The Silent Descent

The alarm screamed at 0347 hours. Elena Vasquez's hands flew across the control panel, muscle memory faster than thought.

Emergency red bathed the cramped capsule. Every surface glowed crimson.

The hiss started soft. Then louder. Atmosphere venting into vacuum.

Elena's fingers danced over touchscreens. Diagnostics flickered across her visor. Seventy-two hours from Earth and the air was bleeding out.

Sarah Chen's stopwatch tumbled past her face. The silver case caught the red light, spinning lazily in zero-g. Elena's left wrist felt naked where she'd worn it for three years before the accident.

"Medical bay sealed," Yuki called from aft. Her voice stayed calm, clinical. "Crash, status?"

"On it, Doc." His Southern drawl cracked at the edges. "Bulkhead three's got a six-inch tear. Looks like micrometeor penetration."

Elena ran fingers through her short hair. The data made no sense. Their trajectory had been clean. No debris warnings.

"Seal it," she said. "Yuki, oxygen projections."

The hiss grew louder. A metronome counting down their lives.

Yuki's hands moved over her medical station, pulling crew biometrics. Her head tilted like a bird studying prey. "Current depletion rate puts us at thirty-six hours breathable air. Maybe forty if we go EVA protocols."

Not enough. They needed seventy-two to reach Earth.

Elena's jaw tightened. Her shoulders went rigid, spine straight against the command seat harness. The posture she wore like armor when decisions had no good options.

The stopwatch drifted closer. Its hands frozen at 14:37. The moment she'd hesitated.

She looked away.

***

Three thousand miles from the dying capsule, Marcus Webb's emergency comm crackled to life. The sound tore through silence he'd wrapped around himself for three years.

"Marcus?" Yuki's voice. Tight with control that barely masked fear. "We need you."

He stared at the cold fireplace. Pine logs stacked with geometric precision, never burned. Catherine had loved fires. Called them alive.

"Marcus, please. The capsule's venting atmosphere. It's the Valence-5 system."

His hands trembled. The system he'd designed. The system he'd approved for Artemis Station without proper testing because his genius had always been enough before.

"I can't." The words scraped his throat. "Get Patel. She knows the systems."

"Patel doesn't know your shortcuts." Yuki's warmth bled through the static. "Your workarounds. The way you think in orbital mechanics like other people think in English."

Through the cabin window, stars spread across Montana sky. His telescope pointed at Mars, lens cover thick with dust. He hadn't looked through it since the funerals.

On the table, Catherine's wedding ring gleamed atop boxed NASA awards. Both lives he'd abandoned when six astronauts died from his intellectual pride.

"The failure cascade matches Artemis," Yuki continued. "Valve timing delays under Mars-distance protocols. You're the only one who understands it."

Marcus removed his glasses. Cleaned them with slow, deliberate strokes on his flannel shirt. His empty ring finger ached with phantom weight.

"How long?" he asked.

"Thirty-six hours of air. Seventy-two to Earth."

The math was immediate, visceral. They'd suffocate thirty-six hours from home unless someone found a solution his original design had missed. Unless he admitted his first calculations had been wrong.

He touched the empty place where his wedding ring had been. Catherine's voice echoed in memory: *You can't save everyone, love. But you have to try.*

"I need direct capsule access," he said. "Telemetry feeds, crew biometrics, full system diagnostics."

"Already arranged." Relief softened Yuki's tone. "Transport leaves Bozeman in forty minutes. They're holding it."

Marcus stood. His legs shook. The boxed awards stared at him like accusations.

"Marcus?" Yuki's voice gentler now. "Thank you."

He ended the call. Grabbed his go-bag from the closet, still packed from three years ago when he'd thought someday he might return. His fingers found the familiar weight.

The telescope waited by the window. Its lens pointed at the red dot where three people were dying because of systems he'd built.

He didn't look through it. Couldn't bear to see Mars knowing what was happening in the space between here and there.

The cabin door closed behind him. Pine-laden darkness swallowed the place where he'd hidden from failure. Now failure had found him anyway.

His truck's headlights cut through mountain dark. Bozeman was ninety minutes away. The plane would take him to Houston, to Mission Control, to the place where his mistakes had killed six people.

And maybe, if his genius could finally be enough, to the place where he could save three more.