The Darkside of The Moon

Julia - Part One

I'm still strapped into my seat, but I can feel the zero gravity trying to pull me up. Ignoring the pain, I turned my neck sharply, my eyes looked for my brother. He was suspended in midair: his belt must have come undone during the ship's crash.

A few minutes earlier we had gotten caught in a spontaneous meteor shower. The ship had lost the trans-nav, G-control and comms. The self repairing system had shut down too, it was the only thing that could save us now and only the reboot code could bring it back online, but only one person had that: our father.

The spacecraft, a Delta-X 2083 model, had been programmed with the Repercussions Protocol. Like all Delta models that had been made since the 2040's, our spacecraft was set to alarm its base operator of the location and nature of its system failure; then the operator could find the ship and fix it. This spacecraft's base operator was our father. So all we could do now was wait and stay alive.

I unbuckled my belt and pushed off my seat, gliding in the zero gravity towards my brother. I couldn't see him well in the dim light but he seemed unconscious. His body floating there, it looked lifeless, dead. He was cold to the touch and that made me fear the worst. I had lost another one. Then his eyes fluttered open; the blue in them contrasted the darkness around us. Relief came over me.

“Emmet.” Hearing his name was have snapped his attention.

“Dad.” He croaked out. At first I thought he was confused, that he had hit his head. Then he continued, “We wait for Dad.”

After getting our bearings, we managed to salvage some control of the ship. We got a hold of a radar device, managed to enforce the temperature parameters and re-engaged the artificial gravity.

But still, this would all be for nothing if we couldn't get our father here in time. The damaged control panel still had the oxygen levels: the quickly dwindling needle read an estimated 6 hours before the craft ran out of air. Before we died.

Long-range communications was still down by the time Emmet had fixed the control panel. Looking at the panel, we found out things were much worse. All our fuel had spilled out in the crash and we wouldn't be able to squeeze in another jump back home.

Emmet and I both ignored the blinking red light. Sitting on the left hand side of the control panel, the tiny red dot was the biggest elephant in the room. It was the ship's emergency alert. It was just an alert; but an alert of our impending doom. It signified that the hull's integrity was deteriorating quicker than the self-repairing system could handle. Meaning in not too long, the ship's walls would be ripped apart by gravity and we'd be frozen dead stiff in thirteen milliseconds. Give or take.

I could feel the seconds ticking, like an echoing alarm clock had been placed here on the darkside of the moon. I could feel our choking fear, it was so thick and palpable in the room that I'm sure if I had my laser blade I could cut it up and taste it.

I heard the creaking, the cracking, the crunch of the walls as they began to cave. We were doomed, temperature was dropping, completely and utterly doomed, it was now harder to breathe, irrevocably doomed, I hugged Emmet.

The left wall broke open first. It happened slow and quick, like watching a bullet moving in slow motion. It bent inwards first, rays of darkness and frost broke in, then it snapped back and flew off its hinges.

The chill was intense. My lungs felt close to freezing. Breathing hurt. The right wall seemed to be the one to go next.