SPACE: 1999 YEAR 2
JOURNEY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
SECTION EIGHTEEN: Remembered Echoes
Alan Carter sauntered into Command Center; a jaunty tune hummed under his breath as he meandered to his desk. Naturally he drew a few curious glances, but he seemed more intent on delivering whatever quip was forming on his lips than acknowledging the glances of those on duty.
"Guess who's playing tour guide?" he announced as he dropped into his chair, the grin on his face unmistakable.
Bill Fraser glanced up from his console, brow arching. "What?"
"Verdeschi's showing Maya around Alpha," Alan replied, leaning back in his chair with a smug grin, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
Bill snorted softly, crossing his arms as he leaned back. "Is he sticking to essentials?"
Alan chuckled, tilting his head as if considering the question. "Yeah, well, define essentials. I'll bet she knows where to find coffee anywhere on Alpha before the end of the day."
Sandra's lips twitched as she stifled a laugh. "Alan!"
"What?" he replied with an exaggerated shrug, his palms splayed upward in mock innocence. "Priorities first, right?"
Shaking her head with an amused sigh, Sandra turned her attention back to her station, though her small smile lingered.
"I wonder if he'll bring her here," Kate said, glancing over at Sandra from her seat with a questioning tilt of her head. "We do need to meet her."
John Koenig listened and watched the exchange from his desk, his fingers lightly tapping his desk. He shook his head faintly, the faintest of smiles tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Should we be worried, Alan?" he finally asked, his tone mock-serious, though his eyes did gleam with a hint of humor.
Helena Russell had just entered the room, her gaze sweeping around; her curiosity piqued by the levity and John's question.
She came to Koenig's desk and leaned down slightly with a questioning look.
"Worried about what?" she asked, her tone calm yet inquisitive.
John glanced at her, his smile softening. "Apparently, Tony's showing Maya around, starting with Alpha's most vital resource, coffee."
Russell blinked, processing the unexpected reply, before a quiet chuckle escaped her. "Somehow, I don't think that's entirely accurate."
"Nah," Alan admitted from across the room. "But the girl will need to know the important stuff. I mean tell me; coffee is not important?"
Helena rolled her eyes, though a faint smile betrayed her amusement as she straightened. "Well, that is true."
Fraser stood and stretched, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, I've got to head back down to the Hangar Bay. They should've finished the diagnostics on Eagle 4 by now."
Alan's posture shifted subtly, his humor giving way to professional focus. "Let me know what they find," he said, his voice all business.
"Got it," Bill replied with a nod, offering a casual wave as he headed out.
Koenig's gaze followed Fraser briefly before he turned back to Carter. "What's wrong with Eagle 4?"
"Onboard computer malfunctions," Carter explained, leaning forward with his arms on the desk. "I've pulled her from the available list, for now."
Koenig nodded, the faint lines on his brow easing slightly. He knew Carter and he knew without doubt; Eagle 4 would not launch again until all the mechanical things were perfect. Turning, he tilted his head towards Helena. "Speaking of coffee, care to join me for a break?"
Helena's expression softened as she met his eyes. "Sounds good," she replied, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.
Once inside, the door slid shut, sealing them within the quiet, enclosed space of the lift. The hum of its movement filled the silence, a welcome reprieve from the sea of voices and lingering gazes they had left behind.
Maya turned to Tony; her curiosity evident in her expression.
"What's so interesting?" she asked, feeling a bit more relaxed now that it was just the two of them and there were no unfamiliar eyes fixated on her.
"Just wait till we get there," he said with a smile. "You'll see."
The elevator stopped with a soft hiss, and they stepped out. The stillness pressed in around them, a stark contrast to the bustling corridors of Alpha that they had left behind.
Maya's eyes scanned the corridor, noting the absence of movement, the way silence clung to the walls. The emptiness made the corridor feel abandoned, a hollow shell of what might have once been. The air seemed heavier here, as though the walls held echoes of lives and voices long silent – a relic suspended in time, untouched yet somehow left behind.
It felt abandoned.
No, not abandoned. Waiting.
Tony slipped an arm gently around her waist as they walked and he explained to her.
"Before we moved most of Alpha underground, this section used to be one of the busiest," he told her, his voice low, almost reverent. "Hardly anyone comes up here anymore. Only a few of us have access now. You'll see why in a moment."
There was something about Tony's tone, a quality that made her glance at him. She caught a faint flicker of emotion in his expression, though she couldn't quite place it, and she was left wondering what lay ahead that held such meaning for him.
They approached a communications post, where Tony paused to tap a few buttons. A faint smile crossed his face as he read the screen.
"We're good to go," he told her, leading her further down the corridor.
Maya's footsteps echoed softly as they turned and entered a vast, dimly lit room.
"This was Main Mission," Tony said, his voice almost reverent. "The control room for monitoring and supervising all of Alpha's operations. It was what Command Center is now."
Maya glanced around the room, taking in its emptiness, noting the faded patterns on the floor where desk consoles had stood. The room, once bustling with life, now felt like a hollow shell, its energy drained away. The hanging wires dangled like silent ghosts, remnants of a time when this place was the heart of Moonbase Alpha.
"It has windows," she suddenly whispered.
Tony moved to stand beside her, nodding.
"One of the reasons why I brought you up here and one of the reasons we ultimately moved underground to Command Center. An explosive decompression here could have wiped out a lot of very important people in seconds," he explained, his voice heavy with the thought of what might have been.
She glanced towards one wall, now bare except for a few hanging wires. "What was there?"
"That's where the computer panels were," he said. Then he pointed to a higher spot on the wall. "And up there – that's where the Big Screen used to be."
"Oh," Maya murmured softly as she lifted her gaze to where he pointed. She walked over to one of the walls where the computers had been removed, running her fingers gently over the now empty spaces.
The blank walls, stripped of function, reminded her of the lifeless chambers left behind on Psychon after the others had fled. Rooms that had once held purpose and life, now holding nothing but the echoes of what once was.
"It almost feels… sad," she whispered, turning to Tony. "As if the room itself misses the life it once had." She paused, obviously deep in thought. "And everything was moved below?"
Tony nodded. "As much as we could. We simply couldn't afford to take any more chances."
Maya walked away from him as she continued to explore the room, her gaze lingering on the empty space where the Big Screen had once loomed. She looked up and tried to imagine the images it must have displayed. Stars, planets. Perhaps even the last view of their home planet Earth before they were cast adrift into the vastness of space.
"What was over there?" she asked, her voice tinged with quiet curiosity.
Her finger pointed to a set of steps leading up to another section, her head tilted as though she were already trying to imagine what stories the now-forgotten area might have held.
"That was John's office," Tony replied as he pointed towards the now open doors. "He had his choice of open or closed for privacy, something he lacks in Command Center."
"Oh," she said, still absorbing the large, abandoned area. She turned slowly, letting the silence settle around her, until another set of steps caught her attention. "And those steps, where do they lead?"
"Another reason why I brought you here," he smiled, a smile that made Maya think of a child eager to share a secret.
"Come on," he said.
Once they reached the top of the balcony, as he'd expected, Maya quickly moved to gaze out the window, taking in the view of the lunar surface. In the distance an Eagle flew by.
"Where is it going," she asked him curiously.
"Oh, just a routine monitor sweep," he told her. But his voice was quieter now, as if he sensed the question wasn't really about the Eagle at all. It made him wonder, where were they going?
For what felt like an age, Maya stood at the window, her gaze lost in the endless expanse of the universe stretching out before them. Tony wasn't entirely sure what she saw out there, and the uncertainty unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Was she searching for something? A connection? A memory? Or possibly answers?
Maybe she was like the rest of them, just trying to make sense of it all.
Perhaps the sheer enormity of the endless black sea had simply drawn her in, its silent tug as irresistible as a whispered call from somewhere beyond her reach.
There was a stillness about her, but it wasn't the stillness of peace.
It was the silence of someone caught in a storm too tangled to escape.
To Tony, it seemed more like the quiet of someone caught in a storm of thoughts too jumbled and too tangled to unravel. He found himself wondering what was going through her mind, what types of questions might she be trying to find answers to?
Something about the way she stood there, composed yet obviously vulnerable, pulled at him. She'd lost everything and he wanted to reach out; to offer her something but words, the right words were evading him.
And somehow, he didn't want to invade her personal space with a gesture. Instead, he chose to simply stand near her, a respectable distance between them.
There was something about this view; from this room, that set it apart from anywhere else on Alpha. Selfishly, he had come to regard it as a kind of refuge. A place where he could breathe, where the immensity of the universe made everything else seem smaller, more distant. Strange, really, how staring into the abyss could feel like a kind of peace.
The lunar landscape sprawled before them. Barren and unyielding, cold as the vacuum beyond them.
It was a stark reminder of their fragile existence, this lonely moon drifting through the infinite. Beyond it, the stars glittered, their beauty as breathtaking as cruel. They whispered promises of wonders untold, yet Tony couldn't quite ignore the lurking thought that danger might be waiting just out of sight.
Still, he had learned to focus on the mystery and majesty of it all, shoving the darker possibilities into the farthest corner of his mind, where they couldn't trouble him. Most days, that worked.
Most days.
He glanced over at her and noticed the subtle change in her posture. The tension in her shoulders had eased, just slightly. Whatever she was searching for in the silence, she had found something out there. A measure of solace. A sense of perspective.
He didn't rush her, sensing that she needed this moment, this quiet communion with the infinite. Perhaps it was profound. Perhaps it was necessary. Either way, he understood it because he needed it too.
After a while, she turned to him, her expression soft, her blue eyes carrying something he couldn't quite put into words.
"Tony, she said softly, choosing her words with care. "Tell me what happened. Tell me more about how Alpha, the moon, ended up here instead of still orbiting your home planet."
There was no demand in her voice, only genuine curiosity and something deeper. Understanding.
She was aware that this might be difficult for him to explain, their loss, their journey. But she needed to know.
This was her home now.
These people, strangers for now, would in time become something more.
Friends. A family, of a sort. She needed to understand what they had endured. She needed to understand them.
Tony looked at her for a long moment, his dark eyes shadowed with the weight of memories that refused to fade.
He took a slow breath, as if steadying himself, the past pressing down on him in a way it hadn't in a long time.
Then, wordlessly, he moved to sit on the top step.
"It's a long story," he murmured, his voice quiet, tinged with a sadness he never quite learned to shake.
He extended a hand to her, a silent invitation.
Maya hesitated only for a moment before taking it.