Prologue: The Descent

"Wow. We're really almost there now."

I looked out into space. Up through the fifth wake cycle, the window-screen ahead had held nothing but a single slightly oversized point of light. Now a vast blue planet filled the enormous monitor that pretended to be a window, so close it seemed ready to punch straight through the glass and announce itself.

"...Yeah. Though it only feels like about three months have gone by."

The dress uniform I hadn't worn in ages had never sat right with me. The hips were far too tight — tight enough that people of either gender behaved as if they simply could not help sending their eyes that way.

"Ah, um..."

After dozens of duty cycles, the end of an eighty-six-year voyage was finally drawing near. Perhaps reminded that the family, the friends, the most precious person and the most hated person left behind were all long dead, the woman fell silent.

A lesbian, someone had said. I wasn't blind to the sidelong glances, but with a life-or-death landing imminent I didn't bother shutting them down — call it stress management. She probably thought she was being subtle about it.

A snort of laughter slipped out. No matter how I turned it over, accepting something like that was beyond imagination. Hopefully it was just a momentary lustful look and not unrequited love...

"...?"

And then, in one corner of the massive curved monitor that could easily be mistaken for a real window, a tiny fleck of noise flickered into existence. It lasted only a fraction of a second — but that didn't make it something I could ignore.

"How long has that been doing that?"

"......"

"Hey, Soyeon?"

"Hyat— Yes?"

"The static on the monitor. How long has it been like that?"

A gulp. The sound of someone swallowing hard. Wait — that much?

"Ah, ah! That's, um... the, the control supervisor checked it during cycle fifty-seven, there's a record of it! It says no significant issues!"

"You verified everything?"

"Yes! It's a minor monitor error!"

Soyeon made a little show of saluting. Did that kind of salute even still exist on Earth these days?

I wanted nothing more than to snatch up a PDA and check for myself, but I deliberately didn't. I was the Deputy Safety Manager, after all — doing that might chip away at my authority just a little.

Well. There wasn't anything particular that needed doing on this duty shift. I ran through the safety checks out of habit, then sank back into hibernation.

When I opened my eyes again, the screen showing literal open space had no black left in it at all — the planet had come right up to our noses.

And so: landing day. Inside the distilled essence of technology carrying all of humanity's hopes, prayers, and the raw drive for species survival, dozens of people bustled about in a frenzy of motion.

"Um, Administrator."

"Hmm?"

An engineer so far down the hierarchy I didn't even know their name was standing behind me. Looking quite tense under the weight of authority.

"Errors keep popping up, but every report that comes back says there's nothing wrong. If you could take a look..."

"Ah, yeah. Sure. Where?"

"Monitor thirteen...!"

Even though the government and the power structure that would normally shore up my authority might no longer exist at all, the woman awkwardly projected monitor thirteen onto my own screen.

"...So there's no problem... at all?"

"Yes...! They started appearing slowly from the previous cycle, and I checked... there's nothing wrong...!"

"Hmm..."

"I even ran a full system diagnostic..."

"Hmm. Soyeon. Come over here a second?"

Landing wasn't far off. Everything that flew was most dangerous at the moment of takeoff and touchdown, so Soyeon — who had been buried face-first in her monitor — came over in quick little steps. As if being called over made her happy.

"Yeees! Soyeon has arri—"

"Look at this. What do you think?"

Soyeon deliberately came around behind me and pressed her face uncomfortably close to the monitor. Just as the heavy sound of her breathing was starting to raise the hair on my arms, she stared at the screen as if briefly startled, then slipped back into her usual expression.

"Um. That, uhm. The data, that, a local cache flush happened, so..."

She was choosing her words carefully, a little tense — clearly under the impression that I was testing her.

"No. Not the textbook answer. We already checked all of that."

"Practically speaking, then?"

"Practically speaking."

After a moment's thought, Soyeon opened her mouth.

"Just minor errors...?"

"Think we can ignore them?"

"Yes... probably?"

The kind of errors that cropped up from time to time. And the kind that would have shown up cleanly during inspection if anything were genuinely wrong.

Our opinions lined up. Soyeon wasn't under me because she knew less than I did. Seeing us agree, the engineer returned to their post with a carefully hidden look of well, of course relief.

And at the same time, a notification that we had entered the gravity well bloomed large and bold across the exact center of the screen.

I drained the last of my coffee and locked the cup into its holder; Soyeon returned to her own seat and began fastening her safety harness.

The moment I slipped in my earpiece, calm voices began coming through in sequence.

A composed, faintly tense voice announcing the start of reverse thrust and attitude control reached my ear and registered — and in that exact instant—

Beeeep—

The world turned red. The soft green screens that had been easy on the eyes flipped over to crimson, forcing me to squint.

"...!"

"Thrust control failure! Thrust control failure!"

"Rebooting navigation systems! Five, four, three, two, one— ...Uh, i-it's rebooting again!"

"What are you doing! Stay calm! Stay calm!"

In that moment, my mind went white. The fact that death might have just walked right up to our faces hit my chest before it hit my head.

What hit harder still was the vague, formless terror that this mission might fail. Dozens of corporations and multiple nations had been our backers, after all.

"......"

"Loop — we're stuck in a loop — switching to manual! Administrator!"

"..."

"Administrator!"

Bee-yung, bee-yung — chaotic sirens flooded the Control Room. Even a child who had never been socialized would have known something was wrong.

"...Ah. Yeah. Transfer it now. Restart the navigation systems."

My hands moved across the keyboard without conscious thought. Special characters, letters of the alphabet, Hangul, a few hard keys — and control authority began flooding over all at once. At the same time, a blood-colored graphic greeted me: the hull had tilted approximately three degrees.

And so the floor began to shake, slowly. The quality of the vibration was nothing like what we'd felt in training.

Clatter-clatter. The mug that hadn't been properly secured started rattling wildly in the play of its holder.

Those who had briefly unbuckled to respond could barely stay on their feet, barely managing to claw their way back into their seats.

On the screen, the hull looked perfectly normal. Without the numbers, you wouldn't have known what all the fuss was about — such a subtle tilt.

Fortunately, it was still fine. Not fatal. Only three degrees. The landing point would shift by the barest margin, nothing more.

And at the same ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time — the lights went out.

"..."

My own face stared back at me from the black face of the monitor.

Murmurs. In the Control Room that had fallen silent as if everything had stopped, the scattered muttering soon shifted, kicked off by someone's terror-stricken scream.

"No, wait— hold on...!"

We had only struck the atmospheric plasma layer. I opened my mouth to calm what should have been a disruption lasting a few seconds at most — but the controller poured their voice into the earpiece as if even that were a luxury we couldn't afford.

Anyone panicking without even understanding the situation wouldn't have been much help anyway.

"No autonomous control response! Requesting manual flight authorization!"

"Ah — authorized. Authorized! Do you have control?"

"Deviating seven degrees...! Flight control is possible! Thrust still not responding! Eight degrees deviation!"

Vwooom. With the sound of something spinning back up, power returned. The murmuring and the screams quieted a little. The farce of people looking embarrassed in the middle of all this wasn't even funny, and I had no attention to spare them a glance.

"Tell me when it hits ten degrees!"

An alarm. This time it rang on my monitor alone. Someone's consideration, maybe — hoping the rest of them wouldn't panic.

Fuck. My body tried to bolt upright and was caught hard by the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠safety harness, pinned to the chair. This was far more serious than I'd thought.

"Hey. Hey. What's the atmospheric turbulence percentage right now."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I asked it urgently. Honorifics had vanished a long time ago.

"……Three — three hundred percent. Three hundred percent."

"What?"

The woman buried her face in the monitor, reading the numbers as if she couldn't believe them.

"What is this? Why — why like this? No, that, still—"

"Ten degrees deviation! Approaching eleven!"

No input from the Zone 3 sensors meant something very clear. No childish idiot had yanked the wires out over there — it meant everything had burned out so thoroughly the system couldn't even register it existed.

The ship — the hull — shook as if it were about to slide out from under us.

Eleven degrees of deviation.

Back in training, every candidate who had ever let a hull tilt this far had washed out on the spot. They'd probably all died of old age by now.

"Calculating landing point...! We're off course! More than twenty kilometers off!"

"...No. We have to get out! Right now fucking landing isn't the issue! Evacuate! Evacuate!"

Past fifteen degrees, the ship itself might survive — but every organic thing inside it would be pulverized into paste.

Everyone repeated the word evacuate twice. No one meant to; it was the muscle memory of an action performed dozens of times a day until a few subjective months ago, leaking out on its own.

Soyeon turned her head and stared at me, startled. At the same time her hand went to her harness.

Evacuation was my exclusive authority. Right now, even if the old captain himself walked in, he would have to listen to me.

I slammed down on the plastic case covering the red button hard enough to shatter it — it didn't break — so I flipped the cover up with a click and pressed the button.

The escape pods required three separation sequences in total. Automatic — but each one still needed administrator authentication. Most of the people around me were already half-panicked, moving on pure training memory alone.

Which meant I still couldn't leave. There was work left to do.

Even as I kicked off the evacuation sequence, I kept checking the situation as fast as I could.

This couldn't be right. Turbulence. Turbulence was only an external factor. It might have made things worse, but it could never have been the cause. It made no sense that a ship like this would fail to land over a handful of human errors.

Why? Why? What the hell had broken it this badly? It should never have gotten this far. It should have been nothing more than a small enough glitch that we'd touch down, go phew, that was scary, and tease whoever had flinched.

The hull kept tilting. Twelve degrees. Thirteen. Fourteen. The AI — built of nothing but algorithms — detected critical danger and ripped control authority out of human hands. Meaning the situation was so urgent that even the organic judgment of a human being, the kind no computer could imitate, was no longer required.

The vibration intensified. Backup thrusters kicked in, but we were already well past serious. I could feel the tilt in my bones.

The ceiling shuddered. Monitors lurched. People were flung into the walls. The overheated backup thrusters cut out a moment later. Maybe only the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sensors had burned and the thrusters themselves were still fine — but there was no way to know.

So I unbuckled at the same time and pounded the panel hard enough to crack it. One last time, I entered the Passkey.

"Administrator!"

"Go first!"

The escape pod hangar doors opened.