Over the Moon (Star-Crossed Book 1)

C
opyright
© 2015 by K. McLaughlin.

A
ll rights reserved
. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

R
ole
of the Hero Publishing

Boston, MA

www.roleofthehero.com

P
ublisher’s Note
: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

I
SBN
: 978-0692695838

C
ARMEN WORKED
hard to draw breath. The books she’d read about rocket takeoffs were right: it felt like a giant hand was pushing her back into her seat. She could still breathe, but it was a lot less comfortable than she was used to! She felt the beginnings of a little anxiety but pushed it aside. It was harder to quell her excitement as the powerful engines blasted the shuttle aloft.

She’d never been in space before. What an awesome opportunity! And yes, nepotism had a little to do with her being allowed to go. Her father being appointed leader of the expedition probably helped a lot. But she didn't really care. She was going into space. That was what mattered.

Her excitement must've shown her face. "Your first time, too?" the man next to her asked. He looked like he was straining to breathe a little, but wasn’t having as hard a time with it as she was.

"Yes," Carmen gasped out. Then she laughed, a bubbly sound filled with joy. It just rolled out of her – she couldn’t help herself. It had been too long since she’d laughed like that. On the world below her, there was too little to laugh about right now.

The source of the outbreak was never seriously in question. A team in Antarctica was digging up meteorites, looking to bring them home for analysis. They were looking for mineral composition data or something boring like that. Carmen didn’t recall for sure, and it had been months since she’s read the initial news reports. What that team accidentally discovered was something else entirely, though.

One of the Antarctic team became sick before they even returned home. Nobody thought anything of it. Just another cold. But within a week the entire team was ill. Within two weeks, the entire team was dead. If things had stopped there, the whole event would've been a strange but curious anecdote. But by the time anyone realized there was an outbreak situation, it was too late. The virus – that's what they had discovered the thing was, eventually – spread like wildfire. No one on Earth had any natural immunity. Not to this virus, because it wasn't from here. Lab analysis of the virus left scientists certain it had evolved someplace other than our planet.

And that might spell the end of humanity, if someone didn't figure out a way to stop the virus.

Which was what her father intended. Earthbound labs hadn't seen much success in finding a cure for the virus. But someone had the bright idea that since the virus came from space, they might have better luck finding a cure in low or zero gravity environment. Personally Carmen thought that was bullshit. It was bad science at best. More likely, some politician didn't want the lab testing to be taking place anywhere close to his home, and came up with the idea as a way to ensure the research was being done as far away as humanly possible.

There’d been a base on the moon for two years now. It was small, but it was slowly growing. There were not a lot of amenities, but there was a basic lab and the ship she was riding in was carrying out everything else that her father would need to find a cure.

"So, are you going up with the med techs, or the engineering geeks?" the man next to her asked.

"Medical," Carmen replied.

That was where the nepotism came in. Carmen's father was a virologist. He was widely considered one of the best in the world – privately, Carmen thought he was
the
best, but she recognized she might have a personal bias. After finishing medical school she followed in her father's footsteps. And she was a fairly respected neurologist in her own right, though nothing near her father's stature. When her father was assigned as the head of this mission, he was pretty much handed a blank check by the United States government. Whatever Dr. Rosa said he needed, Dr. Rosa got.

Dr. Rosa said he needed his daughter to go with them to the moon. Carmen Rosa got a ticket on the same rocket her father was taking.

In the back of her head, Carmen had niggling doubts about whether her father had invited her for her expertise, or just to keep her safe. The virus had spread worldwide on Earth. Tens of thousands of people had already died, and the number of sick might already be in the millions. No place left on the planet was really, truly safe. But the moon was still clean. The lunar base, completely cut off from Earth, had been carefully isolated. Everything going up was sterilized – twice. The passengers and crew were carefully decontaminated after undergoing a battery of tests to ensure they were not carriers of the virus.

So did her father want her along because he respected her expertise in their field, and wanted her help? Or was he sending her to the one place that he knew she wouldn't die of the virus before he could find a cure? She didn't know the answer, and part of her didn't really want to.

"Wait – are you Dr. Rosa’s daughter?" the man next to her asked.

Carmen nodded. She wondered how often she would be asked that question in the days ahead.

"That's awesome!" he said. He smiled at her. He had red hair, and freckles covered most of his face. He had to be a couple of years younger than her. He certainly seemed friendly enough, though. And Lord knew, she can use someone to talk to up here!

"Yes, I'm Carmen," she said.

“I'm Jacob. It's awesome to meet you.”

She smiled back, wondering how many times a conversation she was going to hear the word ‘awesome’.

And then they hit the edge of space, and everything changed.

The sudden shift took Rosa by surprise. She knew intellectually what to expect for the transition from high thrust to sudden weightlessness. But when the main thrusters cut off, it was like being tossed off the top of the world. Her body told her that she was falling, and for a moment she could feel terror boiling up inside her.

Then her mind took over again. Falling was nonsense. She wasn't falling at all. She was flying!

What an amazing experience. She set aside the faint grumbling from her stomach, which was still trying to adjust to the lack of up and down, and unbuckled herself from her seat. Next to her, Jacob was turning a color somewhere between white and green, holding a hand over his mouth. If he heaved, it was going to get everywhere!

"Didn't you take the space sickness shot before you left?" she asked him.

He shook his head, growing greener by the moment. She couldn't really chastise him - she had opted not to get the anti-nausea shot, too. She didn't want her first moments in space tainted or diminished by sedating medication. But where her stomach seemed willing to tolerate the experience, his clearly was not. She looked around for a space-sick bag. The last thing she wanted was bits of...stuff...floating around here in zero gravity!

There they were! She snagged one of the small packets from the pouch in front of her seat. She ripped open the plastic wrapper and opened the bag inside.

“Here,” she said, handing the device to Jacob. He took it with a grateful look, pressing the opening in front of his mouth.

Carmen wasn’t sure if he was going to barf or not, but she wasn’t really feeling good about sticking around to find out. At the same time, she felt bad about just flitting away and leaving him feeling miserable by himself. She floated there next to her chair, undecided.

“Everyone all right in here?” The woman’s voice came a voice from the front of the compartment. It was the co-pilot, who’d helped get them strapped into their seats before takeoff. She kicked off from the hatch, up near the cockpit, and drifted down the center of the compartment, checking faces as she went.

“Anyone having second thoughts about the space-sickness shot?” she asked. Carmen saw she already had a little plastic container with syringes in her hand. She looked around, and saw a number of green faces in several nearby seats.

“Over here, I think,” Carmen said, waving at Jacob. Jacob nodded his head vigorously, looking even more miserable.

“Here to help,” the woman said. Carmen read her nametag as she went by. It read Sullivan. With deft hands, the woman opened the plastic contained, while hanging on to the chair by hooking her feet. She slipped on a pair of plastic gloves, pulled out one of the prefilled shots, and popped it into Jacob’s arm.

“There. You’ll be right as rain in a little bit,” the woman said. “How about you, hon?” she asked Carmen.

“I think I’m OK, thanks.”

The woman scrutinized her carefully. “You look fine. Tell me if you change your mind, though. Plenty of others around here to see to, anyway.” She rolled her eyes.

“Is not taking the shot a common problem, Ms. Sullivan?” Carmen asked.

“Amy, please. And yes.” She pushed off to the next chair, and administered a shot to the man suffering there. “Lots of newbies think that they’re going to be the ones who can manage space without feeling sick. Most of us can’t. Most people feel at least a little sick. You got a headache yet?”

Carmen nodded. “A little,” she admitted.

Amy smiled. “Got some Tylenol for that, if you want.” She fished a packet out of a pocket and pushed it gently through the air. It floated the distance between them, and Carmen caught it easily.

“Water?” Carmen asked.

“They’ll come around with some drinks in a while. But for now, you can run back to the galley – next compartment back. Ask for a water bulb there.”

“Thanks for the help!” Carmen said.

She turned to look at Jacob again, who seemed a little less ill. She was excited about the idea of getting out and about, and seeing some more of the ship. So far, all she’d seen was this room. They were going to be stuck on board for two days – she might as well explore a little.

“You up for looking around a bit?” she asked Jacob.

“No,” he said with a wry grin. “Maybe in a bit. Feeling a little better, but I think I’ll just sit here a while and get whatever amounts to space legs. You go ahead.”

Didn’t have to tell her twice. Carmen always did better on her own, anyway. She flashed him a smile in return – no harm in being polite. Then she kicked off gently in the direction Amy pointed. Or she meant to, anyway. But instead of jetting gently in the direction she wanted to travel, she realized that she was drifting off to her left. She was going to crash into the row of chairs, and she gritted her teeth in embarrassment.

There had to be a way to stop herself. She tried to twist about, so she could get her feet where they could hook on to something. But all she did was start spinning as well as drifting. That little burst of nausea she felt when her stomach first reacted to zero gravity came back with a vengeance as the world spun past her eyes.

“Whoa there,” Amy said, gently catching her by an ankle. “Take it slow. You’ll be popping around like a pro by the time we reach Luna, but it takes time to get used to moving around up here.”

“So I see,” Carmen said, feeling a little sheepish.

“Still feeling OK?” Amy asked her.

She really wasn’t, Carmen realized. Her stomach was the worse for wear after the tumble, and her head was really pounding. But she figured the former would quiet if she could just avoid making like a human carousel, and the latter she could fix with the Tylenol and some water.

“Yeah, I’ll be OK,” she said. It wasn’t really a lie. She would be OK.

“All right then, off you go. I’m headed back to the cockpit to relieve the pilot. He gets grumpy if he doesn’t get his coffee. You get along.”

Carmen got. This was a big ship, and there was a lot to see. She wanted to get about seeing it – as carefully as possible. This time, she moved more carefully, keeping one hand in contact with something at all times, moving hand over hand. She wasn’t surprised to see there were a lot of handholds and contact points spread over the interior of the ship. But she was grateful all the same.

When Carmen reached the hatch at the far side of the compartment, she caught a rail bolted to the wall and brought herself to a stop. She pulled her tablet from a pocket and brought up a map of the ship’s interior that she saved there before boarding. It seemed like it might come in handy, and she hadn’t quite had time yet to commit it to memory.

The nose of the ship was the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot stayed. After that were passenger compartments. There were two levels of compartments, one stacked atop the other. Upstairs, they had two rows of small semi-private rooms, two bunks to a room. Actual places to lie down and sleep. Carmen figured by the time she reached the moon she’d be dying for a chance to lay down in a real bed. The bottom two compartments were significantly less posh. They amounted to rows of chairs, which could be tilted back far enough that you could almost stretch out in them. She messed around with the controls before takeoff. It looked like something one could probably fall asleep on, if you were tired enough. But it wasn’t going to be very comfortable.

Luckily, they’d be at the lunar base in about forty-eight hours. So the discomfort wouldn’t last too long.

Back from the passenger area were the passenger service sections. There was a galley, for preparing food, and a dining area where passengers could eat in shifts. The map showed a few other rooms in that section of the ship. There was an infirmary, for example, and a few storage rooms.

And then there was the rear half of the ship – all taken up by cargo space. A lot of the cargo this trip was the supplies for her father’s work. And her work, she reminded herself. She was determined to prove she was along for more than just her last name!

Maybe she could slip back into the cargo space to see how those canisters fared during takeoff. If things had shifted, fallen... It could set back their work if certain pieces of equipment were broken or damaged. And time was of the essence. She felt each hour pass by like she was watching sand sift through an hourglass. Carmen had seen the videos of some of the worst affected cities. Houston was a disaster area, and many other cities were just as bad. The worst part about a global epidemic was that nowhere was really safe. People were dying all over.

The sooner they could get to the moon and start working on a cure, the better.

She slipped the tablet back in her pocket and pulled herself closer to the door. An electronic sensor spotted her and opened the hatch, the door receding into the wall with a hiss of pressure equalizing. Carmen pulled herself through. The next room was interesting. Staff were folding open tables in the dining area, preparing for people to arrive – but the tables were on the ceiling, and all the walls! She felt a moment of disorientation, watching a table unfold on what felt like the wall next to her. She shook her head gently. No up, no down, remember? She tried to wrap her head around the concept, and how it would impact every bit of day-to-day life here. At least on the moon, they’d have gravity – even if it was only a fraction of Earth’s. Here, life was very strange.