Remember Astrid

Is the world burning? I blink my eyes open to the glare of amber light, and a suffocating heat prickling my skin and filling my lungs. There’s a throbbing pain inside my skull and everything’s blurred, as if a dense fog envelops me.

  I try to roll over, but my arm is snagged. Above me a dark figure drifts by. I peer hard at it. Human, but unmoving. A corpse? I call out, but receive no reply. Around it a cloud of tiny specks swirl like snowflakes in a blizzard, only so slowly it’s as if time itself is grinding to a halt. I reach up to touch one, and it leaves a wet red spot on my fingertip. I put the tip of my tongue to it, and taste blood.

  Confused, I free my arm, which is tangled in a strap. As soon as it’s freed, I feel myself pulled upwards. Only, there is nothing or nobody holding me to pull me. It’s then I notice no part of me is touching solid ground. I’m floating, drifting like the motionless figure above.

  A cup spins languidly by my face. Beyond it, as my vision comes back into focus, I see the window. And what lies without. Through the shards of light that bathe the white walled room in which I find myself hovering weightlessly, is an infinite mass of stars scattered like glittering raindrops against an endless void. Realisation hits me like a sobering gut punch, I’m in space.

  Memories come flooding back to me in a torrent. 

  The last moments of chaos and confusion as great gouts of flame spiralled skywards and screams filled the air. People stampeding across the bridges to reach the shuttles, trampling those that were swept up and buried beneath the tide of panic. Drones swarming the invading alien spacecrafts as enemy lasers picked them off to send showers of smouldering debris tumbling like hail. Shuttles launching to leave the desperate hordes clamouring on the bridges crying out in anguish as they watched their salvation rocket towards the clouds.

  I remembered fighting my way across the bridge, shoving others aside to make it aboard. I managed one last look back as the door was lowered, to see a city being blitzed by missile strikes and raked by gunfire. Then the door was sealed, the engines rumbled, and we all scrambled for a handhold as the spacecraft hurriedly launched. 

  Lights blinked, and I found myself in a sea of faces wide eyed with fear. The turbulence shook us like we were beads inside a giant maraca. My ears popped, and all sound was muffled. 

  We were almost at the upper reaches of the earth’s exosphere, when a sudden, violent shudder set an alarm blaring. Voices cried out. The shuttle lurched and juddered, and I grasped the rung of a ladder to steady myself. Jets of steam hissed from various points in the walls. Above me a hatch slid open, a helmeted figure appeared, and shouted, “Climb!”

  I scrambled up the ladder. Others followed close behind. I was hauled up into another room where more figures suited and booted in the same attire as their helmeted comrade were gathered. As more citizens were pulled up, the shuttle pitched to one side. Screams echoed up through the hatch, which was sealed automatically to cut off the sounds of panic.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, righting myself.

  One of the helmeted crew replied, “Jettisoning the cargo.”

  I stared back in horror, my own disbelief reflected back at me in the visor. 

  “It’s that, or we all die” was the reason given.

  The shuttle convulsed, and I was thrown against the wall. Then all of a sudden it stabilised, and we were drifting calmly. I had to catch my breath, and slumped down against the wall. My shoulder hurt from the impact of my being hurled against it. I looked around, and saw but a score of other citizens who had made it through the hatch. A score, out of some two hundred and fifty souls, all reduced to chaff to be dispersed and tossed in the space winds like flotsam on a river’s current. 

   Later, the alarm sounded again, the shuttle rocked, and the crew became frantic. Through a narrow window I glimpsed an alien vessel that blotted out the earth, which spewed a swarm of smaller crafts as vicious as riled wasps. I saw other shuttles following our flight path coming under attack. Flashes of white light flitted past. One struck a wing, and the shuttle tipped. Another shuttle away to our left was hit with a barrage of enemy fire, and blossomed into a ball of flame.

 Our thrusters burned, and amidst a storm of laser missiles, we tore through space. But we were pursued doggedly, hit thrice more, and the next thing I knew the electronic voice blared out over and over, “System failure”, the entire shuttle shook from a concussive impact, my skull felt fit to burst, and all went black. 

  A sudden flash of realisation strikes me. Short term memory has been a struggle since the accident two years ago, and it takes significant moments or events to wake my mind from slumber. Anything at the time I think will be important to recall, I note on my watch. The notepad app is filled with random scribblings that would be nonsensical gibberish to most, yet to me makes up the fragmented tapestry that my life has become. 

  This time it’s the image of the exploding shuttle that makes me remember. My sister, Astrid, was with me when the invasion commenced. We were separated in the bedlam as our world crashed and burned around us. It must have been before the rush to make it to the shuttles.

  Fear and panic grip me. Was she on the shuttle that was destroyed by enemy fire? Or one of the others that may or may not have escaped? Did she even make it onto a shuttle?

 I rack my brain for my last sight of her, beating at my skull to force it to work. I remember the feel of her hand gripping mine, then it was gone, and I was running up onto the bridge. I clasp my hands over my head, digging my fingers into the long scar behind my right ear, and curse myself. I feel the tears welling as despair threatens to drown me. The only family left to me, can she really be gone?

  A beep in my left ear stills my self-reproach. I remove my left hand from the side of my face, and look at my watch. Twelve unread messages. Nineteen missed calls. All from the same number, saved under one name; Astrid.

  It’s as if someone takes a defibrillator to my hopes that an instant ago had flatlined. Astrid lives. This awakens the urgency in me, and I access my inbox, fingers clumsy from the almost overwhelming emotion, my heart galloping. I open the last message sent one minute ago. 

  Coordinates. I skim through the rest, and amidst the panicky words I find out she made it aboard a shuttle, and escaped the swarm of alien crafts. Relief washes over me. And then the battery symbol on my watch blinks. It’s almost out of charge. 

  Hurriedly, I call Astrid. Call received, but all I get is static. I shout her name, “Astrid? Are you OK? Astrid!?” Nothing. 

  The shuttle murmurs, trembles, lights flare, then die. I hear a voice call out, the sound faint through the door. As I look at the door, I read what’s written beside it. ‘Cell 4’. Another flashback. When the passengers were jettisoned, I attacked one of the crew, believing Astrid might have been among them. I was forced against the wall, jarred my shoulder, and dragged to this cell.  

  The shuttle shudders again. I have to find out what’s happening, I have to reach Astrid. I propel myself to the door, which is ajar, slide it open, and exit into a hallway. Ceiling lights blink. I follow the voices. 

  I pass some writing on the wall. ‘C.E.C. 100-38’. I remember something else. It wasn’t Astrid’s hand I held, it was a little girl’s. She was crying for her mother. I took her hand and told her she had to get to safety, that it’s what her mother would want. I pulled her along, but in the surge of bodies her hand slipped from mine. I searched the chaos, but couldn’t see her, and got disorientated. Then I was pounding across the bridge, to Civilian Emergency Craft 100-38. Astrid had been waiting for me by C.E.C 100-39.

  I turn right into a short passage, glide up a narrow stairwell, and lift the hatch. Crew crawl all over the hot, circular control room. The space is a hubbub of frenetic activity and frantic chatter. Wires burst from bare panels like weeds and lights blink manically on the central console. 

  I approach one man soldering wires together. He’s lean and unshaven and smells of coffee. “Will the shuttle fly?” I ask him.

  He glances sideways at me and growls, “She took some punishment, but she’s built sturdy. Pliers.” 

  I frown, and he juts his grizzled chin at the toolbox fastened magnetically to the wall. I hand him the pliers and watch him work. When he’s done he stuffs the reassembled wires back into the wall and shouts to the crew at the console, “Try now!”

  There’s a whirring, and lights buzz and stutter overhead. Then, with a clink, they stay on. 

  “Told ya” smiles the crewman, patting the spacecraft before replacing the panel. “Built sturdy.”

  Another crewmember slides out from beneath the console, nods to a shaven-headed woman at the controls, who taps out a sequence. The shuttle rumbles and lurches with a whirr, like the hoverbike did before I crashed two years back. 

  A line of green and yellow lights illuminate around the console, and a digital touchscreen materialises stating ‘system at eighty-six percent’. 

  “I can’t access all the data” a spectacled man calls from the separate, smaller console he’s hunched over. “Our coordinates are unknown. Comms are down.”

  “What about the coordinates for the Sanctuary?” asks the shaven-headed woman.

  The spectacled man taps frantically, his pale face lit by the screen before him. “That data is lost also, Captain.”

  My watch beeps. The charge has almost run out. The digits showing the time provoke a memory. I access my inbox, and open the last message from Astrid. Coordinates of where her shuttle is headed. The light on the screen dims. “I have them” I say. 

  “Have what?” asks the grizzled crewman beside me, lighting a roll-up dangling from one corner of his mouth.

  “The coordinates.” I show him the watch. 

  He peers down at the message, his eyes widen, and he curses. “Cap’n!” he cries, and shoves me in the direction of the central console. I flail through zero gravity as the shaven-headed woman turns to see me bearing down on her, unable to stop myself. 

  Someone grabs my feet, and I’m halted an arm’s length from her. It’s the grizzled crewman. “His watch” he says urgently, jutting his chin at my wrist. 

  The Captain considers me quickly, grabs my wrist and turns it so the watch screen faces her. “Coordinates” she murmurs, glancing up at me. “For what?”

  “My sister’s shuttle” I say. “C.E.C 100-38. It’s headed for the Sanctuary.”

  The watch beeps again, and the screen dims further still. “Techie!” the Captain barks. “Record these coordinates!”

  She calls them out, but the screen dies halfway through her reading. “What was the last sequence?” she demands of me.

   I strain to recall them, but it’s no use, and I feel more useless than ever. “I…can’t remember.” 

  The Captain hisses in frustration, and releases my wrist. I can feel the dejection from all around me, and none feel the disappointment in myself and my faltering mind more than I. Hope that was so recently restored to me fizzles out once more, and I feel further away than ever from Astrid.  

  The grizzled crewman lets me go and loudly recites the whole sequence. Everybody stares at him. He taps the side of his head and smiles. “My knees might be playing up, and my back might give me jip, but there’s nothing wrong with my thinker.”

  The techie taps out the last sequence. Someone at another screen says, “Enemy spacecraft spotted, Captain. Though it hasn’t detected us yet.”

  On the digital screen, the image of the Sanctuary appears. The moon, with its vast underground lakes and gas pockets, is our destination, and perhaps our new home. And where Astrid will await me. 

  “Burn thrusters” barks the Captain. “Let’s make ourselves scarce before the enemy spots us.”

  Crew scramble to their posts, the shuttle rumbles, and suddenly we’re burning through space. The grizzled crewman slaps my back and grins. I smile back, giddy with relief. I stare at the image of the moon, brimming with hope, as out the window distant stars race by. “I’m coming, Astrid” I say, grinning like a fool. “I’m coming.”