Page 2 of Across the Stars (Cosmic Threads of Fate #1)
CHAPTER TWO
MAE
Loud beeps ricocheted off the cabin walls as green light strobed across the consoles—the vessel’s scan finally complete.
“About time this hunk of junk found something,” Mae muttered, swinging her boots off the display table and pushing upright in her seat. “I was starting to think we’d been searching in the wrong quadrant altogether.”
She flicked her wrist to take her turn in the battered 3D Space Battleship game she’d scavenged from the mess hall and hissed a curse when a ship slipped past her crosshairs.
Her gaze drifted to the makeshift robot—a Frankenstein of spare parts and boredom—that hunched beside the wall, wires splayed like untamed hair.
“Don’t even think about cheating while I figure out what’s making all this noise.
” Mae shot a glare at the refurbished trash can—outfitted with an old 3D printer and a domeless surveillance camera—that passed for her robotic opponent.
“I know you like sneaking peeks at my board when I’m not looking. ”
She tossed her tablet onto the empty couch cushion, a quick flash of disappointment sparking in her chest—no more distractions for a while.
Pressing her palm to the scanner, she watched the red light flick green. The alarm cut out, and the display table unlocked beneath her touch. As she lifted her hand, the black surface flared to life, washing the cabin in a soft 3D glow.
“What do we have here…” she muttered, the sound meant only for her own ears—no one else on the ship was awake to hear it.
Four of the five years in flight had been hers alone, and somewhere along the way, talking to herself—and to Wilson, her jury-rigged gaming partner—had become a habit.
There were only so many entertainment vids she could rewatch before every plot twist dulled.
While the autopilot hunted for a habitable planet, her world had shrunk to daily rounds, whispered updates to thirty-two silent cynopods, and one patched-together robot for company.
Finally, something exciting was happening.
The display pulsed with a binary star system—five planets circling the larger sun, each trailed by clusters of moons. Mae tapped the highlighted target, zooming in on the fourth planet and its thirteen satellites.
Most of the moons were dry, lifeless rocks, but the survey flagged the fourth, fifth, and sixth as potentially habitable.
She skimmed through the unselected moons one by one, flicking open their stats and failure notes.
A few could cradle microbes, but none offered what humans needed—no stable temperatures, no oxygen-rich skies, nothing but silent, airless stone.
“No sense being picky after going without for so long.” Mae sighed, swiping away the unstable planets and moons. “Three options are better than none. Here’s hoping one’s fit for colonization.”
She bit her bottom lip and tapped the three flagged moons, expanding them until they hovered alone in the projection. Two showed sprawling continents with shallow oceans, but the fifth moon snagged her attention—a quiet tug she couldn’t explain yet.
The violet orb reminded her of Earth after Pangea’s breakup—one vast continent ripped into two halves, split further by a pair of scattered islands.
With more water than the other two moons combined, it looked like the strongest candidate for a colony. Water meant everything out here, and the Cosmic Trinity Alliance would chase it across galaxies, no matter the cost.
Mae didn’t believe in the government’s crusade for interstellar expansion, but the offer to pilot one of the Atlantis’s three survey seats had been impossible to refuse. Risking her life meant her family’s healthcare and education would be secured—even if it cost her a return to CTA space.
A frown tugged at her lips. She had no idea what waited back home.
When the Atlantis had left Gaia five years ago, the CTA was still locked in the Lian War against the Dzextru—a reptilian species whose greed had gutted trade routes.
Doubt had already begun to fester in the CTA’s alliance with the Vresqoxk, their arachnid partners.
So the government sent vessels like hers—quiet, unreported—searching for new worlds to seize before anyone else knew.
“One thing’s certain,” Mae muttered, lifting her hand to spin the fifth moon’s image, its violet surface slowly turning under her fingers. “I’d rather be here than tangled up in the war back home.”
It had always struck her as bizarre—the Vresqoxk arriving on Earth, eager to ally against the Dzextru.
They’d known nothing about humanity, yet Earth’s leaders had jumped at the offer.
She couldn’t shake the fear it would backfire.
One day, Earth’s population could be indentured labor on some distant Vresqoxk outpost—the same way they’d done to the T’sisk on Gaia.
“What do you think?” She glanced at Wilson, the cobbled-together robot standing sentry beside the couch. “Should we scout the fifth moon first?”
Wilson’s lights blinked green—as if she’d nailed one of his Battleship vessels.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Leaving the three-moon projection spinning behind her, Mae headed down the corridor to the bridge. She vaulted the armrest into the oversized captain’s chair and scanned her hand to wake the control panel.
Multiple habitable targets meant protocol kicked the choice to the captain. One landing, one shot—that was the rule. If the ship failed to relaunch, they’d be marooned, and she’d trigger the emergency beacon, praying someone was out there to hear it and come to their aid.
But there was no guarantee of any friendly ships in this stretch of space. A CTA rescue would take four years at best—assuming there was still a crew and vessel left to send. And with no idea how the Lian War had unfolded, Mae couldn’t bet their survival on a rescue that might never come.
Mae’s fingers flew across the control panel, rerouting their course to the fifth moon and dispatching the remaining scouts to sweep the binary system for any trace of existing tech.
The last thing she needed was to stumble into a hostile species and get drawn into a fight while trying to retreat.
Returning to CTA territory didn’t worry her half as much as the prospect of facing a fleet with tech superior to the Atlantis —the kind of encounter that would leave her crew at another empire’s mercy.
With luck, the surveys of all three moons would be uneventful, and she’d finally be able to contact Earth with something worth the years of silence.