Evacuation

(Respectfully dedicated to HG Wells)

As the aliens invaded the station, I punched the release codes on the escape hatch, to find it already occupied. There was no time to find another: this would have to do. ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I thought this one was empty,’ I said, my breath coming in starts. (I identified her rank from the solitary stud on her uniform’s collar).

     The young woman smiled. ‘That’s all right, Sir.’

     I pressed the requisite buttons on the releasing mechanism in the wall, and we braced ourselves. The small chamber jolted sharply as it fell away from the station. No doubt it was crawling with the aliens by now. I let out a sigh of relief. Despite my senior rank, the lieutenant favoured me with a bright smile. I studied my unexpected travelling companion. She had light brown hair, tied back, brown eyes, and, given the emergency, her uniform was remarkably well-kept, more so than my own. ‘Which part of the station were you from?’ I asked her.

     ‘Engineering,’ she replied promptly. I nodded slowly. As Head of Security, I knew little about technical maintenance. It occurred to me that she probably knew more about how the escape capsule worked than I did. I asked her name and she replied in what I can remember as little more than a liquid blur, an abstract flow of words, but it must have made perfect sense at the time.

     The capsule shuddered as it fell towards the nearest planet. ‘I hate the aliens,’ I said sharply, hitting a panel in disgust. ‘They had no right to invade us. We were just monitoring our space, looking after our own interests.’

     A flicker crossed the woman’s face. ‘Perhaps we should limit our ambitions, and respect their territory,’ she ventured quietly. ‘We were expanding into their space, after all.’

     ‘Their space?’ I shouted incredulously. ‘They’ve done nothing but attack us, and capturing our last outpost was the last straw!’

     ‘Perhaps we don’t know everything about the aliens,’ she said softly. ‘Why should we fight them? We could work better together.’ I stared at her in contempt.

     ‘How you got to be a military engineer, I don’t know, but you won’t get far under my command with remarks like that! Think about your family at home. Surely they’re a cause worth fighting for?’

     Her face seemed concerned, almost sad, but her tone was still even. ‘You won’t be much use to your family dead, will you?’ she said as softly as before. I was distracted by a bleeping sound from a nearby panel. The instruments told me that we were passing through the atmosphere of Plectra Four, a mining planet that was still an Earth colony. I looked over at the woman. Her head was to one side, and she still looked concerned. I began to feel sorry I had shouted at her.

     ‘Excuse my outburst, Lieutenant,’ I said awkwardly. ‘We are on the same side, after all.’ Her expression did not change. I felt I had to protect her, that she was one of my own. ‘Brace for impact,’ I said curtly, trying to ignore these strange emotions. Gaining a firm handhold, I turned to see that she was not bothering. My astonishment did not find immediate expression, however, as she was now much closer to me. I looked into her eyes, and saw that they were not brown, but dark blue. More than that: the irises shimmered with a light and energy I had never seen before.

     What happened next, I am not entirely sure. All I remember is a sensation of being embraced, then there was nothing. I found myself amongst the wreckage of the capsule. An engineer from the station, who had also escaped, was bending over me in concern. ‘Are you all right, Sir?’ he enquired. I brushed him off and stood up.

     ‘Do you know a Lieutenant in your division called…?’ Try as I might, I could not remember her name. Examining the remains of my capsule, he turned around, his brow cleft with worry.

     ‘Sir, technically speaking, you shouldn’t be alive. The reading on the oxygen valve is zero, and has been since you left the station. You’ve been travelling all this way in a vacuum.’ I stared hard at him.

     A junior officer came running up, his face alight with pleasure. ‘Sir, listen to this!’ He handed me a communicator rod, which was broadcasting a news message. All I took in was that the fighting had stopped. We were at peace with the aliens. Everyone else was celebrating, but I fell into deep thought. As I stared at the unlovely craters and steam pits of Plectra Four, I wondered about the visitor to my space station and what her mission really was. Perhaps now I would never know.