“Alpha Team, this is Echo Team. Entry is clear,” Dustin said into his headset as he swiped his ID through the electronic slit of the white metal door, lights shimmering across its smooth surface. The door slammed shut as it accepted Dustin’s identification, letting out a beep and securing away boxes and valuable cargo so they wouldn’t be ripped into the atmosphere once the outside door was opened.
There was muffled static on the other end of the headset. Dustin tapped the side of his Apollo pressurized astronaut helmet, but nothing changed as the voices on the other end remained garbled. He faced away from the sealed door and toward the window that showed the interior of the spacecraft. Every single light inside was off, something that should never happen. Darkness surrounded the inside. Dustin couldn’t make out a single thing, let alone Alpha Team, who were supposed to be standing there and waiting for him to allow them entry.
Something was seriously wrong.
Dustin was the only member of Echo Team, leading Alpha Team’s five members. Right now, Dustin was in a hangar between the entrance to the spacecraft and the entrance to the outside world of planet SILOS-74724. Dustin called it SILOS for short. It was a recently discovered planet with oxygen that could be manipulated, gravity that could be stabilized, and a promise of livable habitats for the human race, who were facing extinction as Earth burned itself to the ground in a fiery blaze. Dustin and the five others were selected to travel to SILOS, and exploration had been the mission. Now survival was slowly becoming a priority.
The garbled, muffled voices came to a sudden halt. Everything was silent.
Sounds of the ground splitting came from outside, and then there was a muffled, shattering sound. The entire spacecraft shook.
Turning around, Dustin watched as a window exploded. The sudden change in the atmosphere swept Dustin off his feet, and his body was hurled towards the shattered window that would lead onto SILOS. Glass cut his grey astronaut suit as he flew out of the window and onto the dusty, orange surface…
Dustin groaned as he sat up. His body felt light as the low gravity made him slightly float before allowing him to finally settle on the floor. Dustin looked up and into the sky, breathing heavily.
Stars.
Beautiful stars lit up the planet of SILOS, burning across the sky and shining bright.
The spacecraft continued to tremble, the ground cracking beneath it. Dustin turned around to face it, and his jaw dropped at the sight in front of him.
A black, swirling mass of fog consumed the ship, breaking it apart and growing bigger as it swallowed debris and metal. Within the fog, red streaks of liquid swirled. Five bodies in astronaut suits came into view as they floated in the fog. The dead bodies were decaying, broken apart to the bone. It was Alpha Team. Dustin gasped, stumbling back and trembling in horror as his brown eyes stared at the awful sight.
He didn’t stand still for long as the fog began to shift towards him.
Turning around as the spacecraft fully lifted from the ground and flew into the dark void of space, Dustin ran towards the stars in the orange horizon and away from the world of ugly things behind him, heading towards a place where dreamers had once dreamed of living. In front of him were just mountains of orange, but far ahead, he could see streams of water and vegetation. Dustin ran as fast as he could, bouncing and fighting against the low gravity.
Then the ground caved in beneath Dustin’s feet. Seconds later, he was off his feet and falling slowly but gaining speed all the way down into a black mass of darkness. Above him, the fog swirled over the hole menacingly. It was like it knew it’d failed to catch him.
Dustin shakily unzipped a pocket in his suit and pulled out a small, colorful photo of his wife and daughter in front of their Christmas tree from last year. Neither of them smiling. Neither of them yet feeling the abandonment they’d suffer when he left Earth’s atmosphere.
Dustin felt peace staring at the photo. He’d be dead when his body hit the ground. Tears welled in his eyes as his wife’s soft voice echoed in his mind, as he heard the last words she’d said to him in Latin, all before he left for SILOS.
Ad Astra, infinitum. Fare thee well.
Continuing to descend farther from the stars he’d come all this way for, the world around him grew darker as his body finally slammed into jagged rock.
And then came nothing but his unconscious, ragged breathing.
