“Human Nature”

Her first thought was that it had to be weather-related but logic quickly dictated that that couldn’t be the case.  It was way too bright to have been anything like lightning, which shouldn’t be observable from space anyway.  Could it have been a reflection of the sun’s light?  A basic understanding of geometrics and the sun’s current location made that highly improbable.  Laura’s mind was running through the logical possibilities…to the point of even considering breaking Dimitri’s slumber early for his opinion, when the communication channel designated “Tango” began flashing on the digital dashboard.  It was accompanied by its own unique beep and the moment it went off, Dimitri woke up anyway, constantly tuned-in.  It was an alarm they weren’t used to and probably shouldn’t be hearing.

There was there main line of communications, “Alpha”, which was the direct contact with their Mission Control at NASA in Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The had regularly planned interactions but it wasn’t completely uncommon for either side to relay messages outside of the scheduled check-ins.  “Beta” was a back-up com-channel which also linked to Mission Control in the unlikely scenario that the main line became compromised.   Once you got past the first two channels, you had a dozen more which were direct lines to the various space agencies’ Mission Controls around the planet.  Tango was so far down the list of probable contact that Laura had actually forgotten who it connected to, having not used it since the early days of training.  Not surprisingly, Dimitri knew immediately as he switched off the alarm and connected to the European Space Agency’s Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany.

“This is Daedalus,” Dimitri began, his English thick with a Russian accent.  Pulling up the confirmation codes needed for an unscheduled transmission from his console screen he continued, “Confirmation: Echo…Rainbow…straw-hat…seven…four…razorblade…”

“Daedalus there’s a problem.”  The unidentified person on the other end cut him off, seemingly unconcerned about national security since Dimitri still had four more verification words left to read.  “We’re getting reports…Oh God…I don’t even know how to…”  The man’s voice seemed strained and disconnected at the same time, tones they weren’t used to hearing from their Earthly contacts, who were trained to maintain calming dispositions when dealing with their counterparts in space.  The capsule-mates shared a bewildered look before Dimitri tried again.

“ESA…why are you guys contacting us?”  His best guess was that they had some atmospheric questions or numbers for Daedalus to run for the unmanned supply launch that should be taking place within the hour.  Perhaps an update on the launch itself.  “Was there something we can help you guys with?”  There was an extended silence, which was also unusual.

Finally, “Daedalus…when did you last report to NASA Mission Control?  How long has it been?”  It was Laura who replied.

“Approximately forty minutes ago.  Due for next communique at oh-nine-hundred hours.”  The ESA rep left them with an extended silence yet again and this time it was long enough for Dimitri to say, “screw this” and pull up the Alpha channel as well.

“Mission Control, this is Daedalus, do you read?”  There was no reply, and after a few minutes, he tried again.  “Mission Control…this is Daedalus…do you read?”

“You’re not getting anything, are you?” asked the ESA line who had been listening the entire time.

“What the hell’s going one ESA?” Laura blurted.  They were both getting a little irritated with the situation.  The astronauts could hear the man sigh and then begin talking to someone else that wasn’t them.  It was mostly muffled but small bits of phrases would make their way through unscathed, like “have to tell”, “what if it’s true”, and “better off than we are” before finally speaking in a voice clear enough that it was obvious he was speaking to them again.

“Dimitri…Laura…this is coming strictly outside of the chain of command and…”  Again the line went quiet and the informal nature of the way they were being addressed was, alone, enough to find quite disconcerting.  They both had codenames that were to be used during transit.  Once aboard the OSS, NASA or anyone else that wanted to make contact would be fine in calling them by their birth-names.  It was protocol, however, that during the actual flights he would be referred to as “Handlebar” and she was “Teacup”.  It was highly unusual to hear her real name coming from the tiny speakers in her flight suit when she had been hearing “Teacup” since day one of the mission’s training period and it make her squirm uncomfortably, strapped into her seat.

“What the hell is going on there, ESA?”  Dimitri blurted out, seeming to recognize the difference between intentional silence and signal tangibility, which Laura was suspecting.  The voice with German inflections finally replied but not before they could both hear a blood-curdling cry coming from somewhere else behind him.  It was enough to send shivers down both their spines as they looked at each other, searching one another’s face for any sign of understanding; each hoping the other might have figured out what was happening.

“I’m sorry guys…things are going to hell right now.  This is Dolph…Dolph Weiner.”  They had both worked closely with the man in the past and it was somewhat surprising that neither of them had recognized his voice but, thick with panic, it was undeniably different now.  Dolph, much like Dimitri, was very well respected for his experience and tenure in the space and aeronautics fields.  Cutting his teeth at NASA, straight out of MIT, he bounced between government sectors and private corporations like Northrup Grumman and Boeing before finally ending up with the ESA as its Mission Control director for the sunset years of his distinguished career.  For someone of his caliber to be the one establishing contact was just…wrong.

“I don’t want to be the one telling you this…but…somebody has to.  Things have gone to shit down here.  It’s…it’s war.  The big one.  I think NASA is gone.”  Dimitri struggled to grasp what Dolph was trying to tell them but Laura immediately thought of the flash and knew.

“Gone?” Dimitri’s voice was confused.  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“Nukes…Dimitri.  The bastards are all using…”  The signal went dead, its light extinguishing as well to signify that the man hadn’t just stopped mid-sentence.  Laura twisted her head back to viewport six and released a horrible scream that echoed off the capsules walls long after it had ended in a tormented moan.  It had only been a split-second.  In that minuscule moment of time that her eyes were open and facing the glass they were bombarded with a series of simultaneous flashes so bright it seemed as though the Earth had, in fact, become the sun itself.

The scream was one of physical agony and not at all pertaining to the emotional anguish which was far from setting in, even though her brain had realized what was happening.  The thoughts of her husband and child being burned away to a pile of nuclear ash or even worse… living through the blasts… hadn’t set in yet.  The shock of being so suddenly and completely…blinded kept everything else at bay.

With quicker thinking that Laura displayed, Dimitri activated the solar shields which blocked, very nearly, all outside light with the type of tint one could watch a solar eclipse through and unlatched himself from his seat to set about doing whatever he could to treat her eyes.  Although neither of them were doctors, it wasn’t as if they were without medical training altogether.  Every person that went into space, especially those expecting extended stays, were required to learn just about everything first-year med students were taught.

Laura’s entire body vibrated with involuntary shaking, a physical reaction to the trauma of having her eyes open and not seeing anything but the assortment of flashing spots, over and over again.  At the periphery there seemed to be some acuity but if she shifted her gaze to any area she thought she might have taken in a small bit of Dimitri’s movements, it was filled with the disruptive optical echo.  In the thousands of times she had been required to spend extended time in the tiny, cramped spaces that being an astronaut required, she had never once experienced any claustrophobia and now, without warning, Laura was overwhelmed with the sensation of being trapped…in her own body.

Struggling for breath, she was vaguely aware of her co-pilot’s voice doing the best it could to calm her histrionics, but it was distant and foreign; the visual barrier somehow reaching into her mind to affect her cognitive abilities. It took several long minutes and his placing a medicated bandage over her eyes for his words to slowly sift into any recognizable form of communication.

“…solar retinopathy…know it’s terrifying…not permanent.”  He placed one large palm on her forehead with his fingers drifting into her hairline and something about the warmth and pressure of it eased the hyperventilation and calmed the tremors from her body, much as Dimitri had intended it to.  It brought back warm and comforting memories of her father who used to do the same thing when she was a small child.  She wondered if there was any way the Russian could have known that once her mind returned to the summit of being able to process thoughts once again.

“Once we get aboard Olympus we’ll be able to treat it better and you could be seeing fine in just a few weeks.”  Laura nodded her head to convey that she not only heard the statement but also that she was back in the realm of clinical response and Dimitri seemed to understand its meaning.  “Good,” he continued; “okay…listen, I need you to keep your eyes closed for now and do your best to stay calm.”  He sighed in a way she didn’t think she’d ever heard before, before finally asking; “Does it hurt?”  She nodded. The two small bonfires beneath her eyelids kept her from little more than a responsive state while the shock momentarily held the rest of reality at bay.

She could hear him rummaging through something, airtight foil being removed, while she concentrated on the burning and flashing lights that inundated her optical nerves beneath closed and covered eyes.  In a moment his voice had returned to her side.

“I’m going to give you a fentanyl dose.”  She nodded again and when he gently slid the plastic tip of the nasal applicator for the synthetic opioid into her right nostril he said, “On three.  One…two…three” Dimitri squeezed the bottle as Laura inhaled deeply and the medication began to do its thing almost immediately.

Within thirty seconds she was granted relief with the sweet embrace of darkness offered by unconsciousness.  Shortly after that, she found herself in the loving arms of Mike with Kevin desperately trying to squirm his way from between them.

The three of them were in the double-king, canopied bed that Mike had insisted they spend way too much money on, wrestling and tickling each other and reveling in the unabashed and unrestrained joy of being a family in love and of being all together, which was a truly rare thing.  Kevin would pretend to try to get away but only so much as to re-position himself at an angle to get at her weak-spot: between the ribs, just below the armpits.  The child was getting stronger every year, but with Mike’s assistance, they were able to keep him between them and smothered with kisses.  It was a moment that they would have all been happy to have last forever.  It didn’t.

In unison, Mike and Kevin quit laughing and sat upright in the bed, smiles completely erased.  Her husband and child each turned to face her and the expressions of fear etched upon their faces was enough for her to bolt upright as well.  Perhaps it was a reaction to Kevin taking her hand or Mike’s saying, “I love you both so much”, but the fear they seemed to be feeling gripped her by the throat as well.  Suddenly terrified by the certain knowledge that some impending doom was imminent, all she had time to do was shed a single tear when the bay window flooded the room with blinding and oppressive light.  It consumed them and the smell of burning hair filled her nostrils before the wall of fire came through to wash them away.

It was a momentary relief when the psychological sledgehammer of a dream jerked her back to a waking state, but the moment was short-lived.  Discovering, yet again, that she had been blinded…hopefully temporarily…the reality of her situation setting back in was just as horrific as the dream had been.  She could hear Dimitri…and he was speaking to someone.

“I’m telling you there’s nothing.”  It was Rukia Kanagi’s voice.  Dimitri was communicating with the OSS. “We’ve scanned the entire planet, Sir.  There are no signals of any type.  We’ve gone over every known man-made frequency in the database.  I think…Oh Dear Lord, I don’t even want to say it out loud.”  Rukia was a communications expert, among other things, and she wasn’t exactly known for her emotional outbursts.

“It’s okay Kanagi,” Dimitri offered, using a voice with the same calming qualities he used on Laura; “you don’t have to say it.”  There were a few minutes of silence and Laura wondered if she should let them know that she was awake when Rukia’s voice filtered through the speakers in her flight-suit again.

“Sir…given everything that’s just happened, I’m…uncertain…about bringing this up…but,” her voice became conspiratorially low; “I think there might be another problem that you need to know about.”

“Go ahead, Kanagi,” he pressed.

“Well,” still at a whisper; “it’s been nothing more than talk at this point but…well…I thought you should know.  It’s Alex and Nick… geez, I can’t believe I’m even having to say this but…they’ve been trying to convince the Commander that we shouldn’t let the Daedalus dock with Olympus.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Kanagi?”  Laura cringed involuntarily; she had never heard Dimitri cuss before.  She could only imagine what Rukia’s reaction was.  It took a moment for her to respond.

“Sir…I can’t stress enough that they’re simply suggesting it as a hypothetical.  I know these people and I can’t imagine that they’d really do it.  It’s just…well, right now the food supplies are somewhat low.  Even with reduced rations, there’s really only enough for four people to survive for a few months.  Everything that we needed to keep a continuous supply of food was supposed to be on the Ariane-six…all the seeds for crops and enough MRE’s to last three hundred people a decade were on that supply ship and…well…we’ve not been able to verify if she got off the ground before the shit hit the fan.  Until it clears the Van Allen belts we’re not going to be able to lock onto her signal and that won’t be for another six hours…assuming she’s even out there.”

Rukia went quiet again and Dimitri considered her words before asking, “So what you’re saying, Kanagi, is that if the Ariane never made lift-off then they’re not going to let the Daedalus board the station?”

“I’m so… sorry, sir.”  Dimitri could tell the young Japanese-American astronaut was sickened by her own words.  “According to Nick, the current supplies would last six people no more than a couple of weeks.  I don’t know what to say, sir, except…I will die before I let that happen; you have my word.  I have to go before they discover that I’ve contacted you. Maintain your course and the second I can, I’ll give you an update.  God speed, sir.”

“Kanagi.”  Dimitri caught her before she cut the transmission.

“Yes, sir?”

“Kanagi…Rukia…your father would have been proud of you.”  Laura could hear the other woman’s breath hitch quietly, just short of an actual sob.  It was a noise she often made herself when she needed to keep her composure in a haze of emotion.  Although it was customary for commanding officers to refer to their crew by their secondary names, Dimitri had been doing it his entire career.  It was a rare treat to hear your first name coming from his lips.

“Thank you, Sir.”  Olympus cut the connection and, after a moment of quiet, Dimitri turned his attention to his bandaged co-pilot.

“You had nothing to add to the conversation, Hillman?”  She smiled despite the grave situation; the man never ceased to amaze her.

“How did you know I was awake?”  Her voice was dry and cracked and, before she could ask for water, he had positioned the flight suit’s drinking tube into her mouth.  The water tasted fine even though she couldn’t help but think about the fact that a portion of it was her own reconstituted urine, much as she did every time she drank.  The flight suits were equipped with ten gallons of water and an advanced filtration system for the astronaut’s urine which would stretch the ten gallons into the fifty or sixty that they would need to stay hydrated on the trip to Olympus.

“Your breathing,” he answered her question as she drank.

“Is it true?” she asked after finally satiating her thirst.  “Is it all…gone?”

Dimitri shook his head despite her inability to see it.  “I don’t know.  I think…I think it would be unwise for either of us to make any assumptions.”

“But you tried all the channels?”

“While you slept…yea.  I’ve scanned every frequency this little Orion capsule is capable of.  That being said, we can’t afford to lose ourselves in hypothetical conjecture.  Dwelling on what happened down there isn’t going to help us any up here.  All we need to concentrate on is getting to the OSS.”  She was incapable of taking that advice, however, and her brain vomited up the thought it had been tip-toeing around for as long as it could.

“Oh, God…Mike…Kevin” She felt the already weak grasp on her sanity slipping away as the notion of a ‘rest of her life’ without her husband and child tried to take hold.  Dimitri grabbed her shoulders and gently shook her, hoping to bring her attention back to the here and now.

“NO!”  He screamed into her face.  “You cannot do that right now.”  His voice was compassionate but forceful just the same.  “For one…you can’t cry if you want your eyes to heal.  There’s no way around that.  If something did happen to your family, then there will be time to mourn them later…on Olympus.  Right now…I’m giving you a direct command: you are not to think about the conditions on Earth while you are aboard Daedalus.  Do you understand?”

Technically he wasn’t her commanding officer until they were aboard the OSS and he had relieved Commander Milner of the position, but…she knew what he was doing, and more importantly, he was right.  Nodding again, she did her best to wipe the anguished look from her face.  The new one wasn’t a whole lot better but Dimitri could see the determination Laura was trying to convey.  He could trust that she was, once again, a competent co-pilot and wouldn’t be slipping back into hysterics of any type…not yet, anyway.   Although it took several long seconds, she somehow managed to compartmentalize the pain into a spot where it could be relatively ignored for the time being.  It was an ability that she wasn’t aware she had and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Yes Sir,” she finally managed and then, after a few more seconds; “What about the Ariane-six?”

“What about it?”  She wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking either.

“I don’t know…is there any way that we can track her?  We’re a lot closer to it than Olympus.”  Dimitri shook his head ‘no’ before yet again realizing that her condition made it moot to do so.

“Not without knowing her flight-plan. She’s unmanned so there’s nothing more than a beacon and without Mission Control to give us coordinates…well…the answer’s ‘no’.  Olympus will find her before we ever could.  All we can do now is continue on with our flight-plan.”  Without her eyes, Laura found herself concentrating on the timbre and cadence of his voice more than she ever had before and there were no cracks.  Still calm, still in control and still working the problem with a thorough logic that she couldn’t hope to achieve, given the circumstances.  Laura knew her life was in his hands and…she was grateful.

“Do you really think they’ll exile the Daedalus?”  It seemed unimaginable…but then again…so did this entire situation.

“No.  No, I do not.”  She could hear the certainty in his voice.

“How…how can you be so sure?”

“Because I know Kanagi and Commander Milner won’t let that happen.  Wang and Geary had a knee-jerk reaction.  Panic and fear make some men revert to base instincts, but…they will come to their senses.  It’s been my experience that those who make it to space generally have a strong reverence for life.”

“Okay… I believe you.” And she did.  They sat in silence for thirty minutes before Dimitri broke out their meal-injections.  Being that a toilet was one of the amenities the Daedalus lacked, solid food consumption was out of the question.  A pre-launch colon-cleanse combined with the injections that contained all the vitamins, proteins and nutrients their bodies required made the process possible.  Which wasn’t to say that it was pleasant in the least.  Several days of tapering off the injections and slowly re-introducing food to the system was required afterwards, and it could be several weeks before your stomach was ready for a spicy burrito again.

Fortunately, they were privy to the most advanced supplies available and their nutrient-shots came in MIT-engineered devices which injected their “food” without needles, delivering a high-velocity jet of liquid that breached the skin at the speed of sound.  They included appetite suppressants as well which kept the tummy from rumbling its disapproval at the unnatural attempt to sustain its needs.

“Everything a growing cosmonaut needs to become big and strong,” Dimitri said as he depressed the injection into his neck.  It was the same thing he said every time they “ate”.  His consistency was doubly reassuring in that moment and for the umpteenth time she thought, thank God for Dimitri.  Although he offered, Laura was able to handle her own injection.  Ironically, it was just the day before that she told him she could have done it “blindfolded” and now it was time to put up or shut up.

Dimitri did the honors of cleaning the dishes and informed her that it was time for her to sleep.  Without her vision to provide a framework of her surroundings, she was losing all sense of time; after the last, drug-induced, chainsaw of a dream, she was in no hurry to return and put up a bit of a fight as well.  After all, he hadn’t slept since she had…and they both needed him to be as his best…or at least better than he would be if sleep deprivation took hold.  Her arguments held no sway, however, and he pulled premature rank on his capsule-mate once again.

Finally, she agreed…she was tired…but she declined Dimitri’s offer of more fentanyl.  Her eyes weren’t burning nearly as badly now and, frankly, she couldn’t take another dream like the last one.   Before attempting to sleep, Laura did something she hadn’t done since she was a small child: she prayed.   It was the first time the adult version of her had done so without feeling like a hypocrite and it was a short, simple request.  There were a great many things that probably should have been prayed for more…she knew that…but she only asked for a moment of peace, an opportunity to sleep safe from the torment of pain.  Her prayer was answered.

Falling asleep quicker than she had thought possible, her mind remained mercifully blank.  The burning thoughts she had been holding at bay, the ones that wanted to rip away at her soul, were enveloped and replaced by the soothing balm of utter blackness.  It was impossible to say how long she was cradled by the nothingness, but when Dimitri put his hand on her shoulder to wake her, it felt like only a few minutes.  When he told her it had been six hours…it was a shock and, had it been anyone else, she wouldn’t have believed him.  He said that he would’ve let her sleep longer had they not been anticipating an update from Olympus on Ariane-six’s status.  That and he wanted to change the dressing on her eyes.

They were mid-way through the process of removing the bandage and cleaning her eyes for the new one when Olympus’s signal went off.  Multi-tasking, Dimitri switched on the com and addressed the OSS while finishing the task.

“Go ahead, Olympus,” he stayed somewhat official, unsure if he’d be speaking Rukia again or not.

“Oh, God, sir.”  It was Rukia.  She sounded unusually frantic.  “They’ve… Oh, God… I can’t believe…”

“Kanagi!” Dimitri barked with authority pulling the Olympus communications officer back from the edge of panic.

“Right.  I’m sorry, sir.”  Her voice returned to it normally stoic tone.  “It’s mutiny, sir.  Wang and Geary have cordoned the Commander to the brig because she refused to side with them regarding the Daedalus.”

“You mean us?” Laura asked.

“Laura…?”

“Yea Rukia, it’s me.”

“Oh, Laura… I’m so sorry.  Commander Kapirski told me about your eyes.  Don’t worry… we’ll get you fixed up.”  It had been a number of years since the women had seen each other but they had always considered each other ‘friends’.

“How are we going to do that if we can’t come aboard, Rukia?”  Silence took a full half-minute from them before Dimitri took control again.

“Kanagi, what is your standing with Geary and Wang?”

“Um… it’s not great, sir.”  Dimitri chuckled seemingly getting the answer he was expecting.  “The sons-of-bitches know I’m not going along with them either, however, it would seem I know Olympus’s electrical grid a little better than they do.  I’ve managed to lock myself down in E-wing and until the morons figure out how to manually override the door controls, I should be okay.  I’ve re-routed communications and most of the central systems so that I can control them from here.”  Dimitri was impressed.  For that matter…so was Laura.  She had always thought of Rukia Kanagi as a competent scientist and advanced electrical-engineer who, most likely, had a kind heart…but this fierce loyalty and bravery was really showing her something.  In the wake of extreme tragedy, people’s true colors were bleeding through the facades they liked to present and Rukia’s were downright…admirable.

“You’re a smart girl, Kanagi,” Dimitri offered what they were both thinking.

“Well, sir…I don’t know about that.  I may have control of the OSS right now but the one thing I have absolutely none of…is food.  I’ve got maybe four days tops before I’ll have to turn the station back over or risk dying and having the whole place go down as a result.”

“Kanagi, can you control the docking ports from your position?” Laura broke in and Dimitri, knowing where she was going, nodded in agreement.  It was the only way any of them could go without resolving themselves to disagreeable deaths.

“That was the entire reason why I stole control of Olympus, Laura.  At your current trajectory, you should be here in fifty-six hours…I’ll make it that long.  That’s not the only problem though.  Even if I get you hooked up to the station that doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to keep Geary and Wang from greeting you at the door as you come in.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Kanagi,” Dimitri’s iron tone put it to rest.  “All I want you to do is to keep yourself safe until we can get there to help you.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir… Commander, sir.  I will not let you down.”

“I know that, Kanagi.  You never have.”  After a short moment of reflection as they all instinctively wondered if this communique were between the last friends any of them would have again, Dimitri asked, “Do I take this to mean that there’s been nothing from the Ariane-six?”

“No, sir,” Rukia lamented, and, after a moment said, “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  Without any communications with Earth… well, we just don’t know.  I tried to explain that to Alex…I mean ‘Wang’…but with Geary breathing down his neck, he just wouldn’t listen.  There are a million different things that could have changed about the launch-time or flight-plan that would affect our ability to locate it.  There’s no way to know for absolute sure that she’s not coming until the damn thing’s only twelve hours away or closer.  So it will be…what…like two and a half days before I can narrow the search enough to say, definitively, one way or another.”

“Rukia?” Laura piped.

“Yea?”

“Do Alex and Nick know that you’ve been in contact with the Daedalus?”

“Not yet…no.  Wang isn’t the complete idiot Geary is, however.  It won’t be long before he figures out how to, at least, monitor the com.  I’ll know if that happens though so…oh shit.”  Rukia cut the communication completely and Laura’s first reaction was to re-establish the channel.  Dimitri said “no” however and, being blind, there was little she could do about it.

“What the hell?” Laura demanded, serving the dual purpose of questioning both Rukia’s abrupt exit as well as Dimitri’s refusal to find out why.  A full minute passed without an answer when she reiterated the question.  This time it earned her a, “Shhh”, like she was a child to be shushed.  In any other situation she might have taken offense but in this instance: it worked.  After a few more minutes of silence, Dimitri said; “It’s Morse code.”

“What?”

“Kanagi…she’s using the channel’s connection light to communicate in Morse code.  I thought maybe it was broken but…okay, wait…here’s the beginning:  L, I, S, T, E, N, I, N, G, D, O, C, K, B, A, Y, S, I, X. She wants us to dock in Bay Six.”  Dimitri clicked the channel off and on to acknowledge the received message.  Shortly after that, the channel opened again.

“Daedalus this is Olympus, do you copy?”  It was Rukia again, formal this time.  “Daedalus, I have your docking information.”  She was obviously attempting the lay the trail of crumbs for Geary and Wang.

“Roger Olympus, this is Daedalus.  We copy.”  Laura replied since she was technically the com-officer in the capsule.

“Roger that Daedalus.  We’ve got you docking in bay twenty-five.  Do you copy…bay twenty-five?”  There were only 25 docking bays so she was giving them as much distance as she could without making it obvious by putting them in the first few bays.  Rukia really was a smart girl.

“Copy that Olympus.  Bay twenty-five.  Over and out.”  Dimitri flipped off the signal and sighed.  The next two days were going to be that much longer if they’d be unable to speak to Rukia anymore…unfettered, at least.  What had started out as an expedition based in science and the advancement of the species had turned into a Darwinian nightmare where, hopefully, it wouldn’t be ‘survival of the fittest’ but rather ‘survival of the smartest’.  With the advantage of knowing what it was they would be walking into, they had approximately two days to formulate a way of making sure they ended up on top.  It was Dimitri’s contention that there was a significant difference between what the two men would do if they actually made it aboard the Olympus.  There was more than a fine line between leaving them to their own devices by denying the Daedalus and committing cold-blooded murder in person and he seemed fairly certain that the Olympus astronauts were incapable of such an act.  She wanted to believe him.

For Laura, the next two days passed like two months.  She had never realized how acutely integrated her sight was with her sense of time.  Her inability to monitor the clock and the distance traveled seemed to mess with her sanity more than anything and it required Dimitri’s having to talk her back from the edge more than once.  Every five hours they changed her bandage and Dimitri cut his sleep times down to ninety-minute intervals.  Those hours and a half segments were the worst, teetering on the edge of her seat while he slept and straining her ears for any one of the one-hundred and three different noises the Daedalus might make to let them know if there were an issue or if the course needed adjustment.  Those short periods felt like days unto themselves and she was grateful for those rare moments when he would release one of his sleep-snorts.  Rather than surprise her like they normally did, they felt like Dimitri’s way of saying, “you’re okay” while he slept and brought her back from the sensation that she was all alone and floating aimlessly through space.

When they were within twelve hours, it would have been procedure for the OSS to make contact with the Daedalus every forty-five minutes but Olympus made no more contact.  Rukia, knowing that the gig was up, no longer attempted the routine B.S. and concentrated solely on her survival and keeping tabs on Astronauts Wang and Geary through the OSS security cameras.  At least that’s the message she conveyed in her last Morse code transmission around the twenty-hour mark.  When they were a mere four hours away and riddled with adrenaline-fueled anticipation, they did receive a transmission from Rukia.  It was short…and it gave them no time to respond before the connection cut again.

“Commander…Laura…they’re coming through the door.  I can’t hold them back any longer.  Automated docking routine Epsilon-Epsilon-Seven-Nine-Tango.  God speed.”  Dimitri did try to reestablish contact this time but there was no raising the station.  Rukia had done everything she could to give them a fighting chance of getting aboard the station.  The Daedalus was at a decided disadvantage, no doubt.  Without someone to make the tiny rotational adjustments to the OSS that are usually needed…not to mention Laura’s inability to monitor the capsules gyroscopic readings…well, Dimitri would have his hands full.

What he did have, however, was the exact pitch and roll the station would be in along with the remarkable gift of being able to fly any vehicle designed for zero-gravity with the precision of a machine.  From time to time, including his current approach, he was known to say “Han Solo eat your heart out”, but the Daedalus wasn’t exactly the Millennium Falcon and Laura wasn’t sure she wanted to be thought of as Chewbacca.  She did her best, throaty “ggrrrrlllhh” impression of the Wookie regardless and Dimitri unleashed his first authentic laugh since they had left Earth.  There wasn’t much to it but it was a moment they both needed; the tension palpable and suffocating.

Olympus was enormous.  It was the first trip for either of them and it could be seen by eye at nearly five-hundred miles.  The closer they got the more Dimitri marveled at its size and struggled to verbally describe it to Laura.  Even though he knew specs by heart, it was so much larger in person than he had imagined.  At five hundred yards it was like navigating the capsule above a large city; a city which was rotating at fifty miles per hour. Bouncing between his manual controls and Laura’s gyro readings, Dimitri was a one-man dynamo.  Navigating the Daedalus like it was an extension of his own body, he somehow made the piece of unwieldy metal and its twenty-four opposing jets control like a sleek, flying sports-car.  Even without her eyes, Laura was impressed.

Dimitri had to circle the OSS twice in order to bring the Daedalus into alignment with Docking Bay Six, and then rotated an additional four more times with the station before making sure the capsule was locked into the magnetic hold with an airtight seal.  Once the green light for the first stage of decompression came on they knew they needed to move quickly.  Bay Twenty-five was at the far end of the station but if Wang and Geary had regained control of the surveillance system then they probably already knew that they had been fooled…if they had been fooled at all.

Dimitri stood and handed Laura one of the only two weapons they would be armed with: their doctored nutrient shots.  The usual sustenance they contained, however, had been removed to make room for their homemade roofie-cocktails…or, at least, the closest facsimile they could create without actually having any Rohypnol on hand.  Instead, each injector was re-purposed with the entire supply of fentanyl, promethazine and diphenhydramine they had on hand. In theory, it was both a non-lethal and quick-acting solution to possible aggression which should put a man three times the size of Dimitri down for the count.  It was hard to say how long they would be unconscious, but all they really had to do was to get the men behind bars.  They could decide what to do with them later.

Laura stood behind him, keeping her hand on the shoulder of Dimitri’s flight-suit as they made their way through the capsule’s door and into the short decompression tunnel which led into the larger world of Olympus.  Unlike Dimitri, who seemed solid as a rock, her legs were weak and shaky from sitting in zero gravity for so long as well as being unable to see her foot-falls now that gravity had returned.

They shared a moment of legitimate concern while waiting for the tunnel to decompress once the capsule was sealed off.  It remained unspoken, but they both knew that if Rukia had lost the station’s controls to Nick and Alex, this would have been their ideal opportunity to see to it that they didn’t make it aboard.  If they had really regressed to the primitive point of being cold-blooded killers then now was the time to get it done without dealing with the actual blood, cold or otherwise. Two and a half, very long minutes later they were able to breathe a combined sigh of relief as the door to Olympus slid open.  Rukia came through for them.

Bay Six was large, to say the least.  Not designed for receiving personnel, it was crammed with robotic, assembly-line loaders and unloaders as well as a lot of empty space.  It made sense for Rukia to have them come in this way if they were trying to be discreet, but it wasn’t the easiest route to navigate with a blind woman in tow.  Not to mention that they had really been hoping to see the lockers they would have found in the docks made for receiving crew.  They were both anxious to get out of their flight-suits which, no longer free of gravity, had become quite cumbersome. Taking longer than he’d hoped but quicker than he’d expected, Laura and Dimitri found themselves before the enormous set of electric sliding doors that let into an equally large hallway which would, in turn, open up into one the station’s main arteries.

They kept a steady pace towards the doorway until the motion sensor slid the barrier aside when Dimitri came to an abrupt, unanticipated stop which sent Laura smacking into his back.  His body felt rigid.

“What is it?” Laura whispered from behind him.

“Two men…waiting.  Them…I guess.”  Dimitri did not lower his voice which seemed to imply that they had been made.  “Be ready.”  She knew exactly what he meant and clutched the tranquilizer in her hand, ready to depress the button at a breath’s notice.  The stood quietly for several long seconds before he spoke again, this time much quieter than before.  “They’re not doing anything…just sitting there on the floor next to the door.”

“Do they see us?”

“I thought so… but… maybe not.”

Laura wasn’t sure what to do with that and; “Is there another way around them?” was the best she could offer.  She was, more than at any point before, infuriated with her inability to contribute more to the situation.  Hell… she would’ve been happy just not being a detriment, keenly aware that Dimitri would take responsibility for not just his own safety…but hers as well.  If something were to happen to him because he was trying to save her…well…it was another one of those thoughts that needed to be packed away somewhere in the deep, dark corner it would share with Mike and Kevin.

“No…it’s the only way through.  One is moving…I think he may see…”  Dimitri went quiet and then Laura could hear another man’s voice, coming from not too far ahead.

“No… no fucking way.  Who the hell are you?”  There was genuine shock in the man’s voice…or perhaps insanity and the next few moments came in a rapid flurry of frenzied activity.  She could hear the man scramble to his feet and run headlong towards them while screaming; “I don’t believe it!  You’re not real!”  There was a thud from all three of them when he made contact, sending Laura to the floor while Dimitri seemed to be wrestling with his attacker.  “You’re real!  You’re real!  You’re fucking real!” the crazy man cried over and over as Dimitri struggled to subdue him.  There was no way she could tell but from the Russian’s grunts, but he may have been losing.

Laura struggled to get back to her feet and still keep a firm grip on the injector when she heard the other man call out from the end of the hall.

“It’s open, Alex!  You have to come NOW!”  She did her best to try and target the second man so that they wouldn’t be able to double-team Dimitri and was going to put herself between them as best she could when the struggling astronauts made contact with her once again, sending all three of them to the floor this time.  Somehow she found herself atop the sweating, panting mad-man and, with a deftness she hadn’t imagined possible with her blindness, she plunged the tranquilizer into his neck.  Almost instantly he ceased moving and his breathing became calm and even.  It had worked.

“Dimitri?” she whispered and from beneath her, he replied.

“Wrong guy,” was all he managed to gasp and she suddenly realized that she was feeling the cosmonaut’s flight-suit on her palms.  Dammit straight to hell…she had injected Dimitri.  She was trying to help…wanted to help…but it had all been so disorientating.  She could only hope that he wouldn’t blame her later; assuming there was a ‘later’.  There was no time for guilt in that moment, however, as her mind calculated the math equation of what two crazy guys plus one her would equal.  Laura climbed over his sleeping form as gently as she could, only to fall over once again on yet another unconscious body.  Dimitri had apparently gotten his shot in after all and crazy guy number one was out cold as well.  While that was a good thing, she supposed, it made her feel twice as bad about drugging the man that had been keeping her alive.  If she had only left well enough alone, he would have been fine and they would still have another shot for the second psycho.

Once she finally found her feet, which was no easy task, Laura had absolutely no sense of her bearings.   She might as well have been back in space for the ocean of darkness she was swimming in, no idea what direction her assailant would come from.  Every nerve tight, every hair standing on end, she battled to keep her breathing slow and steady if for no other reason than not to overpower the ability to hear her immediate environment.  Locating the remaining aggressor by sound was already hard enough with her heartbeat pounding in her ears like a jackhammer; she didn’t need to add hyperventilation to her growing list of impairments.  Her muscles screaming in agony beneath the weight of the flight-suit; they could barely maintain the unrelenting tension they were being kept in.

Despite what she thought to be a heightened sense of awareness, when he grabbed her shoulders from behind it caught her completely off-guard and she screamed like eight-year-old Laura screamed when Freddy Kruger jumped on screen for the first time.  It was a cry of pure, unabashed horror and the fear only got worse as he began to drag her down the hall.  The most terrifying thing of all was that, no matter how strong an effort she wanted to put into fighting him, she was no match for his strength.  Being out of zero-g for less than an hour and given everything she had already endured in that short time; her body was in no condition to challenge him.

The man said nothing as he drug her slightly squirming body, and it seemed that he had gone a considerable distance.  They had obviously made it into Olympus’s main hull but she had no idea where he was taking her.  After several nightmarish minutes of feeling like a fly being pulled away by a spider, he seemingly found a place to his liking and, after hearing a door slide shut behind them, Laura found herself being lowered into a seat.  The man left her there and she could hear him rummaging through things on the far end of the room.  She considered making a run for it, but the futility of the act which was likely to be more comical than successful kept her in her place.  Before too long his heavy breathing was back her side and he had returned with a metal tray of clanking items…weapons?   With fear and exhaustion playing ‘tag’ with her psyche, a quick snippet of her wedding vows shot through her mind like oddly-timed lightening and Laura knew it was time to “speak now or forever hold her peace”.

“What…” her voice was dry and cracked, the little saliva she had a thick paste.  “What are you going to do to me?”  There was no part of her that wanted to know the answer.  The question was really just a last-ditch attempt at conversation and the highly-unlikely scenario that she could talk her way out of not dying…or, at least, not being tortured before she did.  The man was quiet for a moment and Laura hoped he was reconsidering whatever perverse avenues he had planned to go down.  Finally, he gave a long, guttural sigh, sounding nearly as tired as she was, and spoke.

“I’m going to try to save your life…and mine while we’re at it.”  The man’s voice was deep, with a hair of British inflection, reflecting his nearly thirty years removed from the English territories.  “But for now, we’re going to start by having a look at your eyes and getting you out of that zoom-bag.”  This was not what she was expecting and it put her off her second line of conversation completely, which was to start begging for her life.  “And since I answered your question,” he continued, “I appreciate it if you’d answer one of mine:  exactly who the hell are you…and how the hell did you get here, Miss?  I guess that’s two questions.”

Given that nothing else in the last four days had been remotely close to…normal…it didn’t really come as too much of a surprise to see the trend continue.  She was confused, to be sure, but more than that…she was relieved.  Not being tortured and killed in the depths of space, where they say screaming isn’t heard terribly well, put her mind at ease considerably.

“I’m Astronaut Laura Hillman…and I got here on the Daedalus with your new Commander, Dimitri Kapirski.”

After another moment of silent pondering her unseen companion blurted out; “psycho-bitch!” and Laura flinched instinctively.  The man put his hand on her knee, perhaps to comfort her, and she nearly fell out of her seat trying to pull away, suddenly quite wary of her imminent safety again.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized several times over as sincerely as he could.  “I didn’t mean to scare you.  I realize you must think I was talking about you…I wasn’t.”  He sighed.  “Listen…I’m Nick Geary.  You can call me ‘Nick’.  I’m the medical officer onboard the Olympus until the crew gets…” Nick trailed off, realizing his own mistake.  “Well…I’m the medical officer.  If you’ll let me, I’d like to take a look at your eyes and see if we can’t get you fixed up.  After that, we need to get you changed into some real clothes…and, as much as I hate to be a pain, we probably need to do these things at an expedient pace.  I don’t think it’s wise for us to stay here too long.”  Every time she thought she was beginning to grasp the situation…it just went right out the window.  Her head was swimming in confusion.

“I don’t understand, Nick…we were told that…well, that you had taken control of the station and were denying access to the Daedalus.  We thought you were there to…I don’t know…do something to us.  We were only trying to defend ourselves.”  Nick’s response was a dry chuckle that didn’t sound like real laughter.

“Well… we were told that the Daedalus never made lift-off from Earth before…you know.”  The doctor reached for Laura’s bandage and this time she didn’t flinch or pull away.  It was due more to her being captivated by his words than her no longer being afraid of him, however.  It was hard to fully trust anyone when you couldn’t read their face.

After a brief inspection, the man who claimed to be the station’s doctor agreed with Dimitri’s earlier assessment of solar retinopathy as well as the cosmonaut’s confidence in its ability to be treated.  This was very welcome news given the intensity of the distracting flashing that flooded her visual senses while the bandage was off, the intense light of the Central Medical Bay playing havoc with her optical nerves until Nick reapplied a new bandage, bringing back the merciful darkness.

Nick took a swab of the inside of her mouth for Laura’s DNA and fed the sample into one of the most expensive pieces of machinery on the entire OSS.  It was a one-of-a-kind, bio-processor with a sixteen-digit number as its only ID, but which its makers had affectionately dubbed “Prometheus” for its ability to restore life to humanity and perhaps even achieve immortality.  Prometheus, unimaginable for most of humanity’s tenure, was science-fiction become science, creating synthetic stem-cells on a nanoscopic level which could combine with specific DNA or RNA to create cures for nearly every conceivable ailment from the common cold to cancer to fifth-degree burns.

“We honestly thought we were the last people left…”  Nick gently patted her head like she was made of fine China while they waited on the amazing machine and she could hear the reverence in his voice.  “I’m really glad you made it here.  I don’t know how you did it…but I’m really glad you did.”  It took a remarkably short amount of time for Prometheus, with some specifically inputted instructions, to produce the solution which, once painlessly injected, would reduce Laura’s healing period from several months to a day or two.

Nick helped her get out of her flight-suit, clean up and change into better-suited clothes and Laura, beyond the point of modesty, let him.  It had nothing to do with her being blind or his being a doctor either.  Given the circumstances…it just didn’t matter.  They spoke as she changed and she kept getting the impression that she wasn’t moving nearly quickly enough.  Nick’s increased cadence and high rising intonation gave every word a thinly veiled sense of urgency and, without seeing facial expressions, it was the only way she had to ‘read’ him.

He explained the Alex had not been trying to attack Dimitri at all, but had slipped into a state of mental delirium and wanted nothing more than to verify their reality with his own sense of touch.  The situation escalated quickly between the two men and it was unfortunate for them all the way it turned out.  Apparently the strain of the last few days had been too much for Olympus’s main engineer and he had snapped long before the Daedalus made port.  It hadn’t helped any that the two men had been led to Bay Six by a false alarm touting blockage in a ventilation shaft, and then trapped there for the last two days without food, water and a toilet of any kind.

“You can bet your ass that there’s some blockage in that shaft now,” Nick joked and had she not been standing nearly naked it would have qualified as “T.M.I.” but instead it produced a real chuckle from both of them.  Astronaut Geary was somewhat crude with the mouth of a sailor but she could tell by the time she had her clean, OSS jumpsuit on that she really like the man.  He didn’t seem to have much of a filter between his mind and his mouth, not mincing his words in the least, but he seemed to be a straight-shooter which was part of what she loved about Dimitri so much…and Mike.  Once she had her boots laced up he was insisting that they leave the Med Bay…that they were most likely being watched.  Laura refused to budge this time without some answers first.

Where were they going?  Why were they running?  Who were they running from?  On top of all of that, she was demanding that they go back and help Dimitri.  Yea, they may have still been alive, but they couldn’t just leave him passed out on the metal docking platform…and Alex too, for that matter.  Nick could see her determination and, by her best guess, was probably too exhausted himself to drag her any further.  With the frustration plainly evident in his voice and a sigh after every other sentence, Nick did his best to explain what he could.

For starters, he didn’t know where they were going…just that they had to keep going or risk being trapped in whatever room they happened to be in.  More than forty hours ago, he and Alex had contemplated trying to access they only real weapon aboard the OSS: a 9mm handgun locked in a safe in the Commander’s office but the only way in was with a numeric code only known by the acting Commander.  The idea had been nothing more than a vicious tease to them but Laura made a mental note: Dimitri would know that code.  It was another reason they needed to go back and get him…if not ‘sooner’ then definitely ‘later’.  Nick paused and promised more answers if they could just start moving to a new location…any new location.

Laura reluctantly agreed and let him lead her, hand in hand, out of the Med Bay and towards the housing units.  It was his contention that, being some of the only areas without cameras, if they could get into one of the apartments unseen, they could finally rest and formulate some sort of plan.  He repeatedly stressed the need for stealth but she could only be so covert, shuffling along, at his side and slightly behind.  Nick held her left hand while she traced the cool, metallic wall with her right.  She tried to work through the conundrum in her head and to her, their antagonist couldn’t have been more obvious.

“Commander Milner,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.  Without slowing his pace, Nick looked over his shoulder at her.

“What about her?”  He shared her hushed tone and Laura found that she actually preferred it in her current state of blindness.  There was something about the tone and volume of the words that came her way which affected her ability to process them properly.  Having to rely solely on an auditory palate for the world to color itself from had created unique and surprising effects on the way her brain was rewiring itself but this was hardly the time for a scientific analysis.  For that reason alone, she hadn’t even begun to wonder why all the abstract hums, beeps, whirs and other background noise that made up the station seemed to drift through her mind as vibrant colors instead: a cacophonous kaleidoscope of Olympus’s soundtrack.  It made her dizzy if she let herself focus on it.

“That’s who we’re running from…Commander Milner.  I bet she went off the deep end…like Alex, except worse.  She deceived all three of you and tricked you into doing exactly what she wanted you to.  I mean…I haven’t got it all figured out yet but…it’s something like that, right?”

This did seem to halt Nick momentarily, and just as she was sure he was about to confirm her suspicions, he said; “Are you hungry?”  Offbeat and random seemed to be the man’s forte and Laura’s mouth literally dropped open.  In point of fact, however, she wasn’t.  It would be another twelve hours at least before her body would be ready to start accepting solid foods again.

“I can’t eat…I just boarded.  Didn’t you say you were the Medical Officer?”  She was teasing with her jab.  Under the current circumstances, anyone could be forgiven a large degree of ‘scatter-brain’.

“Of course,” he agreed; “however…I’m hungry.”  As if on cue his belly rumbled in confirmation.  “I helped myself to a Nutrient Shot back in Med but we hadn’t eaten in a couple of days.  I’m going to need a little something.”  Laura had no great alternate plan to propose so she simply shrugged her shoulders as if to say, ‘whatever’ and allowed him to adjust their course accordingly.  They shuffled along quietly together for some distance before Nick finally revealed what had been troubling his mind.

“Commander Milner…”  His voice was soft and low and conveyed a somber seriousness; “made sure that everyone called her ‘Jill’.  She was unlike anyone else you’d ever meet.  She was a pioneer and in my personal and professional opinion, she could have been one of the greatest deep-space astronauts of all time.  The Commander was something of a hero of mine…I would have given my life for hers without deliberation.”  The anguished pain she heard at the edges of his sentences sounded like it might break into sobs at any moment and she totally understood when he needed the time to collect himself.

Within a few minutes they found themselves in “Kitchen C”, just outside of “Cafeteria 47” otherwise labeled “The Rainbow Room Bar & Grill”.  Grabbing a menu and reading it aloud as they made their way back to the meagerly supplied shelves, Nick’s mouth began watering for something significant but he would have felt like a hypocrite if he had taken the time to fry a steak or whip up some bacon and eggs when he had pressed her so hard about their mobility while she was struggling to get out of the modified spacesuit.  She was inclined to agree.  Instead he pocketed several of the NASA distributed granola-bars which were designed somewhere underground by DARPA and tore into one immediately.  Laura was quite familiar with the bars herself having, on more than one occasion, brought them back home to Mike and Kevin, who had liked them a lot more than she did.  They didn’t taste bad with their genetically engineered oats, synthetic chocolate and hundreds of chemicals designed to improve production, however.  By her recollection…the ones from Walmart were worse.

While slowly sipping her water, Laura stood and listened to him lip-smack his way through two of the questionable “health food” bars and she couldn’t help but to think about her Commander again.

“Everything a growing cosmonaut needs to become big and strong,” she said more to herself than anything.  It did earn a “Hmm?” from Nick, however, whose mouth was too full to say anything else.  “Oh… it’s just something Dimitri liked to…you know what, never mind.”  Now was not the time for nostalgia.  Once she felt certain that the ex-Brit’s mouth was empty enough to speak, she put a little more pressure on what she knew was an already sore spot.  “So, Nick…Commander Milner.  You got so upset because of what she’s done…right?  I mean…you would have laid down your life for her and now she’s trying to kill you?  Believe me, the hellish irony isn’t lost on me…I can understand how painful that must be.”

Laura waited patiently for Nick to respond, hoping for some continuation of the story.  There were still so many questions that needed answering.  Not the least of which was: where the hell was Rukia in all of this?  She had been wary to bring up the subject of her friend since the last time they’d heard from her she painted quite the picture of opposition between herself and Nick, in particular.  As she waited, his unspoken seconds turned into minutes and the longer it stretched, the more uncomfortable she began to feel.  She would have given anything to see his face.  There was no way for her to know exactly how much time had passed before Nick cleared his throat and broke the silence or that he had been spending those minutes fighting to keep his emotions in check, but it was long enough that she would’ve said something herself had he not beaten her to it.

“You’ve got it wrong, Miss Hillman.”

“Laura,” she corrected him; “Laura’s fine.”  It wasn’t so much that she felt the current situation dictated less formality…which it did…but rather a case of her really not wanting to hear her last name, “Hillman”, said aloud.  It was the name shook took from her husband and shared with her child and, unfortunately, she might never be able to hear it again without thinking of them both involuntarily.  It was yet another unanticipated idiosyncrasy in the brave, new world that was the rest of her life.

“Laura…right, of course,” Nick agreed before releasing his hundredth sigh in the last hour.  “There’s really no easy way to say this…so I guess I’ll just say it.  The Commander is…”  Nick didn’t get to finish his sentence…or if he did, she was unable to hear it.  Without warning, a vibrating alarm filled the room, echoing off the kitchen’s metal walls and creating the effect of two or even three sets of competing digital beeps.  It was accompanied by flashing red emergency lights she was unable to see and when Nick spoke again, he had to do so at very nearly the top of his lungs.

“It’s a lockdown!” He screamed.  “She’s found us…we have to go now!”

Grabbing her hand, he jerked her towards the door with significantly more force than he meant to, almost sending her to the floor again.  As difficult as it had been to trying to navigate her environment without the benefit of sight, it was unimaginably worse now that her hearing was being taken away as well.  The simple act of just placing one foot in front of the other became a Herculean task and Laura allowed herself to be pulled more than progressing by her own volition.  One foot shuffling behind the other, she prayed she wouldn’t trip over anything…including her own feet.  Well aware that she wasn’t being expedient enough, it didn’t help when Nick called out something from in front of her, most of which was lost to the audio assault.  All she was able to make out was “…need to hurry…” and “…trapped for good…” She felt like she had a pretty good idea what he was trying to get across.

They made it out of the kitchen just before the doors sealed themselves and the blaring echoes behind them, apparently locking in the process, and partway through the Rainbow Room before the familiar alarm erupted again.  The open space and linen-draped walls of the dining area absorbed a large portion of the mentally grating blasts, allowing her to think…and walk…a little straighter than she had in the confined spaces of the kitchen.  Moving much quicker as a result, the motley pair easily made it out of the “lounge”.  Oddly enough, however, the alarm stopped as soon as they did, ceasing the exact moment they crossed the threshold.  The door didn’t close and lock and they stopped just outside of it.

“She’s fucking with us,” Nick concluded and after a moment; “I need you to hang tight for just a second.”

“What?  What the hell are you talking about?”  She didn’t sound happy.

“I dropped my bag…I have to run back in and get it.”

“What bag?”

“I had a bag with some supplies: food, medicine and the like.  I’d been grabbing stuff as we went and it must’ve fallen off my shoulder back there.  I think I see it…it’s not far.  It will only take a moment to run back in and grab it.”

“What about the door?” Laura asked; “The alarm?”

“That alarm is nothing more than a twenty-second warning of a lock-down.  Even she shouldn’t be able to override it.  If it goes off again, I should have more than enough time.  I’ll be quick.”  He pulled softly and, reluctantly, she let his hand slip away.  She couldn’t have really stopped him anyway.  As hard as it was to accept, the fiercely independent woman she had been was having to come to terms with her current state of vulnerability and it was having to do it so damn fast that it probably wasn’t good for her psyche.  The state of dependence she’d been forced into was bringing back emotions not felt since early childhood and random thoughts that were better-suited keeping their distance.  Don’t leave me, Daddy…I’m scared of the dark without you.

She followed his hustling progress as well as she could with his offering; “Almost got it”, “Here it is”, and “I’m coming back now” to aide her as he went.  Laura could hear his heavy breathing again once he was only a few feet away but he never quite made it back to her side.  The door to the Rainbow Room’s main entrance did close and lock…without warning…sealing off the space between them with an airtight and soundproof glass door.  If she hadn’t lost the ability to see, the sight of Nick screaming and pounding on the other side of the door, eyes wild and panicked, would have probably made her sick.  Instead, her only awareness was of the low, vibrating hum of “Concourse Delta” and the complete and utter helplessness felt in the pit of her stomach.  It was 1979 again and all she wanted to do was to pull the sheets over her head to hide from the monsters under her bed and in her closet.  Laura could feel herself regressing exponentially and she was getting dangerously close to the point of not coming back.

“Laura?”  A voice broke through her psychological swan dive…a familiar voice…and the joy she felt upon hearing it played a crucial part in holding back the madness.  There was still the fear that it may have been an auditory hallucination and when she heard, “Oh God, Laura…it is you,” her chest swelled as she tried to keep her ailing eyes from producing any tears.

“Rukia!” she cried towards the direction of the voice and then the women were clutching each other in a warm embrace.  It seemed like a lifetime since they had been together face to face and yet…neither of them wanted to let go.

“I was so worried about you Rukia.  I thought maybe Commander Milner had done something with you.” Laura whispered as they hugged.

“I’m sorry Laura.  I couldn’t say anything until I got you away from Nick.  I’ve been monitoring you guys and waiting for a chance to isolate you.  You have no idea how lucky you are.”  Laura pulled back and shook her head.

“I don’t understand.  Nick was trying to help.”

“No Laura…you don’t understand.”  Rukia’s voice had something of an edge to it.  “I don’t know what Geary said or did to you but…he’s a master liar.  If I were to tell you what he had planned for all of us it would sicken you.  The man is a lunatic; I probably saved your life.”  That was so hard to believe.  Nothing anyone was saying seemed to make a lick of sense.  Laura made a half-hearted attempt to sort the drastically different accounts when she remembered the most important thing.

“Dimitri!  We have to go back and help Dimitri.”

“Yea,” Rukia agreed; “we do.  I already moved Wang to a secure location but Commander Kapirski will still need our assistance.  I managed to get him on a stretcher but haven’t had a chance to move him.  I thought it was more important to stay close to you and Geary…watch for my opportunity.  I…I don’t know what I would’ve done if he had hurt you.”  Laura could hear the sincerity in her voice and it did nothing but further cloud her ability to judge the situation.  If she could just get a clear picture of exactly what was happening on Olympus, it would make dealing with it a whole hell of a lot easier.

“Where is Commander Milner in all of this?”  Jill Milner felt like the missing piece of this puzzle.  “In the last communication, you said she’d been put…what…in the brig?  Is she still…I mean…can we find her?”

“Definitely.”  Rukia squeezed Laura’s hands which she’d still been holding.  “I got her out of lock-up shortly after I was able to free myself.  We can go see the Commander right now.”  Not what Laura was expecting, the revelation came as a genuine shock and, despite the other woman’s words, she couldn’t stave off the feeling of mistrust she had for the OSS’s, should be former, commanding officer.  Maybe it was just the fact that she was the only crew member Laura had yet to encounter but ever since the first signs of chaos aboard the station made themselves known, she stayed behind the scenes.  It seemed logical to presume that she was the one pulling the strings behind the crew’s animosity; she was the Commander, after all.

“Okay…let’s do that.”  Laura was still wary but…she needed to know.  Commander Milner, or “Jill” if she believed Nick, could either be a strong ally if there was a schism in power here…or…or she will have found the mastermind behind all their current troubles.  Rukia said, “Okay” and Laura let her lead the way, making better progress than she did with Nick insistence on sneaking but amazed, nonetheless, that her muscles allowed her to continue on at all.  The fear of dropping at any second and passing out from exhaustion was a legitimate concern.

For that reason more than any other, Laura remained relatively quiet as they went, the majority of her cognitive abilities spent concentrating on continuing to place one foot in front of the other and staying upright.  Rukia remained relatively distracted as well, the tablet which she kept constantly in hand consuming most of her attention with its readings on all of Olympus’s operations.  The current situation had obviously forced her into a role with a lot more responsibility than that of a Communications Officer and it seemed the station only continued to function properly through her diligence…at least that’s the way it sounded as she spent the majority of her time tapping away at the touchscreen.  It would have been impressive as hell if Laura had a spare synapse to fire off a thought about it.

Laura didn’t bother to ask where Rukia was leading her and Rukia never bothered to tell her.  In her current state of exhaustion, bouncing from one frantic situation to another, she had given herself fully to the notion of now being safe.  Having been found by her old friend, learning that Dimitri was no longer laying on cold steel, and that both Alex and Nick…dangerous or not…were contained and alive was incredibly cathartic.  It gave her well-worn adrenal glands a much-deserved break.

They weren’t required to actually walk but for a short distance before Rukia was steering them into a mobility chamber: a glorified elevator than ran horizontally as well as vertically.  It was probably a good thing too as, even with transportation, it took nearly twenty minutes to arrive at their destination.  By the time Rukia was sliding her onto the hard, metal stool, Laura was so grateful to take the weight off her feet that it felt as good as a Lazy-Boy.  The stool was attached to a table which Laura surmised to be a dining area and she put her head down on her arms like pre-school nap-time.  All she wanted was to sleep.  The second she quit fighting it she was out.

When she finally came back to her sleeve was wet with drool and it felt like it had probably been a significant amount of time.  Much like her time in the capsule, however, the ability to properly detect and measure increments of time was impaired beyond the point of any degree of reliability.  Her body’s internal-clock had always been a source of consistency and it came as a shock to discover how closely tied it was with her ability to monitor an actual clock.  Outside of the steady hum of a few electric devices or appliances, the room was completely silent.

“Rukia?” she called out, her voice echoing off the cold walls.  The acoustics sounded very similar to the kitchen she had been earlier with Nick.

“I’m here,” Rukia replied from somewhere across the room.  “You’re okay.”  Laura was still tired and weak and for the first time in a week, her stomach was showing some interest in food.

“How long was I asleep?”  She could hear Rukia coming closer as she replied.

“Not too long…but you were out good.  I figured you probably needed to recharge a bit.”  She wasn’t wrong about that.  “You were asleep just long enough for me to take care of Geary.”   Any residual fogginess was quickly blown away and Laura shook her head.

“What do you mean, ‘take care of’?  What did you do to Nick?”

“Relax.”  Rukia plopped down into the seat next to hers and put her hand on her friend’s shoulder.  “It’s all okay now.”  Her words were steady and even and did a great job at conveying their honesty.  “Geary and Wang have both been processed…now we’re all on the same page.  There won’t be any more struggling for power, only…survival.  We can take care of Commander Kapirski together and then the future can be…well…whatever we want it to be.”  Laura had no idea what the Asian woman was referring to when she spoke of the men being “processed” but it could have been any number of things from a decontamination routine to binding agreement.  Regardless, the fact that they would all be getting along again was great news…except…

“Wait a second…”  It surprised her that it took so long for the thought to reveal itself but, given the strenuous ordeal her mind had been made to endure, it probably shouldn’t have.  “What about Commander Milner…Jill?  I thought we were going to see her?”

Rukia sighed and took her hand off Laura’s shoulder.  “Listen,” her voice took on a somber tone; “I wasn’t completely honest with you.  Thing is…I didn’t want to lay too much on you at one time.”

“Rukia,” Laura tried to match her even quality, not yet sure how to play the coming seconds.  “I think now would be the time to go ahead and lay it all on me.  I appreciate your concern…but I’m not a child you need to protect.”  There were a few moments of silence as Laura allowed Rukia time to consider her words, except it wasn’t complete silence.  Beneath the electric hums and even their breathing there was a small, gritty sound Laura knew very well.  Having heard it from her father for her entire life until his death, she knew that Rukia was grinding her teeth together.  She also knew that it was generally a result of stress.

“Okay…” Rukia began; “here’s the truth.  Commander Milner had been forced into the brig, as I stated before, but what I didn’t tell you was…that she committed suicide while she was in there.  By the time I was able to get to her…she was gone.  I was too late.”  She took a moment to swallow the lump in her throat before continuing.  “It had all been too much for her; the bombs on Earth and the mutiny had her on the edge and then when she was told that the Daedalus never made lift-off…it just…pushed her over, I guess.”

Laura understood why Rukia hadn’t wanted to tell her.  It was tragically sad and, even though she had never met the woman, she could see how the news of someone killing themselves due to enduring horrible circumstances…and then learning of new ones…might not be the best story to share with someone who was also enduring horrible circumstances.  Rukia had chosen the temporary sin of omission over deluding what was already thin morale.

“Oh, Rukia…I’m so sorry.”  She was too.  It had to have been a devastating loss.  Laura put her arms around her friend and the two women embraced for several seconds before Rukia quickly pulled away.

“Oh, shit…”  Something had her attention.

“What is it?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know…an alarm in engineering…E-Level.  Could be nothing but I need to check it out real quick.  Listen…give me thirty minutes or so and I’ll be back and then we can talk about what we’re going to do.”

“Okay,” Laura nodded her head; “and then get Dimitri.”

“Yea,” Rukia agreed.

“And Nick and Alex too?”

“Yea,” Rukia confirmed; “they’ll be there too.  I have to go, Laura.  Try to get some rest.”  She stood and quickly made her way out of the room, calling back to her just before the doors slid shut.  “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

It put a smile on Laura’s face, and she put her head back on the table and spread her arms out in a yawning stretch.  The fingertips of her right hand made contact with an unusual object and, stretching further, she took hold of…something.  Odorless and firm, in vacuum-sealed plastic, it wasn’t completely solid but felt tender and…wet.  If she didn’t know better she would have sworn it was a large, meaty steak.  The problem with that, however, was that there should have been little to no meat aboard the station until…and if…the Ariane-six made contact and it definitely wouldn’t just be laying around on a table like this. 

Rukia must’ve had it out for her next meal.  Satisfied with the probable logic of that possibility, Laura would have let it go too had her hand not encountered second package, differently proportioned but similar in consistency to the first.  She carefully slid down two seats until she found herself directly in front of a small pile of the mystery packages.  Working them through her hands one at a time and wracking her brain in the world’s worst “guess the Christmas present” game, she finally came across one she could recognize and it made her throw up a little water into her mouth.  It was a human foot.  The horror that gripped her as she held the wrapped appendage in her hands would not allow her to drop it even though that was all she wanted to do.  Her mind seemed as frozen as her body and the only thought she could produce was, this can’t be real, which repeated over and over.

It took a considerable mental exertion to free her hands of the offensive object and Laura struggled to consider her options.  Was she really going to just sit here and wait on Rukia without knowing for sure?  There was always the possibility, albeit unlikely, that she had misconstrued and misinterpreted what she thought she just felt but…she had to know for sure.  Reluctantly, she slowly peeled away the gel-infused bandage from her eyes and tried blinking several times.  Remarkably, and with complete thanks to the Prometheus injection, they were already significantly better.  There was a slight burning sensation and a large black spot that filled the center of her vision but the flashing was gone and if she concentrated she could make out the items on the edges of her periphery without actually looking directly at them.

It took several mind-numbing minutes of practice and an on-setting headache before she could turn herself at the proper angle to discern the pile of packaged meat…and yes…it was meat.  It was identifying a woman’s hand that put her in motion, however.  It was definitely time to get the hell out of there.  Scanning the room and, in turn, locating the exit proved to be even more difficult.  Every time she thought she saw something useful her instinct was to look at…and then obscure…whatever it was.  It was frustrating to no end…but it was better than being blind.

Sorting out her environment was time consuming but it eventually came together.  She was in another kitchen…a very large kitchen which seemed to spread out endlessly.   She had navigated past a couple of preparation tables before stumbling across a large, wooden butcher’s block drenched in bright red blood which she could only take in at a cock-eyed angle.  There was something with stained metal buried in the wood but the persistent instinct to look right at it kept her from fully distinguishing its form.  It was disturbing, nonetheless, and her best guess was that it was a meat cleaver.

Walking sideways to navigate her way around the gory table, she nearly lost her balance when her foot slipped in a slicked puddle of red.  Even with her poor tracking abilities, the sickening trail of blood was easy to follow, leading past the pile of soaked and shredded OSS uniforms and straight to the vacuum sealing machine where it began to dry and become sticky.  The pile on the large table next to the machine designed to maintain the freshness of food for the long haul of deep space nearly took her breath away.  The segmented parcels made it impossible to equate to human form but the sheer mass of it dictated that it had to be more than one…person.   Laura’s stomach lurched violently and she was suddenly grateful there was nothing for it to produce.  Had Rukia done this?  Was she looking at the remains of Alex, Nick and Jill?  It seemed inconceivable and was at such odds with everything she knew as sanity.

Spinning on her heels and nearly slipping in blood once again, Laura decided she had lingered long enough when the door, which she had yet to locate, slid open somewhere to her left.  She cocked her head and did her best to target the direction but could make out very little beyond the fact that someone had entered.

“Laura…don’t freak out.”  Rukia was back…and she was taking slow, deliberate steps in Laura’s direction.  “You need to let me explain.”  With each step her friend took towards her, Laura would take one in the opposite direction, keeping her neck strained at the uncomfortable angle required to pin-point the movement.  “This is just about simple math.  Without the supplies from the Ariane-six, six people would have survived for no longer than three weeks.  That’s it…three weeks…and then we all die horrible deaths anyway.”  Laura nearly fell over a plate stand, knocking the top two or three to the floor with a crash and for a split-second lost Rukia completely.  Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be trying to take advantage and continued with the slow pace of both her words and her steps, allowing Laura plenty of time to locate her again.

“However…if we supplement our resources with eight-hundred pounds of high-protein meat and cut that number down to two then…well…we can make it.  We only have to survive for two years before it would be safe enough to take the Daedalus back to Earth.  I’ve worked this problem through several times, Laura…you have to believe me.  There’s only one way for two people to make it out of this alive.”

Still backing away and sickened to her core, Laura didn’t know how to reply.  The reality and full implications of Rukia’s words were slowly seeping into her realm of acceptance, one dreadful thought at a time.  Nick said Rukia told them the Daedalus didn’t make it.  Rukia said Jill killed herself from hearing the same thing.  It was Rukia all along…she was responsible for all their deaths.  Laura’s faith in human nature was being torn away, one painful strip at a time, and she could feel the qualities that made her the person she was going with it.  No matter how this situation resolved itself, she would be a fundamentally different person afterwards.

Then there was the big question: why hadn’t Rukia tried to kill her?  When she said “two people,” had she meant the two of them?  If that was the case, then…Oh Dear Lord no…

“Two people?” Laura blurted out, surprising even herself with the volume.  “Rukia…did you kill them…all?  What about Dimitri!  Did you kill Dimitri?”  The combination of her forceful screams and still trying to keep Rukia’s general vicinity in view sent Laura backwards and she braced herself against a table to keep from tumbling over.  As soon as she felt the moisture on her hands, she knew which table she had grabbed.  Too furious to be revolted, she held her bloody palms up in what she hoped was the right direction.  “Is this HIS blood?!” she screamed again before pausing to let Rukia respond.  Rukia sighed and this time Laura could barely hear it over her own panting.  Now that she was relying more on her eyesight again, her cochleae and ear-drums were no longer pulling Superman duty.

“Laura…” Rukia’s voice sounded like she was talking to a small child who would barely understand the words.  “I already told you.  It’s going to take two of us to process him…he’s a big guy.  Until he’s processed, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to kill him.”

“So he’s alive?” Laura interrupted.

“For now…yeah.  The Commander is still strapped down on a stretcher in Bay Six.”  Laura felt some sense of hope return, having gotten the answer she was least expecting but it far from outweighed the shock she felt at Rukia’s presumption.

“And you honestly thought I was going to help you to…what…kill him…cut him up…eat him?  Are you out of your fucking mind?”  Laura hoped she knew it was a rhetorical question because the woman was quite obviously as mad as the Hatter, sans the limericks and witty repartee.  “I would rather die than do something like that, Rukia.  I would have thought you’d know that.”

“Well, Laura…that’s always an option…but…before you make that kind of decision I think you should know all the facts.”

“Facts?” Laura cried; “What bloody ‘facts’?  The only ‘fact’ I see is that you’re as big a psychopath as the people responsible for killing my husband and child.  You better hope there’s not an after-life because there’s a special place in hell for you, bitch!”  Rukia’s demeanor seemed unfazed by her outburst.

“Laura…I know you’re upset…but please, hear me out.”  She paused for a moment and, when Laura didn’t interrupt, decided to continue; “The Commander’s being alive isn’t just for…freshness.  I said ‘two people’ because it will take a minimum crew of two in order to maintain Olympus.  This is only even possible because of the work I’ve been doing since we lost contact with the Earth.  The way I’ve adjusted the systems are very specific and therefore…one of those crew members must be me.  The other can either be you or the Commander and…because I wanted it to be you…I wanted to let you decide.

But be aware that this only works one way mathematically.  Just in case you’re thinking that Olympus could hold a crew of three…don’t.  It will skew the numbers just enough to make the whole endeavor futile…and essentially…a waste of lives.  For there to be meaning in any of this…it has to be two people.  Two people…two years.”

Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  Rukia sounded too calculating and articulate to be insane but she was definitely a sociopath, ascribing no real value to any human life other than her own.  It suddenly seemed odd that she had chosen Laura as her favorite based on what was now such ancient history and knowing how little Rukia seemed invested in previous attachments.

“You honestly believe Dimitri will help you to cut and eat…me?”  Laura knew Dimitri more than well enough to know that he would never go along with something like this.  Rukia suddenly closed the distance between them in half and Laura could do nothing but stagger and try to see her…which was hard to do without looking at her.

“Well here’s the thing Laura…I won’t need his help to kill or cut you up.  You’re not as sizable a job as he would be.  Once it’s just the Commander and I who are left…well, I think you know he’ll believe whatever I tell him.  Including the freak shipment of four sides of beef that came in with the last supply run.  I don’t know…maybe I’ll come up with something better.  The point is…whatever it is…he’ll believe me.”  Laura was scared.  She had lost everything that held any importance to her except Dimitri…and now she was being told that the only way she could live was if she lost him as well.  All things considered, it made sense to just give up.  If there was nothing left to live for then why bother living?  Except…down deep, where the primal instincts and urges lived, she wanted to live.  Beyond rationality and defying logic…she wanted to live dammit, and it wasn’t for the pursuit of happiness.  That ship had sailed.  It was that thing inside of her that told her she had to…what was it Rukia had said…survive.

Sliding her hands back to the cutting table again, Laura began reaching out behind her as nonchalantly as she could before finding and taking hold of the cleaver’s handle.  She was only able to pull off the illusion because of the funky angle she was already standing at in order to keep Rukia somewhat targeted.

“Okay,” Laura said, “I’ll do it.  I’ll help you.”

“Really?” Rukia sounded hopeful.

“But you have to answer one question for me first…and be honest.”

“Okay,” she nodded, still not noticing Laura’s left hand gripping the dull end of the chopping device embedded in the wood-grain table-top.

“Why me?   You said you wanted it to be me…so…why me?”  Now that Rukia was closer, Laura could hear her grinding her teeth again, this time much louder than before.  It was her ‘tell’.  She was about to reveal something she didn’t want to, which meant she was probably going to be telling the truth.  Rukia had to believe they were beyond the point of lies now, anyway.  Laura hoped so, at least.

“I chose you, Laura Hillman, because, next to me, you have the smallest body size and caloric intake to provide maximum output efficiency.  The odds of my survival are twelve percent better with you than the Commander.”  If there were any laughter left in Laura’s soul, she would have laughed.  She wanted to laugh.  There was no doubt Rukia was telling the truth because it reflected her cold and calculating nature perfectly.  She didn’t choose Laura to be her last neighbor ever for any reasons of friendship or even familiarity.  It really was a math equation to her where “X” equaled “co-worker” and “Y” equaled “TV dinner” and it really didn’t matter who was which variable as long as it came out to “Z”: her continued and extended existence.

The answer wasn’t exactly what Laura was expecting but it was close enough to push her to the end of her own little calculation.  Was her desire to live, despite the multitude of reasons not to, stronger than her desire to make sure that Rukia didn’t?  Was self-preservation “greater than or lesser than” the chorus of her blood-thirsty nerves screaming in unison to bury the blade somewhere deep in Rukia’s skull?  It, for damn sure, wasn’t “equal to” and Laura knew with complete certainty that the other woman’s life needed to be ended; she shouldn’t be alive for even another minute.  Even if she were the very last human in existence…she would need to be put down.  Like a rabid dog, it was an act of mercy; that kind of sickness just…shouldn’t exist.

Laura yanked on the meat cleaver’s handle with every ounce of energy she had.  In her mind, she saw the large cutting device sliding free from the wooden surface and then gliding through the air in one swift and fluid motion.  It would make contact with Rukia long before she’d even registered an incoming attack…maybe not a killing blow, but good enough to get the party started.  A single, lethal strike was a better death than she deserved anyway.  The problem with all of that, however, is that the cleaver refused to budge.  She yanked a second time and, of course, by this point, it was painfully obvious what she was trying to do.

The third time seemed like it might be the charm, as the handle moved just a bit, and Laura turned her head to reestablish a bearing on her ex-friend.  Inconveniently timed as it was, she was able to catch the movement before her nose took the worst part of Rukia’s fist, shattering the bridge and sending her sprawling to the floor in a pool of other people’s blood.  Her face felt like it was on fire, except burning from within.  Laura tried looking up through the red haze and could barely see Rukia straddled over her.  The psychopath was so close that the black spot only concealed her face and chest, so Laura was able to easily detect the meat cleaver dangling from her right hand.  Sure…after she’d loosened it up for her.

“I’m not going to lie, Laura…I’m a little disappointed.” Rukia expounded.  “For some reason, I really thought you were going to see things my way.  I thought we could…well…I don’t know what I thought.  I guess it doesn’t matter now.”  She raised the cleaver in a striking position and Laura held her hand up in front of her face, knowing full well it was a useless gesture.  “I’ll make sure the Commander gives a eulogizing toast in your honor the first time we dine on your liver.  I’m sure it will be very moving.”  Laura couldn’t see her face, but she could swear she heard a smile in that sick bitch’s voice.  “In the meantime…try not to fight this.”

Rukia raised the blade over her head and began arcing it down with as much force as she could muster which, given her already proven ability to butcher, was probably quite a lot.  Laura prayed it would be quick and relatively painless and she wondered if she would get to see Mike and Kevin again…but that wasn’t the same thing as acceptance.  She didn’t want to find out what happens when you die.

As the blade slid through the air, it glinted the fluorescent kitchen lights on one of its only clean spots and momentarily completed her blindness.  In that same instant, there was a hollow pop from across the room which made Laura think, of all things, of champagne being opened.  In the back of her mind, Kevin’s voice asked, “Is it a special occasion, Mommy?”  Perhaps it was.  Rukia suddenly lost her grip on the deadly cutlery, sending it flying from her hand and clanking away unseen; and Laura had no idea what had happened. Due to the flash of light and the ever-present blank spot, she was unable to see the look of astonished surprise on Rukia’s face.  Nor did she see the thin line of red that had begun to run down her cheek from the tiny hole in her temple.

Laura remained frozen in her spot on the floor, like a child waiting for admonishment, for the several long seconds that Rukia continued to stand there.  Face burning, eyes stinging, she waited for some type of aggressive impact, the fight all but beaten from her, and it came as a complete shock when her tormentor tumbled down on top of her, crumpling into an immobile pile.  Laura screamed and desperately tried to pull herself from beneath the lifeless body, much heavier than she would have imagined, while her hands and feet slipped in the blood.  For one horrifying split-second, she was convinced that it wasn’t going to happen…and then Rukia’s body was lifting itself off of her.  No…it was being lifted.  Another second later…she was too.

The searing ache and pooled blood around her nose and eyes had her nearly blinded again, but she knew she was safe the moment she felt the strong arms wrap around her and lock her into their embrace.  It was Dimitri.  Her commander, co-pilot, protector and dear, dear friend had promised to keep her safe no matter what and somehow…he kept his promise.  Held tightly in his arms and covered in blood, it was the only place in the universe that she wanted to be in that moment and Laura found herself unable to hold back the torrent of salty tears, despite the acidic pain they brought with them.  Seemingly, the roller-coaster ride of emotions had come to an end and it had cost her everything to ride it.  The relief that it was over, even for just that moment, was like nothing Laura had ever dreamed…or desired.