//------------------------------//
// Exodus [Human] 
// Story: From Black Skies 
// by The Fanatical Christian 
//------------------------------//

The drop ship set down next to the old' abandoned 'argata' airport. As far as the 3 hour VTOL flight had went he had found out much about Alec. He was 22, from Florida and was a scout for United Human Defence Front, humanity's new military force to name a few things about him. He had fought in the war since its start and was actually in the impact zone of Icarus when it detonated. He also said that he had a friend he served with who was part f the project too.
The pair stepped out onto the cracked concrete. the airport was built shortly after humanity tried to set up the first settlements after the fall, however due to the high amounts of acid rain and a mutant infestation of the area had quickly lead to the base being abandoned. the two stood in the direction of the airport, the warm air generated by the dropships VTOL blew dust particles around as it took off again. 
"So, what were the orders sir?" Ryan asked. 
"They didn't tell us much, just to wait out here until we were 'identified'." Alec responded. 
The two stood there for a few minutes and Ryan was just about to say something until a door opened. 
As soon as it had around forty men in full U.H.D.F armour, bearing rifles dashed out of the building. Before surrounding the two, pointing there weapons at them. One of them, the leader if Ryan was correct, cleared his throat and began to shout. 
"Drop your weapons and identify yourselves!" The man shouted. 
Ryan and Alec quickly threw there knives and other melee weapons to the ground and Alec gently set down his heavy gauss rifle. Raising there arms Alec responded to the armoured man.
"Staff sergeant Alec Davis and Private Ryan Stephson of the U.H.D.F, here on behalf of orders from general Mourge." 
The man kept his weapon trained on the two, then ordering on of the soldiers. "Check 'em." 
The soldier approached the two men slowly keeping the rifle aimed at them. He reached over and pulled out there identification tags. 
"Looks clear sir." The man said to the leader of the group. 
There leader then nodded before ordering the duo. "Remove your helmets." 
Ryan and Alec did what they were told. 
"Is that them corporal?" The man in charge asked. 
"Yes sir." the man who had checked them replied.
The men all lowered there weapons and sighed in relief.  
The leader of the group walked up to them and removed his helmet as well. 
"Hello sergeant, private, I'm lieutenant James Murphy. We've been expecting you, follow me." The lieutenant said as he turned to walk towards the airport. 
"Our new captain has been expecting you." Murphy said calmly. 
"New captain?" Ryan asked. 
"Yes, the captain of the ship we're going on." The lieutenant responded. 
"Your all part of the project?" Alec asked. 
"Every one of us that's here, right now we're waiting for our pick up." Murphy replied. 
The large group entered the airports huge main hall containing about 200 other men. 
The rest of the group who had went out to greet the pair dissipated into the larger group of men. 
The remaining three walked towards a man in the centre of the room who was talking to a marine. 
Murphy signalled for the Alec and Ryan too stop as he went to speak with the 'captain'. 
The marine talking to the captain walked off and left the lieutenant talking to the 'captain'. 
After the two talked some time Murphy and the captain walked over to Alec and Ryan. 
The man was not wearing his helmet, revealing a handsome face with scars down his neck and bottom left cheek. 
"Hello, I'm captain Will Jones. I'll be your commanding officer for the majority of your remaining life. we have been waiting for you." 
"Thank you sir." Alec responded simply but respectfully.
"We're waiting for our pick up, a transport has been set to pick us up and take us to the training site. I would spend the time to get to know you better but I have important matters to attend to. I suggest you get acquainted with some of your new associates." The captain said
Ryan nodded and turned, but that's when he noticed, out of all of the people in the room, there were no women. 
"Uh sir, where are all the girls?" Ryan asked confused. 
"There are none. Everyone here was chosen for a specific task on our mission, even though we are all soldiers, some of us have other jobs also. So when we were picked out, by coincidence there were no girls, I trust that isn't a problem?" The captain replied. 
"Uh. No sir, it's just some people would be very offended if that was found out by the public, this project is going public, right?" Ryan asked. 
"Yes, it is eventually Ryan. In fact this mission is actually more for morale than anything, so in all honesty the crews gender diversity doesn't really matter."
"Yes sir." 
"And Ryan. Dump the formalities, we are all going to be living together for a majority of our adult life." 
"um ok, will." 
Alec tapped Ryan on the shoulder. 
"Hey, Ryan I got a fried for you to meet. He's great, your gonna love 'em." 
"Great, looks like you did all the work for me."  
The pair turned and Alec lead the way towards two men talking to each other it the corner of the room. Alec and Ryan eventually navigated threw the crowd and over to the small group, the two men talking looked up at them and one of them gave Alec a smile of recognition. 
Alec walked up to the man and gave him a man hug. 
"Cole, good to see ya buddy." Alec said happily. 
"Nice to se you too Alec" the man said in a deep voice, he was a veteran by the look of him, no older than 27. Ryan also noticed how tall he was, Ryan was 5'10 and Alec was around 6'2 but this man had to be around 6'7 and he had  enough muscle to make Arnold Schwarzenegger  jealous. His face also sported a beard and a normal length of dark brown hair and brown eyes, his neck was scored with scars as was the area concealed by the beard. Ryan was surprised that the man could even talk with the extent of the scaring on his neck. 
"Who's this?" Alec asked Cole gesturing to the man Cole was talking to. 
"This is Corporal Dereck Mc'graidy, he's from Scotland in the UK. He is one of our medical division marines, head doctor of the ship actually." Cole said. 
"Hi. Nice to meet you." The man said. He did in fact wear the tell-tale white armour of a medic. He had a clean shaven face and was good looking man by American standards and a very very good looking man by British standards. (I just had to make that joke, please take no offence. I am in fact also British so I actually just shot myself in the foot.) He had black hair of an average length and he had light blue eyes. 
"Hi I'm staff sergeant Alec Davis, I'm from Florida." Alec greeted.
"Private Ryan Stephson, I'm from Mississippi." Ryan said
"You lived in a river?"  Dereck asked confused. 
"No, no I don't live in the river. I live in the state of Mississippi." 
"Oh, sorry." The medic said sheepishly.  
"I'm Cole Markson, I'm from Alaska."
Suddenly there was high pitched screech of a VTOL engine outside, then someone shouted. "Oi! Lads, that's our ride. get goin!" 

Three months later,Ryan: 
Three months. Three long months of Hell on Earth. The training program for the marines had been brutal. Every fear that the marines had, hadf been taken into account and used to make the training a nightmare. Not to mention the flood therapy, he never liked spiders, so naturally the trainers locked him in a small 1m cubed room with hundreds of different types of spiders. It worked though. 
Then there was the team exercises, the idea was that two men would take part in a seemingly impossible and physically gruelling task, but it did help them to get to know each other. The weapons and vehicle training was fun though. The marines were using the mark IV weapons range, renowned world round for their durability, high clip capacity low recoil and sound, deadliness and last bit not least, the agonising amount of pain it could cause You see, during the start of the war China had a problem with deserters, a lot of Chinese people hated their new Government for declaring war and essentially ruining China. So the deserted, to counter this the Chinese military commissioned for Chinese and POW engineers to design a gauss rifle for the task, what they came out with were the deadliest infantry weapons ever devised. It shot an osmium bullet at 22% the speed of light and was coated in a material that prevented blood clotting and caused tremendous amounts of pain. This weapons were so effective that whenever the Chinese government realized that they were losing the war, they mass produced the weapons and they alone were the reason the African-Asian Defence Force could turn the tables so quickly.
Then there was his armour. 
(Please note that this marine is not Ryan but another marine in the project. The art is halo marine concept art by Bungie even though this is not a halo fic.)
 
The armour looked the same but had a truckload of upgrades. 
The lightweight alloy the armour had been enhanced to absorb more damage and was lined with extra thick graphene, it now had a air conditioning system. It also had an improved gas mask in one of the compartments that could attach to the armour when needed, the suit itself was airtight thus the marines could be put in no oxygen conditions for 10 minutes with a new built in air tank. The suit also had a layer of shock absorbing gel that hardened when force was applied but quickly became flexible again. It even had an advanced tactical visor to help the user in combat. It even had a drug injection system which could inject various combat drugs into the user. 
That led him to where he was. On board the ship. The 'Pale Blue Dot' as the ship was called, was named after the famous photo of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 probe from the edge of the solar system, It was not overly big, only the size of a aircraft carrier and a third, not as big as the next generation would be. The ship was a large rectangle with huge thrusters at the end and a large protrusion coming out from the top this was the bridge and the engine/reactor room. The main section of the ship, the rectangle part was mainly used as a cargo/hangar bay but the front section, about a quarter of the main body was dedicated to cryostorage. The final part of the ship was a small observation deck on the bottom of the ship, it was mostly reinforced transparent steel and was where the crew would control the ship when it entered orbit of the alien planet. Their orders were to fly out to the Moon and drop automated rovers, a resource extractor and other automated machinery to collect the resource rich dust of the Lunar surface. The remnants of humanity would then build a small battle fleet which would fly out to the Moon, they would then set up a base and build a bigger fleet using the moons resources that were collected by the rovers. After the fleet had been built they would use the helium 3 to power there warp drives and travel to the alien planet, officially named 'New Terra', where the crew of the Pale Blue Dot would have established a military presence and a political process if there were in fact aliens.  This whole process would take 60 years. And now everything was ready, the ship had left the the ship building bay in the Earths orbit and had successfully landed the rovers on the Moon. Now he sat in the ships cargo bay, Alec was securing the tanks for the warp jump and Dereck was in a modified heavy APC that served as a mobile med bay and since the ship never had a med bay installed as they would be building one when the arrived on the planet. Cole was sitting on a crate next to the medical APC, he was cleaning his plasma cannon and Ryan thought it best to not disturb him during this time. Alec had told him that cleaning heavy weapons, specifically plasma weapons, brought back bad memories to Cole. Not all of them were from the war, as Cole had told him only a few days before he had once been married. The worst part was, that Cole had thought everything was fine until the final days of the marriage. At first, him and his wife, Maria, could get any happier. They had thee kids and held a stable relationship for over four years. But then Maria had started to get involved with a radical belief system which she referred to as 'feminism' and 'social justice'. Over time her views started to change, but she never had let it upset the marriage so Cole had assumed it was fine. But then, the arguments started, she started shouting about 'checking his privilege' and other nonsense like that. Eventually the arguments got so bad that, one morning Cole woke up to find his house barren of life. The only thing he found was a note on the kitchen table. It had said that she was tired of his oppressive beliefs and was leaving him to go to Germany, the note also told him how she had taken the kids and that she illegally divorced him. Cole became depressed and couldn't keep a job, eventually he lost his house and found a place to live under an overpass. His depression worsened to the point of near suicide. So when the war started, he had nothing to lose. Cole was quickly promoted to staff sergeant due to putting himself in so many dangerous situations and managing to survive. However instead of simply dying like Cole planned when he joined the war effort, It actually lifted Coles depression. He once again had a family to care for and to look after in the military, thus Cole great fully accepted his rank and all the responsibilities that came with it. While Ryan had simply joined the military to avenge the fallen and also for the sense of adventure that was plentiful in the army, he was still glad to have someone like Cole watching over him.
Ryan sighed again. 
"I'm gonna go check on Alec." Ryan shouted over to Cole. 
"Ok, see ya later." Cole replied simply, sounding saddened as he usually did when he cleaned his plasma cannon
Ryan jumped off of the crate he was currently sitting on and began to walk to the tank section of the ship. 
While the hangar bay was all one room, it was divided into different sections for different things. The walk to the tank section where Alec was went straight threw the section for the crews belongings. So naturally Ryan thought it reasonable to check on his belongings for what would be the last time for fourteen months Ryan walked quickly past the other marines and their crates to his own, the men had only been allowed to take a certain amount of belongings with them. Thus after he was told this Ryan chose very carefully what to bring with him, however since he didn't have very many belongings he could easily bring them and some random extra stuff. Ryan casually approached the crate, only to have Alec jump out from behind it. 
"Boo!" Alec shouted. 
"Gah!" Ryan screamed as he repulsed backward in shock 
"Got ya." Alec said proudly. 
"what was that for?" Ryan asked shocked and dazed.
"Nothing, I just felt like it. What brings you here?" Alec asked. 
"Well, I was going to check on you to see if you were done with the tanks yet and thought I would check my crate first." Ryan replied. 
"Oh, well what's in your crate." Alec asked. 
"personal Tablet, normal clothing, Bible, that type of stuff." 
"Huh, I brought that and some seeds." Alec continued. 
"You were allowed to bring seeds?" Ryan asked confused. 
"I mean, there for eating, not planting." Alec answered. 
"Oh." Ryan said stupidly.  
"So are you ready for this. You know, the whole warp drive alien planet scenario?" Ryan asked. 
"Ryan, I was born ready for this. Heck, I can barley wait, I've been scratching to get going. More importantly Are you ready?" Alec asked. 
"I think so. It's just, what if there's something out there on that rock that's dangerous. I men, more dangerous than we've ever seen before. Could we fight it? Would it attack Earth? Would it wipe us out?" Ryan half asked, half shouted. 
"Hey, listen, we've got some the best tanks, aircraft, vehicles, weapons and machines ever created by mankind. There is not a single alien on that planet who could look at a mark V heavy anti-vehicle anti-infantry anti-air tank and not think we shouldn't be messed with. If anything tries to kick us off that rock, it can expect a tank shell to the face, heck, we've got an Icarus charge on board. You know what those things can do?" Alec replied. 
Ryan sighed in relief. 
"I guess your right. Nothings standing up to an Icarus cha-" 
Ryan was interrupted by the voice of the captain or commander Jones as he was formally known over the intercom. 
"All personal, this is captain Jones speaking, we are making the jump in six minutes. Head to your cryo-pods. If anyone has not had their pre-cryo injections see chief doctor Mc'graidy immediately.
"That's the call Ryan, let's go!" Alec shouted as he began to jog towards the cryo-pods with Ryan in quick pursuit. 
When Ryan and Alec got to the pods there were already men strapping themselves into the pods and preparing themselves for the jump. 
"There squad 42, that's us!" Ryan shouted, pointing at their squads cryo-pods. 
"Quick get in!" Alec shouted. 
The pair leapt into their cryo-pods and began to secure themselves in. 
The two then sat in awkward silence for the next 3 minutes after realizing that they had made a big deal for literally no reason. 
Soon after the rest of the marines had arrived the intercom came to life again. 
"All hands, this is captain Jones. We are now about to make history. As of now, we have travelled farther than any human has travelled before. Now, we will go even farther with a prototype warp drive. After the jump we will have over a year to travel at top speed until we reach the planet. We have a years supply of food but that is needed for the first year while we produce our own food. If the planet turns out to be uninhabitable then we will starve to death, but it's worth the risk for mankind. When we reach the planet, we will enforce and military, industrial and if necessary, a political presence. We will make a beach head for the rest of the fleet when they arrive. This mission is not for our nations, but for our species. For mankind!" The captain shouted which was followed by cheers from the men. 
The voice over the intercom changed to one of the engineers. 
"Warp jump commencing in 5, 4, 3 ,2, 1, Jumping!" The ship suddenly started to accelerate alarmingly fast, pushing the marine towards the end of the ship. But as soon as it had started, it stopped, the force of the deceleration would have thrown the marines out of their seats if it weren't for the harnesses. 
"Warp jump successful!" The marine shouted, which was followed by the mad cheers of the crew. 
Ryan high fived Alec who was seated next to him. 
"Now that's what I'm taking about!" Alec shouted, numb with the adrenaline coursing threw his veins. 
The captains voice came over the intercom again. 
"Gentlemen we just made history! No one has ever done that before!" 
The captains voice was followed by a chorus of gleeful cheers. 
"Excellent job men, your cryo-pods are being initiated! I'll see you on the other side!" The captain finished. 
Suddenly Ryan's pod door closed and it became very cold. The temperature soon dropped to below freezing and Ryans body became numb. His heartbeat began to slow and his brain began to shut down. Ryan's eyelids became heavy and he lost consciousness. The enzymes in his brain that sustained consciousness began to stop catalysing. He fell into a deep cryostatic sleep.