Peter David - After Earth

“Negative, sir!” Lewis shouted as the ship bucked furiously all around him. “We either land there or we break apart out here.”

There was absolutely no choice being provided them. His voice even, Cypher said, “Set her down,” even as he unbuckled his jump seat and moved back toward the main cabin.

From behind him, the pilot was calling out, “Mayday, mayday, this is Hesper-Two-Niner-Niner heavy in distress! We took sustained damage from an asteroid storm and are going down with bingo power! Request immediate rescue, repeat, request immediate rescue!”

The radio provided nothing but static in response.

The main cabin was shaking so violently that Kitai was convinced the entire ship was going to break apart around him. He didn’t know which was more terrifying: the sensation that the ship was about to blow apart or the fact that his father was nowhere around.

Part of him wanted to condemn his father for being somewhere other than next to his son, but he quickly dismissed any such notion. If the ship was in danger of falling apart, there was only one place his dad was going to be, needed to be: in the heart of it, trying to prevent it from happening.

Kitai had put the lifesuit on as he’d been instructed and also had donned an oxygen mask handed to him by a Ranger passing by. But none of that made any difference. It was obvious that the ship was badly injured and spiraling downward toward… what?

He twisted in his chair to get a glimpse out the observation port and perhaps see what they were heading for, but things were moving too quickly. He saw pieces of debris flying off the ship, bounding away into the unlit darkness, and felt a new swell of terror. As near as he could determine, they were heading toward nothing. They were just a spiraling cloud of debris with only complete destruction awaiting them.

Kitai saw that Rangers were endeavoring to reinforce the bulkhead area, whose warning lights were flashing above them. They passed the equipment back and forth effectively and moved with great precision.

I’m not doing any good sitting here. Chances are, I won’t do any good on my feet, either. But at least I’ll feel as if I’m contributing .

He began to unbuckle the straps that restrained him, and that was when he saw Cypher heading toward him, lurching violently from side to side as he went. Cypher paused only to take a mask a Ranger shoved at him so that he could be as safe as Kitai was. Kitai, however, already had unbuckled his strap and was halfway out of his seat.

Cypher didn’t hesitate; he slammed Kitai back down into the seat. Kitai let out a startled grunt into his oxygen mask but quickly recovered himself. His father was back. That was all that mattered.

Suddenly there was a noise that sounded like a thousand bones breaking at once. The sound was so catastrophic that it drowned out all other noises. What is that? Kitai wondered.

Cypher froze for a long moment, looking around to try to see whence the noise had originated. Then he shook it off and refocused his attention on Kitai. He helped Kitai relock his belt and harness and pull them in tightly. Once he was satisfied that Kitai wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, Cypher placed his own oxygen mask on his face.

Then Cypher and Kitai’s eyes locked, and Cypher very slowly, very carefully, worked on restoring his son to a clear frame of mind. His face only inches away from Kitai, Cypher began breathing very steadily and very slowly. To try to get Kitai’s breathing even, he raised and then lowered his hand with simple, quiet steadiness. Kitai copied him in the breathing manner, and felt the exercise was starting to calm him. Another five or ten seconds and Kitai was positive that everything was going to be just fine.

Everything seemed to happen all at once.

One moment Cypher was right there in front of Kitai, urging him to breathe steadily, and the next moment he was gone. Just gone . Cypher was lifted up off his feet and propelled down the hallway and slammed into the far corner of the main cabin like a rag doll.

Kitai, his mouth covered by his mask, screamed as the winds howled around Cypher, banging him around mercilessly against the end of the corridor. Kitai realized for a moment, to his shock, that his father was actually holding on to something embedded in a wall, some extended rod, as the wind smashed against him. Then, a second later, it tore Cypher away from his grip and sent him hurtling out of Kitai’s sight.

Kitai was tempted to unbuckle and go after him, but he realized that he would be a goner if he did. Despite the fact that it went against his instinct, Kitai stayed right where he was, continuing to scream for his father even as the ship shuddered from one end to the other.

He heard something tearing away and realized that the ship had snapped in half. In half . The entire cargo section had broken off and fallen away from the vessel.

Kitai considered what that meant. My God, they’re dead .

He wanted his father back so that he could tell him and then realized Cypher Raige was probably dead as well. The way the wind had smashed him against the corridor, there seemed little to no chance that he possibly could have survived. At this moment Cypher Raige was a pounded mess of flesh, and Kitai probably was not going to last when they hit the ground, and poor Faia, his mother, was back on Nova Prime doing her job or perhaps relaxing at home or even sleeping, thinking that she was going to have her son and husband back within a few days.

But she wouldn’t.

Kitai fought to remain conscious, but he was losing the ability to do so. The G-force rippling across his face proved to be too much. His eyes rolled slowly back and shut. One moment he was there, and the next darkness reached out for him. He hesitated only for an instant and then embraced the darkness, welcoming its hold on him. I’m coming, Dad; I’m coming . Those were his last conscious thoughts, and then he slumped into nothingness.

He never heard the ship crash.

Lily Carmichael is grasping her mother’s hand, hoping not to get lost. Lily, fifteen, thinks herself about seven years too old to be holding her mother’s hand, but there are literally hundreds of people ahead of them, all trying to move in an orderly fashion from the staging area to the actual platform that would grant them access to the Espérer , the rocket that promised them salvation.

“Where’s your father?” her mother, Rebecca, asked, her voice filled with rising concern.

“I’m right here, Bec,” her husband, Paul, yelled. He was always overly polite and as a result, there were now six people separating him from his wife and daughter. Lily knew this was all too typical of her dad, but she loved him for it.

“Catch up,” Rebecca demanded, and he tried to thread his way through the moving mass. There were people jostling back and forth, raising the air of tension, mixing with the cool temperature.

Lily examined the dull silver bracelet around her thin wrist. Somehow it contained her entire life. Her name, height, weight, medical history, school transcripts, and other arcane data that would ensure her life would resume once the transport ship departed Earth. Every one of the teeming masses around her wore an identical bracelet, biometrically encoded for each passenger. The massive ship stood like a silent sentinel in its gantry. Liftoff was six hours away and not a moment too soon if you asked her.

“Finally made it,” a voice said behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and Lily saw an old woman, wrapped in what seemed to be three layers of outerwear, shuffling behind her. The arctic air was cool, but not so chilly that she needed so many clothes. Once aboard the ship, of course, such outerwear would be superfluous and stored away for their descendants.