Until the morning they wake up to silence. All communication with Earth, gone. From half a dozen different agencies with multiple installations and redundancies across the globe, there is simply... nothing.
And through the viewports of the ISS, only the thick veil of churning, lightning-veined dust to suggest the Earth remains at all.
Now, without ground control, without the proper telemetries or calculations or even reliable visuals, Cynthia and the rest of Expedition 81 must make their way home. It will be the most fraught and the most frightening task of their lives.
But it will be nothing compared to the world that now awaits them beyond the dust.