Seeking Peace. Tiera Harding

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СКАЧАТЬ completely in love with his wife and devoted to his daughter, when the war came it shattered his world in an instant and with utterly no warning.

      One day, when Esther was a year old, Liam kissed his wife and daughter goodbye and headed out the door, bursting with excitement, to embark on his first mission aboard a spaceship. He would miss his family, but it was to be a short mission, only two weeks long. His best friend, who had been his roommate all through university, would be on the mission too. Liam was in a hurry, he was running late because he hadn’t been able to find his shoes. Esther had hidden them in her toy box.

      He had just turned the corner that brought the launch site into view when, with no warning, he was knocked off his feet by a massive explosion as the entire launch site went up in flames. Liam’s friend and everyone else at the launch site were killed. If he hadn’t been running late that day, Liam would have died too. The explosion was no accident and two days later the United Kingdom had declared war on those responsible, entering what was already being called World War III.

      Almost four years later, Liam was approached by the leaders of the Amity project. Some of them had been his professors at university and he was their top choice for the captain of the ship they were building, if he chose to accept the job. As if he would ever have said anything but yes. It was not only a chance to fulfill his dream of traveling to the stars, but a chance for his family to live in safety, for his daughter to grow up in peace and have a happy childhood. He accepted the job and soon the family was being trained along with 409 others, people from countries their own was at war with, but in the end that didn’t matter, they were all the same, people who had been offered a new hope and a second chance.

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      As the Amity entered its fourth month of space travel all seemed to be going well. The ship’s gardens thrived and there had so far been no major injuries or health problems among the 412 inhabitants of the spaceship. Perhaps they should have known that the easy going couldn’t last.

      The attack came without warning. Liam had just entered the control room at the beginning of the day when the ship was hit with great force, knocking him to his knees. For a moment his mind flashed back to the explosion that had knocked him off his feet so many years ago, but he shook that thought away. He was the captain, he needed to concentrate on the present, not the past.

      “Turn on the view screen,” he commanded, getting to his feet. The officer at that station, who had just regained his own seat after being knocked out of it when the ship was hit, obeyed instantly. Once again a ship filled the screen, but this ship was nothing like the one that had carried the Lemarians. The Lemarian ship had been about half the size of the Amity, silver and pretty, almost dainty. This ship was huge, dwarfing the Amity, and its color was a dull, dark grey, almost black. As Liam and the others watched a beam of dark red light shot from the ship, hitting Amity and shaking it once more. Liam braced himself against the wall and managed to keep from falling this time. He quickly punched the button on his communication device to call the security room,

      “Return fire,” he ordered tersely. A moment later an orange beam hit the the ship on the viewscreen, but it seemed to have little effect. Another beam shot from the alien ship, not red this time, but a sickly, pale green, and much wider, wider than the Amity itself. When this beam touched the Amity the ship didn’t shake from impact, instead it began to be pulled towards the other ship. It was some kind of tractor beam.

      “Lieutenant Han, try to break free of it!” Liam ordered Mei, who was on duty at the navigation station, “Full power!”

      She punched in a string of rapid commands, “I’m trying, but I can’t; it’s too powerful!” Liam could tell she was struggling to keep her voice calm, but it was tinged with panic.

      As he watched the screen a door in the side of the alien ship slid open and the tractor beam carried the Amity towards it. They were carried inside, the tractor beam cut off, and the door slid closed, leaving nothing outside the ship but total darkness.

      Captives

      Liam knew the rest of the Amity’s crew must be close to panic. He walked quickly over to the intercom and hit the button to broadcast to the whole ship.

      “Everyone please remain calm and make your way to the auditorium. I will join you there shortly.”

      Ten minutes later, 411 of the auditorium’s seats were filled and Liam stood on stage. No one had skipped the meeting because of duty in the security room this time. There was nothing to see.

      Liam could see the fear in the faces of his shipmates. Several of the younger children were crying. Esther wasn’t, but she clung tightly to her mother’s hand, her eyes huge and round. Clara’s face was pale, but she looked up at Liam steadily, silently giving him support and strength. He was grateful, because he certainly needed it. Clara gave him strength, and it was his job to give everyone else strength.

      “I know you are all frightened,” he began, “I’m frightened too; I won’t try to deny it. But we can’t let that fear overwhelm us. We’ve been taken prisoner by an alien ship. We don’t know why or what they intend to do with us, but I believe if they had merely intended to kill us they would not have gone to the trouble of bringing us inside their ship.”

      "Unless they want us dead but don’t want to damage our ship…" said a pessimistic voice inside his head, but Liam chose to ignore it.

      “I have reason to suspect that the aliens that have taken us prisoner might be a race known as the Hok-Kar; the Lemarians informed me of this race, but I chose not to make the information public knowledge at that time. The Lemarians said that they are a violent race with little tolerance for other races. Other than that I know no more than you do. I know the situation might seem hopeless, but as the old saying goes, where there’s life, there’s hope. Be strong, shipmates. None of us thought this would be an easy journey when we signed up, but I believe in our ability to get through this trial. Do not give in to fear. When you give in to fear, that’s when you’ve lost.”

      Liam looked out at the audience, making eye contact with several of his shipmates. His words seemed to have had some effect, the faces were still afraid, but the fear no longer seemed so wild and out of control. He spotted Amy Brannon near the front of the crowd, between her parents. She was pale and seemed younger than usual, but she met his eyes and gave him a smile that still contained some of the confidence she showed on her hoverboard, as if she was saying, “Bring it on!” Despite the dire situation, Liam found himself smiling. No one who had been chosen for the Amity mission and accepted could be called a coward, but he thought Amy Brannon might just be one of the bravest people he knew.

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      For the next few days nothing seemed to happen. Liam assumed that the ship they had been taken into was traveling, but they saw nothing of their captors and the view outside the Amity remained pitch black. Not knowing what else to do, the passengers of the Amity went about their usual routines. The children went to school, the adults did their jobs, Amy and her friends even kept hoverboarding, but tension and worry underlined everything they did. It was inescapable, you could see it in the faces of the people walking down the hall, hear it in the hushed murmurs of conversation in the cafeteria. It felt like the entire ship was holding its breath, waiting, though they didn't know what it was they were waiting for. This went on for seven days.

      On the eighth day something changed. The prisoners aboard the Amity felt a small impact, and then an absence, the lack of something they hadn’t really noticed was there, the feeling of the movement of the ship through space. Most quickly figured out that the alien ship had landed.

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