Chapter Thirty-Three: Arrival Day

The Brig was a rather large room with three walls covered with monitoring stations, communicators and lined with workers. One wall was covered with screens so large it looked more like a window. In the center of the room was a large glowing table surrounded by the commander and her officers, all of whom were engrossed in whatever was on it.

They did not even notice the Io and Omari enter.

“Where are we on the countdown?” Io asked as she approached the table.

“Two minutes and twenty-eight seconds,” the commander answered. “But as we discussed she could arrive even weeks after that.”

“Understood.”

For Io, the next couple minutes felt like years. Even though she had decided some time ago that the Odyssey was lost, she still wanted it to return. Somewhere inside she dreamed of the happy ending. Where the ship returned unharmed, there was no threat of war and she could be with Omari. She stood by the glowing table simply watching each second pass by, and dreaming with each one.

And when the clock hit zero she could hardly believe her eyes.

A small dot appeared on the monitor. A rhythmic beep rang out across the room with each second, tracking the vessel as it inched closer to home. Io wanted to celebrate the moment but found herself trapped instead, still waiting. So was everyone else in the room. They were waiting for a message to come over the communicator.  The Brig was silent for a long time, but no message came.

The moment of return was already marred by the silence. If everything was right, the crew of the Odyssey should have contacted Jupiter Station right away. This meant that everything wasn’t right. Something was wrong.

As the beeping continued to echo across the room, everyone prayed that it was just a broken communicator. Even though they knew it probably wasn’t.