Mourn

What Demetri predicted about the journey had—so far—been true. Space was vomit inducing, the launch, in general, made the crew want to vomit. The training had covered a lot of it but the actual shakes, the bounces and the rumbles that ached their cores and felt like an iron vice around their stomachs. Training for years had gotten predictable, this was new. This was awful. But once the ship didn’t need the initial thrust, and they could see the blue-white orb they’d ascended from, the crew’s stomachs settled. The weightlessness was expected, but the lack of feeling as they unhooked their seatbelts and began floating around the cabin still to this day scared him.

He’d been training his whole life for this moment. And he had to say it was underwhelming. Space had begun colonization decades prior, starting with the moon, then mars, then Titan, Dione, Tethys and Rhea. Neptune was next, but that was for the experienced, they were only heading to the moon. Nothing important.

Somehow, he'd ended up commander, at twenty-five, he was the youngest in the shuttle. There were five in total. Himself as Commander, Sakura Soto as Pilot, Leon Weber as Science Officer and Shuttle Doctor, and Esther Grace as Engineer. It wasn't exactly the team he wanted but they'd have to do. He got on with Sakura. Leon, not so much. Leon seemed to spend most of the time arguing with Esther over meaningless things that really didn't concern him.

The shuttle they were on was standard, one most astronautical colonists took to the moon. A white ship filled with mostly LED lights in the cockpit that he'd associated different training sessions with, and a large area in the back where parts of the engine worked meticulously and loudly. There was nowhere to sleep, though, they wouldn't need it. While years and years ago it took days to get to the moon, now it only took about nine hours. Though, with the constant bickering in his ear, nine hours felt like an eternity.

His thoughts were entirely on what the future would bring. He’d never thought, ever, that he’d end up on the moon, living there, in a colony. When he was a little younger, he thought perhaps he’d live in orbit, just like those in the Space Station did. But the moon was a different thing entirely. He knew that with the earth slowly dying, the moon was probably humanities hope, but it was too different, everything he knew was down there. Terra-forming a new planet and moving the part of the population capable of moving onto another planet screamed disaster, how quickly could they destroy this place too? After that Mars, and then Titan, Dione, Tethys, Rhea, by that point maybe even the moons of Neptune wouldn’t stop humanity.

“Leviathan, you are off -course, please adjust urgently or you'll end up losing orbit." He heard stutter through the com. He looked at the displays, they were on course. "Leviathan, adjust your course."

“Check again. The CDS reads we’re on course.” He muttered back, reading the display again. The com was near static, the voice on the other end barely audible.

“Command Module isn’t faulting. CDS is incorrect. Adjust—” the com went purely static. Sakura flicked a switch, hoping the voice would return.

“Adjust by how much?” Sakura asked.

“I didn’t hear. I don’t think the CDS—” Demetri began.

“We need to get back in contact, Esther can you take a look at the com.” Leon interrupted.

"The static sounded like an issue from their side," Esther added, pulling herself over the large module above the pilot seat. "It seems fine. The fault protection in the ships algorithm should prevent any CDS issues. Leon, what could be affecting the signals on earth to us?"

“Coronal mass ejection, potentially. But that’s something predictable. Perhaps geomagnetic storm? How are the other systems?”

"All functioning on my end," Esther said, moving Sakura out of the way briefly to check the pilot module. "I think they had it wrong."

"We can't change course based on a think, at this speed, minor alterations could force us out of orbit, we wouldn't be able to land," Demetri said, checking to see if communication was still down. "I'm going to stay on course."

"If we were so off that they said it was urgent then—we're screwed both ways." Sakura took her hands off the module and looked ahead, in the distance they could see the moon, in space, it looked so different, so dark, with no atmosphere the universe felt so much bleaker than he’d imagined. Telescopes must’ve had a bias because every time he looked out the window all he felt was dread. And the moon was large, destructive, with flickering specks of light bouncing off. He thought he could make out the moon base they were headed to. But he must’ve been mistaken.

They stayed on course.

Hours passed and panic ensued; the voyage had gone wrong. The moon was beneath them, the ship felt the orbit, they just needed to follow it. But they'd come in too quickly, at a wrong angle. It was doomed. They all knew it. They remained in orbit for under an hour, before they were flung out of the gravity pull. Demetri felt every inch as he lost control of the ship to space. No communication, no help, just the five of them stranded and drifting. Fuel had been depleted in the attempt to regain orbit. Lupus was in sight, though of course, it looked different from behind the moon. The sun was somewhere behind them, near where they'd left the earth. All that was ahead was black.

“I can’t believe, this is how I die," Sakura said.

“What else did you expect?” Esther asked.

“Honestly? I expected to crash and burn up.” Sakura said, taking her hands away from the pilot module.

“I thought that too. Only when you were pilot though.” Leon added, a sad laugh following it. “I always presumed I’d age until my heart gave out.”

“Electrocution for me. What about you, Demi?”

He thought for a while, feeling the pressure of their eyes, desperate.

"I can't believe we were wrong," Demetri said, looking at the monitor before him, seeing the crews' faces in its reflection. "I checked everything; how could this happen?”

"Shit happens, Demetri." Sakura looked back at her monitor, biting her nails. "The system must be faulty, with things like this even a small fault can cause a catastrophe. It's no one’s fault.”

“How much oxygen do we have?” Esther asked. “I don’t want to suffocate.”

“What else can we do?” Leon asked, looking at her. “Suffocation isn’t that bad, the air will just get thinner, we’ll pass out. It’s faster than you’d think.”

"Not fast enough." Esther stood up, looking around the cabin for anything. He was worried she'd find something and slit her throat, but that wasn't like her. At least he hoped it wasn't. Instead, she sat back down and began to cry, very quietly, facing the wall. He could tell Sakura wanted to speak, but she didn't.

They just sat, watching the stars in the distance. As they got further away from the moon, they noticed more and more asteroids, very little ones, tiny even. Small little flakes of ice, clinging to dust.

The static of the com served as a taunt, occasionally they’d hear something, but not enough to be a direction. They’d tried a few times to contact HQ and explain the situation, but they weren’t stupid enough to believe that they could be rescued. This was in the training, a part of it. Something they signed up for, that and the petty government salaries. Demetri knew this was a risk, the small percent of failure.

So, they began to mourn, silently, only the little cries to remind themselves that the oxygen tanks were still worked.