Through Dangerous Times

Arrival

The three were slowly closing in on the QAN, Cisco piloting the ship as they flew through the zero-gravity atmosphere. He had insisted the cockpit contained an inbuilt music system, to which he had downloaded many songs onto as they travelled the distance between Earth and the station. This distance was the further away from Earth than any other man-made objects orbiting the planet, around a thousand kilometres away. As he was controlling the small fuel bursts used to position and steady the ship, the main Star Wars theme was playing at a high enough volume for the other two to here in the other room. The module they were travelling in only had two rooms designed specifically for space travel, one for piloting and take off, the other for work. Both Barry and Caitlin were sat in the work area, keeping fairly quiet as they did so, neither had spoken a word to each other since they entered this room. The minor acceleration rockets had detached from the rocket not a few minutes ago, falling back to Earth as they did so. All that was left to move the ship was some small gas tanks, letting out small bursts of said gas to move the ship around, all controlled by Cisco. At the current time, both Barry and Caitlin were scribbling down equations and blueprints respectively, all plans for the work that would need to be complete once they arrive at the QAN.

"Caitlin, are you doing okay?" Barry asked somewhat nervously, knowing that she wasn't the biggest fan of him.

"I'm fine," she stated, quickly getting back to work afterwards, leading Barry to do the same. He temporarily looked up at the window, seeing a few small pieces of debris hurtle by, as well as the quite stunning view of the many stars, as well as a beautiful image of their home planet, sat to the right of the window's view, the bright blue glow of the ozone creating a truly incredible scene.

Not long after this, Barry got up, or more accurately unbuckled himself from his work station as he floated over towards the cockpit, the door automatically closing behind him.

"How's everything going?" He asked Cisco, who had to mute the music purely to hear him.

"It's going great, how about back there?"

"Decent enough, Caitlin is still pretty resistant to talk to me though," he said with a slight tone of sadness in his voice.

"Don't worry too much about it, she will come around, I've known her long enough to know that," he said with a reassuring smile.

Barry floated over to the co-pilot's seat, taking a peer out of the main window as he did so.

"So, how long is it until we arrive?"

"Not too long now, maybe around half an hour at the most. Usually, for space travel, we would travel a lot faster, however, due to the distance from Earth to the QAN it's not really necessary and just a waste of fuel."

"Makes sense."

"I just realised I never asked you this, why exactly did you become an astronaut, why come on this mission? Not that I don't want you here, you are a great company, I'm just curious, that's all."

"Well, it is mostly due to a childhood dream that, well I guess never really died. It was my biggest passion, right next to science in general. My mum died when I was 11, and one of my clearest memories of her was when she took me to an observatory, and her telling me that one day I could make it to the stars above me. After she died, I wanted to achieve that, or at least try my best to do so."

"Well, here you are, and I'm sure she would be proud," Cisco smiled.

"Here I am," he replied, turning his head back to the window, to see a great image of the moon to the left of them, quite a distance away but still a great sight.

"Wow, the moon looks great from up here," he said, smiling at the sight of it.

"That's no moon... it's a space station," Cisco replied, a large smile on his face.