__
___
____
_____
_______
________
Arrival
________
_______
______
_____
____
__

Crewmen scrambled around the deck, alarms blaring in the distance. Jacob could feel his pod shake as it opened. Sharp, cold pain stung his eyes, and his first breath since cryo-sleep was like a stab in the chest. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry and his throat failed to produce any other noise besides a weak wheeze. There were shadows moving around the frosted glass panel on his pod as the cradle lights on either side of him began to flash hurriedly.

Suddenly, the panel popped open, a spray of gas blasting into his eyes. For a moment, everything went bright and blurry. Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed him by his shoulders, and pulled him from his casket. His feet flailed madly as his body tried to adjust to life. His limbs felt as numb as death. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed in a tight fist. He tried to call out for help, but his voice failed him. He was flipped onto his back, his eyes staring up at shapes that were too blurred to discern. Suddenly, a long, sharp needle was plunged into his chest, and pain found him once more.

Within moments, the fog disappeared, and the numbness in his limbs subsided. Sitting up in panic, Jacob reached out for something to hold as he waited for his vision to clear. As his eyes began to refocus, he started to make out what seemed to be a face, extremely close to his own. Blue eyes managed to come into focus and they stared directly into his own. His face was scarred in some areas, one running down his left cheek, but his smile hid it quite well. The Middle Eastern man was trying his best not to sarcastically grin.

"While I do enjoy making friends, I believe kissing your saviour might not be the way to go,"

Jacob pushed the man away, his eyes scanning the floor in front of him. He tried to focus on the patterns in the grating to stop the spinning sensation in his head. A deep chuckle then caught his attention, and he looked back up to his 'saviour'. Seeing the soldier stare at him, the man smiled,

"Do not worry, friend. It is only Cryo-sickness. Everyone gets it, but some get used to it faster,"

The man ran a hand through his grey hair, and turned to look at the other crew members awakening in the chamber. Now free from the Cryo-pod, the alarm that was screaming was quite loud, and quite annoying. Jacob looked back at the man in time to see him walk away. His white jumpsuit was missing a sleeve, and the arm that should have been there was missing.

Jacob tried to get up and thank the man, but his balance was off, and he collided with the slanted surface of his Cryo-pod. The swirling sensation returned, and he held the edges of the pod tightly. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself, taking short, shallow breaths. When he opened his eyes, a small reflective container was held out in front of him, a cheery orange straw poking out of a hole in the top. His eyes followed the hand that held the container, up the arms, and eventually, to the horn-rimmed eyes of the man who had helped him out of his pod.

"Here, drink this, it'll help you get back on your feet and it'll clear up your throat,"

Jacob nodded in thanks, and greedily sucked out of the orange straw, a mildly sweet liquid going into his mouth. Jacob didn't take any time to ponder the flavor of the liquid, focusing instead on downing as much of it as possible. The cool sensation swam down his throat, and with a few groans he managed to pull himself back up to his feet.

"Easy there," the man said. "You'll be disoriented for a few, but you'll be fine in the next five minutes."

Jacob pulled the straw from his mouth.

"Who are you?"

"I'm with medical. Try not to throw up anywhere."

Jacob looked out over the rest of the massive room. He could see cryopods everywhere, a fine layer of dust coating everything. Shadows of bodies still lay in a few unopened ones; those had been shut down. A grim realization dawned upon him- they wouldn't wake up. A woman was hunched over, clutching one of the darkened compartments tightly, sobbing. Body bags were being escorted out of the room, and several crew members were accompanying them. Jacob felt a guilty sense of luck for not having joined them, and a frown found itself upon his face. Vast amounts of people, of every nationality, were walking around, some wearing the stark white medical uniform with concern plastered on their faces.

Abruptly, the alarm cut off, and the commotion in the room suddenly stopped. With everyone curious as to what was happening, a couple of technicians in grey jumpsuits with black shoulder-pads walked through the crowd and toward the hallway at the end of the room. A voice rang out over the speakers after the disappearance of the grey clad men,

"This is Captain Sully, rise and shine, people. Y'all might be wondering why we woke y'all up so early. Problem is, our techies found multiple glitches in the navigation software. Basically, our computers fucked up and sent us home the long way."

Silence reigned over the chamber.

"Just hang tight, everything is gonna be a-ok. We have another bird on comms, trying to patch us through as we speak. Sit tight, 'aight? Don't panic now."

Jacob looked around uneasily, as, slowly, everyone in the massive room took on a slightly worried expression..

"We've patched through to the Hunter, don't worry, they'll send help. They're real close. Got the same bug as us. Uh... in the meantime, report back to your positions, and, uh, I'll have engineering unlock the rec center until further notice. Sit tight, we'll see what they do."

The room let out a collective sigh, but the captain wasn't done speaking yet.

"All military personnel, please report to the 'racks immediately."

"Damn it," said Jacob.

"We've just got confirmation that approx 3% of the U.T.C Hunter's population died during cryo-sleep, which does exceed expectations, although not by much. We've lost around 4% of our own boys. I'm sorry if any of you lost loved ones due to this, they will be remembered. That is a certainty. But that is not why you've been called to the barracks today,"

The officer pushed himself off of the desk. He struck a board behind him with a long metal pole, a loud snap resonating across the room.

"This," he began, "is why you've been called here,"

The board displayed a colorless outline of Europa. The room gave a collective gasp as color began to fill the image. The moon was no longer an icy wasteland. A large spot of green covered a huge section of the moon, and in the center there was a small silver dot. The officer pointed at the dot with his silver stick.

Jacob cracked his knuckles.

"That, my friends, is the U.T.C Pompey,"

A collective wave of murmurs and whispers erupted amongst the crowd of commanding officers.

"On our next pass, we'll be using Jupiter as a slingshot to the Mars colonization site. Before we do so, we will go into orbit and send down a team of scouts to report back to us the status of the operation, and if there are any living souls down there. Our attempts at communication were met with static, but a distress beacon has been transmitting on low frequency,

"Gentlemen, we don't know what's down there. We don't know if they managed to successfully terraform the planet and start anew, or if they had wiped out each other... or worse. That's why we need to verify the status of that colony before we return to Earth, and the same goes for Mars. We've been gone for twenty million fucking years,

"Is that understood?"

The unit leaders all responded with positive replies, and the mission briefing was over.

"Get some sleep guys, tomorrow will be full of surprises."

"Ahhhh... shit," Jacob groaned as he lifted himself from his bunk. It had been a week, and that meant they were in range for the reconnaissance operation. Jacob groggily picked up his PDA from the counter-top next to the bed, and the time read "06:00".

Right on time.

Jacob stumbled out of bed and rolled across his small cabin, bumping against the closet. Pulling the wooden doors open, he was greeted by a collection of bland uniforms. The padded fabric was an odd shade of green, with black wires running all over it. The U.T.C logo was emblazoned on the right chest, and a zipper ran down the front. The one Jacob selected smelled faintly of metal and sweat. The rest were even worse.

Pulling the jumpsuit on over his underwear, he zipped up and readied himself for what lie ahead. Brush hair, eat, brush teeth, floss, rinse, mouthwash, rinse, shave, shampoo. The daily routine. The boring routine. He pulled on his boots, and strapped unused knee-guards and shin-guards over the leggings, the black matte pads fitting on nicely.

Running a hand through his short dark brown hair, Jacob sat down in front of his personal data console and began to type down an entry, setting his coffee mug to the side.

Let's face the facts; we've been gone a long time. I mean, a LONG fucking time. Its a damn miracle our reactors and generators still work. But that means that this luck will come at a cost. I don't believe in a higher power, and neither am I superstitious, but every time good things happen, a bad thing will happen as well. Murphy's Law; "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Even if we manage to find some remnants left of the human race, we'll probably have problems with the populace. Who knows if some sort of deadly bug is rampantly spreading down there?

Ah... fuck me. I probably just jinxed myself.

Well, if I die, and some U.T.C moderator is reading this, tell everyone aboard the ship I hate them all. Except this one guy with grey hair, seems like the only dude around here who doesn't have a stick in his ass. Don't remember his name... anyway, he's missing an arm, so its not really hard to identify him. (I'm a bit of a prick, aren't I?)

How hard do you have to push a H.ARM operator anyway?

Well, this is Jacob Wynes, signing off for possibly the last time.

Jacob walked over to the cabin door and paused for a moment, a thought on his mind.

He couldn't find an answer. Jacob grabbed his PDA from the countertop next to the door, and left, a trail of steam pouring from the cup left alone on the surface. The lights in his room shut off, and the ambient humming of his computer slowly faded out as it shutdown.

Jacob looked nervously around the room of the drop pod, and saw that his four other squadmates that were assigned to Alpha Squad were too busy fiddling with their own equipment to pay him any mind. It looked like they had done this before. Jacob had not. Jacob was an Exo-suit pilot, not a damn flyboy, the way he thought about it. His gut tossed and turned when the pod started moving down the monorail. The pod jolted, and all of the heads of those present rocked back and forth in sync with the motions.

A monotonous drone rang out from the headset strapped to his helmet, the somewhat boring operator soothing his terrible nerves somewhat.

"Drop teams, prepare for the recon-op. Launch in T-Minus ten,"

Jacob wringed his sweaty hands together. His teeth were clenched in anxiety. He felt as if he were on a rollercoaster. But this would not be fun.

"This is Alpha-1, we're about to drop, see you surface-side, assholes!" roared the Squad Leader with a grin as he punched the launch button.

"Sons of bitches! Bravo Team, we're fucking racing these assholes," came a roar from the same headset.

Jacobs organs jumped into his throat, and his fingernails dug deep into the arm-guards and chest-guards holding him down. His eyes wide with terror, a continuous groan managed to escape his throat.

"This is Charlie, kiss my ass, Alpha! We're getting to the ship first!" came a female voice, joined by other excited special-ops units.

The pod was falling, and the other spec-ops were hollering and roaring in laughter. Suddenly, the pod shook violently, sending little items flying around the room. The Captain was whooping and the shaking grew worse and worse.

Looking out of his window next to him, he could see the planet approaching. Fast.

The violent trembling rocked the craft once more, the occupants shaking with the craft. A woman sitting on the right-hand side of him began to frown, and slapped a hand to her mouth, her face turning pale. Jacob looked across from him, and saw that the terrible turbulence was not exactly helping the other people as well. They needed to stop this, or the pod would fall apart from the stress.

"Deploy the chute!" Jacob cried, worry evident in his voice.

"Not yet!" Yelled the Captain. "We deploy here and we won't make the landing zone!"

The ground was approaching faster, but they were rocketing over a large jungle of sorts, the vegetation passing faster past them as they neared it.

"Deploy the chute, damn it!"

"Not yet!"

The ground was getting closer, and when they were only a mile up, the Captain deployed the parachute. The entire craft shook, and jolted violently, then, began falling sideways. Everyone began to panic now. One of the soldiers beside Jacob vomited, sending flying food bits around the cabin. Jacob could feel bile rising in his throat, and fought to keep it back down. Everything was spinning. From his spot near one of the windows, he could see they were soaring over the strange jungle, but at a much greater speed. Screaming filled the cabin.

The Captain looked out of the window and roared,

"CHUTE'S LOST! CHUTE'S LOST!"

Jacob gripped the guard-rail as tight as possible, and started yelling at the top of his lungs.

Impact.

Jacobs stomach lurched, and gravity began to twist and turn around him. Terrible vibrations shook the entire structure, the small overhead light cracking from the physical stress.

Everything went black.