BeiterJ1213


 * __The Exodus__**

__Prologue__ In the year 2030 scientists made a bleak discovery: a massive asteroid was hurtling towards the earth, due to hit in a maximum of 25 years. They did their best to deflect it. Explosives, astronauts, even lasers - nothing worked. They then made another, bleaker, determination: Earth was a lost cause. The asteroid would hit the earth and do so much damage and throw up so much dust as to make it unlivable for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Everything stopped. Wars, commercial production, almost all conflict. The human race banded together to work towards a goal that was far more important than who had the oil in the Middle East. They worked together to develop the technology for the human race to leave the earth in a mass exodus.

The fleet took off in early 2045, just missing the asteroid which was scheduled to hit in less than a year. It consisted of ten giant spaceships, each carrying several hundred million people. This ships were equipped with everything necessary to be self-sufficient for hundreds of years, far longer than it would take to reach the Earth-like planet that was their destination.

It is in this fleet that the following story takes place.

__The Story__

Aryll Beckett sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The computer monitor that was across the small cabin from her bed was flashing and her alarm was going off. Slapping the off button on her alarm, she peered over at the computer. The monitor indicated that someone was trying to reach her. On closer inspection, she saw it was her supervisor, Gordon Shaw. She walked over to the computer and clicked a button. His face appeared on the screen. "We need you down here to the bridge as soon as possible," he said urgently. "Something has happened." "What? What happened?" Aryll asked, set on edge by the strained tone in his voice. "Just come. We can explain better there." His image disappeared from the screen. Aryll groaned. //"Looks like it's going to be another long day at work,"// She thought wryly.

Aryll Beckett, 25 years old, was one of the lead engineers on the second ship in the fleet. She was in charge of a lot of the troubleshooting and maintenance around the ship; it was her you called when something was going wrong that you couldn't fix.

She strode into the bridge. A large room with rows upon rows of computers and people working at them, it was where all the technical things happened to make the ship work. She spotted Shaw standing behind someone looking over their shoulder as they examined what looked to be a schematic of one of the fleet ships. "What happened?" she asked. Shaw turned to face her. "The first ship is badly damaged. We have no idea what happened to it. One of the things destroyed was their comms tower. They're dead in the water. They can't send or receive transmissions. We need someone to go over there, figure out what's wrong, and act accordingly. We've decided you can be that person." Aryll's interest was piqued. "What do you mean? How were they damaged? In what way?" "We don't know what happened. All we know is what we can see from the windows. It looks almost like there was an explosion. Parts of the ship are badly damaged. That's all we can say. Now get moving. We don't know what caused it or if the other ships are in danger."

She was soon in a ship, after a crazy bustle of people instructing her, examining her, and telling her what to do and where to go. She was to pilot her small one-man ship to the damaged ship, land on it, and make her way to the bridge, and help however she could. She shifted the ship into gear and took off. "//Funny how similar these are to cars,"// she reflected with a smirk.

Her destination was the first ship in the fleet. The committee to oversee the mass exodus had determined that the safest way to fly the ships was in a line, a few hundred miles apart from each other. That way, if something happened to one of them, like this situation, it couldn't wipe out all of them.

As Aryll's small boarding ship drew close to the larger ship she marveled at its state. It drifted along in space, not propelled by its engines, among a sea of shrapnel and debris. It looked like it had gone through a meteor shower or something. Parts of it were badly damaged and she could see into the interior through a tangle of wires and metal.

Her breath caught as she saw the large section of the ship that carried the passengers. Most of the ship was segmented with airlocks in case of something like this, but the passenger section was all one part -- no airlocks. There was a large hole straight through it; she could see the stars on the other side. She blinked back a tear. There was no way any of the passengers could have survived that. Millions upon millions of innocent people, all dead. A slight comfort came when she saw the bridge, which was largely intact.

She brought her ship down into one of the landing bays. Unfortunately, the bridge was on the complete other side of the ship. She stepped out of her ship. As the airlock closed, nothing happened. Nothing happened, which was precisely the problem. Usually the room would fill with air, the lights would turn on, the doors would open, etc. But none of them did. "//I guess the damage is worse than I thought,"// Aryll inferred. //"Looks like the circuitry is all destroyed. Looks like I won't be taking off my suit. And I'll need these.////"// She was wearing the standard engineer's spacesuit, capable of going out onto the surface of a ship and making repairs. It had a hard metal protective shell. As she thought, she returned to the ship and grabbed a few tools, namely a good old fashioned crowbar and some electronic repair tools. Aryll stopped off at one of the computer terminals in the room. She chuckled at how cliche it was as she hacked the system and checked the condition of the ship as well as scanned for human life. The ship was not in a good state. A lot was damaged, much depressurized. Very little of it still had air. Somehow, the bridge seemed fine. All systems there were running as usual and by the looks of it all the people were alive. That was definitely her destination. She set off on her way to the bridge.

Getting to the bridge was easier said than done, however. She had to clamber through hallways destroyed and full of twisted metal and often hack open doors to continue. Of course, that wasn't all of it. There was also a bit of walking through a perfectly fine hallway or room, but Aryll didn't mind or even notice nearly as much.

Aryll was almost to the bridge. She was walking through a minimally affected section of the ship. She stepped into what appeared to be a research or science room. There were many tables, as well as fluid that appeared to be water everywhere. She reached up to unseal her helmet. The air in her suit was getting stale and it would be nice to get a breath of air that was fresh by comparison. She stopped. There was an ominous, creaking, screeching sound, like that of metal being bent and torn. She glanced over at one of the small reinforced windows. She sprinted for the exit. What she saw - a several ton section the ship drifting straight towards the room - began to make contact. The leading metal girders punctured the wall, opening it to the vacuum of space, and several things happened. First, all of the air in the room and that section of the ship rushed out through the holes in the wall, creating a gale that Aryll had to struggle to fight against. Next, everything went totally silent. With no air in the room, there was nothing for the sound to travel through. Lastly, Aryll could no longer see. After all the air escaped from the room, the liquid that was all over the room began to evaporate and flow out of the room as well, limiting her visibility to next to nothing as it filled with steam. She managed to make it out of the room, just in front of a wall of crashing, crushing metal. The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful compared to that.

Aryll turned a corner and saw it: the door into the bridge. She walked up to it and pumped her fist. The airlock was working. If it wasn't, she would kill all of the people inside just by opening the door. She walked through the airlock and into the bridge. She stepped inside, unsealing her helmet and taking a breath of fresh air. The people inside turned to look at her in wonder. "What?! Who are you? Where did you come from?" asked one of the men, who seemed to be in the lead.

"My name is Aryll Beckett," she replied. "I'm one of the lead engineers on ship two and the person they sent to help you sort this out." The man was visibly relieved. "My name is Jonathan Smith. How can I help you fix this?" Aryll walked over to one of the computer screens. "How bad is it?" Jonathan shook his head. "Bad. The ship is torn to shreds. The... The passengers are... lost. I don't think we should even consider repairing the ship. The people in the bridge are the only survivors. Fifty-two of us. I think we should just focus on getting us out and making sure what happened to us doesn't happen to the others." "Okay..." Aryll mulled it over. "What can you tell me about how it happened? Did you see anything through the windows? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"Let's see..." Jonathan tried to remember. "Well, we were flying as usual, the only thing out of the ordinary was a small asteroid belt. Not many asteroids and all of them small; we thought that the ship could withstand running into them. The hull is more than strong enough. But... when we first hit one, there was a huge explosion, throwing us back and putting the ship in the state you see here."

"Hmm... I think I might know what happened. Wait here and watch out the front window." Aryll took off running.

She went up stairs, climbed ladders, and went through airlocks, eventually coming out one of the maintenance hatches on top of the bridge. She made her way down the outside of the spaceship, finally reaching her destination, a metal platform right in front of the main window in the bridge. She could see the asteroid belt several hundred yards away. So small, it shouldn't have even mattered, but those weren't regular asteroids.

Aryll stood on the platform and waved her arms to get the attention of the people inside, pointing to her hand. She put her hand up to the window, showing them what was in it. It was a small piece of metal debris, about the size of two adult thumbs next to each other. She flicked it towards the asteroids. When it made contact, there was a blinding light and a wave of force from the explosion that rocked Aryll and the ship. She quickly made her way back inside.

"What was that?! What did you do?!" Jonathan asked her as soon as she came into sight. "Some warning would have been nice."

"Hey, cheer up. I figured out the problem. Those aren't regular asteroids. They're antimatter." She saw him about to ask, and answered his question before he could. "Antimatter is the same as regular matter, but with opposite charge. Matter has protons, neutrons, and electrons; antimatter has antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons. When matter meets antimatter, they annihilate each other and turn their mass into energy. That's why antimatter is so uncommon; most of it has annihilated. I'm surprised there's such a large amount of it untouched. It's almost an impossibility. Anyway, annihilation - that's what happened to your ship. It hit some antimatter, from the looks of it about the size of a pea, because the damage is so slight."

Jonathan gaped. "Wow. But what are we going to do?"

"Leave it to me," Aryll answered. "We're going to get you guys off first."

She radioed Gordon Shaw and asked him to send a ship to pick up the crew. Then she got to work rigging remote controls up to the ship's engine and steering systems. With that done, she just waited and was picked up and brought back to ship two with the rest of the survivors.

"Really? That much antimatter? That's unbelievable." Shaw exclaimed when it was explained to him. "What are we going to do? We can't go around it." "I've got it taken care of. Just watch," Aryll responded.

She held the series of wires and buttons that was hooked up to the ship's engines and steering in her hand. She fired up the engines, moving it forward toward the asteroids. "I'm going to run the ship into the asteroids, hopefully annihilating all of them. That's why I had all the other ships go to five hundred miles out. Everybody shield your eyes!" she yelled.

Everybody in the bridge ducked and there was a blinding flash of light followed by a huge shockwave, which was accompanied by a flash of the interior lights. Aryll looked out the window and gave a cheer. The only thing left was a few parts that were plainly metal from the ship, not the dull gray of the antimatter asteroids.

Unhindered, the fleet flew on. Onwards to a new home.