All I could do was trap him. Even all of us together weren't enough to win.

-

Sen found himself searching for Denmark when Gova's call blared over the intercom. "Extrusion visible in five, if anyone wants to see it," she said. "Cockpit's got the best view. Just don't touch anything, Ryker."

The doctor was nowhere to be seen, but Sen could feel him scowl all the same. He felt himself smile, but when he touched his face the expression was already gone, as if it had never been there. He frowned instead and glanced around. "Cockpit is..." He spun on his heel and pointed with both hands down the hallway, nobody around to witness. "This way....probably."

Lucky for him, he was correct, and the hall opened up to a map room, beyond which was the cockpit, he remembered. As impressive as it was to watch space unfurl, the map room was itself a sight to behold, on par with the stars themselves at times.

If Sen recalled, a set of projectors created a three-dimensional, interactive solar map. Unlike the fragile holographic experiments his father once had a tendency to buy, this system was rugged and reliable, its mechanical parts working hard to do their duty. His father collected similar, smaller items.

Sen watched for a moment until he realized the operator had stopped and was now staring at him. He peered back through the hazy light, taking a moment to recognize Evi. He could see the gears turning in her head as she struggled to decide what to say to him. Sen tilted his head like a curious puppy. "Don't hurt yourself," he said, before slipping into the cockpit without a sound, leaving Evi to her thoughts.

Gova barely reacted as the blonde boy padded in, his bare feet creating hardly a rustle against the metal floor. A few days prior, Sen might've thought the ship's commander didn't notice his entrance. However, she seemed to have a knack for sensing his presence, noise or no noise.

Sen peered wordlessly out the windscreen at Earth below. Long ago, he may have once seen brilliant blues and greens rolling over the horizon, but now it was nothing but an endless expanse of gray, the dense ash clouds choking anything alive beneath.

"You talk to Evi on your way in?" Gova's question tore the boy's attention from the dying planet.

He nodded. "Impossible not to," he responded. "She's been stuck to me like glue lately."

Sen could've sworn the commander's smirk was real for the briefest of seconds as she made a few adjustments to her instruments. "She does that," Gova said. "She gets clingy. You here for the Extrusion, yeah?"

The boy nodded. "How will we see it?" he asked. "The clouds..."

Gova scoffed. "It's a massive chunk of rock floating in the stratosphere," she said, making another adjustment. "The clouds have no say in this."

As she spoke, Sen spotted a discrepancy along the drop-off, a dark brown break in the otherwise gray horizon. Over the next few moments, the Extrusion became more evident, growing in size until it was difficult to look at. Even from the ship, many miles above Earth's atmosphere, the massive hunk of dirt and stone was impossible to fully view, the edges disappearing over the horizon to the north. Sen was rendered almost speechless. Almost. He had one singular question. "How big is it?"

"The entirety of North America was torn up," Gova answered, half watching, "As well as half of South. There are stories still going around today about how the world saw massive tsunamis that wrecked their coastlines before the entire ocean poured into the hole left by that damned thing. Sometimes explorers find videos of the event, but those are rare. We're...not sure why."

"The Shattering makes more sense after you've seen that thing," Sen muttered, watching the last of the Extrusion creep under them. At this range, he could see mottled patches of green where plants still clung to life in desperation. He shuddered. "The world literally shattered."

Gova scoffed again. "Naw, the Shattering wasn't named cause of that thing," she said. "The rock was just the icing on the cake. Everything leading up to it...I've heard that was truly hell. Nonstop natural disasters, everything from hurricanes to earthquakes to volcanoes, everything happened at once, and then it just kept happening. Like the Earth just had enough of humans and wanted them gone. 'Cept it wasn't just the Earth. Meteors slammed into it in droves, as though the solar system was as done with Earth as the Earth was of us.

"Then the weirdest part: all their nuclear weapons went off. All at once. All in their silos. Every one at the very same moment all around the world. 'Course, that could just be part of the stories, but...you go digging enough, the data's there. Every facility has the arming time stored in their systems. Rather, every intact facility. Not much left after an explosion like that. And then, after all of that, the Extrusion happened."

Sen blinked, struggling to retain the sudden onslaught of information. "What caused it? The Extrusion, I mean."

"Who the hell knows," Gova responded. She leaned forward and made a show of flicking some big, multicolored switches. "I just hope I never meet them."

"Them? What do you mean, 'them'?"

"Lots of people back home believe it was the result of an early Mennesk going haywire. Others don't think that's right, 'cause we didn't find solar cores until much later, and that was only 'cause of the constant asteroid impacts."

"What do you think?"

Gova glanced over, her expression serious. "Bad luck and scary stories," she said. "Strap in. Time to go home."

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Sen obliged, belting himself into one of the many vacant seats as Gova made an announcement over comms.

The next few minutes were a blur of gray and orange as the ship plummeted out of orbit and into the clouds, flames licking along the extremities of the windscreen. Sen didn't stop gripping the arms of his chair until they popped out the bottom of the clouds in a puff of gray smoke.

The scene laid out in front of Sen was nearly as breathtaking as the Extrusion. Despite nothing but shades of black and gray, the landscape was eerily beautiful, sleek obsidian crags jutting through the ash that filled every crater in the Earth's pockmarked surface. There was no rain, but lightning struck constantly, unleashing its explosive power upon the already bruised planet.

In the distance, lightning clustered on a concentrated area, drawing Sen's attention. He leaned forward, peering through the falling ash. "New Munich," Gova said, answering the boy's unspoken question. "One of the last safe havens on Earth, and the home base of the United Front."

Sen tilted his head. "Germany?" he asked, vaguely remembering something from his schoolbooks. "Or just named after the city?"

"Germany," the commander confirmed. "One of the few relatively high-altitude locations that wasn't swallowed by hellfire. Tsunamis never reached it, so the land is as usable as it can be on this godforsaken planet."

Sen nodded grimly, falling silent as the dark, glimmering landscape raced by. The city grew larger on the horizon until it filled his view. Made up of nothing but low buildings, five stories at most, New Munich was nondescript and uninviting. Its harsh lights felt more like a warning than an invitation.

Lightning flashed, and a massive structure made itself visible in the center of the city, a dark spire a thousand meters tall. The tip glowed furiously, taking strike after strike, absorbing the brunt of the perpetual storm to protect the fragile settlement below.

The city flickered closer, flashing in and out of existence each strike, until they were just on the outskirts. Gova pulled back on on the sticks and the engines roared, the ship hovering above a massive, sprawling, low building that at first glance looked like nothing but an old airplane hangar.

"Haven, this is Revenant," Gova spoke into her headset. "Mission code violet, card, guitar, zen. Additional cargo in tow."

Sen heard a muffled voice crackle to life on Gova's headset. He couldn't make out what it said, but he assumed it was confirmation to land, as the ships engines shifted in pitch once more. The roof of the hangar split open silently beneath the ship as it descended, bright white light spilling out from the gap.

Minutes later, Sen found himself blinking in that very same light, taking in the new faces in the massive hangar as the ship whirred down behind him. He could sense their apprehension mixed in with their weathered faces. After Culwell, however, not much fazed him.

An older man with a battle-hardened yet inviting face stepped forward. The blinding lights rendered his white hair nearly too bright to look at. "Sen Devartani." He said the name as though he was chewing on it, considering his every word. "Welcome to New Munich. My name is James Calibura."

This was the man Gova had told Sen about. His accent was similar to hers as well. If he hadn't gotten used to it on the ship, he may not have been able to understand him. He'd barely understood the conversation he'd had with her in the galley. "Is my father here?" Sen blurted out before he could stop himself.

Calibura smiled, a twinge of regret in his eyes. "He resides here, but he's visiting the Extrusion for experiments at the moment." He gestured to the nearest door. "Come, let's get you settled. You can meet him when he returns."

"When will that be?" Sen asked, shuffling after Calibura. He was hesitant to trust anyone at this point, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice.

"I'm not sure," came the response. Sen slipped through the door, the noise of the hangar cutting off as it shut behind him. "Geni runs on his own schedule. I don't think he even knows you're here."

"Can't you tell him?"

"You saw the atmosphere on your way in. Too much interference. And we don't know exactly where he is."

"Then...how did you know I was on the way?"

The hallway cut off at another door, beyond which was a stairwell. Calibura started heading down before answering.

"We only have one functioning satellite left," he said, letting his voice bounce off the walls. "And we can't access it from down here. It isn't equipped to transmit, only receive. We send a pilot up daily to download anything we get and bring it back down."

"Oh," was Sen's only response. He didn't attempt to hide his disappointment.

He stayed quiet as they exited the stairwell and started down another harshly lit hallway. Calibura nodded at a man dressed in pilot gear heading the way they came. He didn't seem to notice Sen.

"What's with all the hallways?" he asked, the door clanging shut behind them. The sound echoed down the corridor into nothingness, leaving a faint ringing in Sen's ears.

"Going outside is dangerous," the white-haired man said. He nodded at another UF member, this one female. She didn't return his greeting, instead staring intently at Sen until they passed. "We have a network of tunnels between every building."

Sen once more fell into silence, memorizing the layout as they traversed the concourse. Calibura led him left at an intersection, then up another flight of stairs into another building. "Barracks and training," he explained.

It was busier here. Men and women of every age and ethnicity marched here and there, eating, sleeping, training, or, as Sen discovered, partaking in the Arena, the highest form of entertainment in New Munich.

"Gova can take you to watch in person later," Calibura said. Sen tore his gaze away from the TV in the lounge they were passing through. An assortment of soldiers were relaxing in here, watching the sport with varying degrees of interest.

"Hate reruns," one of them muttered. The ones nearest him nodded in muted agreement.

Sen scampered after Calibura as the UF leader disappeared out a doorway. Just beyond was another hallway, but he pushed through a set of double doors just across from the lounge. "The training center," he said, with no fanfare.

Sen couldn't particularly say he was impressed. At first glance, it appeared to be a concrete pad surrounded by plexiglass on all sides. In front of the entrance was a rack with an assortment of melee weapons. Sen frowned. "Where-?" he began, cutting himself off as the sound of muffled gunfire emanated through a door to the left. "Ah."

"We'll start your training tomorrow." Calibura stepped forward, staring down at Sen from beneath his bushy brows. "Once we figure out your aptitude, we can give you a role."

"I can start now."

"No kind of time lag like space lag. Rest first. I'll send someone for you tomorrow."

Sen nodded mutely. Calibura nodded back in response. "Good. Come. Your room."

-

Sen sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the 3 empty cots in the room. "You're lucky," Calibura had told him. "You're the first in this room. Don't get too comfy. We'll fill it soon."

He wasn't sure if he'd enjoy roommates. Even trapped on Culwell's ship, his room was his. Even on Gova's ship he'd had his own room, however small. Escaping to be with his own thoughts seemed to be a luxury in the UF itself. He wasn't looking forward to having blackouts in front of unfamiliar people. It almost felt like he'd gone from one prison to another.

Still, it wasn't all bad. The UF planned on at least arming him and teaching him to fight. And his father was here, according to Calibura. Whether that was true remained to be seen, but Sen felt like it was important to hold on to the first ray of hope of seeing his family he'd had in a while.