Station Eleven B / Season 1, Episode 1
The Airlock Lottery
Episode 1: The Airlock Lottery
The klaxon blared through the cramped, sweat-soaked corridors of Station Eleven-B, a jagged wail that clawed at the eardrums. It wasn’t just a warning—it was a death knell, slicing through the recycled air at 3:17 a.m., station time. Mara Kess, hunched over a flickering console in the ops deck, felt her chest tighten as the sound rattled her bones. The screen in front of her spat static, then resolved into a grainy feed of the lower hab ring. A breach. Again. The third this month. Red pressure warnings pulsed like a dying heartbeat across the display, and she could almost smell the acrid tang of burnt wiring through the walls.
“Damn it,” she hissed, slamming a fist on the console. The metal was cold under her knuckles, slick with condensation. Everything on Eleven-B was cold now—heat rations had been cut to bare minimum six weeks ago. Her breath fogged in front of her, a ghostly puff in the dim, bluish light of the ops deck. She tapped the comms pad embedded in her wrist, the device’s edges worn smooth from years of use. “Rico, you seeing this? Lower hab, sector nine. Pressure’s dropping fast.”
Static crackled in her earpiece before Rico’s voice cut through, rough as gravel. “Yeah, I see it. I’m in engineering. Looks like another seal blew. I told ‘em last week those patches wouldn’t hold. You got eyes on the crew down there?”
Mara’s fingers danced over the console, pulling up a thermal scan. Eight heat signatures clustered near the breach, their shapes blurred but frantic. “They’re alive. For now. Moving toward the bulkhead. Can you reroute power to the emergency seals?”
“Working on it. But, Mara, we’re running on fumes here. Diverting anything means pulling from life support somewhere else. You wanna pick who gets to freeze first?”
Her jaw clenched. She didn’t answer. Instead, she stared out the ops deck’s viewport, a narrow slit of reinforced glass that framed the void outside. Earth hung there, a gray, lifeless marble shrouded in toxic haze. No blue, no green—just a corpse of a planet, orbiting in silence. Eleven-B was all that was left, a rusted tin can spinning 400 kilometers above the ruin. Ten thousand souls crammed into a station built for half that, and every day, something else broke. Every day, they lost a little more.
She turned back to the console, her reflection ghosting over the screen—sharp cheekbones, dark circles under her eyes, a scar cutting across her left eyebrow from a riot two years back. She was thirty-eight, but the station aged you double-time. “Just do it, Rico. We’ll figure out the fallout later.”
“Copy that. Gimme five.”
The klaxon cut off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. Mara’s ears throbbed. She leaned back in her chair, the springs creaking under her weight, and rubbed at her temples. The ops deck was a tomb at this hour, just her and the hum of failing systems. Overhead, a light strip flickered, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Graffiti scratched into the bulkhead read, “We’re already dead. Vote don’t matter.” She tried not to look at it, but her eyes kept drifting back.
The vote. Tomorrow. The Airlock Lottery, they called it. With supplies dwindling—food at 12% capacity, oxygen scrubbers failing—Command had decided they couldn’t sustain the population. Two thousand would be “decommissioned.” A polite word for ejected into the void. No suits, no mercy. Just a quick shove out the airlock, bodies tumbling toward that dead Earth until they burned up or froze solid. The vote was supposed to be democratic—everyone over sixteen got a say on who stayed and who went. But Mara knew better. It wasn’t democracy. It was survival, raw and ugly.
Her comms buzzed again. Not Rico this time, but a softer voice, laced with static. “Mara? You up there?”
She sighed, recognizing the tone instantly. “Yeah, Lila. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Jonas. He’s got a fever again. I don’t have anything left in the med kit. Can you… can you get something from supply? Please?”
Mara’s stomach twisted. Lila was her sister, younger by six years, and Jonas was her nephew, barely five. Sick kids didn’t last long on Eleven-B. Not with rations so tight that even painkillers were locked behind Command’s red tape. “I’ll try,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Hang tight. I’ve got a mess to clean up here first.”
“Thanks. I… I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Mara cut in, sharper than she meant. She killed the comms link before Lila could argue. Guilt gnawed at her, bitter as the metallic aftertaste of the station’s recycled water. She couldn’t save everyone. Hell, she could barely save herself. But family was family, even up here, in this floating coffin.
The console beeped, pulling her back. Rico’s voice crackled through. “Seals are holding. Barely. Pressure’s stabilizing in sector nine. But I had to pull power from hydroponics. Lights are out down there. Expect complaints.”
“Complaints are the least of our problems,” Mara muttered. She tapped the console again, pulling up the station-wide diagnostics. Every sector was a patchwork of yellow and red alerts—leaks, power failures, oxygen levels teetering on the edge. Eleven-B was a dying beast, and they were all just parasites clinging to its hide.
Footsteps echoed behind her, heavy and deliberate. She didn’t turn around. Only one person walked like that, like they owned every inch of this crumbling station. “Captain Voss,” she said, not looking up. “Didn’t expect you on shift this early.”
Captain Elias Voss stepped into her peripheral vision, his silhouette broad and unyielding against the flickering lights. He was in his fifties, gray streaking his close-cropped hair, a face carved from stone. His uniform was pristine, a stark contrast to the grime and patches on everyone else’s gear. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl. “Heard the klaxon. Another breach?”
“Third this month. Lower hab. It’s under control. For now.”
Voss nodded, crossing his arms. His gaze flicked to the viewport, to that dead Earth outside. “For now,” he echoed. “That’s all we’ve got, isn’t it? A string of ‘for nows’ until the whole damn thing falls apart.”
Mara didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Voss wasn’t here for chit-chat. He was here to gauge her, to see if she was still holding it together. As head of ops, she was his eyes and ears across the station. If she cracked, so did their fragile order. “You got a plan for tomorrow?” she asked finally, swiveling her chair to face him. “For the vote?”
His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching under the skin. “Plan is to keep it civil. No riots this time. We can’t afford another lockdown.”
She snorted, a bitter sound. “Civil? You’re asking ten thousand people to vote on who gets to die. You think they’re gonna line up and shake hands after?”
“I think they’ll do what they have to,” Voss said, his eyes cold. “Same as always. Same as you.”
The words stung, but she didn’t flinch. She’d seen too much to let a jab like that get under her skin. Instead, she stood, brushing past him to the viewport. Up close, the glass was scratched and smudged, a spiderweb of tiny cracks from micrometeor impacts. Beyond it, the void stretched endless, speckled with distant stars. She wondered, not for the first time, if there was anything out there worth hoping for. A signal. A rescue. Anything. But eleven years in orbit had taught her better. Hope was a luxury they couldn’t afford.
“Rico’s on the breach,” she said, changing the subject. “But we’re pulling power from hydroponics. Food production’s gonna take a hit. Again.”
Voss didn’t respond right away. When he did, his voice was quieter, almost resigned. “We’re past the point of balancing the books, Kess. Tomorrow’s vote… it’s not just about numbers. It’s about buying time. A few more weeks, maybe a month. Long enough for the engineering team to stabilize the core systems. Or long enough for someone to answer our distress calls.”
Her laugh was sharp, cutting through the stale air. “Distress calls? We’ve been broadcasting into the black for years, Captain. No one’s coming. You know that.”
“Maybe,” he said, turning away. “But I’m not ready to give up. Not yet.” He paused at the hatch, one hand on the frame. “Keep the station together until the vote. That’s all I’m asking.”
She watched him go, the hatch sealing behind him with a dull thud. Alone again, she turned back to the console, the red alerts still blinking like accusatory eyes. Keep the station together. As if it wasn’t already fracturing at the seams. As if she wasn’t fracturing too.
The lower hab ring smelled of rust and despair, a metallic tang mixed with the sour stench of unwashed bodies. Mara navigated the narrow corridor, her boots clanging against the grated floor, the sound swallowed by the hum of overworked ventilators. She’d left ops an hour ago, after Rico confirmed the breach was sealed, and now she was on a mission of her own. Lila’s plea echoed in her head. Jonas. Fever. Med kit empty. She had no right to pull strings, not with supplies so tight, but she’d be damned if she let her nephew waste away without a fight.
The supply depot loomed ahead, a fortified bulkhead guarded by two security grunts in patched-up armor. They eyed her as she approached, hands resting on the batons at their hips. The taller one, a wiry man with a jagged scar across his nose, stepped forward. “Kess. Didn’t expect to see you slumming it down here. What’s the play?”
“Need to check inventory,” she said, keeping her tone even. “Captain’s orders. We’re rerouting power after the breach, gotta make sure nothing’s compromised.”
Scarface narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t argue. Captain’s name carried weight, even now. He jerked his head toward the hatch. “Five minutes. Don’t touch anything you’re not cleared for.”
She nodded, brushing past him. The depot’s interior was a maze of crates and shelves, all bolted to the walls to keep them from floating in the occasional grav glitches. The air was colder here, the chill seeping into her bones through her thin jumpsuit. She moved quickly, her eyes scanning labels—protein packs, water filters, O2 canisters. Med supplies were in the back, under lock and key. She didn’t have clearance, not officially, but she’d learned a few tricks over the years.
Her fingers brushed against a rusted panel near the med shelf, a hidden latch she’d used before. It clicked under pressure, popping open to reveal a small stash of contraband—painkillers, antibiotics, bandages. Nothing fancy, just enough to keep someone breathing a little longer. She grabbed a vial of fever meds and a packet of sterile wipes, stuffing them into her jumpsuit’s inner pocket. Her heart thudded against her ribs, loud enough she swore the guards outside could hear it.
Footsteps echoed behind her, sharp and uneven. Not the guards. Someone else. She spun, hand instinctively dropping to the utility knife at her belt, but froze when she saw who it was.
“Cal,” she breathed, half-relief, half-annoyance. Cal Renfrew, her oldest friend on the station, leaned against a crate, his lanky frame silhouetted by the dim overheads. His hair was a messy tangle of brown, his jumpsuit half-unzipped to reveal a faded undershirt. He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Stealing again, Mara?” he said, voice low, teasing. “Thought you were above that.”
“I’m not stealing,” she snapped, zipping her pocket shut. “I’m borrowing. For family. You gonna rat me out?”
Cal raised his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m no snitch. Just curious what’s got you risking your neck before the big vote. Thought you’d be up in ops, playing the good soldier for Voss.”
She glared at him, but there was no heat in it. Cal had a way of cutting through the bullshit, always had. They’d grown up together on Eleven-B, two scrappy kids scavenging for scraps in the lower decks. He was a mechanic now, one of Rico’s crew, but he had a side hustle running bets and black-market deals. If anyone knew the station’s underbelly, it was him. “Jonas is sick,” she said finally, her voice softer. “Lila’s out of meds. I don’t have a choice.”
His grin faded, replaced by something harder to read. “Yeah, well, choices are in short supply these days. You hear the latest rumor? They’re saying Command’s already got a list. Vote’s just for show. They’ve picked who’s going out the airlock before we even cast a ballot.”
Mara’s stomach dropped. “That’s insane. Even Voss wouldn’t pull something like that. Would he?”
Cal shrugged, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Dunno. But people are scared. And scared people do stupid things. There’s talk of a protest before the vote. Maybe worse. You should keep your head down.”
“Since when do I keep my head down?” she shot back, but the words felt hollow. A protest. Another riot. The last one had left six dead, including a kid no older than Jonas. She couldn’t stomach that kind of chaos again, not now, not with everything hanging by a thread.
Cal stepped closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Look, I’m just saying… if things go sideways tomorrow, I’ve got a way out. For you. For Lila and the kid. But you gotta trust me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “A way out? What, you got a secret shuttle stashed somewhere? There’s nowhere to go, Cal. We’re stuck here.”
“Not stuck,” he said, a glint in his eye. “Just gotta play the angles. Meet me in engineering after your shift. I’ll show you.”
Before she could press him, the hatch to the depot hissed open. Scarface poked his head in, his baton half-drawn. “Time’s up, Kess. Move it.”
She nodded, brushing past Cal without another word. Her pocket felt heavier with the stolen meds, a small weight against the crushing pressure of everything else. As she stepped back into the corridor, the station shuddered underfoot, a low groan vibrating through the metal. Another glitch. Another crack in the foundation. She didn’t stop to check the alerts on her wrist comm. She couldn’t. Not yet.
Lila’s quarters were three levels up, in the mid-hab ring where families were packed like sardines into converted storage units. The corridors grew narrower as Mara climbed the access ladders, the air thicker with the stench of desperation. Graffiti lined the walls—angry scrawls of “No Vote, No Death” and “Command Lies.” She kept her head down, ignoring the stares from hollow-eyed residents slumped against the bulkheads.
When she reached Lila’s unit, the hatch was ajar, a sliver of dim light spilling into the hall. She knocked once, sharp, before pushing it open. “Lila? It’s me.”
Inside, the tiny space was a mess of scavenged blankets and cracked plastic crates. Lila sat on the edge of a cot, her thin frame hunched over Jonas, who lay curled under a tattered sheet. His small face was flushed, sweat beading on his forehead, his breathing shallow and ragged. Lila looked up, her eyes red-rimmed, a mix of relief and exhaustion on her face. “You got something?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Mara nodded, pulling the vial and wipes from her pocket. “Fever meds. Should help for a day or two. But you gotta keep him hydrated. And don’t let anyone know I got this. Clear?”
Lila took the vial with trembling hands, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Thank you. I… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Mara said, crouching beside the cot. She pressed a hand to Jonas’s forehead—hot, too hot. “He’s gotta pull through. We’ve got bigger problems tomorrow.”
Lila’s face darkened. “The vote. You think… you think they’d put a kid on the list? They wouldn’t, right?”
Mara didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Because deep down, she knew Command didn’t care about age or innocence. They cared about numbers. Efficiency. Survival of the fittest, or at least the most useful. She squeezed Lila’s shoulder instead, a silent promise she wasn’t sure she could keep. “Get some rest. I’ll check in later.”
As she stood to leave, her wrist comm buzzed again. Rico this time. “Mara, you there? We’ve got a problem in engineering. Big one. Need you down here now.”
“What kind of problem?” she asked, already moving toward the hatch.
“The kind that might blow us all to hell if we don’t fix it. Hurry.”
She killed the comms, her pulse spiking. Another crisis. Another crack in the station’s crumbling shell. She glanced back at Jonas one last time, his small form barely visible under the sheet, then stepped into the corridor. The hatch sealed behind her with a hiss, and the weight of everything—Lila, Jonas, the vote, Cal’s cryptic offer—pressed down harder than ever.
She broke into a jog, the metal grates clanging under her boots, the air growing colder with every step. Whatever was waiting in engineering, she had a sinking feeling it was only the beginning.
[To be continued in the second half of Episode 1.]
The descent to engineering was a plunge into the station’s underbelly, where the air grew thicker with the stench of oil and burnt circuits. Mara’s boots echoed on the rusted ladders, each rung slick with grime under her palms. The temperature dropped further as she moved deeper, the cold biting into her skin through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit. Engineering was the heart of Eleven-B, a labyrinth of pipes, conduits, and jury-rigged repairs holding the station together by sheer stubbornness. It was also the loudest sector, a constant roar of machinery drowning out everything else—a reminder that survival up here was never quiet, never easy.
Her wrist comm buzzed again as she reached the main access hatch, Rico’s voice cutting through static. “Mara, where the hell are you? We’re hemorrhaging coolant in reactor bay three. If we don’t plug it now, we’re looking at a cascade failure.”
“I’m here,” she snapped, slamming her palm against the hatch release. It groaned open with a shudder, revealing the cavernous expanse of engineering. The space was a tangle of exposed wiring and hulking machinery, lit by harsh sodium lamps that cast long, flickering shadows. Steam hissed from a dozen vents, curling like ghosts in the frigid air. A handful of techs scurried between stations, their faces smudged with grease, their shouts swallowed by the din.
Rico was near the far wall, hunched over a control panel, his bulky frame dwarfing the console. His jumpsuit was patched at the knees, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms crisscrossed with old scars. He didn’t look up as she approached, his fingers flying over the touchscreen, rerouting systems with a speed that belied his size. “Took your damn time,” he growled, voice barely audible over the rumble of the reactor. “Coolant line’s ruptured. Pressure’s spiking. We’ve got maybe ten minutes before it blows a hole in the containment wall.”
Mara leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the readouts. Red bars pulsed across the screen, warning of critical overload. The reactor—Eleven-B’s ancient, overworked power core—was the only thing keeping them alive. Lights, heat, oxygen scrubbers, all of it depended on this beast of a machine. A breach here wouldn’t just kill a sector; it could kill them all. “What do you need?” she asked, already rolling up her sleeves.
“Manual override on the secondary valves. Someone’s gotta crawl into the access shaft and shut ‘em down before the system locks us out. Auto-controls are fried.” He finally looked at her, his dark eyes bloodshot from too many double shifts. “It’s tight in there. And hot. You up for it?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Point me to it.”
Rico jerked his chin toward a narrow hatch on the far side of the bay, half-hidden behind a tangle of pipes. “Shaft’s through there. Valves are labeled C-17 through C-20. Twist ‘em counterclockwise ‘til they lock. Don’t breathe too deep—coolant fumes’ll mess you up. And don’t touch anything glowing. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said, grabbing a wrench from a nearby tool rack. The metal was ice-cold in her grip, a stark contrast to the sweat already beading on her neck from the heat radiating off the reactor. She crossed the bay in quick strides, dodging a tech hauling a coil of cable, and pried the hatch open with a grunt. The shaft beyond was a black maw, barely wide enough for her shoulders, the air inside heavy with the sharp, chemical bite of coolant. She could feel the heat pulsing from deeper within, a warning of what waited ahead.
Crawling in, she braced herself against the walls, the metal slick and scalding under her palms. The wrench clanged against her hip as she moved, the sound swallowed by the low hum of machinery vibrating through the shaft. Her knees scraped against the grates, each inch forward a battle against the oppressive heat and the acrid sting in her lungs. Sweat stung her eyes, blurring her vision, but she blinked it away, focusing on the faint glow of emergency lights marking the valve cluster ahead.
“C-17,” she muttered, spotting the first label etched into a rusted pipe. She wedged the wrench around the valve, her muscles straining as she twisted. It resisted at first, then gave with a screech of metal on metal, locking into place. A hiss of escaping pressure echoed through the shaft, the sound of a small victory. One down, three to go.
By the time she reached C-20, her lungs burned, each breath a fight against the fumes. Her hands trembled as she locked the final valve, the wrench slipping once before catching. She leaned back, panting, her back pressed against the shaft wall. The heat was unbearable now, her jumpsuit sticking to her skin, but the warning klaxon that had been blaring in the bay outside had stopped. That meant something, at least.
Her comms crackled. Rico’s voice, gruff but relieved. “Pressure’s dropping. Nice work, Kess. Get the hell outta there before you cook.”
“Way ahead of you,” she rasped, dragging herself back toward the hatch. Her limbs felt leaden, her head swimming from the fumes, but she pushed through, collapsing onto the bay floor as she emerged. The air outside was still cold, still stale, but it felt like a damn oasis after the shaft. She lay there for a moment, chest heaving, until Rico hauled her to her feet.
“You look like crap,” he said, a smirk tugging at his lips. “But you bought us another day. Maybe.”
“Maybe,” she echoed, wiping sweat from her brow. Her gaze drifted to the reactor, its massive bulk humming quieter now, the immediate threat contained. But she knew it was just a bandage on a gaping wound. Eleven-B was full of wounds like that—temporary fixes, borrowed time. And with the vote looming, time was the one thing they couldn’t afford to borrow much longer.
As she steadied herself against a nearby console, a shadow fell across her. Not Rico this time. She turned, her pulse spiking, to find Cal leaning against a pipe cluster, his lanky frame casual but his eyes sharp. He’d changed since she last saw him in the depot—his jumpsuit was zipped now, a small pack slung over one shoulder like he was ready to bolt. “Told you I’d find you here,” he said, voice low, almost lost in the ambient noise of the bay.
Mara straightened, brushing grime from her hands. “What’s this about, Cal? I’m not in the mood for games. We nearly lost the reactor just now.”
“No games,” he said, stepping closer. His gaze flicked to Rico, who was back at the control panel, then returned to her. “I meant what I said earlier. About a way out. For you. For Lila and Jonas. But we gotta move fast. Before the vote.”
Her stomach twisted, a mix of skepticism and desperation. “I’m listening. But you better not be wasting my time.”
He nodded toward a side corridor leading deeper into engineering, away from the main bay. “Not here. Too many ears. Follow me.”
She hesitated, glancing at Rico. He was engrossed in diagnostics, oblivious to their conversation. Against her better judgment, she followed Cal, her boots clanging softer now as they moved into the narrower passageway. The corridor was dimly lit, the walls streaked with rust and old coolant stains. The hum of machinery faded behind them, replaced by an eerie quiet, broken only by the occasional drip of condensation from overhead pipes.
Cal stopped near a sealed hatch marked “Maintenance Access - Restricted.” He tapped a code into the keypad, the lock disengaging with a soft click. “Inside,” he said, pushing the hatch open.
The room beyond was small, barely larger than a storage closet, crammed with dusty control panels and crates of spare parts. A single flickering light strip cast a sickly glow over everything. Cal shut the hatch behind them, the sound of the lock snapping back into place louder than it should have been in the confined space. Mara crossed her arms, her patience wearing thin. “Alright, Cal. Spill it. What’s this ‘way out’ you keep dangling?”
He set his pack on a crate, unzipping it to reveal a jumble of tools, data chips, and what looked like a handheld comms unit, modded with extra antennas. “I’ve been working on something,” he started, his voice quieter now, almost conspiratorial. “You know how we’ve been sending distress calls into the void for years? No answer, right? Well, I’ve been tweaking the signal array in my off-hours. Boosting the range, narrowing the frequency. And last week… I got something back.”
Her breath caught, though she tried to hide it. “Something? Like what?”
“A ping. Weak, but deliberate. Not random noise. It’s coming from a sector we haven’t charted—way out past the Kuiper Belt. I’ve been tracking it, triangulating. I think it’s a ship. Or a station. Something with tech advanced enough to respond.” He tapped the comms unit, pulling up a grainy waveform on its tiny screen. “If we can lock onto it, boost our signal again, we might be able to establish contact. Maybe even get a rescue op in motion.”
Mara stared at the waveform, her mind racing. A ship. A rescue. It sounded like a pipe dream, the kind of hope that got people killed up here. But Cal’s face was dead serious, no trace of his usual smirk. “Why haven’t you taken this to Command?” she asked, her voice sharp. “If it’s real, Voss needs to know.”
Cal’s expression darkened. “Because I don’t trust Voss. Or Command. You think they’re gonna risk resources on a long-shot signal when they’re too busy deciding who to space tomorrow? Nah. They’ll bury it. Or worse, use it as leverage to keep everyone in line. I’m telling you because I know you’ll do something about it. For Lila. For Jonas.”
Her jaw tightened. He was playing her, she knew it, but he wasn’t wrong. Command had a history of hoarding information, of making decisions behind closed hatches. And if there was even a chance this signal was real… “What do you need from me?” she asked finally.
“Access to the main comms array in ops. I can’t get in there without clearance. You can. We boost the signal tonight, before the vote, and we might have a shot at a response. If it works, we’ve got bargaining power. Proof there’s something out there worth fighting for. Enough to maybe stop the lottery.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” she pressed, her eyes narrowing. “If it’s just noise, or a glitch? Then what?”
Cal shrugged, but there was a hardness in his gaze. “Then we’ve lost nothing. But we can’t afford to wait, Mara. Tomorrow, two thousand people get sent into the void. Could be Lila. Could be Jonas. Could be you. I’m not willing to roll those dice.”
The weight of his words settled on her like a physical thing, pressing down until she could barely breathe. She thought of Jonas, flushed and feverish on that cot. Of Lila’s tear-streaked face. Of the graffiti on the walls, the anger simmering in every corridor. A signal from the void was a long shot, but so was surviving another day on Eleven-B. “Alright,” she said at last, her voice low. “I’ll get you into ops. But if this goes south, it’s on you.”
He nodded, zipping up his pack. “Deal. Meet me there at 0200 hours. Most of the crew’ll be off-shift. Less eyes.”
She didn’t respond, just turned toward the hatch, her mind already spinning with logistics. Getting into ops after hours wasn’t hard—she had the codes—but if they were caught tampering with the comms array, it’d be a one-way ticket to the airlock, vote or no vote. Still, she couldn’t shake the image of that waveform, the faint possibility of something—someone—out there in the black.
As she stepped back into the corridor, the station shuddered again, a deep groan vibrating through the metal. She froze, her hand on the wall, feeling the tremor ripple under her fingers. Not a glitch this time. Something bigger. Her comms buzzed before she could process it, Rico’s voice urgent. “Mara, you still in engineering? We’ve got a seismic alert. Core systems are picking up stress fractures in the outer hull. Looks like the breach earlier did more damage than we thought.”
“On my way,” she said, breaking into a jog. Cal followed, his pack slung over his shoulder, his face grim. The corridor seemed narrower now, the air heavier, as if the station itself was closing in around them. Stress fractures. That meant hull integrity was compromised, a death sentence if they couldn’t patch it fast. She pushed the thought of Cal’s signal to the back of her mind, focusing on the immediate threat. One crisis at a time. It was the only way to keep going up here.
The ops deck was a hive of controlled chaos when Mara arrived, the air thick with tension and the sharp tang of burnt electronics. Techs shouted over each other, their voices overlapping as they relayed damage reports. The main viewport framed the same dead Earth outside, but now it felt closer, as if the station’s orbit was decaying inch by inch. Mara’s console was already lit up with alerts, red warnings flashing across every sector. Stress fractures in the outer hull weren’t just a problem—they were a ticking clock.
Captain Voss was there, standing in the center of the deck like a rock against a storm, his face unreadable as he barked orders. “Kess, status on the hull. Now.”
She slid into her chair, pulling up the diagnostics with practiced speed. Her fingers trembled slightly, still shaky from the coolant fumes, but she steadied them. “Fractures in sectors four through seven, outer ring. Micro-breaches already forming. Pressure’s holding, but not for long. We need repair crews out there ASAP, or we’re looking at catastrophic decompression.”
Voss nodded, his jaw tight. “I’ve got teams mobilizing. But we’re short on EVA suits. Rations cut into maintenance budgets months ago. We’ve got enough for three, maybe four techs. The rest’ll have to wait.”
“Wait?” Mara snapped, swiveling to face him. “Captain, waiting means losing half the station. We can’t—”
“We don’t have a choice,” he cut in, his voice like steel. “We work with what we’ve got. Prioritize the largest fractures. Divert power from non-essentials to reinforce the inner bulkheads. And keep this quiet. Last thing we need is a panic before the vote.”
Her stomach churned at the mention of the vote again, but she bit back her retort. Voss wasn’t wrong—panic would turn a bad situation into a disaster. Still, the idea of keeping people in the dark while the hull literally cracked around them felt like a betrayal. She turned back to her console, relaying orders to the repair crews, her voice clipped and mechanical. Inside, though, her mind was elsewhere—on Cal’s signal, on Jonas’s fever, on the lottery that loomed like a guillotine over them all.
Hours bled into each other, the ops deck a blur of alerts and shouted updates. The repair crews reported slow progress, sealing the worst fractures but unable to reach the smaller ones without more suits. Pressure readings stabilized, barely, but Mara could feel the station’s fragility in every tremor, every groan of metal. By the time her shift neared its end, her eyes burned from staring at screens, her hands cramped from typing. The clock on her console read 0130 hours. Half an hour until her meet with Cal.
She glanced at Voss, still stationed near the central hub, his gaze fixed on the viewport. He hadn’t moved in hours, as if sheer will could hold the station together. She stood, stretching her aching back, and approached him. “Captain, I’m clocking out. Need to check on family before the vote. Rico’s got ops covered.”
Voss turned, his eyes narrowing slightly, searching her face. For a moment, she thought he’d call her out, sense the lie beneath her words. But he just nodded. “Go. Be back before 0600. We’ll need all hands for the ballot.”
She didn’t wait for him to change his mind, heading for the hatch with a nod to Rico as she passed. The corridors outside were quieter now, most of the station asleep or pretending to be, the weight of tomorrow pressing down on every soul. Her boots echoed in the empty halls, the cold seeping deeper into her bones. She reached ops’ secondary access point at 0155, five minutes early, and found Cal already there, leaning against the wall with his pack at his feet.
“Thought you might bail,” he said, a ghost of a smirk on his lips.
“Not a chance,” she replied, punching in her code to unlock the hatch. The comms array room was adjacent to ops, a smaller space packed with ancient equipment and tangles of wiring. The air smelled of dust and static, the hum of the array a low thrum underfoot. Mara sealed the hatch behind them, her heart thudding against her ribs. “Let’s make this quick. What do you need?”
Cal set his pack on a console, pulling out the modded comms unit and a bundle of cables. “Gimme access to the main transmitter. I’ll patch in my booster, narrow the frequency to match the ping I got. If there’s something out there, we’ll know in under ten minutes.”
She hesitated, her hand hovering over the console’s security lock. If they were caught, this wasn’t just a reprimand. It was treason, or close enough. But the memory of Jonas’s fevered face, of Lila’s desperation, pushed her forward. She entered her override code, the screen flashing green as the transmitter came online. “You’ve got ten minutes,” she said, stepping back. “Don’t screw this up.”
Cal worked fast, his fingers a blur as he connected cables and adjusted dials. The comms unit’s tiny screen lit up with static, then resolved into a jagged waveform, similar to the one he’d shown her earlier. He leaned in, headphones pressed to one ear, his face tense with concentration. “Sending the signal now. Boosted range, tight beam. If they’re out there, they’ll hear us.”
The room fell silent except for the hum of the array and the faint crackle of static in Cal’s headphones. Mara stood by the hatch, one hand on her wrist comm, ready to bolt if an alert sounded. Seconds stretched into minutes, each one heavier than the last. She watched Cal’s face, searching for any sign—a twitch, a nod, anything. At the eight-minute mark, his eyes widened, just a fraction, but enough to make her step closer.
“What?” she hissed. “You got something?”
He held up a hand, silencing her, his focus locked on the comms unit. The static shifted, a faint pattern emerging, almost like a voice distorted by distance and interference. Mara’s breath caught, her skin prickling with a mix of dread and hope. It couldn’t be real. Could it?
Then Cal pulled off the headphones, his face pale, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s not just a ping. It’s a message. They’re responding. And… Mara, they’re not human.”
Her blood ran cold, the words hanging in the air like a blade about to fall. Not human. The implications crashed over her—something out there, beyond the void, something alien, something unknown. Before she could process it, before she could demand answers, the hatch behind them hissed open, the sound cutting through the silence like a gunshot.
Captain Voss stood in the doorway, his face a mask of cold fury, flanked by two security grunts with batons drawn. “Kess. Renfrew. Step away from the console. Now.”
Mara froze, her heart slamming against her ribs, as the static from the comms unit crackled louder, the alien message looping in the background—a chilling, incomprehensible sound that promised everything was about to change.
[End of Episode 1: The Airlock Lottery]