THE THIN VEIL

They all left the safe warm confines of home in rockets. Countless billions of them, shot off into the mysterious darkness of space. Most left in the first wave, but they all got off the planet eventually. Their mission: colonization.

The planet exploded, hurtling large chunks of matter through the entire system.

The lucky ones were in the first wave, they found the wormhole in time, the rest were wiped out, flushed away into nothingness. Countless billions.

Through the wormhole the rockets swam into the deep sea of the cosmos. A place where life was possible, teeming with potential. The rockets explored. There wasn’t much time, they had to find a new home before supplies dried up. The Commander of the fleet could see it already, it wouldn’t take long for their race to be shed from existence in a tide of blood, brother against brother.

Navigating through a treacherous narrow passage between asteroid fields and cosmic radiation, the Commander saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

A new world.

His nav-screen showed that the planet was a twentieth the size of home, but it had a breathable atmosphere, and was remarkably fertile.

Despite the Commander’s best intentions, he knew competition between the billions of his people for planet fall was unavoidable. Billions were lost and drifted dead in orbit. The Commander’s ship was the only one spared, it had to be, he was the one. He was the man who would be king of the new world, he would not spoil the opportunity, would not repeat the mistakes of a previous life.

The Commander and his crew pierced the thin veil of atmosphere.

They were home.