Chapter Text
The move to Baikonur Cosmodrome had been a logistical nightmare. Stratt worked for weeks to make sure they were able to transport all of the taskforce members and research from the aircraft carrier to the facility. Specialized equipment that they couldn't transport had to be built over there to exact specifications. The Russians had to erect additional temporary living facilities—which were not yet finished—to accommodate all of the new residents. In their defense, they had also been coordinating the preparatory launches for the building of the Hail Mary. Each launch had contained a package with a different section of the ship to be assembled by astronauts at the International Space Station. While Baikonur had been balancing the launches with preparations for the arrival of the project members, Stratt had been balancing keeping track of everything as the project ramped up, and the move had sort of happened in between everything else. Something had to give, and in Stratt's case, it was sleep, mostly.
All that to say, it was finally done, and Stratt breathed a sigh of relief as she settled in the chair behind her desk in her portable. She pulled out her phone and set the timer for five minutes. Then she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling, slow and deep. When her timer went off, she opened her eyes and got back to work. There were two weeks until the final launch, anything going wrong now could be catastrophic. A setback would cost lives, a fact of which Stratt was hyper-aware. The last update from Leclerc had not been encouraging, and every day they didn't launch, the death toll rose. Famine, war, disease. Death. The horsemen of the apocalypse rode circles around Stratt's mind as she sorted through her email. Problems with some of the scientific equipment she forwarded on to Grace, who would get back to her once he'd determined if it could be fixed or if they would need emergency replacements. An updated map of the temporary living quarters, which she immediately sent to her printer so that she would have a hard copy to keep on her. Dr. Komorov's mass email about team drinks in Baikonur's officers' bar, which went right into the trash folder.
More concerning were the hundreds of small, non-catastrophic problems that the ESA test crew had encountered while testing out the Hail Mary's systems. Nothing had been serious enough to stop or delay the launch, but each time Stratt received one of their emails, she held her breath until she had read every word. Both Stratt and Grace were cc'd on those. It was close enough to the launch now that there was very little she handed off in its entirety. Everything passed through her, even if she did not deal with it directly. Through with her emails, only slightly less numerable than they had been on the aircraft carrier, she shuffled through the paper reports that had been delivered to her by Grace that morning. The Russians, she had known from experience, preferred paper over digital. The dismayed expression on Grace's face when he had found out the hard way had only been a little funny.
For the next several hours, Stratt slogged her way steadily through the paperwork, only coming to a stop when she had a remote meeting with the UN to give an update on the move—complete—and the current launch status—on schedule. A meeting which could have been an email, Stratt thought irritably once it was over. In an uncharitable moment, the thought crossed her mind that they just liked displaying they still had some power over her. That they just wanted to prove that they could make her show up. She wondered what they would have done if she had just sent an email instead and been done with it rather than wasting an hour going into details that the UN representatives didn't really need.
Stratt made another pot of strong coffee and grabbed a bag of jerky from the cabinet of her little kitchenette. Not the best flavor combination, but the protein was filling and she needed the caffeine for her burgeoning headache. When she returned to her computer, she pulled up the spreadsheet for the next week's schedules. Stratt had implemented this once they got down to an estimated one year remaining until launch. It was a living document where she and all of the other scientific heads could work out the best way to use the time they had for training and checks and last minute adjustments. The schedule also made sure that people had designated time for rest. The last thing she needed was a bunch of scientists burning out on the final leg of the project, not to mention the astronauts, who needed to be in good mental and physical condition to make sure nothing went wrong with the coma induction. Stratt finalized it herself each night. Changes could not be made past 20:00 except in the case of emergency, and even then, they had to go through Stratt first.
Someone knocked on her trailer door, and Stratt knew it wasn't Ilyukhina. The other woman had been notably absent from any kind of personal setting since their last meeting. Their last one-on-one meeting. When Stratt had made it clear that they had to adhere to a strictly professional relationship. Camaraderie—or whatever it was that they had—wasn't helping either of them. The project had to come first. Stratt stood by what she had said, she had to, but it did not stop the swooping sensation in her stomach any time someone knocked.
"Come in," she called, not bothering to stand from her desk.
The door swung open, bringing a voice with it. "How many times have I told you to lock the door?" Carl stepped into the trailer, closing and locking the door behind him.
"How many times have I told you that we are perfectly safe here?" Stratt retorted, looking up from the schedule.
"Yeah, that's why I almost had to take a bullet for you," Carl scoffed.
Stratt tsked. "We were not on the grounds yet," she said dismissively. The attempt he was referring to had occurred at the airport as they were transferring from her private jet to the cars that would take them to Baikonur. Someone—she had never found out if it was an airport employee or a trespasser—had taken a couple of shots at her. Not the team, thank goodness, very specifically her. At the sound of the first shot, her freeze response had kicked in for one millisecond before she dropped to the ground, arms over her head, and Carl had leapt in front of her. Either the shooter had terrible aim, or they had only been trying to scare her. As though she hadn't already gone through four such attempts. No one had been hurt, and the shooter had been apprehended by airport security.
The attempts on her life didn't scare her. They never had really. There was something reassuring about them, a confirmation of a sort. Stratt knew that her decisions weren't good, even if they were the right ones to make. She knew that she deserved to be punished for what she had done, no matter the intention behind her actions. No matter that she hadn't asked for power or acted with malice—just the opposite in fact. The assassination attempts were a price that she readily accepted. Not that she would ever admit that to anyone. Carl, she was sure, suspected that she felt some kind of way about them, and not the way she probably should.
Stratt had insisted that they keep the assassination attempts under wraps as much as possible. No distractions, especially if people were only gunning for her. Though, just like at NASA, she had the security at Baikonur doubled and then tripled after the event at the airport. The Russians had come to the same conclusion, mortified that an attempt had happened on their soil, and this close to the end of the project, no one was taking chances.
"Do you need something?" Stratt asked when Carl took a seat in the little kitchen booth. She checked the time on the corner of her desktop screen. "It is barely dinner time, are you already here to remind me to eat?"
Carl and Grace had been taking turns making sure Stratt didn't neglect herself for the project, though Grace had become almost just as busy, which meant Carl had ended up checking on him as well. Thankfully, their portables were right next to each other, so it was easy to go right from one to the other.
"That and to let you know that the security patrols have been finalized. We've plugged all the holes, physical and virtual. Anyone who wants to sabotage or otherwise harm the project will have a hard time making any headway."
Stratt nodded and stood, stretching. Several joints popped, including a long line up her spine. She sighed in relief and then made her way to the stove. Carl was already there, so she may as well start dinner. Proof she was eating. "Good," she replied, filling a pot with water. She glanced over at Carl. "Pasta?"
"You don't have to," he said, his customary response whenever she offered to feed him. She wasn't a good cook, but if she had someone to cook for she was more likely to eat herself.
Stratt shrugged. "Message Grace, tell him there is pasta. It is better than ramen at least, and lord knows that is what he will be eating."
Carl pulled out his phone while Stratt put the water on to boil. She pulled out the box of fusilli and measured out three portions, setting them to the side while she seasoned the water. There was an unopened jar of garlic marinara in the pantry, which she set on the counter as well.
The water was close to boiling when there was another knock on the door. Carl stood and let Grace into the portable after checking to make sure it was him. Stratt rolled her eyes at the dramatics. "Hello, Dr. Grace. Please take a seat," she said, gesturing to the little booth.
Grace slid onto the bench seat beside Carl. Stratt narrowed her eyes at him. He looked tired, shadows under his eyes that were almost as bad as the ones she saw in the mirror. "Smells good," Grace said, inhaling deeply.
"I have not even properly started cooking yet," Stratt replied.
Grace looked sheepish. "I may have forgotten to eat lunch." Stratt arched her eyebrows. "Oh, like you had lunch," Grace said.
"I did," Stratt said, adding the pasta to the pot.
"Oh yeah? What?"
"Beef jerky."
"That's not a meal!" Grace sputtered. "That's a snack at best!"
"It is better than nothing," Stratt retorted smoothly.
"Such a double standard," Grace muttered.
"This is the most hypocritical conversation I've ever heard. You're both terrible," Carl said, shaking his head. "I have no idea how you're still alive. Either of you."
"Skittles," Grace replied, and Stratt twitched imperceptibly. "In Stratt's case, I'm guessing coffee and sheer willpower."
Stratt pressed her lips together. "And the knowledge that if I stop, the project may very well fail."
"So, no pressure," Grace said, sighing.
"No pressure," Stratt agreed, stirring the pot when it threatened to bubble over.
"So how have the astronauts been settling in?" Grace asked in an innocent voice. "Have you seen them?"
Stratt stopped stirring and stared into the bubbles, caught off guard. The steam burned Stratt's hand when she kept it over the top of the pot too long. She hissed and yanked it away, shaking it. The skin was red and angry, so she turned to the sink. The sound of the running water gave her an excuse not to answer for a moment. There was a presence beside her and then Grace was handing her the first aid kit from the bathroom cabinet. She blinked as he turned off the water with his other hand. How long had she–?
"You okay?" Carl asked, coming up on her other side. He reached across to take the first aid kit that Grace was still holding out. He opened it and pulled out the little tube of burn cream.
"Fine," she replied, waving them off. "It just surprised me. The burn is only superficial. There is no need for that." She moved back over to the stove.
"Why don't you let me get that," Grace said. "You look tired enough to fall asleep standing up, and if you burn this thing down, I don't think the Russians will appreciate the property damage."
Stratt sighed and thought about fighting him, but her hand was stinging and Grace's question had thrown her. She relinquished the spoon and moved over to the little table. Carl joined her and leaned in. "You dodged his question."
"I did nothing of the sort," Stratt said, sniffing. "The astronauts have not said otherwise in the meetings so I assume they are settling in just fine."
"Uh huh." Carl gave her a scrutinizing look. "You haven't been avoiding them, have you? The astronauts?"
The astronauts. Stratt could read between the lines well enough to hear what he wasn't saying. "Of course not," she replied. "Why would you think that?"
Carl gave her a knowing look. "Ilyukhina hasn't been around in a while, and not just since we moved to Baikonur."
All movement by the stove stopped and a tense silence filled the portable. Carl didn't flinch, didn't back off. He just looked at Stratt with dark, steady eyes. And Stratt looked back, her blue eyes as cool and unreadable as she could manage. Anxiety radiated from Grace, just out of sight, but they both ignored it. Stratt held herself very still and straight, every thought, every emotion, every cell in her body locked down.
"We have all been busy with the project," Stratt replied, voice giving away absolutely nothing. "There has been less free time for everyone. I have had no time for social calls, I assume that neither have the astronauts with the increased training schedule and medical testing."
"Uh huh," Carl replied, unconvinced.
Stratt pursed her lips. "Do not make me regret having you here for dinner," she said. "I can still make both of you leave."
"But I didn't do anything!" Grace yelped, whirling around, spoon in hand.
Stratt kept her gaze fixed on Carl. "Consider it incentive. Do you want to have to deal with Grace pouting"—"I do not pout!"—"because you did not leave well enough alone?"
Carl raised his hands in surrender and sat back. "Fine. But whatever went down, I can see it eating at you," he said, one last push—she hoped. "And I can see it eating at her as well." Stratt's expression remained fixed. "You may want to address it sooner, rather than..." His voice was quiet as it trailed off, but it hit like a punch to her gut.
Stratt opened her mouth to ask them to leave when Grace swooped in with three bowls of pasta. "Alright, enough of that now," he said, casting a not-so-subtle worried look at Stratt and an extremely obvious shut up look at Carl. Carl put his hands up in surrender before taking a bowl. Still bristling, Stratt took one as well.
The bowl of pasta sat on the table in front of her, but Carl's words had chased away her appetite, so she poked at the food with her fork while the boys dug in more enthusiastically. When she felt the weight of eyes on her, Stratt shoved a small forkful of pasta into her mouth. She forced herself to chew and swallow, but it didn't taste like anything to her. Grace began chattering about something, Stratt didn't keep track. She ate mechanically, and when she was finished, she cleared their bowls from the table. While she was rinsing them in the sink, she saw Grace and Carl exchange a look in her peripheral vision.
"If there is nothing else, I believe you two have team drinks to get to, provided you have finished your work for the day?" Stratt glanced over her shoulder at Grace.
"No, yeah, I have. I was actually wondering if you were going?" Grace asked. "It might be good for morale if you–"
"I assure you, it will not be," Stratt said, cutting him off. "Have a good night."
Grace ran his hand over his hair and glanced at Carl, who shrugged. "Okay, then, we'll see you tomorrow at the morning meeting," Grace said. "Good night."
Before Carl followed Grace out, he turned and took a step closer to Stratt. "Get some sleep," he said in what Stratt thought of as his security voice. "And for the love of god, talk to Ilyukhina. I know Grace has tried to get you to, and he's right. You should. I'm not saying you're a coward, but you are hiding." Stratt opened her mouth, but Carl kept talking. "Your work is just a convenient excuse. You don't have all the time in the world, don't let it run out."
Then Carl was gone before Stratt could recover enough to respond. After the door swung shut with a snap, Stratt stood for a moment in the silence. All traces of camaraderie were gone from the room. The rush of running water kept her company as she properly washed the bowls and then set them on the drying rack. Then she braced her hands against the counter and hung her head.
The moment Ilyukhina got word that DuBois was running a test on the astrophage generators with Shapiro of all people instead of her, she started toward the research center. Baikonur was primarily a launch center, not really meant for the kind of research they were still performing for the Hail Mary launch. They'd had to retrofit some of the rooms—more like classrooms really—into laboratories to continue work on the project while they were there. The research center was several kilometers from the living quarters and crew communal spaces, but the walk would be good for her.
Ilyukhina was the one in charge of the ship and the equipment. DuBois wouldn't appreciate her interrupting his experiment, but since he should have included her to begin with, she decided not to feel bad about it. Besides, Ilyukhina was glad to have somewhere to focus her persistent frustration. It was nice to have her thoughts spinning out over something new and different. A distraction from her last conversation with Stratt. Really she had done it to herself. She should have known what would happen, the attachment she would feel that Stratt couldn't reciprocate. Ilyukhina shook it from her mind as she walked, wrapping her arms around herself. The generators, she redirected her thoughts. The unlikely possible failure state. She'd planned on checking it out herself the next day anyway. DuBois should have waited, or at least consulted her.
It wasn't quite dark yet, still early enough in the evening that the light was only just starting to dim as she made the trek from the officer's bar. Cold bit at her face as she walked, and she shoved her hands into her pockets. Nine days until launch, and she couldn't get in the ship fast enough.
Tires crunched on the dirt and then slowed beside her. "Need a ride?" came a deep Russian voice.
Ilyukhina looked up to see one of the non-project Baikonur employees. It was one of the security personnel, she couldn't remember his name. "Yes, thank you," she replied, walking around to swing herself into the passenger seat of the jeep.
"Research center?" he asked.
Ilyukhina nodded and clasped one hand around the oh-shit handle as the jeep jumped back up to full speed. She didn't bother with the seatbelt. The research center was a little more than two kilometers away, she didn't need to–
A bright light flashed across her vision. The security guard jerked the jeep to a halt, then he started to turn around, shouting something at her just as the shockwave hit them. Ilyukhina was thrown free of the vehicle. She crossed her arms over her head, curling her body into a ball. The ground slammed in to her right side and all of the air rushed from her chest in a silent cry, tears squeezing from her eyes. When her breath returned, her throat tore in a pained scream that she did not hear. There was another rush of air and brief darkness as something large flew over her, sharp pain shot through her body over and over as she tumbled across the ground. Another shockwave, debris stinging her face, hair whipping, another series of skidding tumbles as she felt her skin scrape and bruise. Up was down and down was up, a flash of dimming sky and gray dirt over and over. A bright burst of pain in her head.
And then she knew nothing at all.
The reports in front of Stratt drifted in and out of focus as exhaustion pulled at her. Sleep had been even more elusive for the past five days. They were coming up on one week until the launch, and the ESA astronauts were still finding problems with the ship. All small, but all needed to be fixed nonetheless. She signed off on another work order and set it aside. There were outgoing and incoming document boxes outside of her portable that were checked by runners multiple times per day. The stack of completed documents on her desk was tall enough now that she stood, tension headache spiking behind her eyes, and picked them up to–
The windows of her portable shattered inward, sending shards of glass flying into the room. Stratt dropped the documents and raised her arms to cover her face as the shockwave rocked her portable and sent her slamming into the opposite wall. She dropped to the floor, dazed, only to be glad she hadn't tried to stand when a second shockwave hit, rattling her portable again.
Grace was closest. Stratt took the radio from her hip and clicked it on. "Grace?! Are you okay?!" she called and then flexed her jaw to pop her ears when she realized her hearing was muffled. Still, a faint ringing persisted but that could have just been from slamming her head against the wall.
After one tense moment, Grace's voice crackled over the radio and Stratt breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah! What the heck was that?!"
"I don't know," Stratt said, pushing herself to her feet. "Hang on." There wasn't time to get dressed, so she threw on a robe over her pajamas and slammed her socked feet into her boots. Out of habit, she swiped the schedule charts from her desk, shoving them in her pocket. When she opened the door to leave, it had gotten darker out than she realized, so she grabbed her flashlight from where it was hanging from a strap on a hook beside the door.
The first step out of her door threatened to send her to her ass as she realized one second too late that the stairs simply weren't there anymore. Her hand flailed out and grabbed the doorframe as she quickly shifted her body weight back to the safety of the doorway, just avoiding falling. She swung her flashlight and saw the stairs several feet away from her. The shockwave, she realized. Her portable had been pushed back and the stairs, more firmly anchored into the ground, had not been. Left with no other choice, Stratt jumped to the ground, wincing when she felt the impact in her joints.
As she half-jogged to Grace's portable, lit up so that she could see his silhouette in his doorway, Stratt lifted her radio to her mouth again. "This is Stratt. What happened?" she demanded in Russian, the language certain to get her the fastest answer. She forced her panic down, forced herself to sound in control.
The answer came, faintly muffled. "Explosion at the research center." It was the worst possible answer. Stratt felt her gut clench, dread settling heavily over her.
Grace was looking at her questioningly, the Russian nonsense to him. "The research center blew up," she said, her voice distant even to her own ears.
Words reached her through her own, internal panic, and Stratt realized Grace was asking her something. "Who was there?!" The question was stressed, as though he had asked it at least once already.
Stratt's hands were shaking as she pulled the wadded up schedule charts from her robe pocket. "Hang on, hang on…" she trailed off as she rifled through the papers, throwing the useless ones to the ground. She felt Grace's eyes on her as she searched for the relevant page. Finally, there it was. Stratt felt a swoop of shock and dismay so strong that a gasp escaped her, visibly startling Grace. "DuBois and Shapiro. They're scheduled to be there doing some astrophage experiments." Her eyes were locked on the page. How had she missed that? A primary and back up doing experiments of that nature at the same time?
"You are working under such a sleep debt that you could have slept for thirty hours and it wouldn't have been enough. If you keep going like this you are going to make a mistake." Grace's voice haunted her. That had been so early in the project, and her sleeping habits had hardly gotten any better. She shuddered to think what her sleep debt must be now that the project was almost over.
And now here was her fatal mistake. An administrative error that she should have caught. That she would have caught if she had been able to get a full night's sleep. If her sleep debt hadn't been so high that if she slept for a year, she wouldn't make it up. A mistake that could cost her the project.
No, no, no.
"No! No, please no!" Stratt looked over, dazed, to see that Grace's head was in his hands. "The research center is five kilometers away. If the blast did this much damage to us here–" His eyes found Stratt's, wide and panicked.
"I know, I know!" She flicked on her radio again, barely able to keep her own panic out of her voice. Her own guilt already beginning to eat at her. "Prime crew—I need your locations. Call them in."
"Yáo here," came the first reply. "In my bunk."
Stratt waited, Grace tense beside her, but there was only silence after that. They exchanged a confused look. "Ilyukhina, check in. DuBois, check in."
Silence.
Stratt's brow furrowed, heart racing. "Shapiro?"
Nothing.
"Ilyukhina wasn't scheduled to be at the research center," Grace said, eyes wide. "Maybe she doesn't have her radio on her?"
Stratt pursed her lips. "Radios are required at all times, they know that. They all know that. Ilyukhina may be a menace sometimes, but she would not shirk procedure. I would not have let her stay on the project if that was the case." Stratt took a deep breath, her hands shaking. "Ilyukhina, check in. Report your location." She repeated the message in Russian as well.
Still there was no answer.
Grace's eyes were on her as she took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Then she clicked on her radio again. "Stratt to transport—I need a jeep to take me to Ground Control."
"Copy," came the reply.