Lost

Chapter 1

“Approaching orbital debris field, everyone brace for impact”, I said, flicking switches and watching the readouts on the panel in front of me.

“Debris shield online”, chirped the shuttle’s computer.

“Here comes the best part!”, laughed Kevin.

“Easy for you to say, drop-pod junkie”, Rita replied, looking a little green.

“Both of you, pipe down. We’re still on an open channel”, I barked, bracing myself against my straps. The first impacts began to periodically strike the shield, before it escalated into a full storm of small pieces of junk and debris peppering our small shuttle. The shuttle shook fervently as result, and I felt like my teeth were rattling together.

The shaking began to slow to a stop, and the impacts against the debris shield were becoming less frequent. I sighed a bit, focusing on plotting out a course correction that would bring us to a higher orbit.

“Ugh, I hate that part the most”, Rita murmured.

“Really? Even more than reentry?”, Kevin questioned, leaning forward in his seat.

“Yeah. At least if something goes wrong on reentry the ship will probably just disintegrate. If micrometeorites cause the hull to burst open, well you get the picture”, explained Rita, shuddering slightly.

“Yeah okay, point taken”, Kevin conceded, bringing his focus to the sensor panel in front of him.

“How’s it looking?”, I asked Kevin.

“We’re clear of the debris field, and we’ll be long gone before we have time to swoop back around into range”, Kevin affirmed, his hands gliding over the touchless interface and his eyes flicking across the screen.

“Rita, how’s our special payload doing?”, I asked, sparing the small woman a glance. She grunted and looked down at the panel.

“S’good. Power levels are stable, and the containment field for the fuel pellets is still at 100% integrity”, responded Rita, sounding tired already.

“Are you okay?”, I questioned, eying her for an extra moment before returning my gaze to the pilot controls.

“Yeah, just reminding myself how crazy I am for letting ground control fire me up into space with you two knuckleheads again”, she replied, grinning. I allowed myself to laugh at that.

“Be real, you’d never pass up a chance to hang with us”, Kevin said, jabbing a gloved finger at her helmet’s faceplate. I was about to chime in with something witty myself, when the controls alerted me that we had finally climbed into a high enough orbit to begin our mission.

“Alright, serious time guys. Let’s do this”, Kevin said, looking more or less serious, which was an effort for him. Rita grunted her acknowledgement.

“Ground control, this is Trailblazer. We’re spinning the prototype up”, I said, simply.

“Acknowledged, we’re monitoring from ground stations. Godspeed”, crackled a voice from ground control over the comm.

I reached down and withdrew a small key from one of the pockets on my flight suit. I looked at it for a moment before inserting it into my control panel. Kevin and Rita both withdrew similar keys and did the same.

A compartment opened on each of our panels, revealing a red button inside that we all had to press at the same time to activate the drive.

“Alright, last checks. Coordinates?”, I began.

“Coordinates for Mars are set, we’re go”, Kevin affirmed.

“Power levels? Fuel?”, I continued.

“Go, and go”, replied Rita, who was now furiously typing lines of code into a console mounted on the drive.

“Alright, test flight is a go. On three guys!”, I confirmed, hovering my right hand over the button.

“One!”

I looked over at Kevin and Rita, who were both poised to press their buttons as well.

“Two!”

I looked out the window to my left at Earth. It was dark, dully colored, and shrouded with a massive planetary debris field. It was our home, but maybe if this mission succeeded, it wouldn’t have to be our only one.

“Three!”

I brought the palm of my hand down on the red button, and almost instantly I felt myself pressed into my seat as a loud crackling noise began to buzz through the cockpit. Our orbital speed indicator began to spin like crazy, and I dimly acknowledged that other annoying noise as being Kevin whooping like a maniac. The stars ahead of us seemed to stretch from pinpoints of light to long, stretched out lines.

Suddenly, there was a snap, and it was over. Our speed indicator returned to normal, as did the stars. I lurched forward against my straps.

“Everyone okay?”, I questioned, my breathing slightly faster than usual.

“That was fucking awesome”, Kevin exclaimed. Rita, though, was quiet.

“Rita, you good?”, I asked again, turning to look at her. She was transfixed on the window.

“That… can’t be right…”, she murmured, her voice a mixture of shock and terror.

“What’s wrong?”, I asked her, turning and putting a gloved hand on her shoulder.

“The stars! They’re all wrong, I don’t recognize them!”, she shouted franticly. I looked out the window as well, and apart from the stars I also noticed a distinct lack of Mars.

“What do you mean they’re wrong?”, Kevin questioned, starting to sound uneasy himself. The tension in the cockpit was starting to reach palpable levels. I picked up the handset on my console and brought it up to my mouth.

“Mission control this is Trailblazer, do you read?”, I spoke into the handset, my hands becoming shaky. Nothing but radio static answered me.

“Ohhh shit…”, Kevin mumbled.

“What is it, Kevin?”, I asked, turning to look at him.

“Both of you, come see this. You’re not gonna like it”, he replied, staring down at the interface.

Rita and I both hastily made our way over to Kevin’s station and peered down at the interface. It was showing a star chart for our current area.

“I don’t recognize this cluster, it doesn’t look like our solar neighborhood at all”, Rita said, gazing intently at the chart.

“That’s because it’s not, look at this”, Kevin replied as his hands began to move over the touchless interface. He brought up a chart showing the entire Local Group.

“So, here’s the Milky Way, right?”, he said, pointing a finger at our home galaxy. We both nodded.

“This is where we are”, Kevin continued, zooming out until we could see the entire Laniakea supercluster. He pointed his finger at a small dwarf-galaxy about seven billion light years from the Milky Way.