Station Breaker

53 Support Crew

Laney stares at me like I'm a ghost. I'm having serious second thoughts about coming here. As she sits under a shelf of model rockets and glass unicorns, I feel like I've just brought an innocent into something very dangerous.

Peterson and Bennet are dead. So is Bennet's son, Tyler. This is a bad idea.

I stand up. "This was a mistake. Give me a head start if you're going to call the police."

"Sit down," she says, rising to her own feet.

There's something about the complete conviction in her voice despite the fact I can see her legs are about to betray her.

"There are some bad people who could be here any minute."

She puts a hand on my shoulder. "Sit down. I have a gun." She pauses, "I mean, I'm not going to shoot you. But if they come…"

I fall back on the bed. "This could be very bad." I nod to the room next door where her brothers are loudly playing their game.

"Understood. Tell me what's going on and we'll figure it out."

I give a nervous glance towards the window, trying to decide if I should run.

"I knew something weird was going on at the Korolev station," she says.

"How do you mean?"

"Before you even docked with them. They have an open channel and a secure one. There has been almost nothing on the open one. They use it for talking to school kids and stuff. The place was on some kind of lockdown before you even got there."

"Yes…"

I don't know what I should tell her. I notice a tall bookcase in her corner filled with binders. I walk over and take one down and start flipping through. It's a schematic of the Soviet N1 heavy launch system. Not just outlines, but detailed drawings.

I take down another one. It's filled with specs of the X-20 Dyna-Soar, an Air Force space plane that never made it past testing.

"Are all of these rocket schematics?"

"Communications systems. Space suits. I have them all on my computer but I like the physical copies best."

"And you've read them?"

"No. They're just there to impress guys. Yeah, dumbass. I've been collecting them since I was a kid. I couldn't decide if I wanted to fly them or build them."

"Why not both?" I reply, sitting back down.

"Yeah…" Her eyes drift off to the side. "Peterson and Bennet? Are they really dead?"

The image of Peterson's dead body floating by the window is still in my mind. "Yes."

Laney wipes at her eye. "I'd talked to Peterson several times. Did you know that? She was always nice. And Bennet, oh my god, he's a legend. What it must have been like to have learned from him. He knew Armstrong and Musgrave."

"Bennet was something else… So was Peterson."

Laney puts a hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what it must be like for you."

"It's fine. To be honest, I'm still a little numb. There's time for that later."

These were people I worked with. For Laney, they were heroes. In some way, maybe she even feels more strongly. Peterson wasn't just some cool person she could fawn over. Peterson may have been a role model, a version of Laney in a different universe.

Laney uses her wrist to wipe away a tear. "Why are you here?"

"Why aren't you calling the police?"

"Because nothing makes sense. The Russians are lying and I get the impression you had nobody to turn to."

I nod. "Pretty much."

"So what the hell is going on?"

I make a flash judgement to trust her. "There's a nuclear weapon onboard the Korolev. The head of the Russian space agency is planning to detonate it in order to stage a coup."

"Holy shit. Zhirov?"

"Yeah, him."

"He's an asshole. You know that he's been trying to militarize their space agency into another army?"

"I don't think Radin is going to let that happen."

She sits there for a moment processing everything. "Why isn't our government doing something about it?"

"Zhirov has a spy inside our intelligence community. They already had a rendition team torture me."

"Oh my god!"

"I… got away." I prefer to gloss over that episode. "Anyway, apparently we're worried if it gets out there's a nuke on the K1, Zhirov will go ahead and pull the trigger."

"Who is we?"

"As far as I know, it was Bennet, his son, Peterson and someone else. You heard about Tyler Bennet?"

"Yeah. They killed them? Why?"

"I don't know. But they did. I've encountered some nasty people."

"So what can I do?"

"I don't think I should get you involved. It's not safe."

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. I'm involved now. Why did you come here? Just tell me that."

"They're shutting down the roads."

"Yeah. The I-10 is backed up. I thought that might be about you."

"I can't get to where I need to go by myself."

"So you need a driver?"

"Basically. But I think…"

She interrupts me. "Let's go."

"Laney… I can't ask you to do this."

"You can't stop me." She's already standing up and shoving things into her purse.

"What if I'm lying?"

"I'll tell them you threatened to kill me. Meet me outside."

"What about your brothers?"

"My aunt is coming over. Worry about her."

Two minutes later she slides into the driver's seat of her van. I'm trying to decide if I should be a passenger or hide in the back.

She tosses me a pair of reading glasses. "I took these off the counter."

I put them on and check my reflection in the visor mirror. "What do you think?"

She takes them off my face and tosses them into the back. "Too intellectual. You look like you might know how to fly a spaceship, or try to nail UCF coeds by getting high and talking about social justice."

"Heh, that's half true. I'm just not sure how to get through the checkpoint."

"I got that covered. If they stop us I'll play some death metal. In this crappy van, they'll assume we're just white trash."

"Here's to stereotyping."

"And my angsty teenage years."