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Chapter 16
Zach Croft: 2053
Throwing up in zero-g was probably the worst thing he could do.
Zach clutched his stomach and tried to suppress the bass-boosted speaker system in his abdomen. Despite his best efforts, his stomach continued to gurgle and vibrate. Through the wall-sized window, Earth danced in and out of view while the dropship blasted away on a rounded trajectory. It only made the dizziness worse.
From six seats over, Mabel looked down at her drifting hands. After a few moments, she ran her fingers through her hair to find every strand was pointing straight up. She brushed her blonde locks away from her forehead and smiled.
At the command module, Ryker floated with his toes pointing perfectly forward, his feet levitating an inch or two above the floor. Then, he wedged his toes in the gap beneath the control module to steady himself.
Ryker took a deep breath and stared intently at the screen. “We should be approaching the Gateway any minute now.” Ryker turned his attention to the window. As he predicted, the Gateway—small at first but gradually growing larger—materialized from the darkness.
A shiver shot down Zach’s spine. They were really doing this; they were really going back to the Gateway. After twenty years, it was finally time.
What if I’m wrong? What if we can’t get the fuel?
Carver didn’t want to reopen the Exodus program, but the man wasn’t an idiot. He’d abandon Earth and evacuate whoever he could to the Gateway if it came down to it. But to do that, the Gateway needed to be in orbit. Earth orbit. And Zach was taking it to Mars. If they made it safely to Mars, got the irogen, and made it back to Earth, no problem. But what if they died trying to get the irogen? The Gateway would be stuck orbiting Mars, far outside OSE’s reach. Humanity’s last hope would be eliminated.
Zach made a promise to himself that they weren’t going to die on Mars. They would make it back with the irogen in one piece.
“Holy shit,” Mabel said in awe.
Zach broke from his thoughts to focus on the window. The Gateway was just outside now. It was massive, over a mile long, and half a dozen stories tall. The station was a marvel of engineering, one Zach still had a hard time believing OSE had been able to build. It was a different time back then, with a vastly bigger budget and unimaginable resources at OSE’s disposal.
The cylindrical station was divided into three sections: the Spark, the Homestead, and the Works.
The closest section—the Spark—was relatively short and covered in solar arrays that laid flat against the metal armor. To pack in as many panels as possible, the plates had mere inches between each other. Together, they generated enough energy to power an entire city.
Beneath the arrays, inside the Spark, was the continuum drive that allowed the Gateway to warp spacetime. Originally developed using the irogen deposits found in the Saudi Arabian desert, the engine was intended to run on the irogen that would be freely available once Prescott was operational.
But that, of course, was a mistake.
The entire reason for Zach’s journey to Mars was to secure enough irogen to power the continuum drive. With the drive operating at full power, the Gateway could make it to Alpha Cen, ferrying a thousand people to the new world. They wouldn’t be able to save as many people as they would have if the Exodus program hadn’t been canceled, but it would be enough to ensure humanity’s continued existence.
Past the Spark was the Homestead. It was the largest sector, designed to house the colonists while they weren’t in cryo. A thousand people used to call it home. Now, it was a ghost town. Gigantic metal discs bordered the Homestead on both sides, radiating a subtle green light. Zach had never learned what they did, but they made the station look like something out of a movie.
“So are we going to be tumbling around up there, or…?” Mabel asked.
Ryker gave her question little notice. “No. There’s gravity.”
“How?”
Ryker snorted. “Shit if I know. Ask OSE.”
The Works was toward the front of the ship. It contained some of the Gateway’s most essential systems—the hydrofarm, waste treatment, and water filtration—plus the cockpit, which jutted like a bird’s beak from the front.
Ryker had a solemn look on his face as the Gateway drew near. His shoulders rolled forward. His eyes were full of dread, although he tried to hide it. Being back there so soon after he escaped must have been weird for him. It was strange for Zach, and he hadn’t been trapped there for decades.
A burning sensation on Zach’s skin made him realize how hot he was. Sweat rolled down his face and dripped into his lap. He pulled his burgundy Harvard sweater off, taking one last look at the big embroidered H before stowing the sweater beneath his seat. He made a mental note to come back for it later.
With the sweater off, he wore nothing but a plain white undershirt. A ring of wetness stained the neckline and the middle of his back. He hated the way sweat felt.
“We’re going to enter through Z-Deck.” Ryker manipulated the control stick. The dropship veered skyward. “Just a heads up.”
The ship shot up, rising maybe a hundred feet before it leveled out just above the Gateway. Then, after a moment, the multi-directional thrusters sent the ship flying down at a sloped angle until it was barely thirty meters from the station. The dropship tilted farther until it pointed straight down at the cosmos below.
Zach could almost feel the vibrating station beneath his feet. The ship sputtered downward—following the curve of the Gateway—then began to back up against the station. Zach blinked at the starry darkness outside the main window, then glanced over his shoulder at the main blast door. The porthole window provided just a glimpse of the outside of the ship. A flicker of gray here. A glint of light there.
Zach looked back at Ryker’s control module. Hazy footage appeared on the screen. The grainy live stream settled until the image was crystal clear. It showed their target airlock—octagonal in shape, the cylindrical decon shower jutting ten feet out like a sore thumb, the letter Z molded into the metal just above the fixture—along with big rectangular spotlights on either side that shone on the dropship.
“Ryker, you seem like a smart guy…” Mabel said, her eyes squeezed tightly closed. “How many times have you flown one of these things?”
Ryker pressed his lips together and craned his neck to read something on the screen. “Thousands of times in a simulator. Once for real.”
“Hm,” Mabel replied, clearly dissatisfied with his answer. Her bony fingers closed tighter around her restraints. “Are you sure you—”
“Yes, I know what I’m doing,” Ryker answered calmly. “But I need to focus, so—”
“I’ll shut up,” Mabel said.
Just then, a series of thick gray tethers shot from unseen compartments on the sides of the dropship and latched onto the rim of the airlock. Once in place, they began drawing the dropship toward the Gateway.
Zach’s sweat turned cold against his neck. To calm his nerves, Zach imagined he was in a cabin high up in the mountains. So high up, in fact, that the sky was pitch black and full of stars. He pictured himself looking out a window at the snowy landscape, the trees, the rocks. And then, at… what’s that? Yes, that there. The tumbling white. The shaking of the ground. His eyes widened at the avalanche barreling toward him, getting closer every instant he sat idle. But he couldn’t go outside. No, he could never do that. Where he was, so incredibly high up in the mountains, the air was far too thin for him to breathe. There was nothing he could do but sit and watch his end come to him. That’s how Zach felt watching the Gateway get closer and closer—first sixty feet away, then forty, then twenty.
A moment later, there was a loud thud, and the dropship went still. For a few seconds, everyone remained rigid. Not a single muscle in Zach’s body dared to move.
Then, Zach kneaded his stomach with his knuckles and realized it was no longer gurgling. Gravity—that was it. It had to be. Cautiously, Zach undid his restraints and pushed on the arms of his seat until he reached a standing position. Sure enough, he didn’t float toward the ceiling—he stayed upright against the plated floor. The dropship was attached to the Gateway. They had made it.
Ryker looked between Zach and Mabel, nodding to unheard words in his head. “I’ll go in first… I should make sure everything’s online before you guys board.”
Zach knew Ryker wanted to go first so he could have a minute to himself, so he replied, “Go ahead. I need a moment to catch my breath anyway. Mabel?” Zach glanced at her with raised eyebrows. She nodded.
“I’ll let you know when it’s all clear.” Ryker cut through the center aisle between two rows of smooth leather seats. He reached the blast door, pulled the steel handlebar release, and stepped back as the airlock parted in the middle. He stepped through and shivered as jets in the decontamination shower drenched him in icy gas.
Eventually, the plumes of chemical-laced air fizzled out. The door on the other side opened, giving way to a small deck—maybe thirty by thirty feet—with white-colored walls and bluish overhead lights. With the blast door open, a flood of antiseptic-smelling air crept into the dropship and burned Zach’s nostrils.
The odor reminded him of the infirmary back at OSE. The last time he’d been there, Ryker had just punched him in the face. Then, Carver showed up and spewed some bullshit about the man on the dropship—Ryker—being a spy from another country.
Zach cleared his throat and wiped Carver from his mind. He took a minute to look around, then walked over to Mabel and extended his hand to her. She took it and stood up with a wobble.
“Should we wait for Ryker’s all clear?” she asked.
“The lights wouldn’t be on if life support was down. I think it’s fine.”
“If you say so,” Mabel said as they started for the airlock.
The decon shower looked as if someone had halved a school bus and welded it to the side of the station. The room was empty. The grated ceiling hummed overhead. On one wall was a glass case embedded in the paneling. Zach could see spacesuits, flashlights, radios, and oxygen tanks stowed neatly on racks or in small, translucent bins.
Once inside the decon shower, a cold, unwelcoming gas blasted from the ceiling and completely engulfed them. Zach tensed up. It felt like being in one of those money-grabber games from the arcades of his childhood, with hair and flaps of clothing flying every which way. He could picture the bacteria and other contaminants dying on his skin as the disinfectants blew from above.
Once the shower ended, Zach waited patiently alongside Mabel for the airlock leading into the station to open.
Two seconds. Nothing.
Ten seconds. Still nothing.
Zach shot a glance at Mabel, then up at the ceiling. He wondered whether the sensors had found something on them, some sort of biohazard. He considered retreating into the dropship, but before he could step back, the blast door closed behind him. With the entrance to the Gateway still sealed, they were trapped.
The lights went red. A siren began to blare, filling the decon shower with an ear-splitting wail.
“LAUNCH INITIATED,” said the intercom.
“What does that mean?” Mabel yelled through the racket.
Zach knew what it meant.
He ran to the Gateway airlock and pressed his face against the glass. The deck inside was flooded with the same bloody light, along with the illumination of a few flashing yellow bulbs against the walls. Ryker stood in the center of the room, looking around with confusion. Zach pounded on the porthole. The motion seemed to catch Ryker’s attention. He made eye contact with Zach, then bolted for the far corner of the dock. He consulted the readout on a terminal embedded in the wall, then turned around and shouted something at Zach. His words were inaudible between the shrieking siren and the thick airlock door.
Zach signaled that he couldn’t hear. Ryker sprinted to the airlock, tapped his finger on the glass, and pointed at something behind Zach.
Zach glanced at the glass case of spacesuits and realized what Ryker was trying to tell him. “Get a suit on!” Zach roared to Mabel and ran over to the case. He yanked the doors open and pulled out a pair of suits.
“Why?” Mabel asked.
“Just do it!”
He and Mabel pulled on their suits and connected their oxygen tanks. Zach’s helmet clicked on and, with a hiss, the suit pressurized.
Ryker’s voice crackled in the helmet’s intercom. “Zach, Zach, can you hear me? Mabel?” His voice sounded strained, distant, and grainy.
Zach went back to the window and looked into the deck. At the terminal, Ryker was standing with a headset on. He continued, “Am I patched through to the suits? Hello?”
“Yes, I’m here,” said Zach. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Ryker breathed out in exasperation. “The dropship’s decoupling.”
“Why?” Mabel asked, then looked back at the dropship. Steam wafted up from the tiny crack in the floor between the docked ship and the Gateway.
“Can you stop it?” Zach asked.
“I’m trying,” Ryker’s fingers clacked loudly against the terminal’s keyboard, “but nothing’s going through. I’m locked out.”
“You’ve got to get us out of here!” Mabel shouted.
“I said I’m trying!” Ryker yelled in frustration.
In the dim red light, Zach scanned for anything to grab onto. The glass case would shatter under stress, so that was a no-go. A few pipes ran along the wall but were too thin to bear much weight.
“Here!” Mabel said. Her gloved fingers worked their way into the groove between two sections of the vented ceiling. She pushed up, slid the panel to the side, and hooked her hands into the newly revealed space.
Zach was about to do the same when another thought crossed his mind. If Mabel was so easily able to move the plate, what in the world would the vacuum of space do? It would tear the ceiling to pieces, turning it into a barrage of shrapnel and taking Mabel along with it. “Wait!” Zach shouted.
Before the warning had escaped his lips, the dropship separated from the Gateway, and all the air in the decon shower was sucked out into space. Zach managed to get hold of one of the sturdier pipes on the wall. Mabel was not so lucky. Her feet were swept out from under her as the ceiling tile she had grasped tore away from its rivets.
Zach had always thought that in moments like this, time would slow down. But no. Time didn’t slow, falter, or change in any way as Mabel bent into a flying L, shot ten feet back, and was thrown against the airlock of the now-separated dropship. Her hands shot out in front of her, pawing desperately for something to grab onto as her legs kicked at the abyss below.
Since all the air in the decon shower had been vented out to space, Zach could safely let go of the pipes without fear of being sucked into the void—the Gateway’s artificial gravity was still holding his feet to the floor. He swiveled around to look at Mabel. Taking hold of the pipes again, he ran to the edge of the decon shower and extended his hand.
Mabel reached for him, her fingertips brushing his.
But she was just out of reach.
Zach stretched further away from the wall, barely hanging onto the pipe. Mabel clawed at him desperately until she finally managed to get hold of his hand. Zach pulled her back into the module. Once inside the gravity field, she dropped to the floor, gasping for air inside her helmet.
Zach kept his eyes on the dropship as it drifted into space. Once it was a safe distance from the Gateway, its engines ignited, and it made a purposeful turn back toward Earth. Zach realized then that it wasn’t just some random malfunction—someone at OSE was controlling it, piloting it remotely.
The dropship would inevitably return to Earth, and OSE would open it up, expecting Zach and Ryker to be inside. But all they’d find would be air and empty seats. And the Harvard sweater he left behind.
Damn it, Zach thought. I loved that sweater.
Once their breathing had returned to normal, Zach and Mabel came to the inner airlock.
“Ryker! Open the door!” Zach yelled.
A moment passed before a response came. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Open it!” Mabel added.
“It won’t let me.”
Zach groaned as he realized: opening the airlock without a vessel docked on the other side of the decon shower would suck Ryker and everything inside the deck into the vacuum of space. It would probably vent a lot of the station’s air too.
“What’s he talking about?” Mabel asked.
“We need to find another way in,” Zach mumbled. Then, to Ryker, he said, “How do we do that?”
Though Zach could only see the back of Ryker’s head through the window, he could almost picture Ryker’s expression as he said, “I don’t know.”
Ryker Gagarin: 2053
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know?'” Zach stared at Ryker through the porthole window.
“Just give me a minute,” Ryker rasped. His throat felt like sandpaper. His hands shook. Sweat filled the creases of his palms. He looked around the deck for answers, studying the dim screens on the walls while trying to think of an alternative.
“Open the fucking door!” Mabel shouted into the intercom.
“There’s no way! The station won’t allow it.” Ryker clenched his fists and pressed his knuckles against his temples, teeth grinding together as he wracked his brain for an idea. “Is there anything on the outside of the ship? Another airlock or a service duct, maybe?”
“I’ll check,” Zach said and took off toward the wide opening of the decon shower.
“Tell me what you see,” Ryker approached his side of the airlock and leaned his hands against the edges of the window, “and I’ll try to get you in through there.”
“I’ll do my best.” Zach reached the edge of the tunnel. Then, holding onto the wall, he maneuvered his body out of the decon shower and against the outer shell of the Gateway, where Ryker could no longer see him. Zach clicked his tongue, searching, then said, “There are a few windows, but I can’t see an airlock or…” He paused for a moment before cursing under his breath. “Shit. Yeah, nothing.” He carefully returned to Mabel’s side. “No other doors or hatches that I can see.”
“So?” Mabel asked. She tugged on the arms of her spacesuit and tilted her head downward. A piece of sweat-slicked hair fell over her narrowed eye.
“I’m thinking,” Ryker said. He paced back to the center of the deck, trying to remember Z-Deck’s layout. There had to be vents out there somewhere. Or were there?
Frustrated, Ryker’s mind returned to opening the door. How can I do that? He wasn’t lying when he said the station wouldn’t let him.
With his brow tensed so hard that the muscles in his face hurt, Ryker thought of an idea. It was bad. Really bad. But it could work. He would have to go down to the data center where the Gateway’s primary control systems were housed. From there, he could manually override the door. The proper entrance to the data center was clear across the station—it would take him at least thirty minutes just to get there, plus who knew how long to figure out how to override the door. Zach and Mabel could be dead before he finished.
The only way to get down there faster was via the maintenance ducts, but they were risky. First, they were a labyrinth of poorly marked tunnels barely wide enough for a man to pass through. They were designed for quick access to make essential repairs, not for traversing the whole ship. Second, the heat inside could be unbearable. If Ryker got lost, he’d cook in there before he found his way out.
Time was slipping away. The oxygen tanks keeping Zach and Mabel alive would only last so long before they were empty. Ryker realized he had to accept the inevitable: there was no other way to open the airlock. He had to get to the data center as fast as possible, which meant passing through the service ducts and hoping not to melt in the process.
“Where are you going?” Zach asked as Ryker headed for the exit.
“Just stay on the line with me!” Ryker tightened his headset, opened the ship-side blast door, and entered the hall. It was cold. Freezing. The air was thinner than he remembered.
As he looked down the wide corridor, his exhales lingering in the frigid air, he suddenly felt dizzy at the thought of being back on the Gateway.
After everything he did to escape.
Ryker closed his eyes and tried to push the thoughts out of his head. He couldn’t allow himself to go there, not with Zach and Mabel breathing on borrowed time. After taking a moment to center himself, he opened his eyes and sprinted down the hall. At the first intersection, he turned right, then left, then left again, then right. As he ran, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Earth through one of the wide-framed windows that lined the corridors.
He stopped at a small computer lab and grabbed a laptop, patch cords, and a thumb drive. Then he continued running until he reached the entrance to a stairwell—the biggest stairwell in the entire ship. It went down six levels, winding and winding, each step painted with a neat stripe of blue, ultimately leading into an expansive warehouse-like room with a low roof. The flickering lights above him buzzed and whined.
“You still with me?” Ryker asked.
“For now,” Mabel replied. “But hurry.”
“I’m trying.”
Ryker ran into the service bay, expecting the motion-triggered lights to go on as he moved. They didn’t. He didn’t have time to wonder why. Instead, he continued through the shadows and into the dark. It was the type of dark that made Ryker feel watched, as if he might turn around and see a pair of yellow eyes staring at him from the shadows. Fighting his fear, he made his way to a thick-handled hatch adjacent to the wall and lifted the lid with a creak.
A light turned on in the duct, and Ryker stared into the cavity for a moment. He listened to the station’s deep rumble, to the air whistle through winding vents. Then, he climbed in and shut the hatch above him. A series of LED bulbs lit up in rapid succession down the narrow duct. Ryker extended his arms into the main portion of the tunnel, which was about chest level, and pulled himself into it. He immediately remembered how much he hated tight spaces.
“Keep talking, alright?” Ryker said to Zach. “You’re being too quiet… I need to know you’re okay.” A beep sounded over the intercom, prompting Ryker to ask, “What was that?”
“It’s my damn oxygen,” replied Zach. “I grabbed a half-empty tank.”
“How much do you have left?”
He heard Zach shift a bit. “It says twenty-seven percent.”
Ryker cursed and pressed his lips shut. Dust had accumulated in the ducts over the years, and Ryker fought to avoid inhaling it. He wheezed and coughed, each convulsion causing his back to arch and hit the aluminum ceiling. Another few meters down the duct and the air began to heat up.
The stifling air seemed to press in all around Ryker, nearly confining him in place and rendering his lungs inoperable. The metal was hot to the touch, and every second his arms rested against it, he felt like the skin was melting. He thought of how eggs cook in a pan, the bubbling flaps around the edges of the egg whites rippling in the heat. He could almost hear the sizzling, the crackling. He could practically smell it.
“What are you going to do?” Zach asked.
“I’m gonna try to override the door commands.”
“Try?”
“I’ve never done this, but the system’s controls are pretty similar. Worst comes to worst, I can open up the airlock controller and manually bypass the failsafes.”
“You know how to do that?”
“Don’t worry. I had to do something similar to the artificial gravity controller when it broke.”
“And how’d that go?”
Ryker paused. “For six months, I slept on the ceiling.”
“Great,” Zach said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I feel so much better.”
Ryker continued down the air duct. The weight of his elbows caused indents in the thin metal that quickly flattened out after a second or two. The toes of his shoes screeched along the duct as they dragged behind him.
Another beep came through the grainy radio. “Twenty-five,” Zach reported.
Thankfully, the closer Ryker got to the data center, the more the heat faded—the data center was kept at an icy temperature to prevent the computers inside from overheating.
Soon, Ryker could see the exit. Mustering his remaining strength, he crawled toward it until his fingers grasped the grate. He pushed it until it came off and landed with a crash on the tiled floor.
After slipping from the grate and into the data center, Ryker looked up to survey his surroundings. It was an expansive space with dozens of rows of towering server racks. Terminals with glowing screens lined one wall. The light burned his eyes.
“Twenty,” Zach said. Ryker could hear the tension creeping into his voice. “Almost done?”
“Almost.”
Zach Croft: 2053
“Get hold of something,” said Ryker through the radio. “When the door opens, all the air will rush out—probably whatever’s not strapped down too. Stay close to the walls.”
“Okay.” Zach and Mabel took hold of a pipe. Zach’s suit beeped again.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Okay, here we go. One … two … three.”
The airlock slid open, and Zach’s and Mabel’s feet were swept off the ground.
Two boxes from the deck flew through the open cavity and ejected out to space. Zach hugged the wall as tightly as he could, resting the glass forehead of his helmet against the surface, his hands clasping over one another around the pipe.
A third box tipped over before exiting the deck, and its contents—power tools, spare parts, and handfuls of loose screws—spilled out. Like a barrage of shrapnel, the items tore through the decon shower. A giant power drill spun directly at Zach’s face. Reflexively, he let go of the pipe with one hand, using it to block the tool from shattering his helmet’s face mask. Although he managed to deflect the worst of the impact, his arm redirected the drill’s diamond-tipped bit into the side of his oxygen tube, puncturing it.
“Shit!”
A beep emitted from Zach’s suit.
Then another.
And another.
The beeps sped up, one succeeding the other until they blended with Zach’s increasing gasps for air. It was pulling the air out of his suit. It wasn’t just stopping the flow of new oxygen. It was practically sucking the air straight from Zach’s lungs.
“Zach’s suit is breached!” Mabel declared. “Ryker!”
“Just hold on a little longer!” Ryker answered.
Zach’s voice came next, scratchy and pleading. “Air. I—I…”
“I know!” cried Ryker.
Zach’s movements grew slower. Weaker. He could feel himself slipping away, his grip on the wall becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
“Screw this!” Mabel yelled, then placed a hand on Zach’s back. “Pull yourself in! I’ll help you!”
“Okay,” Zach gasped. Freeing a hand, he reached forward, grabbing at a pipe that was closer to the airlock. The first time, it slid off. But the second, he felt a push on his back, lurched forward, and took hold of the pipe.
The pull on their feet lessened as the last bits of air in the deck rushed out. Mabel took the opportunity to shove Zach through the airlock. She tugged herself after him. “We’re in!” she shouted. “Close it!”
Behind Mabel, the airlock slid shut and sealed with a hiss. As Mabel began taking off Zach’s helmet, Ryker suddenly yelled, “Stop! It’ll take a minute before the oxygen system repressurizes.”
“He’s suffocating, and we’re inside the station! I’m taking it off!” Mabel replied.
“You’ll kill him!”
Ignoring Ryker, Mabel pulled off her own helmet to test if the air was breathable. Then, after pulling in a deep breath and confirming that conditions were okay, she relieved Zach of his too. He gasped, turned over onto all fours, and lurched as he gasped for air.
After a few seconds, he fell onto his back and drifted into an exhausted sleep.
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