Space Age Sorrows

Oct 22, 2087.

“Losing control!” Lt. McCoy shouted as alarms and red lights went off around the interior, “Colonel Thompson, what do we do!”

       “She won’t make much longer, sir, we are dangerously close to Io’s gravitational pull, if not in it yet,” Major Kane said.

       “Everyone check to ensure their suits are tight and follow my lead out the hatch,” the Colonel ordered. He sounded calm but inside was a raging panic.

       “All things check, sir!” the younger astronauts said in unison.

       “Ready to follow your lead,” the Major added.

       “Alright,” Colonel Thompson spoke, “I’ll go first to make sure we are safe for the jump, you two don’t move until I say so. If we miss the jump time or if I start falling next to the ship, you two are to wait until your elevation is twenty-five hundred feet above the surface and deploy the ship’s parachute. Then you will have to wait until Starlight sends her rescue crew. Understand.”

       “Yes sir!” Major Kane shouted.

       “Copy!” The Lieutenant agreed.

       “Okay, men,” Colonel Thompson said while opening the hatch, “one, two, three,” he jumped. Immediately, the captain felt himself floating in the gravity-less vacuum of space, he tested his spacesuit’s boosters to ensure they could move him around. They did. The superior officer was about to inform his men to jump, in order of rank, Major first, then Lieutenant, but he froze. About three hundred feet above the descending spacecraft was a disc, unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

 The disc was smooth and appeared to be made out of shiny, dark metal with flashing red and amber lights around the diameter. There were no identifying marks on the craft that Thompson could identify, but at that moment he knew that wherever this small ship was from, it was the reason for his own craft’s fusion-powered engine failure. The disc stayed still, watching the American spacecraft descend toward the small moon rapidly, before darting into the empty blackness of space in an instant.

The next thing Colonel Thompson remembered was the final radio transmission from Major Kane, “I said, is it clear to jump, sir?!” Before Thompson could reply, he watched the ship (no larger than a small passenger plane) reach Io’s gravitational pull and crash into the dusty surface of the moon. The parachute had failed.

Sep 9, 2094

       Colonel Thompson, now just known as Mark, woke up in a cold sweat next to his wife in bed. She stirred with a groan as he pulled himself to the floor but remained asleep. The glowing green clock on his bedside table informed him that it was 2:43 a. m. Sleep wouldn’t be coming back tonight.

       Mark Thompson was glad he didn’t have to work- some smart investments and his pension check ensured of that- as he walked to the kitchen of the condo and poured a drink. Looking out from the window over the city, flashing with neon lights and skyscraper-sized hologram advertisements, the old man sipped and thought back on the biggest blunder of his career.

       The other two men he had taken with him from Starlight had perished and never been recovered on Io. He’d used the propulsion boosters to make it halfway to the command ship before they sent a rescue craft to pick him up and take him the rest of the way. The General and two other Colonels on Starlight had taken Thompson’s witness statement (in which he left out the foreign spacecraft for fear of ridicule) and kept him on board. The families of the deceased were notified and funeral services were held, but the old Colonel couldn’t take it.

 He saw the accusing looks on their faces. He knew that there hushed discussions that the officer had saved himself before his crew, that maybe he was getting too old for the Force. That years of space travels and being away from his wife, children, and grandchildren had taken its toll on the man, so on December 24, 2087, when Starlight returned home, Colonel Thompson handed in his resignation.

For two years, he’d lived with survivor's remorse, refusing offers to give speeches at ceremonies or conduct discussions on interplanetary travel, wishing he had been the one to die alone on that piece of rock that orbited Jupiter instead of his men. That was followed by another fifteen months of hollowness inside. After that, a reluctant form of acceptance. Being around the grandchildren and going to museums of primitive space travel from the 1950s-2020s with is wide helped. He could smile and feel joy again, but there were still nights like these where the mistake haunted them.

To some, he was a hero, a man who escaped a horrible crash as a traveler of the new frontier. To others, a disgraced leader who had disrespected his nation and his uniform by only saving himself. I know I saw that disc, though, I just know it! Mark Thompson thought to himself. The nightmares always started when the anniversary of the tragedy occurred.

Retired Colonel Thompson sipped his whiskey and continued to watch the moving advertisements and hovercars crowding the feet of the city’s skyscrapers.

Oct 22, 2094

       Mark Thompson steps out of his old hovercar and walks to the front door of the Lt. McCoy’s widow. Mrs. Kane had been heartbroken but accepting over her husband’s death, holding strong for her own children- now fully grown adults- she would even have dinner at the Thompsons every six months or so. It was Mrs. McCoy who had held resentment for seven years.

       Mark rang the doorbell and took his uniform cover off. After an hour of debating what to wear to meet the thirty-four-year-old, he’d settled on wearing the Space Force uniform that had sat collecting dust in the back of the closet since the day he’d resigned. A woman opened the door.

       She was pretty. Honey-colored eyes that reflected gold in the right light. Dark brown hair cut into a messy bob and pouty lips that carried a dark pink color. “Oh. Why are you here?” she asked like the anniversary of her husband’s passing had been ruined even more. Mark noticed the woman’s eyes were red like she’d been crying and she wore clothes that looked like they had been worn to bed the night before.

       “Mrs. McCoy, I was wondering if I could come in and talk a bit,” Thompson spoke bashfully. He’d wanted to make amends with the woman but could never find the right way.

       “Absolutely not,” Leigh McCoy spoke as if she'd just been insulted.

       “Mrs. McCoy, please,” Mark begged.

       “Why in the hell would I ever let the man who murdered my husband in?” the woman screamed.

       The old man recoiled at her words. “I just beg, ten minutes of your time, that’s it,” he said.

       “Fine,” the young widow said and began walking to the kitchen. Mark followed her to a small table with space shuttle- shaped salt and pepper shakers in the middle. The pair took seats on opposite ends.

       Leigh McCoy had never remarried, though she had every right to. Ben McCoy and her had been high school sweethearts and stayed together when he went to the Academy to become a Space Force officer and she went to NYU to study law. They had gotten married upon Ben’s commission into the service. Little hologram images dotted the house of Leigh and Ben at prom together, a repeating short film of the two of them dancing with Ben in his service uniform, and a multitude of others of the couple looking happy in various instances. Leigh had just found out she was pregnant right before Starlight was leaving for a flyby of Jupiter to take samples of its gases. Lt. McCoy had never met his daughter. Leigh took it upon herself to raise the little girl and work as a successful lawyer, never allowing the time to meet someone else.

       “So, get on with your sob story about how sorry you are for taking my husband and Sarah’s father away,” the woman said coldly. “You have ten minutes and then I have to go pick up Sarah from my mother’s.”

       Retired Colonel Mark Thompson took a breath and tried to find the right way to begin, “Leigh-“.

       “Misses McCoy,” the woman corrected.

       The old man nodded, “Mrs. McCoy, I’ve come to admit that, yes, it was my fault your husband died seven years ago.”

       Leigh McCoy snorted, “Yeah, I already knew that.”

       “I’ve never told anyone this, but there’s more to the story that was released to the public when it happened,” Thompson told her.

       “Mr. Thompson, you know I’m a lawyer, I know how to pick out lies and find the truth, just tell me what you came here to say and be gone. You have eight minutes left,” she said angrily.

       “The engine our small craft was running on cut out,” he spoke, dreading having to tell what he saw, “nuclear fusion cores don’t just shut off when they’re fully charged like ours was.”

       “Okay?” the woman chimed impatiently. She checked her watch, seven and a half minutes.

       “I gave the order to your husband and Major Kane to stay back while I jumped off first to ensure safety, we had to be sure that we hadn’t reached gravitational pull yet…” he paused.

       “Go on,” McCoy urged with the same sense of urgency to get this old man out of her house.

       “Well, I was just about to give the call that it was safe for the other two to jump when I saw something. Another spacecraft, a massive disc above us,” Thompson felt like the solar system’s biggest idiot for saying that.

       “So you’re saying aliens are the reason my husband is dead,” Leigh McCoy spoke like a mother whose child had just told her that gremlins stole the cookie and not them.

       “I’m not saying anything except that, whatever this saucer was or where it came from, is the reason that ship crashed,” Thompson explained, “As for your husband’s death, that was my fault for pausing. I couldn’t take my eyes off this… thing that was above us. And I am deeply sorry for that lapse of reasoning that killed your husband.”

       “Mr. Thompson, if this story is real, why haven’t you told anyone over the last seven years? Why does your official statement say nothing about some other spacecraft?” the lawyer side of the woman was taking over.

       “Do you believe my story,” Thompson asked calmly.

       “No,” she answered quickly.

       “That’s why I’ve kept it a secret,” he told her.

       “Mark- Mr. Thompson,” Leigh corrected herself- she didn’t want to use his first name because she felt that it was too friendly, “this is insanity. Do you really think I’m supposed to believe your story and forgive you? Help you make amends for your selfishness and blunder that got two men- my husband included- killed on some lonely moon?” her face was reddening in anger. “Get out.”

       Thompson stood up and took two steps away before turning around, “Mrs. McCoy, I don’t expect you to believe me, but I had to try to atone for my sins somehow. Now, not one word I’ve spoken to you is a lie, but I understand if you don’t change your mind.”

       The lawyer could tell that the man was- in fact- telling the truth, at least as how he remembered the period but told him, “Thompson, there may have been something there that shut off the power to your craft. There may have been a UFO or floating disc- whatever you want to call it that made you forget your training, but the fact is, you allowed my husband to die so far away from home. And for that, I can never forgive you. Now leave, I have to go get Sarah now and you’ve made me late.”

       “I understand,” the old man said with a tear in his eye. He didn’t know what he expected from this meeting, but he had felt a small sense of closure. The retired Colonel Thompson got I to his vehicle and drove home, the faces of the victims of his worst mistake floating around his mind.