A structure.

Valdez looked at me. “Kaelen. You’re logging this. What do we call it?”

“Kaelen,” she said. “We’ve lost propulsion. All of it. Main drive, maneuvering thrusters, the whole vector array.”

Now it was our turn. We argued for twelve hours. No food. No sleep. Just the amber glow and the skeleton’s silent witness.

It’s a delay, not a solution.

We can hear nothing. Transmit nothing. No distress beacon. No Mayday . Just static, and the slow realization that no one is coming because no one knows we’re here.

Pilot Chen discovered the cryo-bay during a manual systems audit. She walked into the mess hall, pale as a sheet, and said, “Four pods.”

But that’s not why I’m writing this final entry.