Through the Never

by J. A. Culican

  “Are you alright?” Cern yanked me up roughly, steadying me on my feet.

  I nodded, my gaze locked on the window next to me. It looked into another torpor room. The door read “Cycle 11.” I could see the rows of slim tubes. Each containing a human. Someone who slept as the world collapsed around them.

  “What will happen to them?” I asked, my voice soft as I stared at my shipmates. I didn’t know them, but they were important. We were all important if the human race was going to survive.

  Cern shook his head. “I don’t know, but the tubes are the best place for them right now. We don’t have time to wake everyone, and even if we did there wouldn’t be enough shuttles to take everyone off the ship at once. The tubes should give them some protection…”

  In reality, we had no idea how well protected the hibernating space travelers would be in their tubes.

  “We have to go.” My throat was tight as I tugged on Cern’s hand. Were we leaving those people to die?

  I pulled a heavy vest over my head, quickly tugging all the straps tight. The room was eerily quiet for as crowded as it was. Dozens of people stood around me, but nobody spoke. They were too busy getting their own gear. Quiet rustling punctuated the silence. Occasionally, a locker would slam closed, me from my own gear check.

  A small mirror on the inside on my locker door reflected my image back at me. My gray-green eyes were wide as they looked back at me. My lips were pressed tight into a thin line, their pale pink color almost disappearing altogether. Copper-red hair that didn’t even touch my shoulders framed my face before I once again pulled it back into a tight ponytail.

  “Everyone ready.” Cern’s voice echoed through the room. Heads snapped up and five people nodded in response. “Alright, grab your gear and let’s get going.”

  I looked down at my watch. Twenty minutes until atmospheric re-entry. I hefted my pack on to my shoulders and turned to leave with the others.

  “Hey.” Cern caught my hand. “Wait up.”

  In one swift move, he pulled me close to him, his strong arms enveloping me. His head bent down to meet mine. His lips were soft, delicately brushing against my own. My head swam for a moment, before I pressed against him, my arms wrapping around his neck and pulling him closer. His lips weren’t soft anymore. Instead, his kisses were crushing as desperate need took over. I pulled away, gasping for air.

  “I love you, Laure,” he whispered. The world rocked under me. I had been dying to hear those words for the last few cycles, but I didn’t want to hear them now.

  “We aren’t going to die today.” I pushed away from his embrace. Hurt and confusion crossed Cern’s face. I sighed, my tone softening. “You’re telling me goodbye. We aren’t going to die here today. If you really mean that, tell me again when we’re planetside.” I leaned in again, my lips lightly grazing across his before I quickly pulled away again with a teasing smile. “I want to hear it again,” I whispered, my lips brushing against his ears.

  “Well…” The watch on my wrist chirped, letting us know that we had to leave or we wouldn’t make it to the shuttles in time.

  “Come on. Let’s go.” Cern grabbed my hand and together we dashed through the halls. The sirens had been shut off. The hallways were empty and silent, except for our heavy footfalls and labored breathing. My chest burned as we weaved through the long corridors that led to the shuttles.

  As we entered the docking bay, we skidded to a halt. Many of the ramps leading to the ships were closed off, the shuttles having already departed.

  “All personnel prepare for atmospheric re-entry,” the robotic voice announced over the intercom. “T minus sixty seconds.”

  Cern looked frantically back and forth. I gasped for breath, my legs shaking from the run as I looked over the empty docking ramps. We were too late.

  “Hey!” Our heads snapped to a figure at the very end of the hall, wavering to us. “Hurry up!” Lero disappeared into a short corridor that led to a shuttle.

  With our last bit of energy, we sprinted for the shuttle.

  “What took you so long?” Lero slammed his hand down on the hatch lock the instant we were inside.

  “Let’s just get out of here.” Cern threw his bag into one of the storage bins. I tossed my own bag to him and Cern slammed the lid closed.

  “On it!” Elsy called from somewhere out of sight. “I would strap in. Things are gonna get bumpy.” I dropped down in a seat, my hands shaking as I buckled the safety straps in place. I caught Cern’s gaze just as the shuttle jettisoned away from the Endurance. He gave me a half-hearted smile, his fingers clutching the armrest until his knuckles turned white.

  I watched the Endurance sink away through one of the viewports. I had never seen it from the outside, only through its long metallic halls. Though the ship was an ugly meshwork of function, it was my home. It had always been my home. And though I longed for a planet and freedom from the ship’s confining halls, the thought of losing my home was crushing.

  Flames licked across the surface of the Endurance as it hurdled down toward Iotova. Bits of debris peeled off the ship, disintegrating under the intense heat of re-entry.

  Elsy swung the shuttle around to follow behind the massive carrier. Panic surged through me as I momentarily lost sight of my home.

  “It looks like everyone is trailing after the ship.” Elsy came over the intercom system. “Once it’s down, we’ll pick a spot close by to land.”

  The ship was already small enough to fit entirely in the face-sized viewport. So far it was holding up, but that meant nothing. The real danger would come with the impact. If Commander Nash brought the ship in at the wrong angle, if it was going too fast, if it had been too badly damaged by debris, it would break into a million pieces when it touched the ground.

  More than ten thousand people in hibernation were still aboard the Endurance. All that was left of humanity. Those people had brought with them the knowledge of an entire planet. The histories of thousands of cultures, carefully recorded and transcribed over decades. Documents on technologies that hadn’t been used in centuries but would prove useful once more on a new planet. DNA catalogs of the planets and animals from the world we had left behind. DNA from our loved ones who could not make the trip.

  The ship was the last breath of a dying world. If it were destroyed, our world would die. Our species would die.

  I looked around at my teammates. Cern. Lero. Elsy. Jastin. We had all grown up together. We spent every waking cycle together. Commander Nash had mentioned that we didn’t know our parents and we hadn’t. These people here were my family.

  Suddenly, my vision blurred and I realized I was crying. I wiped at my eyes quickly, not wanting to miss a second as we trailed behind the falling giant, which was no more than a speck against the planet now.

  “Can’t we get any closer?” I ground out. I knew we couldn’t. Getting closer would put us at risk of getting hit by debris from the ship.

  Cern reached over and took my hand, his own shaking as he reached for me. He had always been there for me. As children, we had played together, drawn to each other since we could first walk. Now, we would take our first steps on a planet together.

  If our world survived the fall.

  I squeezed his hand tight, almost crushingly, but Cern didn’t protest.

  “Look.” Cern’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Another shuttle pulled up alongside us. The black metal exterior blended in with the dark emptiness of space around it. Slowly, more shapes began to materialize out of the darkness. The longer I looked the more shuttles appeared. Dozens of shuttles drifted in the wake of the massive carrier.

  “Alright, guys,” Elsy came over the intercom once again, jolting me from my thoughts. “The ship should be…should have landed by now. We’re going to swoop in and try to land as close as we can. It should be a lot easier for us, as these babies were made for landings. Just sit back and relax. The shuttle is gonna jostle and bump, but we’ll be fine.”

 
I took a few deep breaths as our pilot angled the ship directly toward the planet. Flames licked across the viewports as the shuttle descended through Iotova’s atmosphere. The shuttle jolted and rocked as though it might be ripped apart at any moment. My fingers dug into Cern’s hand, his grip on my own just as tight. Though the Endurance had seemed to disappear to the planet quickly, our descent seemed never-ending.

  Then the ground was quickly rising up to meet the viewports. For a moment, I panicked, thinking we would simply smash apart into a million pieces. Instead, the shuttle leveled out, gliding effortlessly across the planet’s surface.

  “Oh my god,” I breathed. Unlatching my seat belts, I rushed to the viewports. My eyes darted quickly over the land, trying to take in everything at once.

  Our shuttle was barreling over a vast prairie. A sea of golden-brown grass covered the land as far as the eye could see, but the land was marred. A long streak of churned and blackened earth shattered the otherwise pristine land. Gargantuan hunks of twisted metal protruded from the ground, still smoking. Bits of debris had flown off in every direction, carving out their own smaller paths.

  I held my breath as we continued to follow the scorched path. With so much debris, what could be left of the Endurance?

  I could see the other shuttles following alongside us. They flew low to the ground, inspecting the scorched new land as we were.

  A blur of movement caught my eye. A shape falling from the sky. Not a ship. Not debris. It looked like a bird, larger than any I had seen in the old pictures. In the blink of an eye, it smashed into one of the shuttles. As the creature took to the sky again, the shuttle spun out of control, slamming into the shuttle next to it. They plummeted to the ground below, dirt flying up in their wake. A wing was ripped off of one of the shuttles, throwing it back up into the air.

  Our shuttle swerved precariously as it tried to avoid the flying debris. I scrambled for something to hold on to as Elsy over-corrected causing the shuttle to jerk back and forth. Why had I gotten out of my seat? How could I have been so stupid?

  Strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me close as the shuttle took a nosedive. I locked my arms around Cern, holding on to him for dear life. Any moment now we would slam into the ground and be ripped apart just like the other shuttles.

  Metal groaned and the ship jerked once again and suddenly we were spinning. My fingers dug into Cern’s shirt as the force of the impact threatened to tear us apart. Pain bloomed from the back of my head as I smashed in against an overhead compartment.

  I love you. The words rang through my mind as I clung to Cern. We were going to die. I wanted to say the words back. I wished I had said them back before. But the words wouldn’t come as I held my breath and waited for the end.

  Chapter 2

  The sky above me was blue. I had never seen blue sky before, only in pictures and videos. White clouds drifted along lazily as they moved in and out of my field of vision. A lopsided moon hung in the sky. It almost looked like someone had taken a bite out of it. I blinked a few times, sure that the view would vanish and I would be back aboard the ship.

  But nothing changed.

  The ground beneath me was hard and uneven. Rocks poked into my back. My whole body ached. Every inch and every muscle protested all at once.

  Then everything came flooding back to me. The asteroid. The debris cloud. The ship. The shuttles. The crash.

  “Cern!” I cried as I snapped up. I instantly regretted the quick movement, my head throbbing.

  “Laure!” His strong, familiar hand took my elbow and steadied me. “Take it easy.” He kept me from standing.

  “What happened? What was that thing?” The image of the bird creature plummeting from the sky kept replaying through my mind.

  “I don’t know.” Cern shook his head. “An animal of some kind.”

  “Are we safe here? Should we find shelter somewhere? Do the others…” I stopped.

  How had I not seen it sooner?

  The Endurance rose up out of the ground like the carcass of a gargantuan beast. I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain in my head. I had never realized how big the ship was. It had to have been huge to carry ten thousand souls thousands of light years from their home and for hundreds of years, but as I stood next to it now, the place I had called home for the entirety of my life was bigger than I had imagined.

  And yet it still seemed small. The Endurance had carved a path of destruction across Iotova as it tried to land, but the scar it left wouldn’t even be seen from orbit.

  My eyes flitted around as I looked over my home. While the Endurance was mostly whole, it was far from unscathed. Debris was scattered across the prairie for as far as the eye could see. Charred pieces of the wreckage had embedded themselves into the ground on impact, a silent monument to their violent landing. There were more pieces scattered about than I could even begin to count. Some pieces still smoldered, smoke rising from the surface and dissipating on the breeze.

  For the most part, though, the ship was still intact. Certainly, some of the colonists had survived. Certainly, not all of our work was lost.

  The human race still had a future.

  Just as my heart began to swell with hope, a piece of debris caught my eye. My legs felt like lead as I took a few steps forward. The long cylindrical tube lay on its side, partially embedded in the scorched earth.

  A torpor tube.

  * * *

  MIRA RAFFERTY

  #6689

  CYCLE 27

  * * *

  This glass face was shattered and scorched. With a shaking hand, I reached out and touched the glass. A blackened shard fell away, revealing a glimpse of charred remains inside. Tears blurred my vision and I tried desperately to blink them away. As my vision cleared, I saw more tubes scattered across the plain. A hard lump formed in my throat and I struggled to keep myself together.

  They hadn’t all made it.

  “Come on.” Cern’s voice was gentle. “The other shuttles have landed. We need to figure out what to do.”

  I turned away from the torpor tube, wiping away the last of the tears. There wasn’t any time.

  The survivors from the shuttles were clustered in a small group. A quiet din rising as everyone talked at once. I approached the outer edges. Our teammates nodded as Cern and I approached. I gave them a courteous nod but didn’t stop to stand with them. Instead, we made our way through the crowd until we stood near the front.

  The colonists stood in a rough circle around Lieutenant Commander Parsons from my own cycle and a man I presumed to be the second in command of cycle forty-eight.

  “Folks.” Lieutenant Commander Parsons raised his hands, his voice booming across the crowd. A hush fell over the survivors as they hung on his every word. “I am Lieutenant Commander Parsons of the tenth cycle. This is Lieutenant Commander Carter of the forty-eighth cycle. We have a daunting task ahead of us. What we see before us”—he gestured to the Endurance—“is the only home any of us has ever known. The planet has promise, but we are already off to a…rough start.” He lowered his head, his eyes flitting back and forth over the ground as he chose his next words carefully. “At this moment, we are without food, water, or any real shelter in a land that is unknown to us. At this exact moment, we cannot be sure if any of the other colonists survived the landing, which would mean we are alone.”

  Lieutenant Commander Carter stepped forward. “But that does not mean we are alone. Look at her.” She gestured to the ship again. “Commander Nash and Commander Sims brought her in as expertly as anyone could have. She is in better condition than anyone could have hoped. Surely, we will find others who are still alive.”

  “We have a lot of work to do.” Parsons nodded to his equal. “Many of us have come straight out of hibernation.” He sighed, rubbing his face wearily. “There will be no rest. No adjustment period. If we do not act now, we will die. We have survived too long for that.”

  “We need to break up into teams.” Carter picked up
the speech. “You will each be assigned a task based on your current job status and abilities. Our priorities right now are food, water, and shelter.”

  “What about the other colonists?” I interrupted. All eyes snapped to me. I wanted to hide from the crowd, but I forced myself to stand tall.

  “We have to worry about those of us who are here, right now. Once our survival is assured, we can worry about the rest,” Carter stated.

  “No,” I said firmly as Carter glowered at me. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Our lives were created to ensure the survival of our race. Millions died on Earth so we could leave. Those who left never set foot on a planet again. Thousands more were born in space, never to know a planet of their own. We owe it to all those who have come before us to ensure the survival of the others, not just ourselves.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd.

  “If we cannot ensure our own survival, then we cannot ensure the survival of the other colonist,” Carter said slowly.

  “We have four hundred people here.” Parsons gestured to the crowd. “Certainly, we have enough people to retrieve supplies and begin searching for survivors from the other cycles.”

  Carter sighed and rubbed his temples. “You’re right. We’ll split into groups to look for the resources we need and other survivors.”

  “Make no mistake,” Parsons stated loudly. “This will be dangerous. Without a full inspection of the ship, we cannot say for sure how structurally sound she is. It is likely that we will lose people to accidents.”

  “What about Commander Nash and Commander Sims?” a voice broke through the crowd. “We should look for them too.”

  I stood up on my tiptoes trying to see the speaker across the crowd, but I couldn’t tell who it was. What had happened to the commanders of the tenth and forty-eighth cycles? Their chances of survival had been slim, but perhaps by some stroke of luck they had survived. It would hardly be just for them to languish in the wreckage until they died after saving so many others.