Lieutenant Armstrong had been one of the lucky ones. When his Battle Star was first hit by the kinetic energy weapon, essentially a long spike of nano-hardened carbon fiber, he had responded to the abandon ship alarm by taking the nearest ladder to the wheel's perimeter. He had come off the ladder right next to a lifeboat pod. He waited until the station was shaking violently and when he saw no one else, he accessed the pod and launched it.
Brently was quite far away from the platform when he saw the next hit. The inertia wheel where his private quarters were seemed to wobble noticeably as if it were a top spinning down. Next, he saw the spine of the platform buckle.
The bottom boom, the part pointed toward Earth began folding almost in its middle. Brently watched the tip of the boom and its attachments approaching the wobbling wheel in slow motion. Brently wanted to yell, to warn, as he watched the end of the boom shred into the wheel. That was when the wheel started disintegrating, throwing off chunks of itself. Rooms and equipment he could easily recognize from this distance, but thankfully not the bodies, human or robot.
Brently stopped watching the destruction of the platform, he knew that the pod was recording it anyway. He turned to look at his destination. A stable low orbit around the moon from which he hoped to be rescued in a few days.
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