Station

Max sat inside Horizon Gate, one of the orbital stations built in the years after the ISS was retired and NASA was dissolved. In its place rose the Aeronautical Research Centre for the Human Odyssey of all Nations, a sprawling, globe-spanning coalition formed to unify every major space program under one banner. Most people used its shorter name, ARCHON, because no one had the breath to recite the full title every time a satellite sneezed.

Horizon Gate itself was bigger and sleeker than anything that came before it, all modular carbon trusses and a rotating ring that offered a whisper of artificial gravity. Designed to make long-term habitation easier. Right now, all it did was make the place feel too loud.

Around him, astronauts hustled with the restless energy of people one checklist away from going home. Cargo nets tightened. Hatches clamped. Suits half-zipped. At Node C, the docked shuttle waited, sleek and white, descended from generations of craft that once carried NASA insignia. An ARCHON workhorse. Compact, overconfident and eager to drop back to Earth at a moment's notice.

Max sat by the comms alcove, thumb hovering over the reconnect key. He’d already tried Daphne twice. Straight to an automated tone. He tried again.

No answer.

His jaw clenched. He switched the line and pinged Thomas instead.

The connection snapped live after a few seconds, audio only, no video.

“Max, good heavens, hello! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until . . . well . . . tomorrow.”

“Thomas, are you with Daphne? I can’t reach her. I’m dropping soon and I thought she would want to know.”

“Yes, yes of course. Totally logical. The only slight drama being . . . well, she’s not exactly, erm, available at the moment.”

Max tensed slightly. Something about Thomas wasn’t sitting right.

“Why not?”

There was an audible rustle of fabric and a tiny inhale over the comms. Thomas was sharper than a pin-collector's almanac, but for some reason unknown to Max — he was stalling.

Daphne is behind this, he thought. She has told him not to tell me something. There is always only one individual with more employee authority than the boss and that of course is — the boss’s wife.

“She’s at the hospital,” he said softly. “Magnus isn’t feeling his best . . . Nothing ghastly. Nothing worth you launching yourself out an airlock over. He’s just being checked over by the doctors.”

Max gripped the console.

“Checked for what?”

“It truly sounds more dramatic than it is,” Thomas soothed, voice sliding into a toffee dance between earnest and flustered. “She absolutely will call you the moment she’s able, I promise.”

Max could sense that there was something Thomas didn’t want to say while he was surrounded by the crew, government hardware and the vacuum of space.

“Don’t lie to me Thomas,” said Max.

“Dib-dib, dab-dab, Scouts honour, Old Chap,” Thomas replied. “Honestly, Max, try not to let it consume you. I’m sure Daphne will chew your ears-off as soon as you touch soil. Now — I really had better dash, meetings with the board and such, erm, all terribly political I should imagine. If I hurry, I might secure the chair next to the pastry tray.”

“Okay, Thomas,” said Max, still unconvinced, but it didn’t matter — There was another way to get answers. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He tapped a button on the dashboard and ended the call.

He scanned the station quickly, pretending to stretch. No one was watching him. Everyone was too busy strapping down oxygen tanks and arguing about whose turn it was to clean the galley filter.

Good.

Max crouched down by the main console, slid a thumb into the recessed latch, and popped one of the panels off. He moved fast and with the idle confidence of somebody simply tying a shoelace, nothing unusual, nothing to see. A few fibre lines came free with experienced fingers. He tilted a monitor toward him, hiding it with his shoulder, and dropped into the system’s hidden menus.

He danced through code, submenus, routing tables, backdoor threads tucked between firmware versions older than the station itself.

After a minute, he exhaled, reconnected the fibres, sealed the panel, inserted an earpiece and disabled the external speaker. The next conversation was for his ears only.

He made the call and a warm chirp answered immediately.

In the corner of the ops screen, a tiny round face drew itself in quick chalky strokes. No smile this time. Just eyes, watching the scrolling code beside him on the monitor.

“Boss-man! Is that you tapping into the Horizon Gate uplink? That’s adorable and illegal.”

“Temporary,” Max muttered. “I need you to do something and I don’t want anyone listening in. This call won’t show up anywhere it shouldn’t.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Hermes replied. “My maker has become a comms-pirate—”

As if on queue a small cocked hat sketched itself on Hermes’ head, complete with a skull and cross-bones motif.

“Let me just fetch an eyepatch.”

Max didn’t smile.

“I need information. Magnus is in the hospital and Thomas isn’t being completely honest about his condition. I want you to pull his hospital records.”

“Aye, aye Cap’n.” Hermes’s tone bounced, then dipped. “I can confirm that Magnus has indeed been hospitalised, however, there are no current records regarding his condition, I assume that his tests have not yet been completed.”

Max let out a frustrated sigh.

“Also . . . while I’m sneaking through healthcare firewalls like we both work for a super-villain with a volcano lair, the entanglement comm’s are getting weirder. More anomalies. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Keep filtering them,” said Max. “Remember, only send clean data to the board. I’ll look into the . . . noise, when I land.”

“Sure. But, there’s one anomaly I think you should see. The QEC seems to have become a kind of answerphone for interdimensional cold-calls and there’s one particular message which is addressed to you.”

Max hesitated for a moment, trying to digest both this new information alongside his concern for Magnus’ condition.

“Okay,” he said. “Play the anomaly.”

The screen flickered — and then, Magnus appeared. Still nine years old. Still soft-faced, hair messy, cheeks flushed. But his posture was — wrong. His stillness — too deliberate. His eyes seemed to be older than the face that held them. His voice, when he eventually spoke, carried a steadiness that did not belong to a child.

“Dad, I don’t know where you are, and I don’t know if this message will get to you. But, if you are watching this there’s something you need to know—"

Magnus continued, calm and heartbreakingly composed.

“Dad, for a really long time, I never understood why you chose to stay . . . I hated you for it. I used to think if you hadn’t stayed, Mom would still be here. I was wrong. I think I understand now."

Max’s jaw dropped as he listened. It made no sense. Nonsense. And, from what he could see on the video feed, Thomas was wrong, Magnus was at the lab — not the hospital.

“Dad, if you do get this message, you have got to do something for me . . . Promise me! You can’t finish the mission. You can’t let them see the beginning. Not ever—"

Max reached out an arm instinctively and gently placed his hand on Magnus’ image. 

“Something is going to happen, something bad . . . I’m sorry . . . it’s my fault. But you need to be brave, Dad. You can’t come with us, you need to find the monk with orange robes. Trust him, he knows what to do. I know it sounds strange, but it’s the only way to save—”

Max heard the approach of footsteps.

He quickly snapped a command on the keypad and the feed vanished, replaced by the harmless blue desktop of the station’s ops menu. A hand slapped him on the shoulder. It was one of the crew, suited and booted in one of the ARCHON space-suits, helmet tucked under his other arm. He had stripes on his sleeve. A shuttle pilot.

“Hey, you okay, Mr Orpheus?” He said, filtering concern through an ear-to-ear grin. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Max released the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding.

“I’m fine—" He wiped his face.

“Great, well, everything’s ready. Shuttle’s fuelled, checks are complete and we’ve even skipped past the adverts on the in-flight movie. Let’s get you home, Mr Orpheus.”

“I’ll be right there, I just need a minute.”

The pilot nodded, then turned and headed off towards Node-C.

Hermes appeared, gloved hands feeding paper into a shredder.

“Go, Boss-man. I can tidy up here and disconnect the tap,” said Hermes. “You just worry about getting home.”

Hermes disappeared. The screen went blank.

Max stood and headed in the same direction as the pilot, his legs were steady in the artificial gravity, his mind — not so much.