[Moose]

  His rationing math said he had several months’ worth of supplies and he was going to use it.

  He had chosen a relatively short hop for the first leg of their new journey. It had taken him less than half a day to get the math ready and for the computer to check everything. If the math was all correct, the flight itself wouldn’t be more than a couple of days.

  Which worked just fine for him.

  While the others seemed to take that first day as a rest and recover period from the station, something he wholeheartedly agreed with, he had spent it all doing math. Most of the next day as well, though Pup and Kitty had finally come to see what he was up to.

  ‘Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t go to the station. I don’t know how I would handle being surrounded by that many people after so long. Even just Pup and Kitty are draining if they are both awake at the same time.’

  He had always enjoyed his extended bouts of isolation, much more interested in tinkering or reading than interacting with people. The occasional buddy dragging him out to be human again was appreciated, but it took so long to recover afterwards.

  ‘Probably why I was accepted for the cryo tests. They made it pretty clear they didn’t want top performers, but there had to be better choices than me.’

  That first contact with aliens had been a big deal… for all of a week. The advanced communication tech that allowed the contact got more press in the end. It wasn’t surprising, since it took nearly three months for a call and response. Not exactly riveting entertainment for public consumption.

  He couldn’t say much though. He had been equally as wowed by aliens as everyone else, then promptly forgot about that altogether when the cryo tech debuted. Supposedly from the aliens, but he never got confirmation on that part.

  He wasn’t going to question it too hard.

  It landed his ass here after all.

  ‘If the math was right, we should be in FTL for nearly a month. It will have fits and starts, as I couldn’t find a good straight path without an obstacle. Shame I haven’t figured out if I can curve the FTL travel.’

  He was keeping track of days, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour to pop down to the bridge and start the FTL again. He hadn’t done all that math for nothing after all.

  ‘Still best to check fuel and other levels between each jump though. Better safe than exploded.’

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  The extended periods would give him a lot more time to pursue the labs on the secret level. While the fate of the crew had never left his mind completely, it had been overshadowed by everything that needed immediate attention. Like watch standing and docking. He might know where they had ended up, but it didn’t tell him why. Or how.

  ‘Didn’t seem like enough of a mess for a ship this size either. I wonder how long they had really been there.’

  He had zero guesses on decay rates in an air lock. He supposed it depended on what was doing the decaying, but he had zero guesses on that either. He had hoped to find the answers in the ship logs, but not only did they prove to be illusive, the ones he did find were not very helpful at all.

  He had learned more from those lab reports, even if it was mostly guesswork.

  His plan was to spend most of that flight time locked up in the labs, reading reports. He not only brought what he thought was essentially a crowbar to pry open anything that was locked, he got something he might be able to use to pick a lock.

  ‘Got some pillows so I can sit somewhere that isn’t a metal floor as well. All I’m missing is a nice hot drink.’

  He grimaced.

  ‘One that isn’t water at least.’

  He had tried to make hot chocolate with those choco-sticks, but whatever they were made out of didn’t melt well. All he managed was a mess and a wasted snack.

  ‘Let’s hope the young’uns don’t cause too much trouble while I’m not watching.’

  It didn’t take him long to get settled in and translating. Having to leave at the end of the day to do small things like eat and sleep didn’t help with the speed, but he felt he made good progress. The problem being that he had no way to really place things in a timeline.

  ‘There are a lot of lab reports full of jargon, some of which I might actually understand. But I can’t figure out how or even if they are dated. Did the successful gamete extraction happen before or after the artificial wombs were verified at a high effectiveness?’

  Did it matter? He had no idea. Maybe. Did gametes need artificial wombs to be successful? All good questions he didn’t have answers to. He supposed it didn’t really mean much to him, he needed a timeline of events, not a head full of research notes. The science was too interesting to dismiss though, always tantalizing with a ‘this might be important later’ vibe.

  ‘If I translated this right, it does seem like this isn’t the only ship. They gave something to a ‘sister ship’ to begin testing. Something about editing senescence.’

  He wasn’t sure how you edited entropy, but interesting was certainly an apt descriptor.

  If he could find more references to this ‘sister ship’ he might be able to find a location or a radio code or something. It would at least give him a reason to seek out a particular destination rather than just randomly pop into star systems.

  “Oh, here we go. ‘C.UeH dies in childbirth, fetus never matured. Viable genetic materials collected.’ I have seen that abbreviation before. It had something to do with moving cryo pods.”

  It meant that said abbreviation was talking about a person. A female person, considering the fetus was also mentioned. The abbreviation had thrown him off before, ruining his ability to grab context where it was used. He started to go back over the papers he had put aside, looking for where he had seen it.

  Finding it and giving it a quick look over, he found the spot he had gotten stumped.

  ‘I still don’t know what it stands for, but it is clearly talking about a person. It clears out some of the context I couldn’t parse before.’

  If he was reading what he translated correctly, and that was a very big if, this might be a big change.

  It might mean he wasn’t the only one here.