章 181: K: Successful Failure

Brendan stared at the screen and silently admitted that he found the usually annoying figure of the animated ship's avatar somewhat comforting.

Sys20si was displaying the core's plump winged figure leaning over, as if to peer through a window, at their current course.

The ship itself was disturbingly quiet. It wasn't that the ion drive's normal vibration was missing, it was the lack of human voices, and inevitable sounds of movement and activity.

Even with just himself and Rafaela aboard on their outbound trip, they had struggled to create artificial moments of silence, separating into the even smaller environments of the medical units. On the trip home, despite the extra external crew module, there had always been someone making some faint noise.