THE JOURNEY BEGINS (part 1, it was too long for one PM)
A Tale by Zaya Pearwood


Jacqui drifted through the void, the feeling of weightlessness easing any and all troubles from her mind. It seemed that no matter how many times she had to repair the ship (a job one would think would appear as a hindrance instead of a blessing) she would never outgrow the sense of carelessness she felt whilst suspended in deep space. Carefully making her way along the starliner’s exterior shell, Jacqui pressed flipped up the small patch on the wrist of her suit’s left arm, and pressed one of the many small buttons now revealed.

“Communications System now online.” Crackled tiny speakers next to both of her ears, the calming female voice cutting off with a slight ‘bzzt’.

“Harlan, for the third time this month; there is no hull breach.” Jacqui sighed exasperatedly; ever since the Firebird had passed through the previously undetected asteroid belt between the planets Xenophus-4 and Xenophus-5 Harlan had been going on about an asteroid he may have scraped the side of the starliner on, and even though the scanners hadn’t shown up anything he’d ordered Jacqui outside the ship for maintenance on three separate occasions within the space of a month. Of course nothing had shown up on any of the escapades, but he still insisted he had heard metal being torn away from the ship. Unfortunately he was the only crewmember awake at the time of the alleged ‘crash’ and as such, there could be no verification, and due to solar flares a week before, the security systems had been down and as such the rest of the crew couldn’t directly tell him he was being ridiculous.
“Officer Summerdale, I will not remind you again. You will address me as ‘Captain’ over the comms. You may come back on board if you are sure you haven’t overlooked anything. And also, don’t forget to fill out the maintenance report like you did last time, we need those to send back to Headquarters.” crackled the comms hollowly, the usual life found in human conversation seemingly cut out somewhere between the transmission and the receival.

“Yes sir, Captain. I’m coming back in as we speak.” Jacqui replied, rolling her eyes audaciously as she manoeuvred her way back to the airlock. Opening up the hatch next to the currently closed off entrance, she punched in the code to open the door and then drifted on inside. Once Jacqui was safely past the motion sensors placed in front of the airlock to see if anyone had actually come in, the door closed with a final sounding ‘schoop’ and she removed her helmet, letting her flaming red frizz of curls to hang in the open. Seeing her pale visage reflected dully in the glass screen that separated the airlock from the rest of the ship’s interior, Jacqui reminded herself to rake a comb through her hair later, and to maybe try that new anti-freckle cream her sister had sent to her via star-mail; Jacqui had picked it up at the last space-station they’d passed which had been well over three months ago now, but she’d never gotten around to using it. Sliding open the glass doors leading to the main corridor, Jacqui grabbed one of the cleanly printed sheets of paper outside the airlock titled ‘STANDARD MAINTENANCE REPORT’

“Damn Harlan.’ She hissed under her breath; written reports usually took at least an hour to fill out. Why couldn’t Headquarters just use the automatic status check that was sent every time someone was sent out to do repairs? Jacqui vaguely remembered something about needing a humanised physical copy, but it was still ridiculous into how much detail into which the report went. Being careful not to crease the leaflet, she made her way to her dorm, barely registering the sign on the door telling her that ‘this dorm houses Jacqui Summerden, Engineer Officer & Melony Sears, Training Officer’ as she pushed it open. Hearing even breathing from Melony’s side of the room, Jacqui guessed that she’d volunteered to take the night shift again. Being careful to make as little noise as possible, she changed back from her space-suit to her casual uniform (a forest-green fitted shirt with a white band across the left upper arm for engineering and black pants of the wearers choice; In this case, jeans), grabbed a black fountain pen, and sat down at her desk.

—x—

Rubbing her eyes blearily, Jacqui stamped the top of the filled out maintenance report with the Headquarters’ address barcode and sent it up through the mail chute located in the corner of the dorm. “Well, that’s done,” She sighed wearily, and glanced absently down at her digital watch; it was almost time for dinner. Gently shaking Melony awake, Jacqui informed her roommate that it was soon to be dinner and then began making her way down to the main hall where most meals were held. Humming tunelessly, Jacqui opened the door separating the living corridor from the main walkway. Just as she was stepping through, the lights lining the walls dimmed and flashing red emergency lights lowered in from the ceiling, and from somewhere unseen a siren began to howl. Immediately switching into action mode, Jacqui turned around and began pelting back to the engine room; she’d be able to get an idea of what was going on from there.
In the space of two minutes Jacqui was hastily opening the door to the engine room, and making her way past panicked engineers. Spotting Amer, the head engineer, over the throng, she made her way towards him.
“What the hell’s going on?!” she screamed over the combined din of the other engineers shouting orders and the sound of the ship’s engine screaming as it worked overtime.

Amer pointed at the holo-screen placed above the door, saying something that Jacqui couldn’t hear. Turning to see what he was pointing at, Jacqui’s heart skipped a beat and then seemed to pound ten times faster than normal to make up for it; The screen showed a picture of the Firebird in orbit of the planet Chebnik-7, and a massive asteroid hurtling towards the ship.
The asteroid must have been behind the planet, and undetectable by the ship’s scanners, and was moving at such a speed that there was no way that the Firebird would be able to pull out of its path in time, not without frying the ship’s engine.

Running to her station, Jacqui began helping the others try and manoeuvre the ship to safety, bravely defying that they couldn’t do anything, unless… Jacqui stood up, and ran towards Amer’s station and shouted something in his ear. Realisation dawned on his face, and he stood up screamed at everyone to shut up and listen.

Thirty seconds later, all fifty engineers were all frantically positioning the ship closer to Chebnik-7’s top atmospheric layer, and on Amer’s say-so, the engine’s were shut down and the engine-room became suddenly eerily quiet. For three whole seconds, everyone held their breath, the asteroid only twenty-or-so seconds from impact, and then the ship began to slowly but surely drop away into Chebnik-7’s atmosphere. Soon, the asteroid passed overhead, but now the main issue was stopping the ship from crashing into a fast-approaching mountaintop and killing all one thousand of the crew members inside.

Set in a fresh panic, everyone in the engine-room set about adjusting the ship’s crash-course, and soon enough the Firebird was grounded, smoking slightly, and not going to fly again any time soon.

“God damn…” Jacqui coughed, shakily getting to her feet. Helping some of the engineers around her up, Jacqui bit her lip in frustration; the engine was smoking heavily now, and some wires that had ripped from it in the crash now sprayed electrical sparks into the open air. Glancing over at Amer, who was now rubbing his head dazedly, Jacqui gulped. They were stranded on Chebnik-7, until another ship went by.

Seeing as she was no longer needed, Jacqui exited the engine-room to go check on the rest of the crew, namely Melony. Stumbling into her dorm and being careful not to step on any of the miscellanea that had become unlodged from shelves and tables during the crash, Jacqui frantically searched the dorm but to no avail; Melony wasn’t there. Deciding that the training officer would probably report to the bridge where her supervisor resided as soon as any sign of danger appeared, and began making her way to the command deck. From what she saw on the way there, no one had been seriously injured by the crash, though one man had hit his head on a table and appeared to be unconscious. Pushing past a group of domestic staff demanding to know what was going on; Jacqui flashed her clearance card up to the scanner, and entered the bridge. Almost running in to Melony’s supervisor on the way in, Jacqui stopped.

“Maddan! Thank God you’re okay, where’s Melony?” Jacqui asked, gripping the woman’s firm shoulders.

Maddan pointed into the bridge, and then looked back to Jacqui. “She’s in there and she’s okay. What happened, Jacqui? One minute we’ve got a siren going off telling us we’re about the hit an asteroid, and the next we’re crashing.” Maddan asked pointedly.

Pushing back her hair nervously, Jacqui sighed. “We were going to hit, but then I had the idea of moving closer to Chebnik-7’s atmosphere, and then when we cut the engines we got sucked into its gravitational pull. Now the engine’s fried, though. Some of the framework has even snapped clean in two!”

Maddan nodded gravely, and hurried Jacqui on inside. “You might want to explain this to Harlan.”

—x—

“So, we’re basically stranded until the next scheduled starliner comes? In three months?”

“Yes, Captain.” Jacqui replied, nervously licking her lips. Harlan seemed to have taken the news very well so far, but he was beginning to look a bit crazed.

“Do we know if this planet can even support human life?” he asked, pacing across the bridge.

“No, sir, but the science officers are checking the atmosphere and radioactivity levels as we speak.” Piped in one of the younger trainee’s, who had joined the meeting at the last minute.

“Very well, then.” Nodded Harlan. “Inform me as soon as the results come in, I want to know what we’re dealing with here. Everyone dismissed.”

After a resounding chorus of ‘yes sir!’ everyone but those who actually belonged there left the bridge and returned to work. Jacqui rubbed her temples; she was only twenty-two and already she was looking at the possibility of an early death on a strange planet. There was no point in dwelling on that fact though, and as such she returned to the engine-room and awaited orders from Amer.

—x—

Harlan creased his brow as he looked at the atmospheric conditions; they were similar enough to Earth’s, but there was a radioactivity spike that could come as dangerous.

“Are you sure this is safe?” He asked Gerard, the head science officer.
“It should be safe enough, and we’ve even detected a water source not too far from where we are now.”

“Hmm. I’ll arrange for everyone to prepare to go outside. We may as well make the best of a bad situation.”

—x—

Bags packed with everything that could help set up some shelters, Jacqui waited in the cargo bay along with everyone else. Slowly the back of the bay began folding out, forming a ramp into the unknown, and bright sunlight began filtering in, illuminating the faces of all those about to set out. As her eyes adjusted to sudden change in light level, Jacqui gasped at the beauty of the planet they had crash-landed on. Two small suns lay dominant in the sky, their bright rays showering light on a beautiful jungle of exotic, alien plants. The atmosphere was humid, though not stuffy, and the party-members began exiting the ship.

“Holy Moses…” muttered Jacqui as she took in the stunning sight, “I was expecting a red rock desert…”

Harlan, who was standing at the front of the group, yelled at them through his megaphone.

“I suggest you get used to it here, because this is going to be your home for the next three months.”

Yeah, I could get used to this. Jacqui thought to herself, My first new horizon.

—x—

As it happened, the next starliner didn’t come for three years. By then the crew of the Firebird had established a colony on Chebnik-7, a planet which they had nicknamed ‘ The Ashes’, after the mythology of the phoenix; while the Firebird had expired, new life had risen from the ashes and spread humanity even further amongst the stars. There had been trials, of course, for the settlers; alien diseases, predators, food poisoning and countless other hindrances, but the small base of humans had adapted and life stood triumphant.