Beyond Sol

Epilogue ZA

I threw on my winter jacket, "James, you ready yet?!" I called upstairs. I pulled my short hair back, throwing on my NF REAL hat.
    "Coming!" James, my 13 year old great...times twenty year-old grandson running down the carpet laced stairs. My great...times nineteen granddaughter had died, along with her husband, leaving James up for adoption at the age of seven months. So, just a year after my return I was able to orphan him. He was originally called Alexander, I renamed him in honour of James, don't tell him though.
    James threw on his coat and toque, I did the same. "Ready little dude?"
    "Yeah!" I opened the front door, the snow shovelled walkway from the sidewalk once again covered. I skipped down the steps with him, kicking through the white snow.
    "Whatcha up to these days?" I hung a right onto the sidewalk, cars parked all up and down the road. You'd be surprised how little they changed, other than the price, of course.
    "At school? Not a lot. We just entered our new unit in science though. It's uh...ah what was it, tch," he thought, "spaceflight! We're learning about this thing called Sol Beyond? Apparently it was this like super, super cool mission that was gonna go to Alpha Centauri for the first time but like at Neptune it disappeared and it met all these cool big ships and they were chased down by these alien creatures and it was like a myth for the past few centuries and they had this super big ship called the light or something? But like a bunch of people died on it so it's even cooler! The teacher kept looking over to me like I did something wrong though," he said in joy. I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk. My lips parted slightly, I stared ahead in terror and fear, comprehending the words I just heard from his mouth.
    "Dad?" He turned around to me, watching the falling snow collect on the brim of my hat. It all came back to me, the launch, the disappearance, the countless battles, stuck on KLMA-3E, watching Emma and Braeden die, Project Aurora, the Somal Incident, everything.
    I started walking again alongside him. "It wasn't cool, James." I kept my head hanging low.
    "What?"
    "Did your teacher give you a list of the crew?"
    "Yeah! It was this Braeden guy, Emily, James, Amelia, Elizabeth, Muhammed and C-" It was at that moment he realised. "W-Were you...were you on it?"
    "Don't stress it." I pat him on the back with my right prosthetic arm, crossing the sidewalk to him. We hung a right, then a left into the cemetery. We walked through the paths until we arrived at a gated zone, six graves lying inside. All six of them. Flowers surrounded the area outside, despite the black metal fence allowing access inside.
    I unlocked the small fence, walking inside the maybe four square metre area. I pulled out six copies of a novel, black cover, the words BEYOND SOL imprinted on the top left, five planet like spheres diagonally crossing, the name CARTER ALLAN etched into the lower right corner.
    I dropped one on each of the graves before backing away. "Say a prayer for them." I turned to James, closing my eyes with him. About halfway through a shockwave blasted away snow across the whole island...I'd assume. My eyes opened nearly instantly, my neck craning upwards. I couldn't quite distinguish what it was, something in the gaps of cloud cover.
    Okay, it's coming from space, nice to know. Entry interface trailed behind the group of objects, they were black, some blue contrail, some sort of wing like surface, christ, they were big too. I realised at that moment what it was. "W-What is that?" James asked, snapping his neck upwards as far as he could.
    "Aeson's."