Emily and Mr. Ro- Peter didn’t talk much more as the helicopter flew across the dead forest until they landed on a cracked concrete landing pad. The helicopter blades above slowly slowed down as the vehicle rumbled to a stop.
They left the helicopter, Emily adjusting her pack on her back as she jumped out. The pilot hopped out as well. A dark skinned woman with her hair up in a series of corn rows and in a tight bun in the back. She was wearing casual breathable clothes and a pair of sunglasses.
“Hey,” the woman said and stuck out her hand to Emily, “Nice to meet you. I’m Clara. Guess I’m not the new girl in this place anymore.”
Emily reached out and shook the woman’s hand after a moment, the feeling of someone else’s skin on her own an almost euphoric experience after not touching someone in so long.
“You can let go now.”
Emily blushed and quickly let go as she realized that she’d kept shaking the woman’s hand over and over with a dopey expression on her face.
The woman raised an eyebrow at Emily before gesturing to a massive metal almost bank vault like door to the side of the landing pad that had been propped open revealing a concrete tunnel beyond.
“Emily, right?” Clara said, “Let’s go. I’ll help give you the tour. I’m sure Mr. Rose will gather the others for your story.”
Peter raised his eyebrows at Clara before with a shrug he walked forward into the concrete hallway ahead of them and turned a corner to disappear without saying a word.
Emily nodded dumbly and followed behind Clara as she led Emily into the base itself a few seconds later.
“How many people are here?” Emily blurted out, before scolding herself mentally for speaking so loud as her voice echoed through the empty hallways.
“You’d be number ten,” Clara said easily as she turned her head to the side and slowed down to walk besides Emily in the wide hallway, “I came in more than five years ago now. They picked up the heat from the place I was staying on the satellites. It stood out like a beacon after so long compared to the ice nearby.”
“Where were you?”
“I was in Abuja, Nigeria. Born and raised.”
“Oh, nice,” Emily said, “I heard that the public transport over there is amazing. Maglev trains and everything in the videos… Or it was…”
“Yeah,” Clara said, “It was a great city to live in…”
“Sorry,” Emily apologized as she realized her misstep, “Didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
Clara shook her head and looked at her again, “Nah, it’s fine,” she said, “It is what it is. Anyway, The satellites here are really sensitive to heat. That’s how they found me so long ago. If you were from CODA international up in the North American Midwest, then I’m surprised we didn’t detect you. They have some long distance electric jets they used to come and get me.”
Emily thought about it and felt the sagging grayness of depression washing over her again just from thinking of those times.
“I assume you had a fire or a heater or something you were using all the time?” Emily asked.
“Yeah. I set up a camp on top of Aso Rock. It rises 1300 feet above the rest of the city, so I was able to stay away from the ice below. It was… Well, at least I had a good place to stay after everyone else died. We’ve got to stay warm after all.”
“No we don’t,” Emily said quietly, “We don’t have to stay warm.”
Clara looked at her in confusion, “Of course we do. I mean of course our regeneration takes care of most of our needs. But it must get strained or run out if we overwork it too much. Like a muscle. Best to not risk it just in case. Eat extra when we can to fuel it up after taking some time to let it recover. We’re still not sure exactly how it works honestly.”
Emily shook her head. “Clara, I don’t think it works like that. Back in… the place I was staying. After everyone else was dead… I stopped using the heater. I was trying to… It was just too much work for something that didn’t seem to even matter anymore without anyone else for it to protect… I’ve been in the freezing cold for years and years on end and my regeneration never stopped in the slightest. That’s probably why the satellites never found me.”
Clara stared at Emily, “What about food? I mean I didn’t eat for a week or two at points. But surely you must have had to eat a lot to maintain something like that. I loaded up after once I had the opportunity to make up the difference.”
Emily shook her head again, feeling suddenly tired by the explanation alone.
“Clara. I walked here. From North America. I haven’t eaten anything in years. Almost since the bombs dropped. If there’s a limit, I don’t think we’ll be hitting it anytime soon.”
“Walked?!” Clara said in shock, “What? You didn’t have a plane or vehicle or… something to carry you most of the way?”
Emily just shook her head, “Everything was under the ice by that point. I just walked south until I heard your voices on the radio and came here.”
Clara stared at Emily for over a minute silently as they stopped walking.
“Damn,” Clara said as the revelation seemed to fully hit her, “You’re one tough cookie, Emily. And here I thought the rest of us had it hard.”
Clara suddenly reached out and hugged Emily. Emily squeaked at the sudden attack as her hormones suddenly rushed up and reminded her how freaking hot and sexy Clara was, which Emily had been trying to ignore ever since she’d first seen her. She awkwardly returned the hug and felt herself blush as the hug lasted for a few seconds before Clara released her.
Clara chuckled and stepped back.
“Thought you needed it,” she said with a small smirk.
Emily stammered out a reply, as her mind tried to reboot itself and not blurt out anything too embarrassing.
“T-Thanks. That helped.”
“No problem,” Clara replied, “Now C’mon. Let’s go meet the others. They’ll probably be gathered in the war room.”
Clara started walking off and Emily quickly jogged for a moment to catch up.
“War room? What is this place anyway?”
“Secret bunker of the Brazilian President,” Clara said, “Mr. Rose knew about this place because of him being the leader of CODA and all. This is one of the few places both not hit directly by the bombs and close enough to the equator that it didn’t freeze over. The whole forest in the region was blasted to hunt out this base, but luckily they all missed the base itself. Mr. Rose managed to get a plane still working and fly it here in the early days after the bombs dropped. Ever since then he’s been working on finding the rest of us and gathering us here.”
“What happened to the Brazilian President and the other people that were here?”
“Radiation. Bombs didn’t hit them directly but there’s enough radiation in the area that they all died within a few weeks of the bombs dropping. Seems their radiation filters were overwhelmed, weren’t designed to take the load and failed almost immediately.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. So uh, what’s the gender split? We the only two women in this place?”
Emily wanted to slap herself on the forehead as the comment slipped out. Ugh, god that was so embarrassing to say it like that…
“Half and half now,” Clara said, not seeming to pick up the suggestive undertones Emily had accidentally slipped into her question, “Five women, five men. You’ll be meeting them soon. It’ll be nice having somebody new around. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”
— — —
Meeting everyone else went surprisingly well. Clara helped Emily along when the pauses grew too long or she said something embarrassing to the group by accident. Emily could feel the rust and grime on her social gears as she fumbled interaction after interaction with these new people.
But they seemed understanding of her awkwardness, especially after they heard her full story. All of them had similar stories, so it seemed they sympathized with her. It seems that Mr. Rose had found another Immortal in Canada right after the bombs dropped, which had made him realize that there was more than just him out there. The rest had all been picked up from their various camps around the world and brought here after Peter managed to get a connection with the satellites and could find them.
They were from all over the world. Three were from North America including Emily and Peter and the woman from Canada. One was from Uruguay in southern South America. Clara and two of the men were from Africa. One man was from France, and the last three were two Asian women and one man. Overall a somewhat even spread across the globe among all of them.
All of them spoke English luckily, even if the others from all around the world had second languages as well. The man from France was actually the worst at the language, speaking with a thick accent versus the others that were more crisp when they spoke even if their original accents still shone through on occasion.
After a while sharing stories and generally getting to know each other, there reached a point where the conversation petered out.
Emily looked around at the group.
“So… What now?” Emily asked, “Is there… A goal we’re working towards? Something… I don’t know. What do you all do?”
Peter cleared his throat, “Ah. Well, we’ve mostly been trying to keep this place running and hunting for more people like us. But given that you walked here, I doubt there’s any more people left for us to find. If you had settled down and had heat in one place for a while at any point then we’d have found you.”
“Should we just wait?” Emily asked, “For the ice to recede? I mean, it’s been around fifteen years supposedly, but I don’t think I feel like I’ve aged a day. Once the ash falls from the higher atmosphere I’m sure things will warm up again.”
Everyone winced.
“I… don’t think that’s an option,” Peter said slowly, “Projections from the satellites are that the ash won’t fall from the sky for thousands of years. If not longer. And the ice caps are still growing somehow. Even portions of the oceans are freezing in places. We think… the whole Earth will be covered within a few decades. Including here. We’ve been scrambling to figure out what to do honestly for these last few years.”
“It’s not going to stop? We’ll be stuck in the ice too?”
“We think so.”
“...”
They all discussed the plans that they’d all come up with and what they’d been doing, but it didn’t really amount to much in Emily’s eyes. None of them were engineers, so it was taking all their brainpower and time just maintaining the equipment in this bunker and keeping things like that helicopter functioning for so long.
Clara showed Emily to her lavish room. Apparently the Brazilian President had wanted to have some creature comforts even in his bunker for the end of the world.
Emily fell onto the bed after taking off her filthy clothes and taking a shower that still miraculously worked. Clara told Emily proudly that she was the one who had fixed them and figured out how to keep the running water and recycling systems going again after they broke down a few years ago.
There were technical manuals in big stacks in one of the rooms that Emily had passed. It seems that everyone had been using those to try to figure out how to repair things when they broke.
Emily went to sleep for the first time somewhere near other people rather than on top of a glacier in her torn and ragged tent that had lasted the whole journey here mostly undamaged somehow.
— — —
When Emily woke up, there was a bundle of clothes placed just outside of her door. She quickly changed into the more casual clothes, grateful to be in something clean for once rather than her utterly filthy other clothes that she’d been wearing almost constantly for years now.
The winter coat was probably more holes than jacket now. Her undershirts had lasted longer, but while the fabric held, they were all frayed and just felt old after so long wearing them. She was glad to wear something new.
She went out and started helping the others around the base, getting to know them better as they worked.
Somehow she just intuitively understood how things worked as she hummed and questioned herself out loud to think through the problems like she had before her.
She had assumed that the improved intelligence was part of the package of their powers, but based on the looks of astonishment from the others, it had not been. When Peter saw it, he had just laughed.
“You were always a genius, Emily,” he said easily, “Perhaps you were simply even more suited to engineering than biology after all.”
Emily felt it was something more than that, but the others seemed to accept Peter’s explanation for her competence even for systems that she’d never seen or worked on before.
Like that several months passed. Just like the satellites had predicted, the weather outside of the bunker got colder and colder. The glaciers were slowly creeping downwards towards them like the frozen fingers of winter coming to choke the life out of them and their planet.
Emily got to know all of the people in the bunker pretty well. She didn’t really click with any of them but Clara, but that was okay.
Emily had taken the plunge and had a frankly excruciatingly painful conversation with Clara after Emily confessed her attraction to the woman after Clara’s teasing and flirting grew so obvious that even Emily wasn’t able to mentally brush it off as anything else.
Clara had been open to ‘experimentation’. It was clear after they kissed the first few times that Clara that the experiments were a failure and Clara was just doing it to humor Emily. That Clara was only into men apparently. Emily had never kissed a girl seriously before, so she hadn’t read the signs of Clara’s disinterest until it had become blatantly obvious to the both of them that Emily was being too over eager with it.
One last painful and cringeworthy conversation later, Emily and Clara had returned back to being firmly friends and mutually agreed to not talk about what had happened ever again.
The whole thing just made Emily blush and feel embarrassed as she looked back on it. Ugh. But at least they were friends again at least and Clara seemed to have almost forgotten that it had happened at all.
Even if Emily kept thinking about it in her quiet moments, what it had been like for that heady period when she had thought that things had been going well between them...
— — —
Emily pursed her lips as she stared at the sensor data from the satellites. With her help, the bunker was functioning again to full capacity and they all were spending time on their own things with less work available. Something that was both good and bad. The ice and snow had reached their bunker, and even if it was only a light frosting every once in a while now, it was clear that it wouldn’t be stopping any time soon.
“Hey, Peter,” Emily said as she frowned at the sensor data of the deep space satellite, “Is there any hope for Earth? I mean for the ice to recede sometime soon somehow, releasing us from being trapped underneath it?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Peter sighed and rubbed his temples despite Emily knowing that it was impossible for any of them to get a headache.
“Probably not,” he said heavily, “High atmospheric ash like that… It’ll stay there until something knocks it down. It was theorized to be thousands of years in simulations of this happening… But it could be less. More. Who knows. The mechanisms in the atmosphere to knock it down weren’t studied enough to be certain.”
Emily eyeballed the display she was reading.
“What about Epsilon-354? The crewed mission? They were still working on putting in the life support systems for the main ship before the bombs dropped… But we don’t need those, do we?”
Peter paused and realization slowly washed over his expression. “An exoplanet?” Peter mused and sat back in his chair with a thoughtful look on his face, “And with a full biosphere based on the data from that probe a few decades ago. But that journey’s supposed to take centuries. The probe only got there so fast in only a few decades because it crashed at near light speed into Epsilon’s sun as it collected its data.”
“What does it matter?” Emily said, “We’d just be sitting underneath the ice otherwise waiting for things to unfreeze. And what then? Isn’t it better to go somewhere new?”
Peter hesitated and then nodded, “Yes… Yes, maybe you’re right. But what about space? What if our regeneration cuts out up there and we die?”
“If we survived a direct nuclear blast then I don’t think we have to worry about space,” Emily said confidently, “Let alone everything else that my body’s been through. I think it’s worth a shot.”
“Okay,” Peter said as energy entered his eyes and he stood with renewed energy, “Let’s see what we can do. If we can get there then we’ll have a whole new planet to explore and settle on.”
The whole group discussed the idea for the next few weeks, and eventually Peter and Emily managed to convince everyone that they should go. Clara was one of the ones that was most resistant to the idea. But after some pressure from the rest of the group, the woman eventually caved and agreed to go with them.
With that everyone agreed that they should go. There was just one problem. They were on Earth. And the massive ship meant to take them to the planet in the other solar system was orbiting around the moon.
There had used to be a lunar colony as well, but their radio signals had gone dead a while back before Emily even arrived at the bunker. Without the constant shipments of food and equipment from Earth their systems had failed and they had all likely died out.
So they all had to get here to the moon. With only what was in this bunker.
But they all had a purpose now and worked hard to come up with solutions.
It was in the unlikeliest place that they found their hope for the plan.
“Was this guy serious?” Emily asked as she looked at the launch chamber, “Even in his doomsday bunker he kept another nuclear missile in case he wanted to end the world again?”
“Well, do you think you can do it?” Peter asked hopefully as they stared at the intercontinental missile in the large cylindrical metal chamber in front of them.
Emily eyed it for a moment.
“Can I do it?” she asked herself.
Yes, Little Emily. We can do it. You have enough spare parts in this place for it. Let’s get to work. To start off, we need to remove the warhead. From there we can create a chamber to hold everyone and make sure it’s secure enough that it won’t fall off. Ah, and adjust the software so the thrust will bring us to meet the ship on the moon rather than land back on Earth like it’s designed to do.
Peter glanced at her, but didn’t comment on her talking to herself. All of them were used to her odd habits by now. But Emily felt confident as some ideas of what to do entered her head.
“Yeah, I can do it,” Emily said confidently, “But it’s our only chance, so it may take a while. We can’t mess this up.”
“Well, we’re with you,” Peter said, “But we can’t take too long. Only until the ice reaches the top of the launch chamber. Then the doors will seal and it will be too late. Probably in two or three years by my estimate. We have until then to finish it.”
“Alright, then there’s no time to waste, let’s get to work.”
— — —
Emily gripped Clara’s hand tightly as the modified missile’s engine fired beneath them full force and they started rumbling into the air. The woman smirked at Emily knowingly, but Emily’s heart was racing and she was far too nervous to feel embarrassed as they slowly rose through the air as the launch sequence continued.
All of them were packed tightly and strapped to the walls of what was effectively a hollow barrel of welded together metal just barely large enough for them all to stand in. In the center between their feet was a stack of items tightly bound to the center of the floor with a series of nets and bags bolted to the floor. Personal items and a few bits of equipment that they thought they might need. Board games and the luxuries that would be taken had been argued about extensively among them all. The Brazilian President had brought all sorts of things into the bunker, and all of them would be stuck on a spaceship for potentially centuries or longer even if everything went right.
But they’d all agreed on what to bring below a certain weight limit, and the moment was here.
The missile left the launch chamber and out the open roof that they’d cleared from snow just hours earlier. They went up and up as the missile fired below them higher and higher into the air. The air quickly grew thin around them as they reached the edge of space after some time. Everyone except for Emily gasped like they were choking as the air left their lungs through the small gaps in the welding of the metal box around them.
Emily’s eyes and soft spots started prickling from the vacuum around her and a steady stream of fluid started streaming out even as her body healed the damage.
Emily just took a few deep breaths of nothing to remind herself that she didn’t need to breathe anymore. It was one of the things that she had… tested… after Sean’s death. It would all be fine.
They all started floating upwards as the engines below them cut out and they were floating through the empty void of space. The main engine of the missile detached and left only their small little ship flying through space as the main engine would fall back down to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. They all remained in place with their straps keeping them attached to the walls.
Emily quickly let go of Clara’s hand before the others noticed. She saw that many of their mouths were moving, but nothing came out. Right, no air in their lungs, no air around them. None of them would be able to speak. Emily couldn’t believe that she had forgotten something like this…
But it was fine. Peter had a device in his hand that was hardened against radiation that had their orbital path all calculated out.
He pointed to Emily and she nodded and silently unstrapped herself from the harness and floated through the air. The feeling was so odd, to feel like she was in perpetual free fall but knowing that she was in zero gravity instead.
She quickly went over to the containers of gas that had been loaded into a harness attached to the ceiling securely. It had felt dangerous setting it up that way, but it was the only place where there was enough room for them.
Emily quickly tied a rope to her waist and anchored it to the central hook bolted into the floor of their make shift space capsule. Then another rope attached to another hook to another hook on the floor. Then another. With three points to secure her to the ship the others all remained in place as Emily went over to the door and opened it to the empty blackness of space and twinkling stars.
The door wasn’t an airlock or anything. It was literally a metal door that they’d ripped out of the walls of the base and welded to the side of their metal cylinder. Without worrying about air pressure there was no need for doing anything fancier.
Emily floated outside the ship and her heart pounded as her hand nearly slipped out from the welded handhold on the outside. It had warped and shifted slightly from the force of their ascent into space it seems.
But she caught herself on the handle by the tips of her fingers and pulled herself back to the outside surface of the capsule.
She rotated her wrist and in a trippy motion flipped completely upside down so her head was poking down from the ‘upper’ frame of the door. Everyone inside now appearing to be floating upside down looked at Emily in concern as she stared back at them. Emily raised her arm and threw them a thumbs up and they relaxed.
Peter took one of the gas canisters and took a metal clip and secured them to the center rope. He started sliding it along until Emily caught it and held it in her hand. Peter carefully floated next to the door and silently handed her the bulky welder. This thing provided its own oxygen to the flame, so theoretically it should work in space. She attached the wrist strap so it wouldn’t go flying off into space even if she dropped it by accident.
Otherwise if the welder didn’t work then they would have to secure these things with duct tape and rope. So… Yeah, Emily really hoped that this worked.
She floated up to the nose of the ship, her casual T-shirt and shorts billowing around her as she climbed with one hand with the gas can clutched in the other.
The others had wanted her to wear a space suit, but Emily had decided to just wear something casual. Space was like the cold. Wearing something thicker would just make her clumsy and lower her range of motion.
Her whole body was tingling with the signature feeling of radiation even as she felt a cloud of something pouring out of every available surface of her skin, including her eyes. It made it hard to see and she had to squint slightly as she moved. But it was bearable and she was able to keep moving upwards mostly by feel.
She reached the top and squinted until she saw the first in the ring of anchor points. She held the welder and the mounting for the gas can in place. She fired up and after a moment the flame appeared in the void. She spent a minute or so fusing the gas can to the exterior of the ship before sitting back.
The portion of metal that she’d welded was still red hot as she stared at it. Without air to help dissipate the heat it just sat there and radiated off it energy slowly with its red light.
Well, one down, another thirty or so to go…
Emily floated back down and received another gas canister from Peter waiting within the ship. She kept going, fusing canister after canister to the outside of the ship in the places that they’d planned for.
The heat dissipation of the metal of the ship was so slow that she was forced to take a break about half way through. She didn’t want things to get too hot and make any of the canisters explode or rupture.
She returned into the capsule and shut the metal door behind her. Peter gave her a quizzical look but she just shrugged and shook her head. After some pantomiming, she managed to make him understand that she needed to take a break for a while but that nothing was wrong.
Everyone was floating around in the center of the ship by now having unstrapped. All of them were just sort of awkwardly staring at each other and unable to speak.
Luckily Emily waiting for the outside of the ship to cool was no issue. It would take days until they reached the position where their capsule would be close to the main ship. They had some time to waste.
— — —
Emily finished up attaching the canisters and rigging up the firing mechanism. Peter had some remote detonators and explosives with hardened electronics that had been in the bunker. So on the end of all the canisters was a tiny explosive that was all hooked up to the central detonator. So whenever Peter pushed the button on the detonator he had, the explosives would all go off and release all the gas at once as a sort of makeshift thruster to slow them down once they reached the main ship itself.
Emily floated there above the capsule and looked back at the Earth behind them. She had always imagined what it would be like coming to space, seeing its greens and blues for the first time. Maybe when she saved enough money to take a trip to the lunar base for a vacation.
But the Earth looked nothing she had imagined like it would be. A dark black smog covered the whole globe. She could see it swirling and moving with the weather patterns, bunching and thinning in certain areas. But always there blocking out the sun. And underneath was only the bright white of the ice and snow. There was only the oceans left as a vibrant blue to disrupt the ball of ice covering all of the land.
The ice caps had grown until Antarctica had grown to merge with the bottom of African and South America. The north pole stretched past Britain and the water was one giant sheet of ice nearly to the middle of France all the way across the Atlantic ocean. Long fingers of ice stretched from both poles and from the land as if to show that their advance wouldn’t be stopped, that the whole Earth would be consumed by their wintery embrace.
Emily turned back to the capsule and checked the canisters and their fixtures one last time before floating back into the inside along with everyone else. Now there was nothing else to do but wait.
— — —
They all waited in enforced silence in the vacuum of the capsule. Eventually the time came and Peter hit the detonator after they all strapped back into their seats and made sure the door to the outside was firmly locked.
With a jolt, the capsule shuddered and they were all pulled upwards as their ‘thrusters’ fired for just under a minute before they were empty.
After recovering their wits, Emily unstrapped and saw that Peter was looking concerned as he stared down at the data pad in his hands.
Emily floated over to him and grabbing the wall behind stabilized herself and peered over his shoulder. They had mostly done it. Mostly. Their speed relative to the ship was close to zero. Fifteen miles an hour which at the speeds they were going was practically nothing. But still fast if they wanted to get on the bigger ship.
Emily studied the orbital path for a moment before gently taking the datapad from Peter. She navigated out of the program to a notation app and took the attached electronic pen and wrote on the screen.
‘All jump for the ship. Tied to each other with rope. Leave other things here. Hopefully get later,’ she wrote.
Peter took the pen, ‘Damage main ship? What if we miss and go in space?’ he wrote.
Emily took the pen back, ‘If jump soon, we spread out. Not likely to miss. With our strength only one needs to hold on and pull the rest in. Just make sure there are many ropes securing us to each other so none break free from one on ship. Ship outside made for meteorites. Human not do damage at these speeds.’
Peter hesitated, but then nodded to Emily. She quickly went around and showed the short written conversation to everyone else.
They spent a few minutes taking all of their available rope and tying it around all of their waists and torsos so that they were sure that it wouldn’t snap. They were all tied in a long line to each other, with Emily on one end and Peter on the other. Peter was their leader while Emily was the most knowledgeable on the engineering and science of it. All of them crawled out of the ship one after another until they were gathered at the top of the capsule. Emily could see the dot of the main ship slowly growing in the distance.
Peter held the datapad with the orbital path of their capsule plotted on it. Their capsule would just barely miss the main ship. So if they jumped at the right moment they were almost guaranteed to hit it with a chain ten people long.
Peter held up five of his fingers as he held the datapad and looked at it intently.
Four fingers. Three. Two. One…
All at once they pushed off of their feet and were sailing through the open void of space, the capsule slowly floating below them and appearing almost motionless as they sailed away through the void.
Peter kept holding the datapad as the people along the rope pushed away from each other from the ball they had formed to form a rough spread out line as best as they could.
With nothing to push off of the whole group of them couldn’t change their overall course. But within their formation they could group up or spread out as much as they liked to give them a higher chance to hit the ship.
Emily looked down and when Peter noticed he shot her a thumbs up. She let out a silent sigh of relief. They were close enough that they’d be able to hit the ship and wouldn’t miss entirely.
The main ship floating there around the moon kept growing in size until Emily realized just how massive it truly was. It was meant to hold over a hundred people. A whole crew to form a small colony on the new planet. A new start on a new world.
The ship grew larger and larger in their view until it was flying at them. Before she knew it, Emily and the others were slamming into the ship with heavy impacts. Emily hit the ship and bounced, desperately scrabbling for a grip on the surface as she started drifting away. She started panicking and reaching out to have her fingers brush against the metal skin of the ship. She looked to the side and saw with relief that Peter and two of the others had managed to catch hold of something. Little handholds that were supposed to be covering most of the outside of the ship for safety during any spacewalks of the potential crew inside.
Emily’s beating heart slowed its pace as she was reeled in and over the course of a few minutes by the others. All of them were pulled towards the ship and got their own grip through the efforts of the three clinging on to the ship currently.
All of them carefully inched across the surface of the ship for what seemed to be forever before Peter at the front of the precession finally found an exterior airlock. He pulled a lever and the outer door opened. All of them carefully piled inside, all ten of them just barely fitting inside of the airlock stacked from floor to ceiling in the zero gravity.
Emily saw through the press of bodies and floating coils of rope between them that Peter was fiddling with a panel by the interior airlock. The exterior door behind them shut and there was a loud hiss of air and suddenly air started to fill Emily’s lungs.
The others started gasping and Emily realized with a start that she could actually hear things now as the air pressure rose in the little airlock. They waited for a few minutes and started all talking at once and laughing in relief that the daring jump had actually worked and that they were on the ship now.
After a few more minutes of floating, the hissing around them stopped and the air pressure stabilized.
“I thought that this thing didn’t have life support?” Clara asked suddenly from where she floated off to Emily’s left, “Was that not true?”
There was mumbling, but none of the rest of them seemed to remember the answer and Peter wasn’t paying attention, too busy looking through the window of the interior airlock to study the interior of the ship. Emily couldn’t see anything inside from her high angle near the ceiling of the space.
“No, there’s not,” Emily said eventually as no one else answered, “This thing has a few months of air like what you’d expect on a normal spaceship or station. But considering the length of the journey, they needed to recycle it and replenish the oxygen almost perfectly unless they wanted to run out of air halfway through the journey. So we’ve got air for now but it won’t last nearly the whole way through the trip.”
“Will we be able to talk then?” Clara asked, rotating to face Emily, “When the air… runs out? Like out there in space?”
“No, I think…” Emily said, only to be interrupted by the interior airlock opening with a hiss. As one they all tried to move inside only to realize that they’d tied each other up in the tangle of knotted ropes in the tight space of the airlock.
After a few minutes of swearing and squirming they managed to all get out of their rope harnesses and make it to the inside of the ship. They all floated off Peter as he pushed off the walls of the ship to move around with purpose while glancing at the datapad in his hands occasionally.
Eventually following the downloaded ship plans, they reached the command deck of the ship. Peter sat down and strapped himself into the captain’s chair so he wouldn’t float away as he sat there. He started navigating the screens and typing in various authorization codes as the ship around them started humming and rumbling into life.
Peter kept typing, remaining focused as the rest of them floated there looking around. Peter’s remaining CODA military satellites had managed to hack the ship and transfer the command codes to him as well to help them calculate the orbital paths they would need for the ship to accomplish the journey.
“Any chance of getting our things?” Clara asked after Peter sat back, appearing to be done.
“Hm? Oh, yes,” he said, “I’ve already sent a probe. It’ll latch onto our little ship and drag it back here over the course of the next hour into the main hangar. Meant for collecting asteroids for materials or situations like this. Our antimatter engine provides us with plenty of thrust and electricity for the journey. At least that’s one thing we shouldn’t have to worry about.”
Everyone relaxed.
“Hehe,” Clara chuckled half heartedly, “I think I would have gone crazy if we didn’t have some monopoly or chess to play with everyone on the way there.”
Everyone else chuckled as well even if it wasn’t really a joke. No one was looking forward to the estimated over two hundred and thirty year long journey to Epsilon-354, which hopefully would be their new home.
“Alright, let’s explore the ship then,” Peter said as he unstrapped himself and started floating into the air again as he pushed upwards with his legs, “Best to get to know the place before we settle in. Everything’s automatic from here beyond whatever repairs we may need to do. Once we’ve collected our little capsule then the main engines will fire on their own and we’ll start our journey out of the solar system and go where no one has gone before.”
“Brave new explorers to the final frontiers,” Emily added after no one said anything in response.
Peter nodded and smiled at her as she understood his reference.
“Let’s get settled in our new home then!” Peter said with an upbeat tone as he floated past the rest of the group and out of the command deck into the rest of the ship.