Chapter Text
The Hail Mary was screaming, multiple alarms blearing at the same time, warnings flashing on every screen. Gravity was tearing the ship apart and it kept falling towards Adrian. Grace hadn't been fast enough. They had lost too much altitude. Even now that Grace had pushed the engines to the maximum Mary couldn't keep up. She hadn't been designed to enter an atmosphere and she certainly hadn't been designed to exit one.
Rocky was jumping in his xenonite ball, screaming at Grace in Eridian. The translator was covered by the alarms but Grace could recognise his own name. He screamed, loud enough to be heard over the noise, "Rocky! I'm trying!"
And wasn't that a horrible reminder. They were going to die here. And if they did they condemned two whole planets with them. 8 billion people on Earth, countless Eridians on Erid - he hadn't thought to ask how many there were, and it was too late for that now. And they had been so close.
A few minutes less on the EVA and they might have had enough thrust to get out of Adrian's atmosphere. But Grace's eyes were fixed on the screens, and their altitude was still decreasing. They weren't getting out of here.
Warning upon warning popped up until the Engine failure one appeared. Grace could hear the engine turn off even over the sound of the ship breaking apart. Then it was free-fall. He turned to Rocky and told him, "I'm so sorry." Even if Rocky couldn't hear him, maybe he would still understand.
Grace took a breath - what he thought would probably be one of his last ones - as the noise of the cracks and tears in the hull were reaching an unbearable noise level.
He blinked.
Silence.
Well, not silence exactly. People were chatting all around him, but it felt like silence compared to the Hail Mary breaking apart in an atmosphere. Was he dead?
He knew he was sitting on a soft surface. He was surrounded by five people - wait people? Those were clearly Eridians. They had five limbs and a spider-like-body. He was aware of his surroundings, but this made no sense because he couldn't see. He just knew where things were, but he couldn't tell colours apart. It was almost like what he imagined echolocation to be.... Wait a damn minute.
Now that he was focusing on the Eridians around him, he could tell their voices apart and understand some of what they were saying. One of them in particular asked in Grace's direction : "Rocky? Is everything okay?"
Rocky?? Oh fuck. Where was Rocky?? He had been just next to him as they plummeted through Adrian's sky. He immediately turned around, as if maybe Rocky was hiding behind him. Actually.... right... echolocation... he had turned but it changed absolutely nothing to his perception of his surroundings. This would take some getting used to. If he could trust his new sense, Rocky wasn't in the room. He knew him well enough to recognise him even in a room full of Eridians. The ones here were all strangers.
Turning around had proved something else though: he had five limbs. He had moved fine when he had acted on instinct but as soon as he became aware of his five limbs, the tiny step back he tried to take turned impossible and he collapsed on the ground in a heap. Okay, so like riding a bike or breathing, don't overthink it or you suddenly forget how to do it. Noted.
Two of the Eridians got closer to him and called out again, sounding worried, "Rocky? What's going on?"
Grace had always prided himself on his deduction skills. So he quickly gathered what he knew:
-
He was alive (kinda? Maybe?),
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He had five limbs and knew how to use them (sometimes) and he was currently using echolocation,
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He was surrounded by Eridians,
-
And they were calling him Rocky.
He had two almost simultaneous realisations:
1) He had to be in Rocky's body
2) Rocky was fucking tiny and those Eridians were HUGE. Like maybe twice or thrice his current height. What the actual fuck.
He wasn't too proud about it but he thought it was a valid reaction to two spider-like-things thrice your size getting closer: he screamed and backed away until he collided with a wall. Ah, nice strong exoskeleton, that hadn't even hurt. His reaction didn't seem to reassure the Eridians - fair enough - and he could feel their confusion from all the way over here. Oh! He had moved again on his five legs! Maybe he was getting the hang of it and - oh there we go... too much being aware of his limbs ... he flayed around and ended up on the floor again.
"Goddamn motherfucking useless fucking alien limbs." Good news: he could speak Eridian. Bad news: it seemed Rocky likes to swear like a sailor.
The approaching Eridians stopped and watched him, now with worry. "Rocky, do you require assistance?"
Assistance? He did actually. But who could even - Adrian! There was someone he should be able to trust here. Well… probably?
He chose to stay on the floor for now. If he didn't move, he couldn't embarrass himself further. Okay don't overthink this. He tried to speak consciously for the first time, "Adrian!"
Oh good, it had worked. So he kept at it, "Adrian! Adrian! Need Adrian! Adrian!" Could he have tried for more complicated sentences? Sure. But this was getting his point across well enough.
The closer person told him, "We will get Adrian. Please call down. They will be there in a few minutes."
Grace stopped screaming. You know what… maybe he didn't have a very good handle on speaking and screaming ranges in Eridian yet. But surely he could be forgiven since it was his first time. He might be currently ruining Rocky's reputation though.
One of the Eridians had left, presumably to fetch Adrian, or to get help because they thought he had turned insane - he wouldn't know. The rest of the people in the room, Grace included, were frozen. The silence was eerie. Now that he took a second to think, Grace realised he had been lucky that Adrian was apparently not that far. They could have been on the other side of the planet for all he knew. He lacked a lot of knowledge of what Rocky's life had looked like before the launch and he knew next to nothing about life on Erid. They had talked a lot, but still, this was an alien planet. There was so much Grace had no idea about.
The door opened again - wait they had doors, wasn't that nice! Some of the things around Grace were unfamiliar but most like the door were clearly recognisable. Interesting to see (echolocate) that some things were the same across different planets.
The Eridian that had left, which Grace could vaguely recognise, entered first, followed by - Oh my god that Eridian was so pretty. That had to be Adrian. They were even bigger than the other Eridians in the room, their carapace was smooth and shimmering in Grace's view. Damn. He didn't know if it was muscle memory from Rocky's body or if Adrian really was just that beautiful by Eridian beauty standards. Actually Grace had no idea about Eridian beauty standards. But if he had been in the possession of a jaw, it would have currently been on the floor.
Adrian was here! Now.... Actually he hadn't thought that far. Well done Ryland...
He stayed frozen, focused on Adrian. They tapped the ground twice, probably in order to see him better. He could feel their attention on him. After a few seconds they walked his way, easily scooped him up and left the room with him perched on one of their limbs. At least that meant Grace didn't need to figure out how to walk out of the room. It might have saved some of his dignity, that was if he hadn't honest-to-god squealed when he felt Adrian pick him up. Uh. Was he getting kidnapped? Eridian-napped? Pebble-napped?
They entered another room, which was empty, and Adrian carefully let him down. Grace immediately tripped over his own limbs again and smashed to the ground. Adrian made a little humming noise and picked him up again. They helped him to stand until he was steady-ish. "Hello." Adrian said to him softly.
Oh fudge. Grace couldn't let them think he was their mate. He rushed to say "I'm not Rocky!"
Adrian hummed again, though Grace couldn't decipher what it meant, and answered calmly "Yes. I know."
Grace froze. This wasn't the reaction he thought he would get. He asked tentatively "You do?"
Adrian sat down in front of him which brought them closer to his level. Grace appreciated the fact that they weren't towering over him anymore. Adrian told him, "My mate would never sit this still." Oh my god. That was true, Rocky never stayed immobile except when he was sleeping.
Grace risked a careful glance, or he would have if he had eyes, as it was he just focused on the bigger Eridian. They were eerily calm for someone who's mate's body was currently being occupied by someone else. They just asked, curiosity clear in their voice, "Who are you? Where's Rocky?"
You know what: they were right! Where was Rocky?
Grace tentatively answered at first and then started rambling "I'm Grace. I'm Rocky's friend! He told me so much about you. Like uh… he made you that terrarium thing so that you could keep your little insects that everyone on Erid thinks are absolutely disgusting but you think they're very cute. And he prepared a whole thing to ask for you to be his mate but he was getting too stressed so you just told him yes before he even asked! But then you said it would be a shame for everything to go to waste so you still made him do it."
Actually now that he had met Adrian, every story Rocky had told him made so much sense. Also, whoops… that had been a lot of words. But he needed Adrian to trust him. He needed to prove he was telling the truth and he didn't know how else to show he knew Rocky well.
Adrian gently tapped the top of his carapace and … Grace had no frame of reference for what that meant in Eridian behaviour… but it seemed nice? And they said "It's okay. I believe you." And they really sounded like they did. Then they prompted him again, "Rocky?"
Grace took a few seconds. He wasn't sure but his best guess was: "Well if I'm here in his body… he might be in mine."
"And where would your body be?" Again with the soft and calm demeanour. Whatever chill pill Adrian took, Grace wanted the same.
He cringed and muttered, "On my home planet? Which is 16 light years away."
Adrian hummed thoughtfully, "Well, that's unfortunate." Yeah. You don't say… "How did you two meet then?"
"At Tau Ce- Wait a moment! How long is it until the spaceship launches?" Grace asked. Now that he was thinking about it, even if Rocky had woken up in his body, the important question was: when? Because if the Eridian spaceship hadn't launched yet, his body hadn't even been born yet.
"Three days." Adrian told him dryly. "You freaked out the crew."
Oh shit. Three days?? He was so stressed he forgot about the having-five-limbs thing and he jumped in place before pacing around. He asked Adrian, "Is three days enough time to modify the whole ship so that there's a thin layer of astrophage on every space-facing wall?"
Adrian looked thoroughly perplexed by the question but they did make the effort to think about it. "I'm not an engineer or a ship designer. I worked only on the life support system. But I would say… probably not?"
Grace turned around - oh he kept forgetting about the echolocation thing - and told Adrian "Then the spaceship is not launching in three days. Statement."
"Grace sits down and explain now." Grace felt scolded like a child, Adrian would have done wonders as a school teacher he thought.
The thing was, he had no idea where to begin. "I come from Earth, in the Sol system. Astrophage was dimming our sun so we did just like you and we sent a space mission to Tau Ceti. I was chosen to go."
And then he froze at the memory of running for his life and being tackled in the grass. Well then... he had been working under the assumption that he had volunteered for the mission. But no. He hadn't. He had been dragged kicking and screaming onto the ship. Nice. Let's avoid touching that memory even with a ten foot pole.
"Grace? Question." He just now realised that the question marks in the conversation so far hadn't been stressed like Rocky used to do it. Either that was a Rocky thing or he had done it all the time so Grace's tiny brain could understand better.
Grace shook himself, though it didn't look like much on an Eridian body. And continued, "Sorry. Yeah so I was sent to Tau Ceti to find a solution, and I met Rocky there. Like me, he was the only survivor from his crew." He trilled sadly - oh damn he didn't even know he could do that.
"That's why you can't launch in three days. The whole crew will die. The ship needs to have a layer of astrophage to protect the crew from space sickness. Rocky survived only because he lived between the astrophage tanks."
Grace could see the sadness radiating from Adrian when they said softly, "No one to watch him sleep. For how long?"
"No one to watch him sleep." Grace repeated sadly. "40 years."
Adrian let out a distressed noise. Oh, now Grace felt bad to have managed to break their unflappable demeanour. He added softly, hoping to make it slightly better, "But I watched him sleep. As soon as I got there, I watched him sleep."
"Thank you." Adrian told him solemnly. "And he watched you sleep? "
Grace almost nodded before he realised - again, this was hard to get used to - that he didn't have a head and that moving his carapace up and down would mean nothing to Adrian. "Yes. He did." Now wasn't the time to explain human sleep and the cultural differences between their species. He was telling the truth, Rocky had watched him sleep.
"Your crew died from the same sickness?" Adrian punctuates their question with a little tap-tap on the floor.
"No. We knew to protect against it. They went for a long sleep and did not wake up." Adrian trilled sadly again. Oh right, what would sound somewhat comforting for a human sounded like an Eridian's worst nightmare. Whoops.
"Why are you here, Grace? Can your species change bodies?" Reasonable assumption to make when meeting an alien in your mate's body actually. But no. It wasn't any more usual for humans than this was for Eridians.
"No. I don't know what happened. The last thing I remember, Rocky and I were on my ship and we were falling in Adr-" Right. That would take some explaining. "Tau ceti E's atmosphere. And then I blinked and I was in the room you found me in."
"Why?" Adrian asked confused.
"Uh. Why what? Rocky was on my ship because it was more manoeuvrable and we were trying to take a sample from the astrophage breeding clouds. We found that Astrophage was not breeding, or at least not leaving the planet. We wanted to know why. But my ship was built for deep space, we lost too much altitude for us to escape Tau Ceti E's gravity and it tore it apart."
Adrian made a thoughtful noise "We have to inform the crew and the people in charge of the ship so we can make all the changes it needs. Is there anything else about the ship that we should need to know about?"
"I'm going to have to explain relativity. Oh and well a sampling device that can go inside Adrian's atmosphere, to about 5 km down, would be good. And if it could be done from inside the ship that would be great. Having to go out and walk on the hull with gravity to fetch it... It's not fun." He said dryly.
"You did WHAT? Question." Glad to know that was what it took to break Adrian's calm. "Can your species live in space?"
"Oh no. We die too. But we have suits."
"Is your species insane. Question." Adrian was tapping the ground in agitation. It was true Rocky hadn't been a big fan of Grace going outside the ship into space either.
"Well... uh... sometimes." Great work Ryland. Make the alien think you're all crazy. Nicely done. "It's not important. We do okay."
If Adrian could have they would have probably given him a long look. They gave up the subject for something more important. "What is your body doing right now? Is Rocky safe? Will he go to Tau Ceti do you think?"
"Uh." Good question actually. "I... really don't know. Technically my body is not born yet - like right now. And uh so... if he tries to tell anyone about him not being me and coming from another planet... no one is going to believe him. Humans are not really welcoming to things they don't understand."
"It depends on when. If it's when I'm already on the astrophage task force... well yeah he'll be sent on the ship." Stratt wouldn't pass off the opportunity to send Grace's body to Tau Ceti again. Especially if it had survived the coma last time and if it was currently piloted by an alien with experience in the whole astrophage mission then all the better. But the big if was whether anyone would believe Rocky or not.
"For Erid, first priority will be saving our sun. Then maybe we could think about a diplomatic mission to Earth. But if you think Rocky might be on your spaceship we need to wait at Tau Ceti too. Actually, how old are you? And when did you get to Tau Ceti?" Adrian asked.
Ah shit relativity again. He needed a white board and 30 minutes to explain. As he didn't have that he did the short version: "I'm about 35 years old. And my ship is going to be at Tau Ceti in about 58 years. But I might need to check the math on everything to give better estimates."
Adrian froze and then asked shrill, "You are a pebble? Your planet sent a pebble to space? A pebble was their foremost expert?" Right… Adrian's chill was definitely gone. Grace resented the implication, by human standard he was an adult - had been an adult for a long time.
He answered slightly pouting, "I'm actually not. I'm about 40% of our natural lifespan. I'm definitely an adult.
That didn't seem to reassure Adrian at all. They seemed to be thinking for a while before they talked to Grace again. "We are going to inform the Old Ones about all this." Uh… Okay? Grace had no idea what Adrian was talking about but sure. He could trust they knew better.
Adrian asked him gently, "Do you need me to pick you up again or do you want to walk?" Grace was feeling very babied right now.
"Uh… I'll try to walk." It couldn't be that hard…
It was in fact that hard.