Liberation – Reactor

A young woman is recruited to be part of Nigeria’s first ever space mission, but things go awry when the mission is thrown into chaos.

Novelette | 7,548 words

Zero

At first . . .

Udo Johnson is in a closed conference room with blacked-out windows, talking to an audience of corporate types, giving a speech about being an astronaut. She is twenty-seven, confident, and happy, about to fulfil a dream.

She says, “Humans were shaped by gravity. My body, my mind recoils at the idea of being in microgravity.”

Then she says, “Scared, no. Excited, yes. Sure, space flight is dangerous, but we’ll have dependable folks in mission control watching over us. Like guardian angels.”

Now . . .

Udo is on space station Liberation, in Earth orbit, in darkness except for one module, at one workstation.

She says, “Mission control, mission control, Liberation. I see flames, I see flames. Please advise.”

She flinches at the sound of metal rending and her heart beats faster than it already was. The light from the work area flickers.

Then she says, “Mission control, Liberation. Advise, advise. I see flames, I see flames.”

The light fizzles out and darkness takes hold, squeezing out hope.

One

Romeo “Bash” Bashorun stares at the interviewer’s mouth, mainly her lips, marvelling at how red she had managed to get them. Deep, deep scarlet.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” says Bash.

“I said, what do you know about the history of Nigeria’s involvement with space?”

Where to start? With the American president?

Because he is a visual thinker, he has a mental image of an object orbiting the Earth. It looks like the Death Star in miniature.

“On the tenth of July, 1962, NASA launched the Telstar 1 satellite. It was spherical, eighty-eight centimetres in diameter.”

Bash immediately pictures a man in Agbada, the Nigerian prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, swaddled in a turban, radiating gravitas and dignity, holding a satellite phone to his ear. He is a thin man with a light beard. He talks and listens, talks and listens.

“On August twenty-third, 1963, the Telstar enables the very first satellite phone call, which is between the Nigerian prime minister, Tafawa Balewa, and President John F. Kennedy of the United States. JFK talks about a new era of cooperation between the US and Nigeria, possibly the rest of Africa. It’s a good day. Optimism peppers the talk. They even squeeze in comments about boxing legend Dick Tiger.”

The interviewer must know all this. She sips water and her lips leave a smear of red on the glass.

Bash swallows. Pavlovian, maybe.

“History, fate, whatever you want to call it, had further plans for both men. They would each fall to assassins’ bullets, JFK in 1963 to a . . . heh . . . lone gunman in a window, and Balewa to renegade soldiers in the bloody Nigerian coup of 1966.”

Bash pictures Tafawa Balewa propped in a sitting position against a tree at a roadside just outside Lagos, in a flowing white gown, bloodied, unmoving, misbaha prayer beads in his right hand. And he pictures JFK by way of Zapruder, head exploding in perpetual real time, brains fanning out on the back of the presidential limo from a Krönlein shot, Jackie gathering skull fragments.

Bash experiences a brief, powerful feeling of sadness at what might have been if none of the bullets struck home. He looks to the floor to compose himself, then back at the interviewer.

He refocuses on the present. “Our involvement has been a lot more…peripheral since that time.”

He’s forgotten the interviewer’s name. She’s a special aide to the president, which is all he knows. She’s on television. Above her hairdo, the Nigeria coat of arms dominates the wall behind her.

“You went to space, right? In the old days?” she asks. Her eyes are black pits, but they are sharp and he knows she’s taking in everything.

“Not quite. I was in a MiG, got stratospheric, but I’ve never crossed the Kármán line.”

She looks puzzled.

“Kármán line is the edge of space, Ma,” says Bash.

“You flew the MiG?”

“No, but I was taken up to—”

“But you are a pilot?”

“Yes, although I haven’t flown in—”

“Clarify for me, Bashorun. You were meant to go to space at one point, right?”

“Yes. With the Americans. It didn’t work out.”

That was an understatement. In the name of international guilt about Africa, the powers at NASA decided it would be cool if the first Black person in space came from Nigeria. The search was on for a candidate. Bash was twenty and the best pilot in the country. They shipped him off to the US to train. As soon as Bash arrived, he knew it was a mistake. The Americans saw him as a token, a mascot. They condescended to him, asked him basic questions about flying. These people who, from Bash’s point of view, sat in a plane that almost flew for them. But he swallowed all of the bile and focused on mission training. It would be worth it just returning to Earth having orbited it a few times. He took a ton of photos with various celebrities and was feted by Black America.

A week to the mission, he was dropped. No reason given. Within three days he was back in Nigeria. He never flew again, could not bear to enter a cockpit.

He teaches now. He likes the students most of the time.

Esan. The interviewer’s name is Esan.

“What if I were to tell you we’re starting a space program?” Those eyes pinning him to the spot.

“You want me to go up in space?”

“You? No, Bashorun. You’re too old.”

“Of course.” These words pierce him, but he keeps his face like carved wood. He can bleed later.

“No, but we do want you to head up our program. Recruit, train, and run mission control.”

“What’s the mission?”

“First African team and spacecraft to orbit the planet.”

Bold. “Okay. Do we . . . where’s the spaceship?”

“Funny you should ask that…” Esan smiles for the first time.

There is a pipe that drips in Bash’s house, but try as he might, he cannot find it. No puddle of water anywhere, no discolouration of paint. The sound of dripping itself seems otherworldly and omnidirectional, so he can never localise it. It is loud, though. He can hear it from the lounge, where he sits in the dark, sipping a glass of Gulder and staring at nothing.

He hears wheels coming up to the front door, hears it unlock, open, close, and lock. He hears the sound of Riya no doubt swivelling and making her way towards him.

“Bash?” Her voice fills the space in seconds. Nobody expects the power of that voice coming from such a small frame, and Bash has never got used to it.

“Here,” he says. He sips the beer.

“In the dark? Did the interview go that bad?”

“They offered me a job,” says Bash. He stands to meet her and kisses her on the lips. Her hands rise up to his shoulders and stroke them. Her breath smells of the egusi she had for lunch.

“Don’t you already have a job? I thought they were going to fire you.”

“They could have done that by letter.”

“So, what?”

“They want me to build a space station in orbit, then select, train, and launch a crew that will orbit the Earth no less than twelve times, after which they will return to base.”

Riya expels a loud word of surprise and disposes of the expected reaction. Yorubas expect a performance when told something shocking. This is a kind of extroverted display of high expressed emotion to make the talker feel supported. Bash waits it out because Riya’s real reaction will come after.

“How do you feel about it?” she asks.

“Conflicted.”

“The pay?”

“Substantial.”

“Are you capable?”

“Yes.”

“Will the earlier space bullshit in your life get in the way?”

Bash exhales. “I honestly do not know.” He sips his drink. “But we’ll find out, won’t we?”

They give him an office in the statehouse and a budget. It is a weird time to be working for the federal government. The capital is in the process of moving from Lagos to Abuja, and everything is in transit and temporary. Esan abides, though. Stable and cheering him on.

They dump one hundred personnel files on him, hard copies that cannot leave the office, and they ask him to select a number of candidates for training.

“They aren’t all pilots,” he says to Esan.

“They don’t need to be in modern space travel,” says Esan. “They don’t fly the shuttle, and they don’t fly the space station.”

He hates the selection process, knowing that he will have to interview them without telling them what job he is considering them for. Exactly what Esan did to him. He wonders who else they looked at.

He cracks the space station problem first, although he has to Frankenstein it. He buys three almost-decommissioned modules from existing stations, one from the Americans, one from the Chinese, and one from the Russians. Through a masterful piece of diplomacy, Bash gets them to retrofit the coupling parts, though the Americans grumble a lot, talking about Soviet-era ghost ships whose orbit had, by some miracle, not naturally decayed into a graveyard orbit.

Before the deal closed a strange white man came fishing around the house and places that Bash frequented.

“CIA,” says Riya. “Vetting.”

Bash wants to call it Eagle One, since the eagle is Nigeria’s national bird, but Esan says the order from on high is to call it Liberation.

Bash keeps working, harbouring a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach because he thinks surely today will be the day the government pulls the plug, only they do not. He is on budget and solving all the emergent problems.

Too costly to build a shuttle? No big deal. We’ll rent one from the USA. That’s too expensive? We’ll hitch a ride on an Indian space mission. Won’t even have to build a super-long runway. Just ship the crew to Sriharikota.

Oh, the crew.

The components of Liberation mate, and it begins to orbit with all systems nominal. The Russians say they have changed all the instructions and displays to English, so the crew don’t have to learn Russian.

Liberation is ugly, misshapen, like a tumour hanging in formalin, not floating in space, but it doesn’t have to be pretty. Just functional for a few orbits with its historic crew in it.

When the Nigerian space effort internal documents are printed, Bash is not mentioned, only Esan and the president. He does appear deep in the article as a “consultant” with “lived experience of NASA,” whatever that means.

“Why do you care?” Riya asks. She is marking papers and doesn’t even look up.

“She’s taking credit for my work, but also preparing to cut me loose as the technical adviser should this go wrong.”

“Why does it matter? Do you want glory?”

“Of course I want glory. Do you know any pilot that doesn’t? My father looped the bridge at Onitsha. You think he didn’t look at that news clipping every chance he got?”

She stops. She taps her red pen on her lower lip, the colour reminding him of Esan. She stares at him. “That was an individual feat of prowess. This is politics. Worse, this is Nigerian politics. Just do your job and keep your head. And I mean that literally.”

Bash meets the proposed crew for the first time in a gymnasium. The one that shines the brightest as they stand in line is Udo Johnson. She’s a TV personality, Science Girl One, famous for popularising science among hard-to-reach groups, especially girls who are actively discouraged from being too booky. She has that attitude of being pretty and knowing it, as if she is aware of the camera angles even when there is no filming. Glamour. Movie-star charisma.

Paul Oba is next in line. Tall. The only pilot in the group. Talkative. That will be a problem in space.

Next is fair-skinned Kene Chukwu. Double PhD, academic, does not want to be here, and had to be convinced. Razor-sharp thinker, eyes like black diamonds.

Tobi Shangode is called Stub because he’s like five-two or something. He’s good-natured, a schoolteacher. His students love him.

Sola Kuku is quiet, almost silent. Background in biology. She has a daughter she thinks she has hidden, but Bash’s job is to know everything. It doesn’t disqualify her, the little deception, but it’s cause to keep an eye.

“I hope,” says Bash, “I hope you like to stink.”

We all stink of vomit from the parabolic flights. I don’t vomit the most, but not the least, either. The middle has me, as usual. I do this on purpose lest people think the gods gifted me more than others. Bash did not lie. We can die in training. We can die on take-off, or on clearing orbit, or on transfer into Liberation. He made us, on the first day he met us, write goodbye letters to our families, letters he would deliver if we died. He made the “if” sound like a “when.” This guy.

“Udo, he likes you best,” says Tobi. If only talking were a competitive sport, Tobi would win gold effortlessly.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“He asks you more questions than anybody else.” Tobi has a self-satisfied smile, but you can’t hate him. He’s so nice.

It wasn’t sexual, though. You get an eye for that kind of thing in men, and that’s not the vibe Bash gives off. He’s like one of those guys who see you as their child, or the child they never had. We, the crew, have dug up everything we can find about him. Heroic without being a national hero. They did him dirty.

I should concentrate.

When we finish training we take a ton of publicity photos, but these are not to be released to the public until we return. If we return. There’s an official photographer for the Liberation mission. He also takes film. We’re interviewed as if it’s real time.

We meet Bash’s boss, who gives us a boring speech. She smiles, showing her even teeth that remind me of a snake’s.

“She would decapitate you after mating,” says Tobi.

Twenty-four hours before we leave for Chennai we get a new crew member. His name is Ladi DaSilva and he looks hard. We all look hard from the conditioning we’ve gone through over the last eight months, but he doesn’t just look fit. His soul exited a long time ago. You can tell from his eyes and the set of his jaw. He glances at me while Bash explains to us that he’s been prepared on our protocols. Ladi’s eyes are windows into emptiness. This you get from the deliberate trauma they give to military folks. He is probably State Security, which means be careful what you say around him. I think they are going to make him team leader, but Bash says it’s still me. The first Nigerians in space! I’m excited, although it’s tempered by the brass constantly lowering expectations. You might get dropped from the team, blah blah.

Sola, Kene, and I are given progesterone injections. They tell us it’s to stop our periods for the duration of the mission, but Kene has done intensive study of space missions.

“Sometimes there are relations among crew members,” she says. “It’s a high-intensity environment with forced proximity.”

Sola gets the giggles and I just know she’s imagined fucking one or all of us.

Bash hugs all of us just before departure, which is somewhat unexpected. I say “all,” but I mean the ones he trained. Ladi remains aloof.

Bash leans in to me last and says, “Don’t let them give you any shit over there. You are customers, not supplicants. The Nigerian government is paying a lot of money to get this done. It’s a taxi service.”

I nod.

Chennai’s hot like Nigeria, but we don’t get to see much of it. We don’t even go through customs. We’re treated like diplomats and an air-conditioned bus shuttles us directly to the space centre, by which point I have goose flesh on my forearms. Tobi smiles all the way.

“I’ve always wanted to see India,” he says.

“But we’re not seeing India,” says Paul. “We’re barely breathing India’s air.”

In the hours before launch I take a nap and dream of being trapped in a house where the ceiling collapses unexpectedly, but not completely. There are others with me, and they scream. I push myself into a corner, but more of the masonry gives way and a dust cloud obscures my vision and I cough myself awake in my bunk.

Ladi’s awake and watching me, but absolutely still on a bunk below Tobi. Eyes in the dark.

I turn away.

Two

Bash calls Riya in the last window he expects to have.

There are two mission control centres for Liberation, M-zero, in India, and M-one, in Abuja. M-zero is active from the point of departure of space shuttle Hope until it docks with Liberation six hours later. M-one takes over at that point, for the remaining duration of the mission. Bash is already at M-one, with full personnel in place and monitoring the progress. Telemetry from Hope and Liberation is nominal.

“They’re free of Earth’s atmosphere, so we should be grateful nothing blew up on take-off or on the second stage. Now let’s hope they can find Liberation and—”

“I don’t want to hear this, my darling,” says Riya. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

“Anxious but happy.”

“No envy?”

“Of who?”

“The kids. They’re in space, something you never got to experience.”

“I envy them, but in a healthy way. Nothing is eating away at me, if that’s what you mean.”

Docking goes without a hitch and control is passed to M-one. Ram, their man in India, performs the handshake and wishes them godspeed. Bash glances at Esan, who stands impassive at the back of the room.

“Abuja, Liberation. We have started the first Nigerian orbit of the Earth,” says Udo on the radio.

A cheer in mission control.

They have already made history, and in ninety minutes they will complete the first period.

I instruct the others to start their observations. Tobi is inexplicably morose. After Hope detaches from Liberation he stares out after it.

“There goes Hope,” he says.

I hate him briefly for saying that. He puts fear in my heart for a few minutes. But there is a curious effect of being in zero-g watching the Earth spin. You feel above your problems, anybody’s problems. It’s euphoric, but you can’t ease up, and you fall into routine. Mistakes cost lives.

We are in the Chinese module and it is as they told us. All controls are in English, the monitors have no Chinese characters, and you wouldn’t know this used to belong to the People’s Republic. Just in case, there is a Mandarin speaker in M-one. Contingencies and redundancies.

Ladi is my first problem. He doesn’t stay for the briefing. He floats off, saying he’s going to explore the Russian module. We were going to do that, but I haven’t got round to assigning it yet. I cover up by saying, “Good idea.” It still leaves a poisoned feeling in my gut, like Ladi doesn’t recognise my leadership.

We have approximately three days. I want to make sure everybody gets EVAs, which are really photo opportunities for Earth and us.

We’re astronauts! I’m flying through space at 7.7 kilometres per second.

“Boldly,” says Paul. “Where no Nigerian has ever been before.”

While the others prepare for a spacewalk, I go looking for Ladi, who has not returned after several hours. I find him in the main module. It’s cramped, with exposed wires and panels in seeming disarray. Ladi floats there, one hand around a handle, anchoring him in place, the other holding an open instruction manual. The writing on the cover is Cyrillic.

“What are you doing, Ladi? We have instructions,” I say.

“Continue without me,” he says.

“I know you probably think you’re older or something, but I’m team leader.”

“Then lead.” He turns a page with his nose. “Lead them. I’ll be fine, and . . . and I won’t get in your way.”

“Is that in Russian?”

He nods, but I don’t have his full attention. “It truly is.”

I snatch the manual. I don’t know what bothers me most, the fact that the Russians didn’t do as they promised and left the instructions in Russian, or that Ladi clearly speaks and reads it.

His face darkens for a moment, then he smiles. “Give it back.”

“I’m going to read it.”

“No, you won’t. You don’t read Russian. You speak Igbo, Hausa, some French, and some Spanish. I’ve read your file.”

I haven’t read his.

“I have a different mission, Udo. I serve a different master to you. But I promise I will not hamper your mission. Is that fair?”

The manual is useless to me, so I give it back. “Should I even factor in a work schedule for you?”

But he’s already back in study mode. I leave him. It’s not worth fucking with State Security agents. They can get your entire family incarcerated for no reason.

The rest of us rejoice in microgravity. We frolic and sing. We tell stories, and by the time we’ve gone round the Earth ten times, it’s old hat.

We go on EVAs two at a time, swapping the role of photographer. We basically pretend to carry out repairs and get our photos taken. Then we photograph the other person doing the same thing. We make sure the green-white-green Nigerian flag is prominent.

This makes me sad. It’s a sort of mockery of a space mission. Here we are in the cast-off, sloppy seconds of other nations, pretending to be explorers. Is this something to be proud of? What have we built? We just bought this trip with oil money. Even the concept of exploring may not necessarily be an African priority. We just think we should do as our colonial masters did. But why? Do we think this is a marker of development? Like we take on the master’s religion, the Christianity?

I had never thought this on Earth, but I’m thinking it now.

We sleep standing up, hanging in bags.

Ladi does not sleep among us.

Paul will not shut up. He gets on everybody’s nerves at bedtime because he literally talks until his brain shuts down. Which it never seems to do before mine. And he hums.

I will not speak of the toilet arrangements.

My calls with Bash are the brightest spot of my day.

“The exercise equipment is broken,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Exercise is part of our work schedule,” I say.

“And who designed your work schedule?”

I wait. He did, but I’m not playing ball.

“Liberation, three days is too short to develop osteoporosis. Exercise is good, but it’s busywork.”

“Roger, Abuja.”

“Anything else?”

“The food tastes . . . bland.”

Laughter. “That’s just the microgravity, Liberation. Your circulatory system is confused and blood is pooling in your head. It is, in fact, larger. A lot of your bodily functions will change slightly, including your taste perception.”

“So it’s not just because the food is designed for white astronauts?”

“Afraid not, Liberation. Just smear every meal in hot sauce.”

On day two I’m resting when I hear someone breathing in front of me. I open my eyes and Sola floats there, staring.

“What?”

“We’re losing power.”

I blink the sleep out of my brain. “Say again?”

She helps me out of my sleeping bag.

“We are losing power. At this rate, I’m guessing we’ve been using stored power continuously since arrival.”

“What are your theories?”

“Check my figures first, then we can speculate.”

I do. She’s right.

“Shit,” I say.

“Indeed.”

“It’s the solar panels, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“None of us is qualified to fix anything on this rig,” I say.

“Maybe Ladi?” Sola asks.

“I wouldn’t count on him having anything to do with us,” I say.

“Listen, maybe we don’t have to do anything.”

“Explain.”

“You’ll have to check my figures again, and triple check with someone else, but I think we have enough energy for the next three days. We’ll be home before this tin can runs out of power. Which is fine, because it’s going to a graveyard orbit after this.”

I check her figures again. She’s right. I go to one of the windows and look out, as if I can  eyeball a misaligned solar panel. I see nothing wrong. Maybe a micrometeorite impact at an unlucky angle?

“I’ll tell Abuja. Don’t tell any of the crew,” I say.

Sola makes a zipping gesture across her mouth and floats away.

Three

Tobi sits in front of the camera, sweat dripping over the bruises on his face and inside the cast on his arm and legs. Everything hurts. The air is still, in spite of the air conditioner. He is sure the orthopaedic doctors missed a broken rib.

An assistant brings him a cup of water with a straw hanging out. He sips. The assistant disappears while giving the thumbs-up to a supervisor Tobi can’t see.

“State your name,” says someone from behind the camera. Heavy south India accent. Telugu-tinged English.

“Tobi Shangode,” says Tobi. “But call me Stub.”

An assistant slaps a clapperboard shut.

The disembodied voice pipes up. “It’s day two on board Liberation, and all is going well. Is that correct?”

Tobi tries to nod, but pain flowers down both of his arms and up his neck. “Yes, we all felt pretty good, apart from Ladi, who just wouldn’t come out of the Russian module. Udo knew what he was doing and was evasive whenever I asked.”

“Then what?”

“Then two things went wrong at the same time, one on Liberation and the other down at mission control. A synchronised terrorist attack would have been less devastating, and I still suspect foul play of some kind. But it was just synchronicity. The universe screwing us.”

“Let’s start with Liberation. What happened there?”

Tobi takes a deep breath and suppresses his emotions. “It was Paul’s turn for a spacewalk, with Sola as the EVA camera. We were checking their suits . . .”

I wish Paul would stop talking.

We’re in a can. There’s nowhere to escape that droning voice. Here we are, fitting him for a suit and he won’t give us peace.

“. . . And this guy, a true Stakhanovite, worked his entire life but still died in penury. I told the priest, I said, this is unfair, Father. What does God have to say about this? What did he deserve? And the father, he said, we can’t understand God’s ways. I’m like, Father, that’s not the lesson here. The lesson here is there is no God, and the universe is indifferent. And that’s when my fiancée broke off the engagement. I’m—”

“Shut the fuck up, Paul,” says Sola, just before her helmet lowers and clicks in place.

Paul is shocked into silence for a moment, and I shove his helmet on while he’s distracted and slap it to signal the seal. Everybody laughs. Before long both of them are out of the air lock, and we monitor them as Paul pretends to do maintenance and Sola films him. Paul clowns, but then, what else are you supposed to do? Udo records a section, and I wonder if she’s going to use it for her show or whatever it is the kids in my classroom watch. Science Girl One. How does she manage to smell good when none of us have showered? Her sponge bath game is better than mine, no doubt.

I leave the monitor for a second to suck a tube of water, but I stop when I feel a slight vibration through the hull, after which there’s a series of clicks. New sounds.

“Udo, what is—”

We’re all shaken by an ear-shattering boom, then it seems like Liberation quakes and shakes us all loose from our mooring. A shock wave hits, and I’m disoriented.

The lights go out, and we’re lit by the glowing Earth from a port hole.

My first thought is that Liberation is in the process of exploding, and I calm with the acceptance of death. I think I see metal plough into the midsection of one of the spacewalkers. I hope I’m mistaken. I remember a weird thing. Sola has the smallest waist I have ever seen on an adult human, and the hardest abdominal muscles, like teak. Absurdly, I think the muscles are so hard, no metal can get through.

Screams cut through my brain fog. Then I see a yellow glow from inside the space station, from what I assume to be the direction of the Russian module. All this is compressed into a few seconds.

Udo says, “Anybody conscious, on me.”

Only three of us left to respond. Kene moans. I sound off. Metal groans somewhere. I aim for the port. I feel a trickle of liquid in my ear. Am I bleeding? I plug my ear with a finger.

“Biohazard alert. Bodily fluid,” I say. “I’m bleeding from the left ear.”

“Copy,” says Udo. Nothing from Kene, but I’m not sure she’s conscious.

A panel lights up with emergency power. A comms array. Udo immediately propels herself in that direction.

The world spins. Earth. It’s spinning . . . no, we are spinning. Liberation. Whatever exploded threw us into a slow spin. Marvellous. Turns our external light source into a disco.

“Tobi,” says Udo. “The hatch.”

I had forgotten. In the event of an explosion hatches need to be sealed to slow the spread.

“What about Ladi?” I ask. I seal it, though.

“Look,” she says, and points.

A monitor shows a feed from the external camera, which seems to be operating, but barely so. There’s a debris field around us, and the Russian module sports a massive hole. One astronaut is entangled in cables, broken visor, not moving. No signs of any others.

“Fucking Russians,” I say.

“Not sure we can blame this one on them,” says Udo.

By which she means whatever Ladi was messing with caused this.

“Mission control, mission control, mayday, mayday, mayday.” Udo waits for the return. Nothing. Yet.

I secure Kene with Velcro straps, so she won’t float about. I examine her best I can in the poor visibility. She seems stuporous. I wonder if she hit her head.

I hear another boom and flames bloom on the other side of the hatch. Burning up precious oxygen. We’re screwed.

“Abuja, Abuja, Liberation, over,” says Udo. She glances at the hatch window, and I see the flames reflected in her eyes.

She says, “Mission control, mission control, Liberation. I see flames, I see flames. Please advise.”

She flinches at the sound of metal rending and the light from the work area flickers.

Then she says, “Mission control, Liberation. Advise, advise. I see flames, I see flames.”

I look at the panel. There’s nothing from mission control, not even a keepalive network packet or an identifying signal. It’s like they ceased to exist.

Udo grabs my hand. “Get into a suit. Then get Kene into a suit. We are in competition with fire now, and we will lose.”

“What about you?”

“When you two are dressed, I’ll change. Go! You’re wasting time.”

Tobi sits wide-eyed staring at the camera. He has no tears, but then, he’s cried so much that his body has decided enough is enough and shut down his tear ducts.

“So you’d lost half of your crew, Liberation was on fire, and you couldn’t raise mission control?” asked the disembodied voice.

“Yes.”

“What was happening on the ground, in Abuja?”

“I didn’t know. We had no—”

“But you know now?”

“Yes.”

“Tell us.”

Bash is in one of the bathrooms in mission control, washing his face and armpits. He’s lathered his face in order to shave.

“I can smell you from here,” says Riya. She is a face on his phone, which is propped up on the sink.

“Sorry,” says Bash.

“No, I imagine you smell kind of musky right now. That always makes me horny,” she says.

Bash is about to speak when the phone disconnects.

He picks it up, getting shaving foam on it. He redials, but nothing gets through. There is power, but no signal. Nothing from the cell tower, nothing from the internet. He wipes himself dry, puts on his shirt, and heads to the control room.

Everybody is clustered around one small radio. All the monitors are dead and the overhead lights are giving out a sickly colour, like they are uncertain whether to glow or not. Martial music emanates from the radio.

“What’s going on?”  asks Bash.

“Military coup, we think,” says a woman. “The president’s dead. Most of the cabinet too. The government is suspended.”

Bash tries dialling his phone again.

“Don’t bother. Cell towers are jammed. It’s a nightmare.”

Bash is old enough to have experienced coups before. What you do is wait it out, unless you’re in government, in which case you find somewhere to hole up until the killings and arrests are over. Usually, one would leave the urban areas and settle in the villages, although that’s the first place soldiers check for those wanted.

The power goes out at mission control within hours, which shouldn’t be possible because the supply is independent of the local grid. Bash knows it’s been cut off. He tries to locate Esan, but her assistant says she has been shot. This turns out not to be true. No cars moving on the roads, but lots of people on foot. Cars and trucks either smoking husks or brightly burning torches lighting up the night. Bash finds Esan among a group walking along the side of the main road, considerably less glamorous.

He stops her. Her haunted eyes focus with difficulty, like she doesn’t recognise him.

“Oh. You,” she says.

“I thought you were dead,” says Bash.

“They did come for me. Not me. They came to ‘clear’ my area. I was lucky. The leader of the detail was my cousin. He wouldn’t let them shoot me.”

People flow past, not curious, trying to get away. Anywhere but here.

“What are we going to do?” asks Bash.

“Like . . . what do you mean?”

“Liberation. The mission ends in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Mission? There is no mission. The federal government has been liquidated. Go home, you idiot. Don’t you have a wife?”

“What about the kids who are stuck up there? We sent them!”

“Look around you! There are six of them. How many do you think are dead down here? How many do you think will die before this is over? Go home and pray nobody comes for you.”

She brushes past him, and Bash never sees her again.

After a while, cell service returns, albeit intermittent. Bash uses all the numbers he has, trying to get in touch with someone in power. Futile.

“Keep your head down lest you lose it, my love,” says Riya. “This is a bloodthirsty lot.”

She’s right, but Bash can’t let it go. It would be easier if they had died on the platform in a hydrazine accident.

He broods and paces, unable to eat. At intervals military jeeps with armed soldiers thunder past. One time a megaphone tells everybody to stay indoors and be vigilant for saboteurs. News broadcasts start up after a fashion. Prepared statements given by haunted heads. No doubt, gun barrels just off camera providing encouragement.

When the knock comes it’s a suited man at the door, and he’s polite when he asks Bash to follow. There are two others in the SUV and they search him first. They take him to a field command post, a large tent, and he’s soon face-to-face with a leader of some kind. Bash doesn’t catch his name, but he’s a lieutenant.

“You’ve been making phone calls. What do you want?” asks the lieutenant.

“My name is—”

“I know who you are. What do you want?”

“I have six astronauts in a—”

“I know about that.”

“I . . . we need to reactivate mission control,” says Bash. “Bring them down safely.”

“’Need’?”

“They’ll run out of air and die.”

“That’s sad, but Liberation is not a priority right now.”

“We sent them up there! Sir.”

He grunts. “No, you sent them up there. The previous administration. I know you were thinking of a weapons system—”

“Wait, what? There was no weapons system. It was all cosmetic, for photo opportunities.”

The lieutenant seemed genuinely surprised. “You didn’t know. Ah. That makes sense.”

“What weapons? What are you talking about?”

“R-23M Kartech.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that. Russian space cannon from 1975. Decommissioned as impractical. What of it?”

“Liberation’s Russian module had a prototype installed. They didn’t bother uninstalling because that module was supposed to fall and burn up in the atmosphere. There’s an agent onboard Liberation whose job is to test-fire it.”

“Oh my . . . Ladi.”

“You really didn’t know any of this. Amazing. Well. Another example of how your administration threw bad money after bad.”

“It’ll be a PR disaster for the new military government if you don’t bring them back.”

“No, suegbe. It won’t. You know why? Because you never told anybody they were up there. You never announced it. Nobody knows they’re there.”

“The Indians do.”

“The Indians signed nondisclosures when they took our money. This will end up as a conspiracy theory like Ilyushin. No evidence.”

“Sir, I beg you.”

“I am not going to spend millions on a space mission that is of no benefit to anyone. You wasted the resources of the country on these follies when people had no food to eat. Why do you think we are here? Why are we fighting running battles in the street with counterinsurgents and other loyalists? What do you think all the guns are for? Starving people don’t need space propaganda, Bashorun. Nigerians don’t need orbital guns. They need bread.”

“Sir—”

“Get the fuck out of here before I have you shot.”

Back at home, sitting in the dark, brooding.

He leaps up. Riya, at the far end of the room, straightens.

“I need a favour from your father,” says Bash. “I need his satellite phone.”

In his father-in-law’s home office, Bash copies a number from his own phone and dials the satphone.

“Hello?” says a voice tinged with a South Indian accent.

“Ram, it’s Bash.”

“Oh, wow. How are you, brother?”

“Not good. Listen, I have to dispense with the pleasantries. I don’t know how long this phone will stay connected. I need . . . do you know what’s going on with Liberation?”

“I’ve seen photos that suggest there’s been an explosion.”

“Shit! Are they—?

“Some analysts think some of the photos show bodies. Others disagree. Who knows? Liberation is surrounded by a debris field, and the whole station is rotating.”

“Ram, you need to reactivate M-zero, as per the plan.”

“I don’t have the staff or the authorization for—”

“I hadn’t finished. I want you to bring them home.”

Ram laughs. “Oh my days. No, Bash. No authorisation, no money. I can’t launch a shuttle to rescue your lot. They wouldn’t just jail me. They’d decapitate me.”

“Ram, my kids will die.”

“They might already be dead, baoji. And your government hasn’t settled its debt with us. You don’t have a government right now. I just run the space centre. I don’t authorise anything.”

Bash thinks furiously. “Okay, how about . . . how about birds already in the air.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have shuttles in space right now? Does anybody?”

“Nothing for humans. There’s a freight mission coming to an end. Supplied our guys in the International Space Station.”

Bash smiles. “Best news I’ve heard all day, sahib.”

The cameras combined with the lights make Tobi sweat. Or maybe it is the anxiety involved in organising stories unfolding in different locations, but all representing peril to him.

“Go on,” says the producer. “Do you need water?”

Tobi shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and continues.

“Bash’s plan was to send the cargo shuttle from ISS back to India, but after a pit stop at the partially destroyed Liberation.”

“And Ram agreed?”

“He refused at first, but then considered it an intellectual problem, then a practical challenge. Which I think Bash was counting on.”

“So what happened next?”

“We have to go back to Liberation for that . . .”

Udo stares at the lit panel, shaking her head. Everything is red. She turns to me.

“Put on your helmet. You’re going outside,” she says.

“What?”

“There are two priorities here. One, we need to put out the fire before it eats up all the oxygen, and two, we need to stop this bird from rolling. If I can trust this panel, the fire’s spread to module two, the one adjacent to the Russian module.”

“But module two has a hatch that can be operated from the outside. Right.” I nodded and left. The most complicated thing on that EVA is compensating for the spin as I crawl along the hull, dodging flotsam. I see Sola, headless, a frozen smear of red at the topmost part of her suit.

I open the hatch and it burps flame for ninety seconds before it dies.

“It’s out,” I say. “I’m going in.”

“Negative. You have no idea what’s in there. Melted plastic, stray exposed wires, sharp metals. Don’t risk it. Come back via the air lock.”

Udo tries the slowing burns. “They didn’t work. Rockets didn’t fire. Chineke me. I don’t even know what I was thinking. Slow the roll, then what?”

The radio comes to life, startling both of us.

“Liberation, Liberation, this is M-zero. Come in.”

Udo mouths, India?

“Mission control, Liberation. Good to hear your voice.”

“Likewise, Liberation. Report? And keep concise.”

Udo does.

“Listen, Liberation. I will talk you through the burns to slow the spin. After that a shuttle will dock with you.”

I raise a fist in the air, like my team just scored a goal.

“It’s a supply drone. I have no idea if any of you can fit in it. It’s not authorised, but you can look inside. If there’s space and you fit in there you can come home. I have to emphasise, this is not a passenger shuttle. You could die.”

All the items on the shuttle are fixed in place. We can’t undo them without special tools. There is space, but only for one. We load Kene and make her as comfortable as possible.

“That’s it,” I say.

“Not quite, Stub,” says Udo. She tucks a recording device into my space suit. “There’s enough space for your stubby body. Tight, but you’ll make it.”

“What about you?”

Udo smiles and shoves me in the shuttle. She ignores my protestations. The last words she says are, “Don’t forget me, Stub.”

She slams the hatch and engages the manual lock.

Tobi is wrong. He still has tears.

“I broke . . . the ricochet fractures alone . . .” He takes a moment. “Kene is still unconscious, but she’s alive. I’m alive. And we are the last survivors of the Liberation.”

“And you believe your team leader died in the Liberation.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to show you some imagery.”

A series of still shots on a screen off camera. The air lock of the Liberation. Like early animation, hatch open, an astronaut emerging, out, spreading arms as if flying. Gone.

“I’d like to stop,” says Tobi. “Now.”

The camera pans on the rookie astronauts. Paul waves and turns to Tobi, saying something that makes him laugh.

It settles on Udo, who smiles. Demure but, as ever, aware of camera angles and tilting to favour her best side. The camera loves her back.

In the background, palm trees sway in the wind, not a single cloud in the sky. The wind changes direction and blows directly into Udo’s face, and she squints.

“You all right?” asks someone off camera.

“Yes,” says Udo.

“Do you want to touch up your makeup?”

“No, I’m ready.”

“Mission Specialist Udo Johnson, what would you like to say to your fans?”

“Can I talk to my family first?”

“Of course.”

“Mother, I love you.” She spreads out her arms. “I made it. You won’t know until I’m back, but I’m going to space! I’m team leader. I know the question you’ll ask: Does it pay better?” Udo laughs. “Tell them in Agulu. I’m here. I come from Agulu and to Agulu I will return, Mama. To be continued.”

Udo blows a kiss to the camera.

“Science Girl One, out.”

“Liberation” copyright © 2025 by Tade Thompson
Art copyright © 2025 by Jenis Littles

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