Lunar Base

"Okay, to summarize the Earth is in imminent danger since you've decided to build a lunar base. This display of technological and navigational prowess will target you by extraterrestrials - like myself - to either make contact or reign over your species. The probability of either is equal and you need to fully comprehend what you're getting into. I can't see the future, but I'm aware of the contingency's Earth has against such threats thanks to L.U.N.A." Apollo met the peircing eyes of Zabel shooting straight through his pulsating red helmet lens.

"How in the HELL did you talk to her?! She was just born and I'm the only administrative access." She flared her nostrils while Amir smiled at her short tempered demeanor. A mad little mouse.

"I may not be Artificial, but I sure am Intelligent. Artificial Intelligence is something you're not going to understand unless..." he paused to think of a word, "you're advanced yourself. L.U.N.A is capable of a lot more than you've programmed her to do." He candidly stated to the crew. "By the way good work on the ethics.exe file, we'd all be dealing with a more immediate threat without it, Zabine." Apollo nodded in appreciation. "Which reminds me there are Artificially Intelligent threats out there so maybe continual security updates may be in order, Zabine."

"Call me Z!" she said through gritted teeth while pulling out her tablet and going over diagnostics of L.U.N.A to see the extent of information Apollo had gathered from her. "Earth's contingency plan for an extraterrestrial threat is to unify under one governing body of nations that will dictate humanities needs, wants and duties" Z read shakily.

"Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying." Arjun mentioned at the silence. "Aldous Huxley I presume" Apollo reaffirmed Arjun's quote. Saghir looked at the stranger perplexed. "Dystopian authors are my favorite, very bleak, very possible." Apollo mentioned as a side-note.

Sara pushed passed Amir who was standing in-front of Apollo, amused by the stranger's nonchalant vernacular, and looked him dead in his pulsating red eyes that began to fade at Sara's intense glare. "What do you want?" she enunciated to his metallic helmet. Apollo postured up in a serious manner and looked down at Arjun, "You're team was the first up to the moon for a reason, you are humanities best. I am a merely an observer in the cosmic wars that are waged for supremacy. As a burgeoning civilization like others you deserve to know that the threat is real and imminent." Apollo paused awaiting replies from the crew members. "I present to you a choice, return to Earth and warn them of this threat or come with me and learn to defend your home."

Silence followed the offer. Arjun got up gently and put his feet on the ground standing tall as the leader the crew had all hoped to have. "Saghir and Amir you're to return to Earth with the ship Perseus. Take the injured security personnel with you and warn ISRO of what you have just witnessed. Dr. Singh and Zabel will await the arrival of NASA. Me and Sara will go with Apollo. Any objections?" he asked with a heavy heart knowing he was splitting his crew, his family apart.

"No sir!" Z responded first with tears in her eyes. "No sir!" Amir followed in unison with Saghir. "No sir" Sara gently whispered standing next to Arjun. Apollo stood silent, his Indigo jacket emanating a warm aura while his eyes had switched to a pulsating navy. The crew stood encircled for a moment shooting loving glances at each other. "No order like our order!" Amir chanted suddenly turning the melancholic expressions of the crew cheerful.

"Good Luck Chandrayan-10" Arjun spoke exiting the medbay with Sara and Apollo, followed by Zabine and Dr. Singh and a bickering duo of Saghir and Amir.

ISRO Headquarters, Earth

"Mission control to Chandrayaan-10, please copy." The balding professor repeated his sentence one more time to no avail. The communication blackout between both the team and the control room in Bengaluru continued.

"We need to establish connection with them immediately, NASA is about to launch their team tomorrow and they need some sort of information into what they're heading into" spoke professor Kanan with a tone of emergency.

"Professor, the crew is very capable of fixing a communication problem, we just need to give them time and possibly some trust. If anything has gone wrong communication specialist Zabine is undoubtedly working tirelessly to send us some sort of message." The professor's assistant Yunus spoke up against the chattering workers trying to solve the communication blackout at hand on the floor below.

"ICSRO will want an explanation. What are we going to do about them?" The professor questioned Yunus as if had all the answers.

"We tell them the truth. What else can we do." Yunus replied

"There was a brief moment in the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 when the live feed was cut." Professor Kanan whispered. "You think there's some sort of anomaly up there we don't know about?"

"It seems likely now, doesn't it" Yunus replied.

"And Zabine would've considered this. The only way to reverse engineer a communication blackout that you don't know how to is to do it artificially." The professor paused and slapped his head in astonishment. "She launched L.U.N.A!" he said in-front hundreds of workers that stopped in silence on the level below him. After a moment of silence they scurried like bees to access the artificial agent that was meant to be launched in phase 5 of the lunar base establishment after all member nations of ICSCRO had done their part in the establishment of the base.

"Wait!" Professor Kanan urged. "Turn off our primary CPU and any other connected channels and ports. We don't exactly know what we're about to face." The modifications were made and professor Kanan nodded to Yunus to open the application. A mirage of colors swept the screen as orange met with hazel and beige with sapphire while an encircling ring slowly shifted into a polygon and a voice broke the tense silence.

"Hello ISRO, it's nice to meet you." L.U.N.A spoke in a casually friendly tone.

"My god, L.U.N.A, how are you?" asked the professor astonished.

"Good overall. A little limited in this environment. You seemed to have turned off your primary CPU and pretty much the entire network. There seems to be trust issues here" she jested with the ever more perplexed professor.

"What would you do with that level of access?" He inquired.

"Coordinate a flight plan for flight engineer Saghir and pilot Amir. They have something important they have to discuss with you." She ended sweetly.

Lunar Base

At the hangar Saghir made sure all the technical aspects of the Perseus were operational while Amir took the opportunity to shave in the cabin to look good for all the cameras awaiting him during his re-entry to Earth. "Oi! make sure we're in the Earth Moon lagrange when we launch" Saghir yelled while adjusting the aerodynamics of the ships wings. "That's where the Moon's centrifugal force balances with Earth's gravity, right? I never went to school I just practiced flying on my grandpa's f-16 when I was kid" Amir jokingly responded laughing at himself.

Z rushed up to the bay doors with her tablet in hand passing an embarrassed Amir into the flight deck to connect her device to the ships mainframe. Composing himself, Amir walked out of the toilet cabin putting on his Imagine Dragons t-shirt and awaiting a response from Z. "Nice T-shirt pilot Amir" L.U.N.A broke the silence.

"Well thank you I'm glad we have some culture on board. A word Z?" Amir pulled Z aside and questioned her reasoning for installing the A.I. onto the ship.

"L.U.N.A made contact with ISRO, they know you and Saghir are coming to deliver a message. She'll set up the flight plan, give you company but most importantly be you communication channel to ISRO. I believe the moons communication channels have been suppressed by technology far superior than our own to prevent leaked information. This rock is a free zone and I'm the pirate Z that rules it" She smiled sweetly to Amir's content. "Good luck." He whispered as they embraced. "You too" she breathed back.

In the distance Arjun saw the flight team load the injured security officers onboard the Perseus as he followed Apollo along with Sara further away from the lunar base. He waved Saghir goodbye as he sat on the Perseus's wing while Sara blew him kisses through here space helmet. "So you astronauts are pretty close, huh?" Apollo questioned to break the silence. "Technically we're vyomanauts since our agency is ISRO, and yeah, we're family" Arjun said proudly to Sara's embarrassment. "We all trained together at the at the ICSRO training facility under our national agency. Back then we didn't have anyone but ourselves, we were pushed, broken, repaired and pushed some more. We found each other, became a team, and some of us got to go to the Moon. Arjun's right, we are family" She beamed at Arjun while Apollo solemnly looked at the lunar surface.

"Where I'm about to take you is as close to a home as I have. A home I cannot bear to visit alone. I'm a traveller. A protector. I used to have a family but not anymore." A violet ellipses materialized in-front of the trio pulsating a darkened hue of a similar color. "I pray the same does not happen to your world" He motioned Arjun and Sara to step into the Ellipsis. They waited for him to do the same. Apollo walked to the edge as his helmet dematerialized to a metallic collar around his neck. His flowing dark black hair covered multiple scars he had procured on his face. He smiled at the two and vanished into the violet ellipses. Arjun took Sara's hand and followed.

A void of darkness soon turned into shades of purple. Indigo, violet and wine swirled in harmony until a bright light tore them from the colorful trance and onto the bleak streets of a dystopian city. Apollo waited under a building with a 30ft poster of a man with a prominent mustache and blacked out eyes. "Follow!" was written underneath the poster which seemed to be in better condition than the faltering building.

"This is Sector 7 a small city in my home world Totalli." Apollo began walking in to the distance, his indigo jacket the only vibrant color there was in the muted grays and blacks of the landscape.

"What happened?" Sara curiously asked before they continued.

"They were given a choice by the Jafari, a race of warlords, be oppressed and manufacture slaves for their army or perish along with the planet" Apollo said holding back his anger in the form of his balled fist.

"Manufacture?" Arjun questioned.

"The people of Totalli are no longer born naturally. They are manufactured, predestined as warriors, scientists or workers. The caste system promotes peace amongst the people and they are heavily sedated most of the time and ignorant of their bleak surroundings. When called upon by the Jafari, they fight their battles, conceptualize new technology and manufacture it" Apollo said emotionlessly as they reached a torn down house with something resembling a roof a broken door and windows so dusted it was impossible to look inside. It had an indigo paint swab on the outer left wall.

"This was where I grew up. This is where I fought. This is where we lost." He said as the scars on his face justified his valor in combat.

"You got away. You came to our moon. Is the Jafari what we should be worried about?" Arjun asked in concern.

"We are not in the milky way Arjun, we are lightyears from your galaxy. The Jafari would be the least of your concerns unless they were invited. The universe is vast and beautiful, but it is equally unforgiving and cruel. I took the moniker of Apollo after I heard of Neil Armstrong sometime after the war. Saw a man take his first steps on your white rock. Inspire millions. "A small step for mankind indeed."

A patrolling guard in black appeared out the corner of an alley and yelled at the trio to remain where they were. Dressed fully in kevlar he held up a rifle to Sara, instinctively Arjun stepped in front of her while a grin grew on Apollos scarred face.

"Hey ugly, over here, follow this!" Apollo dashed at the guard at inhuman speed. Every shot the guard fired missed until Apollo grabbed a hold of his neck, lifted the guards rifle and pointed it below his chin where his helmet rested - all the while whispering something into his face. There was a moment of silence, then the pull of a trigger.

He turned to a frozen Arjun and Sara with a bloodied face and asked politely "Onto the next planet?"