Reece had just told Naeva that he loved her for perhaps the last time. Despite the fact that they may never hear or see each other again, the only thing he heard was the pounding of his heart. Finally, the comms unit squawked to life.

“You too... love. Over and out.”

Reece could hear the emotion in Naeva's voice, even over the intercom. Despite that, he trusted her resolve. She would get the job done, regardless of the obstacles. He wondered if all Iranian women were like her...or all werewolves. He doubted it in both cases. She certainly seemed to be one-of-a-kind, in his opinion. As her voice faded from his mind, he felt another presence.

Aika was standing near Reece, waiting for him to finish his conversation. Taking a deep breath, he looked at the hurting woman. The truth was, they were all hurting.

“She’s okay, all things considered,” he said to her. “She’ll report in when she’s got something to report.”

“That’s good,” answered Aika softly before taking a deep breath to get her mind right. “Now, what happened with Sora, that’s why we told you that Naeva would stay here with us if anything happened. They can’t be sure that Naeva is on their side of the station. And I’m guessing that’s why you fooled us all with the stone. None of us were sure if she could be trusted or whether she was going to pull a stunt like she just did.”

“What I want to know is this,” added Pasha. “When exactly did she side with them? I spoke with her at length over the last couple of days and she seemed fine like she’s always been. A little depressed maybe, but fine. It wasn’t until today that she started acting strange. And the way she laughed at us behind the desecrated bodies of our friends, well...that’s not the Sora I know. It was like something else was wearing her body.”

“I don’t know when for sure,” answered Reece. “But my gut tells me that she was herself up until when she started feeling better today. We saw the same thing with the Beckers. They were a nice couple and we spent a good deal of time with them. The night they attacked us, they had become totally different people, just like Sora.”

“Yeah, I just hope they can be fixed,” said Pasha softly.

“As do I,” replied Reece.

“Now, about the stone,” said Pasha, changing the subject. “Did you really find it, or was that a ruse too?”

“Oh, that wasn’t a ruse. I did find it,” answered Reece. “We’ll hold on to it until we have a use for it. For now, my thoughts are with Thato, Thomas, and even Sora. I feel like we just lost another crew member.”

He had clearly grown fond of her, as had they all. They’d all lost too many fellow crewmates. Friends. Not counting Naeva or the traitors, there were only three of them left now. Hopefully, Naeva would get back to them with good news. Maybe she could take them all out and come back to them. The idea seemed implausible, but Reece wanted to stay optimistic.

“And what in the world did they do to poor Thomas and Thato?” asked Pasha angrily, cutting into Reece’s musings. “They didn’t deserve that.”

“No, they didn’t,” agreed Aika. “And I don’t think I want to know what they did to them…maybe never.”

The two men nodded their agreement, and all three of them headed back to the infirmary to wait for Naeva to check back in. So, they waited, and they talked, and they waited some more. They watered the plants and Reece showed them the nightcore. As they examined the object, Reece explained how he had managed to find it and how he fabricated the counterfeit. Several hours passed and they went to the mess hall to prepare some Italian cuisine for Naeva’s hopeful return. Just as they had finished the spaghetti, the station’s spin started to slow.

“Shit! Stow the food and kitchenware,” yelped Reece as Pasha gulped half a liter of measured water and crammed a re-hydrated meatball into his mouth.

Just as they finished cleaning up everything, Naeva’s voice spoke over Reece’s intercom.

“Reece, it looks like we guessed correctly. They were waiting on Sora and the stone. As soon as she showed up with it, they started getting ready to leave. They packed supplies and lab equipment into the remaining functional shuttle, Sombra, and are preparing to leave the station. I was able to board Sombra while they were out collecting their things. I’m safe for now. These shuttles have a lot of good hiding spots. Rogers mentioned something about a surprise in the control room. Look for traps or bombs when you get there. I’m going to have to go radio silent soon.”

“Before you do,” Reece cut in. “I’ll see you on the ground. Over.”

“It’s a date. Over and out,” she replied.

That was the last radio transmission he received from her.

One good thing about the mess hall was that it had a view. As the three of them floated in zero-G, they held onto the tables and pulled themselves into position for a good view out the thick polymer that acted as a window. As they held on, they watched and waited, and their waiting paid off. Twenty minutes after the gravity had been disengaged, they saw the shuttle, Sombra, fly past them. They could just make out four astronauts in the cockpit before the shuttle left their field of view. Reece hoped that they had made the right decision with Naeva and didn’t just send her to her death.

“Well, I guess Zhengzhou Station is all ours,” he said darkly as he turned himself towards the others. “ Let’s go and see what they’ve done to her and see about getting the gravity turned back on.”

Aika nodded at him, and Pasha simply turned himself to follow. The three of them pulled and pushed their way as best they could. They needed to fetch their weapons and tools before heading back to the sealed door. It took a bit longer to open with nearly no leverage, but after a few minutes, the door swung open. Inside was an awful mess. The remains of Thomas and Thato floated about the hallway. Their guts, viscera, blood, and body parts formed a nightmarish barrier through the passageway.

“Tell you what,” Reece called back to the horrified pair behind him. “Why don’t you two stay here. I’ll go on ahead and re-enable the gravity. Once we can get around again, we can clean up this mess and reclaim our station.”

The two nodded vigorously as they backed away from the ungodly sight. Pasha offered up his spear, which Reece took. Breathing deeply to focus his mind, he steeled himself for what was coming and attempted to spy a safe route through the mess. As Thomas’s scattered remains floated together for a moment, he saw an opening. Reece launched himself through the doorway, not giving himself the chance to second guess the act. He flew quickly through the floating blood and gore.

Halfway through the mess, he grabbed onto Thato’s corpse and shoved it behind him. This increased his momentum as he used the spear to poke at the floor and walls to guide him through the mess. One last push and he saw himself clear of the gory scene. Once on the other side, he had collected only a few drops of blood on his uniform to show that he had traversed the horrid mess. He turned and gave Aika and Pasha a thumbs up before continuing onwards to the control module.

Passing through the shuttle bay’s airlock module, Reece noted that only one shuttle remained, tagged Wisdom. It had been damaged when the shuttle Hermes had rammed into the airlock several months ago. He continued pulling himself along and passed into the engineering bay. On the other end of engineering was the opening to the control module. Pulling himself through the portal he made his way past fabrication machines and large floor-bolted tools until he reached the control module’s entrance.

Peering inside, he looked around for any signs of obvious traps and the like. Not seeing anything, he carefully entered the control room. He slowly made his way inside, being cautious not to bump anything and keeping his eyes peeled for tripwires. He made it to the station’s main control console without incident and was about to re-engage the artificial gravity when he got a bad feeling and stopped himself. Gingerly, he pried open the cabinet doors below the console to inspect the wiring and circuit boards within.

What he found made his blood run cold. He saw that the anti-gravity leads had been removed from their sockets and plugged into the station’s thrusters. If he had attempted to restore gravity, the thrusters would have begun firing continuously until they ran out of fuel. If that had happened, there was nothing they could do to correct their course. That would have either sent them falling towards earth in a ball of fire or hurtling away from the planet altogether. Both would have resulted in them being struck by countless pieces of space debris and the station would have eventually broken up, killing them all almost instantly.

Luckily, he was the right person for the job and easily corrected the wiring. He checked for any other traps and, finding none, he re-activated the station’s gravity spin. Within a few minutes, he could walk on the floor again. He returned through the engineering and airlock modules, securing the airlock’s bulkheads. Although he was confident in his work with repairing the breach, there was no good reason to tempt fate. Instead, he walked back through the gore-splattered hallway. He concentrated on the ceiling until he got close to the carnage. Once he reached the edge of the first coagulated blood pool, he forced himself to find a clean path through it. A minute later and a few shades greener, Reece met back up with Aika and Pasha.

“I found their little surprise,” Reece told them. “It’s been taken care of, but we should probably do a thorough inspection of the entire station just to be safe. Sora may have sabotaged something while she was in our half, and who knows what other surprises they left for us on their half. Let’s leave as little as possible to chance.”

“What about Thomas and Thato?” asked Pasha.

Reece didn’t want to think about it, but Pasha was right. They had to do something about the bodies. They couldn’t just leave them there like that. Reece wracked his brain for any idea on how to make the cleanup quicker and easier. The whole process was going to be unpleasant for several reasons and he wanted it over with as fast as they could manage. His problem-solving brain worked quickly, and an idea struck him. The solution had been given to him by the commander’s attempt to kill them all.

“We’ll re-activate the other door we sealed and move around the station that way until we’ve fully inspected it. In the meantime, we can lower the temperature of the officer’s quarters to below freezing. If we give them enough time, they should freeze solid. It’ll make cleaning them up much easier.”

“That’s a great idea,” Pasha said as he noticeably breathed a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t looking forward to that chore.”

“Nor was I,” replied Reece. “Nor was I.”

“Okay, so where do we begin?” asked Aika.

“I think we should stay together and inspect each module, one at a time. We’ll start with the most important modules first and work our way through the rest.”

“Okay. Let’s get started,” stated Aika, clearly eager to feel somewhat safe again. They didn’t want to keep worrying about unknown system problems for the only thing keeping them alive, Zhengzhou Station.

To begin with, they did a once-over inspection of the entire station. They avoided the officer’s quarters due to the horrific mess there. The entire process took about a week. They spent about ten hours a day combing over systems, checking statuses, and running tests. The rest of the time was spent eating, doing yoga, exercising, tending the garden, and spending some time together. Finding nothing obviously in need of attention, they moved on to full diagnostic inspections, one module at a time.

They started with control before moving on to the garden module followed by the mess hall. Reece performed his periodic maintenance at the same time and slowly they verified all systems for each area were behaving normally. Day by day, the small crew grew even closer. Reece and Aika finally made time to talk.

They had both been ignoring what had happened on Naeva’s last night with them. They avoided each other out of sheer embarrassment and emotional discomfort. Finally, enough time had passed that they could laugh about it, though the days of late were generally melancholy. They had all lost so much and the future was a big unknown. The companionship helped, but it was the job of keeping the station running that ultimately allowed them to remain sane.

The inspections and maintenance averaged one week per module. The control module was the exception. It took two full weeks to complete, due to its complexity. The intercom was working fine, but they couldn’t verify long-range comms despite broadcasting an S.O.S. for an entire 48-hour period. It could be that there was no one left to respond. That was a sobering thought. This made Reece think of Naeva and wondered if she had survived and what was happening on the ground. All other systems reported within nominal specifications, once all appropriate maintenance activities were conducted.

After a solid month of internal system checks, it was time to inspect the shuttle bay’s airlock next. The airlock itself seemed in good shape, except for the emergency patch job Reece had done so many months ago to the fourth shuttle bulkhead. Reece decided to include the remaining shuttle, Wisdom, in his inspection.

He boarded the shuttle through its airlock umbilical hookup only to find that the entire flight control panel had been smashed. Wires had been yanked from their harnesses and connectors, displays were smashed in, and levers were broken clean off. Pieces of the panel were lying all over Wisdom’s cockpit. It seemed like the commander had ensured they could never leave the station. Reece continued his inspection of the shuttle and found nothing else amiss.

“And why would there be,” he thought to himself. “They’ve completely destroyed the only means of piloting the shuttle to the ground, they had no need to break anything else. That would have just been a waste of their time.”

Cursing under his breath, he made his way back to the airlock and sealed the bulkhead back up. Aika and Pasha were there waiting with hopeful looks on their faces.

“How does it look?” asked Pasha.

“Well…the flight console is completely destroyed,” replied Reece.

“Screw us, can’t we catch a break?” responded Pasha rhetorically.

“So, do you think you can fix it?” Aika asked.

“Well…,” said Reece as he rubbed his stubbly chin and pondered the task and their supplies. “Maybe…if we cannibalize a few pieces of the station to replace some of the broken components. It’s going to take some time, but I think I may be able to fix it. Scratch that. I can fix it. I can fix just about anything. I’m just annoyed that they gave me more work to do. I owe them another one. When we get to the ground, I’m going to kick all their asses. Are you up to flying the shuttle with one of us as your co-pilot, Pasha?”

“If you can fix it, I can fly it,” came Pasha’s confident reply.

“Great. Now…for the time being, we need to turn our focus back to the station proper and continue getting her ship-shape,” added Aika, cutting into their conversation.

Reece and Pasha nodded, and the trio made their way to the mess hall for the final meal of the day. The main course of fresh eggs was scrambled, and they added steamed cauliflower and broccoli. They no longer had to worry about rationing with only three of them left. The garden produced enough food to feed them for as long as needed. Plus, they were able to supplement fresh vegetables, herbs, nuts, and fruits with the occasional food item from their ample stores.

As they continued working through the inspections and maintenance for each module, the days began to blur into each other. As a homage to Thato, Aika and Reece instructed Pasha on the intricacies of yoga and they added him to their daily yoga routine. Pasha spent his spare time in control, trying to find hidden files, ship’s logs, saved communications, recorded video messages, or anything else that might give them an advantage if they ever managed to reach the ground again. What he lacked in training, he made up for in brilliance and unlimited time to find the answers. If there were any answers to be found.

While Pasha was scouring the ship’s computers, Aika began teaching Reece how to handle a sword and spear in addition to their regular exercises. Reece spent time finishing Aika’s katana, giving it a professional look and re-tempering it with the full-size tools from the engineering shop. He also took the time to craft a second katana for her, as she had once mentioned that she usually trained with two simultaneously.

He presented it to her on her birthday. He and Pasha had managed to discover it in the ship’s database. That was a pleasant surprise for her. Reece created a rather wicked-looking straight-bladed hand-and-a-half sword for himself with the signature extra length of the well-known style of sword. It turned out so well that he decided to show it to Pasha.

Pasha let out a slow whistle when he saw the weapon. “That’s a real beauty there. Looks downright deadly in close combat. I’m not too good with medieval weaponry myself. Do you think you could fabricate a rudimentary pistol or rifle?”

Reece looked at Pasha without a hint of amusement. “Seriously? I’m not a machinist by trade, you know. You’re lucky I can craft any kind of weapon at all. At least a sword or spear will be much more effective than a wrench or baseball bat if it comes to that...which it probably will.”

Pasha put up his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright...I’m very happy with my spear,” he said soothingly despite the wry grin on his face.

They both knew they would need whatever advantage they could get once they reached the ground. As they slowly prepared for that day, the inspections and maintenance continued. The weeks bled together until finally, they had finished the entire station’s inspections for the current quarter.

Now it was time to clean up the mess in the officer’s quarters hallway. Reece entered the module in his EVA suit to combat the freezing cold. Pasha didn’t have a suit of his own as Angel had taken the only other men’s suit with him. Aika refused to put the too-small suit back on unless absolutely necessary, and she deemed that cleaning up gore and bodies did not qualify. Reece really couldn’t argue. He just wanted it done, so he got to work on the task alone. They spun the station down.

Starting out, he collected the biggest pieces of the two men and hauled them to the shuttle bay. There, he gave them a space burial through one of the two functional and empty shuttle bulkheads. The rest he collected in old-fashioned plastic bags. He had found an old box of them in one of the storage rooms during their earlier inspections.

He wondered if any of the astronauts who came before ever did an inventory as plastic had been banned decades before and what he had found was now considered contraband. He put them to good use and by the end of the day, all of Thato and Thomas had been given an unfortunately unceremonious burial in space.

He removed his suit after collecting the last of the floating chunks as Pasha spun the station back up. Aika and Pasha were with him when he remotely opened the shuttle bay’s airlock and they watched from the safety of the mess hall as the last bag got sucked out into space as the airlock module depressurized. Pasha made a sign across his chest, a rite from one of the almost forgotten religions of the past. Aika merely bowed her head for a long moment in a silent goodbye.

“Thank you, Thato…for your instruction. You were a magnificent teacher and you will be missed. Thank you, Thomas…for your humor. You were a true friend until the end, and you will be missed,” said Reece as he watched the last of the two men disappear from their field of view.

He noticed Aika looking at him from the corner of his eye. She was staring at him intently.

“That was very beautiful,” she whispered with hints of both sadness and awe in her voice. “Is that a religious practice?”

“Nope,” stated Reece flatly. “It was similar to what my grandfather had said at my grandma’s life celebration, and... it came from the heart... you know? They deserved no less than that.”

“I see,” she said quietly.

It had been six months since they had last seen Naeva and the commander. Reece found himself wondering once again what had become of them. When they had taken the shuttle, Sombra, with the rest of the crew to earth, Naeva had to hide aboard. Reece wished he knew if she had succeeded in the difficult task.

The trio was taking a break from the relentless work and Aika was assisting Pasha with the control module’s computer systems. That’s when Pasha had found a backup drive within an electronics closet in the control module. He speculated that it may hold data that the commander had thought they had erased. However, he couldn’t bring it online to check its contents.

Aika used her software skills to recover the drive’s file system and was able to help Pasha access it. It contained back-ups of every file collected on the station, even the ones from the bio-lab. It wasn’t in the schematics, which is probably why the other crew members had missed it while wiping out everything else that could be used as incriminating evidence of their deeds. Reece decided to let Pasha start combing through it all.

Meanwhile, he went back to the newly cleaned officer’s barracks to get some sleep. After cleaning up the blood of the two Becker women, Reece removed the sullied bedding and moved the bed to another room. It was one that didn’t have blood-stained floors. Removing the sullied bedding with fresh ones from storage, Reece could feel the bed calling to him. Nearly spent, he laid down on it for the first time, but it didn’t feel right without someone there with him. The first thing that came to mind were thoughts of Naeva, but she had been gone a long time.

In place of the sexy Lupine, his mind soon shifted to Aika. She was definitely attractive, but Reece didn’t know how to take the next step or if it was still too soon. After lying in the bed for a while and thinking about her, he couldn’t bring himself to fall asleep. So, he decided to go to the gym and tire himself out. Maybe if he exhausted himself, sleep would finally come to him.

When Reece arrived, Aika was already there jogging on one of the treadmills in her white tank-top and black shorts. She was playing an old classic rock medley through the gym’s surrounding speakers.

“Mind if I join you?” the nervous engineer asked politely.

“Of course not,” she replied. “You know I enjoy your company.”

“I enjoy yours as well,” replied Reece as he stepped onto the treadmill next to her.

“Lame,” Reece thought, scolding himself. “I can do better than that.”