The whole crew was standing on the main bridge. Nate was keeping an eye on the deceleration process while Tess Foncet was briefing the others on the current situation.

“We received two messages from L1. The first one is the SOS.” She raised her head towards Oliver sitting to her right, who started the recording they had received one hour and a half before.

“Station L1, this is head researcher Stanislas Karpov.” The man was speaking clearly and fluidly, but his heavy Russian accent left no doubts about where he was from. “We lost 75% of the station after…a catastrophic event compromising the atmospheric integrity of the vessel. We have no other choice but to start the emergency evacuation order.”

The recording ended there.

Tess looked at Shiina, standing behind Nate’s chair, then at Honey and Sam, standing as well not far from Oliver.

“We haven’t been able to have audio contact since, but Karpov has answered our written messages. He indicates that there are three survivors, him included, and that most of their linking airlocks are compromised. They have only access to one airlock designed solely for spacewalks.”

“Three survivors?” Honey repeated in disbelief.

“Casualties are massive.” Tess acquiesced.

“But…what could have done that!?”

Tess grimaced.

“Karpov doesn’t know.”

Shiina frowned. “If he doesn’t know, what guarantees do we have that it won’t happen again when we’re inside?”

“None.” Tess answered. “Which is why I want the same professionalism as when we were rescuing Johansson blind. Shiina, I want you to check the airlock’s integrity while Honey gives us a close look at the station. We have the added problem of the angle of the station. If the airlock is oriented towards the sun…”

“Ah. Radiations?” Shiina understood.

“Yes. The station has a wall to protect its occupants fully, but Karpov warned me part of it had been destroyed.”

“And what do we do if the airlock is facing the sun?”

Oliver responded this time. “We’ll improvise. If the station still has its retrorockets functional, or if the station is rotating, or if another airlock has been overlooked by the L1 crew…there are many things we need to take into account.”

“Do we have a map of the station?” Honey asked.

“We do.” Tess hit a few digital buttons on her tablet. “And now you all have it. Study it before we arrive.”

Nate looked away from his screen.

“You said two recordings.”

Tess gave him a piercing look, her expression indecipherable.

“Ten minutes ago, we received another message coming from the station.”

Something in her tone of voice put the rest of the crew on edge.

“Oliver?” She asked.

He hesitated for a few seconds, before finally answering: “I’ll warn you all, this is…disturbing.”

The main bridge’s speakers turned on once again. A masculine voice, deep and feverish, started to talk. The accent was too mixed to determine its origin.

“…as suffering is the sole truth. There is nothing else. Our memories are erased under the pain, our desire to live an artificial feeling created by the cogs of evolution. It is logically unsound; it contradicts the immutable laws of entropy. No, I reject suffering. It needs to go. I need to make it vanish. I need…” The recording cut mid-sentence.

“The message goes in a loop, hard to say when it was first recorded and sent.” Oliver added.

Nate spotted Shiina’s hand, gripping his chair’s elbow rest. He put his hand on hers and gave her a comforting smile.

She met his gaze and gave him a thankful nod, but she did not look reassured.

“Ok. What was that?” Honey spoke first.

Tess was clenching her teeth as she answered him: “Karpov pretends it is a philosophy podcast coming from a bugged phone in one of the destroyed parts of the station.”

“Yeah, and when I snore it sounds like whales singing.” He countered sarcastically.

Sam nodded silently next to him.

“Unfortunately, Karpov insists it is a bug and nothing else. And even though I don’t believe him one instant, we can’t abandon three researchers on a station ready to implode just on the basis of a creepy message.” The captain did not look happy to have to say that. “I haven’t made you listen to this message to scare you but to be perfectly aware of the situation. If you spot anything strange, you tell me on the spot. And that counts double for you and Chi.” She concluded as she pointed at Honey.

“Yes, captain.”

“Good. Now I want everyone studying the station’s schematics, except you Sam, I want you to prep the med bay in case we found other survivors. Karpov insists that they are not wounded and that there is no one else, but considering the nature of the second message, I will take the decision not to take his word for gospel.”

“It is done already, captain.” Sam responded.

“Then Oliver will send you some documents. About the research that is being led on L1”

“Isn’t that classified information?”

“Yes. It is. But I hate surprises.”

Her gaze was harsh and resolute.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Nate asked himself once more how Oliver was able to get around all the rules. Having lots of contacts did not explain how you could create a fake identity, illegally mod a spaceship and gather confidential research.

“I’ll see if anything in it can explain our horror movie quote.” Sam confirmed.

Honey grimaced. “Shit. Last time we came to help a research station, that’s exactly what it was. A horror movie.”

He and Tess exchanged a look of worry.

And Nate, remembering very clearly the absurd story of Honey about the ghost station, suddenly felt his mouth going dry.

“Do you receive my feed?”

Honey’s voice resounded in the main bridge.

“We have your visuals, perfectly clear view, Honey.” Oliver confirmed.

Station L1 was remarkably like the Lagrange station of Nate’s era. The young man recognized the circular design, slightly larger but in a similar style to the ISS of the beginning of the century. The metallic circle was composed of a multitude of modules, each one containing one room, but not all of the same size. The main difference between this station and the past one orbiting earth was the giant lead wall, plenty of solar panels on top of it, that would have shaded the station completely if it wasn’t slightly displaced.

“The sun is shining on our target airlock.” Shiina announced.

“We’re seeing it, Chi.” Tess confirmed.

Nate didn’t want to bother his captain, so he asked the question that had popped in his mind to Oliver.

“Are the survivors not in the danger with the shield in this position?”

“Not in short term. The station’s structure is enough to lessen most of the rays’ effects.”

“But not if we’re just in space suits.”

“If it’s a very short span of time, space suits will protect you just fine. Shiina can go and take a look with minimum risks, but to organize a spacewalk evacuation? Shiina and Honey would be irradiated beyond what our onboard drugs can handle. There is an important difference between minutes and an hour.”

Nate grimaced. Their initial observation of the station had shown that the retrorockets were unusable. Which was not surprising as a full quarter of the station had become pieces erring in space, even if it wasn’t fully visible from their current position.

“Captain, I have a closer look at one of the destroyed parts.”

Tess examined the image sent by Honey.

“That’s…” She hesitated.

Nate observed the large module, linked to its neighbors by airtight doors, and didn’t hide his surprise. No one saw him hiccup in disbelief, and before saying anything he checked the station’s schematics on his tablet. It took him mere seconds to confirm what he had already guessed.

“Something inside blew up.” He said.

“Seems that way to me as well.” Honey responded.

“…But there is nothing that can explode on that part of the vessel.” Oliver refuted.

“No…Honey can you show me the closest capsule next to this one, the one on the left which is also destroyed?” Nate asked.

“On it.” The mechanic swiftly repositioned himself in the void, and his headlight shone on another part of the station instants later. Just like its neighbor, a large side of the structure was blown open, looking like a piece of paper having been pierced by a crayon.

“Yeah, same here.” Honey told them unnecessarily.

They stayed silent for a short moment before Oliver expressed what they all thought out loud.

“Sabotage?”

“Shit.” Honey’s voice echoed in the room.

Tess was now furious. “No way we’re helping anyone until I see Korpov explain things in person.” Her fingers pressed furiously on the keyboard in front of her, then she waited.

It took a minute, then the front screen activated with a new announcement.

“Call incoming from station L1.” Said the onboard computer with its seductive voice.

“Hah.” She said with disdain. “Let him through.”

Immediately, a man dressed in medical garbs appeared on the screen. He had a squarish face, he was looking exhausted, and he wore little round glasses with a blue tint.

“Captain Foncet.” There was another researcher behind him, floating in the air, focused wholly on the laptop in front of him.

“Professor Karpov, I am pleased to see you are still alive, and ecstatic to see that your communication system works again.”

The man frowned in anger. “The entirety of this station is under strict rules of non-disclosure. I would never have accepted any kind of video call had you not so shamefully threatened me, captain. Be certain that I will give a report to your superiors after this ca…”

“And I would very much like to know if you and your two comrades aren’t the ones that sabotaged this station, professor.”

The researcher opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I should have known, considering your reputation, that you would find out. It is true we were attacked in the most cowardly of ways, but me and my colleagues are not responsible, and truly need an evacuation ASAP. Our life support is dead, we have only two hours of oxygen left until we suffocate.”

“Why hide the sabotage attempt, professor?”

“That is classified information.” He answered with his lips stretched thin. “Will you help us, or shall I call your headquarters, so you won’t have any choice in the matter?”

Tess thought about it for a short moment. “No, we will help you. But you will be under arrest until an investigation can prove your innocence.”

The researcher almost looked pleased to hear that. “Will you be armed?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

“…Professor, are the ones responsible for the sabotage still here?”

The professor Karpov seemed to hesitate, before pointing behind him on his left. He was showing them one of the hermetic doors separating the different parts of the station, and it was closed shut.

“They were in the part of the L1 that lost its atmosphere. They weren’t wearing a suit.”

“Very well. As we cannot access your airlock from the outside as the radiations are too dangerous, we shall manoeuvre to bring the Saviour closer to you. Before that, you need to assure me there are no risks of other explosions.”

“I would not recommend connecting your ship to this airlock, captain, it was not designed to…”

“I will not dock, professor, just cast a shadow, you will have to jump from one airlock to another. My crew will bring you suits if you do not have them. Let me be clear that my men have been trained to fight, and that any sign of aggression will be met with severe prejudice.”

The professor gritted his teeth but nodded. “I understood quite well that you do not trust us. Still, our credentials should be accessed easily from your database, and you can verify that we are not dangerous. I assure you there are no risks of sabotage or explosion anymore.”

“The only reason I am inclined to believe you, professor Karpov, is exactly because I read those credentials and that you and your colleague look like the pictures I saw. I still haven’t seen the third person though.”

Karpov looked away from the camera to a part of the room they couldn’t see, and a few seconds later, a woman in her mid-thirties appeared on the screen.

She was ghastly white and seemed to have cried a lot, her eyes red.

“Helena Baron, captain. We have not sabotaged the L1, I promise you that.” She didn’t seem to be happy about Tess’s accusations either.

“Understood. We will arrive in thirty minutes.”

And Tess shut off the communication.

“The manœuvre will be delicate, but it shouldn’t take more than twenty?” Oliver questioned.

“I know. But I want Shiina to hold on to the rifle.” She pushed on a button on her keyboard. “Chi, I want you back on the ship as fast as reasonable.”

“Understood.”

“Honey, are you carrying your handgun?”

“Of course.” The voice of the mechanic overtook his niece's.

Tess grimaced. “The identity of our three researchers seems to check out, but I won’t take any risks. There could be more of them hiding, some potentially responsible for a terror attack. You and Shiina bring them all on the ship, I will align the Saviour’s airlock with the L1. They are to be put under lockdown as soon as they step on my ship, got it?”

“I got it.”

Tess shut off her mic and turned to Oliver and Nate.

“Go pick up the rifle in our room, here is my key.” She opened the front pocket of her officer jacket, pulled out a tin key, and gave it to Oliver. “I want you helping Shiina and Honey with the prisoners. Make sure they do not try anything once inside the ship. The rooms under the kitchen will be the perfect cells. They will stay there, one per room, until we drop them off at the Lagrange station.”

Nate couldn’t help a cynical remark. “Handy, they won’t see the ship so no risks of being uncovered ourselves.”

Tess looked at him before sighing heavily. “That is true. We won’t imprison them long, we can reach Earth in less than a day anyway.”

But Nate wasn’t so optimistic. “A terror attack doesn’t explain what that second message was. Didn’t seem like a manifesto to me.”

“Indubitably. Nate, you and Oliver will maybe have to go on the L1 to help Shiina and Honey. Especially if we find other survivors. Can you handle yourself?”

“I grew up on the street, I can defend myself.”

Tess nodded silently, and Oliver and Nate left to pick up the rifle.