Richard Daniels isn't your average 24 year old man. Not only did he graduate from Harvard at age 18 and was top of his training class at NASA for six years in a row, but he is now the youngest man to fly in space and soon to be the first man to land on Mars. You would expect the first manned trip to Mars to take to take at least ten people, but this is a one man trip starring the most famous astronaut of the 21st century. Richard was selected to go alone due to the lack of supplies to get a full crew all the way there and the fact that piloting seemed to be second nature to him.
"Daniels to mission control. All systems are fully operational and I am about to reach the halfway mark. Over," he said into his coms.
Daniels knew it would take a few minutes for his message to reach Earth, so he just sat back and enjoyed the view. A lot of people think space feels really empty and lonely, but Richard feels quite the opposite. Seeing all the countless stars surrounding him made him feel at peace. And while there are many beautiful places on Earth, to Richard, no beach shore or mountain range can beat the shining beauty of outer space. It made him feel as if we was looking at a picture painted by God Himself.
As Richard sat there enjoying the scenery, something flashed on his radar.
"What was that?" he wondered aloud. He had made a habit of speaking to himself on this trip to help keep him sane. "Maybe it was a small rock fragment or something?" He still thought it was odd that it showed on the radar. He had passed tons of debris on the way up here that hadn't been detected. "Whatever it was it's gone now." He checked his watch. "Why haven't I heard from control yet? It's been over 10 minutes."
As soon as he said it he heard something on his coms.
"Dan...Dete...Ger...ook...ou...Ver." Then just static.
"Control, this is Daniels. Please repeat. I'm receiving some sort of interference. Over."
SKREEEEEEEEEE
A deafeningly loud screech was played on his headset. He immediately tore it off and covered his ears. "What on Earth, or...space, was that?" Daniels messed with the controls on the coms to try and figure out what was causing that noise.
BLEEP BLEEP
And there it was. Two moving figures on his radar.
"That's definitely not space rock." He was worried now. Something weird was happening. Something training hadn't prepared him for.
The two signals were still moving around on his radar. He noticed something strange about the way they were moving. It was too erratic to be a shuttle, and it almost seemed as if one was chasing the other. They were also getting closer. Then they were gone.
