LONG LIVE | bellamy blake

1.1 TOUCHDOWN

Then they launched.

Aria was smart, she loved to study, and learn. She was the top of her class, and the two classes above her. Youngest medic on the ark in 48 years, pharmacist, chemist, biologist, computer scientist. But she wasn't an engineer, and even she knew that this drop ship, wasn't in the best shape. That this was a rush job. She could tell just by the shoddy welding on the panels.

She didn't trust it to even make it to Earth let alone whether the planet would kill them all instantly.

The was a large jolt, the atmosphere. She gripped Millers hand harder. "Please don't let me die in an explosion." She prayed to no particular deity under her breath.

"At least it's quicker than being floated." The boy beside her muttered. Aria let out a shaky laugh. She hated this. She'd been afraid many times in her life, but she had always been able to control the outcome. In the operating theatre, the scalpel was in her hand. When she was arrested, she had turned herself in. She liked to be in control, and here she had less than none.

The video screens flickered on, displaying Chancellor Jaha in HD, she couldn't help her face contort with distaste at the sight of him. The man who killed her mother. The man who had sentenced her to death. "Prisoners of the Ark, here me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."

Aria's stomach turned at that. They've been sent to die. Why not just float them all? Probably would've taken too long, and there's the horrid personal touch of having to manually execute each child criminal.

But she would've gotten to say goodbye.

Even if they land, even if the Earth doesn't kill them right away, she still doesn't get to see her family again.

Of course if she was still in her cell she would've died within the week anyway. In four days exactly, she would've been led to the airlock in Arrow station, her family watching, and she would've been sentenced to death by Chancellor Jaha, and released into cold unending vacuum of space. Just as her mother had a 12 years ago.

She barely remembered her mother. But she remembered she was kind, soft, understanding. She'd been floated for some kind of hacking incident. Apparently the details were classified. Aria supposed she'd never know.

She supposes sending them to Earth, the Ark has nothing to loose, and everything to gain. More air and resources spared, and an answer to to conditions on Earth.

"Those crimes will be forgiven. Your record wiped clean. The drop side has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to 2 years."

A horrible thought shuddered through Aria. Opening the mountain and finding 300 skeletons made her nauseous.

"Mount Weather is life. You must locate the supplies immediately."

If there's any left. Aria bitterly thought.

She could hear people yelling from the deck below. But she just gripped Millers hand tighter. He'd shut his eyes tightly, as if he what he couldn't see, couldn't hurt him. Aria resisted the urge to do the same.