T-Plus 15

Esther didn’t think she was a light sleeper. Usually, when the others had tasks to finish or they were going out for a quick excursion, she’d sleep through it, but there was a lot of movement in the locker room this early in the morning. Esther blinked the grogginess from her eyes as she sat up in her cot. Several beams of light flashed over her head, causing the sources to whisper apologizes as they snuffed the lights out. They disappeared out into the hallway. The locker room returned to darkness, and the sounds of shuffling cots and feet disappeared. The soft breathing of sleeping people lapsed back, but this time with several less, leaving only her and Aaron in the room.

When had the tech boys come back? According to her memory, the technicians had been repairing the solar panel and transformer outside, shooing the rest of them to bed, yet here they were, rushing off early in the morning. The echoing of footsteps faded further into the hangar as she swung her own legs off her cot, her toes touching the cold floor. With a bit of shuffling her feet around, she found her socks and shoes, slipping them on to ward against the chill.

She reached out to the side where she knew her flashlight was located. Her fingers wrapped around the familiar tool, and she pressed the power button, covering the light within her coat to keep it from waking Aaron, if he was still asleep. Seeing how she didn’t see or hear movements from his corner of the room, she suspected he was the heavy sleeper.

Using the dim light, she navigated her way out the locker room and through the vague path in the hangar, reaching the hatch. Her light shone on Kuznetsov sitting on a short stack of crates, his arms intertwined with the thick tethers that led outside. She waved her light in an arc, catching sight of none of the others, not even Dr. Vaughn.

“Is everyone else outside?” she asked as she took a seat next to him.

He nodded, moving his lantern to his other side to make more room for her. She did the same, powering down the flashlight to conserve battery.

“What’re they doing now?”

“They’re attaching the panel to the main power lines, so if all goes well, they said we should have the emergency power back on.”

“On all the floors?”

“I’m not sure,” Kuznetsov replied. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“How long did they say they’d take?”

The engineer shrugged, showing her the several tethers he had himself wrapped in. Their ends were knotted and tied to one of the drones that rested on its side further in, probably to account for the solar panel they were working with.

“Maybe a few hours. It’ll depend on if they run into any mishaps. Hopefully, not, but you never know.”

“So we can only wait?” she asked, making herself comfortable.

She and Aaron had been in these same positions the day prior, watching and making sure these tethers didn’t fall loose as the excursion team pulled the panel closer to the Station. The tethers started off with a lot of slack, but gradually straightened and tightened as the technicians moved further away. Today wasn’t any different, although there wasn’t as much tension on the tethers as there was yesterday when they stretched it out as far as they could go. When she asked Dr. Vaughn and Kuznetsov about it, apparently they had to improvise a bit, adding more length to the tether by tying rope to the end. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to do anything risky today.

Esther hopped off her seat and grabbed her flashlight, heading back out the hangar. She paused midstep, turning to ask Kuznetsov,

“Do you want anything? I’ll grab some for you from the supplies.”

“Coffee, please.”

With a nod, she went to grab him and herself a mug of coffee to wait out the good news. She returned half an hour later or so, more awake than previously and holding two lukewarm mugs of barely passable coffee, although her taste buds proclaimed it was closer to warm coffee-flavored water. She handed Kuznetsov’s share, reclaiming her previous seat. He gave her a nod of thanks, and they sank into the silence, taking small sips at a time to preserve their stash.

They remained like that for who knew how long. Esther focused on the little amount that was left in her mug, dwindling by the minute. With as many times as Kuznetsov was sipping from his, she assumed he was in a similar predicament. Eventually, she set her mug down first, and after one last sip, the engineer did the same, releasing a sigh.

“How much coffee do we have left?” he asked, turning to her.

Esther counted the number of containers in her memory, double checking the amount.

“About two, maybe closer to one and a third.”

“I don’t think the others have had any coffee yet, so that it’ll become less than a container soon.”

“If they can get the lights back on, we’ll be one step closer to not having to worry about it,” Esther proclaimed.

The engineer only gave a nod, his gaze directed on the hatch before them. He sat in silence, organizing his thoughts, before turning back to her.

“I wonder if it’ll all go so smoothly,” he muttered, his eyes downcast as he spoke his thoughts.

Before she could give her own opinion, he put his hand out to stop her. He stayed silent for another moment, shaking his head.

“Let me explain my reasoning,” he said. “Once we get the power on, it’ll make our search for a working system to send a message out a lot easier, but then what? Will Triton receive it? Will they actually send help up here? From my understanding of the government, they’ll likely see us as a liability and attempt to purge us if anything.”

“They wouldn’t,” Esther refuted with conviction. “They wouldn’t abandon two Navigators to their fate.”

Kuznetsov stared at her, scrutinizing her words.

“And what makes you so sure of that?” he questioned, crossing his arms and resting them on the tethers in his lap. “What makes you so sure that in this time of uncertainty, they won’t break their precedent and abandon a few Navigators, even one as high ranking as a Rank 6?”

“It’d be senseless for them to train and raise Navigators, especially a high ranking one, and then abandon them because of unknown entities,” Esther reasoned. “Even during the previous Alpha Centauri incident, the government sent a task force to rescue the Navigators stuck there.”

The engineer nodded in recognition of the incident she mentioned.

“I remember that. They made a big deal of it, since that was the first time we met another sentient race outside our galaxy. And I’ll accept your point about the government going out of their way to save their important investments. So let’s say that they do receive our message, and they do send an escort up here. What makes you so sure that they’ll rescue all of us?” he asked, rephrasing his original question. “Since, according to your reasoning, they’ll definitely save their Navigators, but the rest of us aren’t Navigators.”

Esther faltered in her words, weighing her next argument carefully. Kuznetsov’s words weren’t wrong. Even if this was the space age, any endeavors in space exploration still cost a fortune, and training and raising Navigators cost much more than a casual exploration of unexplored space. It was a given they would come to retrieve their multibillion investments. As for technicians, engineers, and doctors, they were a dime a dozen in this scientific era.

“I... I don’t know,” she said, finally.”

Kuznetsov only nodded, leaning back with his arms still crossed.

“I don’t either,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t want to bring this up with the others as they are now. Didn’t want to spoil the mood.”

“So why did you bring it up with me?” she asked.

“You’re the most level-headed one out of the lot,” he answered, turning his gaze back towards the hatch. “I was worrying about how to deal with the possibility that they would only send a double or single person rescue pod, but I figured getting another person’s opinions and ideas would be better.”

“And how long have you had this stuck in your head?” she asked.

“Since they started planning on how to get the lights back on,” he confessed, scratching his chin. “Let’s just say, due to working with Toast, I know how the government likes to operate in times of crisis.”

“You seriously...”

He only shrugged in response, standing to stretch his limbs out. The loose tethers fell off his lap, gathering around his legs. As he stood, it was more obvious that they had been straightening and growing taut as the group outside wandered further away from the Station. The engineer kneeled to gather them all, making sure none of them had loosened while they had been conversing. He handed the bundle over to her as he checked the knots on the drone, leaving her alone for a few moments.

Kuznetsov returned, gesturing for the tethers back, and gathered them back in his lap as he took his seat again. He extended his legs out, crossing at the ankles as he got comfortable again. How he could look comfortable sitting on a plastic crate, she didn’t know.

“Now,” he began, continuing their earlier conversation, “if we assume that they’ll only rescue our two Navigators, what will the rest of us do? At best, they’ll allow some of us to board or at least, give us some supplies, and at worst, they’ll completely abandon us along with the Station and blow everything to smithereens. Of course, the best case scenario is if they evacuate us alongside the Navigators, but I like to prepare for the worst, just in case.”

“So according to you, the case we should prepare for is if they decide to get rid of this problem entirely and blow up the Station, us, and all the aliens after they make sure the Navigators have gotten out safe and sound?” Esther clarified as she got into a more comfortable sitting position.

“Essentially, yes. The first step would be to figure out how far along the government has gotten in their decision making. It’s been about two weeks or so now after this all started, and even with the slow moving bureaucracy, they should’ve gotten somewhere by now.”

“Well, they reacted quickly by putting the Station into quarantine,” Esther pointed out.”

“Of course they did,” Kuznetsov replied. “What would you do if the refugees you took in told you that they were attacked by unknown space aliens that eat through flesh and bone and rocks and are resistant against bullets?”

“... lock it away and pretend they don’t exist until I figure out how to deal with them?” Esther said, furrowing her brows.

“Which is basically what this quarantine is about,” Kuznetsov sighed, patting the bundle of tethers in his lap. “Now, since they put up a quarantine note on the Space Elevator of all things, management knows of the possibility of survivors, which isn’t a hard conclusion to come to once they take note of who made it out alive, and witness reports of who died and such. Now, if the planet of Triton was sensible, they should’ve done one of two things with this information.”

The engineer held up two fingers, counting down as he spoke.

“One, after the initial collapse and abandonment of the Station, send up a probe to figure out the basic situation and confirm if there are survivors or not. Two, send up a dedicated task force to deal with the alien invasion, noting any survivors as they do so.”

“So you think this decision is what they’re arguing over right now?” Esther asked.

He only shrugged again.

“Like I said, that’s if they were sensible. For all we know, they could’ve decided to terminate the Station along with its problems and actually be arguing over the size of the force. We’ll know more once our communications are up and stable.”

As he said that, the room got significantly brighter, nearly blinding the two that were used to dim lighting. Esther covered her eyes, blinking the tears that forced their way out. She wiped them away on her sleeve, her eyes gradually adjusting to the new lighting.

“Well, it looks like they did it,” Kuznetsov said, standing with the tethers in hand. “We’ll have to continue this discussion later. For now, let’s congratulate them on their hard work.”

***