CONTINUATION
by Alex Paige ‘14
The ship hung in low orbit, 250 kilometers above the surface of Eros. The massive space shuttle’s thrusters fired, propelling the craft slowly downward towards the surface of the planet. The words Immigrant and Earth Lander were stenciled in huge black letters along the side of the craft’s white hull. As The Immigrant drew nearer to the planet, the previously slow progress of the ship increased, and the fiery blue jets emitted by the thrusters became more frequent. The solar panels on the top of the ship glimmered in the brilliant sun, and the landing gear began to slowly unfold from the bottom of the huge bay doors on the underside of the vessel.
Behind the tinted windows of the bridge, Dominic White stared down at the utopian planet below him–glittering, vivid, and virgin to the destructive hand of humanity. Dominic White was the sole inhabitant of The Immigrant and had just awoken from a seventeen yearlong stasis. He stared wide-eyed and enthralled, for the planet looked strikingly similar to how Earth had looked before the bomb. However, Eros was an estimated four times larger than Earth and had two moons orbiting in opposite directions.
Dominic White stood, dressed in white scrubs and a robe. His hands pressed against the dash as he stared down through the threshold onto the steadily approaching planet.
“Two-hundred kilometers approaching.” The automated voice came over the PA and shook Dominic from his trance. He strode across the room, and the robe which he had worn for seventeen years trailed behind him. He vigorously tapped different dials and keypads and simultaneously fed a stream of voice commands to the automated pilot. His thick beard was smudged with the smallest strokes of grey and his eyes were a piercing blue. Dominic’s jaw was chiseled, but his gaze was soft.
Dominic White had been raised in Podol’sk, a Muscovite suburb. His father, Fedor, had worked at the sewing machine factory and his mother, Anya, struggling to make ends meet, danced at the bar down town. Often Dominic would return home to find Fedor sprawled on the black and white kitchen tiles, his slender white fingers wrapped firmly around an empty Yat bottle. Dominic would grab his father under his arms and drag him down the dark hallway into his parent’s bedroom where he would slump his father onto the bed. Anya wouldn’t return until the early morning hours and would sleep through the day.
When he was sixteen, Dominic dropped out of high school and enrolled in mother Russia’s most prestigious flight school, The Academy for Aeronautical Sciences. Five years later he graduated with Honors, the youngest student ever to do so, and soon he was flying recon in the A-12 program. There was a time when Dominic was considered the best pilot in the Russian Air Force, but then he changed.
He had been in the streets, surrounded by a crowd of about three hundred. Picket signs bobbed above the heads of the chanting and marching group. The assembly was protesting the high unemployment and the internal corruption that had plagued its government for years. The mass of people slowly made its way down the middle of the street towards City Hall. The civility of the demonstration quickly deteriorated, and the tame chants became angry shouts. Dominic seethed, fed by the anger of those around him. There was a commotion, a scuffle and a shout. Then there was panic. The venomous anger turned to terror as the crowd surged and swayed. Some were trampled beneath the throbbing assembly. Dominic was overcome by confusion and ran, attempting to break free of the turmoil.
Over the crowd a voice was heard, “Police! Police!” Within moments the sound of gunfire rippled through the crowd. Over the heads of the people, Dominic could see riot police with weapons raised and pointed at the crowd. A woman in front of Dominic gasped and fell to her knees, grabbing her chest where blood was pulsing out of a bullet wound. Blood flowed from her mouth and her eyes rolled back into her head. Dominic grabbed her shoulders as she fell and lowered her to the pavement, her head cradled between his legs. His white shorts were now crimson and her trembling body grew still. The rebel protesters ran and as Dominic yelled for help, no one listened.
Dominic didn’t return to work for weeks after the incident at the protest. He had dreams, too, reoccurring and terrible–dreams of kneeling in the street with blood soaked hands while being crushed by his tyrannical government. Depression plagued Dominic and the same alcoholism that had destroyed his father began to take hold of him.
Then the war started.
Bombs were dropped, urgently and desperately, and when the dust settled, it became apparent that Earth was no longer stable. That’s when Dominic was selected as a candidate for the Eros Campaign. He had gone, not only because he knew deep within him that it may be his last chance for redemption, but also because the job was coveted. As he climbed aboard The Immigrant, thousands of people watched in awe. As the shuttle vanished into the abyss of space and the smoke trail faded behind him, the people applauded.
Eros revolved below him, like a diamond on display.
The Immigrant still hung low, the massive hull only hundreds of feet above the trees. She turned a wide turn and crested the edge of a deep canyon. Dominic raised the ship and she ascended again. The ship idly lingered among the large clouds, and Dominic removed his hands from the control dash. He took a deep breath and again stared down at the beautiful planet that looked so much like his home; a home that had been destroyed by the vicious selfishness of his fellow men. Dominic’s face contorted as he remembered. He pictured this pristine and pure planet, void of intelligent life and teeming with vegetation and species never before discovered. But then he remembered the way Earth had looked as he had departed; dark and dying like a sick dog, resigned and waiting for its eventual demise. Earth was covered with litter that was tossed into its orbit, its surface, and the deepest depths of its oceans. He envisioned Earth’s tyrants who had yelled a call to arms over the crowds. Dominic thought of how he had stood in his Moscow apartment, huddled over the tiny black and white TV, watching the troops march into battle. He recalled the thousands of warheads, sparkling terribly in the sun and aimed skywards.
His gaze returned to Eros. He alone had the power to seal this planet’s fate. Should he condemn it to the inevitable plague of humanity? Eros would become blanketed in a web of interstates, factories, and malls. Did people deserve the paradise of Eros?
Dominic reflected. He slumped in his high-backed pilot’s chair, eyes welling with tears, and a look of desperation hung loosely on his face. Memories of hauling Fedor down the dark hallway flooded back into his mind: a fatigued and helpless Anya, stumbling through the door in the early morning; the woman dying in his hands in the street . . . and, in an instant, his decision was made.
Dominic White pushed the thrusters past capacity, switched off the inertial dampeners, shut down the back up fuel line, cut interstellar coms, disposed of the provisionary failsafe program scripts of the central computer, and closed his eyes.
There was a moment of silence, a calming peace that seemed to last for an eternity. In those few moments, Dominic White smiled.
The Immigrant impacted Eros at five thousand kilometers per hour. Humanity’s last chance was snuffed out in an instant.