Nathan Hystad - The Event

“Mary, get the hell away from that thing!” I yelled, and as we flew down and away from it, the whole thing exploded violently. The concussion shook our ship, but we were otherwise okay. Another chunk of human lives gone. The weight of all the lives lost was pushing me down, and I felt like gravity had doubled. I thought about Ray, and Janine… the Kraski we’d destroyed – a whole race of beings. I thought about the hundreds of dead people Magnus and I had walked over to get to the center of the container we found Mae in, before we proceeded to kill her companions. So much death. I slid to the ground and looked at my hands. The hands of an accountant. A man who liked to have a cold one with his buddies, and watch the Yankees play for the pennant. I almost expected them to be covered in blood as I peered at them, my vision narrowing as my pulse raced. I could hear voices, but I didn’t know what they were saying. I looked up to see Janine staring at me. I’d missed her so much, but that felt like a dream; a time so long ago, so full of lies, that it was never truly my life. Then I thought of Mary, so strong-willed and real.

Something wet licked my face. Carey, the ever-loyal dog I’d hardly known until a week ago, was stepping on my lap and licking me. I snapped out of it. I realized that it wasn’t Janine with me there, it was Mae.

“Nat, I’m going to cut under him and pop up hard in front. You cut down and we’ll have him between us. We both fire, neither of us can miss. Got it?” Mary’s voice called out.

I was still on the floor and stayed there, trying not to pass out. The panic attack had subsided, but I was still lightheaded. Not quite the hero of the books I’d read, either.

“Now!” Mary called, and Mae let out a whoop. I pulled myself up to catch the tail end of their battle, the Kraski ship exploding into a million pieces.

Everything went quiet for a moment. I looked to the computer and saw the cube dots all moving away from the sun. The ones we’d fired on, taking out the thrusters, were still sitting back, slowly and surely heading into their imminent demise.

“We have to do something about those guys,” I said quietly, suddenly ashamed of my fall from grace a few minutes ago. They didn’t seem to notice or care a whole lot, not that I blamed them, since they’d had their hands quite full at the time.

I pulled my suit on and locked in my helmet again. “Mae, you’re with me. I have an idea.”

The tethers we wore were made of some linked material that seemed to be indestructible. I knew there were more of them in the cargo bay, and I took all of them that I could find. We clamped the longest ones we could find on our suits, and I took a deep breath as I thought about what we were about to do: float into the great abyss that was space, a couple miles from the sun. Mae assured me that these suits could handle the temperature and heavy radiation, but only for a few minutes. We had to do this fast.

The container farthest away was still moving; its two thrusters were on the same side, so it was slowly trying to spin around. Mae had called over to the ship and learned that three of her people were tied up and gagged. The rest were happy to cooperate and make it out of there alive. They rotated the thrusters and had placed themselves away from the sun, with the other two cubes between them and the sun.

It was show time.

“Mary, are we close enough?” I called to the front of the ship. She didn’t answer, but in moments, she was running into the room.

“Just be safe. I want you to come back to me in one piece.” She stared into my eyes. “Mae, take care of him out there, would you? He’s somewhat important to me.”

“Somewhat?” I asked with a nervous laugh. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” I petted Carey on the head; the dog was looking at me like I was a stranger in a space suit. I was looking forward to getting him home safely.

I squeezed Mary’s hands and let go, pressing the pin on my suit. I glowed bright green and pushed myself through the bottom of the ship, and into the great, blazing hot expanse.

We emerged outside of the ship, the red-hot sun threatening to devour me the instant I was out. It was massive this close, and even though the suit was designed for massive heat blasts, I was instantly sweating. We didn’t have much time.

My helmet screen had darkened, the lens polarizing from the light. I still had to squint as I looked at Mae, who was calling to me from the comm-link we shared in the suits.

“Dean, follow my lead. Squeeze your fingers together on your left hand like I showed you.” She started flying away toward the big, black cube, her tether waving behind her.

Pinching my forefinger to my thumb, I felt the suit’s mini-thruster activate, and I jetted off after her. It took a bit of moving my hand up and down to level off, but once I got the hang of it, it was almost fun. If only I wasn’t burning up in an alien space suit, trying to stop millions of people from dying in a fiery crash, if they weren’t already melted from the heat.

We neared the cube, and I was amazed at the sheer size of the thing. I had no object I could really compare it to, but it looked like a city on its side. The metal walls were black and matte-finished. Mini-cubes covered the whole thing. From afar it looked smooth, but up close it was extremely textured. They weren’t aerodynamic, but I guess that didn’t matter for what they were built for. I had to figure they were really transport vessels for people and perhaps livestock, almost as if the Kraski had planned to relocate their entire population here but something had happened.

I shook the thought from my head as Mae waved me over. We were near the center of the cube, and I unraveled two tethers from around my arm and latched them to a metal eye hook that presented itself by a thruster opening. We mounted four of them in total and quickly made our way over to the next cube in line, securing the four tethers to it. There was a little bit of give, and we could only hope that they would hold up to the immense weight. I had no real idea of the physics of it, but we didn’t have much time to figure out other options.

We raced around the massive middle container and repeated the process, adding the full weight of a third cube. When we were done, I could hardly see, and I felt like I was melting. I looked to my suit and was sure it was melting.

Mary had been following along, making sure our tethers had enough slack, and we now reeled ourselves in fast.

We approached the ship, and I was about to green myself through the cargo door when Mae stopped. She unhooked her tether and smiled at me.

“Dean, I have to go activate one of the thrusters on the left side of that first cube. There’s no other way. The damage looked minimal, just some debris blocking it, I think.”

I didn’t know what to say. Janine’s duplicate watched me with wide eyes, and I reached up to her face. My glove sat on her face-mask for a moment. “Godspeed,” I said, and she floated out after the first cube. My suit was about to expire, and I pushed my pin. Green light enveloped me and I pulled my rope, emerging into the cargo bay.

Carey barked as my head came through, and when I solidified lying down and took my helmet off, he licked me fervently.

“Okay, boy, I’m glad to see you too.” I worried about Mae and ran to the front of the ship as I peeled off the suit.

“Did you know she was going to do that?” I asked Mary.

“Someone had to go in there and run the show.” Her voice was quiet. We zoomed in the screen on Mae and saw her struggling with the debris. She pulled free a hunk of it and the inertia pushed her away from the wall. I knew her suit would be breaking down, and I looked down to my own. It was almost melted and blackened all over. Peeling it off, I kicked it to the side, and didn’t feel much better in my sweat-soaked clothes. They were dirty enough at this point, and the smell just kept getting worse.