Chapter Fifteen

Five Years Later

Doctor Ludwig Pehl woke up next to his wife, Jane, in their small home on Trappist 1d. She was still asleep. Judging by the darkness of their room, they had a couple more hours before the circadian lighting would begin its gradual glow, nudging them awake. A loud, sustained snore broke the silence. Ludwig smirked, shaking his head—so that’s what had woken him.

They’d met a year after his cohesion with Doctor Djawadi and had been married for nearly two years now. Six months ago, they received permission from the colony leaders to have a baby—not the first to be born on Trappist 1d, but one of the first.

Jane had never snored before pregnancy, and Ludwig didn’t have the heart to tell her she did now. She got embarrassed about little things like that. He remembered how mortified she was when he caught her plucking the few dark hairs under her nose. She jokingly called it her “lil mustache,” though that was an exaggeration—they were barely noticeable, except in the right light. Ludwig certainly didn’t care. She never complained about the ear hair that had suddenly decided to sprout on him, the kind he kept forgetting to trim in his usual grooming routine. And in his opinion, long, wispy ear hairs were far worse than a few dark ones on her upper lip.

Shifting beneath the blanket, Ludwig reached for his wrist pad on the nightstand. He only meant to check the time, but his breath caught when he saw the date. April fifteenth. The five-year anniversary of Djawadi’s death. A familiar mix of grief and guilt settled in his stomach like a weight.

Ludwig could hardly believe five years had passed since their cohesion. Five years since they’d completed their mission—the mission that had saved their colony from collapse. Long-range comms had never been restored, but Commander Cernan had sent a team of junior engineers to retrieve Ludwig and Djawadi by rover.

Apparently, when they’d arrived, Djawadi was already dead, and Ludwig near to it. They managed to get him more air, but the doctors couldn’t wake him for several days. If the comms team had arrived even a few hours later, Ludwig wouldn’t have survived. Even now, he occasionally struggled with memory lapses—a lingering consequence of the brain damage he’d sustained.

Another loud snore rattled from Jane. It was comically loud, and Ludwig stifled a chuckle, his amusement escaping as a sharp exhale through his nose. Accepting that sleep was a lost cause, he carefully slid out of bed, hoping not to wake her

He slipped out of the bedroom and into his small office, then powered up his laptop. It had become a quiet ritual—listening to the journal entry Djawadi had left for him on their last day together. Mission leadership had debated whether to give it to him, since sharing personal logs without explicit permission was a rule violation. But one day, it simply appeared in Ludwig’s inbox, sent from an anonymous email. The sender had justified the breach, claiming that the message itself carried the implied permission Djawadi had never given outright.

That first month after the mission had been brutal. The lung scarring from the corrosive air was extensive, and even now—almost fully healed—he still struggled with bouts of shortness of breath. Fortunately, they had removed him from physically demanding missions, assigning him instead to the engineering team tasked with fixing the flaws his cohesion with Djawadi had exposed. Chief among them were the airlock failure and the inability to charge a suit without removing it. They tackled far more than just those issues, but Ludwig had made sure to take on those assignments himself.

Ludwig’s laptop finished booting up. He opened the folder containing the backup data from his cohesion with Djawadi. As he did every year on this day, a flood of emotions and unspoken regrets surfaced. Had there been anything he could have done differently? If he’d been more flexible with the rules, less afraid of missteps, less obsessive over the things that, in hindsight, hadn’t mattered—would it have changed anything?

Taking a deep breath, Ludwig selected the audio file—the last words Djawadi had left for him.

“Hi Doctor Pehl. Well, since we didn’t have the chance to do our final Cohesion Inventory, I thought I’d make one now.” Djawadi’s voice was strained, as if he was struggling to speak. Which made sense, as it was clear to Ludwig now that his partner must have recorded this during their hike back to the surface, likely while Ludwig had been unconscious or too delirious to notice.

“I figure this is goodbye for now,” the recording continued. “Most likely goodbye forever. Even if, by some miracle, we survive this, they’ll put me on ice for what I did. You and I both know what happens to people like me.”

Ludwig did know. They all did. Everyone on the colony ship had known the rule: any major crime committed before the colony was self-sustaining was punishable by death. There were no prisons, no second chances. They couldn’t spare resources to keep criminals alive—especially the violent ones. Someone who couldn’t be trusted to work wasn’t just dead weight; they were a liability.

“I’m not trying to be noble,” Djawadi continued. “I know what I did. I know what’s waiting for me. But you? You can still be useful. They need you. That’s why I gave you the last FLUX filter.”

It hadn’t shocked Ludwig the first time he heard it—he’d always known that the only way he could have survived was if Djawadi had given him the last air filter. But hearing it, spoken so plainly, still hit like a punch to the gut from the storm of emotions it brought. Gratitude. Anger. Guilt. Shame. And, at the end of it all, more gratitude.

“Thanks for not letting me tank the mission,” the recording continued. “It was a good speech, doc. I’m sorry—for hating you, for trying to kill you, for almost wrecking everything. I’m sorry I called you a coward—I think I did some damage there. I could tell you internalized it.” There was a frustrated sigh in the recording. “They really shouldn’t have been talking about us before our Cohesion. Warning us about each other. I hated them for telling you that—hated you for assuming the worst because of them. But I suppose none of it matters now.”

“Umm, what else?” Djawadi mused after a pause. “Oh, I know you’ll hate this, but you really should loosen up about the rules. I’m not saying to break them—just ease up a little. Would it help if I told you that you helped me see their value? Well… that’s sort of a lie. I still think a lot of them are dumb as hell and often contradict each other. But you were right about one thing: the rules keep us safe. Just don’t let them be a prison. And trust me, you do, man—I mean doctor. You do.”

“Alright,” the recording continued. “That’s probably everything. I know the tradition is to say, ‘it was a pleasure serving with you,’ but let’s be real—it wasn’t. I think we can both agree this month was hell. But I’m glad we served together. At least for the sake of the mission.”

A few seconds of silence passed before Djawadi sighed. “I hope you don’t actually regret dropping out of the artificial moon program. Yeah, helping build and pilot the first man-made moon would’ve been amazing. And let’s be honest—you were smart enough to do it. But you being here? That mattered. Helping finish this mission—after everything we went through—you helped save the entire future of this colony. And that’s a hell of a lot cooler than building a moon, if you ask me.”

It angered Ludwig how Djawadi spoke, as if Ludwig alone had completed the mission. But he knew the truth—it never would have been finished without Djawadi. He was an equal factor in their success.

Ludwig clenched his jaw, bracing himself. Emotions welled up as Djawadi’s final words played.

“You did well, dealing with me. I know it couldn’t have been easy. But just make sure everyone knows—you did well.”

When the recording ended, Ludwig fought to keep himself from breaking down—like he always did. He hated how Djawadi had said it. Dealing with me. As if he’d been nothing but a burden. Which, yes, Ludwig couldn’t deny. But hadn’t he been a burden to Djawadi too?

Either way, it broke Ludwig’s heart that Djawadi had spent his final moments seeing himself that way. Especially since he was just echoing what their commanding officers had told Ludwig before their Cohesion. They had painted Djawadi as a liability, and Ludwig as the hero who had endured him—who had protected the mission despite his partner.

But would any of this have happened if Djawadi had been paired with someone else? Someone calmer, more understanding? Someone who hadn’t wasted so much time going to Site Beta out of cowardice? At the very least, someone who hadn’t made him feel like a failure for not following the rules to the letter?

There was no way of knowing, not really. But Ludwig knew Djawadi’s decline shouldn’t have been his legacy.

The doctors had described Djawadi’s decline in such a cold, clinical way—his claustrophobia worsened by what one doctor called plains’ fever, or even cabin fever. A combination of insomnia, intrusive thoughts, and creeping paranoia, brought on by prolonged isolation and the monotony of a desolate environment with no stimulus. It wasn’t a real disease, but a term used for those who suffered similar symptoms in remote places—the Arctic, the moon, months out at sea.

Ludwig often wondered—if they had been friends from the start, would Djawadi have confided in him sooner? Could he have helped him, eased his isolation, instead of the two of them viewing each other as adversaries, feeding the obsessive, murderous thoughts that eventually consumed Djawadi?

And as always, he couldn’t help but wonder—what if their roles had been reversed? Ludwig truly believed that if he had been the one struggling with his mental health while Djawadi remained stable, his partner would have handled it far better than he had.

But he’d never know. And he’d always regret it.

Ten months after their mission had ended, the colony held a ceremony for the opening of the geothermal facility and water reclamation plant—now fully operational and powering their settlement. At the ceremony, Ludwig received a commendation and a ceremonial promotion. He had pushed for Djawadi to receive the same, but leadership refused. His actions were a matter of public record, and while the mission commanders acknowledged his bravery, they felt it wouldn’t be good for morale to honor him, even posthumously. The details of his mental health decline remained classified, known only to Ludwig and his commanding officers.

In the end, they relented, agreeing to name the geothermal facility after him. It was the least Ludwig could do for his partner—to ensure Djawadi’s name wasn’t remembered solely for his failings, but for the power that sustained their colony, the energy that kept their lives moving forward.

But not his own, Ludwig thought bitterly.

For all of Djawadi’s problems, for everything that went wrong, Ludwig would always regret how he handled things. He didn’t know if he could have done anything differently—not with the resources they had, not in the situation they were in. But he wished he’d been better equipped to help his partner, to recognize the warning signs before it was too late. And yet, despite his shame, Ludwig knew he still held complicated feelings toward Djawadi. The anger, even hatred, hadn’t completely faded. But at the same time, he refused to let history reduce him to an obstacle when he had been integral to their survival.

In the end, Doctor Pavitra Djawadi had given his life for the mission—something they had all sworn they were willing to do when they joined this endeavor. But Djawadi had actually done it. With his sacrifice, progress had moved forward. His final act had been saving Ludwig’s life. And because of that, Ludwig was now married to Jane, a child on the way, and a future beyond the mission.

Ludwig made a quiet promise to himself and Djawadi. He would tell his child stories of his fallen partner. Maybe, one day, those stories would become legends—tall tales passed down at LunaU, whispered through generations of cadets. Maybe, in time, those legends would even surpass what the official mission logs recorded.

There had been—and there would be—many more deaths in the name of human expansion into the cosmos. They had always known that.

But that was the nature of the endeavor, the price of progress. It was what made them human. What allowed them to transcend the tribalism of their ancestors, to override the primal instinct that demanded self-preservation above all else.

In the end, Djawadi chose progress. He pushed the mission forward that final, necessary inch—just enough to keep it from crumbling. Like the explorers of old, he gave his life for a horizon he would never reach. His final breaths were not for himself, but for the endeavor—the heart of their mission, the future they worked to manifest.

End of Cohesion