Bellow is my first attempt at a flash fiction piece that I did for the september flash fiction contest on SSFWORLD.COM.  The premis was to write a story involving or related to a feather.  The story need to be under 1,000 words, which this is in no way.  I couldn’t bring myself to cut it down so I just wrote another story instead, which I will also post.  I haven’t sinished editing it but when I do I will replace this version with the new edit.  Why even bother?  Who knows?

 

The radar blipped again. Kawataba looked out the port window. He saw nothing but the gray fallout clouds. He pushed the yoke and began to take the shuttle down. Through the clouds and the burnt husk that was the planet Earth came into view.

“Do you think the radar is faulty?” Lieutenant Granger asked. He was trying to make small talk but his voice gave him away; he was shook.

Kawataba simply grunted. It was important for him to keep his composure. If he couldn’t keep his head in front of Granger, what would he do in front of Colony Command.

The long, sleek shuttle eased towards the ground. At an altitude of 2,000 feet Kawataba engaged the landing thrusters and the ship pointed down then arced upwards as if riding a parabola. The ship’s conical nose now pointed straight up. Stabilizers fired and the shuttle eased it’s way to the ground.

Kawataba and Granger were now sitting horizontally. The two men could make out the clouds from the fore windows—dark black and full of whatever killed the planet. They reached their hands overhead and pulled their helmets down. The helmets lined up with their bio-suits and the automatic fasteners sealed them in. The air inside the helmets smelt like the medical bay on the Colony Ship.

Carefully the men climbed out of their seats. Once vertical again, Kawataba opened the shuttle hatch. The brightness of the gray sky temporarily blinded him. He groped his way to the automatic ladder and began down it.

For the tenth time that day, Kawataba wanted to cry. Before him lay the ruins of another city. A great city, where his ancestors had lived before migrating to the stars. Columns of steel, once grand monuments of mankind’s achievements, stood melted at the tips like snuffed out candles.

Behind him, he heard Granger make his way down the long ladder.

“Begin the scan,” Kawataba said regaining his composure.

Granger began setting up the scanner. They would scan the city for life, just like they did the last nine cities on their route. They would scan the city but Kawataba knew they would find nothing. Those who stayed behind when the Colony Ships left Earth were all gone. Done in by their own wars apparently. Not a single living thing remained on the Earth’s surface. This was the last city they needed to investigate on their route—that at least, was a relief. They would gather surface readings here, pack the equipment and head back to the Colony ship. Then Kawataba could deliver his debriefing. He would have to tell them the hard truth: That the Earth, just like Centuri, the planet they were supposed to colonize, was inhospitable. What they did after that would be Colony Command’s decision, but there would be very many unhappy people, he was sure of that.

Kawataba took one of the sensor posts, and handed the other to Granger. Both men plugged them into the input on the scanner and then begin walking in opposite directions. Long spools of wire fed the cables out, as the men paced a to distance of one hundred meters.

Kawataba drew the cable taught, then began making his way back to the scanner to begin calibration. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something floating down from the sky. It was pure white in color and sharply contrasted the low, gray clouds. At first he thought it might be snow — a terrestrial phenomenon he had read about in school. It was falling to the ground in a slow, rocking pattern. Reaching out with his hand he grabbed the floating object. Its bristles folded in his gloved hands.

“Captain, what do you have?” Granger asked making his way over to Kawataba.

:”I believe it is what was called a ‘feather’” Kawataba said, remembering his early schooling in terrestrial biology. “The flying creatures of Earth, the birds as they were called, were covered in these.”

“Does that mean there are still birds alive somewhere?”

Granger looked towards the sky. Nothing there but the low, thick clouds of fallout that blocked all visibility and radio.

“Our scanners detect all living things for ten kilometers around and thirty meters above and bellow. If their were a bird, or anything, we would have found it by now. There is nothing Lieutenant.”

“But what if their was a bird and it was flying higher then thirty meters?”

“I would love nothing more.” Kawataba said somberly then began calibration of the scanner. “This probably was buried for years under some debris and was kicked up when we landed the shuttle.” Shoulders a bit more slumped, Granger went on with his duties.

When Granger wasn’t watching, Kawataba looked  towards the sky.  He had hoped to see the birds himself one day. All the avian species taken aboard the Colony Ship had died by the third generation. The only hope of seeing them would have been on Earth.  But there were no animals in the the sky; or on the land; or in the heaps of slag that were once cities.  Their was nothing left on Earth.  

Slowly, he walked back to the Lander.  It’s shining hull stood glistening in the sun, ready to return to the colony ship. 

Kawataba grew up on the colony ship.  And so had his parents.  And so had their parents. And on and on.  His family and like thousands of others had spent ten generations aboard the colony ship.  Life and death aboard a vessel in space.  

The inhumanity of living on a space ship didn’t escape the passengers of the Colony Ship.  For ten generations, they were told that the way they lived was wrong.  Every student in ever chair in every classroom aboard knew that this wasn’t the way Man was meant to live.   They knew that one day, they would find a new earth — or, failing that — would return to earth and live once more with those left behind.  The mantra was: We may find new homes in the stars but our home world will always be Earth. 

The colony ship never found a new home.  The school vids showed the discovery of Centuri;  Barren. Inhospitable to all life. The terraforming equipment aboard the Colony Ship would never be able to make Centuri livable. The planers of the mission had made a mistake.

 The vids showed the great leaders of the day discussing what to do: turn back to Earth as the charter stated, or attempt to colonize elsewhere. Eventually, the mantra won out. Back to our homeworld we would go. Back to Earth.

So Kawataba, like all the young men on the Ship, studied hard in school.  He learned the ways of geology, terrestrial agriculture, architecture.  Skills that would benefit him when they reached Earth.  It paid off for him too: he was chosen as mission commander of the first landing party.  He would be the first from the Colony to set foot on earth in over 250 years.  The first to walk on the beautiful paradise that is Earth.

He laughed in his space suit.  The earth was scorched.  Every living thing was dead. It was all black and gray, except for the long white feather he held in his hand; a relic from a past that he would never know.

Kawataba began up the ladder and into the shuttle. He heard the sound of the scanner, a winding humming. A few minutes passed. The shuttle hatch opened and Granger entered carring the re-packed scanning equipment.

“Nothing, Commander,” Granger said.  Kawataba nodded his head and began strapping himself into his chair.

“What will we tell the others back on the Colony?  What will Colony Command say?” Granger words became quicker.  Kawataba still said nothing.

“Sir? Those we left behind—those who didn’t leave on the colony ship–where are they?”

Kawataba was looking down at his hand.  He still held the feather.  It was longer then he had imagined a feather would be, but then again, he knew them only from photos and vids. He put the feather down. Maybe it will be of some use to the scinetists back on the Colony Ship.

He fired the shuttles thrusters.  The G’s pushed him back into his chair.  The radar blipped. From the port window he thought he saw something move, but it was gone in a blur.  Soon they were passing through the atmosphere and into the blackness of space.  

***

From the his hiding spot in the black clouds Svedka watched the spaceship leave. His bright white wings flapped powerfully. His chest heaved in and out.

Loreen flew beside him. “What happened to those men? The haven’t any wings,” she asked in her maternal voice.

She was always a worrier. “Those are no longer men,” Svedka replied.

Loreen looked at Svedka’s strong tight jaw. She was afraid to ask another question.

“Once long ago,” Svedka continued. “All men walked the Earth. The had no wings. In man’s greed, they created machines with which to fly. Many went to the far-sky. Then the scorching happened. Then Man’s rebirth.” He gestured to his wings and his thick chest.

“But where did these men come from?”

“They still live in the far-sky. They return to the Earth occasionally. But they never stay long. The Earth no longer wants them.” Svedka smiled at Loreen. She smiled back. The answer seemed to satisfy her.

“Come now.” Svedka said, and with a beating of his wings he bolted off through the clouds to his tribes mountain top village. Loreen followed.

In the flapping of her wings a long solitary feather detached. It floated slowly to the ground where it lay—a brilliant white on a lifeless, gray Earth.

Tags: flash fiction, Sci-Fi, writing

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