Weekly Goals

Here's Monday's Entry: After finding the fourteenth bolt along the spine of Augustus, Nakul grasped the wrench at his left thigh. Kema’s voice crackled in his helmet. “You sure you’re on the right one?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Nakul said. He pressed the button, the wrench activated, and the nut came free. “Okay, pull.” The end of the bolt disappeared and gas began to waft gently out of the hole, sublimating to a crystalline fog. Nakul waved the fog away. “Hurry up, now, we’re losing atmosphere.”

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses.” The expanse of Earth stretched out behind him, but Nakul kept his eyes on the bolthole so he could reattach the nut when Kema stuck the new bolt through. “Okay, I’m putting it through now,” she said, and Nakul reached up with the wrench again.
As Kema sighted through the hole to insert the bolt, she saw a flash of light through the hole from—somewhere behind Nakul. “Did you see that?”

“Stop fooling around,” Nakul said. “Put the bolt through.”

“No, something’s going on behind you,” Kema said. She put her eye up to the hole. “Wave the gas away so I can see.”

Nakul ignored her, flipped over, and looked down. Far below, above the cloud layer, he could see thin contrails connecting continents. Some had red circles at their ends, and as he watched, there were two white flashes under the clouds on the west coast of North America. About where Los Angeles would be. “Oh, no,” Nakul said.

Kema plunged the bolt into the hole. “Put the nut on and get back in here, Major,” Kema said in her commanding-officer voice.

Nakul responded as he had been trained to respond. “Yes, ma’am.” He tightened the nut and made his way to the hatch.