Tales of the Apocalypse, #5
- Captain, you’re not gonna like this…
- Have you figured out what’s wrong with comms?
- I wish I had, but I still can’t make any sense of this. Everything seems to be in order. I don’t understand why we’re not receiving.
The captain paused for a bit, assessing the situation.
- Come back inside. You’ve been out there for far too long and we’re not making any progress.
As soon as the astronaut took off the helmet inside the station the alarm sounded. It was a breach.
- We have a breach!
- Go, go, go!
Like clockwork, the team went into their emergency response tasks.
Some were in charge of addressing the breach while others calculated reserve times and prepared the escape modules for an eventual evacuation.
- Captain?
- Yes. Have you found the breach?
- No, sir… There’s no breach…
- What do you mean, there’s no breach? The alarm’s still sounding!
- Yes, but the pressure is holding. There’s no breach. There’s a glitch with the sensors…
- All of them?
From the other side of the station:
- Captain, we won’t be able to use the capsules just yet. There’s something wrong with the instruments. The numbers just don’t add up.
The captain realized that something was very wrong.
No comms, misbehaving sensors, bad readings, the same readings from redundant systems, everything put together was an incredibly unlikely coincidence.
- Captain?
- What?
- We have a real problem with the reserves. I know we still have oxygen, but the system is stalled. I think it’s assuming the ratios look good. But they don’t, they just don’t. And there’s no oxygen coming in.
- OK, how are we fixing this?
- Let me just look at…
- At…?
The other astronaut had paused, staring out the window.
At first sight, nothing seemed to be wrong, but something was indeed off.
That — whatever it was that the astronaut was staring at — was new.
Not on the station.
Down there, on the night side of the planet.
Something that the astronaut could see was odd, but couldn’t quite put the finger on.
The cities.
Each time they orbited the planet there were fewer city lights.
