Nothing Ilana had done up to that point in her life had prepared her to fly a small spacecraft into the void of space, and yet here she was.
Facing the doors to the outside, now closing fast.
“Go, go, go!” Exclaimed her partner in crime, or whatever this was they were doing.
But her stomach seized up. Her body revolted at the idea of going outside into the endless dark in nothing but a charred liferaft. Her head spun. What if the extinguisher foam hadn’t formed a seal? How long would they even last? “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Ilana had known danger and fear before on the job, often on a daily basis managing whatever Mother Nature had cooked up for them. But did space count as Mother Nature? Or was space the lack of Mother Nature? Either way, space was an entirely different beast and she was currently floating in the great beyond in a very small bubble.
One of the Spacer’s hands was already over hers on the controls, heavy and warm. Anchoring. He enveloped her other hand with his, his body bracketing her shoulders, his warmth spreading over her back. “You’re not doing it alone.”
Gently he pushed, urging her hands forward. She leaned in and together they accelerated, careening towards the closing doors. She closed her eyes and held her breath as they came upon the threshold.
In the ensuing silence, she assumed she… wasn’t dead.
She opened her eyes. They were drifting in outer space.
Oh, Gaia. Her legs felt weak, the floor giving away from beneath her. Did her guts even have anything left to expel?
“Hey.” Her companion moved his hands to gently brace her shoulders. He leaned forward to catch her eye, breaking through her spiraling panic. “I know you’ve got this.”
He let her go and she immediately missed his presence. But she also believed him – his unadorned tone, the steady way his eyes held hers. She nodded and focused her gaze ahead, pushing the controls forward, ignoring the flush of heat that bloomed through her.
He pointed out the window to the small flock of emergency shuttles fanning away from the larger Lunar ship. “Can you follow the others?”
“I can try.”
“Steady now.” He spoke over Ilana’s shoulder as she steered the controls, veering away from the low large shuttle in a large arc towards Luna. She was as aware of his closeness to her as the alignment of the shuttle towards their target. “Excellently done.”
His praise activated an unexpected note of deep-seated pleasure inside Ilana, a sensation that was both titillating and confounding – she didn’t need validation from anyone, much less this stranger. Who was he to think she needed or even wanted his validation?
“There doesn’t appear to be an emergency transponder or autopilot rendezvous point on this shuttle,” the Spacer said, working through the control panel holographs. He sure liked his big words. “Apparently they’ve both been disabled so I’ve activated my personal emergency beacon.”
“I did as well, earlier.” Ilana hadn’t meant for that to sound competitive.
He nodded. “We can continue following the other shuttles to the evacuation point but the navigation system looks to be fairly pared down. We’ll have to keep them in visual range.”
“Got it.” Ilana took a deep breath then looked over the larger scene.
The moon loomed up ahead, larger than any supermoon Ilana had seen over the horizon on Earth. The dark side of the moon sparkled in strands of golden light, twinkling through the manmade atmosphere over Luna, the gray city. On the bright side, the Lunar settlement blended in with the moon’s peaks and crevices cast in high relief.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.
Before her companion could respond, the Lunar shuttle combusted in a violent burst of light, spraying debris in every direction.
The wreckage tore through the other shuttles until they were nothing but debris themselves. Ilana fired the shuttle thrusters at their highest but she knew they wouldn’t be able to outrun the physics of what just happened.
She flinched and braced herself. Her last thought was of her family – her mother and sister specifically. But once again the end never came.
Ilana opened her eyes to find the shuttle cabin bathed in a soft, golden glow. The air felt still as if suspended in time. They appeared to be protected by a bubble that centered around them and extended over the front of the ship but stopped halfway down the back. The parts of the shuttle outside of the bubble had been shredded by debris. She could even see open space through the hull.
Her companion cradled a floating golden marble over his palm.
Ilana blinked at him. He was breathing hard, staring at the object.
“Are… we dead?” she asked.
“It worked!” He released a puff of air, his voice giddy with relief. “It actually worked.”
When he didn’t explain, she raised a brow. “So… I assumed you were human, but is there something you’re not telling me?”
She was mostly joking but a part of her wondered what on Earth she’d gotten into. Except she was no longer on Earth.
He laughed. “Oh, I’m human for certain. But this technology is not.”
Ilana looked over her shoulder to the back of the shuttle where the glow curved into a sphere. “What is it?”
“This is… my research.” The man gathered himself and cleared his throat. “I work with Elder technology. Specifically, how to apply Elder tech to our world.”
“Holy hell.” Ilana couldn’t help but gawk. “You work with the Elders? That’s literally the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He actually blushed and Ilana’s heart jumped a beat. He’d been attractive when she’d first seen him in the Lunar shuttle, all buttoned up in his tweed jacket and multisyllabic vocabulary – the type that just begged for a little bit of tousling. Now the top of his shirt was unbuttoned, the rest of him mussed by the scuffle earlier. He was even more alluring with a hint of what he’d look like were she to get her way with him.
“Thank you, but we don’t really work with them. They kind of send us whatever they feel like and we try to figure it out.”
“Sounds like semantics to me. How’s it feel being the point of contact for humanity’s first alie—” Ilana stopped herself from repeating the offense— “extra-galactic race?”
“To be honest…” He grinned like a kid who’d just discovered hidden treasure. “It does feel quite awesome right now.”
His smile was infectious. Ilana collapsed back into her seat, her body still shaking off their brush with death. At least the adrenaline had overwritten her nausea and she could look out into space without spilling her guts. “Staying alive feels pretty good, too.”
They sat in sober silence and watched the drifting wreckage of the other emergency shuttles whose passengers weren’t so lucky.
“Most definitely,” he said.
Ilana motioned vaguely. “So how does this thing work? Are we safe?”
“We’re safe. You want the short or long explanation?”
She made a show of thinking about it. While the shuttle controls remained active, the thrusters had gone offline. They weren’t going anywhere. “Indulge me.”
He nodded then pulled his hand back from the marble. The object floated on its own at the center of the bubble that encased them.
“We call this a crisis pocket.”
Ilana couldn’t help her expression.
He noticed. “What?”
“Sorry. It’s just… a ‘crisis pocket’?”
“The name’s a work in progress.”
“Right. Of course. Carry on.”
He shot her a look and she tried not to laugh, which was ridiculous considering their circumstances. Ilana felt as if she were charged with electric energy, her nerves raw and trigger-happy. She’d felt this jittery rush before, after completing certain difficult assignments out in the wild – but never so intensely.
On the job, she’d been prepared to fight the elements. She was a civilian now, caught up in the type of disaster Ilana herself normally worked.
“This particular blueprint was gifted to the Alliance by the Elders soon after we established Contact. It laid the groundwork for the republic’s dome and force field divisions early on. This ‘pocket’ is a third-generation prototype, over two decades in the making. Our lab has tested it in a variety of environments but this is the first time it’s been used spontaneously and successfully out in the world.”
Ilana looked closer at the translucent marble in the middle, shimmering with diffuse golden tones. “How do you use it?
“You squeeze it in your hand, after which it expands—” he leaned back and gestured at the bubble that surrounded them— “and solidifies. Imagine the strength and pressure of an atmospheric dome and concentrate it into a fraction of the size.”
“Huh. And how long does the pocket stay up?”
He shrugged. “Weeks, months, years. The shell can absorb and recycle energy from its surroundings to keep itself going. So we might starve to death but we’ll have air to last.” He studied her face. “You look skeptical.”
Ilana certainly couldn’t deny what was around her. “I believe it with my own eyes, but you make it sound like magic.”
He chuckled and smiled warmly. “What is technology but magic to the unknowing?”
It was Ilana’s turn to blush. He was close now too, his face gently lit by the glow of the marble between them. Her gaze fell to his mouth and couldn’t help but linger there a second too long. When she met his eyes again, he was watching her. His regard was open and intent as if thinking something neither of them needed to say out loud.
And she didn’t even know his name.
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