Dark Alignment

by David Haskell

  No distractions. ‘You’ve got it, Ed. Just a little more…closer…closer…’

  There! The sights were lined up as perfect a dark alignment as they were going to get. He swung at the panel with a triumphant Oooffh!, locking the sequence in. Now he just had to meet up with—

  Kashani! His sharp intake of breath caught hard in his throat his throat as he watched his partner drift. Not again!

  * * *

  “Kashani, command. Talk to me. What happened?”

  There were a tense few seconds of silence. The crew inside once more watched helpless, unable to aid their comrade out there in the cold vacuum.

  This time, though, the anxiety was short-lived. ‘It’s okay,’ Kashani reported, ‘I lost my footing, but I’m okay.’

  As if to emphasize the good news, he initiated a short burst to spin back around, and waved. ‘I guess I got carried away locking in. Sorry.’ He adjusted himself to line up with Evans, then pointed to the deck. ‘We’re done up here.’

  ‘Heading down now,’ Evans added, his voice a mix of relief and annoyance.

  Shane knew how he felt. There was no doubt Kashani hadn’t done it intentionally, but it still felt like a shaker of salt in their still-fresh wounds. “Glad you’re okay, Kashani. Get yourselves down under now.”

  Ruka Saito continued feeding fresh information to Andrea Price, keeping her updated. Now that the work was completed on the upper struts, she would need to work all the faster. There wouldn’t be time enough to line up everything as perfectly as Evans and Kashani had done up top, not with her being short a man, but Saito was giving her as much help as he could, and she was as ready as she could be.

  Checking the outer feed through Jo’s helmet camera now, the lens sweeping up along the struts, Shane saw a flash of something disturbing. He radioed a quick message to Jo. “Specialist Osbourne, hold up a second.”

  The camera stopped mid-pan.

  “Alright, sweep back the way you came, please?”

  The camera silently obeyed his directive.

  “Little slower, Jo.”

  The camera slowed, almost to a crawl. Then it paused without Shane needed to ask. She was seeing the same, gut wrenching thing he’d just caught. A stress fracture, right at the base of the strut.

  “Alright, Jo,” he said, his heart sinking, “I’m gonna need you to stay outside a little while longer.”

  The display gave a nearly-imperceptible, anthropomorphic nod, still trained on the disaster-waiting-to-happen, on a segment they should’ve been done with already.

  68.

  Joseph Mansfield heard the all-hands, and knew they were near the end. The countdown that began pulsing through the spacecraft hit him harder than expected—like a death-knell.

  For a minute he thought about doing something to pass the time. Write to his sons, maybe. They hadn’t spoken in a long time. Not even the anomaly had prompted either to pick up the phone, but he couldn’t blame them. He was no better. They were strangers now. He looked around for something to write with, then he remembered he was in orbit, far from ordinary stationary, and unlikely to have any opportunity to deliver a letter even if he managed to scratch one out. He could’ve used the computer, but that didn’t have the same ring to it. Besides, he didn’t want to interfere with ship’s operations. They needed all the processing power they could get up there.

  He wished he’d given himself a job to do. Something he could do from down here that would make a difference. The current ‘don’t open hatch’ assignment didn’t feel like much, vital though that might be. He stared at the walls a while, watching them until they began closing in on him and he had to squeeze his eyes shut. He shook off the claustrophobia and steadied himself, opening his eyes but not focusing on anything in particular. No sense spending your last hours in a panic, isn’t that right Joe?

  Great. Now he was talking to himself. Just great.

  He strained to listen for more activity above, but they’d gone quiet. The uncomfortable sense of abandonment had been with him since he first got trapped, but it was growing now. He knew they were still with him, just a few short yards away, but it might as well have been from the ship to the earth for all the good it did. He knew they all thought he’d lost consciousness by now, and he very nearly had. He decided it best to allow that assumption to continue. Better that way. Better for them, and for the mission. He closed his eyes, allowing the darkness to settle around him.

  * * *

  The evac team worked at a fevered pitch now. In minutes, the four corners were properly lined up and lit green. The solution was fully connected, synced up and operational, and now all that was left was to blast the whole thing into place. Until now the rush had been for the sake of the ones back home, those suffering and dying every minute the anomaly continued its assault. The crew of Space Force One had proceeded with due haste and a strong sense of urgency, but now the race against the clock hit even closer to home.

  As soon as evac was aboard, Shane would execute the final spin, and from there on out every second wasted could mean death. As Shane watched the spacewalkers finish their part and prepare to come inside, he couldn’t help wondering if any mission in history had come down to every movement of the clock, with consequences lurking behind every tick.

  “Eckert, Command. You think you could spare a few minutes, doctor? I’ve got some numbers I could use your input on.”

  ‘Will do, commander.’

  “Soon as you can, alright?”

  * * *

  Dean wasn’t sure why Shane had requested his presence, but it was for the best anyway. There was little he could do in the command center now that deployment had commenced. If he was wrong in his assumptions, nothing he could do would change that. Might as well set to work on some other matter, and getting home seemed like just the ticket.

  Worming his way up the cylindrical gantryway to the cockpit, he was shocked at the amount of damage their oversized tin-can had taken. Bulkheads warped and bent at every angle, equipment flying every which way. Pressurized gas shooting from two busted pipes, making a frightening hissing racket as it flooded the compartment with God knows what.

  Away from the tension and constant back and forth of the control room, he felt a strong urge to slow down and decompress. He grabbed hold of the ladder-rungs, breaking his upward momentum and giving himself a chance to gather his thoughts. Whatever Shane wanted of him, it wasn’t likely to be fun and games. Not that any of this had been remotely joyful. An ordeal, every minute of it, and thinking back to his childhood dreams of outer space he realized how regrettable the actual experience had been. Not that any of them had come along for a joy ride, of course. This was life-and-death all the way.

  Since wresting control of the mission away from the commander, Dean had felt the burden of what it means to command, more sharply than he ever thought possible. Calm as he’d been on the outside, bucking the commander and the rest of his shipmates hadn’t been easy. Just the fact that inaction meant certain death kept him from caving in when their anger bubbled up—that and the fact that he’d always been able to get lost in numbers at the exclusion of real world concerns. Now that it was over, though, he began to feel sick over it, and he squeezed the ladder tighter to ensure that he wouldn’t start shaking. He blew out a breath and pushed down on the rung to resume his upward drift, his foot knocking into the lower rung and sending him into a slight spin. He arrived at the flight deck at an angle, and reached out to push off the ceiling and right himself, then angled forward and reached for the seat.

  * * *

  Dean knew complaints weren’t the reason for his sudden presence up here, but Shane spent the first few minutes railing against Jo’s irresponsible, crazy behavior. Dean got the sense that he wasn’t upset so much as stalling for time. Shane would’ve done the same in her shoes, so he couldn’t be that upset about Jo’s actions. Or perhaps he wished he was the one out there, instead of her. Afraid to lose another one, perhaps.

  “Not like I
wouldn’t have done the same, though, I suppose,” Shane said, reading Dean’s mind.

  “What’s really bothering you?” Dean asked, going for broke.

  Shane smiled at the bold question. “Damn, you really have come out of your shell these past few weeks.”

  “More like days, really,” Dean corrected him.

  “Jesus, yeah…” Shane said, whistling. “Don’t that just beat all?”

  Dean didn’t reply. Judging from Shane’s sudden shift in expression, the commander had something more to say. Something bad. He braced for it.

  Shane gave it to him, and in no uncertain terms. “I don’t think we’re getting home from this.”

  Dean understood the need to confide. And he was surprised at how calm he was in hearing such a dire prediction. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for someone to actually come out and say it.

  “We accomplished the mission, that’s the main thing,” Dean said. Not words of comfort, but just a statement of fact. They’d done what they had to.

  “Yeah. That we did. Thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to all of us,” Dean corrected his friend, “but that’s not why you called me up here, is it?”

  Shane smiled again, looking like he wanted to reach out and tousle Dean’s hair. Dean shrank back instinctively, prompting a laugh from the pilot. Then his expression turned serious again. “I called you because I have a crazy idea that’s almost sure to get us killed. I want you to tell me if my assumption is right or wrong about the ‘almost’ part.”

  “You planning on killing the beast?” Dean was half-joking, but the look on Shane’s face told him he was on the right track.

  “Thought never crossed my mind,” he said, his regret-tinged delivery indicating frustration over their current, helpless state. “Can’t be done. I am wondering what happens if we poke it with a stick, though.”

  69.

  Ruka Saito drifted on the opposite side of the decompression chamber with a smile. He gave his shipmates a nod as soon as they were able to remove their top gear, and then helped them through the inner hatchway as they re-entered. First Kashani, then Price, taking his hand and allowing him to pull them to safety.

  “Evans doing okay out there?” Ruka asked.

  “Well as can be expected,” Andrea Price said, “not a man alive wouldn’t be shaken up after what he’s been through, though.”

  Unsure of what to say, Ruka stayed quiet. Bad as it’d been to watch the Denisova tragedy from inside, being right out there with her was beyond comprehension.

  * * *

  “Instead of rotating the last ninety and pulling out,” Shane explained to Dean, “we flip it and gun it. Jam superheated rocket fuel down it’s throat and see if it doesn’t try and slap us away.”

  The notion of attacking the anomaly was so absurd, Dean would’ve laughed out loud if he’d not been on thin ice already. On second consideration, though, he realized that he’d never given it much thought. What would a blast of that magnitude do to it’s internal chemistry? They’d never attempted anything like that back home, the main thrust of the defense being thwart and divert. But out here, with the long tail of it extending out who knows how far, what would it do if it felt in danger of being sliced in half? To put it in more concrete terms, what would the gravitational and transdimensional reaction be? Would it react like Shane believed? Would it react at all?

  “I could run some simulations,” Dean speculated, “maybe even experiment on the thing.” Beginning to allow the idea of fighting back to take hold, Dean found himself getting excited. Back in his element, where everything was detached and clinical and there was a puzzle to outthink, was a tempting thought.

  “We don’t have time,” Shane said, reminding Dean of the time constraints, “and besides, Evans and Osbourne are out there till it’s time to go. We can’t go screwing around with simulations with our people out blowin’ in the wind.”

  It was true, and Dean felt his face redden as he realized the critical elements he’d missed. The human factor, always present out here, always a major consideration. In his haste to run scenarios, he’d forgotten that their situation was so much more complicated than that of a lab—vulnerable to wasted time and needless analysis.

  “It’s going to be tight,” Dean acknowledged, “getting them back inside once you start the turn. What if we could increase their chances, and poke it with that stick of yours while we’re at it?”

  “I’m all ears,” Shane said, resting a hand over his seat and turning to face the scientist head-on.

  * * *

  ‘Wish you hadn’t gone and done this, Jo.’ Evans bore a scolding countenance, while at the same time unable to hide his wide grin and expression of happiness at finding a shipmate by his side.

  “Well, it’s done,” Jo said, hearing her own voice echo inside the helmet. “So now let’s finish this up and get the hell home. What’d you say, Ed? Last one in buys the beer?”

  ‘Sounds like a fair bet, specialist. Soon as I flip the switch I’ll race ya.’

  “Hold up just a second on that, Ed. I want to hear what our hotdog commander and his sidekick scientist have to say. They’re having a little tête–à–tête, but it shouldn’t take long.”

  ‘Well, in that case, what say we enjoy the view a while?’

  They turned their backs on both ship and anomaly, achieving just the right angle to keep it all behind them with just the stars and the Earth to drink in as far as they could see.

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Jo said, low enough to allow her drifting shipmate to catch on, but not loud enough for the rest of the crew to hear. This moment was just for the two of them.

  They drifted that way for several minutes. In the calm before the final storm, it was easy to forget the aftermath already experienced. The one far away back home, and the one immediately at their backs, which threatened to swallow them up. Somehow they’d found the sweet spot, the one place where the anomaly had failed to wreak its havoc, at least for the moment.

  Sorry to break up the party out there.

  It was Shane, ruining the one pleasant moment any of the crew had enjoyed since blast-off. But they couldn’t begrudge their commander the courtesy of a reply, not with the rest of them on pins and needles waiting for the final word.

  Jo forced herself to leave the sigh out of her voice when she said, “Command, Osbourne. You two figured out the secrets of the universe yet?”

  * * *

  Dean’s proposal amounted to a collective suicide-vest, one they could either wear all the way home, or trigger at the optimal moment for maximum impact. Having the entire crew in on the madness seemed fitting, since they had to debate and decide between two near-equal paths to destruction. One slightly safer in the short term, but only the very short term—long before they reached mid-term they’d all asphyxiate. The other proposed a fast path to safety, if they could survive the next few minutes.

  “Alright, people, you’ve heard the proposal,” Shane announced after Dean had finished his pitch, “It’s even more of a longshot than what we had before, but at least we might do some damage on the way out. If we’re real lucky we’ll get halfway home before the thing even knows what hit it. The mission’s accomplished either way, so I figure it’s fair enough to decide this one by committee. Do we stick with the original plan, or go down swinging? Dean, it’s your baby, so you first.”

  His voice sounding particularly bold to Shane’s ear, the doctor delivered his opinion to the crew; ‘If we’re going down anyway, I vote to attack.’