Chapter One

I must be dreaming. My mother is standing at my bedside, screaming at me to wake up. It is difficult to orientate myself. Finally, I recognize the sound of sirens penetrating my ears; whoop, whoop. Where am I?

I open my eyes to see blood flowing through the tubes attached to my body while substitution liquid is being drained. According to the monitor above my head, cryo-preserve viability is being restored to my organs. I am cold, freezing in fact, but I can feel rejuvenation taking effect as the stabilization procedure of the cryo-protectant slowly brings my temperature back to normal. The cryo-tubes and tethers anchoring me to the capsule automatically release themselves and retract into the monitor.

My brain is hammering against my skull. Is this part of the rejuvenation process?

The lid of the capsule automatically lifts. Clumsily, I stand. Biometric alarms echo throughout the compartment. My companions, Judah and Peter, are missing from their pods. I can see the automatic rehabilitation machine moving along its tracks towards Beth’s capsule. Nothing can be achieved by waiting for Beth to be revived, so I stumble towards the hatch separating the cryonic area from the bridge and press the auto control.

On the flight deck, warning lights flash a kaleidoscope of colors across every screen. Monitors stream data from the ship sensors as Ingoran, our pilot, switches view constantly.

“What’s going on?” I yell above the sound of the alarms. Ingoran ignores my question.

“Look!” Judah standing beside Peter, shouts. The main screen displays a tsunami of cosmic projectiles hurtling towards us. An asteroid storm stretches into deep space as far as the eye can see.

I realize that somewhere back in time, a giant supernova must have exploded.

“How long?” I shout to Ingoran, realizing the rest of our team is still encased in their capsules.

Ingoran finally tears his eyes from the visual. “Minutes, maybe twenty.”

“Can they penetrate?”

“I don’t know; it depends on their substance.”

Several large, spinning, iron-like objects appear on a collision course—luminous blue plasma trails follow in their wake.

“There!” Ingoran shouts. All I can see is a minuscule hole in the wall of the approaching Armageddon. “There’s a gap, the eye of the storm.” He fights the controls to realign us towards the pocket. “Power to port,” he orders our engineer Ashmor, who immediately punches the command into the console. I watch as though in slow motion as we edge closer to the void. The distance between the two approaching asteroid streams begins to widen. The seconds tick away; I think of my mother in the farmlands back home, the anguish etched into her face as security led me away to train for this voyage to Earth. It seems unlikely I will reach our destination, let alone see Mother again.

I grip Judah’s arm as warning lights flash on the console indicating imminent collision.

“Increase speed!” Ingoran screams. The ship lurches forward with extra power as the boosters kick in, propelling us at the last moment into the inner space between the rivers of carnage.

No sooner do I sigh with relief when our slipstream induces turbulence, causing several incoming projectiles to ricochet off each other and slam into our ship.

The jolt sends Judah, Peter, and me tumbling backward, arms flailing for something to grab onto, our bodies crashing into the rear wall of the flight deck. There is an explosion, followed by the sound of metal disintegrating.

As we scramble to our feet, I can see Ashmor punching instructions into the data feed.

“What’s happening?” I shout to him.

Ashmor keeps working the computers until finally, I feel the ship slowly righting itself.

“We have lost our propulsion engines,” he answers. Disaster has again raised its ugly head, and as though floating engineless through space isn’t enough, warning lights begin flashing again.

“The outer shell is fractured,” Ingoran reads from the sensor screen.

“Where?” Peter asks.

“The cryogenics.” Ingoran’s voice is distraught. “Can you check it out? But carefully.”

“I’ll go,” I say, already heading toward the chamber. I hit the manual control button, and the door slides open. I can see a crack in the ceiling where several loose objects are already rising due to the escaping air.

Beth is conscious but still restrained in her capsule. She looks at me, her eyes wide with alarm.

I can see that the fracture in the superstructure is widening. Attaching myself to the airlock hatch with a cord from a pod, I inch my way across to Beth’s cocoon. Every instinct screams at me to turn back to the safety of the bridge.

The canopies of the remaining pods suddenly open, exposing my companions still in hibernation, utterly unaware of the impending danger. The monitors have either malfunctioned, or this is a safety device. I force myself not to panic as my breathing becomes labored from the lack of oxygen. I have almost reached Beth. She stares up at me, and I can see relief in her eyes. There is no time to consider the consequences. I rip out her tubes and remove the restraints. Globular clusters of blood and fluid float upward to the widening fracture and disappear. Beth stretches out a hand, “Skye, help me,” she whispers.

I grab her wrist and drag her out of the cocoon. “We’ve got to get out of here now!” I shout. There is nothing I can do for the others, but I am determined to save Beth.

Beth swings her feet onto the floor. She unsteadily grabs the canopy for support. I hold onto her wrist with one hand and begin to pull us along the cord towards the hatch with the other. My breathing becomes more ragged. The fracture has widened substantially, and the rush of escaping air pulls at Beth. My grip is slipping; I can feel her beginning to slide through my fingers. The pods groan, straining against the vortex dragging anything and everything towards the gap.

“Beth, hold tight. Wrap your body around mine.”

Still in recovery mode, Beth grapples to comprehend the consequences of the expanding fracture. Her wrist slips out of my grip.

“Beth!  Beth!” I scream.

It is futile. Beth drifts upwards, calling my name in a dazed voice until she comes to rest against the ceiling. Her body briefly blocks the outward flow of air as she deflates before my eyes. I shout again in frustration, but my voice has lost its intensity. I watch in horror as her clothes shred and Beth is reduced to little more than a skeleton of skin and bones. It seems no more than a second passes before Beth disappears altogether, and the vacuum returns. The bodies of my friends are wrenched free of their restraints and rise to the ever-widening hole in the hull.

I have no time to mourn their loss as my life hangs by a thread. My lungs gasp for air. I have exhausted all but the primitive need to survive. I pull myself the last few feet along the cord tethered to the airlock hatch and slam my palm onto the manual release. As the door slides open, I grab the frame against the rush of air from the bridge. I am losing the battle against the onslaught of escaping oxygen when Judah reaches out and hauls me inside. I cling to him, shaking unashamedly. I can feel Judah’s breath on my cheek. The hatch closes behind me, shutting out the nightmare I have just witnessed. My companions are now entombed forever in the vastness of space.

I sink down next to Judah, trying to erase the turmoil in my mind. All of them lost, the only comfort being that Winston, Abraham, Herc, and Julius have died without ever waking up. No knowledge, no pain, except for Beth.

I lean over, and Judah places his arm around me. His masculine scent has a calming effect.

“We’re going to get through this,” he says, his voice choking.

“Sure,” I answer, not sure at all, though I can see through the visual screen that the space ahead is clear of debris. Ingoran and Ashmor are absorbed with the monitors. “At least we’re out of the storm,” I say.

“Not quite. We’ve lost all propulsion. We’re drifting towards Earth at less than a quarter speed, so instead of being a couple of months from our destination, it will take us a year.” Ingoran says.

A year, so what? I think. At this moment, I feel it will take a year to erase the pain.

“Also, we’re not out of trouble,” he adds. “We’re drifting in a vacuum within a stream of cosmic debris. On my calculations, it is thousands of miles wide, and the vacuum we’re in was caused by Earth. It absorbed the brunt of the meteor shower. What we don’t know is whether the entire planet has been devastated and life extinguished.”

No, no! I think. Not only is our ship crippled, but we could be on course to a lifeless planet. Judah and I exchange a look of complete despair.

Realizing the effect this news is having on us, Ingoran changes his tone. “It may not be that disastrous. They should have had plenty of notice to build shelters or go underground, provided their leaders informed their citizens of the approaching catastrophe.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” I ask.

“To avoid panic,” Judah cuts in.

“I would think panic would be the least of their problems.”

“You remember Earth’s disaster screenings that were downloaded? To avoid panic, their authorities always seemed to keep the public in the dark.”

“That was fiction; this is real,” I remind him. “What is the duration of this storm?” I ask Ingoran.

“At least another forty hours,” he answers. “I’ve been able to verify the chemical makeup of the debris. It’s rich in iron, plutonium, and electromagnetic nickel, my guess from an exploding neutron star. Earth’s gravity wouldn’t have been able to completely destroy the projectiles on entry. I calculate the storm would have hit every place on the planet during one full revolution and most areas twice. Therefore, if we can reach our destination and land without power, life as we know it will depend on the size of the interstellar meteors that sustained Earth’s atmospheric conditions.”

“I guess there’s no turning back?” I ask hopefully.

“Our landing boosters could turn the ship, but it would take a hundred years at this speed. I was able to notify Lutor of the situation before our communication systems were destroyed. Our ship is equipped with a transponder, so we will eventually be found by the next voyagers.”

“In a hundred years,” I quip.

“Maybe, maybe not. The sister ship would have only been a year or two from completion,” Ashmor states hopefully.

I still can’t control my negativity. “Unless a devastated Earth is no longer a priority.”

Ashmor shrugs.

Both men are showing their age. They have remained at the controls for more than nineteen years, and every year is etched into their profile, particularly now that their expectations of discovering a new world inhabited by a similar species to ourselves is unlikely. I recall an Earth documentary in which dinosaurs, who roamed the planet millions of years ago, had been made extinct by a single meteor. This time the planet would have been bombarded by billions of cosmic projectiles. It is hard to imagine that any living being would have survived or that any infrastructure would have withstood the impact.

Peter interrupts my gloomy thoughts, “So, what’s your prognosis on our current position, Ingoran?”

“The parallel storm will dissipate, then we’ll limp towards Earth and hope our boosters will give us the capacity to bring us down to the surface in one piece.” Ingoran gives a hollow laugh. “Or at least the piece that remains intact.”

I search his mind for any glimmer of hope but find none.

“I’m really sorry about your companions,” Ashmor says sympathetically.

Trying to restrain tears the memory evokes. I stand, walk over to the viewing portal, and gaze up at the distant stars sprinkled through the heavens, which are so tranquil. I realize at that moment that we are of no importance to the history of the galaxy. We were nothing more than a minuscule grain of sand in the vastness of space.

Returning to my viewing chair, I recognize the odds are stacked against our survival, though Ingoran and Ashmor appear oddly complacent to the situation. Across from me at the central module, Ingoran, a man of indeterminable age, radiates stability as he gazes through the vision screens at the globular clusters of distant suns arching across a never-ending cosmos. To his left is Ashmor, a thousand years etched on his face. I can’t imagine how these two have been able to sit here day after day, year after year, and still be intrigued by the manifestations of calibrations that continually appear on the screens before them.

On either side of me are Judah and Peter. I must admit I have secretly had a crush on Judah from the moment I walked into his class a year ago, or, to be more accurate, two decades ago. Judah is slightly older than me. He has sad eyes that seem to express a feeling of inadequacy. It’s as though he carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders while searching for an answer to life itself. On the other hand, Peter is an enigma, handsome, and affable, yet there is a hint of conflict behind a veil of self-confidence. A man of secrets.

Later, as we drift towards an unknown future, I realize this may be an opportunity to document my story. Then, somewhere in another time and space, my epitaph, if this is what my story becomes, may be discovered and hopefully enlighten future generations to another world so they realize they are not alone.

 Using my sixth sense, I instruct a screen to automatically rise from the ship's console and initiate transmission. Deciding on an appropriate start, my coming of age, I let my mind traverse back through a time capsule of events that led us to our current predicament.