Someone was trying to escape the remains of the shipyard, someone her dedicated and very thorough crew had not found, maybe a pirate, maybe a survivor, but definitely someone who could build something space worthy out the wreckage, for all she saw was what looked like attitude jets, not the flare of boosters, just the puff of ice crystals from thrusters.

Rhysling's Rue
Chapter 2
By Theide
 

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It had been almost 6 days since they had arrived at the remains of the naval yard, and Helen still could not get the haunted gaze of the children out of her mind. Her crew had been over the shattered remnant of the yard, looking for something, anything that was worth salvaging, that would give them some hope of being able to refit and survive. So far, nothing had been found. They were still stuck at the initial limit of five years for their extended cruise, and one year of that had already been expended.

They could exist almost indefinitely as a floating rock, atmosphere could be recycled and refreshed for almost 20 years, but there was only so much to be had in the way of fuel, and that was the limit. 4 years, and her ship became a rock. That wasn’t an option.

On the long bone crushing, agonizing trip out here, she had decided that no matter what, she would do her best to establish some kind of civilization out here, or she and her crew would die trying. Someone had to do something, and it seemed to her as though her ship was just possibly humanity’s last hope to build something worthwhile out of the ashes of this war.

She leaned back in her chair, studying the vista spread before her eyes, the ghostly rings of the gas giant they orbited bisecting the seen and unseen halves of the planet, partly lit by the now faint light of Sol, partly in permanent shadow, and took a thoughtful sip of her coffee. It was lonely out here, and the weight of a solar system was on her shoulders.

It wasn’t fair. Even Atlas had only had to bear the weight of Earth, and here she was with all of humanity riding on what she did or didn’t do in the coming years. She took just a moment to engage in self pity, to long for the simple days before all of this started, before Mars decided to declare independence and the Earth tried to assert it’s dominance, her happy days at the Academy, before the PWA and all of that insanity overwhelmed everything.

The moment of peace was interrupted by a brief spark of light. She wouldn’t have caught it if not for her steady gaze into the vasty black deep. Someone was trying to escape the remains of the shipyard, someone her dedicated and very thorough crew had not found, maybe a pirate, maybe a survivor, but definitely someone who could build something space worthy out the wreckage, for all she saw was what looked like attitude jets, not the flare of boosters, just the puff of ice crystals from thrusters. She watched in horror as what looked like a small section of the habitat area began to spin out of control, even though it looked like it was maintaining a steady vector toward the planet. To her practiced eye, something was wrong with this picture.

The thruster pulses seemed to time with the rotation of the habitat, producing what looked like a smooth trajectory, even though agonizingly slow. She bolted out of her chair and spun for the bridge, coffee forgotten.
 

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