63 years ago.

"Both of you come down, now. It's time," Samuel's calm voice said over the radio. The two teens glanced at each other, their hazel eyes exchanging worry and fear. Their dark hair was wet in the low hanging clouds, but Gwenta's darkening more than her younger brother's in the rapidly blackening sky.

Along with her brother Felix Alva, they sped down the back side of the smooth silver cliff they were perched upon, and dropped into a cavern on the black mountainside behind them. It was foggy and crisp, the brightening moon barely penetrating the layer of clouds which provided their incoming enemies perfect cover. The two Alva's hurriedly climbed down the ladder that was fastened to the cavern opening, and were now in the main cavern that housed their evacuation ship: Nighthawk.

Nighthawk was the secret project Samuel and Mayla, Samuel's sister and Felix and Gwenta's aunt, devised two years ago, to completely evacuate the planet with the people and leave the invaders behind. The invaders called themselves the Jackals, and they arrived some three years ago. Meeting the Jackals in battle was suicide, so Mayla had been building the massive ship with a group of her smartest scientists and engineers, every second of every day, after her and her brother overthrew the corrupt government that sold them out to the Jackals. Nighthawk not only had the hope of evacuating the planet, but also landing on a new, non-hospitable one with everything they needed to survive confined on Nighthawk.

Their partnership was almost mythical, and the people rallied behind them with hope and resolve. The task was impossible, yet Samuel and Mayla, through extraordinary will, tenacity, intelligence, and leadership, provided the deceived and beaten down people the hope they desperately needed.

And they needed to rid themselves of the Jackals.

Samuel greeted his children, standing before the creation that was Mayla's magnificent beast, which teemed with ingenuity and promise and flashed within her shell. Although Felix had seen the ship hundreds of times with his father, the sheer size of her was still unbelievable to him, and looked even more massive on Evacuation Day.

Even more unbelievable to him was that it could lift off the planet and land on a new one with all two hundred thousand citizens, with all the resources they needed. A renewable food resources wing, a medical section, a water recycling facility, and a giant research sector in the basement which was Mayla's playground. She had thought of everything. In order to have hope of survival on any new planet though, Mayla told Felix, they still needed something called the ship's Ring System.

And it was even more marvelous than the ship it hugged tightly. The Ring System was Mayla's greatest achievement. It was a giant structure, and device, which enveloped Nighthawk and was designed to be jettisoned and plunge deep into a ground of a foreign planet upon arrival. Once implanted, the giant metal walls from the Ring System sprung upwards, the walls forming a circle, purifying anything toxic within the Ring and providing a livable atmosphere.

The Filtration Field, an energy field impenetrable to certain kinds of matter depending on its settings, shot from the top of the Ring walls and extended towards the tail of Nighthawk once on the ground, and would form a protective lid above the people. Felix would believe it when he saw it.

"So if I threw a rock through it, what would happen?" Felix had asked Mayla, bewildered by her invention.

"Well, depending on the amount of energy we supply the field, matter would either ricochet off like a stone skipping across a frozen pond, or sink through, reduced to atoms," Mayla had said, thrilled to be passing on her passion for discovery to her niece and nephew.

Felix had then asked Mayla a political question, one she was less pleased to answer. "But Mayla, if you could make something like this, why not weaponize it? Turn the Jackals to dust?"

Felix remembered Mayla looking at both him and his sister over top of her glasses and tucking her auburn hair behind her ears, what she usually did when she decided to convey seriousness. She had a defined face like her brother, and a seriousness about her she could turn on and off like her remarkable Field that matched her brother as well. Unlike her brother however, she was as eccentric as you'd expect of someone so brilliant.

"A long time ago, on the First Planet, we had leaders who thought the same way. We discovered secrets of the Universe, and through our distrust for each other, used them to kill each other rather than to prosper together. These 'good' people who used technology for the destruction of 'bad' people ultimately led to the Great Departure from the First Planet, and we are descendants of one group fleeing for their lives. This is why, Felix, I can never create something for the intention of exterminating human life. It is in our constitution now to use technology to only prosper and protect – never to destroy."

Felix and Gwenta were confused. The Jackals were clearly evil. Surely destroying them was the moral and rational thing to do, by any means necessary.

"Mayla, creating these weapons would fall under protection, wouldn't it? We are the good guys, protecting ourselves from the bad. I don't see the problem," Gwenta had said, and Felix echoed her sentiment and suspicions.

"Yes, Gwenta. We are the good ones," Mayla had said, and then gave a sad smile and added a solemn statement that would stick with Felix and Gwenta for the rest of their lives. "For now. And when evil people within ourselves, within our own people, come out of the shadows, with these weapons at their disposal for death and destruction, what then?"

The Alva children had looked at one another wide-eyed.

"We mustn't repeat our past mistakes even if our opponent is playing by different rules," She concluded to them with a point of her long finger.

Felix snapped back to the present, his father had both hands on his shoulders. His father looked a decade older from the past couple years of his governing, his careful planning coming to fruition.

He was a tall and skinny albeit strong man, with light eyes, peppered stubble, a square jaw and short gold hair. Felix always wondered why his father was skinny. It once dawned on him he was probably rationing his food to regular folk. He was extremely protective and loyal to his people, probably the smartest person in the colony next to his sister, and an ability to lead unlike any other, primarily drawn from his understanding of people.

He was the director of the Security Forces when the old government was in power, after all, which was the intelligence agency that presided over any operations involving the people's safety, both militarily and politically. The corrupt government had appointed the wrong man. He was principled, protective, and aware of his talents which could easily be misconstrued as egotism, that ultimately helped the people depose of the old government.

"Get in the ship," he said to his son and daughter. "Wing A, the Command Centre, you'll find your chambers there. Once everyone is boarded and we have taken off, I will come to you."

"Will we make it, father? Those black machines rolling in on the plain, there are so many," Gwenta asked, holding her father's warm hand which emerged from his crisp grey-green suit which had medals scattered amongst his chest which he always seemed to wear.

Samuel was always straightforward with his children who he was quickly realizing were not children anymore. He was always a man of his word, whether the words were those his children wanted to hear or not. He said, "I wish I could tell you, Gwenta. All I can tell you is we have the best in the colony giving everything they have to save us. I'll see you both soon. Try to get some rest."

Samuel hugged them both, exuding more affection than what both Gwenta and Felix were used to. They exchanged worried glances over their father's shoulder. It was clear that Samuel, usually in complete control over everything, did not know what their chances of escape really were. This frightened them.

Felix and Gwenta looked around the dimly lit cavern for Wing A and made their way to their gate which Samuel gently guided them to, flashes of red all around the ship. The cavern was just as massive as Nighthawk, and she was about to burst from her egg.

Thousands upon thousands of people were now finalizing boarding into the hundreds of gates on the perimeter of the ship, officers liaising their Wing areas and chamber numbers, frantically checking documentation and pointing the skinny citizens in the correct direction. Gwenta and Felix reached their gate and were ushered into a mechanical metallic lift amidst a wave of people. While Nighthawk was jet black on the outside, the interior hallways were white and chrome, people's quarters colorful and rich, no doubt Mayla's choice to boost morale.

The two Alva children were treated like celebrities and were practically carried to the front of the line, even though their father was notoriously against special treatment for him and his kin. Still, everyone in the colony were quick to give the shirts off their back or force feed the children of Samuel's with sweet baked foods when he was not looking. They both remained well-fed to the discomfort of their father.

They exited the lift and were guided down a large corridor of white lights and silver walls, thick pillars perfectly spaced along. After dialing a keypad, another sliding door opened and the teens were in the Command Centre, which was also home to the flight deck.

The flight crew, the finest pilots in the colony, and a group of Mayla's top scientists, including Mayla, were seated in a semi circle around a wonderous theater of windows layered and framed with steel, all of them seated in front of bright blue screens which matched their suits in color but not brightness. They sat among illuminated panels of shimmering keys and bright red buttons, Mayla in the middle with her tight white lab coat. They all nodded to the children, including third-in-command Ffion Oddisy, but had no time for chit chat. They were all laser-focused with their task at hand.

Ffion was the former Associate Director of the Security Forces with Samuel. If anyone in the colony rivaled Samuel and Mayla in raw talent, it was Ffion, or another hero of Felix's named John Gaiathal who he couldn't spot to his disappointment. Although she often argued with Samuel, she was a voice of reason and pragmatism if Samuel went long stretches of no one challenging his direction, which everyone always assumed was right.

She was not shy to speak up when she thought otherwise. Her eyes matched her icy cold demeanor, and her hair strewn back matched the coating of Nighthawk. Behind her intimidating eyes was a fierce loyalty to the people, too. Everyone who had a seat in the flight deck were well fed not because of royalty or status, but because they were all willing to die for the people and the people rewarded the sentiment. This was probably most true for Ffion, though like Samuel, she rejected special treatments and was probably skinnier than usual.

Mayla directed her niece and nephew to their chambers. Somehow, their new chamber was nicer than their previous home on the planet they were leaving. There was a window which Gwenta's tall frame was now looking through, overlooking the remaining streaming passengers boarding the ship who looked like ants from so high up.

Everyone was finally aboard, the great beast of a ship readying to spread its wings, engines humming and blue lights brightening all around the cavern.

"I've never seen father like that," Gwenta said, peering intently at the scene below, which was magnificent and unbelievable and terrifying all at the same time. "Vulnerable."

"I know," Felix replied, scratching his face and lying in a firm silk bed which lay on the opposite side of the room from his sister. "Where do you think John is?"

Before Gwenta could muster a guess, engine lights flared and illuminated the cavern in a deeper blue and white. Their room shook with power and fire. Gwenta and Felix began to feel Nighthawk come to life, lifting, the ground becoming smaller and smaller. The ship ripping through the thin rock lid of the cavern, like a giant beast emerging from the depths of the sea.

Shale rained down beside their window, turning their room pitch black. Fear gripped them both, and they embraced, thinking it may be the last time to hold each other. Within seconds the rocks stopped streaming past them, and they could see out their window again. Nighthawk was now completely out of its nest. The empty cavern was now miles below its belly, visible in the sky from miles around.

Samuel had resumed his place in the Flight Deck with Mayla, his officials standing to attention. Felix and Gwenta waited in their room for their father, who wouldn't come, until he knew their fate.

Now that Nighthawk had taken off, the flight deck collectively held their breath, all aware that the next seconds would mean their certain survival or their immediate demise. They would know in less than a minute, by Mayla's calculations. And Samuel recalled it being the second longest minute of his life.

Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.