The Quiet Orbit — A BSP Burst of Dread

magine floating 250 miles above Earth. No gravity. No borders. Just a slow orbit and a window to the world.

From the International Space Station, World War III wouldn’t start with gunfire. You’d see light.

Not sunrise — but searing flashes. Nuclear detonations blooming like silent sunflowers over Kaliningrad, Minsk, and Moscow — ghost-flames chasing each other across the darkened skin of Europe. First one. Then another. Then dozens. Cities glowing unnaturally, then dimming.

No sound. No screams. Just your breath in your suit and the low hum of recycled oxygen.

Storms swirl where skylines once stood. The Earth’s color shifts. Fires that won’t go out. Power grids blinking off like dying stars.

Your crewmates don’t say much.

What do you say when your whole planet is dying in silence? I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was breath. My chest tightened like it knew the words wouldn’t matter — not up here. Not anymore.

And then the dark begins to grow.

Not just nightfall — nuclear winter. Dust and ash veiling the atmosphere. A blue planet turning gray.

You keep orbiting. Watching.

Waiting.

Because up here, you’re safe — for now.

But there’s no going home. Not to that home.

Log Entry: Commander D. Reyes

ISS Expedition 75

Day 132 — Orbit 2,154

13:08 UTC

Kyiv is gone.

We weren’t looking that way when it happened, but the heat signature hit our sensors — sharp, sudden, unmistakable. Too fast for wildfire. Too large for an explosion. This was something else. Something final.

Minutes later, NORAD pings our comms — fragmented, panicked. One phrase repeats in English, Russian, and French:

“Strategic response authorized.”

Then: silence.

Mikhail, our Russian engineer, went pale. He hasn’t spoken since. Just stares out the viewport, like he’s watching ghosts claw their way from the clouds.

We tried Houston. Moscow. Cologne. Dead air.

ESA’s last ping stuttered like a bleeding heart. JAXA sent coordinates. Then nothing.

We’re alone now.

Next orbit, we confirmed it: Kyiv wasn’t isolated. Lviv. Kharkiv. Minsk. Vilnius. Cities vanished. Not dimmed — erased.

Then came London.

Gone in a flash. No warning. Just light — then a wound in the night where Westminster once stood.

Whatever happened after Kyiv, it spiraled fast. NATO responded. Maybe tactically. Maybe globally. We don’t know.

What we do know:

The world is unraveling. Every pass reveals new scars. Fewer lights. More fire. More ash.

Time doesn’t matter anymore. Clocks belong to the dead.

We’re just floating over ruins now.

And no one’s calling us home.

Earth looks… wrong.

The atmosphere’s turned thick — like smoke trapped in amber. Where continents once glowed with life, there’s only darkness now. The Northern Hemisphere is cloaked in black clouds, a second skin choking the sky.

Lightning dances inside them. But there’s no rain.

Surface temperatures are falling. Fast. Nuclear winter isn’t theory anymore. It’s happening. Snow in the Middle East. Ice crawling down from Siberia. The oceans — quiet.

We’re conserving oxygen. Rationing food. Power’s stable — for now.

But there’s no sync. No uplinks. No ground control.

We’re ghosts now.

Floating above a grave we used to call home.

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