Impact Imminent - Revision #2 - April 7, 2008 1:44:43 AM UTC

By the time Timothy reached the outskirts of the colony, he still hadn't fully decided what to do with the intel. He could make an unscheduled stop at any of the private science corporations he was passing on the way, but he figured he'd head straight to the Unified Science station to at least get a feel for the situation by talking to some of his contacts there.

The general assumption was that the time-keeping devices at the colonies were most likely no longer completely in sync with those of Earth, but one could also concede that Earth's own time-keeping devices were never completely accurate either. Nevertheless, the colonies tried their best to keep everyone's schedules on Earth time. Unfortunately, Carantan's rotation and binary stars made that task quite difficult.

The corner of Timothy's primary display listed THU 3:12 PM, so that was the time as far as he was concerned. That being said, there was a lot of traffic for this time of the afternoon, but his mind was on other things and he paid no mind. After he had docked in the station, however, he was startled to see the mad rush of people scurrying about the complex. Lab techs were wheeling equipment onto cargo ships; office workers were stumbling about with overflowing boxes of documents and manuals and backup drives; workers of all kinds were closing shops and heading for the various hangars to get in personal ships or join the growing lines for public transportation.

Timothy didn't know what to think, and all he could get out of the people rushing about was that they were following evacuation procedure because several days earlier they had picked up a large asteroid headed straight for them. This concerned Timothy greatly, and he rushed toward the lab of his closest friend in the station.

Much to Timothy's relief, Mitch McCormick was still in his lab on Level 13, packing his equipment into bins and apparently trying to finish up some lab work. Mitch immediately glanced up and spoke first. "Tim, where the hell have you been, man? I've been leaving you messages for the past three days straight."

"Sorry, Mitch," Timothy replied. "I've been out of satellite range; I just got back. What's going on? I heard something about an asteroid? It's crazy around here!"

"Yeah, you seriously haven't heard? Well, you know that giant mass we were tracking from Andromeda? A couple of weeks ago, it stopped making those odd course changes altogether. Then a few days ago, we found that it was heading straight for the colony! If the asteroid doesn't destroy the habitat and most of the stations, the alien radiation signature we've been picking up from it will."

"Holy shit!" Timothy exclaimed, wide-eyed. "So what's the plan?" He couldn't tell Mitch about the intel now--not now. This was bad.

"Standard evacuation procedure so far. We thought we had weeks until impact, but it's been picking up speed at an incredible pace, and now nobody knows. We may only have a matter of days. You need to load all the shit from your apartment you can fit into your ship, then rest put into your assigned cargo ship. You should have the information in your messages. When you're done, I could really use some help if you can. Nobody here will take the time to help me finish calculating the radiation levels from the most recent readings, which would give us a much better idea of the planetary impact that thing will have on Carantan."

"Damn, I can't believe this is happening," Timothy was still in a state of near-shock--more-so than the occasion would normally call for. "Alright, man. I'll get everything together and meet you back here to help you finish up. Thanks for the info."

"Thanks, Tim. Just don't take too long, alright? With its sporadic acceleration, we honestly don't know how much time we have."

"I'll see you in a few hours. Later, Mitch!" At that, Timothy hurried back to his ship and set the a course for his dock at Industry Station 13 in the private sector. He was trying to keep from panicking with long, controlled breathing.

Could it be possible? Had that cloaked ship returned to the mass and change it's course for Carantan? "My god," he thought, "Could this by entirely my fault?" Timothy's head was racing.