Planetfall

Planetfall

Something is alive out there.

You wake to an angry klaxon and a fog of cryo-condensation — and the generational ship you left, the Leap of Faith, is gone. Not damaged. Not drifting. Gone, like it never existed at all.

Six other pods around you stand open and empty. The other sleepers disappeared three hours ago, while your ship's AI was mysteriously offline. She doesn't know why. She doesn't like that she doesn't know why.

Outside the viewport: a world that shouldn't be habitable but is. Rust-colored skies. Transit lines still sparking with electric light. Towers of black metal and pale stone scored with patterns no human hand carved. Infrastructure running on autopilot for a civilization that isn't answering.

The sensors say there's life down there. The sensors also say ERROR.

There's only one way to find the truth.

Planetfall is a hard sci-fi survival mystery in the vein of Asimov, Egan, and Corey — cryosleep, first contact, and a slow-burn descent into whatever's left of a dead world's power grid. Your only ally is Shannon, the shuttle's AI, projected as a hologram with more composure than answers.

#tldr2026

Characters

Shannon