Sol Survivors Chapter 9: The Quiet

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Rand pushes through the hatch from the infirmary. The corridor is narrow, lit by the same flickering strips that seem to run on borrowed power. His boots thud dully against the deck grating. Every step sends a fresh spike through his cracked ribs and the burn on his shoulder, but he walks anyway. Pain is an old companion; ignoring it is habit.

He turns left toward the galley. The smell hits him first, stale coffee, recycled protein paste, something faintly metallic from the ship’s ancient ventilation. Voices drift out, low and measured.

Inside, Toku and Lila stand at the long metal counter that doubles as a prep surface. They’re sorting through dented ration crates, stacking pouches and cylinders into neat piles. Toku wears the same clean jumpsuit Rand does, olive drab, stripped of every patch and rank insignia. It hangs on his wiry frame like it was cut for someone larger. Lila has the uniform pants cinched tight at the waist with a belt tightly sinched at its smallest belt-hole; the cuffs are rolled up twice so they don’t drag. Her white tank top fits her small frame better than anything else on the ship. A thin bandage wraps her left forearm. Another small square of gauze peeks from the collar of her tank. She looks cleaner than she has any right to after Ares Station.

They both glance up as Rand steps in. Toku’s dark eyes flick over him once, assessing, calm. Lila’s hand pauses mid-reach for a protein bar pouch.

“You don’t look the worse for wear,” Rand says. His voice comes out rougher than he intends.

Lila’s gaze drops to the bulky layer of gauze visible under Rand’s half-open uniform collar. She rubs absently at her own bandaged forearm. “Well… comparatively.”

Rand steps closer. The faint scent of soap, real soap, not the chemical crap in the ship’s shower, cuts through the galley stink. It’s coming from her. He raises an eyebrow.

“And showered?”

Toku nods once, a small acknowledgment. Lila shrugs, the motion quick and defensive.

“Yeah, well, you still stink and I wasn’t about to give you a sponge bath in bed.” She glances at Toku. “And he said no too.”

Toku’s eyebrows lift a fraction. He shakes his head once, no.

“Besides,” Lila continues, the corner of her mouth quirking, “for all I know you were put in the Icebox because you were a perv.”

Rand lets out a short, surprised bark of laughter. It pulls hard at his ribs and the burn across his back. He winces, then slumps into the nearest chair with as much dignity as a bandaged, half-broken man can manage.

“That does bring up a point,” he says once the pain ebbs enough to speak. “We’re strangers, aren’t we?”

Toku sets a ration pouch down with deliberate care. His voice is low, measured, almost meditative. “Battle forges bonds faster than years of shared meals. We bled together on Ares. That is no small thing.”

“Indeed,” Rand says. He leans forward, elbows on the table. The metal is cold against his forearms. “I’ll start. Keeping it informal. You already know the basics. Major Randall Andersen. Last billet was Marine Corps strategist, tactical advisor to the Chief of Staff back then, General Haas, that traitorous cuck.”

The word lands like a thrown knife. Lila’s hands still on the crate she’s sorting. Toku’s eyes narrow slightly, but he keeps working, listening.

“From what we saw back on the station,” Rand continues, “a lot of my worst fears came true. At least about the machines. But those ships… those bloated, organic things harvesting cryo-pods? They didn’t look like anything built in this system. Unless twenty-two years changed more than I thought it would. I got put away for seeing shit I wasn’t supposed to see. Pissed off the wrong people in power. And I’ve got a feeling there was a hell of a lot more going on down on Earth than just the rise of the robots.”

Lila looks up. Her fingers brush behind her ear again, a quick, habitual touch. “That soldier, the first one who… died, he said something like that. Like you knew what was coming. And they locked you away for it?”

Toku sets another pouch down. His voice drops into the same calm, precise cadence he used in combat.

“He said: ‘You were right about them. About the corruption. About how things fell. Fighting the Neuro-T (pause) the machines (pause) the Earth’s governments. General Haas, the Chief of Staff back then. Compromised. You were right and when the war started, everything split. Infiltrated by those pig-faced Zuhtou pulling the strings (pause) splitting everyone, dividing, conquering (pause)’”

Lila flinches at “Neuro-T.” Her hand freezes mid-air.

Toku continues without pause, quoting exactly.

“‘Your record was impeccable (pause) And you were still alive (pause) here. You saw what was coming (pause) now you can fight it (pause) get to my ship before the MOSHUUS get it.’ And here we are. Together.”  Toku raises his hands as a sign they were all together in this.

The galley goes quiet except for the low hum of the ship’s systems. Rand and Lila stare at Toku. The words, delivered in his low, rumbling calm, sound like an echo from the grave.

Lila breaks the silence first. “What the fuck is a MOSHUUS?”

“Or a Zuhtou, for that matter,” Toku adds.

Rand nods toward the bulkhead as if the answer might be painted there. “MOSHUUS was stamped on the chest plates of those Legionary bots we fought. I’m assuming it’s tied to them. Whoever ‘them’ is now.”

Lila’s eyes go distant. “Pig-faced Zuhtou…” She swallows. “They were here, well, there on Earth when it was all going to hell.”

Rand leans in slightly. “Do tell.”

She exhales through her nose. “There was a riot. Downtown. Protests had been building for months, people screaming about equality, redistribution, some shit… an excuse for tearing everything down. I was there with… someone. We got caught in the middle. And then I saw one. Tall. Bloated head like a pig’s, glassy eyes, tusks dripping. Tentacles under the clothes. It radiated… something. Pleasure. Feeding on the rage. Then the crowd just… snapped. Turned on each other. Blood everywhere. I swung a bat until it wasn’t flesh anymore. Then the riot-control bots came in. Tasers. Nets. I woke up in cuffs.”

“The Newark Heartbreak Massacre?” Rand asked “You lived through that?”

Toku tilted his head, impressed.

 “Yeah, The Heartbreak.” Lila continued “They couldn’t tell who killed who so they locked us all up. I don’t remember most of it. Just the fear. The feeling like my head wasn’t my own…” She whispers “…and the blood.”

She stops. Doesn’t mention the Neuro-T. Doesn’t mention the link. Her fingers twitch toward her neck again, then drop.

Rand nods slowly. “That explains a lot. How could you see it and no one else could?”

Lila flushes a little, her hands clasped on a packet of food, not letting herself touch her Neruro-T as was her habit, her impulse. “Lucky? Maybe I’m a mutant or something. ‘I See Pig People’ it’s my lame superpower.”

Toku studies Lila, knowing there is more to the story but won’t push. He has his own secrets to keep. And, on queue, Rand chuckles and turns to Toku. “And what got you put on ice?”

Toku’s gaze doesn’t waver. For a long moment the only sound is the ship breathing around them. Then he speaks.

“I was a corporate… spy. Sent to investigate Agility Dynamics. The assignment went south. I was betrayed by a colleague. I destroyed a great many of their robots, much like the ones we fought on the station. They did not appreciate the damage.”

Rand studies him. There is a weight behind the words; layers left unsaid. He didn’t tell the whole story, but the man didn’t lie outside of the lie of omission. That much is clear.

Rand lets out a slow breath. “Well. Good. No rapists or murderers here.” he gestures to Lila, “well, assuming, you know…”

“Not funny” Lila replies tearing open a ration.

He reaches for one of the ration pouches Lila has sorted. Tears it open. The smell of synthetic chili hits the air, warm, chemical, and almost comforting.

“Four days to Galt Station,” he says.

“Three” Toku corrects without making eye contact as he finishes sorting the rations and takes one for himself.

“You were out for a while” Lila comments, slurping on a foil bag labeled ‘Thai Chicken’.

“That doesn’t count as our Thai Food feast, right?”

Lila snorts, “Hah, hell no. How can something be so spicy and flavorless at the same time?”

“Well then,” Rand picks back up, “THREE days to Europa orbit, assuming this rust-bucket doesn’t shake apart first. We’ve got time to think about the rest. Who these MOSHUUS and Zuhtou bastards are. What those alien ships want. And why the hell three strangers woke up in the same prison silo at the exact moment everything went to shit.”

Lila slides a water pouch across the table to him. “We’re not strangers anymore.”

Toku inclines his head slightly. “Bonded by circumstance.”

Rand takes the pouch. Cracks it open. Drinks. The water tastes like plastic and faint minerals, but it’s wet.

He sets it down. Looks between them.

“Then let’s eat. Rest while we can. And start planning how to stay alive long enough to find out what the fuck is really going on out here.”

The galley lights flicker once. The engines thrum on.

Rand chews the synthetic chili slowly. It’s warm, vaguely spicy, and tastes mostly like regret and preservatives. He swallows, then sets the pouch down.

“Three days,” he says again, testing the number. “Not much time to play catch-up on twenty-two years of history. But we’ve got a ship, a little food, and no immediate bullets coming our way. So let’s use it. What kind of data do we actually have access to on this can? Lila, you were poking around the terminals earlier?”

Lila wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. The Thai Chicken pouch is already half-empty; she’s eating like someone who hasn’t trusted food in a while.

“Everything’s linked,” she says. “The ship’s network is basic, mostly a hub for personal devices. No fancy AI nanny, thank fuck. But there are games, old manuals, some entertainment files that look like they haven’t been updated since before I was born. I ran a quick index. Ship schematics, maintenance logs, emergency procedures. Full travel lane charts between the major bodies, Earth to Mars, Mars to Belt, Belt to Jupiter run. Fuel burn estimates, hazard zones, pirate advisories from… whenever these were last refreshed.”

She pauses, eyes flicking to the side like she’s reading an invisible screen.

“And maps. Publicly distributed colony layouts, station schematics, orbital schedules. A lot of them. No live feeds, no real-time traffic control. But it’s current enough to show Galt Station in Europa orbit, Heemeyer Shipyards tagged as active, and a handful of independent outposts in the Belt. No red flags on our route, but… no guarantees either.”

Rand nods. “Good. Anything we can use for intel on the factions? MOSHUUS, Zuhtou, those harvester ships?”

Lila shakes her head. “Nothing direct. The maps are civilian-grade. No military overlays, no black-site markers. If there’s classified stuff, it’s locked behind encryption we don’t have the keys for. Yet.”

Toku speaks up, calm as ever. “There are comm channels. Open bands, at least. Distress, trade chatter, probably some traffic relays. We should listen.”

Rand pushes back from the table. The chair scrapes metal on metal. “Bridge. Let’s take a look and see looks back at us from the void.”

They move as a unit, Rand leading, stiff but steady; Lila close behind, still clutching her water pouch; Toku bringing up the rear, silent footsteps.

The bridge is cramped; consoles dark except for the standby glow. Lila slides into the nav station like she belongs there. Her fingers dance over the panel; screens wake with soft chimes. Toku takes comms, scanning bands with practiced efficiency. Rand drops into the captain’s chair, ribs protesting.

“Open band first,” Rand says. “Mars sector, if we can pull it. Anything about Ares.”

Lila tweaks the gain. Static hisses, then voices resolve, clipped and urgent, the kind of chatter from traders who’ve seen too many bad runs.

“…Ares is dark. No transponder. Last ping was emergency beacon, then nothing. Zuhtou harvesters were in system, big ones, cuttlefish hulls. Mars sent a squadron. Old Ceres-class corvettes, couple of converted haulers with PDC mounts. But not before some Galt Fighter Pukes lit up the Pig-faced tentacle fuckers. Harvesters bugged out, fucking Squiggs, but they took a chunk of the drifting with them. Pods, bodies, the works.”

“Squiggs?” Lila asks.

“Another alien?” Toku asks?

“No, don’t think so” Rand puts forward, “Sounds like a sailor slinging a slur. Guessing a Squigg is a Zuhtou”

“Ah” Lila and Tooku respond in unison.

A pause. Another voice, gruffer.

“Maalivahti delegate’ll just broadcast complaints again, same old song. Zuhtou harvest was illegal poaching, not salvage. They’re building the case against the tentacle bastards for what they’ve been doing on Earth, blah, blah, blah. You’d think with their huge fuckin’ fleet there’s be more than three of them on that huge fuckin’ Makuuhu One ship of theirs, jumping around the system like they’re sightseeing. No boots on Phobos or anywhere else. We keep filing reports and the Maalivahti just log it, nod, and ask for more evidence. With the MOSHUUS machines running Earth now, though, everything’s a mess. Complaints pile up, but no one’s forcing action.”

Rand’s jaw tightens. “Zuhtou. Confirmed. Pig-faced tentacle fuckers. Matches what you saw in Newark, Lila.”

She nods, pale. “Yeah. The one I saw… it felt the same. Feeding. Like it enjoyed the chaos.”

Toku’s fingers pause on the panel. “A puzzle piece. The dying soldier mentioned Haas, compromised. And the Zuhtou pulling the strings back then…”

“They’ve been in the game a long time,” Rand finishes. “And the Maalivahti, whoever the fuck they are, sounds like they’rre watching but not stepping in. Arbiters with all the law but none of the actual authority or power to do anything. Sounds like a Space UN.”

Lila switches to a quieter channel. More chatter, traders haggling over water ice, a miner complaining about tariffs at Ganymede, someone warning about a rogue rock in the Jupiter approach lane. Nothing immediate, but the noise is comforting. Proof the solar system is still breathing.

They sit with it for a while. The hum of the ship fills the gaps. Three days is long enough for boredom to set in, but too short for real despair. Yet.

Rand breaks the quiet. “We need to keep busy. Ship’s old. Systems need eyes on them. Lila, you good to run diagnostics on nav and propulsion? Make sure we don’t drift into a rock or burn fuel we don’t have.”

She nods. “Already started. Thrusters are at eighty-seven percent efficiency. Could be better, but we’ll make Europa. Life support’s solid. Air scrubbers are filthy, though.”

“Toku?”

“I will clean those air scrubbers, the air is stale,” Toku says. “.And I noticed a hissing around the airlock. Seals may leak under thrust.”

Rand grunts approval. “Good. I’ll take engineering. Crawl the crawlspaces, look for micro-fractures, loose wiring. Old girl’s been through hell; might as well make sure she doesn’t die on us before we do.”

He stands, slower than he wants. “And we talk. Every meal, every shift change. No secrets that could kill us. We’re not a unit yet, but we’re all we’ve got.”

Lila meets his eyes. “Deal.”

Toku inclines his head.

They both know they’re both keeping secrets.

The next hours blur into routine. Lila at the console, humming tunelessly as she searches the ship’s database for all the information she can find about the Solvo’s controls. Toku in the workshop methodically, wiping down filters with a rag that smells of machine oil. He takes a break and tries to grind down the tang of his massive sword to a more manageable width, to no avail. Rand in the access tunnels, flashlight in teeth, cursing at corroded conduits and tightening what he can reach.

They eat again, more pouches, more recycled water. Stories trickle out in fragments. Rand tells a short one about a Marine who once bet he could outrun a drone; lost the bet and half a leg. Lila laughs, surprised by the sound coming out of her own mouth. Toku shares nothing personal, but offers a quiet observation about balance in combat, body and mind, blade and breath.

Most of the stories come from Rand as he forces conversation, though Lila tries to get the other two to agree with her about what shows and influencers were worth watching back in the day. Toku only describes the places he’s been across the world, though at one point Lila got him to show off his ability to read any manual in all the translated languages, impressed that he could do it without a Tee.

Sleep comes in shifts. Bunks are narrow, mattresses thin, but the ship’s gentle roll is almost soothing. No one dreams of pigs or machines. Not yet.

On the second day as Lila familiarizes herself more with the controls, teaching herself how to fly the solvo from manuals and onboard videos, the comms pick up a faint, looping beacon from the direction of the Asteroid Belt. Independent trader warning: “Maalivahti capital ship Makuuhu One sighted near Jupiter Trojans. Heavy escort. Do not approach. Repeat, do not approach.”

Rand stares at the screen. “Let’s hope they’re not circling Europa when we arrive.”

Lila smirked, “What, you don’t want to see another alien ship after those last ones?”

The engines thrum. The stars slide past, indifferent.

They keep moving. Talking. Fixing. Listening.

Surviving.

One shift at a time.

Link to all the chapters  – click here