IV || [MxM, Sci Fi]

Prologue

"It might be beautiful, but they call it the world's tallest graveyard for a reason, darling."

She turned away from the windscreen. The view was nothing similar, yet that conversation randomly popped up in her memory.

She was there. Twice. Mostly to prove a point - that was her way of doing things. Last time they lost the route and almost perished in a snowstorm. Still, the glacier on the top of the world would make a better grave than... something like this.

A system message popped up - the scanner picked up no signals again.

"Theseus, R-105 reporting," own voice echoed in her head and inside the helmet.

"Johanna?"

Ah, Amy.

Who let her take over the comms? Worse, it's been five hours since his ship went offline, but from Amy's voice, it was clear she was still hoping.

Johanna sighed. She saw them together the other day. They looked like a couple. 

What a cruel fate.

"What's your status? Any updates?"

"Scouted Sector 3. Now heading to Sector 2."

She turned the comms off before hearing the reply and glanced again at the giant rock soaring above the ship. A collision of peaks and valleys bathed in silver light; up close, it did resemble the snow-covered slopes of Lhotse. 

Or maybe it seemed so after you stared at it for too long.

A sudden rattling of computers woke her up from the memories. The drone zoomed in on the surface of the asteroid she was observing, and coordinates flashed across the screens. In a moment, the visuals caught up: a medium-sized scouting spacecraft, scratched registration number TH1170 on its side; one of the engines and a misshapen delta wing were lying next to the decompressed hull.

Both escape pods were still attached.

"Theseus, this is R-105. Transferring the coordinates of RS-107...."

They call space the loneliest graveyard for a reason, darling.