The silence was the first thing that Nick noticed. As soon as he and Jimmy cleared Earth's atmosphere and entered the vacuum of space, the thunderous whooshing of the wind ceased. As Jimmy silently manned the Strato XM's controls, Nick tried to steady his trembling right hand and keep what little food was in his stomach from coming up.
It's been nearly a month since I've been in space. He gave a tiny smile in spite of his nerves. How many children in the world could think that sentence and mean it? He allowed himself a moment to savor this joy, but then quickly shook his head and gave a deep sigh.
"You okay?" Jimmy asked while cocking his head over his shoulder. Nick stared at his friend for a moment before giving a tiny nod. Jimmy nodded back and turned forward. Nick watched silently as Jimmy drummed his fingers against the Strato XM's steering wheel.
"I think this flies smoother than the XL," Jimmy continued as he continued to stare at the empty space in front of him. The moon was still little more than a small circle against the vastness of space. The ride wouldn't be too long, but it wasn't instantaneous either. "I didn't really add any upgrades to the XL's design. That thing was over three years old, though. I guess it was time to let it go."
Nick didn't respond as he noticed the sadness lacing Jimmy's words. Nick had known Jimmy for over three years, but he'd barely spoken to him until less than two months ago. Their friendship had been forged in the heat of battle. Even though it had been nearly a month since they had returned home, the two still remained close. Maybe they didn't see each other or hang out everyday like Jimmy did with Cindy and the rest of his friends, but Nick still felt a deep connection to Jimmy. Jimmy had trusted him to lead the town's children into battle, to make sure they got home alive. He'd believed in Nick when he hadn't believed in himself.
"It flies good," Nick finally responded while clenching his trembling hand into a fist. Nick took a deep breath, but made sure it was quieter than his last sigh. He stared at the distant stars and at the moon which was slowly creeping closer. After a few seconds he glanced over the side of the rocket and stared at the bright red letters painted across its hull.
Strato XM. Nick knew that it had pained Jimmy to lose his beloved rocket in the asteroid belt that had nearly stolen their lives. He had begun construction on this new ship as soon as the first day of school ended. Jimmy had just finished the final touches on it yesterday and had asked Nick to accompany him on its maiden voyage. Nick had agreed.
The pair flew in silence for several minutes until Jimmy slowed the rocket. "Coming in for a landing," he monotonously said. The rocket's speed continued to rapidly decrease as the ship descended. "Hang on to something," he instructed Nick.
Nick took head of Jimmy's words and gripped the door beside him. He lurched upwards and forwards once the ship touched down on the moon's surface. The rocket skidded to a halt after a few dozen meters. Jimmy gave a little nod and unclipped his seat belt. "Alright, looks like we're pretty close. Let's get started."
Nick nodded and unbuckled his seat belt. He cracked his neck and his knuckles before placing a hand on the top of the door and jumping over it. Jimmy opened his and stepped onto the barren white ground. The two young men looked at each other for a moment before staring ahead.
"How close did we get?" Nick asked as he and Jimmy started to walk away from the ship.
Jimmy turned his new hypercube around in his right hand while answering. "Closer than I'd hoped. It's hard to tell exactly where anything is on the moon. Everything looks pretty much the same."
Nick felt his hand start to tremble once more. He glanced down at it nervously. The nausea in the pit of his stomach returned with newfound intensity. He spun around and looked in every direction, searching for any sign of trouble. His breathing came more rapidly, and he felt beads of sweat forming on his forehead. He'd hoped that he would hold out longer than this, but he couldn't wait anymore. There was only thing that would ease his troubled mind, assure him that he would be safe on this barren rock.
Nick reached his trembling hand towards his back and pulled a pistol out of his waistband. It was nothing fancy, a basic nine millimeter. It was the only gun of his father's that hadn't been lost in space. Nick had taken it out of his father's gun case a few days after they'd gotten back. Nick knew it was only a matter of time until he was caught and grounded, but it was the only thing that put his mind at ease.
Jimmy had seen Nick reach for something near his back, but he had had no idea that Nick would produce a gun. He stared at it for a second in shock, and then immediately stopped in his tracks and looked away in disgust. He brought a hand to his forehead and squeezed hard to stop the memories from coming back. It didn't work.
The images raced through his mind in an instant. Libby's leg dripping blood on a makeshift surgery table. Jimmy emptying rounds into Yolkian guards. Goobot's one remaining eye widened in terror as Jimmy grabbed his brain. Eustace Strych lying in a growing puddle of his own blood, clutching the bullet wound in his back. The fearless, antagonizing look on his face. And lastly, the image that haunted him more than any other; the quick glimpse of what remained of Eustace's lifeless head.
"It's for protection," Nick's words breached his ears as that last image raced through Jimmy's mind.
Jimmy narrowed his eyes in anger and spun around. He clenched his hand into a fist and stared up into Nick's sad eyes. "Why? Why would you bring that?" He shouted. Nick opened his mouth to speak, but Jimmy wasn't done. "How did you even get that, Nick?"
"We need it," Nick said weakly.
Jimmy was about to chastise him more, but the pain in Nick's voice stopped him. Jimmy shook his head and took a slow, deep breath. The images in his mind faded from memory, and Jimmy felt himself calming down. "Just put it away, Nick. We're safe here. We're fine."
Nick hesitated for a second before finally giving a tiny nod and tucking the pistol back into his waistband. The boys stared at each other for a few more seconds before continuing on their walk.
Two minutes went by before Jimmy decided to break the uncomfortable silence. "Nick, you don't need a gun. We're safe here. There's nothing on the moon."
"Better safe than sorry. Isn't that what we always used to say?" Nick asked. The pain and weakness in his voice was gone. Despite the myriad of reasons why he should feel sick up in space, he felt himself calming down. Maybe it was coming back to the place where everything had started. Maybe accompanying Jimmy on this trip would give him some closure and let his troubled mind rest.
Jimmy didn't have much to say to that. He was relieved to see that they had reached their destination. "This is it," he said while giving the hypercube a little squeeze. He pulled out a bottle of water and tossed it to Nick.
Nick caught it and cracked it open. "So this is where it all started."
The two boys stared at the empty battlefield in front of them. Bits of stray wire and electric components littered the ground for a few hundred meters into the distance. Motionless robotic droids littered the landscape. And nearly half a kilometer away, barely visible from where they stood, rested a tiny steel shed.
Now it was Nick's turn to take the lead. He took a few steps forward and stared down at the ground. He got down on one knee and examined a few drops of dried blood, perfectly preserved on the windless moon. "I thought Libby got hit farther ahead. Did a bullet graze one of you?"
Jimmy looked down at the red liquid and then at the rock outcropping a few meters ahead of him. "No. When the droids first opened fire, they were hundreds of meters away. They had no chance of hitting us. We took cover over there," Jimmy explained while pointing at the outcropping. "We rushed over, and Carl tripped and skinned his knee."
The situation may have been dire, but the memory still brought a tiny smile to Jimmy's face. Carl was the last person who should have been in a firefight. Still, he had to hand it to his best friend. He may have been terrified, but he hadn't cried or gotten injured.
Nick got back on his feet and handed Jimmy the bottle of water. Jimmy took a few sips as they continued strolling across the battlefield. They rarely stopped to stare. They just walked slowly and Nick paid avid attention as Jimmy pointed out various objects of interest.
"That's the first droid we took out. I wasted nearly a whole magazine taking it down. By that time we had decided to move ahead, try to meet the robots head on. We didn't want them getting too close to us and destroying our ship," Jimmy explained while pointing down at the nearest robot.
"That's where Cindy took the pulse rifle from me," Jimmy motioned at a crater nearly ten meters wide. "We jumped in there before moving to the next pile of rocks. Cindy just snatched it out of my hands, gave it a quick look over, and started shooting. Before I could even respond, she'd taken out one of the soldiers."
Jimmy smiled once more as he remembered Cindy's actions. He hadn't expected her to just grab the gun from him. In spite of the danger, he'd been paralyzed by her beauty for a split second as she scowled, found a line of sight, and squeezed the trigger. Anger at her actions quickly replaced that feeling, followed by a grumble of respect.
"We took turns with the gun after that. When our hands got cramped from pulling the trigger or we started to miss too many shots, the other would take over. We nearly ran out of ammo, but we made it."
Jimmy and Nick finally stopped as they came across a puddle of blood much larger than any they had yet to see. A trail of drops led to a nearby boulder. "This is where she got hit," Jimmy sadly said.
Nick stared at the blood for a moment before taking a seat on the ground beside it. Jimmy followed suit and threw the empty bottle of water into his hypercube. He pulled another bottle out along with a couple of protein bars. He handed Nick one and opened his.
"It looks bad," Nick told Jimmy while taking a bite of his meager snack. His voice didn't sound pained anymore. Now that his nausea had faded, he finally felt how empty his stomach was. He hadn't eaten a thing all day; he'd been too nervous about flying into space with Jimmy.
Jimmy stared at the puddle a little longer and then met Nick's gaze. "It could have been a lot worse. The bullet went straight through. It didn't hit any arteries or do any permanent damage. It looks like she lost more blood than she actually did."
The boys sat in silence for a few moments as they finished their snack and water. Nick screwed the cap back onto the empty plastic bottle and pointed at the nearby shed. "And that's where he was? Eustace?"
Jimmy nodded. He thought back to how Eustace had nearly killed him, how it was Cindy who had saved his life with a well-aimed shot from a flare gun. He remembered the blast of heat washing over him and seeing Eustace scrambling to put out the flames on his clothes. More than anything, though, he remembered how he had felt when forced to pull the trigger on his pulse rifle. He hadn't known that the clip was empty. In that moment, it felt like the trigger weighed a thousand pounds. He'd thought he was about to extinguish a life with the simple twitch of a finger. If I'd only known…
"Hard to believe none of this shit would have happened if you'd killed him here," Nick interrupted Jimmy's thoughts.
Nick's words took hold of Jimmy immediately. He felt partly confused, partly angry, and fully shocked. He glared at Nick and opened his mouth to speak, but Nick warded off his words with a shameful glance at the ground.
"I'm sorry," he quickly muttered. "I didn't mean that…"
"Forget it," Jimmy shot back while picking himself up and strolling the few feet towards the boulder he had dragged Libby behind. He roughly slid his palm down the uneven rock and stared at the white lines it left on his skin. He knew that Nick had meant no harm. Any anger he'd felt towards his friend had rapidly been turned towards himself. He closed his eyes and took an uneven breath.
Jimmy knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything he had put his friends through was his fault. He had failed to realize that the Yolkians weren't behind the attacks. He had led his friends into a trap that he knew was baited for him. Eustace may have been a sadistic madman, but Jimmy had been unable to shake their conversation aboard the Yolkian cruiser.
"Even when you thought it was the Yolkians that had taken your parents, you knew that you were the main target. You discussed it with that Dean boy. So why did you take all of those other kids with you?"
Even with a month to ponder that question over, Jimmy had failed to come up with a good answer. His friends may have all made it home alive, but they hadn't come out unscathed. Sheen had nearly died alone on an asteroid. A dozen kids had received broken limbs in the asteroid belt. Cindy had barely survived her gunshot wound. Not to mention the Yolkians they had all killed. They may have kidnapped their parents before, but did they deserve to die? So many had suffered because of him.
And that's just the pain you can see, Jimmy thought while spinning around to see Nick walking over to him. His friend was strong and brave, but he couldn't hide what their adventure had done to him. He was scarred from what they had been through. Jimmy had noticed the tremors in his hand and the weakness that sometimes showed in his voice. Not to mention that he couldn't come on this trip without bringing a gun.
Jimmy let go of the rock and stood up straight as Nick approached him. Nick hesitated before he spoke, and Jimmy wondered what his friend would say to try to absolve him of his sins. A second passed, and Nick finally gave a half smile and silently handed Jimmy the empty water bottle. Jimmy took it and tossed it into the hypercube. He was grateful for the silence.
"You good?" Nick finally asked. Jimmy nodded, and Nick gave a quick look around. "So, is this where we'll put it?"
Jimmy cracked his neck and took a quick breath to rid himself of his guilt. He'd deal with it another time. "This is as good as any," he answered while taking a few steps away from the boulder and kneeling on the ground. Nick followed suit as Jimmy pulled what looked like a large steel box out of his hypercube.
Jimmy began pressing buttons and staring at the small monitor on the box as Nick looked on. "Jimmy?" He asked.
"What?" Jimmy half-heartedly muttered while turning a few dials and scowling at the monitor.
"Why didn't you want Cindy to come with you up here?"
The mention of Cindy brought another small smile to Jimmy's face. "I did. She's at the doctor's to see if she can finally get out of that wheelchair." He looked to Nick, unable to keep his excitement to himself.
"And you're not worried about getting the cold treatment for not being with her?" Nick joked. For the first time since they landed, the two of them felt something other than despair.
Jimmy's smiled faded as quickly as it had come. Nick noticed his eyes sadden as he turned his attention back to the device on the ground. "I'd like to be. Her mom's with her right now. She doesn't really know about me and Cindy yet."
Nick was surprised. "It's been a month since we came back. You guys haven't told her mom yet?"
Jimmy shook his head. "Mrs. Vortex isn't my biggest fan."
Nick wished to learn more, but a hole suddenly opened on the top of Jimmy's invention. A long metal rod slowly extended two meters into the air and expanded into a satellite dish. Nick was reminded of a flower blooming as he watched the device activate. Jimmy pressed a few more buttons, and a noticeable hum was heard as a series of small lights on the box flickered to life.
"It's online," Jimmy said giving the device a look over.
"That's it?" Nick asked in surprise. He hadn't expected the process to be that simple.
"That's it," Jimmy said while pressing a few more buttons. The device seemed to shift a little, and Jimmy got to his feet.
"What was that?" Nick asked while standing up.
"It just anchored itself to the ground," Jimmy explained. He nudged the device with his foot, but it didn't move. He pulled a small data pad out of the hypercube and stared at it. "My lab's receiving the signal. It's all set."
Jimmy slipped the data pad back into his hypercube and stared at Nick. "Now we'll know if anything is approaching Earth." Jimmy gave a tiny smile and rolled the hypercube around in his palm. "Let's get back to the rocket."
Nick followed Jimmy as they began the trek back to the Strato XM. The walk back was silent and seemed to last twice as long as it actually did. It was obvious what needed to be said, but neither one could bring themselves to say it. It wasn't until Jimmy had wordlessly lifted off of the lunar surface that Nick finally spoke.
"We didn't put that detector there just to be safe," Nick began. He noticed Jimmy's grip on the steering wheel tighten. "It's not just to see if an asteroid will collide with Earth." Nick gulped and wrapped his hands around the pistol digging into his back. "You think they're coming for us."
Jimmy wasn't sure what to say. He felt burdened by the thought that had tortured his mind since he had typed up the essay that he and Cindy had written. Sitting alone in his room, typing up the details of their adventure, the realization had finally come over him. He hadn't wanted to tell anyone, he'd been too worried about causing a panic in case he was wrong. He'd decided to bring Nick with him to install the detector. He'd lied and said that it was just a safety precaution incase an asteroid was headed towards Earth or some other crazy unforeseen incident happened. Just a little project he was working on to keep busy.
That's what he'd told Nick. What he'd told himself was that he'd invited Nick along for the company. Yet he knew that he had wanted Nick to figure out the reason they had gone to the moon. He'd wanted to share the burden which kept him awake at night. But he'd been too much of a coward to just tell him. He'd left it up to Nick to figure it out. And he had.
"I'm not sure if they are," Jimmy finally answered. He nervously swallowed and drummed his fingers over the steering wheel. "I'm not sure," he repeated.
"When did you realize it wasn't over?" Nick asked.
"A week ago," Jimmy answered. "When I was writing that essay I told you about. Thinking about when I killed Goobot, how I was afraid that he might send out a distress call to his home world, it made me realize that they must have learned by now exactly what happened to him." Jimmy took a deep breath and spun around to face Nick. "When did you realize it?"
"Last night," Nick quietly answered. "I'd actually thought of it a couple of days before that, but I didn't think I was right until you said we were going to install that thing up here." Nick paused, and then asked, "Do the others know?" Jimmy shook his head. "Not even Cindy?" Nick asked, surprised that he was the only other one who had thought of the danger they faced.
"She's been preoccupied," Jimmy defended his girlfriend. "She's had school and physical therapy to worry about."
They sat in silence as the moon grew smaller behind them and the Earth seemed to loom over them. "We killed their king," Nick solemnly said. "They won't just take that lying down. They're coming for us." He clenched his hands into fists and felt his stomach tie itself into knots. "We're not wrong."
Jimmy didn't know what to say. If the Yolkians did come, there was little they could do. Earth had no orbital defenses, no means of protecting the planet from an alien attack. All the Yolkians would have to do was park their ships in Earth's orbit and destroy the planet from the sky. Jimmy had tried to think of how he could defend their planet, but what could he do?
I could come up with a design for something to put around the planet, something to keep it safe. But to actually build something of that size; to create a complete orbital defense system? The money, the time it would take, not to mention that there's no way I could do that without the government noticing. It's impossible.
So as Jimmy and Nick reentered Earth's atmosphere, sitting in silence along with their thoughts, Jimmy tried to convince himself that he was wrong. That the Yolkians would not learn how their king died, or that they would not come for revenge. Yet deep down, he knew that he and Nick were right. He knew that the Yolkians would not just accept the death of their king. He knew they would come, and he knew it would be soon. And as he looked in Nick's eyes and held his gaze, he knew that the two of them shared the same thought.
And when they come, Earth will fall.
