Inktober 2026: The Full Story

All 31 days of Inktober 2026 in one place: every drawing and every log, in order, from the last fresh apple before launch to two robots flexing on the grass back home.

Day 1: Apple

Mission Log, Day 1: Last Fresh Fruit

One apple, already bitten, sits on the console beside the launch checklist. It’s the last fresh fruit aboard before we leave the ground behind. After launch it’s freeze-dried and foil pouches for the duration. The cables are strapped down, the gauges are alive, and the ship is ready. I’m giving the apple a few more minutes.

Day 2: Relic

Mission Log, Day 2: No Signal Required

Chief Engineer Okafor’s family has carried this phone for six generations. It has no battery and no signal, and it’s held together with gaffer tape. She keeps it in her pocket for luck. When the long-range array died again, she spliced it into the comms trunk. The signal came back clean. Nobody can explain it, and she isn’t taking it out.

Day 3: Miniature

Captain’s personal log, day 3

Tea’s gone cold again. The Pennywhistle is parked next to the mug, where she’s sat since we left dock. She’s about as long as my forearm, and she’s held together with solder and stubbornness.

She was my first command, a Class-4 cargo tug. Eleven years of hauling ore pods through the belt in a hull that rattled and leaked and stank of coolant and old coffee.

She never made a delivery on time and she never left us stranded. The habit’s my grandfather’s. He built sailing ships inside bottles, rigging threaded through the neck with bent wire and patience, and he said a captain should keep a copy of the first ship that scared him. I started with a brigantine at nine. Every command since has earned a miniature, but the tug is the only one I built myself, from scrap lifted off the dock a pocketful at a time.

She’s all wrong.

The struts are too long, the panelling’s guesswork, and I gave her the dent in her port sponson that the real one earned in the Ceres yards. The crew call her sentimental, and I let them. When the log gets heavy I look at her beside the mug and remember how small she was. She carried us anyway, and I’ve never found a better reason to keep going.

Day 4: Cactus

Scrubbers at 87%. Cactus at 100%.

Chief Engineer’s quarters are the only place on the ship with a plant, and technically it shouldn’t be there. The mass allocation sheet lists it as “personal effects, 0.4 kg, non-essential.” The pot is a standard-issue ceramic planter, orange from the factory, bolted to the desk with two repurposed cable clamps.

The cactus is a prickly pear. He’s had it longer than the posting. It’s flowered twice, and both times it was a surprise. Nobody has ever been able to tell him why it flowers now and then.

Here’s the joke on the lower decks: the cactus does nothing for the CO2 scrubbers. The environmental officer has run the numbers. A single prickly pear is a rounding error next to a ship-scale scrubber array. He knows. He still talks to it.

What he says to it, in no particular order:

• Scrubber bed temperatures, read out like a bedtime story
• Which junior crew member has been using the wrong torque setting again
• Complaints about the corridor lighting on Deck 3
• Quietly, on bad nights, whether the repair is going to hold

It never answers, and that’s what he likes about it. It’s the one thing aboard that doesn’t need a status report.

Markers and fineliner on a postcard.

Day 5: The Smack

Log entry, Day 5

Captain’s log. Day 5 out.

Space is empty. That’s the whole point of it, and I’d got used to it. Four days of nothing on the scope, and the crew had started saying the odds were with us.

At 02:14 ship time, they ran out.

It was a hard knock, felt through the deck plates, then the alarm. Something small and fast hit the port nacelle housing and went through the outer skin. The scope shows a vapour trail where it came in. We’re venting coolant from the damage.

Chief’s on his way down with a patch kit and a very short temper. The cactus fell off its shelf. It’s fine.

The odds didn’t change. We just stopped getting lucky. Four days to the first burn, and I’d rather not do it on a leaking nacelle.

Fineliner, brush pen and ink wash.

Day 6: The OGRE

Engineer’s log, Day 6

Main plant went down again at 0340. Three subsystems threw errors I’ve never seen, and the diagnostic AI asked me to “please restart the universe.” Not helpful.

So I went aft and woke the OGRE.

The Oxygen Gas Recycling Engine is older than the ship’s paint. No firmware, no network, no software updates. It has a hand crank, a dial with one needle, and a flywheel the size of a dustbin lid. The brass plate on the front says D9, and nobody knows what that means. The pipe fittings are held on with bolts a child could undo.

Gave the crank forty turns, then one firm tap with the hammer on the left-hand canister, where it always sticks. The needle jumped, the flywheel caught, and the whole thing started to chug.

Oxygen is steady at 19.8%. The plant is still dead, and I don’t care.

The crew call it the OGRE because it’s ugly, loud, and it keeps us alive.

Note for the next shift: keep the hammer where you can reach it.

Ink fineliner and ink wash.

Day 7: Panic

Engineer’s log, Day 7

06:12. The alarm goes off in the EVA locker and the beacon starts flashing AIR LEEK (somebody lettered that sign, and nobody ever corrected it).

One helmet, one cracked visor, forty seconds of loud, unprofessional panic.

Then the training kicks in: tape over the crack, sealant over the tape. The hiss drops to a whisper. The leak is slowing, not stopped, and the helmet is now tagged and benched until the Chief Engineer has had a look.

Every repair on this ship is held together with hope and adhesive. I’ve started counting the adhesive.

Fineliner, ink wash, watercolour pencils and acrylic markers.

Day 8: Stinky

Engineer’s log, Day 8

Stinky. Always stinky.

Everyone else gets new planets and starlight. I get the waste recycler.

Elbow joint split open overnight, and the deck reeks. That recycler has never played fair. It chokes and cracks when it feels like it.

I’m knee-deep in it again, clamping and swearing. Somebody has to deal with the filth so the rest of you can keep breathing.

Space plumber. Not glamorous. Just necessary.

Fineliner and ink wash.

Day 9: Ram

Cargo Chief’s log, Day 9

They call it The Ram. Earned it. Ten tonnes of scarred alloy that goes through a bulkhead door like it’s an insult.

Cargo droid. Generation AI, the kind with opinions. Mouthy, sulks, glitches hard enough to freeze mid-lift and stare at the wall. I’ve requested its decommission three times. Never filed one.

Bay Six went at 0300. Hull holed, air gone, the whole deck screaming. Nobody ordered it. The Ram put its own chassis in the breach and held it there while we dragged eleven people out.

Vacuum took half its plating. Took the paint, the serial plate, most of its face. It’s still holding the line in my head. I had to cut it loose myself.

Not cargo any more. Crew. Hot bunk, full share, and a seat at my table.

Day 10: Mystical

Captain’s log, Day 10

The mystical signal brought us here, and I wish it hadn’t.

At its source stands a structure so old that the land has grown up around it. The trees lean toward its walls like they are listening. The rock has folded itself around its base. Nothing about it feels abandoned.

Two enormous fins rise from the roof, tearing the air into plasma and forcing the signal upward in long, shuddering lines. It is not leaking out. It is being sent.

The crew are quiet. Nobody wants to be first to say it, so I will. Something built this to call out, and I don’t think we were the ones it was calling.

Tomorrow we go closer. I am ordering the ship kept ready.

Day 11: Rescue

Mission log, Day 11

RESCUE POD TRANSMISSION [AUTO-RELAY, SIGNAL DEGRADED]

…mayd—mayday. Pod touch-do█n confirmed. Landed. Hull ch@rred, aft sect-on b-rnt thr█ugh. Hatch popped on impact, seals gone. Cabin open to the e█terior.

Passenger g0ne. Repeat: passenger GONE. Couch empty, straps cut. No tr_ce. Beacon s-ill ping█ng from the pod.

Air 4% and f█lling. Power 11%. Ne-d re-sc– rescue… resc█e…

[TRANSMISSION ENDS]

Day 12: Toss

Captain’s log, Day 12

Something moved in the pit.

An unidentified survivor in a rescue pod emergency suit, no ID and no comms, just a gloved hand reaching up out of the dark.

Our engineer’s arm has always been good, and the rescue line went out on target. Hauling them up now. Lander crew standing by.

Day 13: Flimsy

Captain’s log, Day 13

Rope takes the strain. We’ve started hauling the unidentified survivor out of the pit, hand over hand, with the engineer on the line.

Then the rope starts to fray. It’s a flimsy old thing, rated for cargo and not for people, and every strand that parts is one fewer between them and the dark.

Nobody says it, but we all hear it. Keep pulling.

Day 14: Lady

Medical log, Day 14

Pod survivor recovered. Unconscious. Vitals steady, which is more than I can say for me.

The rope held. Just. I keep checking the knot.

The crew are calling her “the Lady.” She looks human. Almost. Something about the eyes sits wrong, and nobody will say it out loud.

How did she get into a sealed rescue pod? Nobody launched it.

I don’t know what we’ve brought aboard. We’ll find out when she wakes. If she wakes.

Day 15: Hooray

Captain’s log, Day 15

The rescue is complete. Against every odd, the crew is home, and for the first time in weeks the cargo hold rings with laughter.

Banners hang from the bulkhead. Glasses are raised. And somehow, impossibly, there are balloons. We are light years from anywhere, and I will never know where they found them.

For one perfect hour, nobody is afraid.

Then the alarm sounds…

Day 16: Gangly

Captain’s log, Day 16

Movement in the corridor outside Medical. Gangly. Jerky. Too many joints, none of them bending the right way.

Then the noises: nothing a human throat should make. It was coming from the medical unit, and the unit was meant to be sealed.

I saw it clearly for three seconds. That was enough. Never unsee this. It will live in our nightmares forever.

Bulkhead sealed. Not going back in.

Day 17: Contraption

Captain’s log, Day 17

The engineer hasn’t slept. Neither have I.

We have to get rid of the thing. A sealed bulkhead won’t hold it for long.

So the engineer built something: welding mask, oxy-acetylene tanks and torch, deck plating riveted into armour, and a cargo claw for an arm. A contraption. Protection. Hopefully safe.

Somebody has to wear it.

We’re drawing straws…

Day 18: Flightless

Captain’s log, Day 18

It’s gone. We won, if you can call it that.

The hull is torn open. The power is dead. The ground is coming up fast.

We paid for this in lives I’ll have to name later. Everyone aboard is still breathing. Nobody is leaving.

We are flightless.

Day 19: Confused

Captain’s log, Day 19

Impact. Then nothing.

I came round hanging in my harness, the deck over my head, the ceiling underfoot. Alarms are screaming but I can’t tell which are real. Smoke in the cockpit. Instruments reading everything at once: climbing, falling, dead.

The lights cut out and I couldn’t tell up from down.

Through the cracked glass: mountains, and a column of smoke rising from the wreck.

I don’t know where we are. I don’t know who’s alive.

Confused.

Day 20: Lounge

Mission log, Day 20

Fourteen crew sealed in the lounge, behind a corridor of twisted girders. Atmosphere holding. Morale holding. Whisky holding, but not for long. There are worse places to be trapped, and they appear to have found the best one.

Cutting teams are working the debris around the clock. Estimated time to clear the corridor: two days. Estimated time for the lounge to drink itself dry: one and a half.

Rescue is now a race against the bar. Sending more cutting torches. Not sending any more ice.

Lounge.

Day 21: Hero

Scream of metal. Deck plates buckling underfoot. The hull is tearing open and the air is going, and someone is screaming for a medic, and it might be me.

Then through the smoke and steam, a shape. Massive. Unmoving. Power armour, scorched but standing, the skull on its chest glowing through the haze.

We’re not dead. He came. The hero came.

Hero.

Day 22: Beacon

It took hours. Cutting torches, pry bars, and the hero’s bare hands on the worst of the beams. Finally the debris shifted and there it was, wedged under a collapsed bulkhead: SOSi.

Bashed, scorched, one panel hanging by a hinge, a long scrape down its flank. Nobody dared say it out loud.

Then the status lights stuttered on, one by one, and the little unit gave a groan of servos and hauled itself upright. It shambled off across the wreckage on its four stubby legs, limping on the left rear, and climbed to the highest ground it could find.

The dish swung round, hunting. Locked. Then the waveform on its screen began to climb, and SOSi started to transmit.

Somewhere out there, someone has to be listening.

Beacon.

Day 23: Dapper

Out of the dust sky it came. We had stopped looking up. Hours of waiting under that bruised yellow haze, SOSi still chirping away on its hilltop, and then a shadow slid across the wreckage and the dust began to part. Something was coming down through it. It had answered our beacon.

Clean lines, smooth, silver. No flames, no roar, none of the howling engines we’d braced for. It settled onto the plain with barely a noise, as though it had all the time in the world, and the dust drifted back around it like nothing had happened.

For a long moment nothing moved. Then a dark opening yawned in its flank, black as the gap between stars, and out of it came two figures.

The first was a massive metal robot, heavy-footed and unhurried, its lamp sweeping the wreckage. The second walked out beside it in a dapper EVA suit, immaculate, not a speck of dust on him. He stopped at the edge of the ramp, looked over the burned wreck of our ship, and raised one gloved hand in greeting.

Dapper.

Day 24: Bake

Nobody had eaten properly in days. Ration bars, warm water, the dust in everything. So when the robot ducked back into the silver ship and came out carrying a loaf tin, we just stared.

It set up in the lee of the wreckage, using a slab of torn bulkhead as a counter, and went to work with those blunt pincer hands, surprisingly delicate. Dials ticked on its chest panel. Something warm hummed inside its torso. The dapper man stood by with his hands behind his back, looking quietly pleased with himself, as if this had been the plan all along.

It took less than an hour. The tin came out of the robot’s belly gold-crusted and steaming, and the smell crossed the plain faster than any of us could walk. Someone laughed, a cracked, rusty sound, and then half the survivors were crying.

Real bread. The first thing since the crash that felt like home.

Bake.

Day 25: Fracture

Somehow, everyone fitted. Survivors, hero, robot, even SOSi, bolted down in a corner with its dish still ticking. The ramp sealed with a soft sigh, and the dapper man lifted a hand to a panel we couldn’t read.

We didn’t feel a thing. No shudder, no thrust, no pressing back into the seats. Through the viewport the wreck simply slid away, as though the plain were being pulled out from under us.

Then the energies began to pour out ahead of the ship. Space itself split. A fracture tore open in the dark, ragged and branching like lightning frozen in glass, and the light inside it was in colours none of us could name. Violet, gold, something between them that hurt to look at and that nobody wanted to look away from.

The silver ship slipped into the light without a sound.

We were going home.

Fracture.

Day 26: Zip

We watched it close behind us. Through the viewport the fracture no longer looked like lightning. It looked like a seam. Far back along its length the ragged edges were drawing together, tooth meshing with tooth, a line of dark links running away across the folded skin of space. Somewhere at its head a single bright slider hauled itself along, and the universe zipped shut after us without a sound.

Below decks, the Captain stood in the dim light of the hold, where three of ours lay on the slabs. The hero had carried them out of the wreck himself, one at a time, and no one had asked him to.

Three. It could have been more. It should have been none.

His hand shook as he drew the first zip, tooth by tooth, the same small sound the sky had made. Then the second. Then the third. Not out there. Not under that yellow dust, with the wreck for a headstone. Whatever happens, we take everyone home. Nobody gets left.

He rested a hand on each in turn. Then the ship hummed on through the dark, and the seam behind us finished closing.

Zip.

Day 27: Dumb

Nobody told us not to look, so we looked. A hatch left ajar, a corridor we weren’t meant to find, and beyond it the machines that had ripped space apart.

They were ancient. That was the shock of it. Vacuum tubes, actual valves, glass bulbs glowing amber over their sockets like something out of a museum. Dumb terminals with blocky glyphs crawling across small screens. Reels turning slowly, feeding out ribbons of punched paper tape, row after row of holes.

Our whole fleet couldn’t have built one of them, and they looked older than our grandparents’ grandparents. The rows stretched away into the dark, each one faintly glowing, ticking and murmuring to itself. Whatever had carried us home through the fracture had done it on technology we’d have thrown out centuries ago.

The dapper man never said a word about it. He only smiled when he caught us staring.

Dumb.

Day 28: Trophy

They gave us a ceremony, of sorts. No crowds, no speeches. Just the silver ship settled somewhere quiet, the survivors ranged along the ramp, and the dapper man stepping forward with something held in both gloved hands.

A trophy. Not gold, not glass. A squat grey box on a round pedestal, scuffed at the corners, a cassette sitting in its window with two white hubs and a strip of handwriting across the label: MIX TAPE. Along the front, in blocky letters, a single word: WALKMAN. It was around the same age as the machines in the dark corridor, and it looked as though it had been loved.

He set it down on the bulkhead where we could all see it and said nothing, only nodded to the hero, who pressed the big button on top with one armoured finger. The reels began to turn. Somewhere inside the silver ship, the old valves glowed amber, and for the first time since the crash, something played.

Trophy.

Day 29: Tusk

The dapper man collected things. I should have guessed. Somewhere aft of the passenger deck, past a door that had not been there the day before, he had a long, quiet room lined with trophies, and he invited me in as though I were a guest rather than a captain without a ship.

Most of it I couldn’t name. But the piece he stopped at, he lifted from its stand himself: a tusk, ancient, yellowed to the colour of old piano keys, curving up to a split and weathered tip. It stood in a banded collar of pale metal, ribbed like a barrel hoop. Down its length, cut with a needle’s patience, ran a whale. Heavy-lidded eye, deep furrows along the head, the tail curling away round the curve of the ivory, every line as fine as a hair.

“Scrimshaw,” he said, turning it so the light ran along the engraving. “Not humanity’s best period.”

I braced for the rest. He glanced at me, at the ragged crew behind me.

“You’ve improved,” he said. “A bit.”

I decided to take it as a compliment. On this ship it seemed the safest thing to do.

Tusk.

Day 30: Cookie

I only touched it to steady myself. A bulkhead console in the corridor outside the machine hall, bolted down like everything else on this ship: a squat screen in a scarred metal frame, a slab of keys beside it, a pair of sliders, a row of tiny lamps. Behind it, a glass valve glowed amber in its socket and a fat cylinder hung from the ceiling cable like a sleeping animal.

The screen woke at my hand. Blocky letters, steady and patient.

ACCEPT COOKIE?

[Y][N]

I stood there a long while. We had crossed the dark through a fracture in space itself, on machines older than our grandparents’ grandparents, and the ship that had done it wanted to know whether I would accept a cookie. Behind me the robot’s lamp swept round and stopped on the screen. Somewhere aft, I swear, a loaf tin rattled.

I looked at the dapper man, who had appeared at my shoulder without a sound. He raised one eyebrow, and said nothing at all. I pressed [Y].

Cookie.

Day 31: Flex

Captain’s log. We are home. All of us, hero, survivors, SOSi, even the two robots, down the ramp and onto solid ground, and I don’t mind admitting my knees gave way.

The dapper man walked us to the edge of the landing field, tipped a gloved hand, and went back aboard without a word. We stood there breathing real air. That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t, because the robots weren’t finished. The big one from the silver ship and our battered little SOSi, side by side on the grass, and then, for no reason any of us could see, they raised their arms. Joints whirred. Servos whined. The big robot locked its elbow and swelled its pincers. SOSi, limping and scorched, hoisted its single working arm and bent it with enormous dignity.

It was a strength test. A show. A flex.

I know it. I couldn’t tell you from where, but I know it, some old ritual of ours, half remembered, the sort of thing people did once for no reason but pride. The hero started to laugh. The survivors began to cheer.

We’re home. The robots are showing off. Captain signing off…

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