Rykler exited the black government car with much effort. A government agent came over and helped him into a wheelchair. With shaking hands, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a clear bottle with a few pills.

“Grandpa didn’t you already take your pills only an hour ago?”

Rykler turned to face his concerned granddaughter

“Hahah, no I forgot…”

Diana obviously didn’t believe him and was holding back her tears. She knew her grandpa didn’t have much longer with how many long term illnesses he was suffering from.

“Don’t worry grandpa, maybe Astra has more advanced medicine than Earth and they can help you?”

Rykler showed a face of shock

“Is that why you agreed to this job?”

Although he was an old man near the end of his life and therefore didn’t care if he died on an alien planet, his granddaughter was still in her 30’s and had a long life ahead. What if the alien world is full of dangers or she gets bullied while living there?

“Grandpa don’t think so much… I also wanted to get away from this pollution.”

The two then boarded a private jet with a few other government officials and their family members who were also moving to Astra today. In total there were 20 of them on the jet.

Diana and Rykler sat opposite at a small table and were served some drinks and snacks. As the plane took off both Diana and Rykler tried to look at New York through the window but could only see a hazy brown smog that covered the city.

“Sigh, how did humanity allow the Earth to deteriorate to this state.” Rykler said with much nostalgia, he remembered the good old days whereas Diana had grown up in this polluted era and knew no better.

Both remained quiet for the next few hours, relaxing to the hum of the engine and the chatter from the other government officials.

After 2 hours of flying a voice sounded over the intercom

“Ladies and Gents we will be arriving shortly”

Everyone was confused

Arriving shortly? Rykler looked out the window and could only see the ocean. They were only 2 hours into international waters. He thought they were heading to London where the Astra space elevator was. No matter how fast this plane was, it couldn’t cross the ocean in only 2 hours…

In the distance Rykler could see an aggressive looking dark cloud filled with lightning. ‘Are we going to fly through that?’ Rykler thought. ‘No way an aircraft could survive that much lightning’.

As everyone was looking out the windows and talking nervously about the storm ahead, a blue beam of energy suddenly shot out the cloud towards the plane.

Upon contact the plane suddenly stopped mid air!

It didn’t fall into the ocean, nor did it continue forward. It just stayed comply still.

Soon a mechanical voice sounded.

[This is a restricted area under Astra jurisdiction, state your purpose or risk annihilation]

A cold sweat could be seen on all the government officials’ foreheads.

The pilot responded with a calm voice “This is private flight A329 from New York, we have government officials bound for Astra.”

There was a moment of pin drop silence. Everyone was almost scared to breath.

After what felt like forever but was only a few seconds, the voice responded.

[Identity verified, welcome]

Rykler looked out the window and watched as the blue beam created a tunnel through the raging storm, the plane was then slowly pulled through the tunnel.

Everyone gasped in amazement as they passed through the storm while protected by the blue light. Within the storm was thousand mile an hour winds with hail flying around. The were also hundreds of lightning strikes going on at once, lighting up the dark clouds.

If a plane was to pass through here it wouldn’t even last 5 seconds before being destroyed.

Yet the blue light managed to hold it all back and allow their plane a space passage!

After 5 minutes the plane left the storm and a massive floating island appeared. From the side of the island Rykler could see clouds being pumped out.

‘That storm is artificial! What an ingenious defence mechanism! The clouds block any visuals, the lightning would destroy any missiles before they could get anywhere near the island and would disrupt any scanning equipment from working!’

Wait is this island moving? Rykler wasn’t 100% sure but he was sure the island was slowly floating in a certain direction. Does it travel around the worlds international waters, so nobody knows where its exactly located?

The island was a couple square miles in size and had a runway and other military looking buildings.

Rykler had no idea how the island could float but he could clearly see the aggressive ocean below.

Even the ocean was being manipulated to be more aggressive around the military base! This place is protected by using nature to its advantage!

Despite the aggressive storm surrounding the island, when Rykler stepped off the plane he felt a relaxing breeze and couldn’t even hear the thunder. He then noticed a thin golden barrier surrounding the island.

Is that a real force field?

While Rykler was distracted, he didn’t notice a man with blue hair walk up to greet them. Nobody knew much about Astra but some information was provided. The most important was the ranking system within Astra.

Rykler thought it was weird that they ranked people based on hair colour, couldn’t they just dye it? But when he stared at the man’s beautiful sky blue hair and deep blue eyes he realised that could never be achieved with hair dye.

From the information, he knew that this man was fairly high ranked and should be respected.

The blue haired man had an imposing build of almost 7ft tall and with bulging muscles. He was wearing a black trench coat, shirt, and jeans. The look was completed with black military boots.

Rykler stood from his wheelchair to greet the man. But was pushed back down by the man’s giant hand. The man gave a gentle smile that seemed out of place considering his looks.

“No need to stand for me sir I can see you are in bad health. Greetings everyone my name is Adam, and I will be guiding you through the process of being citizens of Astra, please follow me.”

He then turned on his heel in a very military way and walked with large strides towards the largest building in the center of the island.

The 20 government officials gave awkward smiles to each other and then followed the man.