Life on the International Space Station wasn’t always exciting. We would go days without anything new. The stars remained relatively the same. Asteroids and comets would come in clusters and leave within a matter of hours, leaving us the only object for miles. The moon colonization project had been canceled so we were the only life forms orbiting the lonely planet below. Even headquarters stopped talking to us unless there was an emergency. All we had were our experiments and each other, but when there were only three people on one satellite for over a year, topics tended to run out. Normally astronauts would be rotated every six months, but budget cuts forced longer rotations.
As far as space stations go, I wasn’t complaining. There was enough room to float around and not have to worry about bumping into each other. All of the instruments fit snugly into their compartments along the walls, and I didn’t have to worry about being the shortest person there. If I wanted to reach something on the top shelf all I had to do was push off of the nearest hard surface and I would speed toward it, allowing the weightlessness of space to guide me toward my desired location. Of course, we weren’t always in zero gravity, but it was helpful to our experiments. The view was more than enough to keep me satisfied with my office. The food wasn’t bad either. NASA had made some nice improvements from the freeze-dried stuff the earlier astronauts used. I had been rehydrating some lasagna when the ship arrived.
“What the hell is that Nat?” Hajime asked in Russian. My mother language had become the universal dialect of the Space Program after NASA dropped the program in 2012. When they decided to start it back up in 2104, after a few small wars and a gruesome World War III, Russia had mad most of the progress, bringing in cosmonauts and scientists from all over the planet. As an act of peace they put the space station contact back at Huston. When I turned around Hajime and Eugene were gaping out the far window. I followed their gaze to find myself in complete shock.
“What the …” is all I could get out.
“Exactly.” Eugene agreed.
Two hundred years of sending out probes to search the galaxy for signs of life without a single answer. When a large, dangerous-looking ship showed up in Earth’s orbit without any warning, we couldn’t believe it. The football-shaped ship was made from a black metal unknown to our sensors. They had shields up so our scanners couldn’t identify the layout of their ship. All we could tell about it was what we could see with our telescopes, and it wasn’t very reassuring. What we first assumed to be metallic plating soon proved to be much more complicated. Throughout the ship’s visit, it began to transform. Its originally flat, reflective surface began to grow what appeared to be spikes. Two large poles grew out of either end of the top of the ship. The tops of the poles began to glow and remained that way for six hours. The transformation took around an hour and didn’t change again.
Houston tried contacting the ships as soon as they appeared, but they just sat there for three days. We had no idea how many people were on the ships, or what they looked like. We kept in constant contact with Houston and received reports of mass hysteria. Houston refused to send a shuttle for us, in case it alerted the alien vessel. Eugene, Hajime, and I had no choice but to wait and see what the ship would do.
Finally, after seventy-two horrifying hours of waiting, the ship released a smaller craft from its underside. The craft made its way toward the space station and was docked within a matter of minutes. I tried to reach command control but our signal had been cut off. The station was strictly for scientific research so we had no weapons. We were defenseless as possible hostile beings attempted to board us. Shortly after the craft landed our gravity was turned back on. We hit hard but didn’t have time to notice any injuries, the aliens were making their way to our compartment. Hajime sealed the door but the aliens cut their way through the steel barrier as if it were cardboard. My imagination filled with creatures from science fiction movies as we waited for the invaders to break through. My mind produced images of everything from lizard men to rolling psychopaths with plungers for eyes and whisks for weapons. What came through the mutilated door was nothing like what I had expected.
The aliens looked like humans. Three of them stepped through the doorway, each with what looked like a phase pistol in one hand and a rifle strapped around his back. They wore clothes similar to what civilians wore on the planet below, and they had no problem fitting in our cramped quarters, though they didn’t leave much room for us to escape. I would have thought they were human had it not been for one small detail: their eyes. They didn’t blink. They didn’t seem to have eyelids at all. I wanted to look away but something about them made me keep eye contact. They were yelling something at us but I couldn’t understand them.
“What do we do Nat?” Eugene had backed into a corner. His voice was calm but his hands were shaking so bad he could’ve been having a seizure.
“We fight,” Hajime said. Something in his voice sent a shiver down my spine. He was a black belt in three forms of martial arts and fought at the end of World War III. In fact, we had all participated in that war, it was part of the reason I had signed up to become a cosmonaut. I never wanted to fight again.
“What are we supposed to fight with?” Eugene asked. “We don’t have any weapons.”
“We use whatever we have to.”
“He’s right,” I said. “We can’t go down without a fight.”
Everything happened in slow motion. Hajime lunged toward one of the aliens as I pulled one of the machines off the wall and threw it at the man closest to me. His phase pistol was knocked out of his hand and Eugene ran toward it but was shot down by the third alien. Hajime’s struggle lasted a few seconds longer before he too was shot.
“No!” I fell to my knees, my hands behind my head. “I give up.”
I could feel salt on my lips as I eyed the pistol I had knocked. It lay a few inches from my knees, having been neglected by its owner. In a final act of defense, I dove forward, screaming for my fallen friends. Before I could grasp the weapon the alien’s gun made contact with the back of my head and everything went dark.
…
“Nat wake up.” Eugene’s voice came from my left. The raspy sound of his whisper sent sharp pains through my head. “Natalia.”
I started to open my eyes but closed them again at the light. The back of my head was throbbing. I tried to rub it but my hands were tied around a pipe of some sort. Of course, I’ve been kidnapped, I thought to myself. I remembered the spaceship, the aliens, and the gun. I had an idea of where we were, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Where are we? Why aren’t you dead?”
“Funny, we were thinking the same thing.” I could almost see Hajime rolling his eyes.
“Somewhere on the alien ship,” Eugene responded. “The phase pistols must’ve been on a stun setting. Haj and I woke up at the same time, but we were already in the cell. We have no idea how to get out of here.”
“Let’s get out of these knots first.” I could feel Hajime struggling against the binds and opened my eyes to see what it was that was keeping us there.
“What kind of rope is this?”
“I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got it.” Hajime let out a grunt as he broke free and quickly turned to release me. “Now that you’re awake, we can plan our escape.”
“And how do you expect to do that,” Eugene asked. “We don’t even know what those things are, or what this ship is capable of.”
“We have to try,” Hajime retorted.
“Hajime’s right, Eugene. We have no idea what they are planning. You saw the ship transform. I highly doubt they went through all of this trouble to invite us for drinks.”
Once Hajime finished with my binds and moved on to Eugene, I got up and surveyed the room. Three of the four walls were made of metal bars and there was one long pole in the middle where we were tied. We were in one of twelve cells that lined two walls of the room, with a small hallway in the middle. At one end of the hall was a door, at the other end was a small window flickered with white dots. I found the door of the cell and ran to it.
“Locked!” I kicked the door in frustration and began to pace to the cell. My heart started to match the pounding in my head.
“What did you expect? A sign saying ‘Congratulations, you’ve escaped, have a shuttle pod on us?” Hajime’s sarcastic nature could get annoying.
“Too bad we can’t fit through the bars,” Eugene said.
Before I could try the door opened at the end of the hall and two armed aliens walked in. Hajime pulled me back as they approached our cell. They stood on either side of the door as the one on the left unlocked it. The one on the right pointed his pistol at the three of us and kept it there as the door opened. They both stepped through and the one on the right pointed at me.
“Shlack,” he grunted. My heart fell into my stomach and I grabbed Hajime’s hand. “Shlack.”
“I think he wants you to go with him,” Eugene whispered.
“Like hell.” Hajime squeezed my hand. “You just let us go. You have no right to keep us here.”
The alien on the left tried to grab me but Hajime shoved him back. His companion shot Hajime and pointed his pistol warningly at Eugene. Eugene looked at me.
“It’s fine,” I said as I stepped forward. “Just take care of Haj.”
He nodded as our captors locked the door and led me down the hall. After five minutes of sharp turns and narrow hallways, I was directed into what looked like a medical room. We would get out of this, with or without Earth’s help.
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Alicia Coast 