by K E Lanning
Lowry sipped her coffee, which was now at a drinkable temperature. She leaned back in her chair, watching the surface of the continent drift past as the space station soared overhead, and chewed the stale granola bar. The caffeine was kicking in when a flash of light came from her monitor, blinding her momentarily. She jerked upright, staring at her screen—perhaps a piece of space trash had bounced off the space station? A number, 1998, flashed onto her screen and then vanished. What the hell?
Bob said, “Lowry, I was able to capture a portion of the file before it disappeared.”
She shoved her coffee mug onto the table. “Fantastic, Bob, but what was it, and where did it come from?”
“It was an OPALS laser message from Antarctica, and I have the ground coordinates, Lowry.”
A map popped onto the screen, and a stickpin highlighted the location—an uninhabited area west of the main station in Antarctica. It crossed her mind that Uncle Nick might be sending her a message just in fun, but it seemed too far for him to bother trekking that distance for a lark.
Lowry sat back in her chair, rubbing her chin. “Bob, what’s an OPALS message?”
“OPALS is an acronym for Optical Payload for Lasercom Science, or light-based communication via lasers. They’re much faster than radio waves.”
“Can you tell what the message says, at least the portion you captured?”
“Unfortunately, it’s encrypted, and I don’t have the software to—”
Bob’s voice was cut off mid-sentence as the computer screen went blank. The lights overhead died. Lowry sucked in her breath. All the power in her office was out. A faraway warning siren began howling, and the emergency lights came on, glowing dimly. There was a cold pit in her stomach as she spun her chair around, listening in the eerie silence, but the only sound was her heart thumping. Even the ever-present whisper of air through the vents was curtailed.
She felt around for her phone and then stood up on shaky legs. Panicked voices of her coworkers filled the room. The power outage must be widespread. Everyone knew by the safety films that if the air supply went out, they only had about a day’s worth of oxygen before the levels became critical.
Lowry came out of her cubby to join the restless group of her colleagues, faces pale with worry. “Who do we eat first?”
Bessie, one of the technicians whispered, “Maybe it’s just a drill?”
“I’m going to the next sector to see if it’s everywhere or just here.”
“We’re supposed to stay here, Lowry.”
“Screw it. I’m going.”
The light from her phone wavered as she picked her way through the cubbies toward the connecting airlock door. The finger pad didn’t function without power, so Lowry tried the emergency handle, but with the loss of power, the airlock had automatically sealed itself shut. Peering through the glass, she could see people milling around like cattle under the eerie emergency lights. Turning away from the chilling scene, she leaned back on the door, breathing deeply to calm her nerves.
Lowry stumbled back through the oppressive silence of the lifeless space station. She shrugged as she approached the huddle of coworkers. “Well, looks like the outage is everywhere.”
“We’re all going to die!” screeched Nam, one of the engineers. “I knew I shouldn’t have come up here.”
“That’s not helpful. We need to calm down and think.” Lowry rubbed her chin. “Does anyone know if there’s any emergency oxygen? I thought each sector had spacesuits.”
They spread out, searching for the suits. The workspace echoed with the sound of doors banging open and closed. It had been a scant fifteen minutes, but Lowry could already taste the staleness in the air.
“Over here—the suits are over here!” yelled Sevy, waving his arm.
They gathered in front of the open storage closet, and Sevy pointed to three spacesuits hanging in the back of the closet. Unfortunately, there were four people.
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe?” said Sevy.
A distant hammering noise reverberated through the room.
“What the hell is that?” Lowry asked.
“Maybe it’s a rescue?” Nam said, smiling.
Together, they crept toward the sound. The banging got louder as they approached the door to the main hallway.
Sevy’s face went pale as he gazed down at his phone. “I was able to connect with the video feed in the hall—look.”
Bessie gasped, and the blood drained from her face. Four men and a woman were at the entrance of their sector, beating the door with a metal battering ram, their faces fixed and determined.
The booming echoed in Lowry’s chest, matching the thunder of her heartbeat. She mumbled, “This doesn’t look good . . .”
Like a drum, the pounding reverberated through the room, getting louder as the door began to fail. Dents appeared on the inside of the door, and quivering in fear, Bessie sank down and crawled under a table.
Lowry glanced at Sevy. “Why would they be trying to get into our sector?”
Sevy snapped his fingers. “My god, they’re after the spacesuits.” He raced back to the closet.
Lowry turned and sprinted after him. The suits may be their only chance of survival—if they had any chance at all.
The pummeling thrust the lock askew, and the door crumpled away from the frame. The metal door groaned as they popped it open with a crowbar. The five dashed into the room, brandishing pieces of pipe and metal.
A large man led the group, swinging a metal pipe over his head. With a scowl on his face, he shouted, “Get out of our way!”
Nam froze in place, and they bowled him over, shoving him to the ground. One man screamed for him to stay on the floor, threatening him with a jagged piece of steel. The other four ran after Sevy and Lowry.
Sevy reached the closet and yanked the spacesuits out, throwing one of them at Lowry. With the other two suits, he bolted toward an airtight safe room that could be locked from the inside. “Come on!” he yelled over his shoulder.
Lowry threw the suit over her arm and glanced back at the swiftly approaching invaders. The hair on the back of her neck bristled as she dashed after Sevy. The safe room was close, but the pounding of footsteps was closer.
The leader wheezed to the smaller man, “You get the woman. I’ll get the guy.”
The smaller man leapt toward Lowry and caught the trailing leg of the spacesuit. With a heave, he yanked it backwards, spinning her to the floor. Lowry gasped as she hit the ground but clutched the helmet with all her strength. She twisted over, wrapping her body around the suit, and kicked out at the man grasping the legs of the suit.
The woman of the group joined the attack, her face livid with fury, and like someone demon-possessed, she jumped at Lowry’s head. Screeching, she pulled Lowry’s hair and scratched at her eyes, enabling the man to wrench the suit away.
Lowry shoved the woman back. “Get off, bitch.”
Breathing hard, they faced each other.
The other man tossed the woman a crowbar. “Watch her. I’m going to help Vlad.”
With a glare, the woman waved the crowbar at Lowry.
The larger man caught Sevy at the safe room door, grabbing him from behind, and then slammed him to the ground like he was wrestling a steer.
“Give me the suits, asshole!” he screamed.
He jerked one of the space suits out of Sevy’s arms, drawing Sevy’s face up toward himself. The big man coiled his arm back and struck Sevy in the jaw, knocking him back onto the floor. Sevy clutched the remaining suit, but the smaller man leapt onto Sevy’s chest, punching his face until Sevy released the last spacesuit.
The large man dragged the final spacesuit away. “Good job. We got all of them.”
The woman laughed, and then she bared her teeth and stomped Lowry’s leg. Lowry grunted in pain, but with a swift upward punch, she caught the woman in the gut.
The woman groaned and bent over, clutching her stomach. Then she brandished the crowbar, yelling, “Bit
ch!” and sprang on Lowry, thrusting the flat side of the metal tool at her neck.
The leader shouted to the woman, “Get back over here. We’ve got all the suits.”
Winded and breathing hard, Lowry sat up as they lugged the suits back to the rest of their group.
The large man strapped Sevy’s hands with duct tape. “This is survival, buddy. No hard feelings,” he mumbled. Then he yelled to Lowry, who had gotten to one knee, “Just stay there, lady, or we’ll strap you too.”
She glowered at them as they pulled on the suits. “Aren’t you still missing a suit?” she yelled.
“I think you’re right. I guess we’ll have more fun in the next sector.” The leader smirked as the armed troupe moved into the hallway through the mangled door.
Lowry touched her face, stinging from the scratches. She stood up and stumbled over to Sevy. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better,” he murmured through swollen lips. “Can you find some scissors or a utility knife?”
“Sure.” Lowry went back to the utility closet, found a pair of scissors, and cut the duct tape from Sevy’s wrists.
Sevy sat up, rubbing his wrists where the tape had been. His hands shook as he vacantly gazed at Lowry. “Believe it or not, I’ve never been in a fight before.”
Exhausted, Lowry sat down and draped her arm around him. “The World Wrestling Entertainment recruited out of our school, so I got more practice than I wanted.”
He turned and examined her face. “Looks like you got scratched up.”
“Yeah, she was quite a hellcat.”
Sevy exhaled deeply and stared intently at the floor. Lowry furrowed her brow, trying to discern if he was feeling okay. Without looking at her, he reached out and pulled her to him. A fleeting smile crossed his face as he gently kissed the scratches on her face. “Maybe that will make them feel better.” He turned away but kept his arm around her shoulders. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, and since we might die soon, this might be my last chance.”
Lowry grinned and patted him on the back. She shifted her position and felt a slight difference in her weight. Her heart sank. The thrusters that maintained the station’s rotation must be off as well. They were slowing down. Sevy was right; if the space station was dead, so were they.
Bessie and Nam crawled to them, and they sat in a gloomy circle. Lowry looked from face to face, all etched in fear, as they bobbed in the lessening gravity. A humming sound drifted near, and they looked up to see a drone recording them.
Nam took off his shoe and chunked it at the drone, which smoothly avoided the projectile. “Get outta here!” He shook his fist at the drone. “It’s like some kind of vulture hovering over us, waiting for us to die.”
Sevy glanced up vacantly and then murmured, “It’s documenting the emergency; they are programmed to record every aspect in order to prevent the next one.”
Lowry stared at the drone. Odd that watching it calmly record the debacle on the space station brought home the realization of their dire situation. She bit her lip, clasping her hand over her mouth, endeavoring to keep herself from breaking down into uncontrollable sobs. I’m not going to die crying like a child. She had to pull herself together.
Sighing, she staggered up. “I’m going to see if I can find a walkie-talkie in the utility closet; maybe I can find out what is happening in the rest of the station.”
In the diminishing gravity, she walked with an exaggerated stride over to the closet. The drone followed her, videoing as she searched through the drawers.
Lowry whispered, “Yes!” She clicked on the near-range communicator, but it was dead. She turned it over, opening the back. Shit, no batteries. Some jerk must have stolen them.
Lowry chunked the radio at the drone, but it neatly dodged her assault. She wandered back to the group. “No luck.”
The drone continued its careful surveillance around the room, documenting the death of the ISS, and then disappeared out of the damaged door.
Nam sneered. “Bye, asshole.”
Lowry gestured toward her cubicle. “I’m going to see if I can get a message to my family.” She sat down at her desk and exhaled to steady her fingers as she texted a terse message to her father and uncle: The power is out on the ISS, and we don’t know what is happening, but it doesn’t look good for us. Love you very much—hugs and kisses. She had to try even though she didn’t know if the message would get to them.
Lowry checked to see how much time had passed. It had been about an hour since the power outage had begun. She moved to the window, staring out at the black abyss. It was strange to see the space station dead; what had been alive with lights and sound minutes earlier was now just a hunk of junk rotating around the Earth. Unfortunately, this space trash still had people inside.
Lowry drifted off her feet and grabbed the bar around the window to keep herself in place. She wished upon the first star that she would not die tonight, caressing the glass in front of the Earth’s image floating over the motionless ring of the station. She swallowed hard. Diving headlong into its atmosphere was not on her bucket list.
The muffled talking of her colleagues sitting in the circle hushed when the lights came on. Like a miracle, Lowry felt air on the back of her neck, and she listened with bated breath to the computers as they all booted up—the once tiresome sounds of the space station now heralding their salvation. Smiling with relief, she breathed in the fresh air now pumping through the ducts.
Laughing, she pushed herself towards her coworkers. “The power’s back on!”
Floating with legs crisscrossed, Bessie clung to the leg of a chair, crying uncontrollably.
Nam and Sevy jumped up, propelling themselves to the ceiling in the near-zero gravity.
“Yippee! We’re going to live!” yelled Nam. He high-fived Sevy hovering near him, and the impact of their hands spun them away from each other.
The speaker overhead crackled, and a voice boomed out, “Please keep calm; power has been restored. Sorry about the outage, but please return to your offices or quarters—you will be given more information later as we research the problem.”
Lowry drifted over and placed her hand on Bessie’s shoulder. “Bessie, are you okay?”
Bessie looked up, nodding like a child.
With the spinning of the space station restored, the artificial gravity force began to pull them down to the floor. Lowry put her hand out. “Come on, Bessie; it’s over. Let’s go back to our offices.” She put her arm around her, guiding her back to her cubicle, and then brought her some water.
Sevy bounded over to Lowry and whispered, “I’m still glad I got to kiss you.”
Lowry laughed and grabbed his arm, whirling him around so she could inspect his face. “You need to go to the clinic and get examined—you’ll have some nice bruises for show-and-tell.”
He nodded and started walking past her, but he stopped as she asked, “What do you think will happen to that crazy group who broke down the door and stole the spacesuits?”
Sevy grimaced. “A one-way ticket home, at the least.” He pointed at one of the cameras. “Fixed cameras are everywhere in the work areas, all on battery backup, so their ‘performance’ will have been recorded to a T.”
Lowry returned to her office and sat down in the reassuring gravity as it returned to normal. She looked at the rebooted screen, remembering the strange transmission just before the outage had occurred. She logged in, and the blue screen glowed.
Bob said, “Lowry, that was strange.”
She laughed at the relief of hearing Bob’s voice. “Bob, you were able to capture a part of the file?”
“Yes, Lowry. Let me find it.” In a second, he said, “I have it, but it’s an encrypted file, and I don’t have the capability to break the code. The only lines I can read are the first two lines in the file: the first says ‘1998,’ and the second line indicates an executable file for the main power computer.”
A chill came over her—this seemed more than
just a coincidence. Her heart beat in staccato. There are more ways to skin this cat.
Lowry called Zoë. Her face appeared in the screen, etched in an odd mix of fear and relief.
Zoë asked, “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. Zoë, are you up and running?”
“Yes, though scared enough to pee in my pants.”
Lowry raised her eyebrows. “That would be awkward in zero gravity.”
“Thanks for that visual, Lowry.”
Lowry took a deep breath. “Zoë, I have a favor to ask—can I send you a file, at least a part of a file? Just before the power outage, I received a weird file via a laser transmitted from the ground as we passed over Antarctica. Bob was able to copy the first portion of the file before the original wiped itself off my computer, but it’s encrypted, and we can’t read it. I’m hoping you have a better program to break the code than the piece-of-shit computer I have—oh, sorry, Bob.”
“No offense, Lowry; my encryption-breaking software is as you describe—a piece-of-shit.”
Shrugging, she whispered to Zoë, “You have to keep this hush-hush for now until we figure this out.”
“Uh, sure, Lowry. Send it to me, and I’ll call you when I break it.”
An hour later, Zoë called her. Lowry could hear the tension in her voice. “Lowry, you’d better come down here.”
Lowry’s heart thumped as she walked to Zoë’s office. The grim look on Zoë’s face scared her. She whispered hoarsely, “What is it? Tell me!”
Zoë pointed to the screen, where the file commands were converted into English. Lowry’s eyes grew wide as she read the words on the screen. Shut down all systems in ten seconds: power, air, artificial gravity. The second command was: Restore power in sixty minutes.
Lowry’s mouth dropped open as she turned to Zoë. “Sabotage.”
Zoë nodded and then looked quizzically at her. “Lowry, how and why did you receive this message?”
Lowry shook her head. “I have no idea. I was collecting data over Antarctica when a flash hit my screen. At first, I thought the burst of light was space trash hitting the skin of the station, but then a filename popped up on the screen. Bob said it was an OPALS laser message from the surface.”
