John Karr - Detonation Event

The captain’s order to abandon ship came over the speakers.

Realizing the situation was untenable, Ivanka ran for an emergency escape pod as copilot Ry Devans ran toward her.

Cracks tore through the fusion reactor, blasting plasma and light throughout the engine room. Equipment ignited and melted. Smoke filled the shuttle, illuminated by red flashing lights.

In the bridge and passenger bays, survivors scrambled for the escape pods as electronics blew. Water pipes burst and spewed steam. The tiled floor caught fire and the hull softened. They fought disorientation and velocity as the shuddering craft hurtled into space along with the attached ram rocket. Two escape pods blasted away, then a third.

The last of the onboard video footage showed the disintegration of the ship’s interior.

Outside, the ram fought for direction against the shuttle’s fusion engine. It did not fully succeed, but together they described a death spiral through space. The shuttle hull stripped away shield by shield, section by section, then the shuttle’s heat overwhelmed the protective shields over the ram’s rocket engines. A final blinding flash destroyed both vessels.

That MOS-1 escaped relatively unscathed was miraculous, and a credit to preventive engineering.

Survivors of PS-4 had been deposed to tell what they knew of the events.

Among them were: copilot Ry Devans, navigator Lassiter Nuro, and communications officer Bradley Fresnopolis, who now had a robotic leg from the ordeal.

SCONA refused to label it sabotage. Insufficient data, the publicist explained.

Insufficient explanation, Devans returned. A child could see the timing was too much for coincidence. It was sabotage. It was terrorism.

SCONA: No proof, and no one or group took credit. Therefore, accident.

Devans recalled the cuts and burns on Ivanka’s body as he pulled her into the escape pod with him. She died in his arms before they could make it back to MOS-1. He and Kirsten Ivanka had been… he didn’t know what to call it. They had made plans for the future.

Now he blinked in an effort to clear the images and the faces of the crewmembers who had died that day.

He wondered if it would be better to just go ahead and resurface the cosmetic damage. Two other meridians had suffered less serious incidents and had resurfaced their bays. It was not his call, but Devans concluded once again they should remain as both reminder and memorial. The MOS-1 facilities manager replaced and reinforced the true structural damage and left the cosmetic outer layer. The chief officer agreed that leaving the scars served a purpose: part warning, part memorial.

Devans cleared his throat. “ PS-9 navigating exit.” The words came slowly. “ PS-4 … a very bad day. Everyone was on edge for months afterward. Earth returns tripled.”

The officers worked in silence. Bay Control fell quiet as well.

Devans stared at the stars beyond the bay.

A new voice then, low and conspiring but unable to cloak its youth, just behind the two pilots. “Ever notice how the MOS, for all its size and capability as a space habitat-slash-spaceship, is like a blob-organism and we’re the waste product on its way out the chute?”

Devans blinked and reached to mute the comm link. “They probably heard that, Goldilocks.”

“Since when does that bother you, Cap?” the new arrival said.

“Bitching from me is one thing. Bizarre uttering by unauthorized personnel in the flight pit is another.”

“I’m authorized, else I wouldn’t be here.”

“Not at flight crew level you’re not, kid. Just because you play Mayan Ball at G-force one point five with Helena and the others in that bay tower doesn’t mean their director won’t notice. Rand’s auditors are always looking for ways to needle my ass.”

“Well, you hit ’em with that ‘mindless skin-bags’ thing,” the newcomer said.

Nuro cut in before Devans could respond. “You might be waste product, Trent Wagner. But the rest of the PS-9 crew are little more functional than that.” He engaged holographic switches and checked redundancies. “Besides, why is a junior astrophysicist speaking biology? You just get off a link with your sister?”

“Quit tryin’ to exchange fluids with my sister, Nuro. Not cool!”

A crack of a smile from the bald man.

“Gwen could be your daughter , man!” Trent Wagner added.

“She’s your elder sister, remember?”

“Three years isn’t enough to justify. That’s a daddy complex.”

“Younger cousin, maybe. Now I don’t think we’re related, but you can’t say for sure until the helix comp, right?” Nuro chuckled.

“Save the DNA comparison. Gwen doesn’t need to see half-century guys.”

“I’m only thirty-two, kid.”

“Bullcrap!”

Nuro shrugged his round shoulders. “Hard life. Besides, you her gatekeeper? I don’t recall her saying so during dinner and drinks in the Luminosity Café.”

“Ugh. Just spatz me in half next time, K? Besides, Gwen’s already headed back to MOS-2. Her week of lab work with our biogenesis team was completed yesterday. Not sure how you got her number from the one time she met me at the bay.”

“She found me.”

“How?”

“I don’t question Fate.”

“Uh-huh. I think Fate says to stick to your own generation, pops.”

Devans let the banter dull the memories. He summoned a laugh. “Kid, Nuro could crush you like a bug. And if you don’t start checking with me prior to flight ops, I’ll have him bounce you out of the flight pit, understood?”

“Yeah, yeah. You two lurched into bay prep like you passed out under a booze tap last dark,” Trent Wagner said.

“You know I don’t drink,” Nuro said, without taking his gaze from his readouts. “Unless it’s with a lovely lady.”

“And when I tell Gwen how often that happens she’ll want to rethink her new daddy,” Wagner said.

Nuro laughed. “Nobody signed an exclusivity contract.”

“As for me,” Devans said, “I can handle my poisons.”

Nuro and Wagner stared pointedly at Devans. Behind them, Navigator Burroughs cleared her throat.

“Nothing wrong with a little exuberance on certain special occasions,” Devans added.

Trent placed two lidded coffee containers in the holders on the narrow center console between the pilots. “Point is, somebody’s gotta keep you flight jocks mentally locked in.”

“We’re too old for a babysitter, kid. So this is how you slithered past the guardian of the gate?” Devans swiveled and frowned at Burroughs, whose station was closest to the bridge door.

“What? He had Earth coffee,” Shannon Burroughs said, her eyes widening at the brim of the cup. She wiggled in the chair. “I mean, don’t you smell it?”

“I smell something all right. Speaking of age discrepancies, he’s too young for you, SB. You know that, right?” Devans said, turning back to his holographic displays as she made a face at him. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Copilot Nuro?”

The copilot’s fingers jabbed at a keyboard made of projected light beams. He gazed at first one, then the other subject before returning to his keyboard. “Kid barely shaves, so yep.”

The intruder raised his brows. “Hey, I shave… every couple days. And come on, you have to recognize my waste-exit analogy as an accurate one.”

Devans raised the coffee cup from his side of the stand. He took a sniff and a sip and arched his good brow. “Maybe.”

Grinning, Trent Wagner leaped down the broad stairs to the angular nose of the spacecraft. There, a long acrylic table stood bracketed in a parallel position to the hull walls of the same material, allowing a one-hundred-eighty-degree view of space. Each bolted chair had access to holo projection and physical monitors, with ample space down the middle. Devans maintained the greatest use for the table was eating meals with an incredible view.