Antares Requiem: The Last Dawn of Humanity

The Last Sky

The Earth didn’t die in a blaze of glory. It died slowly, piece by agonizing piece, like an old machine grinding itself into rust. By the time Elara Voss stepped aboard the Solemn Horizon, the world she had grown up in was already unrecognizable—a planet of gray skies, poisoned oceans, and endless despair.

She stood now on the observation deck of the arkship, her hands resting on the cool railing as she looked down at the launch platform below. Thousands of people crowded against the gates, their cries muffled by the reinforced glass. Their faces, gaunt and streaked with dirt, turned upward, mouths shaping the same desperate plea: Please. Take us with you.

Elara turned her eyes away.

The horizon was a jagged mess of crumbled skyscrapers and skeletal highways, all draped in a sickly haze. The air down there wasn’t breathable anymore, choked with ash from a thousand fires that had never gone out. She could remember a time, dimly, when the Earth had been green and alive. But that memory was a fragile, tattered thing—half-imagined, like a story someone else had told her.

Behind her, the bridge’s comm unit buzzed. “Captain Voss,” came the voice of Jonas Kane, her head of security. He sounded impatient, his gruff tone carrying just a hint of tension. “Cargo’s secure. Cryo chambers are stable. We’re ready for final lockdown.”

Elara didn’t answer immediately. She kept her gaze fixed on the platform below, where the crowd had begun to surge against the gates. She spotted a woman cradling a child in her arms, her lips moving in silent sobs. The child couldn’t have been older than three, its small hands gripping its mother’s shirt.

“Captain?” Jonas’s voice came again, sharper this time.

“And the people at Dock 7?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

Jonas sighed. “They’re not getting in. Drones are keeping them back, but it’s getting ugly down there. If we wait any longer, we’re risking a breach.”

Elara closed her eyes, inhaling deeply through her nose. The air aboard the ship was clean, purified by the Horizon’s advanced filtration systems, but it felt heavy in her lungs. “Understood,” she said finally. “Seal the hatch.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Copy that,” Jonas said. His voice was unreadable.

The sound of grinding metal echoed through the ship as the airlocks closed. From her vantage point, Elara watched as the last desperate stragglers clawed at the gates, their voices rising into an anguished chorus. A man collapsed to his knees, his fists pounding uselessly against the steel. A teenage girl screamed something that Elara couldn’t hear, her face twisted in fury and heartbreak.

Elara forced herself to turn away.

A Memory of the Ocean

When Elara was nine years old, her father had taken her to the ocean. It had been a rare trip, back when money was tight and vacations were a luxury they couldn’t afford. But he had saved up for months to give her that single weekend—a chance to see the waves, to feel the sand between her toes.

She remembered standing on the beach, her tiny hand gripping his as they stared out at the endless blue. The water had sparkled in the sunlight, its surface alive with movement. Gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharp and joyful.

“What do you think?” her father had asked, his voice warm and full of pride.

“It’s… big,” Elara had said, her eyes wide. She had never imagined anything could be so vast.

Her father laughed. “Yeah, it is. But you know what? It’s not bigger than you. Not really.”

She looked up at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

He crouched down beside her, his face serious now. “The ocean’s big, but it doesn’t think. It doesn’t dream. You do. That makes you bigger, even if you can’t see it.”

For years, that memory had been her anchor. Whenever life felt overwhelming, she would close her eyes and picture the ocean, hear her father’s words. But now, standing aboard the Horizon, she wondered if he had been wrong. The ocean was gone, boiled away by the heat of nuclear strikes. And she? She was just one woman, leaving behind an entire planet of people who would never get the chance to dream again.

The Long Goodbye

Elara had never meant to leave her family behind.

When the United Earth Council had selected her to captain the Solemn Horizon, she had been stationed at a relief camp in what was left of Chicago. The camp was a grim, overcrowded place, filled with refugees from the nuclear fallout zones. Elara had spent months organizing food distributions, negotiating ceasefires between rival factions, and burying the dead when her efforts failed.

She had been in the middle of mediating a dispute over water rations when the Council’s envoy arrived. The man had been young, clean-shaven, and impossibly crisp in his uniform—an obvious outsider in the camp’s grimy, chaotic reality.

“Lieutenant Voss,” he had said, his tone brisk and businesslike. “You’ve been reassigned.”

She had stared at him, dumbfounded. “Reassigned? To where?”

“To the Solemn Horizon,” he replied. “Effective immediately. You’ve been selected to lead the mission.”

Elara’s first instinct had been to refuse. She had too much to do here, too many lives depending on her. But the envoy had been unyielding. “This isn’t a request,” he had said. “You’re one of the few leaders left with the experience and the resolve to handle a mission of this magnitude. Humanity’s survival depends on people like you.”

“But my family—” she had begun.

“There’s no time,” the envoy had interrupted. “The arkships are launching within the year. We need you now.”

That night, she had said goodbye to her parents and her younger brother, promising them that she would find a way to bring them aboard. But when the time came, there had been no room for promises. The selection process was ruthless, prioritizing engineers, scientists, and skilled laborers. Her family—ordinary people with no specialized skills—hadn’t made the cut.

She could still see the look on her brother’s face as the shuttle lifted off, leaving them behind in the ash-streaked ruins of their neighborhood.

Earth’s Final Breath

The Horizon shuddered as its engines roared to life, the vibrations reverberating through every deck. Elara stood motionless on the observation deck, her eyes fixed on the planet falling away beneath them.

The Earth was a patchwork of scars, its once-vibrant continents reduced to barren wastelands. The oceans were dark and lifeless, choked with ash and debris. From this height, the fires still burning in the ruins of old cities looked like tiny, flickering stars—a cruel mockery of the universe they were about to enter.

A tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t bother to wipe it away. She had no illusions about what they were leaving behind.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

Behind her, Jonas’s voice came through the comm. “We’re clear of the atmosphere. All systems green.”

Elara straightened, her expression hardening. She turned away from the viewport, forcing herself to focus on the tasks ahead. The Earth was gone, and there was no going back.