September Short Story Collection

Day Nine

September 1, 2019

The young woman took a deep breath, composing herself before sitting down at her station and turning on her computer. It took a moment a load, but when it did she opened up the daily log and started a new one.

"Today is day nine since Heffner went missing. The ship is still in disarray and without out an engineer I'm still not sure how we'll be able to repair the ship to get back home."

She ran her hand through her short hair sighing. She looked at herself in the camera feed. She looked close to death, she hadn't slept much since Freddie Heffner went missing. They had been closer, closer than she had been with the rest of the crew.

"So, with Heffner missing and Susan Chang has contracted the same virus or disease that both Danny Fields and Angela Childs had with no cure found yet, and Jo... Jo Summers is dead, this leaves me as the only operational officer of Project New Horizons.

"Right now, I'm not really sure what to do. Chang wants me to continue my search for Heffner, but she's getting worse. I'm not sure she'll survive... She's lasted longer than both Fields and Childs, but... she's not looking good.

"I could keep looking for Heffner, but he went missing around the same area that we found Summers body. Seeing as I'm alone, I'm not sure that it's very smart for me to go there alone. Not to sound like a coward, but I'm not really looking to die quite yet." She laughed drily.

"I don't think we're alone here, I think we've disturbed intelligent life forces. We don't have any proof that they exist but before we found Jo he swore that he saw his father, Susan saw her sister, and Freddie saw his wife. There's something going on because I swear I saw my mom...

"This is not the mission that we thought it was going to be. I'm not blaming you because there's no way anyone could've known that this was going to happen, but... I just want to go home." Emotion laced her words and she was the brink of tears.

"First, I need to find a cure for Chang or something to just make her feel better. Then I need to find Heffner. If that all goes well, fix the ship and get the hell off this planet. We just need to get home."

She was quiet for a long moment. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure how to put them into words. She was afraid to admit that she thought she was going to die because if she did, she thought it would just come true.

"Please tell my family that I'm well and... don't let them know everything that's happened and is happening. They don't need to know that, okay?" She put a smile on her face. "I love you guys and hope you are doing as well as I am! It's still as amazing as the first day we landed. Can't wait to see you guys when we finally come home."

She knew it would take about three years to get to Earth, who knew what would happen in the time that they get the message.

"This is Julie Renner, signing off."

Word count: 554