Grady's Site

Prologue

Our story starts in the year 2012, on December 21.  The international space station  was making its daily check up with the Johnson space center  in Houston, Texas.

“Houston, this is Capt.  Coffman  from I.S.S. reporting in for daily check up, over.”

“I.S.S. this is Houston, read you loud and clear, over,” said the technician on duty.  In front of him was a large screen television displaying the status of the international space station  as it orbited the planet.

“Uhh, Houston, we seem to be having some technical problems.  Can you confirm from your end, over.”

The tech looked over all of the monitors in front of him.  All status lights reporting in from other stations from around the room were green.  Not a single red light.  Funny.  “I.S.S. everything is green on our end, ove…”

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

“I.S.S. what’s going on?  You’ve disappeared from our monitors, over?”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”


 Chapter One

The first inter-planetary war 

It is exactly one thousand years to the day from when the international space station  disappeared from the Johnson space center’s  sensors.  The information sent back from the station the moment before it vanished was a catalogue of data on a sudden formation of a theoretical concept, a white hole.  Scientist had theorized that such an anomaly existed but had had no proof until that day.  As to what it meant to the crew of the space station was an unknown.  It seems though that this day still hadn’t improved over the last thousand years.  Earth was in its first inter-planetary war against the newly discovered inhabitants of mars . 

“Woe be unto you the inhabitants of Earth for the end is here,” exclaimed the Catholic priest.  The man was standing on a milk crate on the corner of First and Broadway in New York City, while flaming wreckage fell from the sky to the earth below.  “The sins of the father will fall upon the son seven fold sayeth the Lord our God, who art in Heaven!”

***

At the same time in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center an Ark was about to take off.  “T-MINUS 20 SECONDS TO LIFT OFF.”  The Operations Commander was taking a last glance at his monitor, which displayed all relevant information in either green or red, before the Star Ship Noah took off on its one and only mission, the continuation of the human race, officially named Project Ark.

“Noah, this is Ground Control, your green for lift off, over”  From inside the star ship Noah  commander Nugent  did a last check over his equipment, before saying, “Ground Control, this is Noah, we roger that and concur that we’re green for lift off, over.”  The Ops Commander turned to his second, received a go on all mission essential operations, and said, “Roger that Noah, you’re a go, out.”

“T-MINUS 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, LIFT OFF!”  As the star ship rose into the air, Ground Control burst into cheers and applause, some even started to weep.  

***

At that exact moment a saucer shaped craft, a Martian scout ship , was entering Earth’s atmosphere.  A hatch six feet long by four feet wide opened up beneath the scout.  Out of the hatch fell an object no larger than a soda can. It dropped one thousand, two thousand, three, four, five thousand feet before it exploded in a blinding white light.   The explosion covered nearly three fourths of the planet, before the energy imploded and the planet disappeared into nothingness. 

***

On the star ship Noah  commander Nugent  was checking his sensors about to enter hyperspace when the shock wave from the explosion hit the ship.  “What the fuck ,” Nugent shouted just as another shock wave hit the ship from the implosion.  “Damn !  Helmsmen get us out of here, there’s nothing left we can do here.”

“Aye, aye commander ! Entering Hyperspace…Now!”  The helmsmen pressed the button to engage the hyper drive engines when a spatial anomaly opened right before the ship.  “NOOOOOO,” bellowed the commander .  But it was too late.  The ship had already entered the white hole; there was nothing they could do.

***

As Noah escape the clutches of the white hole the gravitational pull of the nearby planet ripped the extra fuel pods off the rear of the ship.  The ship floated listlessly as fuel rapidly drained from its arteries leaving everyone on board marooned in space.   As reports came in from all over the ship, Nugent quickly ran through as many possible scenarios that could save as most of the crew as possible, and came up with only one. Abandon the ship using all of the escape pods, but even that wouldn’t save everyone.  When they were designing the ship they weren’t concerned about safety.  They just wanted as many people as they could get on board.   Pressing a button on the armrest of his chair Nugent turned on the ship wide intercom.

“This is Commander Nugent .  I am ordering everyone to abandon ship. I want women and children first. I repeat abandon ship. Women and children first. That’s all.” 

Turning to his navigation officer, Lt. Coffman , Nugent asked, “Where in the blazes are we?”  Lt. Coffman  analyzed the star formations on his view screen in perspective with their line of approach.  He stared at the screen for a few more minutes; then typed in a few commands.  The results weren’t good.

“Sir, the computer couldn’t come up with anything remotely correlating with any star constellation that we have in our database.  We’re lost, sir.”   This could not be happening.  Lost in space.  As the information sunk in, the doors to the air lift opened.  Out of the air lift stepped Chief Engineer Cristian Coffman , Lt. Coffman’s  wife.

“What are you two still doing here,” Cristian exclaimed.  “You were supposed to leave five minutes ago.  Everybody else is gone.  Come on I was able to save one last escape pod for us.  Let’s go.”  At hearing his wife’s voice Coffman quickly rose from his chair and grabbed his uniform jacket.  Turning to his commander he saluted saying, “Permission to leave the deck and abandon ship, sir.”

Looking up from his reverie Nugent nodded his head and stood up.  “Let’s go, Lieutenant.” He followed as the Coffman’s lead the way into the air lift.  Cristian went up to left side of the wall and press a button labeled Deck Thirteen .  There was a sudden whooshing sound and the air lift descended.

As suddenly as it had started the air lift stopped and the doors opened.  Directly in front of them, down a long narrow corridor, stood the open doors of the escape pod.  All three of them ran towards the pod, but just as they were about to enter a child, no older than three, stepped out of one of the doors lining the corridor.   They looked at each other with solemn faces.  The escape pods were meant to only hold three.  No more, no less.  Someone was going to have to give up their seat to protect the child.

“As Commander of this vessel, I order you two to protect and raise this child.   Plus, a Captain goes down with his ship, right?”


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