Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Poppy let out a gasp of pain, and Jesse opened his eyes to find that she had been thrown against one of the steel walls. She had unbuckled her belt to film the approach, he remembered – she must not have strapped herself back in. Her eyes were squeezed together, blood trickling from her nose.

‘What just happened?’ Jesse asked, working hard to catch his breath. His voice trembling.

Poppy crawled to her seat and pushed the button on her dashboard’s intercom.

‘Orlando?’ she called, throat thick with swallowed tears. ‘Orlando. Congreve. Comm check.’

When Jesse turned to Commander Sheppard, he noticed the eerie fact that Captain Omar Briggs, with his softly lined face, was still smiling out at them. Holding his rough hands up at the camera in a final thumbs-up before the frozen picture splintered into hissing static.

Commander Sheppard stared at the screen, then began stabbing the intercom. ‘Omar?’ he called. ‘Orlando – do you read?’

Jesse turned his gaze painfully to the window. He must have lost his bearings. He couldn’t find the station. But it had to be there.

‘Are you there?’ A voice crackled through his headphones. The Damocles.

‘Juno?’ he whispered.

‘Oh, thank God.’ Her voice was crackling, indistinct. ‘You’re alive. Orlando has exploded.’

‘I think we saw it.’

‘It looked like—’ Her voice cracked. ‘Jess, it’s just gone.’

‘Watch out!’ Poppy screamed behind him. Jesse whipped around, saw it long after it was too late to do anything, something careening towards them, reflecting light like a knife. If anything pierced the hull of their shuttle moving at a high speed, it could tear through it like a missile. The air would explode out and, in a few seconds, they would all be dead.

They were hit.

Jesse felt the force of it through his seat, thought he could smell the burn, the scorch of metal. The O₂ alarm began to whine.

‘This is an emergency,’ Commander Sheppard said. ‘We need to get out of the moon’s orbit as fast as we can.’ The shattered space station was throwing off debris. Another hit could cripple the ship, or kill them, and if they wanted to avoid it they would have to get out of the range of the explosion.

‘Up, Harry,’ Sheppard cried. ‘Open it up; thrusters at full speed. Burn all the fuel you need to get us out of here.’

Poppy cried out again, and when Jesse lifted his head to look out the front window, he saw that another object was lancing towards them. A piece of machinery, unrecognizable after the explosion, something with sheer edges moving at terrible speed. Sheppard and Harry were ready this time, grabbing the controllers, they forced the shuttle out of its path.

Jesse’s head spun as the blood rushed down his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tilting wave of nausea, and when he opened them again he could see the space station – or what was left of it. What had moments ago been a majestic feat of design and engineering was now no more than rubble. It had been torn open like carrion; blackened truss, seared metal and hanging machinery all accelerating away from it at different speeds. It was a sickening sight – solar panels, switchboards and smashed components tore towards them, glittering in the light like shattered glass.

Commander Sheppard’s face was a mask of dread. ‘Okay…’ he said, shakily at first but his voice steadied as he continued. ‘Okay, Harrison, we’ll navigate through this together. Follow my instructions. We can get out of this debris field and maybe we can make it out of here with our lives.’

Harry’s face, reflected in the window, was chalk white. His eyes seemed fixed on a shadow in the distance. Jesse followed his gaze and realized it was a body: bloated and pumpkin-orange in a regulation flight suit. It spun through the wreckage, one half of it burnt black, chalky hints of charred bone glinting beneath a flayed skull. Bile rose in Jesse’s stomach. There was another body close by, missing an arm, drifting through the blackness, its helmet visor reflecting the gutted station below.

‘Harry?’ Sheppard said. Jesse had never seen Harry look so frightened. Commander Sheppard clicked his fingers, hoping to rouse the boy. ‘Harrison? Harrison, we need you.’

But perhaps Harry was thinking, Those are people we know. He’d blinked and they’d turned into corpses. Kennedy, perhaps, or James. Captain Briggs with his gentle voice and quiet, constant hope. People just like him, astronauts, vain souls who knew that space did not care for them – but hoped against hope that it would not be their burial ground. Jesse was thinking those things, certainly.

‘Out of the way!’ Solomon shouted – the kind of howl that shattered the nerves. Jesse saw something coming for them in the window, a gas tank, a huge boulder of metal. Harry lunged for the controls and, at the same time, Commander Sheppard leapt to protect him.