They were all strapped down into chairs in what was the comm. Now everything was locked down. Sinead had a tablet on her lap, as did Sherry. The plan was to run the casks into the asteroid, hopefully hard enough to turn the asteroid so that when the reactor blew, it would head toward Luna rather than Earth. They could set the reactor off on purpose, if they wanted, or wait until it went on its own. The Leech could not re-enter an atmosphere directly, so they needed somewhere airless to land.
They decided to do it anyway, even if it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work because the ion drives were not going to push the tonnage fast enough. They normally didn't have to hurry.
"Better to have some attempt to control destiny," Sinead said. "Even if it isn't going to work. We ready?"
"Yeah," Sherry said. "Got no choice but to be ready."
Stanley and Opie looked at each other. They had tablets in affixed to the sides of their chairs, but they were un-powered now. They were passengers on this particular flight.
"Can we use some of our landing rockets to assist with the turn?" Opie suggested.
"No fuel to do both that and land. Used it all on approach and landing with about a minute of it to spare. It's already a rough landing. Fuel to leave towards our re-entry station was due in 2 resupply cycles." She then looked at King. "Drop one."
"Too late," Sherry said.
They could feel it. The Leech held fast, but on the other side of their apple core, the fusion reactor exploded.
"Well, that's not going to be good," Stanley said.
And they waited in silence for a moment.
"Hold on, everyone," Sinead said, "This might not be fun."
Sinead made some kind of motion on her tablet and three explosive bolts blew up and released The Leech from the docking apparatus embedded into the rock. Very little momentum was felt, but they were now drifting away from their rock. Sinead then tapped again, and they felt a slow push in one direction.
"This will give us a chance. We are going to try to let the asteroid go. Sherry, can we still communicate with the casks? We need them to help push us toward Luna or we burn up."
"I don't know. They may have been damaged. I don't know if the ion drives can catch them up to us, they're not made to..."
"Send whatever you can toward us en route to the moon. It's our new home. Sorry everyone, even if we're a skid-mark across the Sea of Tranquility it'll be better than living on Earth after..." and she drifted off. They all knew.
Sherry punched at her tablet again and again.
"Sinead?"
They all looked at Sherry and she shook her head "No."
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