by Agster, Joe
Winter explains, adding on, “The mission is to transport these two to the asteroid. They will access the control panel and activate the embedded nuclear weapon system.”
“What flight experience do they have?” Captain Jason asks.
“None,” Max answers swiftly. “But they know the weapon systems the best, and on such short notice, are willing to sacrifice their lives to ensure its detonation.”
Winter adds, “Now you are to rendezvous with Icedragon and escort these two through the micro-gravity environment on the surface, then into the command center.”
“But what about the asteroid defense system? Isn’t that taking care of the asteroid?” the captain asks.
Before Winter can reply, Max chimes in, “Officially, you guys are the plan B. Unofficially, you are society’s best hope.”
“Let’s start preparations, we launch in three hours,” the captain declares.
Friend and Cassandra are being briefed on the space ship’s capabilities, their intended flight path, and what to expect along the flight and in space.
Captain Jason explains, “We will be accelerating at about 2 G’s for about 7 minutes until we reach low earth orbit. Once there we will make a sharp turn away from the Sun in the direction of the asteroid. Don’t panic, once in space things get easy. You will be weightless, and getting accustomed to it may be a challenge, but since we’re short on time we’ll help you out once we get there. Now Tania will get you suited up. We are scheduled to launch at 20 hundred.”
19:30 CST
Launch Prep
They finish getting suited up in their blue and gray suits, called extravehicular activity suits, or EVA suits as it was explained to them. These suits are lightweight and adapt to their body shapes well, almost a little too tight. They are comprised of thousands of titanium alloy spring threads, packed inside advanced polyurethane coating, ideal for navigating the low gravity, low pressure and volatile surface of the asteroid.
Carrying their helmets, they strut toward the ship, escorted by the crew with their captain in front. Rian stops to pause at one of the large art pieces along the wall.
“I love the nostalgia of the old booster rockets,” the first officer sighs. “Nowadays, with plasma engines, and built-in compressed fuel single-stage rockets, we no longer need them, except for large payloads.”
Friend is confused, but Cassie understands the history of space flight well. He turns to Cassie for clarification, “What is a rocket?”
She giggles.
They enter the ship via ladder, one by one. The interior of the ship appears to hold eight passengers, including a large cargo area toward the rear and below. The crew performs a series of preflight system tests, hitting away at buttons on the illuminated cockpit, the large computerized panel illuminating various shades of blue and neon green. The lower end of the glass also projects a series of readouts, mostly navigational information, something Friend can barely understand.
With the all clear given by the ground crew below, the ship departs the hanger and onto the runway. Friend and Cassie are situated near the rear, strapped in right next to each other. The ship stays situated on the vast runway, stretching forever it seems, all the way to the horizon.
Friend looks at Cassie through his helmet, barely being able to make out her face through the semi-reflective glass, focusing on her assuring brown eyes that he can barely see. “Have I ever told you I used to have a fear of heights? Now, I have a fear of failure.”
Just then, the captain pushes up on a throttle lever, and the ship accelerates rapidly off the runway, faster than anything he’s ever felt. He grips her hand tight through the suit. They turn vertical, just like the suborbital flight, but the large ship is capable of much faster flight. He feels like he weighs a thousand pounds, his whole body pushing into the seat so hard he feels like it could break.
After about eight minutes the ship levels off, maintaining a horizontal attitude. He can feel his weight disappearing as he becomes weightless. Then, as the captain points out, they are now in low Earth orbit. They continue this way for about an hour until the asteroid is in view. It is days away, but its speckle of a glow can be seen perfectly in space. The moon is up close, like a giant ball outside their right window.
“Okay guys, sit tight. We’re starting our acceleration,” the captain announces. The ship jumps in speed again, forcing them back toward their seats. Eventually the ship settles on a fixed speed, and weightlessness is returned.
“You guys can relax now. We should be there in about 70 hours.”
The crew takes off their helmets, prompting Friend and Cassie to do the same. The crew is busy checking gauges and readouts from their various panels.
Cassie, with her helmet off, turns to Friend, glad that they can speak again without all the dizziness of space flight. “I cannot believe it. Just this morning I was intending on driving to Las Vegas with my friends. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be on a space ship going to an asteroid.”
“It’s uncanny how life can take such a sharp tangent,” he replies.
Day 2 – December 27, 0:02 CST
With nothing to do for the many hours ahead in their journey, Friend recounts his whole adventure with her, from the moment they met and the first asteroid impact, to the bunker, to their suborbital flight to Hong Kong, to confronting Foenix and Gustav and being held in their bunker, up to his meeting with Len Wang.
“So we were once a thing?” She confirms rhetorically after he recounts their adventures. She is secretly attracted to him after all, as she usually is, but their mission forces her to remain cordial just as he does. Still, she cannot help herself but delve into this sexy and arousing topic. “So… did we ever… you know…?”
Friend, taken a bit aback at that the mysteriously coded question, fails to muster a response. Desperate, she completes her own question. “I mean sex.”
Friend gestures with a smile, throwing her a vibe of affirmation. She is immediately overcome with a swell of curiosity, jealously, and a hint of shame.
“So then… how was I?” she probes further, as she continues to allow herself to be sucked into this lustful vortex. He just laughs, not quite understanding her question. They made love, yes it is true, but because he loved her, because he was filled with passion in those moments. He wasn’t keeping notes after all, because he was too busy enjoying the nuances of her perfect feminine physique. But he does recall her being ferocious and much in control.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” he tells her, grabbing her hand and looking into those dark cocoa eyes of hers. “I cannot attest to your love-making ability, because in those moments I was in love with you.”
She questions her own question now. What was she thinking? She remains overcome with jealously in knowing he loves not her, but another version of her. This current Cassie is just a friend, a passionless companion. If he is going to tempt her with this profound longing of what is not hers, she figures she will do the same.
“Did I ever tell you about my abusive boyfriend?”
“Yes I know all about him, he forced you to quit school and it triggered you into a spiral of depression,” he explains, recalling all those other conversations.
She grips his right hand, turning his palm to face upward, caressing it as a sign of her ultimate trust in him, to tell him anything. “He raped me. I was a virgin, pure, and he took that from me… forever. Stupidly, I never left him, and he continued to force me to have sex with him.”
He studies the pain in her eyes, hoping for a happy ending to this dark story. She adds, “One day, during my darkest moments, when I had little self-esteem left, I just walked out. My logical side just took over, and suddenly I was numb to the pain. I was free.”
“This is good Cassie, you are a strong person,” he comforts her.
“Eventually I became a bartender. It suited me perfectly at first. But then I became addicted to sex. With my virginity robbed from me I became sexually adventurous, embraci
ng guys that would woo me at the club where I worked. After a while I hated myself deep down, but outwardly, I was the fun loving, endlessly partying Cassie.” She sniffles, but tries to put a lid on her emotions as she pours out her soul to him.
Friend sits in complete stillness, stunned at her revelations. He cannot fathom how she could succumb to passionless sex, how anyone could in fact. But learning her deepest secrets helps him being himself closer to her. Perhaps everyone has a dark side, even him.
“Despite my dark past, most of the time I don’t regret it. But I wish I could remember what it was like with you,” she tells him, longing for any morsel of a memory of sexual contact with him. In this conversation she is so brimming with sexual energy she would love to just rip his spacesuit off now. He holds himself with such esteem and principle, she is sure he would not oblige. Besides, they have little privacy as the crew is constantly moving around, from their cabin to the cargo bay below.
“Imagine how painful it is for me that you can’t,” he tells her, as he’s told her so many times before. He feels compelled to describe their first encounter in detail, but senses it would intensify her longing, so instead he chooses to remain silent after that.
After a minute or so of silence, Cassie remarks, “You know something though, being in space now, on such an important mission, it makes all that past regret pointless. I feel like an entirely new person now.”
Friend opens up, “You are so important to this world. This mission is just the beginning. Your father’s prophecy was right.” He grabs her gloved hand, telling her, “No matter what you’ve been through, remember to love yourself, and not to be ashamed of your past. It doesn’t define you, only the present does.”
After a moment of blushing and reflecting on her final contact with her father, she changes the subject. “Fearing heights yet?”
“It’s been tough initially, but I have learned to control my fear. When we flew to Hong Kong on that suborbital flight it was the same.”
“Well look at it this way, there’s no ground beneath us, so there’s nothing to fall toward,” she expresses as he laughs at the truth of her words. He smiles while brushing her back through her padded space suit, never tiring of her sense of helpfulness, always trying to pick him up.
They float to the right side window, the one closest to her. The void of space is daunting, but looking at the billions of stars comforts them both. “I used to have a friend named Lila who was also afraid of heights. I think about her all the time, to his day, how terrified she must have been when she died in that plane crash.”
Friend’s head spins with dizziness at the revelation. Her friend Lila is dead? Plane crash? The one she would remark she’s been talking to a lot lately. The woman who helped convince Cassie to pursue her education. He had to be sure.
“Lila? Your friend the NASA engineer?” he asks with a strong concern, his eyebrows raised.
“Yes, she had only been out of school a year. She loved her new position. She would call me all the time. It breaks my heart to this day.” Cassie responds with sadness, reflecting back on those last moments.
“This can’t be! Lila has been alive this whole time, every time I’ve met you. They’ve gotten to her somehow,” he cries out. He looks up, searching his head for perhaps a hint that he is wrong. But it’s impossible.
“What do you mean?” Cassie responds with a desperate concern.
“What can you remember? Where was she flying? Were you supposed to go with her?” He drills her, hoping for a clue to understand how they accomplished getting to her.
“No I wasn’t supposed to go with her. She was heading toward mainland China when the plane experienced sudden engine failure.”
Friend engages into deep thought, piecing it together. Could he influence her somehow to stop her friend from flying? What would that accomplish? They are going to get to Cassie eventually, this is the truth of the matter. Foenix is ruthless and relentless. He is probably meditating on this at this very moment, plotting Cassie’s demise. All of this will be a failure if he cannot stop this from happening.
“Cassie, listen to me,” he stresses as he grabs shoulders. “All of this will not matter, stopping the asteroid, if they get to you. Please help me. Your father, what did he tell you when he died? Did he see her death? Did he still predict my coming into your life?”
Cassie finally understands it all. The linking feeling. The deep rooted connection that forms in that sudden moment when she laid eyes on him, making him feel like she’s known him her entire life. She thinks back to those moments in her life when she almost died. The man who mugged her as a student at Caltech. The man was intent on killing her, but his gun strangely jammed as the police arrived. The fire at her aunt’s house when she was ten, how she awoke to the flames and almost died from smoke inhalation, then was suddenly guided out of the house by the neighbor’s black cat, whom she never saw again. It wasn’t coincidence, it was serendipitous. There was someone, something, some divine force protecting her. She gets that now. If that’s the case, then maybe she can save her friend, even if it’s in another life.
“Yes he mentioned you. He said there is a man in the future named Friend that you will meet at the moment he needs you most.” She tears up, the emotions when thinking about her father are always uncontrollable, specifically the gravity of the moment when he died, and how it’s connected to this moment now. “He said ‘love’. He calls me Love, by my middle name.”
She chokes up for a moment before continuing, “‘Love, your destiny will be a bright one once you meet him. He will protect you from all harm, past, present, and future.’ It’s strange, Friend, now I understand what he meant. So you see, they can’t get to me, no matter how much they try, because of you. Your influence over my life, from its beginning to its end, it’s always there, protecting me, guiding me. You are my guardian angel.”
“Guardian angel?” He asks.
“Yes. My whole life I’ve been raised Catholic, and we believe that we all have this sacred spirit watching over us. My whole life I’ve questioned my faith, the scientist in me fueling my doubt. But I understand the purpose of religion, of believing in something. Throughout our history we’ve been given clues to who God is. But what if God is just us? A culmination of all the souls of the past, present, and future, those who embrace love.”
“This God that you speak of, perhaps he’s more than that.”
Friend wants to believe her with complete totality. He wants to be assured in some way that she will be safe. He knows that they cannot blow up the asteroid now. They need to do it in the next iteration. They need to get familiar with the control panel now, understand how it works, but nothing more. Because if they blow it up now, it will attract the attention of Prast and Foenix, and as much as she believes that he is her guardian and her protector, nothing may prepare him for what kind of havoc they may try next.
31
Day 4 – December 29, 20:34
Outer Space
It’s been hours since they last both dozed off to sleep, but the uneasiness prevents Friend from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. The large reclining chairs allow them to sleep comfortably or sit, as they are designed for prolonged space travel. The feeling of weightlessness makes it difficult for Friend, so he unstraps himself from his chair, and floats toward to the cockpit.
Over the past day he had carefully observed the asteroid grow a little bigger through the front viewport monitor. As it draws closer, he becomes that much more anxious to get there than he can control, and would like to admit. He has been pestering the captain every half hour or so, then first officer Rian, demanding an update on distance and time of arrival. Aside from reminiscing about the good old days of rockets and space shuttles, Rian hasn’t been much of a talker. Friend senses within him swelling of tension, possibly animosity toward being on this mission.
This particular time he finds the other crew also resting, except for Captain Jason. He floats over to the cockpit area,
hoping for a more detailed update. The captain shakes his head in playful disapproval, but this time seems more eager to engage Friend in conversation.
“Friend… is that your call sign?” the captain asks.
Friend realizes this is not his name, and the tradition of assigning oneself a word to describe their personality is amusing. “Yes. Actually it is.”
“Can I ask a you a serious question? If there were nuclear detonators buried in the asteroid the whole time, why didn’t they detonate them sooner.”
“Well, Captain Jason, we didn’t know until a few days ago.”
“Call me Jason please. So they, I take it to mean NASA didn’t know, but someone did.”
“Yes, that true. But that man didn’t want to risk his life to open up about his secret until the right moment.”
“Risk his life! One life for ten billion… is that not too much to ask?”
“That is true. But he wasn’t trying to save his own life at the expense of others. He was trying…” Friend pauses to provide a better explanation, something he will believe, “Let’s just say there are forces at work that would rather see the asteroid crash.”
“That is a strange notion,” the captain belts out, checking various instruments. He continues to look through a series of monitors. The monitors are updating metrics on the flight like speed, coordinates in space, distance to destination, among other readings.
Ten minutes go by, and after the latest check captain Jason finally has some news. “Everyone strap in… we are starting our turnaround approach.”
The captain punches a button then issues a verbal command, the ship computer voice confirming the command. The ship engages the auto-navigation for the maneuver by activating the side and retro thrusters. The ship slowly turns in the direction toward Earth. Eventually the spacecraft is oriented in the exact opposite direction of its current velocity.