Beyond the Stars

The Earth Moved - Prison Ship

"My head hurts," I muttered, moving my hand to a sore spot at the back of my head. Something I had to assume was blood matted the hair around an egg-sized lump.

Squinting in pain, even with the dim light, I looked around for Lucas and noticed that I was upside down, several feet off the floor. My eyes widened in shock, hands instinctively reaching for something to stop me falling. It took a moment to realise that I hadn't moved. The feeling reminded me of floating in water, only different because gravity still has some effect.

I pushed away from the post I clung to, testing what I'd seen happen in films and the like. The row of bars separating me from the long, narrow hall slowly got closer. By the time I reached them, I faced the right way. With my face pressed against the bars, I looked up and down the hall. Only a thin, blue, glowing line at the top of numerous other cell doors cast any light on the area.

"Lucas!" I shouted, waiting a moment, then calling again when no answer came. "Lucas! Are you in here?"

"Thank God you're okay," he finally answered, his face appearing a few cells down on the opposite side.

"Where the hell are we?"

A rasping cough sounded from the cell directly opposite mine. His hairy face appeared a moment later. "On prison ship," he said in broken English, his accent made him hard to understand. "Hear they say take home. They home need..." He paused, searching for the right word. "Food?"

I took me a moment to decipher, but when I did, I was horrified. "What? They're going to eat us? We have to get out of here!"

Someone laughed, a full belly laugh that mocked me. "And go where exactly? In case you haven't realized we're weightless, zero gravity, which means..."

"We're in space?" I finished for him. "So what do we do? Sit quietly and wait for the water to boil so they can cook us? Surely a ship this size wouldn't be too hard to take?"

"The ship that picked you up is not the one we're now on. I've seen at least twenty similar ships enter this one since I arrived and I wasn't the first."

"Shit! So this is what? A mother ship?"

"It appears to be, yes."

My heart sank. "Does anyone know what happened? I take it our city wasn't the only one attacked."

The same man answered, "From what I understand and witnessed as we left Earth's atmosphere, they've attacked every continent. Any that weren't flooded were blasted with some sort of laser field. Ninety percent of earth's land mass is now underwater."

"But how could they flood that many places at the same time?" I asked, confused. I knew how quickly the wave had come after the earth shuddered.

"They defrosted both the frozen poles. The ice caps melted almost instantly sending massive waves across the globe as the water suddenly rose. At least that's what a couple of others said. They were picked up near the northern icescape just before the main attack."

"Why kill so many if they need us for food though?" I asked.

"The dead were collected for food." He sighed, loud enough that I could hear him. "The living will be used to breed more food."

Several other gasps of horror joined my own. "Oh dear God!"

"Our planet is as good as dead now that the polar caps are gone." Someone else, a woman, interjected.

"We've nowhere to go even if we do escape? Earth is destroyed," I whispered.

I would have slumped onto the narrow bed at the side of the cell had there been any gravity. Instead, I let go of the bars and floated. Earth was gone. Our home was gone. The people on board the ship were the only remaining specimens of our species. Tiny globes of water floated from my eyes as I realized the magnitude of our situation. I cried for the people I loved, wept for my friends and wished with every fibre of my being that I could take back the argument with my sister.