Chapter 1: Ghosts in the Void

The silence was the worst part.

It wasn’t a true silence, of course. The Lunar Command Module Aurelia hummed around him, a symphony of life support and electronics. Alistair’s own breath rasped in his helmet, loud and intimate. But beneath it all, in the place where crew banter should have been—jokes about the food, muttered checklists, someone humming off-key—there was only that deep, resonant quiet.

The moon filled the viewport, a monochrome wasteland of sharp