John Karr - Detonation Event

Devans watched Scarlet for a few moments, then told himself to get to work. He tried linking to a variety of video feeds either not yet removed by the EFF or operating in spite of them. He could no longer link to the satellites around the moon. MOS-1 and MOS-2 were less than a few thousand miles away, but he couldn’t raise them, either.

Repeatedly he tried contacting Karen Wagner with mindtexts, emails, and a VOG (voice over galaxynet) phone call. No replies.

He did the same for Trent and Gwen, Alicia and Shannon, and then Daniel Shakuri.

Nothing.

The EFF might be jamming transmissions, or had simply destroyed the communications satellites.

Whatever the case, his head had started to throb in conjunction with his heartbeat.

He sneezed a few times. He peeled off some tissues and had to blow his nose. He realized he wasn’t feeling so great himself. Had the aches pretty bad, too.

Maybe he was simply dehydrated. He engaged the shuttle’s autopilot, got up and found a case of water bottles in the supply cabinet at the rear wall of the flight deck. Ripping one out, he drank deeply until it was empty and opened another. He found a six-pack of energy drinks and started into one while rummaging around a first-aid kit for painkiller. He took three and washed those down, ate some crackers without tasting them, along with some packaged lab meat product, then eschewed the ladder and took the elevator to the first-class passenger deck.

Thirty rows of large empty seats greeted him. Strange to fly an empty passenger shuttle. A wave of guilt hit him; perhaps he should have tried to bring along some of the people hiding in the woods on the fringe of the airport grounds. But who’s to say they’d even want to come to space. And with the betrayals stacking up lately, it was possible one or more of them would have sold them out to the EFF in exchange for leniency.

A sudden lurch to the side and his hip struck the cushioned edge of passenger seat. He tensed, ready to spring forward to the flight deck, but then overcompensated and bounced off the seat on the other side of the wide aisle. He swore, righted himself. The passenger seats spun and tilted slightly. He suspected corrections from the autopilot, but when he braced himself against one of the seats it still occurred.

It wasn’t the shuttle.

Dizzy.

Space sick? Hell, he’d only been on Earth a few days. Maybe the hover collision and wreck popped something that had been started on Mars with fractured face shield and that damned forehead lump.

He gripped his forehead, thumb, and pad of his middle finger at the temples.

Head hurts… probably just too much thinking.

Except he was also nauseated.

Gripping one then another seat to help propel himself forward, he returned to the elevator and took it to the flight deck.

“Hey, kid, you awake up here?”

Scarlet didn’t reply, and all he could see of her in the big seat was the back of her head resting on a folded arm.

He wavered a bit and used the navigator’s chair and desk to reach the pilot’s chair. Seated, he felt a little better. Hell, he’d had about eight months of hangover headache that had been worse than this.

But those he could attribute to booze, followed by too much sparring in the gym.

Stow it and fly the bird .

Devans lowered the shields over the nose of the shuttle, so they had a panoramic view of the stars and the growing moon. The sun was behind them, illuminating the field of vision ahead and reflecting silver from the moon. Also ahead came sparkles that shouldn’t be there. Debris became visible, floating out in space. Small at first, and then larger sections of acrylic reflected the sun among sections of warped graphene and steel.

Devans swallowed.

The debris field grew in number and size. He raised the shields, hearing the pings as they approached the moon.

As they entered the moon’s Hills Sphere at 37,200 miles, he spun the shuttle and fired doses of propellant to slow their momentum. Close now, he cut the propellant feed of the nuclear engine and basically let it idle. He initiated the ion drives.

They cruised slowly over the moonscape, little more than a hundred feet above the surface.

Cameras showed the horror around them. He lowered the nose shields.

All that remained of the titanium-threaded protective domes were jagged sections at ground level. Scorch marks defaced the ruins that once held a vibrant space community.

Bodies, and more bodies.

They were on the rubble, half buried in the rubble, strewn beyond the footprint of the domes, scattered among the debris and overturned moonbuggies. The once-manicured silvery surface was splotched in red. Most of the dead did not have space suits.

All ages.

Devans’ good brow arched, then furrowed along with the scar-split one. A cold fire ignited within him.

Scarlet stirred. For a while she watched without speaking, though a tear from ducts that had all but run dry appeared. “Is anyone alive here, Devans?”

His gaze shifted from the bodies to the computer sweeps and back again. “Computer’s not picking up any ID chips, and on top of that I’m not getting heat signatures, even from the bad guys. The EFF were very thorough. They either died destroying Lunar One and their victims, or they left.”

“Where?”

“The orbiters, from what Karen had said.”

“Who?” Scarlet asked.

“A friend. We can’t raise the orbiters through the standard communication links and satellites. But both appear on our radar. So at least they still exist, for now.”

Scarlet shrugged her narrow shoulders. Her eyes were lidded. She appeared very tired. “We used to sit around the big display and watch the ships fly in and out of the orbiter ports. And when we zoomed out, the lights of the orbiter made it look like one of the stars. We watched them as they worked on the third orbiter.”

Devans eyed the radar. “MOS-3 was under construction. Now even that is half destroyed. My guess is the EFF atomized enough of it to kill it as a possibility for the future.”

Devans watched the radar.

Two orbiters, one skeletal orbiter, one moon, one planet.

“MOS-2 is closest,” he mused, pulling the control stick toward himself and raising the nose of the shuttle. “But probably unfriendly. I know there are friends on MOS-1.”

He ran some code to check the fusion build of the rear engine. All set. His hand hovered over and then rested on the throttle.

Was this the way to go? Was it right or wrong?

Who the hell knew. But it was a decision nevertheless.

Devans throttled up. The shuttle hurtled toward space. The bodies and ruins of Lunar One shrank on the monitors.

“How do you feel about heading for MOS-1?”

Scarlet shrugged. “Better than here.”

“Yes. Ready?”

A million stars reflected in her glassy eyes. “MOS-2 looks closer. Do they have guns to fire on us?”

Devans looked up from the holo to the transparent panes around the bridge. The stars were so bright, now that they were away from the reflection off the lunar surface and the sun was behind them. “Not guns in the true military sense, but the spatz asteroid busters could be used as large-scale weapons.”

“My brother always ran around with a plastic rifle, atomizing aliens.” She yawned, crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Think I have the microbe, Devans. Six kids in my class have died already from it.”

Devans noticed again how tired she looked. “Nah, it’s afraid of you.”

“Sure it is.”

“Take a nap. It’ll be a little while.”

“Would you keep talking? So I don’t think so much?”

“Sure… so space atomizers. They need low atmospheric pressure like on Mars or the vacuum of space for the atoms to vibrate high enough to disperse.” He gave a bunch of other secondhand facts to her.