Chapter Text
On June 23, 1969, Kit and Airk Tanthalos are born in Houston, Texas. That same day, 384,400 km away, the first human being sets foot on the moon. His name is Alexei Leonov and, with their new-born twins swaddled in their arms, Madmartigan and Sorsha Tanthalos listen to his speech, translated by the radio announcer.
I take this step for my country, for my people, and for the Marxist-Leninist way of life, knowing that today is but one small step on a journey that someday will take us all to the stars.
Only a month later, on July 24th, Madmartigan Tanthalos becomes one of the first Americans to step out onto the lunar surface. Sorsha Tanthalos helps direct the mission as a flight controller at the Johnson Space Center while the twins are at home with their nanny, Gretta.
In 1974, just before Kit and Airk turn five, the United States establishes a permanent lunar base, which it calls Jamestown. Madmartigan is one of the first occupants of the base, remaining on the moon for nearly a year. Kit tells everyone in her kindergarten class that she's going to follow him up into space as soon as she's old enough. She and Airk build their own moon base on the playground, dull brown sand standing in for the gray lunar dust.
By the end of the 1970s, Sorsha Tanthalos has been promoted to flight director, and both the American and Soviet lunar bases have expanded from small, cramped shelters, into little settlements capable of housing a few dozen people. Kit and Airk grow up in the viewing gallery at the Johnson Space Center, watching their mother direct missions from behind rows of high-tech computers, as the giant screens project their father’s flights back and forth between Earth and the moon.
This is where Kit meets Jade Claymore. The daughter of one of the engineers, the freckled girl sits beneath a pile of books, quietly doing her homework every day until Kit finally works up the nerve to talk to her. Jade's still quiet after that, but she lets Kit ramble at her for hours and she seems to enjoy it, or at least listens better than Airk does.
Jade doesn't need to be loud for Kit to see that she's brilliant. And not just at the schoolwork she devotes herself to so diligently. Jade follows along with Mission Control as she works, listening closely, sometimes mumbling the answers to the adults' engineering problems in her low, rich accent, as she scratches the graphite of her B2 pencil across her notebook.
More often than not, Jade’s answers are right. It isn't long before Kit decides that when she goes up to the moon, Jade’s the one she wants by her side for it. Jade, and Madmartigan of course.
Meanwhile, the Cold War heats up both on Earth and in space, and by 1983, the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union reaches its peak. In August of that year, NASA launches the Sea Dragon 16, carrying nuclear fuel to Jamestown. On September 19, conflict breaks out on the moon between American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.
Air Raid sirens back on Earth prompt Kit, Airk and Jade, to bunker down in the fallout shelter under the Tanthalos family home. At fourteen years old, the twins have outgrown Gretta and the three of them are alone, huddled around their battery radio, waiting for news of nuclear fallout. Three times, Jade and Airk need to hold Kit back from leaving the shelter to walk the twenty miles to the Space Center. Three times they convince her to stay, if only because if Kit leaves, they will follow her, and she can't gamble their lives like that. No matter how badly she needs to know what's happening to her parents.
Still, Jade sits in front of the door all night, always keeping one eye on Kit, and Airk falls asleep gripping Kit’s hand so tightly that it's numb by morning.
The next day, when it’s safe to leave the shelter, Sorsha tells Kit and Airk that their father is dead. He was killed fixing the coolant system on the base, preventing a meltdown of the nuclear reactor that the Sea Dragon 16 had delivered the materials for only a month before. He died a national hero. He would never be forgotten. He'd loved them both so much.
All Kit can comprehend is that he's never coming home. That loss opens up a fissure in Kit’s life, dividing it into before and after. The rest of her childhood falls through that crack, and the girl she once was is lost forever.
Childhood becomes adolescence, and Kit grows up fast and angry. She is only barely kept in line by her deepening friendship with Jade and their shared dream to touch the stars. Even so, her High School days are marked by misdemeanors and a rapidly deteriorating relationship with her mother. It's a minor miracle that Kit makes it to graduation, but despite it all, she's accepted into her first-choice college.
In 1991, Kit graduates from the United States Air Force Academy's Space Training Program and applies for a job at NASA. Jade is already working there as a junior engineer, having graduated the year prior from MIT. After almost five years apart, the two of them are reunited when Kit is accepted into the astronaut program.
Three months later, in August of that year, NASA announces its plans for the first manned mission to Mars.