"This is survivor log, so many days I’ve lost count," the recorded voice said. "Still no response from Liberty command. Still no rescue signals detected. Beginning to accept that I might be the last one."
My throat tightened. Since the demise of Liberty. He held hope that was slowly dying.
The recording continued: "Modified the beacon today. Added human encoding protocols to the power modulation signal. If anyone's monitoring in this sector, Zandovian, human, anyone, they'll see the variance. Long shot, but long shots are all I have left."
"That's the signal I detected," I said. "He created the power bleed specifically to get someone's attention."
Er'dox was scanning the shelter's systems. "Life support is failing. Power reserves are nearly depleted. Whoever lived here had maybe another week before critical systems went offline."
"Had? Past tense?" I turned to face him. "Er'dox, where is he?"
"Unknown. But the logs are three days old. He was alive seventy-two hours ago."
I pulled up more recent data, searching for any indication of what happened. The logs ended abruptly. No final message, no indication of departure or evacuation. Just... stopped.
"Vaxon," I called through the comm. "Can your team do a wider area scan? This survivor was here three days ago, but there's no indication of where he went."
"Already scanning. Nothing within a hundred-meter radius. But there are environmental suits missing from the storage. He might have gone for supplies or equipment."
Or he might have finally given up. Walked out into the marginal atmosphere and the ice-rock landscape and decided it was enough.
I shoved that thought down before it could take root.
"Dana, look at this," Er'dox said from the workstation. He'd pulled up a different file, this one showing technical schematics. "He's been reverse-engineering Zandovian technology."
The designs were crude but recognizable with power systems, communication protocols, propulsion theory. Someonehad studied whatever salvage they'd found and was teaching themselves alien engineering from first principles.
"He was trying to build a ship," I realized. "Or at least improve his communication capabilities enough to reach someone. That's what the power modulation signal was, the first successful test of adapted Zandovian technology."
"Impressive for someone working alone with limited resources." Er'dox saved the schematics. "Captain Tor'van will want to see this."
I kept searching the logs, looking for anything that might indicate where the survivor had gone. And then I found it, a final entry, not in the official logs but buried in a maintenance file.
"Found something," I said. "Secondary shelter location. Coordinates are thirty kilometers east. Notes say the primary shelter's life support was failing faster than expected, so he established a backup position with salvaged equipment."
"Thirty kilometers in this environment is a significant journey," Vaxon observed. "He might not have made it."
"He made it for such a long drawn out time. I'm betting on him making it another thirty kilometers." I pulled the coordinates. "Can we reach that location?"
"Landing craft can cover that distance in ten minutes. But Dana, we need to consider the possibility?—"
"I know what we need to consider," I interrupted. "That he's dead. That we're chasing ghosts. That this is a waste of resources better spent on confirmed survivors." I met Vaxon's intense gaze. "But if there's even a chance someone from Liberty is still alive out there, I have to try."
Silence fell across the comm channel. I could feel the team's calculations of risk versus reward, time versus resources, certainty versus possibility.
Then Er'dox's voice, quiet but firm: "We continue to the secondary location. Dana's right. If there's a survivor, we find them."
"You're authorizing a mission extension based on possibility?" Vaxon asked.
"I'm authorizing a mission extension based on the same instinct that had Dana catch sabotage my entire department missed. Sometimes you trust the engineer who sees what others don't."
I wanted to hug him for that. Wanted to thank him for the trust, for the support, for believing that my gut feeling was worth following. Instead, I just nodded and started compiling data for transport.
We evacuated the shelter, sealed it back up—preserving evidence, Vaxon said, though evidence of what I wasn't entirely sure—and loaded back into the landing craft. The pilot plugged in the new coordinates, and we lifted off with barely a tremor.
Thirty kilometers took exactly nine minutes and forty-three seconds. I counted every one of them.
The secondary shelter was even more improvised than the first, barely more than a survival tent reinforced with salvaged plating, powered by equipment that looked like it was held together with hope and desperation engineering. The kind of setup you built when you were out of better options and running out of time.
