A Light in the Void

Hanukkah. 800 words, 4 minute read. With Claude Sonnet.

Sarah's fingers left prints on the illuminated display as she swiped through the fuel calculations for the fourth time. Each set of numbers told the same story: their deuterium reserves had dropped below critical levels. The massive colony ship Covenant, carrying its precious cargo of two million frozen souls, was about to become the most expensive tomb in human history.

Her hand trembled as she initiated the shipwide comm. "Bridge to Captain."

David's response came with the slight delay she'd grown used to over their five years in deep space. "Go ahead, Sarah."

"We..." The words stuck in her throat. "You should see this for yourself."

Captain David Levine arrived minutes later, his movements carrying the peculiar grace of someone who'd learned to dance with zero gravity. Silver threaded his dark hair, and laugh lines wrapped around eyes that had seen Earth shrink to a pinpoint of light in their wake. He glanced at the fuel readouts, then at Sarah's face, then back to the numbers.

"Well," he said, absently adjusting the Star of David that floated at his throat, "that's quite the predicament we've got ourselves in."

Sarah's laugh held an edge of hysteria. "A predicament? David, we're at point-one-C with barely enough deuterium to power the coffee maker, let alone maintain deceleration burns for eight days."

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

"This isn't funny!" Sarah pushed off from her station, sending herself into a slow spin. "Do you understand what these numbers mean? We're going to zip past our target system like a bullet. Two million people are going to die because I miscalculated the fuel requirements for that debris field deviation."

David caught her arm as she passed, steadying her. His palm was warm against her sleeve – a reminder of human contact after years of minimal crew interaction. "Sarah Adams, you're the most meticulous engineer I've ever worked with. If there was a way to predict that debris field, you would have found it."

She pulled away, blinking hard. "Doesn't matter now, does it? The laws of physics don't care about our intentions."

"No," David said softly, "but they're not the only laws at work in the universe." He pushed off toward the door. "Come by my quarters after your shift. Bring your tablet if you want, but you might find some calculations aren't meant to be solved."

---

Later, Sarah hovered in his doorway, tablet clutched to her chest. The quarters were small, like all personal spaces on the Covenant, but David had made them his own. A small menorah was secured to his desk, its first candle casting a warm glow that seemed to push back against the sterile ship lighting.

"The Maccabees," David said, noticing her gaze on the candle, "were also faced with impossible odds."

"Did their impossible odds involve relativistic physics?"

A smile tugged at his mouth. "No, but they did involve light. Would you like to hear about it?"

She meant to say no. Instead, she found herself drifting inside.

The next morning, Sarah stared at the fuel gauge until her eyes burned. The numbers hadn't changed – they were still critically low – but somehow the engines continued their steady burn. She ran diagnostic after diagnostic, each one confirming that they were consuming fuel that, by all rights, shouldn't exist.

Each evening, she found herself back in David's quarters. She brought her tablet less and less frequently as the days passed. On the fourth night, as David lit the fourth candle, she finally asked the question that had been building inside her.

"How are you so certain? That we'll make it?"

David's hands stilled on the menorah. "I'm not. Faith isn't certainty, Sarah. It's hope with its work boots on."

By the seventh day, Sarah had stopped checking the fuel diagnostics every hour. Instead, she found herself watching the way starlight bent around their deceleration path, creating tiny rainbows in the observation window. The ship's lights dimmed to evening mode, and she realized she was late for the lighting.

When she arrived, David was waiting with an extra yarmulke. "I thought," he said, holding it out, "you might want to say the blessing with me tonight."

On the eighth day, as the final candle burned in the menorah, their destination filled the viewport – a blue-green jewel cradled in the velvet black of space. The Covenant's engines fired one last time, easing them into orbit with fuel reserves that still registered as empty.

Sarah's fingers found David's in the zero gravity, and together they watched their new home grow larger in the viewport. "What should we call it?" she whispered.

“Zion.”

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