Dawn of Hope- Exodus

by Dobrin Kostadinov

  Despite the lingering weariness and the need for more sleep I put on my clothes and went for a walk around the ship. I took the more precise of the two cameras, just in case, and went out. Near my door I saw a corridor leading to large terrace. I could not think of why they might have built it, perhaps it was intended for surveillance and research or it could have been a recreational spot since access to it was free. It was time for me to visit it, besides I was going to breathe in some fresh air and enjoy the nature. I had to go through several doors and then I found myself out onto the incredibly long terrace with overhanging roof. It was comparatively narrow–about three meters–compared to its length, but there were folding benches that you could use in case you needed to sit. I had no desire to check how comfortable they were and even though the railing was low I felt compelled to bend over it and steal a glance at the sight below. I followed that urge. The sky above was nevertheless still just as black and pelting us with cold heavy raindrops accompanied by powerful thunderbolts mercilessly rending it and hitting the ground surrounding the ship or every now and then even the ship itself. I thought I was standing in the middle of a tropical storm that was trying to tear to pieces a lonesome villa perched on the sea shore. But I saw something else, too. The searchlights placed down beside the body of the ship were shining at full capacity and the ship lights illuminated the entire plateau. No one was sleepind down there and despite the torrential rain everyone was doing something and none of the soldiers on guard moved away from their posts at the fence. What a picture that was! It looked like we were a colony of insects defending their home and their territory. It was no wonder that the Vacari wanted to do away with us. I was, however, disappointed by something else. I could not see the starry firmament and I was intent on enjoying the view of the Milky Way . . . I wondered if it would look like an ordinary swarm of stars or if its disc and its globular clusters were clearly distinguishable. I could only hope to ever get the chance to see it.

  The freshness of the splashes of water and the wind were a bit too much for me at that moment so I decided to seek shelter on the leeward side of the terrace and to sit down for a while before I had to leave the place. But at that instant I became an inadvertent witness of a deeply intimate conversation between two colleagues who were present at the meeting earlier on. They came out from the nearest door, some sixty-five feet away from me, but far enough for me not to be able to get a good sound. Fortunately, I had taken the camera with me, so I set the microphone to its most sensitive and I zoomed in the image. It was professor Zanev and Mila Nikolaevna. At first I did not want to eavesdrop on their conversation since they had inspired unbelievable respect in me for the few hours I had known them. But it occurred to me that because of that wrongdoing of mine I could learn more about them or the situation we were in.

  Roman relaxed into the bench, pulling something out of the pocket of his white coat while the fair-haired beauty preferred to remain on her feet right beside him.

  ‘I lost them! Every single one of them!’ the Russian started up, peering into a photograph the image on which I could not see. ‘I chose work over them and I shouldn’t have!’ With sadness in his voice and eyes brimming with teardrops the eminent scientist could no longer hold back his emotions. His compatriot felt his pain and gave him a gentle, silent touch on the shoulder. ‘I should’ve stayed with my wife. Now I won’t see her ever again, neither her, nor my family.’ Zanev put the photograph against his chest and crossed his hands over it, tears trickling down his face. The tears of an elderly man, so honest, so powerful.

  ‘If you had stayed, you may well have been dead by now and perhaps we would have, too, had you left us alone,’ Mila said, emotional, in an attempt to soothe him. She, too, felt an enormous void growing inside of her because of the loved ones she was probably doomed to never see again. That made her feel restless, made every survivor on board the ship feel restless, me included.

  ‘I’d better have died together with my wife back there instead of dying here slowly every day, keeping the memory of her . . .,’ he spoke again and that was the turning point after which the conversation gradually became exceptionally personal and deep. In turn, Mila began recounting about her family and her fiancé and how she had accepted that she could not be with him and Roman slipped into details about his family. I learnt a lot about both of them, but soon after their pain started becoming too much for me, the one I had residing in my own heart was more than enough. A vortex of feelings whirled inside of me as I watched and listened to them through the camera. At that instant I decided it would be better for all three of us if I just left them alone. I respected both of them and did not want to pry like that anymore even though it was with the best of intentions. Perhaps what they needed the most right now was to unburden their hearts from their grief under the dark Menoetian skies and I was the obstacle that prevented them from keeping that private moment to themselves. So I left the place without a second thought. I returned to my room–that dry and warm place I was grateful for having after I had known what the feeling of having to sleep on the cold floors of the ship was like. I lay down on my back and waited for sleep to overtake me. In the mean time I still felt deeply moved by the powerful words I had heard. The crew of Iris 1 definitely did not have it easy, but neither did any of us. We all had left something behind on the Earth in order to be here. The last ruminations that occupied my mind right before I entered the realm of dreams left me agitated, but such is life–hard and cruel in just about every respect . . .

  A few hours later I felt something touching my face while gentle light was shining through my eyelids in a somewhat frustrating and disturbing fashion. When I opened my eyes I saw the sunbeams of Menoetius’s Sun rising above the horizon and streaming through the small porthole of my cabin. It was early morning with no rain, clouds and thunders. The sky was clear and I could hear the odd sounds produced by the local inhabitants and that sound that was similar to the one made by a swarm of insects, but it was weaker and more bearable now. I quickly shook off all the remaining sense of sleepiness as I knew that every additional minute spent in the bed would have a negative impact on me. I slipped into my uniform and adjusted the settings of the two cameras so that they were ready to use. Maybe I was acting a bit too hastily, but I needed to engage into action and find some shooting material. Half an hour had passed since I had woken up, but I could still feel a strong desire for a refreshing drink to keep me in good shape. I just hoped that the strong coffee would help me concentrate or at least fortify me a little.

  When my drink was ready I took it and went back out on the same terrace where I had been the night before. This time, though, the view was different. The red giant was proudly hanging on the horizon, hurling all of its light down on that new land, but the interesting part was that instead of the second Sun you could see the two small Moons. Perhaps it was hiding somewhere beyond the horizon, running late, yet ready to show up later in the night. It was such a magnificent sight to watch, the deep blue of the sky and the grayish- white clouds were appearing here and there, were unparalleled and I could peer into them until my eyes hurt. The different shades of the forest massif below merged into one another in all the colors of the rainbow. But all that charm also carried the sensation of something dangerous and unseen. Or it at least it was how it made me feel. I took a few gulps of the bitter liquid, gazing at the landscape with delight and then my eyes landed on a pilotless plane positioned right next to the main exit of the ship. There was a truck parked close to it and a handful of soldiers were unloading something heavy from it with a forklift while Milev coordinated their work. I abandoned the coffee-drinking immediately and headed down the corridor at a brisk pace and then down the escalators to go investigate what was happening. Perhaps that was a hasty reaction on my part and maybe it was none of my business, but that was not what I thought at the time. When I got to the exit I heard the Officer talking to his people.

  ‘Load quickly, boys, we don’t have much time,’ he co
mmanded his subordinates while he was typing something on a device that looked a lot like a tablet. I closed the distance between us eager to quench my curiosity and he saw me and smiled at me. ‘Good morning, Mr. Stokes, what brings you here so early?’ he asked me in a manner more polite than ever before. Perhaps he had had a decent rest the night before after all that we had gone through together.

  ‘I came to see what’s going on. Would you like me to shoot a few frames or land a hand with anything?’ I asked him, keen on offering my help.

  ‘There’s nothing for you to do for now, but don’t worry, if you had to be here, I would have called for you,’ the Officer responded.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing with my eyes at the heavy cargo that the soldiers were struggling to load and secure in a steady position into the cargo bay of the flying drone.

  ‘This is the most powerful conventional weapon that mankind has ever invented. It’s a vacuum bomb whose force equals that of a medium thermonuclear bomb. This one here is flying straight towards the “black peak”,’ Milev clarified.

  ‘Won’t the blast or the shock wave hit us?’ I asked in fright since I knew just how powerful those kinds of weapons could be.

  ‘No, it won’t reach us, the blast will take place too far away from here,’ he tried to soothe me, but I nevertheless remained just as nervous because that vertical column of magnetite seemed to me to be closer than it actually was. Its sharp peak could be partially seen from the topmost terraces of the ship–it looked like a stick jutting over the forest canopy and since I could see it, to me that meant that could not be all that far.

  ‘Are you ready, boys?’ the Lieutenant asked his men.

  ‘Yes, Sir!’ everyone hollered in unison as he punched the coordinates where the cargo should be dropped and switched on the pilotless flying machine. It started its way up into the sky in a slow and clumsy manner and the whirlwind that formed after its vertical take-off nearly blew my helmet away. I had it to press it to my head in order to keep it in place together with the camera that I had fastened to it. When the machine rose, it flew up into the horizon; the blast was supposed to happen in less than fifteen minutes. Perhaps I had to seek shelter in some safe place, but I was very impatient to see the skies bathed in light as the sound was to echo through the entire area. But there was still some time left before that happened and with a shade of boldness I allowed myself to stay out there with Milev. He had quite a lot to do and he had to coordinate the multitudinous army which was supposed to be the last defense line, immediately behind the tanks, the machine gun nests and a few types of offensive weapons and drones. The technical experts were running final diagnostics and repairs on them before they got switched from offense to defense mode. The rocket launchers were once again set high on top of construction that rotated in all directions. Preparation was at full swing all around us, everyone was in a hurry to get all machines operational and to prepare themselves for combat. The fence in the distance was ready and right in front of it they had dug a deep and rather wide trench that they had connected with the anti-fire system. I overheard that they were going to fill it with water and that they were going to send electric currents through it and through the massive fence planted deep into the ground–the supply was going to come straight from the ship’s power station. A well thought-out plan, but was it going to work? Probably everyone around was asking themselves the same question. Yet a few minutes after we lost sight of the drone something incredible happened . . .

  Something that was in between dark orange and brown in color appeared in the distance, a little past the panels where the images began to merge so much that I could hardly distinguish them from one another. It approached the fence slowly and once it got within the scope of the automatic guns they opened fire on it. Right away the soldiers abandoned whatever they were doing and took up a defensive position. In turn, I switched on the cameras and I headed in that direction so I could gain better visibility since the image was too far away and I could not see it clearly. The mysterious creature moved so fast that no one managed to put a bullet in it. A single black semirectangular rock, about six and a half feet tall, stood close by the place where the intruder was and the critter hid behind it. The soldiers started concentrated fire which began tearing out huge chunks of the otherwise solid rock. And right when the entire structure threatened to get completely smashed to pieces the image leapt forward at our ranks and broke into a run at an unimaginable speed. At first it struck me as a somewhat familiar living thing since it was running erect. It had massive limbs and it used the upper ones to cut across the rockets that were flaring up all around it. It skillfully evaded the bullets and after speeding up it jumped over the trench and then climbed up the fence. When it got on our side it started zigzagging with one upper limb raised in the air as though it was trying to tell us something. Then I heard a few deafening screams behind my back.

  ‘Stop the fire now!’ the five from the Iris 1 crew shouted one after the other and came running in their suits to check what was happening. The soldiers and all unautomated weapons ceased their fire, but the machine gun nests and the rocket launchers kept on rending the air. I could see him clearly now–the sixth member of the crew of researchers–the one barely anyone said a word about as though they were all in deep mourning and no one wanted to mention his name. It could have been out of grief or because it was hard for them to talk about someone who was not just dead but had disappeared without a trace. He was defending himself from the high-caliber bullets with the triangular shields protruding from the arms of his suit; the rockets he dodged by moving aside in different directions at the last second. The men in the front were yelling their lungs out for all machines involved in the defense to be turned off since it was controlled by the experts at the bridge. The newcomer quickly climbed up close to one of the rocket launchers, deactivated it with two kicks and then hid behind it. The fire though was so strong that just a few seconds later his cover was blown to pieces yet another time. One of the rockets demolished the construction it rested upon and the exoskeleton fell back on the ground. I thought that was going to be the end. We were about to kill one of our own without even getting a fighting chance at saving him. But then the five wearing the multimillion technology drew up in a defense formation around him intending to protect him from all the shots. One more rocket was fired right at the heart of the human shield and all of them were sent flying in different directions. I saw the next shell getting loaded and I could not help it but close my eyes. The soldiers were screaming like crazy, but no one did a thing. Why was not there anyone to turn the defense system off? Suddenly the power supply was cut short and the deafening rattle finally went dead. I looked up at the bridge, someone had saved him after all. We rushed ahead to get to our wounded mates. Stretchers were immediately brought in, but the five super humans did not need them–they rose up on their own. Only Thomas, as they called him, was conscious, but unable to get back up on his feet. His colleagues picked him up and placed his heavy body on a stretcher and rolled him to the ship where they could provide him with medical care. I was watching them as they were running in that direction. A strong light suddenly shone up in the sky behind me. I turned around to see it, but it had already faded away. All that I could see was a small globe-like cloud that was slowly growing in size. Perhaps that was the light effect of the blast, but I did not want to look at it. I turned off the cameras and went after our wounded comrade about whom I knew nothing, yet about whom I was deeply concerned as if I had known him for years. Before I walked through the main entrance we finally heard the powerful cutting sound of the blast. I just hoped that it had served its purpose and the hellish mountain was reduced to ashes. I managed to get to the infirmary and tried to find out what had happened to the Colonel who was obviously a very important person here since everyone was panicked. But they did not let me in, neither gave me any information about his condition. I decided not to stay in one place. Instead I headed to the bridge to try and disc
over whether the bomb plan was a success or not. I hoped to be admitted there undisturbed.