Chapter 2: Chapter 2: 43°52′N || 18°25′E

Gottlieb doesn’t know a lot of things.

 

He doesn’t know when Richter’s birthday is, though he’s sure she’s told him twice now. He doesn’t know where Sarajevo actually is, despite having heard the name so often in multiple briefings and having shot the gun there three or four times. He doesn’t know what the difference between the green field-rations and the blue-ones are. Everyone always told him that the blue ones had salt and the green ones didn’t. But he couldn’t ever taste a difference. They both tasted like ass, salt or no salt. He certainly doesn’t know why the sun has gone dark or how that’s even possible.

 

But what Gottlieb is fairly certain about, is that the Earth, his favorite planet, doesn’t look like this. Light returns to the station as the sun returns. The monitors jump back to life.

 

For instance, there is a largely pastel pink continent, shaped a bit like an upside down horse’s head. That sure wasn’t there before. Or that weird ocean there, on the right edge of the planet where he can see a smear of indistinguishable land vanish the other way, as the planet continues to rotate against the orbit of the orbital weapons platform.

 

He rips his eyes away from the monitor, turning his head around to look at the empty ghost of a station behind himself. Gottlieb’s eyes, wide, scan the dancing shadows that sway from side to side beneath the shifting light of the ambient lighting and unmanned consoles hanging all around the room.

 

Something is wrong. Obviously.

 

“KAI! ALARM!”

 

The dark, cold, jagged metal world erupts into sound and light. A wailing siren blares above his head. Red washes over everything, staining everything as if it were soaked in blood as dozens of spinning lights begin to circle around over and over, whirring together with the deafening cry of the alarm.

 

Gottlieb runs, his chair spinning as he hits it with his knee, stumbling forward as he sprints across the room. Something chimes.

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