LOG 034: The Long Dark

Verilia-7: The Bastion – Area Seven-Seven-Delta

The pair moves through maintenance corridors together; mother and estranged daughter. Sylvia has never seen these narrow passages in her time on Starshade. They are marked with warning signs and restricted access panels, barriers she would normally avoid and shy away from for fear of shock or contamination. These aren’t the routes that pilots or crew use. These are the hidden arteries of the biodomes. These are the spaces where only repair workers, robotic diagnosticians, and specialized technicians venture.

Rigel leads and Sylvia follows to a heavy door displaying a biohazard symbol prominently with multiple layers of warning text. “Maintenance access for the outer biodome,” Rigel explains, her voice on stable footing despite the gravity of what they’re about to do. “Multiple pressure barriers and an atmospheric recycling system. It’s designed to keep workers alive while they maintain the station’s inner hull.”

The door slides open into the skeletal chamber -a clear contrast to the habitable zone. This utilitarian space is wedged between the station’s livable core and the nothingness of the void of space. Unlike the polished corridors Sylvia is used to, this space is all exposed metal and raw function. Thick pipes and cables run along every surface, their braided coils and rigid casings laid bare beneath flickering indicator lights to denote optimal function. Interspersed amongst the rigid bulkheads, flexible strutting weaves through the framework, an engineering necessity allowing the exterior shell to bend and absorb the shock of space debris impacts and encounters with rogue phenomena. This skeletal structure flexes subtly, allowing the station to adapt without sacrificing integrity. Massive layers of reinforced plating rise around the chamber like a weave, built to withstand the relentless pressure of life and atmosphere trying to burst outward toward the vacuum. 

“The biodome has multiple layers,” Rigel continues as they cycle through the first pressure barrier. “Emergency protocols, redundant life support systems. Even if something goes wrong, you won’t just be expelled into space. The systems are designed to keep maintenance workers alive long enough for rescue.” 

The Legion designed these protocols. He understood that an intelligent and well-supplied brain with oxygen and pressure would work hardest and most efficiently to repair critical systems in the most dangerous of locations. While Rigel tries to reassure Sylvia of the safety, she cannot escape the reality of her husband’s design: function. Life is protected to support the function of the station. She falls silent in thought as they move through another chamber, then another, each one bringing them closer to the station’s outer edge while maintaining the pressurized environment that keeps them breathing.

The final chamber is smaller than the others, its walls lined with emergency equipment in pressure-sealed compartments or anchored by magnetic hooks. A plethora of monitoring systems that hum with quiet vigilance. Rigel moves with practiced efficiency, checking seals and testing connections, but Sylvia stands frozen, staring at the door ahead of them. Rigel had slipped into her own thoughts and demons while moving forward, and left Sylvia to wrestle fears.

Small, round, and dotted with handholds, this door isn’t like the other doors they’ve passed through. This one is ominous, reinforced with layers of metal and warning strips that seem to pulse with their own internal light. Beyond it lies something Sylvia has never truly confronted, despite years of living on a space station.

The void.

“Sylvia,” Rigel’s voice comes through the comm, far away at first, but commanding attention. “I need you to listen to me carefully. When I open this gate, we’re going to enter a chamber that will help us transition to the vacuum. Your suit will adjust automatically, but you’re going to feel the change in pressure. It’s normal. The suit knows what to do.”

Sylvia’s breathing is already becoming shallow, visible as small puffs of condensation on her helmet’s faceplate. “I don’t think I can—”

“You can,” Rigel interrupts firmly. “Your body is going to react to things it’s never experienced before. That’s expected. But the suit will keep you alive. I will keep you alive.”

Rigel activates her personal link to her ship, her voice shifting to the crisp tone of command. “Orion, I need you to relay a message to Theseus.”

“Listening,” comes the AI’s familiar voice through her neural implant.

“Request override authorization for maintenance door designation Seven-Seven-Delta, Biodome Seven, Sector Twelve. Emergency maintenance protocol.”

There’s a pause. “Theseus acknowledges. Override authorized. Door Seven-Seven-Delta is now under your control, Alba.”

Rigel turns to Sylvia, her helmet’s lights reflecting off the younger woman’s visor. “When this Follow door opens, our boots will automatically engage magnetic coupling with the station’s hull. You’ll feel the shift. It’s like suddenly weighing three times as much, then feeling strangely anchored. Don’t fight it. Let the suit do its job.”

Sylvia nods, though the gesture is barely visible through her helmet.

“After that,” Rigel continues, “I’m going to open the outer door. We won’t be directly in front of it -we’ll be positioned to the side, but we won’t be pulled hard into space because the chamber will already be a vacuum. But you’re going to see… everything. The universe. All of it, without any barriers. It will be disorienting, but you’re not moving. Not until you actively attempt motion. ”

The first door begins to cycle open with a deep, resonant hum. Immediately, Sylvia feels the change -a subtle shift in the air pressure around her, the way sound seems to become both sharper and more distant. Her suit’s systems respond with a series of soft chimes and adjustments.

Then her boots engage.

The magnetic coupling activates with a solid ‘thunk’ that she feels through her entire body and radiates in her suit. Suddenly, she’s anchored to the station’s hull with a weight that feels both reassuring and terrifying. She’s connected to something solid, but that solid thing is hurtling through space at speeds her mind can’t truly comprehend. Yet she is still.

“Steady,” Rigel says, moving with the careful, deliberate steps of someone whose boots are now locked to the station’s surface. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m going to throw up,” Sylvia admits, her voice resonating with fear.

“That’s normal. The suit will also help with that. Give it two minutes.”

They position themselves along the wall -Rigel leading Sylvia- safely to one side of the outer door. Rigel’s hands move over the controls with practiced precision, each movement deliberate and sure.

“Sylvia,” she says, her voice carrying the weight of finality. “When I open this door, you’re going to see space. Real space. Not through a projection like you’re used to, but directly. Your mind will try to process something it was never designed biologically to understand. You might feel dizzy, disoriented, or overwhelmed. That’s your brain trying to cope with infinity.”

Sylvia’s helmet lights catch the terror in her eyes, but she nods.

“Remember: you’re safe. The suit is keeping you alive. The magnets are keeping you anchored. I’m right here with you.”

The outer door begins to open.

The first thing that hits Sylvia isn’t the sight -it’s the absolute silence. Sound, which has been muffled and altered by the various chambers, suddenly feels different again. More present and yet somehow hollow, as if the universe itself is holding its breath.

Then she sees it.

Space isn’t the gentle, romantic vista she’s glimpsed through the station’s simulated viewing ports. It’s vast beyond comprehension, a three-dimensional infinity that stretches in directions her mind can’t map. Stars aren’t gentle points of light -they are distant suns, each one a blazing furnace separated by distances that make her feel smaller than an atom.

Body reacting before her mind can process what she’s seeing, her heart rate spikes. Breathing becomes rapid and shallow. Sylvia feels a primal terror that seems to come from the deepest parts of her evolutionary programming -the part that knows, instinctively, she’s somewhere no human is meant to be. Where humans cannot survive. Yet by audacity or stupidity, she ventures into the emptiness. 

“Oh gods,” she whispers, her voice barely audible through the comm. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.”

The universe wheels around her, and she can feel the station’s rotation in a way she’s never experienced before. She’s spinning through space, anchored to a tiny island of metal and compressed air, surrounded by an emptiness so complete it makes her feel like she’s going to fall out into it.

Rigel moves carefully, using her hands and magnetic boots to maintain her position against the station’s surface. Her movements are controlled, efficient, each step and handhold calculated to keep her from being swept away by forces that would kill her in seconds.

“Sylvia,” she calls, extending her hand toward the terrified woman. “Take my hand. Trust the suit. Trust me.”

Sylvia stares at the offered hand, her mind reeling from the cosmic vertigo that threatens to overwhelm her. Around them, the universe continues its ancient dance, indifferent to the two small figures clinging to the edge of human civilization. “It’s all impossible…”

Rigel’s gloved hand closes around Sylvia’s with a strength that seems impossible for someone so small. Even through the layers of EVA suit material, even with Sylvia towering over her biological mother, there’s something in that grip that transcends physics. It’s firm, unwavering, and somehow familiar in a way that makes Sylvia’s chest tighten with something other than fear.

And then… the spacewalk begins.

The moment their hands connect, something shifts in Sylvia’s perception. The cosmic terror that had been threatening to overwhelm her suddenly… quiets. Not disappears -the universe is still incomprehensibly vast around them, still spinning in ways that make her stomach lurch- but the panic becomes manageable, contained by the anchor of that strong grip.

And then the memory hits her.

It comes like a flash of warmth in the cold void, a fragment of something she’s buried so deep she’s forgotten it exists. She is small, barely able to walk, her chubby fingers gripping desperately at fabric as the world tilts and sways around her. But there are arms holding her, steady and sure, and a voice humming something soft and wordless that makes everything safe.

Safe.

—

The word echoes in her mind as Rigel begins to move, her expertise immediately evident. This isn’t the first time the Admiral has performed a spacewalk. Her movements are fluid, controlled, each step and handhold calculated with the precision of someone who understands that space is not forgiving of mistakes.

“Follow my lead,” Rigel’s voice comes through the comm, steady and calm. “Don’t look up at the stars. Don’t look at the nebula. Look at me. Look at where we’re going.”

Sylvia tries to obey, but her eyes keep drifting to the humbling sights all around them. The station curves away beneath their feet, a vast metallic landscape that seems to go on forever. Above them -or is it below them?- the biodomes bloom in a gorgeous and impossible lotus-like flower, the stars and the Crimson Nebula wheeling in patterns her brain tries to perceive as a massive organic bloom in the cosmic ballet.

Then Rigel’s hand squeezes hers, and suddenly Sylvia is being pulled. Not roughly, but with the kind of controlled force that speaks of absolute confidence. Her boots, still magnetically locked to the station’s hull, release and reengage with each step, the suit’s systems compensating for movements she doesn’t understand.

“Trust the suit,” Rigel says, her voice carrying the authority of someone who has done this a thousand times. The repetition becomes a mantra. Affirmation for Sylvia to cling to. “Trust me.”

And unbelievably, Sylvia does.

Rigel guides them along the station’s outer hull with a grace that seems to defy the environment. Her movements are economical and efficient, with each step carefully planned to maintain their connection to the station’s surface while navigating the complex geometry of the biodome’s exterior. She moves like someone who has spent years learning to read the subtle signs of magnetic coupling, air pressure, and gravitational forces.

Sylvia finds herself following not just Rigel’s path, but her rhythm. Step, pause, check, step again. The Admiral’s hand remains steady in hers -Sylvia isn’t alone in this impossible space.

“How do you know how to do this?” Sylvia asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Experience,” Rigel replies, guiding them around a sensor array that juts from the station’s hull like a metallic flower. “Years of it. Countless walks. Some authorized, some… not so much.”

“The Legion… he doesn’t follow you here, does he?”

 “No, he… he doesn’t.”

They move in silence for several minutes, the only sounds the gentle hum of their suits’ life support systems and the occasional soft chime of status updates. Sylvia’s initial terror has settled into something more manageable: necessity. Fear is still present, making her heart race, but no longer threatening to paralyze her completely.

It’s the memory that keeps her grounded. That flash of being held, of being safe, of strong arms that would never let her fall. She can’t remember the context, can’t place when or where it happened, but the feeling is as real as the vacuum around them.

“We’re almost there,” Rigel says, her voice carrying a note of satisfaction.

The biodome’s vast surface curves away beneath their boots in all directions, its metallic sheen reflecting the cold light of distant stars. The engineered landscape is both boastful and ashamed. Beautiful and marvelous, in sight and scale. Yet in comparison to the nebula beyond, it is suddenly finite and almost insignificant. Sylvia’s breath fogs her helmet display in rapid bursts, each exhale a small betrayal of the terror clawing at her chest.

“Messer’s pilot is here and holding position,” Rigel’s voice cuts through the static, professional and measured. “Two hundred meters out. Right where we need him.”

It takes Sylvia a long time to find the ship. She’s surprised Rigel can spot it so quickly in the infinite -a dark silhouette against the star field, its running lights pulsing like a heartbeat. The distance between them isn’t just space; it’s an ocean of vacuum that wants to swallow her whole.

“Two hundred meters.” Her voice comes out smaller than she intends. “That’s not a distance, Rigel. That’s… that’s an impossible jump.”

“He can’t come closer.” There’s something carefully controlled in Rigel’s tone, a deliberate distance Sylvia recognizes from a dozen strained conversations when she was much younger, before there was only silence between them. “The dome’s AMFS shield is automated. One meter too close, and every alarm in the sector lights up. Every security drone, every patrol ship -they’d be on us in minutes, if we’re not killed by the shields.”

Through the ship’s open cargo bay, Sylvia can see figures moving -Messer’s crew preparing to receive them. The bay looks impossibly small from here, a rectangle of light that might as well be a pinhole.

“I can’t do this.” The words escape before she can stop them. “I can’t just… launch myself into space like some kind of missile.”

Rigel stops walking. When she turns, her helmet’s lights cast harsh shadows across the dome’s surface, making the metal beneath their feet look like a moonscape. “Sylvia, I need to tell you something about pilot training.”

“This isn’t the time for stories—”

“This is exactly the time.” Rigel’s voice carries that particular quality of command -calm, unshakeable, relentless. “There’s an exercise we put new pilots through. We call it the Long Dark.”

Despite her terror, Sylvia finds herself listening. She’s heard fragments of Kano’s training stories over the years, whispered in maintenance bays and mess halls, but never the details.

“I drop them in the middle of nowhere,” Rigel continues, her voice steady as a metronome. “No reference points. No landmarks. Just them and their suit and four minutes of simulation alarms screaming in their ears. Emergency lights flashing. Oxygen warnings. Breach alerts. Everything designed to make them panic.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because then the alarms stop. And they have exactly two minutes of oxygen left. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Rigel’s tone is matter-of-fact, but it comes with a sharpness that cuts through Sylvia’s fear. “Two minutes to a mechanic like you might seem like nothing. But to a pilot alone in space, disoriented and expelled from their ship? Two minutes is a lifetime. A life in six minutes total -four minutes of chaos, two minutes of truth.”

Sylvia’s hands tremble against her suit controls. “That’s… that’s insane.”

“Eight out of ten times, the simulation kicks in at the last second. Mission completed. But two out of ten times…” Rigel pauses, letting the weight of it settle. “Two out of ten times, they run out. Really run out. They feel the suffocation creeping in -ten seconds of it before we intervene. Just long enough to know that death is real, that their time is up.”

“You could kill them.”

“But I don’t. Those ten seconds of suffocation; they’re terrifying, but not lethal. It’s just long enough to teach the lesson that matters most.” Rigel’s voice softens slightly. “That when your life comes down to six minutes, you find a way to survive. That when the alternative is death, you discover you’re stronger than you thought.”

Something shifts inside Sylvia’s chest. Indescribable. Not panic this time, but something deeper. She thinks of Kano struggling in the void, gasping for air, terrified and alone. But he made it back. He made it back to Draco, to the ship Sylvia has helped repair a dozen times, whose engines she knows better than her own heartbeat.

“He never told me,” she whispers.

“He wouldn’t. It’s not something we talk about.” Rigel’s voice carries a note of understanding. “Yet every time he flies now and every time he takes Draco into danger, he knows he can handle whatever comes. Because he’s already faced the worst.”

The ship’s lights seem to pulse in Sylvia’s peripheral vision. She thinks of Kano’s hands on Draco’s controls, steady and sure. The same hands that once floated in the void, fighting for breath, fighting to come home.

“The point isn’t success or failure,” Rigel continues, her voice taking on the tone of a teacher rather than a commander. “The point is learning to think when your brain is screaming at you to panic. Learning to act when every instinct tells you to freeze. To come alive. That panic you’re feeling is the ignition spark, causing you to burn with urgency and trying to bring clarity. It’s a tool, but never meant to consume you.”

Sylvia looks at the gap again, tries to see it through different eyes. Not an abyss, but a problem with a solution. Not death, but physics. Force and trajectory, and the simple mechanics of motion. She thinks of Draco’s engines, the way they respond to the slightest touch, the way Kano can make the ship move like he is dancing.

“An ignition switch?” she asks quietly.

“That panic is fuel. You can either channel it and let it propel you.” Rigel moves closer, close enough that Sylvia can see her reflection in her mother’s visor. “Or you can let it consume you. Freeze you up and lock you down. Right now, you’re letting it control you.”

She has spent years working on thruster systems, knows every valve and circuit. But more than that, she has spent years watching Kano pilot, learning to read the subtle signs of a ship in motion. Draco has taught her about grace under pressure, about the delicate balance between power and control.

“I don’t know how to fly like a pilot,” she whispers.

“You don’t need to.” Rigel’s voice changes, becoming something more personal, more direct. “I just need you to trust yourself. To trust me.”

The words hang in the vacuum between them like a challenge.

“Trust you?” Years of hurt bleed through the comm static. “You want me to trust you?”

“Not as your mother.” The admission comes quietly, almost lost in the hum of their life support systems. “I know I don’t deserve that. I know I lost that right a long time ago.”

Sylvia feels something crack inside her chest -not panic this time, but something more complicated.

“But trust me as Admiral Waldermara,” her mother continues, her voice steady and sure. “Trust me as the officer who put Kano through the Long Dark and brought him home safely. To his home. To his Draco. To you. Every single time.”

The mention of her brother grounds her. Kano -brilliant, reckless, beloved Kano, who can make the Draco dance through asteroid fields like that ship is alive. The ship that has become as much a part of their family as any person.

“How many times did he go through this… Long Dark?” Her voice is barely a whisper.

“Three times during advanced training. The third time, the oxygen cut out was real.” Rigel’s voice carries the weight of that memory, knowing it will hurt both mother and daughter to know. “Ten seconds where he thought he was going to die in the void. However, he managed to return to his ship. He made it back to Draco. Through the void. Both making it home to you.”

The silence stretches between them. No sound but that which they make themselves in their suits. Each isolated in their atmospheres. Close, but separated by the vast connected emptiness.

“I don’t know how to use the thrusters like you do,” Sylvia says finally.

“You don’t need to know.” Rigel’s voice is certain, unshakeable. “You just need to remain still and trust me to guide you. A man named Cattica and his crew will receive you on the other side. I’ll push you through the void.”

Sylvia stares at the ship, at the impossible distance, at the rectangle of light that represents safety. She thinks of Kano’s stories about flying, about the moment when you stop fighting the ship and start to fly with him. About trust.

“I’m scared,” she whispers. It’s the last and most basic of protests. A fundamental barrier that cannot be pummeled or wished away, only tackled as best she can manage.

“I know. I do. Do it with the fear. In spite of it or because of it.” Rigel’s voice carries something that might be love, carefully controlled and professionally distant. “Fear won’t kill you, Sylvia. Kano learned that in his six minutes of hell. And you’ll learn it too.”

“Okay,” Sylvia says, her voice barely audible. “Okay.”

Rigel moves behind her, her hands finding the attachment points on Sylvia’s suit with precision and certainty. “Stay relaxed. Don’t fight the momentum. Let me do the work.”

“What if you miss? What if we drift past the ship?”

“I won’t miss.” There’s something in Rigel’s voice that Sylvia remembers from childhood -not the distant Admiral, but the mother who once promised to keep her safe. “I don’t miss.”

The first touch of Rigel’s thrusters is gentle, barely perceptible. Then they move, lifting away from the dome’s surface with surprising grace. The biodome falls away beneath them like a dream, its curve becoming more pronounced as they gain altitude.

Ahead, Messer’s ship grows larger with each passing second. Sylvia gradually is able to make out faces in the cargo bay. Crew members with magnetic capture lines, ready to pull them to safety. The rectangle of light becomes a doorway, a gateway to salvation. The panic is still there. Moving through her. In her veins. Sharpening her focus, heightening her awareness of every detail. The way Rigel’s hands stay steady on her suit. The way the ship’s bay doors frame the stars. The way her mother’s breathing has synchronized with her own, calm and measured and reassuring. 

She’s flying.

“Almost there,” Rigel murmurs through the comm. “Cattica’s crew has you in sight. They’re ready.”

Sylvia feels the magnetic capture line take hold, feels strong hands pulling her into the ship’s artificial gravity. She tumbles onto the cargo bay’s deck, her legs shaking with adrenaline and relief.

Behind her, Rigel lands with the practiced grace of someone who has done this a thousand times. Through their helmet visors, their eyes meet for just a moment, not as Admiral and mechanic, not as the people they’ve been forced to become, but as mother and daughter.

“Thank you,” Sylvia whispers.

Rigel nods once, professional distance already reasserting itself. But for just a moment, Sylvia sees something else in her mother’s eyes. Something that looks like pride.

And in the vacuum of space, where words are swallowed by the infinite silence, that is enough.