Terra Nova by Amber Millard (red white and royal blue hardcover TXT) 📕

The year is 2954 and the Earth is on its last leg. After hundreds of years of abuse, it finally started showing its age and with that came the usual problems: the ozone was crippled but the absolute worst part was the twenty billion people siphoning off what was left of the natural resources. All life struggled every day to survive. About hundreds of years earlier, scientists from all over the world agreed that the Earth didn’t have long; plans to leave earth were underway. The world worked as a whole in slowing the inevitable. Food was tightly rationed, natural resources were slowly being refreshed but people had to switch to more synthetically made meals, even the produce had to be cloned after a while. There were the heirloom fruits and vegetables and countless species of animals kept in the World Food Bank to keep on catalogue for the journey ahead; in addition to this were the GMO foods, only the ones which had the seal N with a circle surrounding it were accepted because those are natural hybrids. Solar systems were scrutinized to the last detail and for a while no one believed that there was a planet as remotely unique as ours but one day by chance there were a certain set of planets found tucked away in a system in a nearby galaxy!
This came as a wonderful surprise, for the most part. Then there were the ragtag radicals that tried to foul up the plans but failed. After the rebellion settled down, but not completely, next problems were supplies, ships and fuel. Ships and fuel were the hardest because of the long journey ahead; a ten light year journey to be exact! As it turns out the galaxy in question is pin-wheeling on its side and the system that we wanted to catch were sitting in a band that was due to pass our band in about a hundred years. So that took us roughly ninety years to do the improbable; develop ships that can travel farther than Pluto and go faster than sub-light speed. If we missed the band, it wasn’t so bad; we would just have to wait another 1800 years for that branch to return.
So ideas were brought up, tests were conducted; the ideas ranged from the reasonable to the absurd. The best idea so far to which NASA and all other space administrations agreed upon was a small collection of arks that would act as barges, they will have their own maneuvering thrusters but in order to make a ten light year sprint towards the other galaxy, they would need a mega booster. A serious mega booster, but in order to know what type of booster to build, we had to design the arks, to make that long story short there was a competition, most of the teams and firms lost, but two won. One winning team had designed a needle shaped ark that could handle light-speed quite well; the other winning team had made a new generation booster. Storing animals and food seemed easier than twenty billion people who were spread out based on the continent they originated from. The ark design was slender and like a barge its structure restricted it to mainly one element that can support it: space. Though the parts were constructed on Earth, they had to be hauled into space, many parts and most were easy enough to store in a space shuttle like cryo-cases, crew beds, chairs, wiring etc. Next was the ships skeleton, because it was unrealistic to build the entire ship; that mammoth of a design would take forever and a day to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull, only the gigantic compartments actually holding the people would remain on the ground. They would double as transport and long term storage pods. Multiple shuttles took off to regroup at the newly built International Space Station and from there the big work began: construction crews working long hours, lack of gravity got to some of them so they had to transfer out. Once or twice the rebels came back with a vengeance but the security was able to stop them before any serious damage was done.
Years of building through blood, sweat, tears, prayers and a little space dust finally came to an end. The ships were finished; tests were conducted to make sure all systems were normal and that the ship’s hull would be able to handle the intense pressure of traveling at the speed of light. To cover that distance with such a great load the United Nations developed a sanction that restricted people from gaining “Unnecessary weight.” Those that were able to lose the weight before the time of the departure were put in a government weight loss program. Some people refused to leave Earth, they were compelled to stay and help try to restore it somehow. Before the majority of the people left there was a sanction created for that purpose, to restore the Earth, give back most of what we took away, to fix whatever could be fixed. It was scary to think that Earth was left in the hands of not only those who voluntarily stayed along with the sick and terminally ill, but to also the largest penal colony on record, out numbering law abiding citizens five to one. That’s right; Earth is now half big house, the majority of the criminals, hard ones anyway, had been relocated to Asia, who knows it might turn into another Australia.
To make another long story short, we finished a year and a few months ahead of schedule; all the tests were completed, we gathered everything needed for the journey, for the planets we plan to make a life on, after everything was checked and rechecked there was still that last question: “Were we ready to move to this new neighborhood, even though we just skimmed the surface with its discovery?”
They made it, after a long haul they made it to the system. Conditions were surprisingly similar to our mother system but there still differences. A planet was selected as the new home planet and from there a future was forged by our ancestors. Transportation was always a big thing, to have material moving from one end to the next was tricky because the new terrain, the part where they settled into, was jagged and treacherous. Airships became a big specialty. Transporting supplies between towns or planets is serious business, defence is no different.
Life became easier, above and underground train systems, super jets; the new home was coming together until we were spotted by some neighbors nearby. Strangely enough they didn’t have any spaceships but they did have some impressive way of saying hello, that being they sent out a drone to our location and it carried a message: “Stay out of our way.” Well they seem to be sensitive to space considering they’re on another planet! So what do we do? We sent the drone back with a message of our own: “Back at’cha.” Something to that extent, so here we are 500 years later fighting for life once more, only this time new neighborhood and new rules.

"Albatros 1-7, this is Venture Nest 2-0 over." Antonio was daydreaming while on a routine scouting above the entrance of the Honeycomb canyon, he has at times had no control over it. He was getting tired after working long hours to earn a position on the team. The waiting and hard work finally paid off! No more sleepless nights, interrupted breakfast, lunch and dinners and practically becoming a hermit trying to study for the program. The worst part was he never had experience piloting any aircraft. None, at least he has ridden numerous times but that won’t help him where he’s going. The Fire Sky academy… it was an odd name for a flight school, but what the title lacked in making a serious first impression, the school more than made up for. It was better than its old name: Burning Wind.

Publication Date: 11-23-2011

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