find Rocky ship again, taumeoba already get through xenonite and eat Rocky astrophage fuel. Rocky not answer. Rocky die. Grace very very very sorry. Grace take taumeoba to Erid for Rocky. Grace very very very sorry. Sorry for Eridian crew, sorry for Rocky. Sorry sorry sorry.
A tear falls down Grace’s cheek as he finishes drafting what is essentially a space email. He wipes away the tears and rereads his message. That should cover all bases, right? He answered all their questions, so it should be enough.
He puts the message together in the translation software and adds pauses between each sentence to help differentiate between ideas, hoping to help whatever Eridian linguist they got down there to understand.
He presses send.
The Hail Mary is getting even closer now. It’ll be around fourteen hours till his message reaches Erid, and twelve more until another message can reach him.