It came out of nowhere. A rock. A killer.
It was bigger than anything I'd ever seen since breaking orbit, but that wasn't saying much for a rookie like me. My console alerted me to the spinning asteroid and woke me from the warmest blanket of a dream. Of course, that's how it always happens, right?
I make my way up to the cockpit, though it's only on the other side of the thin partition of my shuttle. The Gen-Mark II was designed to hold four and that's how it was filled when we left dock last year. Now mine are the only hands left to man this bucket of disaster. If anyone ever thought a humanity-saving mission hindered on this piece of crap, no one would ever believe me.
It's not like we had much time. The attack on Stem Station came from nowhere and from what I saw, only two other ships made it out before the rest was annihilated. We hoped to have somewhere to go and put the stasis embryos into use. One day enough people would be 'grown' to get something recognizing a civilization back. That wasn't happening now.
I shut of the alarm and look out the plate glass. It's easily three times the size of my ship and it's brought some friends. Our outdated maps didn't show an asteroid field. Fantastic.
Aaron Crocco can be summed up as a writer and a podcaster, but complicating issues further is the fact that he's a huge geek, Apple fanboy and loves Back to the Future so much that he owns a Delorean.
In the mid-2000′s his writing spark was reignited and he's been tearing up the keyboard ever since, slinging words all over the place. Aaron's apocalyptic debut series AS DARKNESS ENDS explores the end of the world from many points of view. His short story PARADOX was published in November, 2011.
He hails from Long Island, NY, the home of fishing, hockey, and Billy Joel. Aaron enjoys hockey, rock and roll, way too much ice cream, Nutella, and coffee.