1 Last Space Walk

Rubin looked at the people that were leaving the capsule one by one. While everyone was looking forwards to leaving the capsule, he on the other hand had no intention of going with them. He sat on his seat while leaning on the window. He was fully awake. Yet he constantly made snoring sounds.

He wanted to make people listening to his radio feed believe that he was just sleeping. With tint activated on his space suit's helmet, no one would be able to see his face or see that he was really awake.

A few minutes passed everyone had left, and the supervisor of the capsule came back to check on him. The supervisor was a man that looked like he was in his 50s. He was bald and morbidly obese. As he saw that there was an astronaut still sitting in the capsule, he tried calling him on the radio.

Rubin saw the calls coming but simply muted them. As the supervisor saw that his calls were not through he had to physically come to shake him awake.

"Ah… What?" Rubin said in a surprised voice. The pissed supervisor who was standing before him pointed at the radio over his ears. It was then he unmuted the radio and he was able to hear what the supervisor had to say.

"What the hell are you doing?" the man yelled.

"I am sorry I fell asleep." Rubin lied through his teeth.

"Fell asleep? What kind of man fell asleep in a space craft… Well, it doesn't matter. Come on, everyone has left." The supervisor said. Then he turned around walking out of the capsule. Rubin followed his suit and came out of the capsule.

After exiting the capsule they found themselves in a small locker room. There were various names with pictures of the individuals inscribed on the locker. Rubin went to a locker belonging to someone named Sherman. The locker belonged to a young caucasian man with blond hair. He then opened it up with a pin code that he already have. As the supervisor was still there, he started making small talk with him.

"I am sorry… My wife and I recently had a baby. So I was not able to get a lot of sleep last night." Rubin lied again.

"It's alright man I understand… I also went through the same thing when I had my son… Now go on then, I have other things to do as well."

"You know what, it is alright. It is not my first time coming to this station. Why don't you go on ahead? I will catch up to you in a minute or two." He offered.

"Sure." The supervisor said and then went out of the locker room.

As the supervisor left, Rubin then quickly started getting to work. He quickly removed the big rectangular backpack from his back which contained oxygen for his suit. He then pressed one of the corners of the backpack and it opened a hidden compartment. He then proceeded to take out a slim rectangular box from the compartment. The transparent rectangular box contained 40 regular bullets all kept neatly in two rows.

Rubin then took a walking stick from Sherman's locker. He pulled out the handle of the walking stick. Then he took out the long tube at the end stick. And just like that, he proceeded to take out various parts from other normal-looking items from the locker. And when had everything in his hands, he started assembling them together.

After everything was assembled, he was left with a gun. He then loaded the gun with bullets that he had brought with him. He then used the long tube that he got from the walking stick to fit it at the end of the nuzzle of the gun. Now he had a fully loaded gun with a silencer…

After he had assembled his weapon, he took the rest of the suit. He then neatly tucked the suit in the locker. He then fixed his appearance in the mirror. Unlike the actual photo of Sherman, Rubin looked very different. He had brown skin, black hair, and a fairly bushy beard. As he looked in the mirror, he fixed his beard, which was mangled because of the space helmet. And after he was done, he fished out the spectacle case from his pocket. The spectacle case contained two pieces of advanced machinery. He put those pieces behind his ear and activated them.

As soon as he activated them, his irises were covered with a light blue light. He started seeing a digital HUD in his eyes…

[System Online] came a woman's voice which was directly heard by Rubin.

"Sweety, start the corruption process," he said.

[Request acknowledged] came a woman's voice once again.

Then the digital hud appeared in front of his eyes and started showing the process of corruption in the upper left corner. He then minimized the small window and then proceeded to the plan…

As soon as Rubin got out of the locker room, he was greeted by the supervisor once again. But that man saw his face and got confused…

"Wait you are not Sherman… Who are you?" he asked. Rubin just smiled at his question and then swiftly put a bullet to his head. He then proceeded to move around the station looking for other crew members.

As he would find a crew member, he would shoot them in the head and eliminate them. And it was only after killing 22 crew members did he started proceeding to the main part of his mission. He then went to the control center of the space station.

By the time he got to the control center, he had gained the whole control of the space station because of the corruption. He had control over comms and every single thing that could be controlled with the help of a computer in the station. So there was no help coming for the crew members no matter how much they tried…

As he got to the control center, he killed the last three crew members and then proceeded toward the objective of his mission.

Rubin then went to the communication desk and started making contact with his client. This particular space station was mostly used for research. But this was all a front for something more sinister. This space station was used to spy on other countries. Which is why he was paid a huge amount of money to disable the center once and for all. And also retrieve the data that it had collected till now.

"This is RJ from the space station. Does anyone copy?" Rubin said from the comms.

"This is DJ from Earth, we copy, over." Came a female voice on the other hand.

"DJ, the bread has been baked. Now, all we need is a confirmation, over." Rubin said in code.

"Copy that, over," the female voice said. The lady was his contact from Earth. And after he got a confirmation from her he started transferring files from the space station to a secure server back on Earth.

While the files were being transferred, Rubin went to the control desk and started changing the trajectory of the space station. He had planned that he would make the space station crash into one of the satellites, thus removing any evidence about him being here.

All of this was possible because of a magnetic storm that was heading toward Earth. Usually, the effect of these storms is not felt on Earth because the atmosphere absorbs most of it. But such storms could harm the communication network.

That is why whenever such storms occur in space, space stations and satellites retract their communication array. Therefore during this time satellites and space stations lose contact with Earth.

Knowing this fact, Rubin had engineered his master plan. He would crash the station to a nearby satellite. When the system would come back online, then the people would blame the magnetic storm for the crash.

As far as he was concerned he could easily escape from the place by an escape pod that had been hacked and his ready for launch at his command…

After Rubin had changed the trajectory of the space station, he made his way to the communication grid once again to talk to the client…

"DJ, do you copy?"

"We can hear you loud and clear RJ, over."

"The bread has been baked. Coordinates have been given to the driver. The bread is on the way. over." Rubin said.

"We expect the arrival of the bread soon. Over and out." The woman from the other side said and then she disconnected the connection.

"Sweety, show me the countdown for the storm," Rubin ordered.

[Request Acknowledged]

Then in front of his vision, a ticking time clock appeared. According to the clock, he had a good 5 minutes before the storm hits. Which would be plenty for him. "Sweety, show me the way to the escape capsules."

[Request Acknowledged]

Then a small map of the space station appeared in the upper left corner of his eyes. He simply followed the map and soon reached the hallway which had all the escape pods. But after he reached there he was shocked as he saw that were no escape pods available in the hallway.

"Sweety, what the hell is happening? Where the hell are all the escape pods?"

[According to the corruption procedure, the escape pods would have been ejected immediately after the corruption had taken over the control of the station]

"WHAT? ARE YOU SURE?"

[Yes]

Rubin then ran back to the communication desk. He wanted to have a word with his client about the corruption file that they supposedly provided him. But no matter how much he tried he could not contact them. He then tried getting in contact with some of his associates but he was not able to contact anyone.

With the space station making it's toward the satellite, he was bound to be killed. He can't change the trajectory even if he wants to because it had been set. Now stuck in a sinking ship with nowhere to run, Rubin sat down in the control room with his head down.

He was trained to be a special ops unit soldier trained for infiltration and assassination. But he left that life behind when he realized that doing shady assignments gives out pretty decent pay. He had done many shady things in his life and killed many people who were deserving and many who were not. He didn't regret any of the things he had done. But in the last moments of his life, he couldn't help but think whether he could have lived his life differently.

While he sat in the space station thinking about his life, a magnetic storm hit the space station. The storm didn't have any particular effect on the space station as a whole. But it did mysteriously kill Rubin in the process…