Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 2: The Reckoning
The first cryopod hissed open.
Quinn.
Inaya watched through the cryo bay feed as her brother’s chest jerked reflexively, taking his first breath. His eyes snapped open, dark and alert.
Too alert.
Most people came out of cryo disoriented, and they came around slowly. Quinn woke like someone who’d been listening the entire time.
His hand moved to his temple and massaged the port where neural interfaces nested beneath the skin. His lips moved; counting, perhaps—he was already analyzing.
“Welcome back,” she said through the comm.
Quinn’s eyes found the camera. All she saw in his eyes was calculation.
“How bad.”
Not a question.
“Bad,” Inaya said.
He nodded once, sat up, and pulled the monitoring leads from his chest with clinical efficiency.
The second pod released Rex Harley in a coughing fit; he rolled sideways, spitting cryo fluid onto the deck. His hand slapped the pod’s edge, reflexively searching for a weapon that wasn’t there.
“Easy, Lieutenant.”
Rex’s head snapped up, his eyes bloodshot, unfocused, but then they locked on her through the camera.
“Commander.” The word came out rough and raw. “We there?”
“No.”
He stared at her and waited for an explanation. She decided he could wait until she could tell everyone in person.
The third pod opened, and Chyna Irving emerged gasping, hands clutching her throat, fingers pressing against the pulse point as though she needed proof her heart still worked. Her curls were plastered to her skull, and when she looked up, her expression was open, vulnerable.
“Inaya?”
The use of her first name cut deeper than it should have.
“I’m here.”
Chyna’s shoulders dropped in relief.
Xavia Kerr woke silently. She sat up, checked her wrist display, and frowned when the device showed nothing but static. Her gaze swept the cryo bay with tactical precision, cataloging exits and hazards.
Old habits.
Geo Randal came out slowly, blinking against the light. His thick hands gripped the pod’s rim, and when he stood, he swayed, but he didn’t fall.
“Hell of a wake-up call,” he muttered.
The final pod opened.
Issis Star emerged like someone surfacing from deep water. Her pale skin gleamed under the bay’s fluorescent glow, and her violet eyes, gene-edited, tracked movement that wasn’t there.
She exhaled and then smiled.
“We made it.”
Inaya’s throat tightened.
“To the bridge, all of you. Now,” she said.
The cryo bay reeked of coolant and ozone, sharp enough to burn the back of Inaya’s throat. She waited at the threshold as her crew filed through the narrow corridor, their footsteps uneven. Some were still adjusting to their bodies; others, to consciousness itself.
Quinn arrived first. He’d already dressed, his uniform crisp despite emerging from stasis only minutes ago. The others wore standard-issue thermals, rumpled and damp.
Chyna’s eyes found hers immediately, searching.
Inaya kept her face blank.
They gathered in a loose semicircle. Six people; the last command crew of the Falcon. Rex leaned against a pod housing, his arms crossed; Xavia stood rigid, her hands clasped behind her back. Geo rubbed his neck, his gaze drifting to the rows of pods lining the bay walls.
Row after row of them.
All dark.
“Commander, report,” Quinn said.
Inaya’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t the captain, but then, neither was she. Hendricks was dead on the bridge, and the chain of command had shattered with the hull.
But someone had to speak.
“We hit something ... a debris field. Impact compromised seven compartments and knocked out primary systems. Echo-9 is functional but corrupted.”
“Casualties?” Xavia asked, her voice clipped and professional.
Inaya met her eyes.
“One thousand forty-three.”
The number hung in the air like a dead fish.
Chyna’s hand rose to her mouth.
“Jesus,” Rex breathed.
Geo looked up at the rows of pods, and his face drained of color.
“All of them?”
“Power failed across the cryo grid; the damage was catastrophic. By the time I woke, it was...” Inaya stopped and swallowed before continuing, “It was already done.”
Issis stepped forward, her violet eyes wide.
“The colonists; the families; the children...”
“Gone,” Inaya confirmed.
Quinn’s expression didn’t change; he tilted his head slightly, recalculating.
“And Erebus-3?”
Inaya’s hands curled into fists.
“Destroyed.”
Silence crashed down.
Chyna made a small, broken sound. Rex’s shoulders sagged, while Geo closed his eyes. Xavia stared at her wrist display, tapping it repeatedly, as if the data might change if she refreshed it enough times. Quinn nodded once as if she’d confirmed an equation.
“So, we’re stranded,” Quinn said.
Inaya looked at the six faces before her.
“Yes.”
Inaya dismissed them with a gesture. They scattered: Geo toward engineering, Xavia toward navigation, and Rex and Issis toward structural assessment. Chyna lingered with her mouth open as if to speak.
“Go,” Inaya said.
Chyna went.
Quinn didn’t.
He followed Inaya to the command office next to the bridge, footsteps matching hers exactly. The corridor stretched ahead, dim and cold. She didn’t turn.
“You delayed revival,” he said.
Inaya’s jaw clenched.
“I sealed the breaches first.”
“Breaches can wait; command structure cannot.”
She stopped and turned. Quinn stood three paces back, hands clasped behind him, posture immaculate.
“You would’ve woken to vacuum,” she said.
“You made that calculation for me.”
“I made the call that kept you breathing.”
Quinn’s head tilted.
“You hesitated: emotional paralysis; the same pattern as the Helix Station incident.”
The mention of Helix landed like a fist.
“Don’t.”
“Seventeen people died because you couldn’t prioritize—”
“They died because the corporation cut life support to save quarterly margins,” Inaya interrupted with some heat. Then her voice dropped to something more lethal. “You signed that report, Quinn, not me.”
His expression remained smooth and unreadable.
“People are data, Inaya; the sooner you accept that, the longer we’ll survive.”
Inaya’s comm crackled before she could respond.
“Commander? I need you in the bio-printing bay,” Chyna said, her voice coming through thin and uncertain.
Quinn’s eyes tracked her as she tapped the receiver.
“On my way.”
She turned toward the corridor, then paused.
“Captain Hendricks is still on the bridge. Handle it.”
Quinn’s expression flickered; just once.
“You’re delegating death rites to me?”
Inaya met his gaze.
“I’m delegating logistics. You said people are data; prove it.”
She left him standing there.
The bio-printing bay occupied the aft section of the medical wing. Inaya had been inside twice before, once during initial boarding inspections and once when a crewman’s lung collapsed before launch; they printed a replacement.
The equipment hummed low and constantly, a sound that sat wrong in her chest.
Chyna stood at the main console, backlit by diagnostic screens. Her hands moved across the interface, fingers trembling slightly as data scrolled past.
“Report,” Inaya said.
Chyna didn’t look up as she spoke.
“The cryo failures compromised most of the organic stores. Temperature fluctuations degraded cellular integrity across seventy-eight percent of the biological material.”
Inaya’s stomach tightened.
“Meaning?”
Chyna’s hands stilled.
“Meaning we can’t print food, can’t synthesize tissue for medical procedures, and we can’t manufacture replacement organs if someone gets hurt.”
The implications spread like frost across glass.
“How long can we last on existing rations?”
“Six months; maybe eight if we’re disciplined.”
Inaya moved closer. The console displayed degradation metrics in cold blue light—row after row of failed samples.
“There has to be something salvageable.”
Chyna’s jaw worked.
“There is.”
She pulled up a secondary screen; green indicators clustered in a single storage section.
“Progenitor cells from the replicant program. It’s military-grade biomass, high-density neural stem matrices. They’re stable and intact.”
Inaya stared at the readout.
“How much?”
Chyna’s voice dropped.
“Enough viable material for one replicant.”
The word hung between them.
Replicant.
Not food, not medicine, but a person. A bioprinted human, engineered for labor, compliance, and expendability.
Banned on fourteen colony planets.
Chyna turned finally, and her large eyes searched Inaya’s face before speaking.
“I know what it means; I know what they are. But it’s what we have.”
Inaya looked at the green indicators.
“Begin diagnostic protocols,” she said.
Chyna nodded, relief and guilt warring across her face.
“Understood.”
Echo-9’s voice crackled through the bridge speakers, fragmented and hollow.
“Commander. Query complete.”
Inaya stood at the navigation console, which had been replaced, her arms braced against the edge. The viewport stretched before her, black and endless; no stars, no destination, just the void.
“Report.”
“Planetary body located. Designation assigned: Oblivion. Distance: four point two astronomical units. Class M variant. Atmospheric composition marginal. Surface temperature ranges incompatible with sustained human habitation.”
Inaya’s fingers tightened on the console.
“Explain marginal.”
The AI paused for half a second, long enough to feel wrong.
“The equatorial band exhibits minimal thermal stability; its width is approximately three hundred kilometers. Oxygen ratio is fourteen percent, and there is water present. Beyond the habitable zone parameters, the planetary surface transitions to permafrost, ice depth unmeasured.”
A sliver of a possible landing spot that wouldn’t immediately kill them in a frozen hell.
Xavia looked up from her station, her face drawn.
“Commander, our reserves won’t sustain another jump. If we commit to Oblivion and it’s uninhabitable...” she said and trailed off.
“We’re already dead,” Inaya finished.
Xavia’s mouth pressed into a line; she didn’t argue.
Quinn appeared in the doorway, his uniform still immaculate despite his hauling Hendricks’ body to cold storage. He moved to the secondary console, fingers already pulling data.
“Temperature fluctuations?” he asked.
“Minimal; diurnal variance six degrees Celsius within habitable zone,” Echo-9 replied.
Quinn’s eyes scanned the readouts.
“Atmospheric pressure?”
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