Kayden sat on his own in the pilot’s seat, staring into space. The Beautiful Tyrant had returned to the BPI asteroid. The shuttle sat in its cradle, powered down and empty. He hadn’t slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see Christophe’s decapitated head, bloody indignation written across his face as the light faded from his eyes. His smart grey suit was still stained with Christophe’s blood. A lot of blood. In some places it was so thick it flaked away like dry mud. He looked at his hands, also red. He took the little golden Star Span emblem off his lapel and rolled it around with shaking fingers, then dropped it to the floor. He brought his hands to his face and the cloying sweet smell of dried blood filled his nostrils. He started sobbing again, his tears melting the blood on his hands into fresh trickles of red that ran down his face. His heart was torn apart, and his head swirled with violent designs.
Lago’s last words echoed around in his mind. ‘Get over it, stop feeling so fucking guilty.’ Kayden didn’t understand. Guilty? Guilty for what? Christophe’s death? He had nothing to feel guilty about. Images of their past together kept running through his mind, of all the good work they had done. Kayden had been the driving force behind Star Span and its ambitions of lunar tourism. If he hadn’t brought Christophe here, he would still be alive now. But how could he have known the Masama would react so savagely to their proposal. He knew Lago had been sceptical of their plans and wary of the Masama. But Lago didn’t care, he didn’t offer any warning. It was pointless to think about the past. But if they had done things differently, maybe Christophe would still be alive.
The Beautiful Tyrant was easy to fly. You just programmed in the destination and the shuttle flew itself. Kayden sat in the pilot seat, he sealed the airlock doors and detached the shuttle from the magnetised cradle. The lumpy bulk of the asteroid hub quickly decreased in size as he drifted away. The comms crackled. “Tyrant, you have detached without authorisation. Please submit your flight plan.” Kayden stayed silent and watched the asteroid grow smaller as it whirled away, driven by the centrifugal force of its tethered orbit. Its lights twinkled and the umbilical glistened it the sunlight. “Tyrant, respond. Kayden, what are you doing.” Kayden did not reply. He found his destination on a screen and put the coordinates into the flight computer. He activated the boosters and gave them a few short bursts to aim the shuttle in the right direction. Then he was gone, burning fuel, and gaining velocity across space, away from his home planet, back towards the Moon.
The word guilty played over in his mind as he stared out the window at the stars. The word reminded him of his upbringing. Catholic guilt was an old cliche, emerging from an inbred fear of evil and sin. Kayden had nothing to fear, he had never felt guilty. He was humble, he was good to people, he tried to help. If anything, he supposed he was guilty of wanting to help everyone, wanting to heal the world but not being able to make any real difference, guilt being a by-product of his informed conscience. He had vast personal wealth. Star Span was very rich. Maybe he could have given back more, but he needed all that money to do his good and noble work. And to build his shuttles.
Kayden saw himself as a progressive philanthropist. Refining oil had made him a lot of money but when it became apparent that carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption was damaging the Earth, he looked for alternatives. He transitioned his refineries to manufacturing bio-fuel. Kayden was proud of the work he had done, he felt warm satisfaction when he heard Star Span being praised by the media. Star Span led the way in manufacturing biofuel and was endorsed by many politicians, industry leaders and celebrities. He was constantly being praised and he believed he had deserved it until now. Maybe he was wrong. The dark recesses of his mind held the truth. Twisted, toxic shame and anxious secrets, once buried deep now squirmed into the light and demanded attention. Maybe there were things he should feel guilty about.
Kayden found himself amongst the wealthiest people in the world, in the top one percent. He left the day to day running of the business to his employees so he could find the time to look up from his penthouse suites and luxury mansions and gaze at the stars. His future beckoned, in the heavens above, twinkling with ancient light. He poured billions into building shuttles and powerful rockets that burnt thousands of litres of propellant to blast through Earth’s protective atmosphere. There were costly failures along the way but luckily some private investors believed in him, and the money kept rolling in. Star Span also applied for and received billions in handouts from supportive Governments and then he met Lago Santos with his plans for an orbital elevator. Kayden knew Lago was corrupt, deranged, possibly even dangerous. But they could work together. The moral differences they had were smoothed over by the promise of potential profit.
Kayden didn’t want to think about it, but he had lost control of his emotions. He was confronted with the harsh truth. What was the real reason he wanted to reach for the stars? Was it really about taking his wealthy clients to the heavens? Expanding the business of Star Span out into the solar system? This is what he had been telling himself but maybe the real reason was because the planet Earth was doomed. It was choking to death. Kayden was probably personally responsible for thousands of tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere. The bio-fuel venture was too little too late. Star Span had plundered resources around the world, decimating pristine land and oceans to drill, and flying everywhere in private jets. Not to mention their shuttles. The problem was he needed his business and its industries of exploitation to create the wealth to fund his means of escape. The more his business grew, the more the planet suffered, which increased the urgency of his shuttle programme. It was a vicious circle of finance and ambition and Kayden had convinced himself his motives were altruistic, rather than selfish. The fact was, he was forsaking his dying planet. He remembered Jejomar’s words “You want to escape. Your ambitions are designed only for wealthy people like yourselves.”
That was something to feel guilty about. He knew that Star Span’s transition to bio-fuel was too late for the planet. If he had invested the billions spent on shuttles back into green technologies, maybe he would not need to abandon Earth. He had not only betrayed his planet; he had also betrayed the billions of innocent people living on it. His advisors had warned him of the possibility of capitalist collapse, the people might rise up against the mega-rich, overthrow the Governments that had given him such generous tax breaks. After decades of exploitation, there was a growing feeling of open rebellion amongst the general public that were becoming intolerant of the wealth disparities. Kayden had invested in secure bolt holes, luxurious, self-sufficient doomsday bunkers in New Zealand that offered him sanctuary if things turned bad and he couldn’t escape the Earth. He had allowed his advisors to convince him that he was worth saving, because of his extreme wealth, he was somehow a more worthwhile person. It was only now Kayden could see how ridiculous it was. He was the same as everyone else. Maybe he had a lot to feel guilty about after all. His tears had dried, he looked at the stars and was aware of how alone he was, for the first time in years.
One casual scathing remark from Lago had caused this deep introspective soul-searching in the midst of anguish for his dead partner. But he was strangely glad of it. Everything suddenly looked different. His life was a lie. It had taken the death of his beloved Christophe for Kayden to see it. Deep down inside he understood he was a fraud. He had believed his own hype. He had been addicted to money. He had convinced himself in order to convince others but now it all looked hollow and empty. There was nothing left except revenge.
The shuttle ran on auto-pilot, it was easy to fly. Kayden was also on auto-pilot. His body going through the motions, strangely detached from his brain. He was numb. The grief, guilt, and existential angst swirled around inside, but at the same time he was strangely removed. Just empty and burnt-out. Incapable of feeling anything. Except revenge, then hopefully, peace. He was exhausted but determined. The hub had disappeared from view, but the Earth loomed bright and blue through the window. The planet he had neglected. It was only now he was abandoning it, he realised how precious it was, but he could not go back. Ever. The entire planet was a reminder of his guilt. Kayden had loved Christophe with all his heart, and he would have revenge on the monsters that murdered him. Lago was right, the Masama were inhuman, he would make them pay. And in doing so he would find his own absolution.
The journey would not take too long. Kayden did not need any fuel for the return trip so he burnt as much as he could, propelling the shuttle through space at thirty thousand kilometres per hour. It was a twelve-hour trip, but Kayden did not sleep. He sat in the pilot’s seat staring with grim determination at the small dot of the Moon ahead, watching it gradually grow as he hurtled towards it. It seemed that time did not pass, but the Moon grew hypnotically larger until suddenly he was close, and he had to think about the logistics of what he was doing. It was not complicated. All he had to do was point the shuttle in the right direction and burn fuel. There were no layers of atmosphere to slow him down and distort his approach, no clouds to obscure his view. The Moon rapidly grew in size, filling the window in front of him. He could see the Mare Serenitatis, the giant crater where the Masama lived.
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The Moon was no stranger to collisions, it was covered in craters. Its surface was scarred with billions of years of cosmic confrontations with asteroids and comets. Kayden intended to create another little crater. The Beautiful Tyrant weighed roughly eighty tonnes. Travelling at thirty thousand kilometres, it would crash into the surface causing instant annihilation of everything within radius. But he had to get his aim right. He stood up and concentrated on his approach, homing in on the collection of domes, ignoring and over-riding the alarms warning him of impending collision. He didn’t have to hold onto a steering wheel or wrestle with any controls, he didn’t have to do anything except push a few buttons. He stood there sweating and staring at his fate looming large in the window, the weight of his soul dragged him down as if it was tied to an anchor.
Kayden noticed movement on the surface below him. The Masama had seen him hurtling towards them and were launching drones and their old BPI shuttle to intercept. The Tobias VI, the shuttle the Masama had stolen from Lago, clumsily lifted off from the surface, its articulated arms folded beneath its skeletal hull. An entourage of worker drones accompanied the shuttle. They were various shapes and sizes, from large steel balls with fuel burning boosters to small light frames with little jets disturbing the vacuum. The two black Masama shuttles remained on the ground like giant spiders, still under construction. Kayden looked down at his controls. He was travelling too fast to attempt any evasive manoeuvres. He had the moon-base locked into the navigational computer. He stayed standing at the bridge of his shuttle as it plummeted towards his target.
The first of the Masama drones collided, it was slightly off target, crashing into the starboard wing of the shuttle and sending it into a spin. Kayden fell into his seat as oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling and the view ahead of him started twisting. It was one of the bigger transporter drones and it had torn a gaping hole in the wing of the shuttle. Kayden realised he was lucky the first drone had been off target. If it had crashed directly into the bridge, it probably would have killed him and ruined his final moments of suicidal satisfaction. The spinning motion changed the shuttle trajectory and made a more difficult target for the remaining drones, but they only had to get in the way to cause significant damage. Kayden could feel the structure of his shuttle shake as he smashed through the drone swarm. One of the smaller drones hit the window, shattering it but not breaking through. The air was sucked out of his lungs as the hull was breached. He turned his head to see the entire wing being ripped off leaving a gaping hole in the hull. He only had seconds before he lost consciousness, more than enough time. He felt the loss of velocity as the boosters were torn away, exploding as they detached from the hull in bright flaring fireballs. His beautiful, expensive shuttle, the Beautiful Tyrant was being ripped apart.
Kayden held on tight as the spinning motion increased and the air was sucked out. The silence of space was replaced by a cacophonous roaring sound. He almost blacked out but was snapped back into consciousness as his body convulsed. He vomited, the stream of liquid and bile was swept away behind him as the last pockets of air were forced out of the hull. He gulped a big lungful of nothing and choked as his body shuddered with the lack of oxygen. His eyes were streaming, and the view was spinning but Kayden gripped the seat and held on, determined to last as long as he could, for the last few seconds of his life. The drone swarm pinged off the hull of his shuttle, the port side wing had a large chunk taken out of it and a hit from another transporter drone reduced it to scrap. A smaller drone smashed through the shattered window in front of him, crashing straight into him in a whirling mess of aluminium frame and spitting jets. He couldn’t get his hands up in time and the splintered frame cut him to shreds, one piece of metal sliced him across the face, opening up his forehead, piercing his eyeball and through his cheek. Another piece ended up embedded in his chest, cutting through something important as blood started gushing.
Kayden stayed conscious through the pain. In these last moments he stayed resolute, only regretting everything he had done in his life, not the decision to end it. He did not need air or blood to see out these last few seconds, although everything seemed to move in slow motion, as if time itself had wound down to give him the chance to savour his vengeful destruction, and fully appreciate the sweet agonies of his own death. Through his one good eye he squinted at the approaching BPI shuttle, it was slowly manoeuvring itself into a collision course. But the Beautiful Tyrant could not be stopped. Even though its boosters were gone, and its engines ripped away, the momentum of his shuttle propelled it towards the moon-base. He was a spinning, screaming, suicide machine.
The BPI shuttle was bearing down on him, aiming to get between Kayden and the moon-base. He could barely see anything, and his breath came in ragged gasps. His life was slipping away, he just had to hang on for another second or two. The shuttle was a micro-second too late, it smashed into the port side, raking down the side, removing the remains of the wing and the wreckage about the stern. His shuttle was now just half a fuselage, an empty tube with no wings leaving a trail of debris behind it. The collision had sent it into a bigger spin, pushing it off its trajectory, rolling the main body and sending the bow and stern flipping over each other in a nauseating, twisting, rotation.
Kayden barely managed to stay conscious in these final moments. The G forces tore at him, the loss of blood and the lack of oxygen was making him deliriously happy. He had finally achieved something worthwhile in his life, he wanted to laugh, to celebrate his success. He was attached to his shuttle. As his bodily fluids leaked out over what remained of the bridge, Kayden was bonded to its metal hulk. The metal blade through his chest pinned him to the seat, his bones were metal, the husk of the shuttle was his skin and flesh, his ruined eyes were the shattered windows. He was an avenging angel of blood and metal. He was the Beautiful Tyrant. The last thing he saw was a flash of moon-base domes beneath him. By some miracle, the wreckage of his shuttle bore down on the base. Instead of crashing ignominiously into the Sea, he was actually somewhere near his target. Kayden rejoiced. In the last few seconds, he was overcome with euphoria. He was ecstatic. What an amazing way to die. Hurtling into the Moon and being instantly annihilated. A glorious blaze of vengeful fire. Time seemed to slow even further, he closed his eyes and levered a smile across his ravaged face.
The shuttle completed a rotation just in time for its bow to crash into one of the domes, giving him the satisfaction of witnessing the final moment of destruction. Kayden’s shuttle had been slowed by the collisions, but it still smashed into the moon-base at over twenty-thousand kilometres per hour. It had shed most of its mass and only weighed a few thousand kilogrammes. There was not much left of the main body, but it was travelling fast enough to do some serious damage. The bow of the shuttle hit the biggest dome, the same one Kayden and Christophe had been introduced to Jejomar in. The shuttle had been shot to pieces and was barely holding together but even such a fragile structure travelling at high speed completely destroyed the entire moon-base, hurling tonnes of debris, soil, and rock on ballistic trajectories above the surface.
Kayden’s body, with the remains of the shuttle, completely disintegrated on impact. The destruction spread from the impact centre in an eruptive flash of dust and structural fragments. There was no explosive fire, there was nothing to burn and no oxygen to burn it in. Heat was created from the kinetic friction which quickly dissipated in the low temperatures. Debris rained down upon the area, the shuttle wings and its burnt-out boosters crashed down in and around the spreading dust cloud. Smaller fragments of metal floated down to the surface like leaves from a tree. The entire moon-base was obscured by roiling dust, punctuated by explosive flashes as various pieces of equipment ignited and briefly flared.
The Moon was accustomed to impacts, it had lived a hard life. Every day it was bombarded with tonnes of flying meteorites and bolides as if it had blindly wandered into a cosmic shooting gallery. With no atmosphere to protect it, the Moon was vulnerable to any piece of rogue wandering space rock that happened to be charging around the system. It had been hit by much larger and heavier things than the shattered shuttle and would not notice the impact. It would not even be the biggest one that day. If Kayden was still alive, he would have seen the slow-motion effect continue. The impact caused instant annihilation for everything in a wide radius around the moon-base, the dust expanded slowly in every direction like a giant blooming flower, as small bits of shrapnel and shuttle gently floated down into the dense haze. As the dust settled, the wreckage was strewn around the Sea of Serenity. There was nothing left of the moon-base, just a shallow crater where the domes had been. Kayden’s body was gone, razed, annihilated, reduced to atoms. The entire collision and its aftermath happened in complete silence and was over in a few seconds. The ancient artefact that was the Moon had another scar on its surface.