Comet Tails
Jude
It was just my luck that my father would be standing between me and what I wanted most. Adam was hovering near a stack of secured cargo crates, face illuminated by his visor light. He held a black crate in his arms.
“SOL open comms.”
“Opening comms.”
“What are you doing here?” I snapped.
Adam set the crate down. “Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing.”
I guided my tether line forward, wrist thrusters firing in short, controlled bursts. “I’m on a mission,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m retrieving my shuttle. Clearance run.”
He let out a low laugh. “Is that why Commander Zhang just put out a wide alert looking for you?”
I went still—my tether tightened, correcting my drift. SOL hovered at my shoulder.
“I’m loading up for a mission, we’re running to Eden-9.” He pushed off the cargo stack and intercepted my path, matching my movement with infuriating ease. “Tell me what’s going on, son.”
“It’s nothing.”
He followed. “Jude.”
I swallowed, hand tightening on the line. “I’m going down… to Earth,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“I need to save Solace.”
His expression shifted. “What does that mean?”
“I can’t explain it,” I muttered. “I just know.” My throat tightened, and the words started coming too fast to stop them.
“I’ve been having these dreams about her.
And then she appeared—alive and living underground.
We’ve been talking on the radio after Commander Zhang managed to make contact.
And then tonight, I woke up with this pressure in my chest like something was being torn out of me.
” I shook my head once, hard. “And SOL can’t find her,” I said, glancing at the drone hovering beside me.
I didn’t bother mentioning the dreams. “No trace. Nothing. It’s like she never existed.
I feel fucking crazy.” My voice cracked on the last part. What if she wasn’t even out there?
I looked at him then—finally. “I need her,” I said. “I need her to be okay. I need her with me.”
He shook his head once, like he could physically dislodge the idea from my head. “You’re not authorized for descent. They’re looking for you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll get yourself killed.”
“So be it.”
An alarm bellowed—urgent and attached to a full system lockdown. Red lights strobed around us like a closing fist. He looked past me again, at the shuttle I’d drifted toward, at the path I’d already decided on. Then he swore under his breath, reached into his suit, and pulled out his own badge.
He shoved it into my hand, hard enough that I almost dropped it. “Take this,” he said. “Go get her.”
I stared at it. Then at him. “You’re just—letting me go?”
“I’m not letting you do anything. I’m trying not to lose you.”
The alarm shrieked higher.
He grabbed me then—awkward in the arksuits with their rigid plating and seals—but it was still a hug. Even if it was clumsy and desperate. When he pulled back, his hand stayed on my shoulder a second longer than it should’ve.
“I love you,” he said.
I didn’t respond right away, neither of us really knew how. But I could feel the truth of it.
“You’re a better man than I ever was.”
The station lights went on full alarm as he helped me climb the ship he had been loading for his own mission.
“You’ll have to reroute the autopilot, it’s on course for Eden-9. It will automate your flight back, but Jude—you should know…”
I glanced back at him through the open hatch.
“If you come back—if you make it back, you’ll be arrested.”
“At least Solace will be alive,” I responded, my words echoing inside my own suit.
The station alarms were screaming by the time I pulled the shuttle free from its berth into the open, black of space, and the void waiting beyond the docking rails. I eased the ship forward, the thrusters kicking softly as the shuttle drifted toward the exit.
Behind me, the inner hatch burst open. Commander Garcia shot through the doorway on a tether line, boots barely touching the deck as the artificial gravity struggled to keep up with the decompression alarms. An ensign burst out from behind the Commander to grab my dad.
Garcia’s voice cut through the comm system a second later. “Captain Ransom, return to the bay immediately.”
I glanced through the shuttle’s side window where station lights strobed red across the hull. The ship drifted another meter closer to open space. He looked pissed.
“Captain Ransom,” Garcia’s voice snapped again through the comm. “Return to the bay. That is a direct order.”
I pushed the throttle forward as I gave him a salute through the dark glass. The shuttle slipped free of the station’s ring and dropped into the open dark.
“Captain, you will be stripped of your rank—“ His voice cut out as the craft slipped beyond the communication range of the bay. Though I had no doubt he’d already be running for the control room to scream at me some more.
They could strip my rank and title. Remove my privileges.
Lock my lab. Take SOL from my custody and shove me into the most menial job in the Order.
Hell, they could line me up against a wall and end it themselves.
I didn’t give a fuck. Nothing—and I mean nothing—would change the fact that I was not leaving her down there.
Space was as terrifying as it was breathtaking. Endless obsidian stretched before me, and I’d found it to be a constant reminder of how small my life really was in the grand scheme of things.
I would never forget the first time I broke through the stratosphere, almost a decade ago.
The short mission to the International Space Station felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
If I’d known then that I’d spend the rest of my life up here, I probably would have said no thanks, quit the military altogether, and become a farmer or something I’d found equally boring.
Anything that kept my feet on the ground.
Unfortunately, the ground was coming up a lot faster than I would have liked.
Earth filled the viewport now, swollen and scarred beneath a blanket of dark clouds.
Even from orbit the damage was visible—smears of soot drifting across the atmosphere like bruises that had never quite healed.
The shuttle rattled as the autopilot adjusted our trajectory.
“Easy,” I muttered. I sat with my knees on either side, gripping the control yoke tighter than necessary.
I wasn’t even doing anything, yet. I didn’t know why I was so damn nervous.
SOL flickered beside me, the soft glow of its screen painting the cockpit in pale blue light.
The orb would have to stay behind in the shuttle, otherwise Earth’s gravity would force me to drag it uselessly across the ground, but I still needed access to its systems. I’d have to hope our connection managed across the distance, to document the possibilities.
Possible. The word that had been running my life for the last two weeks. Possible; that Solace was alive. Possible; the air wouldn’t kill her. Possible; that I wasn’t about to burn alive in a stolen shuttle. Possible; that we could return home soon.
The shuttle lurched as we kissed the upper atmosphere and outside the window, the first streaks of flames crawled across the hull.
I was falling now. Fast. Which happened to be my least favorite part.
“Hang on, Sol,” I whispered. “I’m coming.
” The shuttle shuddered as it hit the upper edge of the expanse and for a moment the whole craft shook violently.
My stomach lurched, sweat beading down my brow.
“Easy—easy,” I muttered as warning lights flashed across the console.
The autopilot fought the drag for a few seconds before the system chimed. MANUAL CONTROL REQUIRED.
Of course.
I flicked the switch and the controls shifted beneath my hands, the shuttle suddenly feeling less like a falling rock and more like an aircraft.
Muscle memory kicked in and for the first time since stealing the damn thing, I was something close to calm.
Roaring through the clouds, the ship rattled as the air thickened around us.
Fire streaked across the viewport, orange light licking along the edges of the glass as Earth rushed up and fast.
What I hoped was the Olympic Peninsula spread beneath the haze like a dark open wound in the landscape—endless forest stretching toward the horizon. Somewhere in there was Solace. If my coordinates were even close.
“Hang on,” I whispered, though I had no idea who I was talking to anymore.
The shuttle screamed as I forced the nose downward and fought the controls.
It wasn’t exactly made for crash landings and I was really gambling at this point.
The air was heavier than expected which meant the old transport ship handled like a brick with wings.
When the ground finally appeared through the thinning, it wasn’t as dark as I expected from nuclear winter, but it was still hard to see. Clouds hung low above the treeline as sunlight fought to filter through them.
Clouds were such a kind observation. These were more like pools of smoke that hung in the air like pockets of thick fog.
There was a wide open field on the edge of the blot of forest.
Good enough.
Wrestling the shuttle down, the landing gear slammed into the dirt hard enough to rattle my teeth and send my brain spinning.
The craft skidded across the field in a spray of ash and dead soil before finally grinding to a stop with a pathetic flop.
Silence swallowed the cockpit and for a moment I sat there and allowed myself to breathe, because I’d just successfully landed a space shuttle on earth after nuclear fallout.
Most importantly, I was still alive and I had all my limbs and nothing was on fire.
I climbed down from the shuttle and dropped into the field, burnt stems cracking under my boots. I peeled my foot up to reveal lavender, or what used to be lavender.
“SOL, map please.”