Exodus

Captain Ursais
H.P.S.S.Aphrael
Log ID: 3236
Today we held the final vote and we are leaving the home system in a couple of hours. I have called in some favours and we will be safe at least for a while when leaving the system. This is the last day I have the honour of calling my ship Home Planet Star Ship Aphrael. The moment we leave orbit we are officially outlaws and thus this ship is nothing more than Star Ship Aphrael, S.S.Genesis after the renaming ceremony. Perhaps a small price for survival but one that I am surprisingly reluctant to pay. This ship has been my life for years now and I just can not understand why people choose to stay when it is clear that the star will not last long. The in-system radiation is already to the roof and primitive hyper drives exist. Why do they not leave?

Captain Ursais
S.S.Aphrael
Log ID: 3237
We are on our way and about fifty light minutes from the home planet. We still have the planetary defence force to worry about but they probably won’t intervene, not when ninety-eight percent of the people here are civilians trying to escape our star. And even if they do come after us we have already gathered so much speed that we will leave the system before they are close enough to fire. This ship has been secretly equipped with one of the prototype hyper drives and it will give us what we need to reach our destination. It will only work one time and only for a limited distance but it is just enough for us to get out of way of the coming destruction and carry us to our destination.

Captain Ursais
S.S.Aphrael
Log ID: 9857
The home system is dead, the light from the nova reached us just an hour ago. That means that the actual event took place about two and half years ago. We continue our search for star ships but have found nothing. It is a strange thing when something you have awaited for such a long time finally happens. After seven years of travel we had all but forgot about the destruction. A group of the scientists aboard the ship estimate that any ship that did not leave within two years after we did will be or have been destroyed by the nova. A memorial will be held soon for anyone and everyone dead. It is very likely that we are not the only ship still in existence but since we are all limited by the speed of light it is almost impossible to find anyone or communicate, especially considering the speed we have reached after seven years of acceleration.

Captain Ursais
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 9862
Today we finally got around renaming the ship, something we had all been reluctant to do before but now that we know the home system no longer exist there is no reason to put it off. I had to hold a speech and despite what I think about it I was told it was a good speech. I tried to remind people of what they did not loose and talk to them about the meaning of Genesis. People are still very sad after the memorial but things are slowly returning to normal, or as normal as things can be on a star ship in a position light-years from every other star.

Captain Malrun
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 16054
Today Captain Ursais resigned because of old age. No one seems to very surprised. He has guided us all these thirteen years of voyage, the Exodus as it is now referred to. I myself am a bit surprised of being elected the new captain as I have no formal star ship education. Perhaps formal education does not matter any more. Whatever the reasons I am now the one set to guide this ship through space to our destination, a voyage that will take another twenty years. I am not worried, Captain Ursais will still be around and will most certainly tell us what he thinks. Of course he is no longer captain but everyone, including myself, still call him Captain. As a retirement gift he was given the immense honour of naming our new home planet. After thinking for some time he announced that it shall be called Retomahn. He explained that Retomahn was a word in a language most of us did not know still existed and that it meant, quite literally, New Home.

Captain Malrun
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 16239
We have completed a ship wide maintenance. It is generally understood that at least some of the ship’s systems will fail before we reach our destination and without access to resources out here in the middle of nowhere there is no hope of a permanent repair. We have long since reached out maximum speed and as such it will be over fifteen years before we reach our destination. No one is saying anything, some of them are being quiet on my order, but there seems to be a growing anxiety aboard the ship. People are wondering if the ship can hold together long enough to reach Retomahn.

Captain Malrun
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 16983
We have finally had a stroke of luck. The group of scientists working with propulsion have announced that they may have found a way to shorten our journey. The original hyper drive that the ship was equipped with upon leaving the home system was irreversibly destroyed during the jump through hyperspace but the scientist think that they can still salvage materials from it and build another hyper drive. Ursais and I refuse to get our hopes up too high but things seem very promising. In a year we will know for certain.

Captain Malrun
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 17468
The construction of the new hyper drive took longer than expected but now it is finally completed. Today’s test of the drive was a complete success and soon we will power it up for real. Ursais is still hanging on to life but I quietly doubt that he will survive to see Retomahn, he has caught a nasty fever. The doctors assure me that he will be alright but for how long?

Captain Malrun
S.S.Genesis
Log ID: 17491
It worked. We have managed to cover twelve years of normal travel in just a few days. As it is now we will reach Retomahn in just over a year. But the mood aboard the ship is still low. Ursais died shortly after the hyper drive powered down. He stayed alive just long enough to look at the photographs of Retomahn and its moon. It is a beautiful planet, and not just because it is the first real planet we have seen since leaving the old system. There is no life on the planet yet but the atmosphere and oceans are close enough to the old home planet so that no terraforming is needed. Congratulations everyone, we made it.

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My entry for the sci-fi short contest in May 2007
Word count: 1165