Children of Sun - The Gift

Chapter 3 - Space refuge, 2024 AD

Nothing can prepare you for the first space flight. It's all about a unique experience. Once you see Earth from space, it's hard to avert your gaze. It completely changes your perspective. The view is intimate and vast at the same time. All this happens while floating effortlessly.

Sona had a very different experience during her first space flight. That day, she felt weightlessness for the first time in her life after surviving a violent lift-off. She was among hundreds of refugees who finally reached orbit on a spaceship. They nearly escaped destruction, fleeing Earth - the hostile and doomed place.

After this day, the space became associated with hope, safety, and a new beginning.

She lived with her parents in a training camp. Her mother and father both had backgrounds in synthetic biology. It used to be a prestigious and well-paid job. But, after a recent biotech crisis, many businesses went bankrupt, making it next to impossible to find a job.

Space mining was an attractive opportunity. Her father applied for a job and was accepted. He was busy training for zero gravity metal extraction.
After that, he needed to spend just six months in the space colony of every coming year.

The pay was good; they live in a corporate house. Sona moved to a local school. It was an exciting time - the building was modern and bright and, on the first day, she had already made new friends. Life started to feel normal again.

But, this good time didn't last long. One day disturbing news about a doomsday asteroid approaching the Earth hit the internet. It was an information dump by an unknown source with coordinates and details about mass, speed, and direction. Authorities remained quiet - all this data could be verified. And it was, by many astronomers across the globe, The main conclusion was that there would be a place on Earth safe in two months, as millions of tons of superheated debris ejected to space after impact will create fiery rain everywhere. This would briefly raise the temperature above two hundred degrees following a "nuclear winter."

And, only two options to survive - hide in an underground bunker with food and supply enough to last for two years. Or, go to space and be self-sufficient, living inside those temporary mining outposts.

Sona was licky because her father was about to live on Earth. They could tag along and maybe survive for two years. Little does she know, it's going to be a lifetime adventure.

They had to live in a harry. More and more people arrived at the spaceport hoping to catch a ride. Many was just frightened people standing quietly behind a fence. There was no extra room in a few dozen space ships standing quietly in the dark, ready for take-off.

The situation worsened every coming hour. The military had arrived. Some people formed an armed group, attempting to take control of a spaceport. Sporadic gunfire erupted here and there.

She was a frightened eleven-year-old girl, clinching for her mother and father's hand. They were standing on a wast concrete surface among thousands of others like them for some unknown reason.

Later on, she tried to trace back the history of what happened to them and why they suddenly became refugees.

That was the Great Reset aftermath, a turbulent time when old tensions were brought to the forefront. Neighbors turned against each other and took up arms.

She still remembered panic and a sense of danger. Her parents, rushing out of the Earth, living all behind. Overnight, her world turned upside down, turning from a happy life in a comfortable family house to standing in the middle of the night surrounded by barb wire and remote sounds of gunfight and explosion.
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They finally arrived at a big silvery ship. It stood proud, over two hundred meters tall - the old reusable rocket, a cylindrical, two-stage space ship powered by an explosive chemical mixture. Hydrogen with oxygen - or methane - she didn't remember.