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“First time up here, and they send you up for Christmas. I haven’t heard you complain once. They must love you. Or you must hate them.”
Alex didn’t move from where he was sat, staring down at the earth passing beneath them. It had been a long journey, to get here, and he still wasn’t quite used to it, three weeks into the seven month trip. A longer trip than usual, but a necessary one - one of the astronauts on the previous mission had been taken seriously ill, and it had been decided to rotate Alex out to the space station earlier.
There were some politics - some big proof of concept of a new on-demand system for rocket launches, rather than the more rigorously scheduled launches that Alex remembered watching out of his window in the house the Pleasures had moved to just down the road from Cape Canaveral.
But that wasn’t the point.
The point was that a month earlier was early enough to have missed Christmas with the Pleasures.
It was the first one that Alex had ever missed.
Sure, there would probably be a phone call. Maybe even a video call. But only a brief one.
Science didn’t wait for anything.
Not even holidays.
Alex was committed enough to the dream of being an astronaut that he was willing to put his holiday on hold to - as Sabina kept on saying - “do the space thing”.
He was about to say as much when the mission commander, a rather intimidating woman who had insisted that Alex call her Lucy, pushed off from where she’d been commenting from the door and flew across the room towards where he was floating, staring down at the planet beneath them..
Lucy had been here five months. She’d be leaving on the next ship back. Alex would be up here for two weeks with only the Europeans for company, and then there would be another rotation of Americans.
“Not a talker, huh?”
“What is there to say?” Alex gestured at the planet beneath them, “They asked me to do my bit, and I chose to do my bit.”
“We could have finished up without your help. You’re useful, but you’re not that useful.”
“Politics.”
“Yeah. Politics.”
They sat in silence for a while, before Alex grinned, a thought crossing his mind.
“You know,” he said, “this isn’t actually my first time up here.”
Lucy paused, before giving him a sidelong glance, “I’ve read your file. This is your first mission.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Alex said with a laugh, “but this is the second time I’ve been on a space station. I came up when I was a teenager.”
Lucy laughed, clearly thinking he was joking.
Then she looked at his face.
Alex smirked as she realised he was serious.
“Go on then,” she said, shaking her head. “Tell me about your first time.”
“Are we still talking about space?”
“You’re too young for me,” she joked back, “and we both know that you’re not going to get it up whilst you’re up here.”
Microgravity did a lot of things to a lot of body parts. Erections were just not going to happen most of the time. Not without an assistive aid, which neither of them had, as far as Alex knew.
“I was fourteen,” Alex told her candidly, “and I was the only option.”
“Come off it. No one would send a fourteen year old into space.”
“You can look up the mission files if you want. You’ve still got clearance right?”
“I served my time.”
“So did I. Twice.”
“America recruited you to go to space at age fourteen?”
“That’s the other secret,” Alex said, glancing down at Earth, where the sprawling lights of Europe at night were currently rushing past them, “I’m not even American.”
“You sound American. California, right?” she glanced down at his uniform, where the American flag was emblazoned on his sleeve, “and you definitely look American.”
“Moved when I was about fifteen, sixteen. Picked it up. Decided to blend in. Made a few choices.” A shadow crossed Alex’s face as he looked out the window at the Earth turning past beneath them. “Some of them were even good choices.”
“And they let you in anyway?” Lucy settled down next to the younger man, “I would’ve thought-”
“I came highly recommended.”
There was definitely a smirk on Alex Rider’s face as he said that. No explanation was forthcoming though. Which made sense. Alex kept himself to himself, and Lucy wasn’t going to push the point. Everyone up here had secrets, and they just had to trust that none of those secrets were things that were going to cause issues. That was, after all, what the CIA was for. Background checks and the rest of it.
And Alex didn’t really strike her as the kind of guy that had much to hide from the CIA.
“You got someone waiting for you down there?” Alex asked suddenly, as America rolled past the window, “‘cus you’ve been doing this for a while, right?”
She had.
Over a decade and counting.
“Couple of kids. A partner. One day they’ll let me marry her,” Lucy said, after a moment of thought. Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy to make a fuss about it, and maybe a little honesty would help him to open up a bit, “or we’ll have to move to a different state, I guess.”
Alex let out a small hum, his eyes still fixed on the planet beneath them.
Africa was just coming up now. Lucy liked to try to see where countries began and ended. Sometimes it was easy. Some countries all but draw the lines in the sand, lights marking the edges of the country bright enough to score the sky. Other times it was harder. She still couldn’t work out where Libya, Niger, and Chad met. Somewhere in the desert. It was all just monochromatic from this high up.
“I’ve got a whole foster family down there,” Alex said eventually. “Two of them, really, but it just feels like one big one.”
“No girlfriend? No boyfriend? No kids?”
“I’m too young for kids,” Alex said with a laugh, “and I was never sure I’d live long enough to make a relationship worthwhile.”
Oh.
That was-
“My bio-family were tied up in a lot of stuff,” Alex said, with a slight shake of his head, “and after my uncle died I got pulled into it. Went a lot of places. Saw a lot of bad things. Didn’t want to think about bringing kids into it.”
“And now you’re an astronaut.”
“Yeah,” Alex agreed, “now I’m an astronaut.”
“And they sent you up for the first time when you were fourteen ?”
Alex laughed, “Crazy, isn’t it? I remember thinking it was cool at the time, but now I’ve actually got here the hard way…”
“...so do you mean that they sent you up in one of those weather balloons, to the edge-”
“Ark Angel.”
“Drevin’s pet project? The one that malfunctioned?”
“It didn’t malfunction.”
“I’ve read the incident reports. There was a catastrophic failure in the atmospheric seal in the-”
“The whole project was over budget and there wasn’t enough people interested in being space tourists. It was going to be the biggest commercial failure in the history of space travel ever,” Alex cut her off, feeling his smile fade away as he remembered it all. The stress. The fear. The tension. “So Drevin came up with a plan. Invent a terrorist organisation. Have them escalate their attacks, one by one, until eventually…”
“And they sent you ?”
“No one else would fit,” Alex said, with a shrug, “and I was there anyway.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You can check my records. It’s all there in my medical history. I was recovering from a bullet wound as well - someone tried to assassinate me.”
“What?!”
“I told you. Bio-family were tied up in a lot of stuff.”
Lucy shook her head, “That’s fucked up.”
“You believe me then?”
“Either you’re the best liar I’ve ever seen, or you’ve had the most fucked up life I’ve ever heard about,” Lucy said with a laugh, “and either way that’s fucked up, so does it really matter if I believe you?”
“Let me tell you about my uncle,” Alex said with a laugh, “and his career as an international spy.”
The earth passed by underneath them as Alex talked. Lucy was a good egg. She was the kind of commander that Alex wanted to be in time. Kind, but firm. Professional, but personable. The kind of person that Alex was glad to call a friend.
And, besides, who was she going to tell?
“I’m going to ask about this when I get back earthside, you know?”
“You’re retiring after this one anyway, right?”
“I might do one more,” she said, her eyes skimming over the Pacific ocean beneath them, “but yeah. I’m gone soon.”
“Not even working for them landside?”
“They offered me an early buyout.”
“Can’t blame you.”
“Kids miss me too.”
“I bet.”
“I’m gonna enjoy retirement. Give some talks. Visit some universities.”
“Stay in touch,” Alex said, “and try not to crashland in the Pacific Ocean on your way down.”
Lucy snorted, and then paused, realising what he was implying, “Actually?”
“Cross my heart, swear to die.”
“And you were fourteen .”
“I got kidnapped when they dragged me ashore too.”
“ Kidnapped .”
“There was this guy. It’s complicated. But he uh-”
“-wanted to steal your kidneys?”
“Yes actually. Well, my heart, I think.”
Lucy shook her head in disbelief, “You have some crazy stories. You know that?”
“This one time, I signed up a secret organisation with an island base off the coast of Italy, where they trained me to be a top secret assassin.”
“Come on.”
“I went to Russia. Saw a nuclear submarine in Sevastopol. Got to stand on it even.”
“Get off it.”
Alex laughed, watching the world turn beneath them, “Believe it or not, I’m telling you the truth.”
Lucy settled in next to him, shaking her head ruefully, “I’ll believe it when I read it in your records.”
“Deal.”
She laughed, “So confident I won’t look.”
Alex just smiled.
Maybe she would look. Maybe she wouldn't. He knew what she would find.
Then it would be up to her as to whether she wanted to talk about it again.
The two of them watched as the Earth turned beneath them, a whole world passing them by.