Sacrifice for the Sun (Mace/Sunshine)

10

Mace, Harvey, Searle, and I got ready to go on the Icarus 1. Carrie and Cori stayed behind to work on Icarus 2. The door opened and it was completly dark.

"Alright, watch your step.", Harvey said as we entered the ship.

"Stay close to me, alright?", Mace said and nodded. We went even farther into the ship and it was completely empty. There was no one there.

"Guys, are you getting this all on the feed. The air is full of dust.",Harvey said searching the ship with his flashlight. "Human skin.", Searle said.
"What?" "80% of all dust is human skin." Well thanks for the weird fact. Just after he said that, something fell and scared all of us.

"Are we all alive?" "No.", Mace and I said in unison to Harvey question. We found a hole that led to another room.

"Is anybody afraid of the dark other than Liz?", Mace said and I hit him on his arm. "We should split up." Is he insane? That's the worst thing you can do in a place like this.

"I don't think that's a good idea.", I said thinking he was crazy.

"You're probably right. We'd get picked off one at a time by aliens.", he said making me and Harvey laugh.

"We move less effectively if we stay in one group.", Searle said.

"Mace and Liz, you two move up to the flight deck see if you can get her to fly. Searle check the social area and the sleeping quarters. Capa you check on the payload. I'll check the garden. Let's keep in contact, you guys.", Harvey told us where to go and we did it.

Mace and I made it to the flight deck. We could rarely see anything.

"Why is there so much dust? It's really gross.", I said looking at all the computers.

"Listen, guys. You gotta see this. 7 years of life grew.", Harvey said probably talking about the Oxygen Garden. Mace started working on the computers to get them up and running again.

"That's strange." "What?" "Subsystems are fine, solar harvest is fine. The ship should be up and running except I'm not getting anything from the flight computer.", Mace said answering my question. Then a message started playing on one of the coms. It was saying that the sun was dying and we are nothing but dust.

"Okay. Does that make sense to anyone?" "Transmission code was 6 and a half years ago.", Mace and I said.

"I'm guessing that was around the same time they were suppose to deliver the payload.", Cori said in our earpieces. Then Mace and I came across the Maintenance Room. I was dreading to come back here. That dream flashed into my head.

"Hey, Earth to Liz. You okay? You kinda zoned out.", Mace said lifting my my chin to look at him. I nodded and we went on. Then Capa informed us that the payload was fully operational.

"That's great. Looks like we got what we came for." "No, we don't.", Mace said to Cassie.

"I know what caused the distress signal. There was a cooling failiure and the bottom line is it doesn't matter if Capa has his payload. Without the mainframe, we can't fly.", Mace said.

"It's been sabotaged."