War Angel: part five

“I am so completely bored,” Ben Drake complained to no one. Drake sat alone on the ship’s bridge, an earpiece seemingly stuck to the right side of his head as he monitored radio frequencies. “This is the absolute worst way to spend a school break humanly possible. How the hell did this happen to me?”

A voice from behind startled him. “Because you’ve screwed around and done a proper botch job on your classes and this is your last chance to pass.”

Drake whipped around from his station to find Captain Albert Morrison settling into the ship’s helm. “Yes sir. You’re right sir.”

“Ease it up, son. I’m not here to pick on you. Anything good coming across the wire?” Morrison leaned forward and slid his jacket off, revealing heavily tattooed arms and broad shoulders. The man charged with shepherding the students’ excursion to Pluto wasn’t much older than his charges, having just turned thirty-five. For him, service was a question of having nowhere else to go. His parents had died in the final offensive by the Omegans during the Second Period, and he had found himself an orphan.

Orphans served the public. That’s what Albert Morrison discovered. The rebuilding society had no room for someone unwilling to contribute something to the greater good.

The young student working the radio scanned through the standard frequencies for Earth traffic. “Not much happening. Standard stuff. Some shipping maneuvers, some media traffic.”

“How about on the hyperfrequencies? What are our fellow EAD members saying?”

Ben busied himself with the communications screens. “Ahh… umm… basic comm chatter from what I can tell. Satellite checks, ship check-ins…”

“Very good, Mr. Drake. Or would you prefer to go by your call sign while on the duty here.”

Drake straightened up and smiled. “’Sounder’ does have a nice sound to it, Captain.”

Morrison stood and grabbed his jacket. “Very good, Sounder. Keep an ear to the ground.”

“Aye, Captain.” Ben returned his focus towards listening to the radio chatter throughout the solar system. “If this is what it takes to pass,” he thought, “then I’ll do what it takes to pass.” His thoughts derailed for a moment. “Of course, the fact that everyone on the ship except for Morrison hates me does make it a bit difficult than I had thought it might be.”

“I!” Kate Stinson landed a right hook into the midsection of the exercise droid. “Really!” she continued with a left uppercut. “Fucking hate!” as a roundhouse kick caught the droid’s head. “Ben fucking Drake!” a series of punches to the midsection shut down the droid and sent it crumpling to the floor. Kate took a series of deep breaths, hoping to calm herself.

Then she kicked the downed droid one more time for good measure.

Standing outside of the exercise box was Dr. Wilma Gray, the ship’s medical technician. “You know, when I suggested working off a little steam about the situation with Ben, I don’t quite think this was what I was imagining.”

Kate began unwrapping the athletic tape from her hands. “What precisely were you expecting me to do, Doc? Take up knitting?”

Dr. Gray shook her head and laughed. “No, I suppose not. I was figuring you might go for a run, maybe dial up the gravity in here and go for a heavy-G run.”

“Hmm. Doc, I like the way you think. Next time I fight an exercise droid, I think I’ll do it in Venus gravity. That’s a great idea. Might even make it a fair fight.”

The older woman threw up her hands in exasperation. “I give up. You got me.”

Stinson threw her head back and laughed. “Nice! I made the old lady speechless! I win!”

Wilma cocked an eyebrow at her student charge. “Kiss my ass, ‘old lady’. I’m barely forty.” Gray pulled her lab coat tight to herself, suddenly self-conscious about her body, wondering if Stinson truly pictured her as an aged person. The younger woman walked to a pile of clothes and towels, picking up the material she had brought with her to the ship’s “gym.” The doctor observed the catlike grace Kate exhibited, her jet-black hair sliding along her back as she grabbed her things. This young astrobiologist was unusual, of that there was no doubt. She seen it in action; Kate’s instincts to fight were almost as strong as her instincts to learn. Perhaps more so.

Kate strode next to the doctor, stopping to throw an arm around her shoulder, guiding her towards the exit. “Fair enough, doc. But you know… my mom just turned forty, so…”

“I’m going to poison your food, Stinson, I swear. Right after we go pick up Ms. Almond.”

Project: War Angel had begun, as so many things do, accidentally.

Jack had been watching media while trying to get to sleep on one winter’s night during his freshman year, when a governmental program announced the finding of a First Period battlecruiser that had been downed on the Sea of Tranquility on Earth’s moon. Teams had been sent in to retrieve the bodies of the crew, and EAD staff had downloaded all of the ship’s logs and comm records. But final disposal of the ship had yet to be decided. Jack, suddenly intrigued, grabbed a pAd.d and began furiously writing.

“That is a seriously stupid idea,” Sarah told him the next day at lunch. “One of your worst, really.”

“What?” Jack replied. “When have I ever had a bad idea before?” She shook her head at the classmate she considered most likely to implode mentally.

“Most of them, really,” she told him. “This one is just dumber than most.” He started to interrupt her. “Number one, there is no way they will let us touch that ship. Number two, it crashed into the damned moon. There’s not likely to be much about it that’s salvageable. And number three… number three…”

Jack stared at her intently. “Yes?”

“I don’t have a number three. But I don’t need one. This is just a bad idea.”

He shifted in his chair. “Look, I know it’s a long shot. But it could be one worth taking for a few of us, really. We both have ideas for shields projects, and we need a practical place to put them into action. Frankly, getting some freighter company to allow us to play with one of their ships isn’t going to be easy. Richard Park has some killer ideas about engine performance and design. Kate Stinson wants to do some xenobiological work that can’t be done in a terrestrial atmosphere.”

“Ha!” Sarah said. “That’s if she hasn’t punched out a professor or dean and gotten tossed in the brig by the time her work is ready to test.”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “Granted, she’s a bit of a loose cannon, which, considering my own behavioral… issues… is saying something. Which is why,” he went in for the kill, “you should be the lead name on the project proposal.”

Sarah’s eyes shot open. “You have got to be kidding me. Now you want me to manage this insane idea?”

“Everyone loves you. You’re smart, level-headed, respected… all qualities that the officers respond to. With your name at the top, we have a much larger chance of a successful ‘go’.”

“That I want no part of and think is a bad idea.”

“But,” Jack grinned wickedly, “if your name is at the top and we get it accepted, you can learn to love it.”

A month later, as Sarah, Jack, Kate and Richard sat in front of the Projects Hearing Board, Sarah almost sounded like she did love it. But she was convincing enough.

War Angel: part four

Jack and Sarah climbed down a series of ladders, moving their way from the crew compartment deck down to the engine room at the aft of the ship. For the first time that day, Jack began to feel pressure gnawing at the back of his mind. This was their final chance to finish the restoration that he and Sarah had begun plotting and designing for three years. Either they finished the job on this journey, and finished it right, or the entire project was going to fall apart, and they’d receive failing grades. They would both prove their worth as officers and graduate with honors, or they’d leave the school as infantry, consigned to grunt work and guarding VIPs. Or worse, sitting in offices and processing data. Data that they both knew that no one in the Earth United Government considered to be of any importance whatsoever.

Indeed, after the Armistice of 2110 was signed, and the Omegans pledged to leave Earth forever untouched, the prevailing sentiment against the EAD had begun to turn negative. “No one,” Captain Morrison told students on their first day, “likes to be reminded of the wars. Not the First Period, and now not the Second. So every time these people see a uniform, all they see is death. The death of their families, friends, co-workers. We serve as a uniformed reminder of loss and pain. They also see a reminder of a time when there was compulsory military service planet-wide.”

“So be prepared,” he said in a stony tone, “to be hated by those you’ve taken an oath to protect.”

Jack listened to that first lecture and felt a great swell of anger. How quickly people forgot. Only twenty-eight years removed from that treaty and the EUG had basically relegated the military to the sidelines, a small joke of its former glory. Where once a proud force of men and women had stood to protect their world, now it was a fractioned, marginalized band. Unappreciated. Undermanned. Ignored.

And those few that joined? It was just as Jack’s mother had said. Too few were Earth’s best and brightest. Only the extreme few like the crew working on the restoration gave him hope for the safety of Earth’s future.

As they reached the engine room, Jack peeked his head through the door slowly. During his last visit down into the ship’s guts, he had rammed his face into a barrier of cables and cords that Richard had left strung across a gantry. That was the quintessential Park move; get so deeply involved with a minute component that he would forget everything else. That led to a broken arm the first time the group boarded the old ship, and a lacerated chest during their second. Richard had also managed to cut open his upper torso with a laser torch during one seemingly routine repair. But his singular focus spread the injury bug past himself, as Jack could attest. Kate and Gina had also managed injuries in trips down to work with him as well.

“Richard Park,” Sarah observed, “is a danger to himself and others. He’d have made a great assassin hundreds of years ago… if he didn’t wind up killing himself before the target.”

Jack and Sarah moved gingerly through the compartment, making sure to take note of anything that looked out of place. Finally, turning a corner, they spotted their classmate using a hydraulic spanner to lock a covering back into place. They waited until he finished before speaking, not wanting to disrupt his concentration, fearing what could happen as a result.

“Hey guys,” Richard said, noticing them as he set the tool down. “Just finished fine-tuning the drive capacitors. Once we get this tub up to speed, it should remain pretty stable.”

Jack grinned. “Really? Cause I was hoping it would feel like we were going to shake apart.”

Richard snorted. “Ha! You guys want a vibrating bed, make your own!” Jack and Sarah locked into place, not knowing what to say. They had done their best to hide their physical relationship, thinking no one else knew. Park waited for a laugh, then realized that the discomfort level in the room had risen. “Oh. I see. You guys thought that your little deal was a secret,” he paused, “well, it isn’t. Let’s move on shall we?”

Sarah and Jack gave a subtle nod, and Richard stood up from his crouch. “Okay, so where we’re at today… basically, we have one major thing left to complete: the shielding and armor system.”

“What needs to be done?” Sarah asked.

Richard motioned for the pair to follow him, and they began walking towards another section of the engine room. “Okay, Sarah, you designed the basic principles of the shielding system, so you know the basic deal: the ship has its ‘running shield’, a low-powered force field through a front projector which prevents a piece of space dust from ripping through the ship like a bullet while we’re at speed.”

Sarah nodded. “Which we power through the use of small particle collectors near the engines. The primary issue used to be running that power from the aft to the fore of the ship in an efficient manner, but my biogel power transmission system nearly eradicated signal degradation.”

The accident prone engineer nodded. “Right. The problem now is an issue of overload. The biogel packs are prone to problems when we use the secondary shielding system. It’s like they freak out, which causes them to shut down…”

“Leaving us vulnerable in an entirely different way,” Jack chimed in. “Damn.”

Park shrugged. “And that’s your system, Jack. The quantum-level ablative armor is fantastic; an energy weapon like a laser cannon won’t do a whole lot to this ship; impacts will smear and dissipate across the hull effortlessly. But those energy bursts will overload the biogel as the system is designed now. Mind you, a physical impact like a missile strike should be fine; that particular quantum alignment on the armor doesn’t disperse that type of energy.”

Sarah let out an exasperated sigh. “Damnit. Richard, how long have you known about this? I can’t believe you’re just telling us this now!”

“Hey,” he barked at her, “don’t blame me for this stuff. Remember last night’s testing? Well, when I came in this morning and was checking everything over, I found this.” He reached into his tool case and pulled out a biogel pack. What once was a blazing green mass of cells was charcoal black. “Dead. D.E.A.D. Dead. I’d have told you earlier, but you apparently overslept.”

Sarah shot Jack an angry glance. “I guess we’d better get to work on fixing this.” He nodded at her.

“I guess we’d better,” he said, mindful of his tone. “We only have two days.”

War Angel: part three

Gina Almond took a deep breath within her helmet and exhaled gently, steadying her arms and her aim. The surveying scanner required precision movement in order to get accurate readings, and the flaws in her data always came back to her inability to keep still, even in low-to-zero gravity. And gravity was certainly not an issue where she was standing that morning.

Pluto was a strange little rock, there was no question about that. At times in Earth’s past it had lost its “status” as a planet, which made Gina giggle a bit when she thought about it. “Since when,” she asked one of her professors, “do we get to decide what is a planet and what isn’t? No one died and made us official gatekeepers of the cosmos, did they?” It seemed even more ludicrous in the face of growing up on a world that had twice been invaded by a race from outside the solar system. Wouldn’t they, she wondered, be far more likely to be able to classify what counted as a planet? They had certainly seen more of them than any Earther had. Even now, Earth was just truly beginning to stretch beyond the edges of its own system.

Of all the students onboard the mission, no one would challenge that Gina was brilliant, a near-master in her fields of astrophysics and astrogeology. It was researchers like her that would ultimately, Earth’s government hoped, pave the way for the third planet from the sun to truly begin to explore and help expand humanity’s knowledge of its universe. Born to the Second Period’s version of a melting pot, her father Archibald had finished the Period living and working in an EAD laboratory on a quiet Japanese island. While there, he had fallen in love with one of his colleagues, a local woman named Rie, and as their skills were put to use in their every waking moment in attempts to drive away the alien invaders, at night their fatigue and passion for life combined to help them fall in love. As their daughter grew, her parents not only began to see that their daughter was stunningly intelligent, but that her intellectual capacity was going to far outstrip either of their own. Excited for Gina’s prospects, Archie did everything he could in order to make sure she had every advantage in her life in the hopes that she would reach the pinnacle of whatever fields she chose.

Rie felt differently. Gina remembered her mother’s parting words to her as she left to finish the final stage of her schooling as though they had been spoken to her yesterday.

“They will resent you, daughter. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how kind you are, they will resent you. Humanity’s history shows us that the masses can cope with one exceptionality in a woman. But those that are possessed of two face anger and betrayal. You are beautiful, my little hime, and you are of superior intellect. Thus you must guard yourself well, and choose your friends carefully.”

Looking skyward for a moment, she eyeballed the ship that had carried her to the far reaches of the solar system. Lowering her head back to the planet’s surface, she took in the desolation and the fact that she was alone on its surface. “You were right as always, mom. No friends here.”

Steadying her aim, she resumed scanning the surface. As she did, her mind wandered to the circumstances that had brought her on this mission.

“So basically, you want to hitchhike?” Sarah Matto had asked her.

Gina took a bite of what passed for salad in their university’s meal center. She knew it was going to be a tough pitch, but she needed to get herself to Pluto in order to complete her dissertation. A paper on the potential for sudden mass shift and how it alters a binary planet system would be useless without first-hand data and observation. She lacked the funding to get there on her own; but Sarah and Jack’s project was taking them right to where she needed to be. “It wouldn’t be a total hitchhike. I have some funding, and I’m more than happy to contribute it towards my personal upkeep. And I certainly wouldn’t be in yours and Jack’s way.”

Sarah took a drink of water from a small bottle, taking a moment to think about what Gina was asking. “Okay, here’s the deal though. It isn’t just me and Jack. Kate Stinson, and Richard Park are also involved….”

“I get along with both of them just fine,” Gina interjected.

“As well as Ben Drake.”

Gina’s mind went blank for a moment. That bastard! Taking him as a lover had been an enormous mistake, her worst since she had arrived at school, and just the sound of his name set her on edge.

“So you can see, Gina,” Sarah said gently, “why this might not be a good idea.”

“Why? Because he humiliated me? Spread my sex life out into the open? Took a term that mother used as a loving nickname and made it a nasty pejorative?” Gina stopped to take a drink, feeling dry mouth coming on. “Perish the thought.”

Sarah gave her a wan smile. “You aren’t the only one, you know. He’s done it to a lot of other women here.”

“Cold comfort, Sarah. Cold comfort.” Gina leaned back in her chair. “Wait; why the hell is he going on your mission? His specialty areas have nothing to do with engineering, physics, none of it. He’s an arts grad.”

The young blonde woman across the table looked pained for a moment, then bemused. “Because if he doesn’t, he’s screwed, and not even his Daddy can save him. He’s failing at least two classes from heavily tenured teachers. So pressuring them to pass him won’t work. He needs extra credit, which he can get if he works as a maintenance and comm. assistant on the ship while we finish her up.”

Gina perked up. “So in other words…”

“I hold his fate in my hands,” Sarah nodded. “Well, me and Captain Morrison. He screws up, he doesn’t get the credits, and he’s out.” Gina smiled broadly at that thought.

“There is no chance in hell that he doesn’t screw this up, Sarah. None.” Gina relished that thought. “Count me in. I want to be there to see him go down in flames.”

Sarah wiped her mouth with a napkin and rose from the table. “I’ll tell Captain Morrison to make arrangements for you to be aboard.” She turned to walk away, leaving Gina sitting and thinking about gathering her equipment to take on the journey. However, just as Gina was about to rise from the table, Sarah turned back around and left her with one more thought. “By the way, as we’ll be on a military ship and working under military command, every crew member will need an assigned code name. You might want to start thinking about one.”

Watching Sarah leave, Gina realized immediately what that code name would be. It was time to take back what Ben had taken from her those months ago.

The scanner vibrated and flared, sending out pulses into Pluto’s rocky crust, and Gina watched the data scramble across the small screen. Much of what she was seeing was expected; the ice deposits were fairly steady in their density, and the rocks were made up of mostly basic minerals. But as the numbers scrolled steadily, she was taken aback by something highly unusual, so unusual that she slowly moved the scanner back over the area just to be sure that the reading was accurate.

“That,” she said for the universe to hear, “is seriously weird.” Gina continued forward, looking for more examples of the anomaly. Her dissertation was starting to look an awful lot like an award winner.

War Angel: part two

2142- In Orbit Around Pluto

He gently shut the pages of the old book and laid it gingerly on the stand next to his bunk. Jack absently scratched at his chin, feeling the beginnings of stubble beginning to grow, and he made a mental note to see the Doc for a laser anti-growth treatment. Even though he was technically still a college student, he thought, he needed to focus on the military aspect of his life while he was out here.

“Plus, I owe them six years after I graduate,” he muttered softly.

The decision to join the Earth Air Defense Officer Training Corps had been an easy one when it came down to it. His mother, upon hearing that he wanted to enlist had told him that there were only three reasons to join EAD. “Son, the people that join the Corps are either too poor to pay for school, too full of a sense of duty, or simply have nowhere else to go.”

“I’ve heard that before, mother,” Jack had responded with a slight hint of exasperation.

She picked up a cup that Jack assumed was full of some sort of wine and took a large drink. He watched as she stood, smoothing her dress across her torso, and running her free hand across the back of her neck. For the first time, Jack had begun to see that his mother was in deep, desperate pain, and that she was self-medicating. “And so why are you joining, Jack?” she asked, staring out the window of their ancestral home.

He rose out of the chair where he had been sitting, slowing walking across the room to stand at his mother’s side. Silence reigned for a moment, before he finally began to respond. “A combination of all three reasons, I should think.”

She cut him off. “We’re not that poor…”

Jack raised a hand to stop her train of thought. “We aren’t exactly rich, either. Not enough, at least, to put me into a top-level engineering school. Which is where I need to be.”

Victoria Keys turned to face her son, a tear beginning to roll down her cheek. He continued, “Plus, you know how I feel about the government’s take on planetary security.”

“The Omegans were sent away almost thirty years ago. There’s nothing left to worry about,” she chided him.

He snarled. “Yes, right. Absolutely, let’s just trust that the warlike, conquering alien race that’s shown up on our doorstep twice and killed billions of people will just leave us alone from now on. I’m sorry mother, but no. Just no. Every member of this family has read Great-Grandfather’s journals. You know what those animals are capable of.”

She rotated on her heels and walked across the room to a small refrigerator, taking out a bottle and refilling her glass. “I was ten when we drove them away last time. I… I barely remember it, really.”

“Except the loss of Grandma?” he interjected.

Her hand shook. “Yes,” she said softly, “except watching my mother die.”

Jack adjusted his posture, striding confidently towards his mother. “Then you have to understand why I feel a sense of duty. I don’t want to experience that same sense of loss. If they come back, I want to be ready for them. I want to be ready and able to protect you, everybody. And where else would I go to do it? Nowhere besides the Corps.”

Victoria sat in the chair that Jack had occupied, staring intently at her drink. Unsure of how to handle her silence, he knelt down on the floor next to her as a knight would before his queen. Minutes passed before she finally spoke.

“You are a Keys. If you’re going to go down this path, you know what you must do.”

He nodded at her, feeling a sense of relief come over him. “Be the very best. Uphold our family honor. Live a life of courage. Do the right thing.”

She patted his head. “You have studied those journals well. The four pillars of life as expressed by your great-grandfather. Go, and with my blessing.”

Two weeks later, he did.

And now look at me, Jack thought, stretched out on his bunk. Orbiting Pluto, repairing and working on a spaceship. She’d have been proud, had she survived the accident that took her a few months into his schooling.

Jack rose slowly in his bed, using the wall to try and get his back muscles to unclench. “Hundreds of years of medicine, and it still comes down to using a bulkhead to get the kinks out. Unreal.” After sufficient time to get himself warmed up, he began to stand. But before he was fully upright, the door chime beeped at him. Before he could speak or move, he heard the code being tapped into the pad next to the door and it opened, revealing Sarah Matto in silhouette.

“About time to get yourself moving, champ,” she said with only a hint of sarcasm. “Why aren’t you out and working yet?”

Jack cleared his throat. “I got caught up in some reading.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really? What did you download?” He gestured towards the tattered old journal on the nightstand. “Wow! Is that your great-grandfather’s actual journal?”

“Volume one,” he said. “Yeah. Been a while since I’ve cracked them open. So I’m starting from page one.”

Sarah walked towards the nightstand, taking in the sight of the weathered old volume. “I wonder how many actual ‘books’ are left. Not many, I’d think.” Her fingertips brushed the cover. “Fascinating.”

“Gently, please,” he whispered, moving in behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. “The journals are really old and have to be handled with care.” Her head leaned back into his chest and she reached her arms behind her to wrap them as far around Jack as they would go.

“Unlike me, huh?”

Jack spun her around to face him. “Definitely unlike you.” He kissed her hard, grabbing a handful of her hair. As he let go, and they stopped for a moment she turned her gaze back towards the journal. “Maybe,” she said, “you could read some of it to me later. I don’t really know much about the First Perioders.”

He exited their embrace, grabbing his uniform jacket from the back of his desk chair. “That could be arranged,” he said with a smile.

Sarah snapped to attention. ‘Then for now, I’d say we’d better get to work. We have a final project to finish, and I want to finish at the top of the class.” Jack mock saluted her, and finished buttoning. “Aye, aye, project leader. Let’s go.”

War Angel: part one

From the Journal of Steven Keys- July 4, 2018

Today was supposed to be the greatest day of my life. I’d had it planned out for months; the trip, the ring, the timing. And it almost worked, too. My grandfather, though… he used to tell me the quickest way to make God laugh was to tell Him your plans.

Somehow, though, I don’t really think what happened today had anything to do with my plan to marry Nadine.

We woke up before dawn began to break, which is easy to do when you’re at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The hike down two days ago was long and arduous, but totally worth it. I fell twice, the second time taking a chunk out of my left calf as a sharp rock rudely decided to take a shot at me for being clumsy- though I did appreciate its efforts in slowing down my slide. Nadine reached the bottom unscathed, though she had not done well in rationing her water. On the bright side, we had both coated ourselves in enough sunscreen that we had barely begun to show any sign of a tan. Considering the skin cancer rate has exploded at an exponential rate over the last couple of years, and that neither of us wanted to wander down into the world’s largest ditch wearing full bodysuits, painting ourselves white was an easy sacrifice. Though we would sure be grateful if the ozone layer would start rejuvenating itself sometime soon.

Anyway, my plan was to wake up this morning, cook us breakfast over a small fire, and then pop the question as the sun crept over the Canyon’s edge. I got us off to a good start, tossing a couple of small logs into the fire pit and getting it cranked up. As it began to burn with some intensity, I took out my trusty old camping skillet, tossed some bacon in it and started cooking. Then I put our coffee pot next to the heat and started whipping up some fresh java. As the bacon began to finish, I tossed some hash browns into the skillet and used their grease to fry up some fresh potatoes. The smells began to waft, eventually waking up Nadine, and as she stirred, my heart began to palpitate.

I drained the grease from the pan after the hash browns were done and then tossed a couple of pieces of bread in to finish the ensemble. Now I fully admit that hash browns, bacon, coffee, and toast aren’t exactly gourmet eats for breakfast in bed, but this was breakfast in sleeping bag in a national monument. Plus, I had pulled some serious strings through my job in order to get us this private spot away from other hikers and campers. So sometimes you just go with what you can make work.

She began stirring a bit more, rolling over to watch me cook. Her beautiful black hair fell across her forehead, gently covering her eyes, yet not so much that she couldn’t see me. I fought the urge to step away from the fire and walk over to kiss her hello, but that would come soon enough. Instead, I turned my focus back to completing breakfast. I heard her get up and grab the bottle of mouthwash we had brought with us, take a swig, and then spit, which told me that I wasn’t going to have to wait any longer for that kiss. She slipped up behind me and slid her arms around my waist, hugging me gently from behind. I couldn’t stop the smile that crossed my face, that’s for sure. I am one lucky sonofabitch.

“Breakfast almost ready?” she asked me. I took my free hand and pressed it against hers as they locked around my midsection. “Just flipped the toast over, so should just be a few seconds,” I replied. She squeezed me tight, burying her face into my back, leaving a kiss, then released her grip and plopped to the ground next to me. I spatula’d the toast out of the skillet, spread some jam on the pieces, and handed her a plate as I sat down next to her.

We ate quietly at first, as is our way. Crunch of bacon, sip of coffee. Forkful of hash browns, nibble of toast. The two of us snuck glances at each other while pretending to be fully focused on the meal, and I wondered for a moment if she had me sniffed out and knew I was going to pop the question. Finally, she broke the silence and began talking.

“So what’s the plan for today?” she asked me. I took a swig of coffee and played it cool. “Well, I was thinking we could take a smaller hike, get a look around at some of the rock formations, maybe make it to the river and take a dip.” She seemed excited by that. “Then tonight is the night when that meteor shower they’ve been going on about is supposed to happen. I figure that down here the viewing should be perfect. No light pollution, nothing but clear sky.”

She squealed in delight. “Oooooh! That should be fantastic.” I nodded in agreement. I topped off her coffee cup and moved closer to her, taking her hand. My pants bunched up a bit in the pocket area, somewhat forcefully jamming the ring into my leg and threatening to draw blood. I took that as a sign, and shifted my weight to reach in and grab the diamond. That was to be the moment. I withdrew my hand from my pocket, keeping the ring hidden, and started to give her the “big speech” but it was interrupted by the loudest boom I’ve ever heard in my life. Our heads shot upward, where we could see the trail of something large arcing across the sky in a southerly direction. A second boom followed, and we saw something that time, unable to tell what it was, though. It was heading southwest, and behind it, with another boom, was one on nearly the same path.

Suddenly, the earth began to shake, and the sounds of another boom echoed through the Canyon. Rocks began to crumble down the face, and ancient artifices began to crack under what felt like a titanic earthquake. Nadine and I ran towards the most open area of the canyon floor we could fine and stuck ourselves in the middle. As we did, light began flowing over the edge of the Canyon rim, but it came from the north, not the east. Another quake followed, and light began expanding, though gentler, from the south.

I’ve never been more terrified in my entire life.

Nadine took my hand, and as absent as I was at that point, it didn’t register with me that she had grasped the one where I had been keeping a near death grip on the engagement ring. As she pried my hand open in order to hold it tight, she discovered the diamond, albeit one that had cut deeply into my palm. Her head shot up, eyes meeting mine in a fierce lock. She gently took the ring from me and slipped it onto her finger, nodding a gentle assent to me. Then she tore a strip from the bottom of her nightshirt and began wrapping it around my palm as a bandage. When she had finished, she took her hand in mine and squeezed as hard as she could. I know it had a medical purpose- trying to stop the bleeding. But I knew the real reason. She was just as terrified as me. What the hell was happening?

The quakes eased in the intensity, but they definitely kept coming over the next couple of hours. The bizarre lights from north and south began to fade a bit as the sun crept over the Canyon rim and daylight assumed its rightful place as king of the sky.

We had brought a small radio powerful enough for local signals only but were getting nothing but static on it. Whatever had happened up top, it had obviously damaged the transmitter. So we had to think about what to do. The quakes had shifted enough terrain around us that we were wary of trying a trail. It seemed like we were safest where we were, at least until we found out what was happening. So we went back to our camping spot, being very cautious at every step. Once there, we put out the fire and tidied up our mess. It was all just busy work, though, a way to stem the rising tide of fear. Something horrible had happened; we had watched booming objects slam across the atmosphere, followed by quakes and bright lights. Finally, Nadine broke the silence.

“Do you think… do you think they were nukes?”

I gritted my teeth. I had been asking myself that same question, of course. “I don’t know, ‘dine. I’ve been asking myself that same question, and the only thing I can think of is that if it was, that seemed pretty small, if that makes sense.”

“Four is small?” she scoffed.

“Comparatively, yeah. All-out nuclear war would see thousands of warheads get launched, including many from the northern part of this state.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “And if we got taken by surprise and never got the chance to launch?”

I had no answer to that, save pulling her close to me and holding her tight. After a couple of minutes, she her body went slack and she pulled away from my embrace. As she did, she took my non-injured hand and pulled me towards our sleeping bags. Once there, she let go and began stripping away her sleepwear. Not knowing what she wanted, I stood there blankly, which caught her eye. For a moment, a smile tinged with pity crossed her face, then she started undressing me. (I was never one for being good at reading signals, what can I say?)

As I finished stripping naked, Nadine wrapped her arms around my neck and looked me in the eyes. “The answer is ‘yes’, you know. Even if it’s the end of the world. It would have been ‘yes’ yesterday. It will be ‘yes’ tomorrow.”

We made love like we were never going to have another chance.

Later in the afternoon, we heard the sounds of a vehicle rumbling across the Canyon floor. We scurried to get ourselves dressed and together, anxious to end our private vacation for news of the world above. Finally, we saw a jeep rambling towards us, driven by a lone driver, a younger woman with a ruffled head of blonde hair caked with mud and dust.

“Folks, I’m Ranger Youngs. I’m going to have to ask you to pack up camp and prepare for departure.”

Nadine nodded at me, wanting me to be the one to ask. “Ranger… what’s going on? What happened this morning?”

Her face dropped. “You don’t know? Oh God.”

“We left our phones and laptops back in Phoenix, and the Canyon radio was putting out nothing but static.”

Ranger Youngs sat silently for a moment, before taking a deep breath and taking off her sunglasses. It was obvious then that she had been crying, and crying a lot. “Sir… ma’am… there is no Phoenix. No Las Vegas. No Los Angeles. No San Diego.”

My entire body went numb, and I began to quiver. I could barely muster the words to ask her how. “That meteor shower that was supposed to pass by us tonight is hitting us this morning. The news reports say that other rocks are headed for Japan, China, India, Russia, and others over the next few hours. There’s a mass panic happening, cities are unable to evacuate.”

Nadine broke down, letting out a terrible sob, and I have to admit I was hard-pressed not to join her. My brain seemed to stop functioning on all but the most basic levels, leaving me unable to document this part of the day with any real detail. The Ranger explained that refugees were being moved to the outlying areas of the upper Arizona country. I do remember asking her if the Canyon floor wasn’t likely to be the safest place for everyone and her telling me that the quakes and explosions had shifted things so much that the Canyon was expected to flood within the next twelve to twenty-four hours. A helicopter was to come and pick us up within the next two hours and take us to a safe area.

After the Ranger left, Nadine and I sat motionless on the ground and held each other for as long as we could. When we heard the helicopter in the distance, we finally picked ourselves up, rolled up the sleeping bags, grabbed what food and water we had left, and threw everything else into the fire. Whatever was going to happen from there, the world as we knew it was over. Our home was gone. Our friends were likely gone. The university where we both taught was apparently gone. The Ranger had told us to only bring necessities.

What exactly is a necessity at the end of the world?