Halcyon's Wake: Faith

Luna Calling

The next few days Beth and I didn’t talk much. There wasn’t any animosity - I just think I needed some time to process through all the information I’d garnered from Lothar. There was a lingering effect of the link, or just willful imagining on my part - not too sure either way, really; I swear I could hear Beth’s thoughts on occasion, and the sideways glances she gave me when we were doing our routine work in Ops told me that she was hearing me, too.

I was lazily floating around the hangar, reading through some of the UFO stuff Mouse had given me while sipping on a little bourbon Jim had left, when the familiar strains of ‘Thus spake Zarathustra’ began chiming from my I-Pad - Mouse was calling on the secure link he’d embedded into our systems.

“Greetings from Luna Base, Zack! This place is cool as hell, man!”

Mouse’s sandy-brown locks bounced around his grinning face - guess he finally got the chance to meet the ET’s he’d been dreaming about his whole life. His expression was the epitome of stunned pride and elation.

“Are the Twinkies still in the fridge?” I asked - using our pre-arranged code to determine if others were listening.

“Twinkies are chilling, Zack - all is cool.”

I floated towards one of the comm panels to summon Beth, but she floated into the cargo bay before I could hit the switch... I swear she could read my thoughts.

She smiled at Mouse and took a long pull on the bourbon-bag, and we both repeated to Mouse what we’d discovered from our session with Lothar.

Mouse was surprisingly cool with the new information. I guess years of speculation and wonder about fringe elements made swallowing this new information as easy as pie. We agreed to keep the information strictly between ourselves - no need to trouble Jim, the President or anyone else until we were able to learn more.

Mouse was obviously distracted by a newfound obsession with Dr. Christina Franks, Luna Base’s communication specialist. He mentioned the vivacious, redheaded Aussie’s name about half a dozen times in the space of a few minutes. If a face ever truly conveyed ‘whipped’ - it was Mouse’s.

Klaxons and flashing lights began pealing through the station which meant only one thing - we’d been breached by something. Beth and I instinctively went into emergency mode, leaving the hangar as quick as possible for the nearest Soyuz capsule. Tiny asteroids no bigger than a pebble were shredding through the hangar as we fled, a fusillade of lethal, jagged daggers. One of them punched straight through the fleshy part of my neck, leaving a wicked gash as I dove through the escape pod’s hatch, Beth right behind me.

The Soyuz hull was pinging like a thousand, steel, ball-bearings dancing in a dryer as hundreds of the tiny asteroids peppered it’s exterior. I dogged the hatch closed and Beth began wrapping a bandage around my bleeding neck. Sounds of shredding fabric and escaping oxygen reverberated through the hull as Beth and I clambered into the waiting pressure suits, praying the link to Ops hadn’t been severed yet. My hands were flying over the controls as the sounds of devastation continued to unravel around us.

The Soyuz received the location of the eye in the sky-skin moments before the link was broken. The primary systems in Ops must have succumbed to the barrage. I backed the Soyuz away from the airlock blindly, and within only 15 feet the barrage on the outer hull subsided. I banked the module and Beth and I crowded around the single porthole to get a glimpse of the damage to the station.

It was totaled. The whole of the ISS looked like it had been sprayed with a thousand machine guns. Oxygen vented into space from every section, debris floating into the vacuum from a few jagged, gaping holes you could drive a Buick through.

Beth jumped on the comm and began broadcasting a mayday to Luna Base as I programmed our reentry.

“I hear Montana’s nice this time of year - how’s that sound to you?” I asked.

“Beats the hell out of being right here, Zack. Let’s go.”

I took one last look out the porthole - too shocked to really process everything, then engaged the reentry systems.

I guess Lothar finally got what he wanted after all.