Prologue
Morning, Wednesday, April 27
250 Miles Above the Earth
As the earth slowly turned, the three humans floated in their tiny spaceship and watched the extinction event unfold below them. The night side of the world, once lit with electric lights in every inhabited corner, was now dark, although patches of white held out against the darkness. There were also more than a few bright red splotches, vicious scars gouged out of the planet by nuclear fire.
The crew remained in silence. Alison McDill, an electrical and materials engineer along as an expert on the alien drive, continued to monitor every radio broadcast she could find, slowly putting the pieces together. They’d only been gone two days. Two days during which the planet had been devastated.
Lloyd Behm, the backup test pilot, had a tablet computer attached to his thigh with Velcro and was busily entering data from the ship’s systems. His concern now was endurance. After two days in space, how much time did they have left? Their captain, Alex West, kept his hands on the controls even though they floated in zero gravity, still drifting toward earth but slowly enough to have many hours without changing direction before they’d reenter the atmosphere. He’d been watching smaller flashes in the northwest Pacific Ocean, flashes that likely meant a battle underway. Even as the species faced eminent extinction, it appeared there was still time to settle old scores. It was finally Alex who broke the troubled silence.
“Look, I have to say it.” The others both glanced at him. “Are we really talking about a zombie apocalypse? The walking dead? Brain eating monsters?” The only sounds were the muted voices from Alison’s headset and the whisper of air circulating fans moving the atmosphere over the nearly saturated CO2 scrubbers. They thought of all those dying below. “Do we have any images yet?”
“It’s harder to resolve the TV signals,” Alison explained. “I’ve tried repeatedly to reach OOE’s uplinks without luck.” Oceanic Orbital Enterprises, the company that owned Azanti, their space ship, had contracts all over the planet to relay signals. It was unrealistic to think that they’d all be down at the same time…but they were.
“Try NASA freqs,” Lloyd said. “Houston, alternate tracking, Launch Alliance, too, someone has to be out there. Right?” The other two nodded, though neither really agreed.
Alison worked the controls of the radio for a time, what they used to call ‘spinning and grinning’ in the days of analog radio. There was still a dial, but now there were also several inputs and a USB interface from a laptop, which was what she used now. A program allowed her to analyze dozens of frequencies at a time for signs of radio broadcasts.
“Two lights on the CO2 warning,” Lloyd told them. They had less than 4 hours before the scrubbers were saturated, and they would succumb to CO2 poisoning. They were already feeling a little fuzzy-headed. At least they wouldn’t die from freezing when the fuel cell ran out of hydrogen. Not that asphyxiating was any better.
“Holy shit!” Alison said suddenly and held up a hand. “I got something.”
“Where?” Alex asked.
“121.5, the old distress channel.” She worked to fine-tune the station. “It’s coming from an orbital source.”
“Satellite?” Lloyd guessed.
“No,” she said as she shook her head, “it’s voice modulation. Satellites wouldn’t use this frequency. Let me clean it up a bit…” she said and played with the computer some more. “There,” she announced finally, and with a flourish she patched it over the cockpit’s speakers. A woman’s voice spoke mid-sentence.
“—since 14:42 Greenwich, and are trying to reestablish contact, over.” There was a short delay. “This is the ISS, Colonel Faye Richardson calling in the clear for any NASA or JPL receiving station. We’ve been LOS groundside since 14:42 Greenwich, and are trying to reestablish contact, over.”
“The International Space Station!” Alison crowed.
“That’ll work,” Lloyd agreed. “We have a universal docking collar.”
“Agreed,” Alex said. “See if you can raise them.” Alison grinned and set the transmitter to a matching frequency.
“ISS, ISS,” she called, “this is private spaceship Azanti, responding in the clear to your call.”
“This is ISS,” the same woman replied almost instantly, “did you say private spaceship?”
“That’s correct, ISS. This is the Azanti, experimental ship owned by Oceanic Orbital Enterprises. We were on a…” she looked at the others in sudden concern and they shook their heads emphatically, “we were on a test flight outside the moon’s orbit.”
“We didn’t hear anything about that from NASA.” Alex cursed and activated his headset.
“Commander Richardson, this is Alex West, captain of the Azanti. With all due respect, ma’am, does it really matter why we’re up here?”
“I suppose not, considering.”
“Exactly,” Alex agreed. “We’d like to come aboard, if possible. Our consumables are in critical condition. We can’t raise our ground tracking station.”
“Neither can we.” There was silence for a few moments, probably while she consulted with whoever else was on the station. “Okay Azanti,” she said, “I don’t see any reason not to let you aboard. At the very least, I’m curious about your ship. We’re transmitting you our orbital data; do you have the delta-V to match?”
“No problem,” Alex said without waiting for the data. When Richardson replied, the curiosity in her voice was unmistakable.
“Now I really can’t wait to examine this ship of yours. See you soon, Captain.”
* * * * *