Kyle West: Evolution

A siren wailed, piercing my hab in Skyhome. I shot up in my bed, remembering that horrible night almost three months ago, where a similar siren in Bunker 108 had marked the end of my old life, and the beginning of the new.

I was covered in a cold sweat as the emergency red lights flashed on and off. The sirens continued to shriek like banshees.

Proximity alert! Foreign mass incoming, velocity: four kilometers per second. All inhabitants, take shelter in an airlock or escape pod. Impact in one minute: thirty seven seconds…

I rushed out of bed, throwing on my clothes. I grabbed my Beretta from my nightstand, and threw on my backpack. It was always packed and ready to go. Outside my door came panicked screams and running feet.

My first thought was going to Anna, and making sure she was safely out of her hab.

As the emergency warning blared again, I rushed out the door into the Mid Ring, running straight for Anna’s room. While every other hab door was wide open, Anna’s had remained closed. It was supposed to open automatically in an emergency.

I felt panic clench my chest.

“Anna!”

I pounded on the door. From within, I heard her scream. I could not decipher the words, but she was terrified and the goddamned door wouldn’t open.

“Hold on!”

I mashed the open button on the control panel. It didn’t respond. It was as good as dead. And Anna was too, unless she could open it from the inside.

Fifty eight seconds…

I retrieved my Beretta, pointing it at the control panel. I had no idea if this would work or not. Shooting a gun in a space station was an incredibly stupid idea, but I had nothing else. Anna was going to die, trapped in her room, if I didn’t at least try. I pointed, aiming right for the panel, and fired.

In a shower of sparks, the bullet entered the panel. Immediately, the door hissed open. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Anna ran out, falling into my arms. I held her shoulders and looked into her face.

“There’s no time! We need to get to the Inner Ring.”

Proximity alert , the warning system began again.

“There’s no way we can make it to the Inner Ring before the blast doors close,” Anna said.

“We have to try to make it.” I grabbed her hand. “Come on!”

We ran around the circle of the Mid Ring. Everyone was out of sight, now.

45 seconds…

“Shit, we’ll never make it!” Anna said.

We ran on, about halfway to Alpha Tunnel. Lines of doors rushed past us in a blur as we sprinted full speed around the curve of the Ring.

20 seconds…

At last, we reached Alpha Tunnel, turning into its long, straight path. On either side were windows that showed the spinning stars as Skyhome continued its rotation. The entrance to the Inner Ring lay at the end of the tunnel. Standing on the other side of the blast doors were Samuel and Makara, screaming at us. Distance and noise masked their words. In less than twenty seconds, the blast doors to the Inner Ring would close.

We were clearly not going to make in time.

“Come on,” I said. “The hangar’s this way!”

“What?” Anna asked. “We’ll die there!”

“We need to get to Odin . Come on!”

We ran partway down the tunnel, turning into the hatch that led to the hangar. Once inside, we gunned it for Odin , the nearer of the two ships that were docked side by side. If Anna and I could get inside the ship and close it off, we might be okay.

That is, if the incoming foreign mass didn’t hit the hangar or the ship.

I saw no other choice, though. I pulled Anna along, sprinting for the ship.

10 seconds…

We ran up Odin’s boarding ramp. Anna mashed the code into the keypad.

5 seconds…4…3…

The titanium alloy door opened with a hiss. I pushed Anna inside, following after her. As I pressed the button to shut the door, the voice sounded again.

2…1….

The ship skidded across the hangar when the foreign mass impacted Skyhome. Anna and I crashed to the floor, toppling into one another. It felt like the entire station had been flipped on its side. For a moment, I was terrified Skyhome might fall off its orbital path and get pulled down to Earth.

Then, I was floating. The Mid Ring was slowing from loss of power. The ring would soon be at a complete standstill, meaning there would be nothing to keep our feet on the ground. My back banged into the ceiling, just enough to cause some pain. The ship’s interior was lit with dim, red lightning. A stainless steel container shot past my face and crashed into a cabinet. From the cabinet spilled silverware that did a crazy zero g dance. Somehow, Anna and I had both been thrown into the ship’s kitchen.

The red lights blinked off, then on, flickering a few times before remaining steady. The room spun around us. In a dizzying revelation, I realized that I was the one spinning. Pots and pans floated before me as if on strings, doing their own crazy spins as they clanged into one another.

“Grab onto a wall,” Anna said.

I reached for the wall, stopping myself from spinning. I stayed still, willing my rising nausea to go away.

“You alright?” Anna asked.

“Not sure. I think I’m going to be sick.”

“You should be alright in a second,” she said. “The ship is anchored to the floor with struts, so it’s not going anywhere.”

That was good to know. Upon hearing this, I already felt better. I let go. Anna pulled me away from the wall.

“We need to get to the cockpit,” Anna said. “There’s a transceiver and we can see if the others made it.”

Samuel and Makara probably had, because I had seen them at the end of the Alpha Tunnel, in the Inner Ring. Unless that part took a direct hit, then they were probably okay.

I pushed myself along cabinets and walls to get to Odin’s main corridor. I turned to the cockpit, clawing along the smooth walls to propel myself. Upon entering, I pulled myself toward the captain’s chair, and strapped myself in. Outside the front window I could only see darkness. The lights in the hangar were all out, and for all we knew, all of the air was as well.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“Here,” Anna said, flicking a few buttons on the dash.

Odin hummed, powering on. I could hear the fusion drive in the ship’s back firing up.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Powering on the ship to get life support running,” Anna said.

“We need that,” I said.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

“ Hey .”

“Sorry,” Anna said. “You’re sitting in the captain’s chair, and you made an obvious statement. It had to be said.”

Anna flipped the transceiver on, finding the frequency to communicate with Skyhome.

“Skyhome, this is Anna Bliss. Alex and I are on Odin . What is your status, over?”

Anna’s voice would be spilling out of every speaker connected to the Skyhome network. Dr. Ashton or the others could be anywhere.

To my relief, the radio crackled to life.

“Anna, this is Ashton. Samuel and Makara are both with me in my office. Something hit the habs, and all of Delta Quadrant depressurized. Thankfully, everyone made it out in time. It only affected the Mid Ring. The blast doors kept the air in everywhere else. We were lucky. I guess those monthly drills were good for something.”

Those drills had been my bane. Getting up randomly at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning and sprinting for the Inner Ring was no fun, but it least it had trained me on what to do in a situation like this. Although, Anna’s hab door malfunctioning had not been part of any of the drills. Usually, the drills gave us three minutes to get to the Inner Ring. This time, we had half that, and it was for real. I’m just glad I remembered the Odin .