Salvation

• Hayley Fagg, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

Salvation
The moment we had feared had finally come. The electrical storm had arrived. There was no way out of this apocalypse but to evacuate Earth from this storm that the aliens had created, destined to kill us all. “It will go on forever with only one way to stop it” the Alien leader had told us. But the only problem is that no one knows what way that might be. We had to evacuate.
With all of the fear and anxiousness rushing through our brains, we had to concentrate or this would be the end of life itself. The megaship that the Engineers and I had been working on, had to inhabit at least 75% of the human species on it for 465 days on our journey to Planet 365XB. It was the only known planet that humans can survive on in our range of travel distance. With nearly everything in common to Earth, the only differences were the beaches of iron core and rivers of acid. But there was only one problem, this ship as big as Western Australia, had never been tested! We only had 3 months to build it, plan it and test it but we had no time for testing as we had to load the ship with millions of tonnes of supplies. All we have to do now is wait for that call from the President saying “Go!”
We are building up butterflies in our stomach, boarding up people and getting in our positions when…”Bbbring Bbbbring”. It was the President. Shaking, I grasped the phone with my sweaty hands and nervously said “Captain Brooke here” and the phone paused in an awkward silence broken by the word “Go!” I shut the doors, turned on the engine and looked out the window to see people crying because they were either left behind or, missing from their families. Tears welled in my eyes as I felt so sorry for them. I took a deep breath. No time for that. ”3, 2, 1…” I turned on the rocket boosters and … BANG!!!
Then a silence that could kill came. The ship was halfway through a black hole. I pressed the escape pod button and my crew and I climbed in. “The rocket boosters gave off too much power Captain” screamed my head engineer. Everyone was freaking out and we all thought we were the only humans left in the universe. Then my Co-Captain said “Maybe the people we left back on Earth are still alive? We could go back and try to shut down the storm?”. “But there is only one way to do it. And we don’t know how.”Said another trembling crew member. “Well we are the best engineers in the world. Otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen us to save the world! So let’s try!” I stated. “OKAY!!!” we all yelled enthusiastically. And we zoomed on our way to save the human existence.