《Solar Reclamation Project》 Ch 1 There Were Devils Among The Angels Ch 1 There Were Devils Among The Angels The Earth was a crowded cesspool in the 2030¡¯s. In the current year of 2128 it was a sweltering barren hellscape. The land had receded into the seas and oceans. The land was arid. Salt water leached life from the ground. Radiation covered the land and lives were short. It was no longer a home. It was a deathbed and a prison. The tools and machines that once tore the earth for its precious metal were no more. The materials humans needed to progress were locked beneath the earth too far for them to reach. Technological advancement couldn¡¯t keep up with the growing population. Poorly made political reforms only added fuel to what was a burning wreck. The world was beyond repair. First world countries became third and third world countries disappeared. Everyone was fixated on helping themselves. Their neighbors warred and were swallowed up by bigger countries and rising tides. Eventually things regressed and resembled the warring states period. There was a time when fixing the earth seemed feasible. It would have been a better option than trying to terraform an entity''s new environment. In the current time it would be better to leave to make a new home then to try and repair one that''s already occupied by those who unwittingly seek to burn it down. It¡¯s not as if an attempt wasn¡¯t made. Many nations tried. Atmospheric regulations came online in the 2040¡¯s. Within a few decades climate change could have begun to turn around. Year by year the estimates for how long it would take lengthened. The current turmoil created many countries with poor and poorer infrastructure. Creating and replacing nuclear plants was a non option. Many returned to fossil fuels and coal. Humanity seemed very determined to destroy itself. With everyone scrambling for resources and dwindling territory they couldn¡¯t see the big picture. Countries fell and regulators were scrapped to make weapons of war. Why scrap them to make weapons? It''s just what foolish humans do. It''s better to save today than the future. Humanities outlook was very bleak. A few were wise enough to make an escape plan. They were labeled traitors and many were killed in their escape. Bombed out of the sky. They knew the world was irreparable and funneled everything they could into the only option the thought would succeed. In 2058 nearly two hundred ships took flight. Many were decoys. Nothing more than an empty hull of scrap metal on a rocket blasting mixed signals. Most ships never left the atmosphere. Decoys that ran out of fuel or genuine ships unlucky enough to be knocked down. Out of all the ships a measly seventeen made it past atmo, three decompressing from hull damages on the journey up. Of the fourteen surviving ships they shared a crew of thirty nine.. Three crew died on the way. An unlucky woman named Katya Tarasova was the sole survivor of her ship. Her copilot''s harness came loose. When she came to. Her co-pilot had bled out from blunt force. their body tumbled into the back of the cabin. Her second crewman had his neck snapped after the first crewman slipped from his harness. The fourteen remaining ships traveled to the asteroid belt. For the next decade they processed tons of material. Cannibalized their ships. Destroyed the occasional satellite sent from earth. Then after many revised plans they made their way to Jupiter''s orbit. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Earth was silent. No radio transmission continued after 2073. The last message was a simple we''re sorry. To the crew it was a clear message. It was the death call for the last remnants of civilized humanity. All that remained were dictators and tribes fighting for scraps. Although their mission was safe from delusional vindictive men who no longer had the power to send their threats to space. It was mute. Knowing their peace existed because civilization. Their civilization. Had died. By 2082 they had captured hundreds of trojan asteroids in Jupiter''s orbital path. They were ready to slow to join orbit around Jupiter. If anyone was still star gazing from earth. They may see a dim star shine in Jupiter''s path. Hundreds of engines lit up the captured cluster in blue hues. In 2096 the fleet deposited the cluster in Jupiter''s orbit on a collision course with Ganymede. The hope was that ganymede would be warmed in the collision. That its magnetic field would strengthen enough to support an atmosphere. Over the course of decades The melting ice added to the atmosphere and for the first time Ganymede had liquid oceans on its surface. During the decades that ganymede warmed. The fleet was actively studying the section of solar system they now called home. Processing materials and expanding the fleet. Their automation kept their growing fleet afloat. In 2116 station Scyphus was completed in orbit of Ganymede. Ganymede¡¯s name was taken from Roman myth. Ganymede was a boy and the most beautiful of mortals. Zeus took Ganymede to Olympus to be the gods cupbearer. Scyphus station was named after the cups that the Romans used to drink wine. The current year is 2128. Ganymede''s atmosphere is breathable with the aid of respiratory equipment. The surface is dotted with frigid seas and oceans. The sea floor consists mostly of ice and rock in scarce areas. Microbes brought from earth fill the soil. Habitats exist in small numbers. Most of Ganymedes population live in Scyphus station. The total collective population barely breaches twelve thousand. Thousands of embryos lay dormant preserved in cryo ready for when ganymede stabilizes. The future of humanity starts here. A collision rocks scyphus. Hundreds of men and women are flung into space. The blown section seals tightly preventing a greater catastrophe. Black sand flows out of the twisted metal on scyphus. There''s a saying. Don¡¯t put all your eggs in one basket. In 2058 one hundred and fifty angels took to the sky. One fourth of those angels escaped the hell they once called home. They carried countless unborn lives on their backs. Among them however were devils. One of the fourteen ships carried an experiment, scientists and their research. They took with them their own plan. Their own idea of how to save humanity. Over decades they leached off the backs of others. They stole and stored snippets of dna from every species. In 2082 they cloaked themselves among the clusters of trojan asteroids. In 2096 they flew alongside the cluster away from the fleet. Their thrusters masked by the swarm of debris they traveled outward away from jupiter. hidden between a backdrop of stars and the black expanse of space. By 2128 the crew had died off. The ship left waiting, its processors aged but still functioning. seventeen launch tubes open with Seven inoperable. Twenty four canisters fire. Seven break in their launch tubes free to cannibalize the ship. Hull breaches spew black sand into space. The decompression spins the ship. Seventeen canisters fly. Their trajectories for Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io. Four canisters fly for Ganymede. One rips into Scyphus. One rips into a ship of a fleet in orbit. Two make it to the surface. One in the ocean and one on the land. The Star Farrer 022 was struck. Its hull breached. Black sand drifted out of the wound. The decompressed space was sealed and pressurized. Of the ship''s twenty crew. Six died on impact. From the camera feed inside the ship the sand seemed to spring to life. It crept along the walls and the crew. The blue paint of the interior was ate away at a visible rate. An unlucky survivor writhed under a carpet of black. The deceased crewmen were lucky. Their bodies were broken down in minutes. After a quick debate over the poor man''s life. The safety of the ship came first. The room was evacuated. The poor man and the foreign black sand drifted away from the ship. The remaining black sands deconstruction of the hull slowed dramatically in the vacuum. Being rewritten Ch2 The Silence That Avarice Bought With grim satisfaction a man walks out of the cargo bay, knowing that from this point forward. He is a murderer and nothing could dissuade him from that truth for the rest of his days. Everyone on board the ship is excited and prepping for the drop. When the cargo opens the ship will jostle a bit. Humans will be alright but anything small will be sent flying around. The killer passes through the ship without interference making his way to his quarters. Sharing a space with three other men was hell. Every moment of putting up a smile and being friendly with them was a chore. Being from a different nation didn''t inspire comradery. Watching someone from a former enemy nation and an ally get along was bad and being the butt of their jokes made it worse. They didn''t give me a reason to spare them and the only person who did, I JUST KILLED! Nothing will stop my conviction. Screw them, screw this mission, and screw me. If before I could be forgiven for the life I had taken. For the many I''m about to, I''ll be going straight to hell. For the country, and for my family''s success. The door of his quarters closed with a clunk and a hiss signaling the room being disconnected from the ship''s circulation system. The door of the other quarters closed and orange light blinked signaling that there was a fight. When security got to the door the light changed to red and alarms blared signaling a fire. Security immediately tried to pry open the door instead of venting the air since there was crew inside. Some people ran through the ship calling for someone to open the damned door. An engineer came running. She opened an access panel and depressurized the door locks. In their panic and never having manually unlocked one of the doors they forgot their training except for her. Instead, they scrambled to find someone who could, and by then it was likely too late. When the doors opened no one came out. There was no smoke hell there wasn''t even a fire. Nor anyone inside. What the hell happened? Sabotage and distraction happened. Because of the chaos like the curious beings humans often are. people came to see what the hell was going on. Some few decided to secure themselves in their quarters encase the ship was compromised. That is what they were designed for after all. Each quarter was a lifeboat capable of recycling the air and water and was stocked with several months of preserved food as well as a transceiver for distress calls and to talk to family albeit severely delayed. The majority of the crew were in one place and where they were not was sealed shut. Then the airlocks opened and every crew member that was in those halls was sucked out into space. Bodies and debris littered the horizon viewed from the ship. Then the crew quarters opened and more bodies and debris were scattered. The airlocks closed and our killer exited his quarters. Blood smeared the walls. Broken bodies lay around the ship caught in handholds and the loose straps they had yet to tighten down. He gathered the corpses that were left into an airlock and sent them on their way. Being a man of precaution he wore an EVA suit just in case there was unforeseen damage to the ship. He entered the control room, sat in a flight chair, and started the thrusters. The ship lurched forward and the hull creaked. Then quieted to a light hum that verberated through the hull. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. He sullenly faced what was coming. A one-way trip farther out than what the ship was made for. With the lightening of the load, he could make it. HIS Mission... Saturn. Unfortunately, someone was left onboard, or what was left of someone. waking up in the cargo bay our lead takes a moment to recollect what happened. he.. he died and someone was there, and they did nothing to stop it. A few moments pass as he contemplates his death. noticing that the ship was moving. He snapped his attention to the outside. Is that debris? So many bodies... Bodies, Bodies everywhere. clear as day as if he were outside the ship standing beside each one all at once. It''s too much! just when his mind started reeling from the shock, and a headache was coming. It went away. His focus shifted back to himself. He was no longer staring threw the glass, and the bodies seemed farther away. All those people were gone, and yet worse the ark had eaten him. yet he survived... no. He was the ark now. Trying to look past his crises, he commanded his body to move. It moved exactly how he hoped. Better than controlling it with signals or code. It was the same level of control you''d expect from your own body. He patched himself into the cameras of the ship. What was it? What caused this? How badly was the ship damaged? The ship was fine. There was no exterior damage. The interior was a mess. Not a single soul could be seen. The only evidence of anyone being onboard. Were the smears on the roof the floors and the walls. Bloody foot and hand prints trailed through the halls. Someone was still here! He patched into the control room. It was him! He killed me! He killed everyone! With no hesitation, faster than a blink, he made a decision. Every airlock every door, and maintenance hatch opened simultaneously. The decompression force was so strong that the killer was ripped out of the flight chair before he could gasp in his suit. The straps of the chair held not even a microsecond. The chair bent and was nearly torn from the floor. The control room, the quarters, the halls, and their compartments warped from the sudden vacuum. Bulkheads buckled, consoles crumpled, and the doorways warped with the walls of the ship. The killer vacuated the ship like the world''s fastest game of Plinko, smashing against consoles, doorways, and any furniture that hadn''t been ripped from the floor by the force before taking a hard left and launching out an airlock like a missal. Crumpled up like a wet wad of paper and shot threw a straw. He took enough damage to kill a man a hundred times over in a matter of a second. If miraculously he came out without hitting a thing, with their suit intact on top of it. Then the g-force would have squeezed Him harder that a tube of toothpaste. He wasirrefutably dead. Our lead couldn''t decide if he was alive or dead being what he was. He thought it wouldn''t matter as he''d never get to figure it out. He could feel it. His consciousness was slipping as he rocketed toward Europa. Their only misgiving in this situation is that they wouldn''t get to see that bastard''s corpse splatter on the moon. His corpse was already out of sight traveling much faster than he was. His consciousness started to fade quicker the further he was from the ship, and things stopped making sense to him. Part of the arks nanites were still onboard. The thrusters burned fully like two blue stars in a sea of black. That was the last thing he saw.