Artemis One
Author
Kayce Schrupp
Reads
17.4K
Chapters
46
Lieutenant Arabella Dorian finally has it all—her command, her father’s pride, and Luka, her perfect and forbidden match. But when Artemis One crashes on a breathtaking yet deadly alien moon, everything falls apart. With Luka gone and her crew scattered, Arabella must navigate strange creatures, ancient ruins, and a mysterious alien claiming she is fated to him. As she uncovers secrets that could doom the remnants of humanity, Arabella faces impossible choices: survive, trust the enemy, or risk it all to uncover the truth. A thrilling, romantic adventure awaits.
Chapter 1: One
ARABELLA
Before I could second-guess the decision, I crossed the room in quick, uneven strides and lowered myself to my knees beside the secured panel hidden beneath my bunk. My pulse quickened as I pressed my wristband against the scanner, already knowing I should not be doing this again, already knowing exactly what waited for me on the other side of this choice.
Unauthorized access flashed across the screen.
The warning lingered there for one suspended breath, quiet but unmistakable, a line clearly drawn, a boundary I was never meant to cross, no matter how many times I had returned here searching for the same thing.
Then the message disappeared.
Access granted.
The compartment slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the single file I always came back to in moments like this, when the weight of who I was expected to become threatened to crush who I actually was beneath it.
My fingers brushed carefully over the worn edges before I lifted it from the compartment, reverent and almost afraid to damage the fragile connection it represented.
To my mother. To the woman who died bringing me into this world.
“Play personal log,” I whispered, my voice quieter than I intended, as though speaking too loudly might somehow shatter whatever remained of her inside this recording.
The room fell still around me. Then Artemis responded in its smooth, detached tone. “Private log. Dr. Annalise Dorian. Playback initiated.”
The lights dimmed almost imperceptibly as the recording flickered to life, and for a moment the sterile walls of my quarters seemed to dissolve around me, replaced by the soft crackle of old archived footage and the sound of a voice I had spent my entire life chasing through fragments.
“If you’re watching this, it means Earth is already gone.”
The breath caught painfully in my throat.
Her voice filled the room softly, steady and heartbreakingly real in a way nothing else about her had ever been. The image shifted, and suddenly I was no longer in my quarters but looking out through massive viewing windows into the endless expanse of space, the darkness stretching infinitely in every direction, broken only by the distant glow of stars and the familiar, unmistakable form of the planet that was once our home.
Earth.
“We’re watching it now,” she continued quietly. “From the observation bay, waiting for it to happen like that somehow makes any of this easier to accept.”
The image trembled faintly.
“I thought I would feel something stronger. Anger. Rage. Something big enough to match what we’re losing.”
A small breath left her. “But all I feel is empty.”
The planet began to fracture.
Light burst violently across the surface as continents split apart beneath waves of destruction, the image so massive and catastrophic it barely felt real. I could not look away from it even as something deep inside me twisted painfully at the sight of an entire world dying in silence.
“That’s the cruelest part,” she said softly, bitterness slipping through her composure now. “They told us this would give us purpose. That watching it end would remind us why we have to survive.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “I think it just reminds us how little control we actually have.”
The image flickered again.
“I don’t even know if we should be recording this,” she muttered more quietly now, as though she had momentarily forgotten the camera was even there. “Half of what we say is monitored anyway, filtered into whatever version of hope they think people need to hear.”
Silence stretched briefly between her words. Then, softer but firmer, she added, “But this is mine.”
Earth imploded.
The planet collapsed inward for one terrible suspended moment before erupting outward into endless fragments of fire and debris that scattered violently across the void. My chest tightened so hard it hurt to breathe.
“I was a doctor,” she said quietly. “A daughter. A woman who thought she had time.”
The brightness from Earth’s destruction slowly faded behind her.
“If you’re seeing this, then you’re part of what comes next. We don’t know what’s out there. We don’t know if there are planets capable of sustaining life. We don’t know if the calculations are right.”
Her expression tightened faintly. “And we don’t know if we’re just delaying the inevitable.”
The recording distorted briefly.
“All we know is that staying wasn’t an option.”
A pause followed. “And leaving doesn’t guarantee anything either.”
The final remnants of Earth disappeared into darkness.
“I want to believe this will mean something,” she continued softly. “I want to believe there’s something out there for us, something worth everything we just lost.”
Her jaw tightened.
“Because if there isn’t… then we’re just out here waiting to die.”
Silence followed, heavy and unfiltered.
“We keep moving forward,” she said after a moment, her voice steadier now. “We keep searching. We keep surviving for as long as we can, because that’s all we have left.”
The screen flickered harder this time, the distortion subtle at first before deepening enough to fracture the image around her. Then suddenly her face filled the screen. Close. Clear. Painfully real. I studied her like this was the first time I had ever truly seen her, because it was, because this was all I would ever have of her.
“If you’re watching this, then we made it far enough for this log to survive,” she said quietly, her voice softer now but no less steady. “So make it count.”
The image glitched again, her features fracturing beneath the strain of the failing recording as the distortion deepened and slowly pulled her further away from me.
“And don’t let this be for nothing.”
Then she was gone.
The recording cut, leaving behind a silence so complete it felt almost deafening, pressing against my chest until breathing became something I had to force myself to remember how to do. The truth settled slowly but unavoidably into place, heavy and unshakable, reshaping something deep inside me as I sat there staring at the empty glow of the screen, at the space where she once was, at the only version of her I would ever know.
She died for this. For me. For all of us. The low hum of Artemis One slowly returned around me, louder now, more present, pulling me back into the reality of what was waiting outside these walls. Today was my pinning day, the beginning of the future that had always been laid out before me, the future I never truly chose yet had been shaped to carry, a purpose that felt heavier now than it ever had before as it settled fully into place.
And yet, as I stood here, fingers trembling at my sides and breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat, all I could feel was the crushing weight of everything that came before it, everything that led me here, everything that was lost long before I ever had the chance to choose any of it for myself.
Every lesson, every expectation, every sacrifice placed carefully onto my shoulders since childhood finally became real today, and standing here now with my mother’s final words still echoing through my head, the weight of it all felt heavier than it ever had before. Because she never got this chance.
She never got to live long enough to see whether any of her sacrifices were worth it.
My gaze drifted back toward the dark screen. Toward the ghost of a woman I had spent my entire life trying to know through recordings, archived files, and stories that never felt like enough.
A tight ache settled into my chest as I pushed myself slowly to my feet, staring once more at my reflection in the polished steel wall across the room. For a moment, I barely recognized the girl staring back at me.
Dark curls pulled back neatly. White officer cadet uniform pressed perfectly into place. Shoulders squared despite the uncertainty clawing beneath my ribs.
I was born aboard Artemis One. Raised inside steel walls and artificial gravity. Trained from childhood to help carry humanity forward into whatever future waited for us somewhere beyond the endless dark.
This ship was the only home I had ever known. And yet sometimes it still felt like a cage. The room suddenly felt too small. Too quiet. Too full of expectation. I closed my eyes briefly and forced myself to breathe through it, grounding myself in the steady mechanical hum beneath my feet, the sound that had followed me my entire life like a second heartbeat.
Because fear changed nothing. Fear did not stop time from moving forward. And whether I felt ready or not, my future was already here waiting for me. When I opened my eyes again, something inside me felt steadier than before. Not fearless. Not certain. But resolved.
My fingers curled at my sides as I steadied myself, grounding myself in the present even as the past pressed in, even as something inside me shifted into something far more resolute than it was before—something that did not waver beneath the weight of what it carried.
“I will survive,” I whispered, the words quiet but certain, carrying more truth than anything I had ever said before because this was no longer hope, no longer fear, but a promise I was choosing to make.
Because if I didn’t, if I faltered, if I allowed myself to break beneath the weight of it, then everything that was lost became exactly what they feared it would be: meaningless, reduced to nothing more than scattered fragments drifting through the void, forgotten, and without purpose.
The truth settled into me then, not as something fragile or uncertain, but as something unshakable, something that rooted itself deep within my chest and refused to let go, shaping every breath that followed and every step I would take from this moment forward.
We rose above not because it was easy, not because we were ready, but because there was no other choice left to us, because survival was the only thing we had left to offer the dead, the only way to ensure that their sacrifice did not disappear into the same darkness that claimed them.
Or we became nothing, lost to the same endless void that swallowed our world, another failed attempt, another story that ended before it ever truly began. And I refused to let that be our ending.
