Commander Juliana Newman floated, turned, and dragged herself into the cupola, where Frank Fuller was watching Earth go by outside.

“Houston says they’ve still not restored the station. Thankfully, the TDRS has reconnected to Guam, so we’re not losing com, but the way I hear the subtext, it was touch and go.”

Frank raised his tablet, briefly showing her the scrolling text.

“Social networks are now all over #WestCoastBlackout. You’d think there would be generators at the ground stations.”

She smiled.

“Maybe they do. And nobody put the local ISP on one.”

“Yes. But to hear the networks, you’d think the coast had dropped into the ocean or something.”

“No chance, you’d get echoes of the earthquake all over the world in that case,” she replied.

“Well, we should be getting a view. The weather’s still relatively clear, and this orbit is a bit closer than the previous one.”

Frank was still smiling when he saw Juliana frowning.

“Frank… turn and tell me if you see that… shimmer?”

The man grabbed an edge and reoriented himself to look forward. He squinted a bit.

“Sort of?”

Juliana whistled softly.

“I worried something was wrong.”

Frank braced himself and passed his hand over the silica glass of the pane.

“Not a smear.”

Juliana hesitated. Then she grabbed her suit microphone and called out, “Shuko? Can you connect me to Houston?”

The Japanese astronaut monitoring the station’s heath acknowledged the request, and ten seconds later, called out “you’re on with Ops.”

“Ops, this is Newman.”

“Hear you.”

“So far,” she automatically joked, before adding “we’re getting close to the west coast and we’re seeing a weird atmospheric distortion over the ocean.”

“Repeat, ISS?”

“There is a sort of weird shimmer over the atmosphere on the ocean further along the orbit. Do you have a satellite view of that?”

There was a slight pause as Ops probably passed the request.

“Sorry ISS, we don’t have a confirmation. We had problems with LEO IR an hour ago. Satellite crashed, and we’re still trying to bring it back to full operation. It should cover your position in half an hour, and if…”

The voice trailed, and Juliana could hear distant voices, indicating that Ops had forgotten to cut their microphone, as usual.

“What?” “The Pentagon?” “What’s that about our sats?” “They lost sats and are asking?” “Tell that colonel we’re good”

“Sorry ISS. Got distracted.”

“What was that?”

“Some colonel Denvers at the Pentagon phoning and asking if we have off-line satellites. It seems they had a problem with some GPS ones, I think.”

“Well, looks like you have. Had, rather,” she answered.

“Not your problem. Is the shimmer stable or what?”

“Stable. And we’re getting closer, so it’s a bit clearer,” Frank answered loudly enough to be through the microphone.

“Sorry?”

Juliana repeated the report.

“Noted, ISS. Too bad the LEO IR satellite software crashed. It was close to the west coast, and it lost all pictures he’d recorded as it was coming over your current position.”

“Copy that. We’ll observe and take pictures.”

“It looks like small hexagons,” Frank said.

She took a look, before complaining, “Fighter Pilots. I’m jealous.”

“You’re still 20/20.”

“And you’re better. Shut up.”

“Sorry, ISS?” the voice from below came.

“Oops, I was talking to Fuller. Disregard.”

Noises came again from the connection, voices.

“What does he mean, he’s losing GPS satellites everytime they go over the northwest? Not our problem…”

“Ops?” Juliana asked.

“Sorry, the Pentagon is asking where you are in orbit, and if you have problems. They say they have some of their GPS satellites shut down over the northwest for some…”

The voice of Ops from Earth trailed down. But Juliana didn’t wait. She could add two GPS satellites being disabled and one NASA observation platform shutting down. She toggled her microphone back to central.

“Shuko. Sound the alarm. Collision. We need to prepare for power…”

“The hexagons are almost under us,” Frank warned.

“Shuko! We’re going to lose all power. Sound…”

Darkness.

No, Juliana Newman realized. Some light still came, reflection from Earth through the panes of the cupola. But the entire ISS had blacked out.

And fallen silent.

The ISS was never silent. Fans were always running, distributing, and moving air around to avoid pockets of CO2 forming or unequal distribution of oxygen. You learned early to ignore the background noise because it never stopped. And you did have special fans running for your sleep period, to make sure you didn’t get a bubble of CO2 around your head while immobile.

“Frank!”

“I hear you.”

She spotted a brief movement, silhouetted over the cupola’s windows.

“Shuko,” she called out, but of course, the microphone did not seem to work either.

“Everything has shut down. Total power loss.”

“The tablet has batteries. It’s down too,” Frank confirmed.

“That’s what happened. To the other sats.”

Frank didn’t answer. Then he said, “Holy Mother of God.”

“What?”

She dragged herself back to the cupola and looked out.

The view would have been glorious in other circumstances, maybe. But combined with the utter power loss, it was horrifying.

There was an aurora of sorts. But in space. Blue lights reaching out from the surface to undefinable heights.

She’d seen her share of auroras from the cupola, of course. The ionized lights were confined by the earth’s upper atmosphere, a spectacle under their eyes.

There are not enough atoms up there to ionize for an aurora.

And besides, the blue light was not the normal color for auroras. It felt unnatural.

“Radiations? Storm Shelter,” she ordered, referring to the protection against solar storms that the ISS included, despite its position under the Earth’s magnetic protection of the Van Allen belts.

“Is it even safe?” Frank wondered.

Despite his misgivings, he grabbed the edge of the cupola and started to haul himself out.

“Do you remember how to get there? In the dark, it’s going to be…”

Frank did not finish his phrase.

Blue light entered the ISS. Blue lines swirling. Juliana realized the lines didn’t light the interior of the station. But they moved, like some slow version of tesla coil lightning, and they started and stopped at the edges. She realized she could almost feel the geometry of the module and tunnels, by the end and start of the swirling lights. She raised one hand, realizing she could see the light through it, even if they stopped at the walls of the station. She could feel some heat, coming from somewhere she couldn’t guess.

“Too late,” Frank said. “were fukt.”

She realized his words were already slurring. She should have felt panic, but she already knew that whatever had befallen the ISS, it was too late for her – or anyone – to do anything. If the radiation was already killing them and that fast, then they were dead, they just didn’t know.

“rank? ere ou…”

Her mouth felt funny as if it was filling with stuff.

She tried to guess in the darkness, using the dancing lights. For one last moment, before their organs liquefied. She felt the heat more keenly, rising inside.

She could see the heat pulsing slowly ahead. In a long shape.

“Okay, the TRDS has no carrier or anything, and we have only the last moment before this happened,” Ops – Kayleigh Byrne – was shouting over the din of the control room.

“Got record of what she was doing on internal coms. She was calling for Shuko – astronaut Aozora – to sound the alarm. Something about collision and loss of power?”

“She must have realized something before it happened.”

Someone next to Kayleigh whispered, “all the satellites.”

The repeated calls from the Pentagon, she realized.

“Is that colonel from the Pentagon still on the line?”

“No, but I can call back.”

“Do so. Tell him ISS… lost com. Probably got disabled.”

“No,” the colonel – Wesley Denvers, she remembered – said, “it’s temporary. But we have a second failure on one of the Navy’s… sorry, Space Force, birds. Again, when it crossed over the northwest coast area. They lose all power while over there. And the entire northwest is offline, even through geo sats links. I… assume that power is off, and can’t be turned on.”

She briefly wondered how the man could even stay calm in the face of the impossible.

“Batteries?”

“Drained. One had a minuscule charge, but they all restarted from solar panels, as it’s still daylight over the affected area.”

“Then the ISS…”

“Should restart. As soon as it moves out. Your guys should be safe unless the lack of power affects pressurization.”

“It shouldn’t. It’s designed so that loss of power locks, not opens. That’d be stupid,” Kayleigh.

“Oops, General Markus just arrived. I have to brief him. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

The beep of disconnect hit her, and she pulled back her headset, hitting the general channel.

“Okay, everyone. Here’s the situation. The ISS has lost all internal power. And by all, I mean even batteries. They’re totally black. The good news is that it’s temporary, and once they’re out of the… affected zone, they’ll get power from the solar panels again.”

She could see relief painted on the faces turned toward her.

“The zone is limited, so we should face maybe ten minutes maximum of orbit… meaning it can restart at any time in the next six. I want everyone to figure out how to restart the essentials of the station from scratch as fast as possible once we get uplink again.”

She breathed deeply, and then added, “And start drawing plans for the next orbit. Can they evacuate? Orbit the Dragon or the Soyuz far enough not to be in the volume on the next pass? I need answers in… as soon as you can get them. Go!”

I know it must be terrifying up there in the dark, but it’s going to end. Stay the course, Juliana.

The next seven minutes were the most stressful ones of Kayleigh’s history. Up until Coms announced, “TRDS has link. Protocol tunnels being negotiated.”

A massive shout resonated across the entire control room, as cheering people jumped up.

“Quiet. Any telemetry?”

“Nope. Trying to run status…”

Then Com laughed, “looks like only the Russian core has restarted. Damn Russians, their computers turn on and off instantly.”

The old Russians modules, notably the core, were not designed two decades ago, but they were even “rugged” for their era. When there were none of their partners for the station around, people joked it probably used sets of ferrite torus as storage.

“Get me voice with the station as soon as possible.”

“Data. Pressure is still nominal, gases ratio not available yet.”

“Should be okay. They must be worried silly. Get me that voice.”

“Solar is low, the panels must not be in an optimal position.”

More data started pouring as various parts of the distant ISS rebooted. The big computers would be slow to come back, but the various systems vital for the station would be almost instantly up.

Up in the corner of the control room panel, a counter displayed 73 minutes.

The current estimate until the orbit of the station would bring it back over the Northwest. If the unpowered zone was not expanding too fast – Kayleigh had a dedicated operator trying to monitor how large it was from whatever source he could – that might be the last orbit to do so for a while, as the earth turned, and the next one would be too far east to cover the current area.

She just had to prepare the station for the next shutdown, and then exact a plan to evacuate.

“Com? That voice channel?”

“Nothing yet. Full bandwidth is available again, but the internal systems are still rebooting.”

She waited a full minute before bugging the hapless Com operator. The guy was doing his job to the best of his limited capacities from here on Earth.

“Com?”

“It should be up. But I get no one on vocal. It’s… buzzing. If astronaut Aozora hasn’t moved, he should be picking up.”

Kayleigh repressed the impulse to swear out loud.

“Text,” Com said.

She raised her head, as the console routed the display on the large set of flat panels.

Houston? Coms are back up here.

More cheers erupted, and Kayleigh had to wave everyone down.

“Com? That voice?”

“Nobody picks up.”

She brought a keyboard, called the text com application, and started typing.

Houston here. Your voice should be up. Can you check?

She waited a few seconds, then text started to appear.

Maybe. I can’t be sure.

You can’t be sure? What? Kayleigh thought as she frowned, and waited for elaboration.

Trying camera. You need to see.

“Video active,” Com announced as the channel automatically added itself to the main displays.

She instantly recognized the corridors of the station. The light was dimmer, as the station would be in reduced power mode.

Then something moved into the camera’s view and the entire room gasped.

It looked wrong. The visible bit was blubbery, leathery, a substance that she had no name for. There was an elongated shape, a head, over a too-wide neck.

Tattered bits of what she recognized as a NASA-issue teeshirt hung, floating in the zero-G.

The thing pulled a tablet into view, and Kayleigh noted that there seemed to be only three far too large digits grasping. The weird humanoid started pecking at the tablet, and text started to display.

Can you see me?

Kayleigh remained frozen, disbelieving.

Ops? the thing typed.

She grabbed her own keyboard and typed.

Who are you?

The alien figure on the camera paused and started typing again.

Commander Newman.

Then after a short pause.

I think you’ll have to trust me on this.

Then another figure moved into view. It looked almost the same, and Kayleigh noted the wide eyes, that looked like somebody extended the iris all the way through the ocular globe, while the pupils seemed a bit overlarge, even in the dim light.

And the other?

That’s Shuko. Frank and Ivan are there too. Yaytsev is checking the station.

Two more figures moved partially in view, one waving with a too-short arm.

The silence in the control room was absolute.

What happened? Kayleigh typed.

Light. Light reached at us. And changed us.

People were starting to arrive in the room, and Kayleigh waved them away, whispering “keep room clear”, before focusing on the view from the ISS.

I should get green and muscles all over from radiation, not this.

She blinked as someone next to her said, “did she just make a Hulk joke?”

The next ten minutes were a painstaking exchange. The changed crew’s digits were too thick to type easily, but they still had their former respective dexterity with the tablet.

Can’t hear anything. Or even speak. All our external orifices are fused shut. No ear, no mouth, no nose, nothing.

No, we don’t have problems yet. Maybe we breathe through the skin. It seems to have digested most of the clothing, by the way.

I can see clearly. I think I even see in infrared.

That’s how we talk. It seems we hear some electromagnetic stuff, including all the wifi stuff like a whistle. We talk to each other over that semi-radio.

Russian accent still awful.

We have 50 minutes you say? Not surprised. We know this time.

Hope it doesn’t change us again. Once is hard.

The control station was almost deserted. Everyone was evacuating as the “zone” spread was accelerating, and the entire western half of the continent was now offline. Kayleigh was very tired, and she was way off her watch, but she kept the post. It was hers until she stopped… and no one was probably going to take over.

Leaving now. You’re sure you don’t want to evac?

Trust a capsule that will shut down three times before going down. Even if we drop over Russia, that’s iffy. And if the zone spreads there before, nothing is going to work and we crash into the ground at 5 times the speed of sound.

She didn’t know what to say. What did you say to, well, “people” even twisted by incomprehensible forces, who were going to die in orbit?

15 min until next shutdown. Good luck Ops.

Fly safe, she typed, remembering that space engineer streamer back on the west coast. His home would be dark already.

Until we meet again.

Kayleigh dropped the keyboard, not bothering to turn off the console. She came to the door, briefly contemplating the now-empty room, as Com joined her.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Once in the parking lot, she reached for the keys, and turned on the car, as she looked across the night sky to the west. Then she blinked.

In the distance, blue lines were silhouetted just over the horizon. Growing.

“Fuck, it’s coming.”

“The 146 is already supposed to be insane even this early,” Com said.

“We’re not going to make it, are we,” she answered.

“At least the last report says people aren’t changed. Or at least it’s not quick enough that people outside can see before they run. But good luck outrunning this on foot.”

“How the mighty are fallen.”

“Do you think…” Com said as she noticed him looking up.

“No. The best they can do is… depressurize and hope it’s quick.”

She grimaced, and added, “not that I was going to suggest. But Juliana is smart. She has to know. She'll do it.”

Okay, we have 14 minutes before the safety locks, she said.

Ready on your order, came Yaytsev’s voice, bouncing across the interior of the ISS.

Juliana rotated herself and started moving, grabbing the metal in the bulkheads, propelling herself, and barreling across the doomed station. Frank joined her, rushing a few feet behind in what would have been reckless a few hours before.

She spotted Shuko – how she could recognize him from Ivan was yet another mystery – and grabbed, braking hard into the middle of the corridor.

Blow it up, she said.

She couldn’t hear anything, but the red flashing lights were obvious. Things started to flutter as pressure dropped catastrophically. Yaytsev had painstakingly bypassed all the safeties so that the station would depressurize against its own designs.

Plenty of time, Frank said.

Once in shutdown, it would be impossible to maneuver anything. They would have to dismantle everything bit by bit.

The flutters slowly ended. She couldn’t really tell the difference, but she assumed the station was now airless.

After you, Shuko said, as he forced open the emergency panel. It was designed to lock itself against a vacuum, but once there was no difference in pressure, it was trivial to open.

Juliana Newman, the last commander of the ISS stepped into space, luxuriating in the sunlight as it started its photosynthetic miracle across her skin. She looked both at the Earth below, the station around her, and the glory of the heavens.

She’d been very careful not to let Houston see that she had four eyes, equidistant over her head, allowing her a 360° field, leaving only a blindspot over her head and under her shrunk “feets”.

Ivan, stop lounging. I want to see if we can rig ablative shields to cover a re-entry. I don’t trust the organics stock we have.

We don’t know how much we really need, he answered.

It does not matter. They’ll run out in a month, a year, a decade. No closed system is 100%.

Or maybe a century, Frank said.

Worst case, if we can figure out where the Chinese station is, we’ll have some additional supplies, Shuko added.

At that moment, Yaytsev came into view.

Look at me! Flying.

I can see your magnetic fields grabbing and interacting with Earth’s, you know. Stop clowning, Russky.

Not Russky. What are we?

Spaceborne, she thought.

Spaceborne STR 17 AGI 13 DEX 13 AUT 17 PER 17 EMP 14

Total: 91, no extra stat

No Data Available.