Henrik Refsnes

This will be a bit touch and go.

Bad news first. Not like there is any good news. Ok, that’s just… stay on topic. I know why the thrusters won’t fire. Because there aren’t any. Gone. The main engine is melted. I don’t know what could have caused that kind of damage, but it wasn’t space debris.

Actually, I do know. Antimatter propulsion. They should have amped up a standard fusion drive instead or found some other way.

It doesn’t matter. There is no way to save this sorry excuse for an interstellar scrapheap. Shield stacks aren’t worth shit in atmo and the hull is in no shape for any sort of emergency planetfall. It’ll take me weeks to even patch the grav ring enough to pressurize.

Second, it’s fucking hot in here. The ship’s running on backup power and all non-essentials are offline. 37.4 Celsius. Then again, I guess that’s nothing compared to what it will be 12 days from now.

Moving on. Unlike the graveyard in cryonics, hydroponics is doing great. Better than great. It’s overgrown. Now, I’m still eating canned gedunk because I don’t know how I feel about mutated tomatoes. Al says it’s perfectly safe, and maybe that’s my problem. At least me and Al have come to some sort of terms—agreed on a playlist. I have to give it to him, dying alone sucks.

Still, I uninstalled his ass from the head.

As for the really good news, the spacewalk was a success. I caught an old news satellite. It was a close call, and I broke a few servos on the rig, but nothing I can’t fix. I welded a cable to the outer ring and wired it in, like a balloon. Anyway, a hack job that gave me a 300-meter antenna.

Then I spent hours asking if anyone’s out there. Nothing. No response. I also told wildly inappropriate apocalypse jokes and had an emotional breakdown. On air. Now I’ve resorted to blasting death metal on the wide band.

Welcome to Radio Aran.

Like I said, touch and go.