A New World

In the swirl of nebulous unconsciousness a blaring alarm cut through, louder and louder until finally Sam felt himself gasp awake. The tiny quarters he had been afforded was flooded red with warning lights, and a alarm bleeped through the intercom demanding that all personnel immediately make their way to the lifeboats.

It took Sam a few moments to collect himself from the sludgy pool of sleep, but his training eventually kicked in and he jumped from bed and quickly went to work dressing himself in the standard issue body suit the company had provided for him. The suit was clicked into place immediately upon reading his specific biometric data and begun the process of pumping Sam’s body full of a light cocktail of designed to stimulate his reaction time and his mental faculties in addition to providing him with a plenthora of gadgets for personal defence. Once in place, Sam rushed from his room and down the winding corridor of the Endeavour.

Sam’s role within the ship had been a last minute thing, and his training was haphazard at best. The _Endeavour _was part of a greater initiative by the Company to test the limits of its spacefaring and colonisation potential past the edges of known space, and as such they had picked a dozen of the best scientists for the expedition to one of the remote world’s they had deemed suitable for habitation. However last minute concerns had caused the Company to try and soothe concerns about potential risks and hired on one member of security personnel. Sam was the lucky schmuck who got drafted for the job. And so far it had been months of tedium followed by the imminent promise of horrible . Not exactly the adventure he had hoped for.

He was greeted by the most of the crew waiting at the life boats, save for the captain, who was conspicuously absent. The ship rumbled and vibrated underneath them, growing worse and worse with every second.

“What the hell’s happening?” He asked the others, “The ship feels like it’s going to tear itself apart.”

“There was an unexpected solar flare,” one of the chief technicians, Yuri Smirnov replied, his face palid behind his suit’s visor. “The ship’s main functions are overloaded and the reactor is reaching critical mass.”

Sam cursed under his breath. “Then what the hell are we doing here?” He looked at the others, “if this heap’s about to go nuclear why on earth are we still aboard? The lifeboats all have enough supplies to last us months.”

“The Captain wanted us to wait until all distress messages were sent,” Yuri explained, though it was clear he looked terrified as the ship was struck by another bout of violent vibration. “We have to wait until-”

“The Captain is here,” came a the firm, yet feminine voice of Captain Alice Walker, moving towards at a brisk walk, a metal case tucked under an arm. “I suggest you ladies and gentlemen get to your life boats, this is going to be a bumpy ride.”

No further explanation was needed and the crew went about finding their places. Sam got into the lifeboat closest, sitting himself down in the six-man pod and allowing his suit to automatically lock itself into the passenger seat. Captain Alice sat opposite him, the metal case still perfectly tucked into her protective grasp. At his right was Yuri, who looked ready to be sick in his helmet as the lifeboat hummed and shuttered as it detatched itself from the _Endeavour _and propelled off into the void. Once the pod was rocked by what was no doubt aftershocks of the ship’s destruction the other three members of their pod seemed to handle the situation little better.

“How far were we from our destination?” Sam asked the Captain, his voice calmer than he would have thought. “Is there any way we can make the rest of the journey in these things?”

The woman shook her helmeted head. “It was another fives months, and the amount of solar radiation would just fry us again,” she checked a screen attached to her seat, “We’re headed for the closest celestial body...a moon orbiting a gas giant.”

“Is it habitable?” Asked another man to Sam’s left, Miguel Rodriguez the ship’s communications officer. “It won’t do us any good sending a distress beacon if we run out of supplies before help arrives.”

Again the helmet nodded. “ANDY ran a scan of the planetoid, there’s a breathable atmosphere,” there was the slightest hesistation, “we didn’t have time to check much more than that, but there’s decent odds we’ll have water as well.”

ANDY sat perched on the captain’s shoulder, a small silver orb slightly smaller than a soccer ball with only a singular red eye. It was one of the company’s newest inventions and cutting edge in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics. Most forms of interplanetary travel required the use of one designated AI to help aid the ship’s captain with calculation and diagnostics and the little bot had not left Alice’s side in all the time Sam had known her.

“We can string together rations for almost a year if we’re smart,” piped in the voice of Catherine Chen, the ship’s xenobiologist. She looked at the others carefully, her expression guarded, “And depending on what we find on the moon’s surface, the soil may be viable enough for us to grown some form of crops.”

A beep alerted them that the lifeboat had reached its programmed destination and was preparing to land. Sam clenched And unclenches his hands as he felt the familiar rattle and shake of the pod breaching atmosphere and the return of gravity. “Fingers crossed...”