I don't own Space 1999.

I based a lot of this one-shot on the Big Finish production, so anyone who's seen the original TV version won't be confused.

Please let me know what you think.

Meta Mission.

Commander John Koenig sighed as he stepped into the Commander's officer off Main Mission, weary after spending a large amount of the day trying to uncover the web of intrigue Simmonds had thrown up around the entire Meta Mission.

For the past month, John and the entirety of Earth's population had been hearing rumours of a mysterious illness that had been affecting the pilots of Moonbase Alpha.

For a whole month, John had, stupidly, as it turned out, had believed every single lie. Every single lie. He should have questioned them more instead of believing Simmonds' reassurances, but he hadn't.

Oh, he had an excuse; he had been too busy with the ground control work into the new Meta Project. It was a job which he was well accustomed to by now, and it was a job he did well. John had a glowing reputation as a high flyer and he had a great deal of experience in astronaut missions given how he had been on a dozen of them.

It was an unspoken rule for older, more experienced pilots and astronauts to control the organising of new missions and expeditions out to further Man's exploration of space.

The Meta Mission…

It was perhaps one of the most complex space expeditions in living memory. In some ways it reminded him of the start of the Ultra probe mission (not for the first time he wondered just how much they simply did not know about the nature of life out there in the universe; while many had written Tony's experiences off as hallucination since he hadn't had a shred of concrete proof, and the probe ship's flight recorder hadn't recorded even the slightest hint of the monster Tony described, John was not one of those doubters since Tony was not that kind of astronaut), however, this one was different because he had three times more involvement.

John had been surprised when, out of the blue, Simmonds contacted him and told him Gorski was going to be moving on, and they wanted him in command of Alpha. To say he was surprised was an understatement; usually, changes and transfers in command were monthly affairs, where commanders were vetted before being approached with the offer. In this case, there wasn't really a true need; John and Simmonds had been working closely together for the past decade.

Simmonds, representing the Space Commission had contacted John for help and advice during the earliest days of the Meta Program. They had needed a number of astronauts, scientists, astrophysicists and astronomers for the program, and he was only one of a number for the think tank. It made perfect sense for John to be the one selected for the command of Moonbase Alpha, given how he had been placed in charge of the work. At first, he had been pleased despite being surprised by Simmond's surprise approach for the role of commander of Alpha - it had surprised him and he had asked Simmonds a few times why it was even happening; he knew Gorski wasn't the best commander. He was more of a politician and a crowd-pleaser who had never truly fitted in with life on Alpha. His experience came with commanding space stations, but regardless he wouldn't have been selected as Moonbase Alpha's Commander if he was incompetent.

So why was there a change right now when the Meta Mission was so close to launch?

On the way to Alpha, John had once more pressed Simmonds for answers but the Commissioner had fobbed him off with a plausible excuse, but what made it worse was how he had given assurances to a live TV audience that the mysterious illness was nothing to worry about. But what did he find when he got to Alpha? A strange effect, one he had never seen before, resembling a powerful lightning storm that had fried the brains of the Eagle crew.

And - And!- They were not the only ones!

John had assumed Dr Helena Russell was an alarmist causing trouble for no reason, but a large chunk of the opinion originated from his discussions with Simmonds. But Victor had made it bluntly clear the illness was not a hoax. He had also told him five people had died recently. It was a massive mess, but the Meta Mission was all-important. At first, John had been on the verge of ending the whole thing, just cancelling it while they still could, even though it could be thousands of years before Earth was aligned with Meta once more. It would be a major blow, but if he saved lives then he could live with it. But when Simmonds revealed the Meta Signal, which indicated the existence of intelligent life, well John's heartstrings had been pulled even if he agreed with Victor and Helena's assessment of the current crisis which they didn't understand, but this could mean alien life.

Intelligent life.

Simmonds was right about that, and John knew it. It was the dream of every sane astronaut and scientist to discover a way of travelling through interstellar space, but the Holy Grail of space discovery was the discovery of life; intelligent, semi-intelligent, artificially intelligent, or unintelligent, it didn't matter. If anyone discovered a fungus on one of the moons in the solar system or some kind of plant life, it would change the sum of human existence in ways nobody could even begin to imagine.

But at the same time, John was torn. Did he risk the lives of a crew of astronauts who were eager to make history? Or did he cancel the mission?

At the moment John was uncertain which one to go for. He could not ignore either of them but at the same time the sight of the astronauts' bodies lying in Medical with a sightless white eye, completely vacant and unresponsive while their brains had slipped into a comatose state before they died.

But he could not ignore the potential discovery of an intelligent life form. If they found one, so much would change overnight.

John felt like a complete and total idiot for not bothering to contact the colleagues whom he called his friends; Victor was one of the more prominent. He had known his old friend and mentor was on Alpha still, he could have contacted him at any point and asked what was going on, but he hadn't because it had simply not occurred to him.

And why was that?

Because he had been both too involved with the bigger details of the Meta project and with the final checks on the ship while trusting Simmonds to do his job. John knew he had lashed out against Gorski, a lot of his anger centred around the lie he had been fed, but that was second place to the rage he felt for a month his fellow astronauts had been taken ill while he had been told nothing was wrong.

John sighed as he walked to the office windows and he looked up. He couldn't see the International Space Station where the Meta Probe ship was currently docked; he wouldn't be able to see it again until the moon had rotated around Earth, but for the moment he pretended that he could see the ship which would make the five-year trip.

"What do I do?" John whispered to the room at large.

Yeah, he could claim to be experienced, but right now he was out of his depth. He would have to come up with answers and a final decision soon, but right now he would need to gather more information about the strange illness. He only hoped Dr Russell could provide some insights; he had been impressed by her so far, and he knew the feeling was mutual despite her best efforts, but he knew she was frustrated by his stance.

Hopefully, things would change.