Survival. They must survive this nightmare!

The orbital station high above Entarra's sister planet was quickly on its way to becoming a tomb for those who came here to study the more primitive world. They had seen their home planet obliterated, and now had only a hand full of minutes before the same destructive wave encompassed them. Moaning as if in the throws terrible pain, the immense space station which had served as their home for nearly eight cycles now twisted in the dance of death. It would soon collapse under the assault. Everyone inside could feel the constriction of cold air wrapping around their necks.

"We're almost there!" he shouted over his shoulder, knowing his wife wasn't far behind. Further back, others followed. Children and adults alike, they all fled, following the man and woman who led them towards the ship which would hopefully help them survive this living nightmare. The ship was docked just beyond this very corridor. With luck, it would be filled with other inhabitants who found their way to it through other routes.

"Which dock?" she breathed hard, choking as they passed through the smoke filled air. Around them, the metal walls were buckling, twisting as if the very effort to hold together was agony. The group of determined survivors ran , dodging their way around and through fallen duct work mixed with tangled cables wrenched loose from their housings.

Suddenly, an explosion echoed from all around them as another shock wave slammed into the station. The jolt knocked many of the fleeing inhabitants to the floor with a sickening bone crunching sound. Screams and choked sobs began anew from those who were following their lead.

With a quick glance back, Talera looked at terrified faces of the people behind her. Seeing eyes full of terror and feeling the wash of emotions flood her own soul, she scrambled to rise again. When she hit the floor, she lost her hold on the two children she carried.

Where are they? What happened?

What can we do? How can she help Tam lead these people to safety when there was no safety?

She looked for them, but heard them before her eyes found their sobbing forms. Both were to either side of her, screaming in fear and confusion. She blinked tears welled and threatened to spill over. Anguished and terrified, she quickly brushed her hand across her eyes. Noxious fumes nearly overwhelmed her. She coughed, looked again, and saw many of the others were climbing to their feet, helping those still struggling on the deck to regain footing. They all realized to remain in one place longer than a second would mean death to them all.

She looked forward again, her eyes meeting her husband's and saw the echoes of her own terror reflected back to her. "It's not much further," he offered. "The next air lock, across corridor three..." and he was off again, still clinging desperately to the children he carried.

"Keep going and don't look back!" she called behind her to the ears she knew were waiting for her words. Words she knew would keep their feet moving. Words she also knew would give hope. Reaching down, she gripped the two children in her own care and pulled them up.

She had never asked to be placed in the position she held. Her husband was the commanding officer of this station, and his duty had automatically become her own She and Tam were the only piece of this chaotic nightmare that kept the group moving. She followed Tam, and kept the chain pulling the others along tight.

Their desperate fight to flee from her grasp was suddenly muffled again by an even more ominous sound.

Another explosion this time accompanied with an ear splitting screech of metal being torn loose and collapsing. A massive wave formed from the very foundation under their feet. Twisting into shapes it was never meant to form, the deck flung the entire group about like torn rags in a mighty wind.

Behind them, part of the corridor collapsed, crushing those who lay underneath, cutting most of the fleeing group off from the rest. Having been slammed to the floor again, she managing to keep her grip tight around the arms of the two children. At first, Talera wasn't able to see the happenings behind her. But as the new screams erupted around her, screams of pure panic instead of fear, she knew without looking what had happened.

Air was moving past her quickly. Too quickly! The exterior of the station had breached, but the collapsing of the tunnel had at least sealed her and the remaining lives from the vacuum of space.

That stunning realization forced her eyes to look past, to see, and to realize how truly helpless she was. Out of the one hundred and fifty fleeing inhabitants from the station in her own group, she could now only count twenty-three.

There was now a twisted, smoldering wall that had not been there moments before. Screams of agony rushed from the throats of those not crushed, but unable to escape injury. Her mind reeled from the carnage.

But something struck her much deeper, and much more painfully.

With a quick gasp, she turned her head quickly forward toward the place she knew her husband to be. Back against a bulkhead wall that had been loosened, and whose seamless walls had been ripped like tissue in a mighty wind, becoming jagged and menacing, she saw his body. Beside him lay the crumpled forms of the children he had been clutching, now motionless as blood congealed around their limp forms.

His flesh met with the torn pieces of metal and the sharp edges had found purchase. Deep gashes released the sacred fluids of life held inside her husband, pouring torrents across his chest and stomach. The whiteness of fear and shock already leached into his face and eyes.

"Beloved!" she screamed as she fought to get to him, releasing her death-grip on the smaller arms she had so fiercely protected before. She tried to rise, to get to her feet so she could rush to his side, to maybe somehow stop the flows of his blood as it left his body. Even from this distance she could see the blood flowed much too freely, too heavily, to be stopped. But if not stopped, and soon, his life would soon ebb away with it.

As she bolted to her , her leg seized. Clamping her teeth together to suppress the scream threatening to escape her throat, she glanced down to see some of the same metal which had cut her husband to shreds gouged deep into her leg just above the knee. Without a second look, she forced back new tears. She took an uneasy step forward.

Creator! What do I do?

The people around her. Her husband. The visage was enough to make her want to shut her own mind down so her eyes would take no more in. She took another step, forcing her leg to move her.

"No!" he tried to scream, but lost his voice as an unnatural gurgle formed in his throat. He squeezed his eyes closed, before opening them again to stare directly at her. *The others! You must get the others away!*

*Beloved!* she thought back, hearing the anguish of his own mind...

*Get the others to the ship! The shock wave will soon be here!*

*But you cannot...*

*My wife, you must! You are their only chance! Only you can get them to safety!*

*But ships from home will be here soon...*

*Entarra is gone! There will be no more ships! The station will not survive the energy wave or the debris showers! Go!*

The last thought drifted from her mind as his eyes closed with a sudden overpowering exhaustion. She could feel herself giving into the temptation to withdraw from reality. The pain intensified in her leg. Terror in her heart grew with every beat.

Unsure of herself, unsure of how any of this day had happened, she forced herself to again look around. The others began picking themselves up, and she realized she must have stood there watching Tam for several long seconds. Their eyes looked toward her, begging her to lead them.

So afraid, so imploring...

She grit her teeth and, through sheer will, forced herself to the end of the line the others had formed. As she passed each on, she caught their eyes with a determined gaze and made her way to the end. The corridor had collapsed, cutting their group to less than a third of what it had been. Walking with only determination as her source of strength, she approached the new barrier.

She strained against the cacophony to see if she could hear the others separated from them now by this crushing wall that had been flung down. She reached out with her mind to brush the mind of another behind the barrier who might still be alive.

Nothing. Nothing but the mournful howl of escaping air around her.

No life existed beyond this wall. She knew this in the core of her heart. They were all alone, all that were left. The ones behind the crushing wall, their spirits, now mingled with the souls of the after life.

She looked again to the others, some whose eyes were wide in shock at the loss of the others. Others, slipping into the recesses of shock and disbelief at the sight of their own rapidly approaching deaths.

The crying and uncontrolled sobbing was beginning anew as the certainty of death gathered them all in its dark embrace. She knew if she didn't do something soon, then she would lose this part of her group as well. They would all be hopelessly paralyzed with fear. Drawing upon a confidence she didn't feel, she returned their looks. "We must go. Now!"

Some gaped in uncontrolled shock, others were silent, keeping their sobs inward. She walked past them, her leg grabbing her with every step. She held her head high knowing her own confidence would force the others to walk.

She didn't stop walking until she came to her husband again, still sitting where she had left him. Glassy eyed, he stared into her face, his breath coming in ragged gasps..

*Go. The ship awaits...*

She chewed on her bottom lip as his words echoed in her mind. Glancing up again to see the others walking past, and then realized Ivo, a dear friend to both she and her husband now directing the group through the airlock to the ship, she breathed a reluctant sigh of relief at the sight of him. Thank the gods he had survived.

But it wasn't supposed to be this way! Why had they made it to salvation's doorstep only to find this end? The ship was within footsteps! The ship that should save them! But her husband, her very life, was dying at feet of their goal!

She looked into her husband's eyes again, feeling her heart threatening to rip itself from her chest. *Beloved, I cannot leave you.*

*You cannot stay!*

This time, she couldn't contain the tears as they started to pour down her cheeks. She gently laid a hand against Tam's face. He was already growing cold as she knelt on her good leg beside him. He winced as pain racked his body. *Oh Tam...*

"No, there is no time, my wife," he said in a harsh whisper. He stopped, laboring to breathe as droplets of blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth. The metal had done far more damage than cut the surface of the skin across his chest. His lungs had been punctured as well.

She was in a nightmare. She knew if she could only awaken, this would all be over. Only this morning, she had enjoyed slices of kikawi fruit with the man who now lay propped against torn metal, dying literally in her hands. Only a short time after that, she had been in her laboratory, enjoying the learning of knowledge gleaned from the world circling below them. That world now threatened with a death as surely as had happened to Entarra.

Another explosion knocked her to the deck beside her husband. The air moving past her in a deadly breeze as it began to pull at her. The atmosphere hissed away, threatening to extinguish the fires of all their lives.

She looked quickly toward the air lock where Ivo waited, understanding in his eyes, an outstretched hand beckoning her. His tunic whipped in the wind tunnel, his long braid of hair dancing just beyond her reach as if a rope to the confines of the waiting ship dangled in front of her.

She rose to her knees and laid a hand against her husband's cheek. Searching into his mind, she could feel the darkness overtaking him. *Beloved,* she thought to him, *I carry you with me always.*

She allowed her mind to brush his, undaunted, as only they allowed in the most intimate moments in their bed. As she had done on so many happier occasions, she allowed her husband to feel what she had held for no other in all her life--emotion going beyond any laws of physical nature. She let him touch all the beauty of her feelings she had carried with her long before their attaching bond. She sent him the knowledge that never had she had any regrets in their lives together, and she hated their parting now.

Feeling his response in return, she became renewed, once again, with the amount of love and enduring warmth she had come to know of his own soul.

*K'ya nop entura*--through all eternity*, he thought to her. Then parting his lips a final time, "Go!"

Taking a final glance into the deep blue of his pained eyes and seeing his own tears threatening to spill over, she rose. Once again, she took another step toward the ship that awaited them.

Not allowing herself another glance toward her husband, she walked past Ivo and entered the ship. With the smallest of prayers to whatever god may have been listening, she hoped she wasn't leading those who had made it to the ship to a delayed death.

She seated herself in the pilot's chair of the transport ship, a ship much larger than was needed for their escape. She was only trained in piloting skills enough as was required for someone of her station. She knew the training was far from enough. Tam, she thought, would have known exactly what to do.

No. She couldn't allow those thoughts now.

She could hear the docking clamps releasing the vessel to the vacuum, and the computer began prompting her for a course. Ludicrous! What course would take them away from the sweep of death she knew must be coming like a wave beyond the portal?

She manually drove the ship through the parting doors of the crippled station, and her breath caught in her throat as she saw the approaching force of destruction.

Nothing in her imagination could have prepared her for what was coming at them now. Blue ringed fire, hurtling debris and stellar matter at incomprehensible angles, plowed through the blackness of what had once been calm space. Nowhere could she look that another visage of destruction didn't fill the scope of her horizons.

Alarms began flashing all around her as the sensors of the ship picked up on the approaching tide, warning her to flee before the wave struck her and the ship. Already, the entire vessel was starting to vibrate with the shock wave. This, she knew, was only a prelude of what was to come.

Where to go? There was no where to turn that would get the ship away so it wouldn't be caught by the approaching tide of death!

Then she allowed her hands to fly across the controls of the ship, over-riding the computer systems now screaming at her that what she was telling the ship to do would destroy them all. She forced the ship straight ahead, turning the vessel directly into the approaching wave. Raising the deflector shields of the ship and routing any available power she could to those shields, she then punched the commands for the engines to come to full force.

The ship immediately lurched as pure released energy and matter assaulted her and her craft. She thought immediately of the others inside this bubble of air caught in the vacuum like a raft in a raging river, and hoped they had had time to secure themselves. If not, then they would surely die from being tossed around.

Her teeth chattered, and her arms felt as if they were being ripped from their sockets as the wild gravitational pulls and vibrations of the ship gripped them. She forced the ship on, compelled the engines to push the craft to speeds approaching light itself. The speed of the same light of the star that had caused this destruction.

Just as she was sure her body could take no more, it was over. The vibrations stopped. The chaotic gravity wells and tidal forces ceased. Everything was suddenly quiet.

Catching her breath and opening her eyes, she immediately reached over and brought the ships sensors back on line. Focusing, she looked behind her. Her chest tighten as she watched the station her husband still lay in shatter and become part of the wave.

*Through all eternity...*

Then she stared as the wave slammed into the sister world of Entarra where she had spent a lifetime watching. The white clouds that had drifted in the sky of the world were ripped away. She watched as the oceans boiled, and she saw the impact of huge chunks of rock the size of mountains impact the exposed surface of the land.

As her ship continued to speed away, she watched as the once watery world seemed to expand, then contract back in on itself. She watched in astonished amazement as the world somehow managed to hold its position in space, bruised and pitted, angered and wounded.

Still it survived. It didn't shatter as she knew other worlds had. No longer blue with white swirls, but a depressed dingy brown as its atmosphere choked with dust. Yet it still somehow managed to survive

She knew without looking deeper into the sensor scans that little life could have survived. If life had somehow managed to survive the assault, it too, would soon die.

But perhaps there was still hope...

Only then, did she allow her hands to come up and press at her eyes. The tears now flowed freely. Her home, her husband, everything was gone.

She allowed the ship to automatically speed its way toward Entarra, to what she knew would only be further death and destruction. But somehow, she knew the answer to the future would begin there.