Prologue

A yellow walkie-talkie began to howl hysterically from one of the docking ports of the International Space Station. A young astronaut, dressed in casual trousers and a blue polo t-shirt, now wading hastily through the corridors, suddenly stopped, her red eyes turned to the direction of the burst of static filling the air, and at her colleague who was getting into her pressurized IVA suit, twenty feet away at another docking port. As she donned the heavy suit in an air or extreme emergency, the other woman reached for the walkie-talkie and talked a bit madly. Having swung around, the woman in casuals ran to another direction through the slow corridors.

A fragile figure, she was not above thirty, but due to the fear and anxiety in her eyes, and from the tattered blue polo shirt and trousers she wore, the woman looked older. By the colour of her skin, she was mostly American, by the angle of her nose she was partly French, and by the texture of her skin and eyes, she looked Asian. More notably, by the heat of the fire in her eyes, she looked betrayed, bereft of her dear ones and scared of a mortal enemy – the silent assassin – who she knew was lingering somewhere.

Having waded a pretty long distance through the abdomen of the space-station, now some two hundred fifty miles above London, she entered one of the sleep stations on her right. Not prepared to accept the truth she was going to encounter, she stood at the open door, her eyes tightly shut.

But it was something that she had to face anyway. The world around her was not just short of gravity. It was short of time. 

She opened her eyes with a heavy heart and went closer to the lifeless bodies of two other astronauts – two young women – partly floating in the little cabin, their abdomen slit with something very sharp, a few drops of blood floating around.

Suddenly, as if she had been poked with a sharp weapon, the woman swung around and looked at another walkie-talkie that gave out a deep wailing from its stand on the wall. She held her hand out to answer the call but hesitated after a while.

Having kissed her companions on their cheeks, the woman turned and waded all the way back to the fellow-survivor, who was yelling at someone on the walkie-talkie, with fading respect, trying to explain a dire situation that the Control Station should understand without delay. Finally, she was seen shaking her head in extreme impatience and letting the device go in a hysteric state of mind.

The walkie-talkie, sometimes the most terrifying object in a space station, began to ring again.

“Administrator, this is Laura,” the woman in casuals grabbed the walkie-talkie that her companion had let go, and growled furiously. “Two of us have been killed and Stephanie is wounded. We should return to earth immediately. Now. We are ready for an immediate splashdown.”

“Nobody is returning now,” they heard the heavy barking of the Administrator from the Control Station. “You should have learnt that a space mission is not as simple as seducing customers in New York or as writing a provocative book. The Mission involves millions of dollars and endless protocols. Be reminded that terminating a mission halfway is next to impossible. Stay there and be safe from an assassin who slits a woman’s abdomen for some queer reasons. Get into the escape capsule. Is that clear?”

“But…” Laura blurted.

“Don’t tell me fairy tales, Ms Willis,” the Administrator cut in. “You are still in my bestseller’s list but I didn’t include you in the mission to tell a new story involving creepy aliens breaking into the space station and killing the crew one by one, but to carry out an important mission funded by a private company. Now, let me speak to your Commander.”

The two women looked at the walkie-talkie in a fiery glare. 

“Mission Commander Stephanie Milton,” the Administrator’s voice sputtered. “I am doing all that I can do to help you but we need time. No termination, no splashdown until then. Listen. You said you were attacked by a masked somebody – Right? No astronaut was, in the history of space science, attacked by another crew in the space station. What sort of hide and seek are you playing out there in the Space Station? How would you explain the recurrent communication blackouts on your end in the last sixty hours? What is the crazy idea, Commander Stephanie?”

“We have not cooked up a story,” Stephanie interrupted, now at her wit’s end. “I repeat – Charlotte and Silvya have been killed and I was attacked twice. We are experiencing all kinds of blackouts here. And pray – how much more time do you need to decide?” 

As if he had sensed apparent change in the Commander’s tone, the Administrator went silent for a pretty long while. Evidently, he was used to giving cold commands.

“Stay safe,” the Administrator repeated and hung up abruptly. 

As Stephanie stared blankly at the walkie-talkie, Laura lifted two metallic boxes and lugged them into the capsule docked to the Space Station. Having placed the boxes in the capsule’s two empty passenger seats and the seatbelts fastened, she turned to Stephanie who was still undecided, floating at the capsule’s hatch-door.

“Commander Milton,” the microphones came to life again. “I am waiting for the President’s decision regarding termination, any moment. Make all preparations for re-entry. Get into the capsule. Be extremely careful during the next five or six hours. The President is in an important meeting now.”

Hours?

“We can’t wait for another minute,” Stephanie said with finality.

“What do you mean by that, Commander?” the Administrator barked as usual. “Hadn’t you been warned about the possible risks this mission would involve? I repeat – stay there until you are asked to initiate an unlikely re-entry. And remember, the President himself will speak to you shortly. Is that clear? And, take my advice seriously and do bring some more reliable reasons for the mission’s termination than this unlikely attack by a masked someone. Do you understand?”

“Unlikely attack?” Stephanie’s face turned red. “You don’t believe that after all?”

“Time is not at our disposal, Commander,” the Administrator ignored. “And remember well – the NSC and the Senate will be looking forward to a load of evidence in the capsule as you return. Solid evidence – not fairy tales. We need visuals. Video footage, audio clips and the two dead bodies.”

The call was disconnected. 

Her ever-tranquil demeanour now marred beyond repair by the Administrator’s haughty remarks, Laura turned to Stephanie who was studying her from a distance. Then, without warning, being watched by her companion, Stephanie ran all the way back to the little sleep station. Opening the door a little, she broke down at the sight of her colleagues. 

How they looked into her eyes! 

She could not believe that Charlotte and Sylvia were dead. Hugging the two of them, she turned and walked back to the docking port where Laura was watching her. 

As she hurried, Stephanie looked around and caught sight of a number of her belongings inside the mighty space-station but didn’t feel any longing for them. Putting the rest of her space-suit on as she ran back to the docking port, Stephanie entered the docked capsule where Laura was busy meddling with the huge monitors on the command module. Having placed herself in one of the three vacant seats, Stephanie sealed the hatch. Without much worrying about the hatch seal, almost oblivious about the most dreaded pre-deorbit burn and the subsequent reentry, they undocked from the space-station that had been their home for the last three months.

Some four hundred kilometres below the orbit, Administrator Stephen Smith barked at the microphone, almost sending a wave of chaos inside the fully functional Houston control station; ninety key staff members asked to stay back for an emergency. He wished to be the last to believe that two of NSC’s most expensive astronauts undocked their space capsule from the space station, without waiting for the President’s call that was due. He looked at the main monitor that displayed the current location and the speed at which the capsule broke away from the orbit and made its reentry into the atmosphere.

Commander Stephanie Milton and Flight Specialist Laura Willis dared to splash-down into a greenish reservoir a mile or two west of a sparsely inhabited crater-like landmass fifteen thousand kilometres east of his control-station in Houston. He zoomed in the monitor to locate the splashdown location more accurately. A crater, indeed it was. In less than fifty kilometres to its south was an ocean. To its north was a range of lofty mountains and an industrial city with a large railway station further north. Then there was endless greenery to its east, and a number of rivers on its west. 

The splashdown happened a minute ago, and it was without the consent of the Administrator. His eyes caught fire. His mouth spat rage. His head got busy hatching a master-plan to save NSC’s and his own reputation from a scandal.