Expedition 63 Box Set

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A hollow thump sounded through the wall, an echo from elsewhere in the Station. Jason jumped back from the exposed wires in his hands and bumped into Eli behind him. For a heart-stopping second, Jason held his breath, ears open for the overwhelming klaxon alarm that warned of a breach.

Seconds crawled past him, even as Eli froze against his back. He hated this part. All it took was one tiny piece of junk and the Station was in imminent danger. It was a weight in his mind. If there was a hole in the Station and they couldn’t get it closed, there was nowhere to escape to, this far from the aft section where the escape crafts were docked. As much as he loved being in space, he wasn’t ready to die anytime soon. So many dangers to be aware of.

Muscle by muscle, Jason relaxed when nothing happened. Decompression was quick and if the Station still had pressure after a minute with no warning alarms, they were probably safe. That was a loud thump though. He turned to Eli ready with the question, when John came through the hatchway.

John’s usual warm umber skin was faded to a weird walnut color. Just the look of him made Jason’s heart lurch. He was about to direct his question to John instead, because with that look, maybe John knew what that sound was, but the commander headed him off before Jason had a chance to open his mouth.

“Uh, meet in Destiny in about five minutes,” he croaked. Jason frowned at John as he continued. “Make sure you safely stow your experiments or repairs. This is not going to be a quick meeting.”

Jason wanted to talk to John, but the man wandered off, unsteady even though John wasn’t walking. He spun to Eli. The scientist was buried in his work, but Eli was more than capable of carrying on complex conversations while he was entrenched in equally complex science.

“What’s that about?” Jason asked.

“Don’t know.” Eli kept at his tablet, fingers a blur as he tapped at the screen. “I assume we’ll find out in a few minutes. Why not wait until then?”

“You know me,” Jason grinned, though he could feel the strain of it without looking. “Pathologically curious.”

Eli huffed, but didn’t turn to face Jason, so he had no way to know if it was an amused noise or an irritated one. “Yeah, I know, but I think you’re just going to have to sit on that curiosity. It’s only a few minutes.”

That was true, but Eli also hadn’t seen John’s face. There was some haunted edge to it, like he’d encountered a ghost. It was an expression Jason had never seen their commander wear before and a greasy sense of dread tried to worm its way into Jason’s thoughts. There was no place for that in space. Feelings of such nature guaranteed bad things happened. It made people careless. Besides, if there was a reason to fear on the Station, it’s not like they could immediately leave. Soyuz capsules were fantastic pieces of machinery, but even they needed a few minutes to set up.

“Besides, you need more practice on reining in your instant gratification,” Eli jabbed at him. It was an old and harmless bit of nitpicking between them.

“And you need a little more spontaneity in life,” Jason sniped.

“Spontaneity is how I became an astronaut on this foolish crew.” Eli’s fingers stopped their little jitterbug on the tablet and he released it to float in the air. “Let’s go see what our esteemed leader has to say.”

Jason let Eli pass him out of Kibo. As he wandered out, he saw John in Columbus’ entry with his face buried in his hands, hiding away from the world, it looked like. With a quick glance down the corridor to confirm that the rest of the crew was away from him and John, Jason pushed his way to his commander and waited in silence for John to notice he was there.

He wavered for a minute between leaving John be and following his instinct to offer comfort or support. Whatever had spooked John must have been bad, to earn this reaction. His commander was tough as nails, for all his gentle exterior, but they were stuck up on the Station. Nothing seemed out of place or a danger beyond the normal issues that could crop up in space.

When John finally looked up at him, bamboo brown eyes puffy and shot through with red, he couldn’t hold it anymore. Not when John looked so afraid.

“You okay, John?” Jason whispered. He didn’t want the others to hear them if John’s problem was personal, though he didn’t see how. They had no way to talk to Ground at the moment.

“No.” John shook all over, a fine tremor making him visibly vibrate in zero gravity. “No, I’m really not.”

Jason edged his way into the module and pulled John into his arms. They started to swirl in a slow dance as they collided. The tremors grew under Jason’s hands, so he held John to his chest as tight as he could, hoping to make it stop through strength and willpower alone. It didn’t help, but John sighed and dropped his face into the curve of Jason’s neck, so that was a start.

“Can you tell me what’s going on, at least?” Jason asked. “Maybe I can help.”

A sick, weak chuckle escaped John. If he wasn’t as close to Jason as he was, he doubted he’d have heard it at all. It sent a foreboding trill crawling across his scalp. That was a new sound from John and he hated it with everything in him, so much that he squeezed tight in warning.

John clammed up immediately, but didn’t move either. With an exasperated huff, Jason let it slide and held on. There was nothing else to do for his commander, especially if John had decided to keep the problem he had to himself. Stubborn asshole.

“We better hurry up, if you don’t want the guys to catch us like this,” Jason said, still muted but out of diffidence to John’s glaring case of upset than fear of discovery.

“I don’t care.” John released a shudder. “Everything’s gone to shit.”

“You ready to tell me what the problem is?” Jason clenched his teeth when John’s coarse fuzz scrapped along his sensitive skin. It almost tickled when John shook his head like that.

Another shudder worked its way through John. “I better tell all of you at the same time. I’m just thankful nobody’s looked out the windows yet.”

Like a magnet, Jason’s eyes were drawn to the little circle of clear plastic that looked over the Shuttle docking station. All Jason saw was the brilliant panorama of stars scattered across the cosmos. There was certainly nothing ominous from what he could tell.

John extracted himself from Jason’s arms incrementally, almost as though he were loathed to leave the haven he’d found. It was a mutual feeling. When John was upset, Jason became unsettled. Nothing rattled John.

An expression Jason had never seen passed over John’s face, half elated and half terribly sad. His commander’s fingers, which belonged to an artist and Jason teased him about it all the time, came up and framed his face with the lightest touch.

He froze, statue stiff in a second. They’d agreed to limit personal touches and he couldn’t believe John was willing to break that. John ignored it, pulling him in until they were eye to eye, nose tips almost touching.

“I’m happy you’re with me, that you agreed to come,” John murmured. His eyes were intent on Jason’s, bright and searing. “You have no idea how much I need you.”

Jason’s face scrunched up with the confusion swirling inside him. This wasn’t the John he’d known for so long. The animal fear that poured off John made Jason’s heart thump heavy, an echo of the sadness he saw displayed in bold lines across John’s face.

The questions danced like leaves on a stiff wind, but John cut him off with a hard, thorough kiss. Jason yielded in an instant. Nothing would’ve stopped this moment with John, so fleeting since they had left the world under their feet. Cold lips pried open his mouth with pressure alone, a desperate tongue followed, flicking and caressing against his own. Jason buried his whimper of need deep in his chest. A single noise might bring any of the others in moments and Jason wanted this kiss, this devouring connection, to continue as long as possible.

He let John take as he wanted, pliant under the sadness Jason could almost taste in John’s kiss. There was nothing to question in the face of whatever John felt. They had been together a few years, now, discreet to the point of secretive. It was a mutual and well thought out decision on both their parts, because their relationship was not something they wanted anyone to use against them until after they went to space. Just in case.

Jason eased them apart, leaving behind a chaste little peck on John’s lips for reassurance. He caught John’s eyes with his own and tried on a calm, soft smile to settle John as much as possible. “How about we go see the guys and you fill us in on the problem?”

“Yeah,” John answered with a shaky breath and a smile. “We can get through this.”

Without any idea what John was talking about, Jason widened his smile and nodded. “Of course we can. We’re some of the smartest, most resourceful people around. NASA wouldn’t have sent us up here if we weren’t.”

That got a chuckle out of John, threadbare and strained but it was some measure of mirth. Jason counted it as a win.

John yanked him in close, set them in a reckless spin with the force of it, and hugged the life out of him. It felt that way, at least, with John’s arms crushing him around the shoulders until his shoulders creaked at the joints. Just as quick, John took up his hand and pulled them out of Columbus.

Jason clutched at John’s desperate hold on him and toed at the walls to help them along. The crew waited for them in Destiny, gathered in a loose circle like a shoal of tiger barbs, and they turned their attention to Jason and John the second they crossed the hatchway. It was kind of eerie.

The crew parted into a semi-circle, their faces expectant and brimming with questions. Like any good crew however, they held their silence.

“Thank you for your patience, guys,” John said.

Jason gave John’s hand one last discreet squeeze and integrated himself into the rest of the group. There were no favorites here and Jason wouldn’t face what John told them with the assumption that would change. Professionalism was a guiding star to John. Jason knew that and had no problem in keeping with it. John met them, this time, as his commander, not as the light of his life.

“I’ve figured out the cause of the signal disruption between us and the ground,” John started, the tremble in his voice barely noticeable, even to him. It was like John’s face was carved from a dark piece of amber, mouth animated to give a prophecy to the huddled masses. “It’s an unfortunate discovery, because I doubt we’ll reestablish contact in the foreseeable future.”

“That’s the most cryptic thing I’ve heard you say.” Turlach crossed his arms and narrows his eyes at John. “Out with it, laddie. I can fix whatever bog we’ve found ourselves in.”

It was a typical response from ‘Lach. That man was the epitome of optimist, so much that he was an annoying s**t sometimes. More than once, Jason wanted to dunk his head in the outhouse, just to see him lose it. Too bad the outhouse didn’t retain anything to stick in ‘Lach’s hair.

“I wish,” John shot back, but there was that little, half-sad smile again. Something about that hopeless expression just irked him in all the wrong directions and he would sell his soul to never see it again. “But it’s not an issue on our end, guys. It’s a ground issue and if you’ll look down at the shiny blue planet, you’ll see why.”

“All right, John.” Saito followed John’s order, but Jason wanted to resist. The others streamed over to the little port windows at once. Their eyes weren’t on John, who turned away from the opportunity to share what he wanted them to see. In defiance of the neutral temperature of the Station, a bead of sweat rolled down a brown temple and over a round cheekbone.

The silence of his fellow astronauts finally got to him, so Jason flowed over to the porthole and allowed the great planet to enchant his eyes.

Disappointment rose when he saw the greenish clouds of an impending storm spread out over a wide area. He loved to see the shimmering blue of the oceans, even though the storms were interesting in their own way. He’d seen a couple of hurricanes on the Station that seemed far bigger from space than he imagined.

Eli piped up after a few seconds, where he was pressed to the window with Saito. “I don’t understand. What’s there to look at besides the storm?”

At least he wasn’t the only one who was confused. John moved up beside him and watched the world circle below, quiet and so tense Jason saw it clear as day in the stiff line of his shoulders. A few seconds later, John jabbed his finger at some spot down on the planet. “There. Look thirty degrees above the center of the window, where the land is.”

Jason squint his eyes in the direction John indicated. The sun was behind them and it lit up the clouds in a way that made everything too bright to look at. But above that, where the mass was spotty over the continent, he caught dark spots in the landscape. “What the f**k is that?” Jason demanded.

“You’ve never seen the documentaries?” Yakecen asked, a strange edge to his voice. He looked at each of them in turn and Jason was mesmerized by the blue-black braid that snaked through the air. “Chernobyl ring a bell?”

“That’s not funny,” ‘Lach growled. “That’s not funny at all and you can f**k right off with that kind of ridiculous talk.”

“Radiation colors the clouds and gives that weird greenish look to the atmosphere.” Yakecen shook his head and looked back at the Earth below. “Where are we now?”

John tapped his finger on the glass. “I have no idea for sure. The cloud cover makes it hard to tell, but I think it’s the west coast. It’s daylight on this side and sunrise in Houston was a couple hours ago.”

“So, just what kind of damage are we looking at?” ‘Lach asked.

Jason turned away from the window. He couldn’t look at it anymore. When Saito answered, the compulsion to cover his ears almost overrode his common sense. As much as it horrified him, information was power and he needed to know what was going on.

“The Non-Proliferation Treaty wasn’t complete yet,” Saito told them, eyes still on the atmosphere starting to roil. “At last count, I heard there were eight thousand nuclear missiles still armed and ready to deploy.”

“Where’d you hear that?” John asked.

Saito shrugged, but his face began to crumple before Jason’s eyes. “My brother works as a technician for the Ministry of Defense. It is information he must know to do his work.” A gloss of moisture spread across black lower lashes when his crewmate blinked hard. “Well, worked, now.”

The breath in Jason’s lungs froze. Holy f**k, he was happier than anything all his family was long gone from the world. If someone he loved had been down there as the world was destroyed, Jason didn’t think he could handle it. He’d nearly destroyed himself when his sister died of cancer six years ago. This? This had the capacity to destroy the crew without anything else going wrong.

But Jason was paralyzed. The only thing worse than no hope was false hope. He had all the useless platitudes to offer or the brutal truth as soft as he could make it.

John wrapped his fingers around Jason’s wrist and gave it a little jiggle. Jason shut his eyes and breathed in as deep as he could, until his lungs stretched and ran into the barrier of his ribs. A breakdown now was inadvisable at best.

“Guys, we have other things to worry about.” John’s steady voice brought his eyes back up and his mind on the problem at hand. “We can’t say for sure what’s going on down there until the debris clears out of the air or we get in contact with someone on the ground.”

“What if there’s no one left?” The slight, high edge of Eli’s tone made the hairs on the back of Jason’s neck stand on end. “We can’t stay up here forever. We’ll die up here after six months. There’s no SOP for this situation.”