The Outer Moon (A Sapphic Sci Fi Adventure)

Chapter 14

"The despoilers in space have stooped to a new low! Not content to pillage what is rightfully the property of the followers of Atlantis, they have now taken citizens of Earth to the ship to loot even more! But not only have they taken our citizens, but they have taken the unclean, the defiled, the nonbelievers! This cannot be allowed! They must be cast down from the heavens like the devils of old! My believers, I beseech you to do your best to stop this madness! Their evil works cannot continue!"

Vanessa wiped her eyes as she listened to the message one more time. It had been posted online late on the day that the missions to get their new people had been completed and seemed to be one more blustering message from an Atlantis prophet that meant nothing to people in space. Jason had sent it just before the last conversation they'd had, when he told her that Zay would be heading back to Earth, this time to their old stomping grounds of Costa Rica, to get the cribs, baby mattresses, clothes, and toys they'd requested.

He was still loading everything carefully into the back of the little fighter craft, where it was a tight fit to get a dozen of them in there, when a bright light lit up the sky far overhead. As it turned out, the shuttle that was going up to meet with Jason had a nuclear weapon loaded aboard it instead of the people that were supposed to be there, and then it was detonated when it docked at the station. Had Zay been there with his ship, it was likely that he would have been killed. Nobody was sure how well the smaller alien craft would have handled the blast, and they weren't looking to test it, but Zay normally stayed on the station with Jason unless he was monitoring messages or running errands, so he wouldn't have had that protection.

But Jason, and the few staff, mostly the scientists that had remained with him while Abby and Yasmin went out to Uranus, were gone. None of them had a chance or had even known they were under attack. One second, they were gathering up all the manifests that were scheduled for the Mars runs, and the next moment they were dead. The only good thing for Vanessa was that her friend and the other people there hadn't felt anything, it was over too fast. That was a small consolation as he was still gone. Jason would have been a good person to have on their new planet as he was a natural leader and very organized, but now that option was unavailable.

There was nothing that Zay could have done. He piloted his craft through the wreckage, not that there was much left, but there was nothing that could have been salvaged. He was furious with rage but had nobody to blame since it wasn't known who orchestrated the act. That didn't stop him from blasting a few military satellites though, just as a warning to whoever may want to try again. With nothing else to do, he headed out to the rest of the team in the ships and space station near Uranus. There were a lot of tears awaiting him there. Many of the newcomers didn't understand who Jason was, but the original crew of the ship, as well as all the new pilots, and the scientists like Yasmine and Abby were hit hard. And unlike when Vanessa lost her father, Anton, they didn't even have any bodies to have a ceremony with. Regardless, they still had one, but it was even harder to not be able to say goodbye.

Lena and Miles had both been upset when they heard the news on the way back, with Lena blaming herself for not having done the surveys faster. It wasn't reasonable, of course, since they were already going as fast as they could, and more than likely Jason would have tried to be polite and have the meeting to leave a good impression anyway. They had just never expected that kind of treachery.

Worse, they had no idea who was even responsible. With the PASSpace station gone, so was their communication with Earth, and so they couldn't talk to anyone. According to Zay, the blast was also large enough to take out other several satellites in the area, he wasn't sure which country they had belonged to, so it seemed likely that the attack was at the behest of a prophet more than a government. Though the way the prophets were influencing the world, in some cases it was one and the same.