Space is a cold place, the individual atoms that are subjected to its purgatory are separated by distances that are so vast in comparison to the atoms themselves that each one might as well be floating in a galaxy of nothingness. But remarkably this tiny smattering of matter can build up over interstellar distances to incredible levels. The dispersed matter of the vacuum still exerts its influence on anything that moves through it, however minutely.
It was the combination of all these particles gathered by the UNSS Leif Erikson that burst forth like a wave of light as the FTL capable vessel reintegrated with the cosmos. This bow wave of light cascaded through space, interacting with the interstellar medium and losing energy until the light became mere motes that danced like fireflies before winking out entirely.
Leon watched the last vestiges of these particles from his central position on the ship’s bridge as he rubbed his head tiredly. He was strapped down into his chair to prevent the microgravity conditions from making him drift from the seat. He tore his gaze away from the console as the yellow alert lights flicked off.
“Samuel, report. Are we in the right place?” He asked the ship’s young pilot.
Samuel nodded, his voice a hoarse half-whisper. “We seem to be in the right place Leon.” The ugly marr of a vivid red scar cut across the entire front of his throat drawing Leon’s attention as he glanced at the younger man. A constant reminder of his near encounter with death several months previously.
Leon nodded and looked at Sabine. She was giving him a side eye, as she noticed him looking she jerked and then spoke, “The ship is operating at normal parameters Leon. Though there seems to be a coolant issue with one of the main radiators, it started to bug me about a day ago. But there was nothing I could do to fix it while we were at warp.” She seemed a bit embarrassed and so he was quick to reassure her.
“It’s fine Sabine. Things happen and it's our job to fix em, let me know what the diagnostic program says in an hour. Maybe it was just being finicky.” Leon smiled as she nodded confidently. He liked to think that a measure of the inspired confidence came from him directly, and not just the chair he sat in.
Taylor was the next to speak, the large man seemingly confused. “I am not picking up nearly as much radio chatter as I would have expected from this system.”
Well, that was either a good or a bad sign. Leon wasn’t sure which at the moment but had the distinct feeling he was going to be finding out pretty soon. He motioned to Terry, the slight woman giving him a nod in return. “Terry, if you would please give us an expanded view of what we are dealing with?”
She just nodded silently, apparently she was feeling a little taciturn today as she pulled up the information without speaking.
What met Leon’s eyes on the main monitor was a single bright yellow star, just as they had been expecting. It looked to be of a slightly higher spectral class than Sol, but that apparently didn't matter as the system had evolved complex life anyways. Now just to determine which planet it was on.
The search for the world didn’t take long, mainly because the system seemed to be rather devoid of large planetary bodies. Soon Terry had pulled up a grainy image of a pale blue dot on the monitor. It looked like little more than an errant pixel that somebody had zoomed in on, but he knew better. This was their world.
“Alright, we have a target. Samuel, plot a course closer if you would. Not too close.” He added even though it didn’t need to be said.
Samuel began typing at his console wordlessly, the metrics for the system hop were simple as there were no large-scale gravity wells to worry about between them and their target. It would be a simple matter of powering the warp drive and rocketing across the inner system in a bubble of condensed spacetime.
He paused. The data scrolling across the console made him frown. He had been party to enough science shit now to understand what a lot of the beeps and blips meant, and the ones that indicated a stable and comfortable biosphere were entirely gone. Well, not entirely, but severely diminished to the point of concern.
He looked over at his second and asked her, “Hey, Joice..” she gave him a look that said she wanted desperately to be somewhere else and Leon frowned a bit more. “Joice, do you see this atmospheric data?”
He waited a minute as she pulled it up and read through it. She seemed a bit taken aback as well. After another second he saw her eyebrows raise as she leaned in closer to the screen. “What? This is saying that.. the atmosphere of the planet is freezing.”
He noticed that Sabine was also looking at them. “Well, we won’t know for sure the cause till we get closer. Samuel? Are we set?”
Samuel gave him a thumbs up and flicked on the yellow alerts. They flashed as he gave the one-minute to warp translation warning. This time it wasn’t so bad. The warpshock, as they had come to call it, hit him quickly. His mind seeming to corkscrew down an endless drain into an infinity of colorful citrus cubes. But just as soon as it happened it was over leaving Leon wondering if he had even imagined it in the first place.
The Leif Erikson was capable of traveling three-hundred times the natural speed limit of the universe, but Samuel had throttled the warp drive down to only a hundred times the speed of light. They knew from experience that getting hit with a double dose of warpshock was an incredibly unpleasant experience.
So instead of mere seconds, the journey took a little over a minute. Before Leon was really ready the ship dropped out of warp once more. The ship peeling away like a giant flower unveiling its perfumed nectar to the universe, and he was the nectar. He shook his head at the strange sensation of becoming a perfumed liquid as reality reasserted itself.
Taylor started coughing and doubled over, Terry reaching over and whispering to him. Leon shook his head again as the strange sensations echoed in his mind unbidden, the big man had never taken well to warp translations and suffered greatly during the mission.
Leon frowned, it was unfortunate. But they couldn't scrap the entire mission for the comfort of a single person, especially when it was entirely unavoidable.
When he turned his attention to the main screen he saw that they were now much closer to their target destination, though still more than far enough away to be entirely out of danger from anything happening on the surface of the world. If anyone did notice them, they would still be far enough away to be nearly invisible to even powerful telescopes. They had jumped from twenty-four light hours from the star to just over twelve light minutes, a considerable distance that should allow their own highly advanced telescopes to still see much more detail on the planet’s surface.
He sat back in his chair as Taylor stopped hacking and Terry was able to turn to her instruments. He hadn’t wanted to rush the couple, but the mission was paramount and every second felt like a minute to his hyper focused mind.
Leon tapped a few keys on his console to adjust the main viewscreen, soon the image of a small terrestrial world was visible up on the main screen. It was a bit fuzzy as the telescopes calibrated, but it soon resolved into a blue and grey ball of rock floating in the depths of space.
The first thing to catch his attention was the startling lack of green. Large swaths of brown and grey covered the sporadic landmasses, the land interspaced by large blue seas. The next thing he noticed were the angry dark storm clouds that encircled the equator of the planet. As he watched he could easily make out the violent flashes of lightning as the clouds moved slowly through the planet’s freezing atmosphere.
That was not a good sign, it had all the hallmarks of a global winter. Either the planet was just naturally cold and desolate, or something had happened recently to make the planet that way. Something related to the last transmissions that they had intercepted twelve light years away.
He was about to ask for a status report when Terry let out a sob. Taylor immediately stopped what he was working on and leaned in to comfort her.
Leon spoke up, “What is it Terry? What’s wrong?”
Taylor shook his head as his wife just cried softly, a look of sorrow crossing his features. “It's all gone Leon. They blew themselves up, I know they did.”
Leon saw Sabine and Samuel exchange a set of dark looks as Joice murmured to herself, “No, why the hell would they do that?” She seemed a bit distraught as well. Not so much as Terry, but shocked nonetheless.
He needed to be sure. He took control of the optical telescopes and switched to the radio and infrared ones, they showed the same scene. The planet was cold and empty. No great sources of light or heat or radio waves were apparent. No signs of the civilization that he had been expecting. No, the planet was eerily silent for a world which should have had intelligent life.
He turned to look at Joice. “We need to send a probe down to the planet to confirm its status and potentially look for survivors.” She nodded blankly, hearing his words but not responding verbally. She must be a bit shocked still, he was too. But his military training combined with his predisposition for expecting the worst made him resistant to the horror of the situation.
“An entire planet destroyed for nothing. How could they be so selfish?” He heard Sabine say. She shook her head sadly and Leon was compelled to agree. It was a deeply selfish act, one that mankind themselves had nearly made themselves.
He swore loudly. “Fuck!” Everyone on the bridge turned to look at him and he continued. “We could have saved them, I know it. We had all of the information in our databanks about our near destruction on the day it ended, the aftermath of the collapse. We could have shown them the horrors we experienced..” he trailed off. There was more to be said, but he didn’t feel like saying it. He felt drained, drained of life and joy, fulfillment of the mission had been snatched from him and he trudged down that steep slope towards depression.
Before he could slip off the edge entirely though he was reminded of their ultimate goal as Samuel spoke, his harsh voice breathy as his damaged vocal cords strained to make himself heard. “We need to get closer. Leon is right, we need to look for survivors and information. Maybe we can find information that will help us too? We just need to keep moving forwards.” the man was right of course, they couldn't give up. Not with so much of their mission ahead of them still.
Leon looked over to Sabine. “If we get closer to the planet we can send a probe down to the surface. I think that it’s worth the use of one.” She nodded and turned to Samuel, they exchanged hushed words but Leon wasn’t paying attention anymore.
He plotted a course to the planet, if they used minimum power on the warp drive they could keep it from being a double transition for at least a few seconds. He had been hoping that they would not need to jump to the planet for a while so as to avoid so many jumps in quick succession. But what was necessary was necessary.
Leon gestured to Samuel. “Samuel, jump us to the planet. Do it now, no reason to wait.” The younger man nodded and immediately the yellow alert lights flashed on, the alarm blaring three times in quick succession. The rest of the crew should know that they had two minutes to finish what they were doing and prepare for a jump.
The twin warp jumps were fast and entirely unpleasant. The first was worse than the second, but he didn’t dwell on them. Instead he pulled up an image of the planet that was now only about fifty thousand kilometers away from the ship. If the planet had had a moon they would likely have been inside its orbit.
Sabine was busy at her console, likely calculating trajectories and vectors of insertion for the probe. Too steep a reentry would result in the craft burning up in the atmosphere or even breaking apart. Too shallow and there was the real possibility of the probe skipping off the atmosphere like a stone on a pond, losing too much speed and crashing straight down through the planet’s gaseous skin. No, she had to get it just right, match speed with the planet and make a soft landing upon the ground. No small feat from their position so far away.
They still had a bunch of relay satellites and they required much less precision in their orbital periods. In fact, they really didn’t want them to stay in orbit forever. They were designed to be used for up to a month at most and then come down on their own, disintegrating upon reentry so as to not affect the planet or any inhabitants it may have.
The eggheads back on Earth had probably watched too much star trek he thought with a chuckle. The entire idea of making sure not to alter the state of an emerging civilization with a scrap of burned out and slagged satellite being a top priority. Enough of one at least for them to spend considerable time programming in a self-guidance package to each and every single complex piece of machinery. He was curious as to why it even mattered, it wasn’t like the surface probes were entirely annihilated when they were done with them. They were programed to close back up and corrode away over the
It took only a few more minutes for Leon to calculate out the course of the observation satellite. He turned to Joice with determination, “Alright, the satellite is primed. Would you like to do the honors Joice?”
She smiled and gave him a nod. “Of course, I always wanted to launch things at other planets.”
He smiled and watched the main viewscreen. It showed a view of the planet unzoomed from near the rear of the ship. The automatic launchers were there, all set up and loaded with both satellite and probe capsules. These would be cycled onto a catapult track via a series of mechanical arms. The rails would be electrified and the capsule pulled from the ship into space at tremendous speeds. Not enough to hurt the over engineered hardware, but it would definitely give a human a hell of a headache. He chuckled silently, five hundred Gs of acceleration would do more than that, it would practically liquify a human’s bones.
The screen showed nothing for a moment and then shook slightly as the ship shuddered. A large white object flitted in front of the screen, so fast that it was only perceptible for a few frames before winking out in the far distance. Leon turned his attention to his console, the small tracker on the satellite showed him its progress.
It moved at blistering speeds, just under five kilometers per second as it hurtled down towards the planet. At about thirty thousand kilometers the casing of the device would split apart and release the satellite into space. Moments later its guidance systems would come online and it would begin to maneuver itself into the correct orientation and position.
It fired off a series of small solid electric rocket motors to further increase its speed as well as get into the proper orbital plain. After less than ten minutes it had already traveled nearly three thousand kilometers from the ship, in fact it would only take it another two and a half hours to reach the planet and begin orbiting it. A hell of a journey for the little machine.
He put aside his thoughts of the satellite as it continued to sail towards the distant world. Instead he turned his attention to what Sabine was working on, the calculation for the probe well under way.
“How much longer?” he asked her, maybe a bit too sternly as she flicked him a haughty glance.
She took a moment to respond, likely being stubborn. “I’m nearly done, we should be set to launch in three or four more minutes. Henry makes these calculations so much easier to be fair.”
Leon nodded, not at anyone in particular. The planet still hung alone in space, the main blast doors of the bridge had been opened sometime in the last few minutes as he waited, they now looked out into space. The ship was oriented directly at the silent world, the bright blue and grey orb hung there. Tantalising in its promise, but wholly disappointing in reality.
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Why had it come to this? He had to wonder why, had they left a decade earlier this could have been avoided. A bare ten years and the fate of a world would not have been sealed. He thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, he hadn't been saving entire species from self destruction, that was sure.
These thoughts and others flitted through his mind, each one just as gloomy as the last. He felt that emptiness in his chest again, the psychosomatic pain that Joice had called the Hollow. An apt name for it, as it felt as though he were an empty vessel.
His thoughts of gloom occupied his mind almost completely. He had always struggled to suppress his negative emotions, but the problem seemed to have accelerated aboard the ship. Ever since he had left Earth he felt like a dark presence had entered the back of his mind, like a cancer it spread. Slowly at first and then with a rapidness that started to scare him. He found that when on his own that same darkness would start to creep up on him, but when around Natalia it seemed to recede. It was as if she held it at bay, something about her being near helped his mind fight back. He frowned, what was the correlation?
He realised that somebody was speaking again. It wasn’t directed at him, instead it was Sabine as she announced the launch of the probe.
He felt the ship shudder again, the extreme power of the electromagnetic launch catapult enough to shake the forty-two-thousand tonnes of the Leif Erikson. A feat made all the more impressive given the extreme vibration dampeners that minimised the felt recoil of the huge gun-like mechanism.
“Probe is away, course looks good. Nothing broke from what I can tell.” Sabine mentioned quietly, but not so quiet that Leon couldn't hear her.
“That's good, wouldn't want it falling apart before it got the chance to tell us everyone is dead.” Taylor muttered, his face dominated by a heavy frown.
Terry shushed him, her eyes still red from crying. He stopped, but Leon could tell from his expression that the man was not really in a good mood. He made a decision, it was going to take hours for the satellite and probe to get into position. Now that the immediate cause for alarm was over they were not needed on the main bridge.
Leon began to unstrap himself from his command chair. Several of them looked at him and he began, “Okay, that's enough. It’s going to take at least two-and-a-half more hours before either of those reach their destination. I want all of you to go and take an hour to relax.”
Joice seemed to understand, but Sabine’s hand rose up and she protested. “But there is way too much to do, I need to monitor weather patterns. Document high altitude winds.. Not to mention.. Bbwah?” she spluttered as Leon made a motion indicating her to shut up.
He shook his head. “No, what you need to do is take some down time. You did a great job on the launch, now please.. go and take it easy for an hour. That’s not a recommendation, that's an order.”
Taylor spoke up next, “You can’t order us around. We aren't military grunts like you, and you are only in charge because they made you.” Leon nodded at the man’s astute observation.
He pointed at Taylor as he finished untangling himself from his seat. “Yes, you are absolutely correct.” Taylor cocked his head and his anger seemed to become slightly muted by mild confusion, clearly not expecting Leon to have agreed with him. “They did put me in charge, think about that. Really think about it Taylor. Five-and-a-half billion people on the planet, and they chose little old me? Maybe they made a mistake? Maybe they made a mistake choosing me, yeah, maybe they made a mistake choosing you? Ever think about that one?” silence followed his words.
Joice seemed to notice the growing tension in the room. “Okay, now harsh words should not be met with harsh words Leon.”
Leon shook his head, one hand making a flat chopping gesture. “No, fuck that. If he wants to insinuate that I'm not cut out for the job then I am going to tell him my credentials.” Leon said, his voice like iron as he glared at Taylor. The other man glowered back, his face turning a light shade of red as Terry tried to calm him down to little success.
Leon continued unabated though. “You want to know my credentials..” He was practically shouting now. “Sixteen years on the force as a front-line peacekeeper. Peacekeepers? Hah, more like peace-killers. Eighty-seven men confirmed dead by my hands, some literally. Dozens more than that in all likelihood. I bet you have never even struck another in anger. After that I spent another decade or so on the water before I died like any good soldier should. But death wasn’t enough, no.. they fucking brought me back. They said I still had purpose, still had a reason to live.” he stopped, sucking in several breaths as he tried desperately to calm down. Taylor looked a bit frightened, Terry seemed mortified.
Leon shook his head and pushed himself to the roof before grabbing a handhold. “Yes.” He said, much more quietly. Sadness taking the place his anger had once filled. “Purpose, glorious purpose. I was plucked out of retirement and given one last mission, my final mission. I knew as soon as I took it that I would never see home again, and I made my peace with that a long time ago. I want you to understand something Taylor…” He stopped and looked the man dead in his eyes. Taylor’s mouth hung open slightly as he gazed up at him.
Taylor managed to mutter something that sounded like an apology, but Leon wasn’t in the forgiving mood just yet.
Leon continued with deadly calm, his voice like an icicle stabbing directly into the heart. “I want you to understand. You are talking to a dead man. This mission is everything to me. I would rather die than see it fail, if you wanted a better person then you could have found hundreds back on Earth. Men more talented in areas of command and technical knowledge. The reason I was chosen, the REAL reason.. was because I was ready to dedicate my life to the project without hesitation or second thoughts. They sent me because I was the most dedicated hard-hearted son of a bitch they could find. They chose me because they knew that I would make the impossible choices when it came down to it. That's why I am and will continue to be in charge.” He stopped before moving towards the airlock.
Before he reached it he turned back and said sternly, “Now, take a break. All of you, that isn’t a request. Meet me on the secondary bridge in two hours, that is all.” Leon pulled his way to the airlock and tore off his voidsuit before dragging himself through and inside. He waited for the doors to close and then smacked the wall next to him hard.
“Damn this mission, and..” he would have said more but just couldn't find the strength to be angry anymore.
He left the airlock when it cycled and pulled himself up a ladder-spoke towards his room, he needed to go and lay down for a while. He was so inexplicably tired all of the sudden.
Leon made his way to his room where he dragged himself to bed and collapsed onto the covers. He didn't even bother taking off his sweaty undershirt or socks, instead he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Emotionally drained and physically exhausted.
**********
Leon found himself on the secondary bridge, the walls a clinical white and the main space occupied by a double row of computer consoles in a similar layout to the main bridge. The front of the room was also dominated by several large portholes to the void, view screens interspersed between the slowly revolving stars. He was feeling much better after his brief nap. The atmosphere in the room was tense, but not so much as it had been before. He nodded to Joice as she entered, the last one to do so.
Leon opened up the tracking program on the console he sat behind. The satellite had nearly reached its orbit with the probe not too far behind. They would find out soon enough what fate had befallen the surface of the seemingly blighted world.
Sabine spoke softly, as if not wanting to disturb the sound of silence that filled the room. “The satellite is beginning its orbital insertion burn now. Five minutes until it is in place.” She leaned back in her chair and glanced at him. He gave her a smile and a nod, she didn't reciprocate. Instead she just slumped slightly and turned back to her screen.
Leon frowned. He always seemed to have a knack for making the situation worse. This time he had let his temper get the better of him. “We have accurate scans of the planet’s weather patterns?” he prompted. Sabine just nodded. “Good, that’s.. is good yes.” He waited a bit in the silence before it was broken by another.
Joice spoke up, her motherly tone stern but fair. “Alright, no matter what happens or what we find, this is still an important part of the mission. There are things to explore, culture to discover and the reason for what has occurred. We are the only ones nearby to do it so I guess we kind of have an obligation to do so.” She stopped and looked around the room, stopping on him. “So let's get to it.” She said with a hint of grit in her voice.
Leon felt that she was trying to make a point to him and he heard her loud and clear. She was telling him to get his shit together and act like a leader, or at least that’s what he was getting from her comment and remarks. He agreed, he had fallen off the horse so to say, but that was no reason to abandon the mission. He just had to pick himself back up and soldier onwards.
So that’s what he would do. Straightening his shoulders ever so slightly he spoke clearly. “Yes, indeed. Samuel, you did a good job, putting us into the perfect position. Thank you all for the hard work and dedication you put into your work every day.”
That was all, nothing more needed to be said, and so he said nothing more. No reason to get dragged back into the sludge right after he had cleared himself off.
So they waited. The silence grew, but this time it felt a little less tense, less charged. It was more of the silence experienced in a dark room before bed rather than the silence one might hear directly before a storm closed in. After a time, the probe had reached the planet and began its descent.
Leon watched the feed from the probe as it was beamed to the orbiter and then to the ship. The probe had been launched in such a way that it would have clear coverage by the satellite until after it had touched down. While they could still communicate with the probe directly, they couldn't get reliable video feed from it at this distance unless the orbiter was over it.
The picture showed the bright blue of the planet slowly expanding until it flipped around. The ceramic heat shield of the probe was now oriented towards the surface of the world. It would take only minutes to descend through the atmosphere, a grueling few seconds though by any measure.
The picture was black and full of tiny pinpricks of harsh light that slowly began to twinkle as the planet’s atmosphere enveloped the probe like an angry blanket. The stars started to fade as the air got thicker and soon sparks and curls of smoke could be seen leaking from around the heat shield. These steadily got more and more pronounced till the entirety of the camera’s view was engulfed in flame and glowing ash.
This continued for a short time as the probe lost velocity, soon it had lost enough speed to deploy its chutes. The screen still showed wisps of smoke and sparks as the first of three large parachutes deployed, the view then shaking as the probe’s glowing heat shield was jettisoned. Like popcorn the parachutes opened with sharp snaps that jerked the falling craft. Each one slowing the probe’s descent further until it was falling as gently as a stone instead of hurtling to the ground like a meteor.
Leon breathed a small sigh of relief as the vehicle’s retro thrusters fired and it touched down as soft as a feather. The parachute lines were severed as it touched the ground making them sharply drift to the side where they piled upon the ground like snow. The probe waited a moment, its automated landing sequence taking over.
First it scanned the immediate vicinity and used its adjustable landing gear to level itself on the slightly uneven surface of the ground. Once this and the scan were complete it unfurled the landing petals that protected its more delicate equipment and the rover. Curls of smoke rising through the cold air as the last vestiges of heat were lost.
The probe was large, almost the size of a small building or shack. It had to be in order to contain both the scientific equipment and the large vehicle sized rover that it contained within. This rover was quickly deployed by Sabine who used the replay point of the orbiting satellite to get a better connection.
He watched in silence as she maneuvered the rover carefully and slowly out onto the ground, its camera was deployed and it panned around. For the first time they got a close look at the planet’s surface, a surface that looked as parched and barren as the great North American rad-deserts back home.
“Well, this doesn't look promising. But maybe their planet just didn't evolve close, ground covering vegetation like Earth?” Taylor speculated as he rested his chin on his hands.
Leon shook his head. “No, that doesn't feel right. What is that outcropping to the north Sabine? Uh, bearing 32 degrees.”
She panned the camera to look at it directly. It looked somewhat innocuous from the rover’s position, but Leon had a feeling that it might be something more.
As the device rolled over to it the main probe continued taking readings and samples of everything. Sound levels, air pollutants, ground composition, water content of the atmosphere and many more besides. One thing that caught his attention were the radiation and geiger detectors, both of which spiked as soon as they were activated.
Samuel noticed it too. “Well, it looks like we can guess what happened to this place already. Those readings are hot as hell, if we were to go down to the surface we might as well go naked for all the good our gear would do us.” The hoarse whispering sound of his voice making the point even more striking.
Pessimistic as it was, the man had a point. The radiation readings were nearly off the charts, a background of over two-thousand millisieverts per hour and spikes as high as eight-thousand-five-hundred millisieverts per hour. More than enough to kill a man in thirty minutes or less, with or without protection.
Leon let out a heavy breath and stated, “Well, I think we can decidedly rule out a trip to the surface.” He sat back into his chair as the others just muttered in acceptance to his comment.
By then the rover had reached the outcropping. The camera panned around to get a better look at its surface as it moved around it. It was indeed a strange object.
It was large and clearly artificial in origin, its surface having the appearance of worked stone. What it may have been in the past was unknown, perhaps a sculpture or a monument, maybe part of a larger structure. In any case its surface was blasted by a source of severe heat, the rubble that it sat upon looking partially vitrified on the face opposite the probe. They must be in a blast crater, that would explain why their landing site had been so even and clear of obstacles.
Leon knew that their quest for survivors was likely futile, but they couldn't just give up. Not when they had come so close to completing the mission. No, they would search for life. And if they found any, they would try to save them.
**********
Leon watched the feed, his eyes heavy and his mood sour. They had been scouring the surface of the planet with the rover for nearly a week now and had found nothing but charred and bombed out ruins. Even these ruins held little of true value as the detonations must have taken place nearly a decade before, the wind and weather had done the rest.
“We have been driving this roadbed for hours now, Sabine. Give it a break or at least let Henry take over the automated systems.” Leon pleaded her.
He looked around, they were alone in the room. It was late and nearly all others were getting ready for bed at this hour. But not her, not Sabine. No, she was still determined to report any survivors if only they could be found.
Leon stood from his seat as she shook her head. “No, there could be survivors around the next bend. I just need to..” He cut her off.
His voice cut through her words like a knife. “No! No more. We have searched hundreds of ruins, dozens of locations. Several of them with distinct military construction, and nothing. Not hide nor hair of any sapient alien, no creatures.. shit, not even any plants that looked to still be alive.” he took a loud breath. The sound reverberating around the largely empty room.
She shook her head, slumping forwards as she let go of the controls. Leon stepped to her side as he heard a small sob escape her lips.
‘Shit.’ he swore internally. Maybe he had been too harsh, he started to apologise but she waved him off. “NO, no.. you are right. There isn’t anyone left. I was hoping, wanting to save them. At least some of them.” She broke down more and he embraced her like a father comforting his daughter. And she may as well have been, she had known him for many years. He loved her as one would their own child.
Leon knew why she had been chosen for the mission. Mr. Green had never stated it as so, but he didn't need to be expressly told to have figured it out. She had been chosen as the one tenuous link that he had to the Earth and her people. Somebody in charge knew that by sending her on this mission Leon would be forced to see it succeed, whether he wanted to or not. The Director had likely planned everything out from the start, wanting a military mind on the ship that he could control even light years from Earth.
She had originally been his only reason to continue on, but now he had more. Natalia for one, but indeed all the crew had become family to him. Family that he refused to disappoint again. And sometimes you needed to be hard on family, to tell them the things they didn't want to hear so that they would move forwards and better themselves.
It was for this reason that he held her close as she cried, her hands clutched the fabric of his overalls desperately. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head and shushed her cries as he rocked her back and forth like a newborn babe.
“It's okay to cry Sabine, it's okay to cry. You know that I would never leave you alone in this universe, I am always here for you.” He tried to sooth her in the best manner he knew how. And to his credit her crying slowly quieted, her sobs subsiding as she burrowed closer into his arms.
He smiled, a tear leaking from his own eye as the love he felt for her swelled in his chest. She was still young, and her experiences on this cursed trip had changed her. But she remained at her core the same sweet girl that he had met all those years ago, green as grass and half as sturdy but always stronger than bonded steel in her convictions.
She stopped crying and mumbled under her breath so quiet that he couldn't hear.
“I'm sorry Sabine, I didn't quite make that out.” He felt her squeeze him a little tighter.
She repeated herself, a little louder this time. “I’m sorry Leon. It's been a long week, and.. It just got to me.” She tried to push away but he gripped her steadily.
“No, don't go just yet. We never seem to talk anymore, even though we are closer than ever. Could we please, just stay a while Sabine? It has been a hard week for me too.” He told her that honestly, it was comforting to just sit here with her.
He felt her relax and nod. He smiled and closed his eyes. “I love you Sabine.” He said tenderly.
His smile only widened as she squeezed him and replied in turn. “I love you too Leon. Thank you. For everything.”
They stayed that way for a while, Leon didn’t know exactly how long. Soon they would have to get up and go their separate ways again. But for now he basked in the warm glow of the bond they shared as it strengthened like wrought iron. The blows may dent and mar them, but it was through such adversity that they were forged, and together they were stronger than they could ever be apart.