The Shot

He didn't need to do anything.

He could just sit down at his desk and wait. The waiting would be the hardest part. The shame would come, and perhaps it would never stop. The thousands of employees under his company would be blameless, they wouldn't put it together until it was too late. The blame would fall squarely on the men in this room.

For the last one hundred and fifty years, the painstaking process of terraforming the exoplanet Gupta-2125 had fallen on his company: James Adelade Space Innovations. The process had been beyond revolutionary, entire fields of science had to be re-worked and expanded to make this possible. Biologists, physicists, engineers, even sociologists if you could believe it. J.A.S.I had metaphorically and physically moved mountains, lifted continents, and gripped the heavens. Now they were about to cross a threshold that was more terrible.

It began with the process they had painstakingly perfected. The use of Rail guns alongside complex mathematical equations to physically "push" celestial objects into the places they needed. Gupta-2125 hadn't even been in the habitable zone of its binary star system when they'd started the most expensive and daring undertaking in human history, but by the time they were a third of the way through, it had had water, a moon, and an ocean to support the next phase.

Packages of smaller, crash-resistant seeds and other small lifeforms were introduced over the course of months. Within thirty years, the ecosystem was taking hold, and within twenty more, they were ready for the Station.

The Station was created in two parts. The first was by launching the necessary materials and people into the now living biosphere via the Rail gun system. Then they would make preparations where the station itself could be assembled, and in turn, launched back into the upper atmosphere. From there, it would be a silent observer that would look over the world in its burgeoning crucible of life. 200 of the finest men and women to help foster stable growth.

Until now, the project had been the new inspiration for the human race, knowledge that if one day their empires and corporations failed, there was something else out there. Something that we passed on, even if we wouldn't be there to see it. Hope.

The asteroid was spotted near three months ago. It was calculated to miss the system that Gupta-2125 rotated by 3 light years, and disregarded.

Then the man had walked into James' office. He still remembered the speech that the assumed upstart had recited to him:

"Did you know that J.A.S.I's interception alert system is flawed? That it was based off math that was corrupted in the iterative process and that your software engineers missed it?" He had said more, but by that point, James was on the phone, on his keyboard, and shouting to people outside the room to get every general manager, every launch engineer, and every person he could find that knew about this issue that had been kept from him.

His Grandfather had founded the J.A.S.I, his father had run it, and when he'd passed it to James, there wasn't much to do anymore. The heavy lifting was done, the results were a matter of waiting for things to reach a truly habitable point. People saw him as nepotism incarnate, but they were wrong on one front. He loved space. He loved space travel and its intricacies. He loved the Gupta project, and knew it inside and out. What that man had broken to him was that they hadn't been on top of things, just extremely lucky for the whole of his tenure. In this moment, as he sweat bullets in his office chair, that luck had run out.

"How long?" He sat stone silent. The first man, the one who'd broken the news to him opened his folder. "A month, maybe less. Manipulating an object this size takes finesse, and the way it's looking, we don't have that kind of finesse."

"So you're saying they'll have to die? Is that it?" His Father spoke, hoarse as he set his hand on James' desk. "I'm saying that there's little time for wishful thinking. There's one solution, and we have to roll with it."

"Your solution is to condemn almost 210 innocent lives to a fiery death!" He gripped the edge, knuckles white with rage. "I won't have it, I won't-" James put a hand on his old man's shoulder. "It's not your call to make, Dad. Sit down and we'll go through it again." James nodded to the engineer. He looked ready to explode, but crossed his arms and sat.

"Very well. The asteroid, as we now know, is big. Big enough to take out the surface of 2125, but not enough to move the planet. The resultant explosion though will destroy everything that the project has built so far. The last century and a half of work, lost."

"But the Station will live! Every man, woman, and child will make it, and we'll have all the time we need to rescue them, bring them back-" His father butt in again, James closing his eyes. He could picture it now.

The image of a perfect circle. Green and brown and blue, devoid of humans, but flourishing with life. Small species that were evolving and others that were being brought down by the scientists aboard the tiny dot that sat at the very top. Void encompassed the circle, and behind it, out of sight, was its destroyer. A mass of metal careening towards it's surface at impossible speeds. They could stop it.

"An an entire Biosphere dies. Billions of lifeforms extinguished. Did you know they just put the first elephants down?" He heard his father curse at the man, but he didn't see them. In his mind, he saw Earth. The pinprick of their Rail cannon, a gun perpetually aimed at the Heavens, ready to fire. He saw the arcing line of the shot pass through space. "Is there truly no other alignment? No other way?" He spoke, eyes closed.

He slapped the folder down hard on the desk, a brush of air going past James. "There's no calculation we've run that results in an interception. We can't knock it off course from any other position because 2125 is blocking the field of view." James held his temples. In his mind, he saw the station in that direct line of the shot. "We can't move the Station itself off-course?"

"Communications take too long. We'll have already needed to fire the shot before sending the message. Even with the speed of light, it won't make it in time." His father gripped the chair. "So that's it then? We shoot through our own station, vaporize everyone aboard, and what happens?"

He opened his eyes to see his father staring neutrally at him. The engineer crossed his arms. "The shot shears off a good bit of the meteor, and it tilts. Moves away from 2125. The planet is saved." James tapped a finger. What about sending them down to the planet? Would they have time to-" One look from his dad silenced that possibility. There was no third option.

"We can't do this." James spoke. His father breathed a sigh of relief, but it was the engineer's fist that hit the desk this time. "You have to. You cannot condemn an entire world just because of one station!" His father stood up to swear again, but he went on:

"Think for a moment. An entire planet, filled with life. A planet! You can't condemn it any more than you could those people's lives! How do you think they will feel when they see the fires of an apocalypse claim everything they've built? Everything their children built? Everything!?"

"How will they feel when they explode from the inside as you kill them?!"

He turned over to confront the man. "You have no say in this! It's up to him to make the call!" I looked at him. "Why are you suddenly putting this on me?!"

"Because you are the boss! You've been in charge ten years now, and I know you know I'm right! Think of what we lose with this if you decide to shift priority! Have people not died doing this before?! Did they not know the risks?! Every man on that station knew from minute one that they would be in a situation that could end in disaster at any moment, yet they still chose to! To be pioneers, and pioneers don't always make it West!"

"What about the kids born in the interim years, hm? What of their choice?" His father was getting so loud that James had to look outside the door to make sure no one was listening in. "No one chooses to be born, what right do we have to condemn them?! None!"

The engineer shook his head. "You know what must be done James. If need be, I'll do it myself. But you know. All the hope and potential of the future cannot be wasted like this. Another hundred years and those people aboard will be dead either way, but 2125? Will you let it turn to fire simply because of your conscience?" He looked to the poster on James wall, a colorful depiction of the new planet, the endless stars surrounding it.

"We can always make another world! A hundred years and a whole new planet-" The engineer interrupted again "And the seed banks, the extinct creatures already on 2125?!" More swearing.

James sat and listened. He listened, and he sweat.The more the arguments swayed him, the more he saw the fire in his mind. The rolling explosion taking almost two centuries away. Hope extinguished by sickening light. The faces of those brave souls he had seen on television and broadcasts every day for years now. Not just his work gone, but three generations of his family, lost because of some stupid rock.

He clicked his phone. Instantly, the two in the room went quiet. He looked at his father. He looked right in that man's eyes, the man who'd loved him like no other. Who'd held him when he was born.

He broke his heart.

"Do it."

He slunk to his seat. The engineer said nothing, but nodded and left the room. James waited for a long time. It was only when the rumble of the shot echoed out from across headquarters that his father spoke.

"You're not my son." He left the room. James was alone.

That night, he walked up to the roof of the building. He stared out over the sky, the twinkling stars that were endless and cold. Somewhere out these, he'd just murdered hundreds. There would be consequences beyond his reckoning for it. It was over though.

He didn't need to do anything now. He just needed to do the hardest thing ever, and wait. Wait for time to pass, for seasons to change and trees to grow. For the hope he'd killed to blossom once more.

He cried as a shooting star curved overhead.