"Hey! Hurry it up!" a gruff man cried out from his truck. "We've got a quota of 300 more redwoods to topple and we DON'T want to be still above ground when the rains hit in about an hour!"

The foreman's threats paid off as the entire worksite became a bustle of movement. Thousands of lumberjacks and truckdrivers worked together to cut down the titanic redwoods around them.

These trees were nothing like the trees they remembered from their homeworld. They were truly colossal being thicker in diameter than a metropolitan city block, and numerous times taller in height than even their largest skyscraper. Because of their vast size, lumber collection had become a much slower process, but the lumber found on their new home was durable, fast growing, and seemingly endless which made it also one of the most sought after materials for construction and manufacturing.

However, lumber collection was by no means as safe a job as it would have been back on their homeworld. The surface of this new world was wrought with dangers. From flash floods, to extreme winds, to major temperature shifts, constant impacts from extra terrestrial sources, earthquakes, and more. It was for this reason that majority of civilization now lived underground in various caves and tunnels throughout their new home.

It had been several years since the destruction of their homeworld, yet the time leading up to it was still fresh in the memories of many who helped colonize this new planet.

For longer than civilization had existed, their homeworld had floated through the great vast empty expanse of space. Nations had risen and fallen. Science had progressed to the point that space travel was possible yet still not financially feasible. Countless research projects had been put in place to answer the question "Is there anyone else out there" but up until that point they had only managed to prove that they were in fact quite alone in the vast expanse of space.

Their search for life had failed, but they did discover something that truly terrified them. A massive object was hurtling towards their planet. A celestial object so vast that their entire planet would have appeared nothing more than a speck of dust next to it. It's size was beyond anything that science believed capable of existing and it was headed straight for their planet at a blinding speed.

Each country across the globe contributed towards the cause of attempting to save their species. A barrage of trans-solar system nuclear warheads was launched towards the massive object, but they didn't even manage to leave a scratch. Finally, with all other options exhausted, a radical idea was brought forth.

The exodus project was a last ditch effort which meant the abandonment of their home planet for the slimmest chance of survival. The concepts of finances, resources, culture, national boundaries, everything that wasn't directly tied to the interest of survival had been tossed aside in an attempt to complete it.

Nations around the world joined forces using any resources available in order to construct massive space ships to carry people off of the planet. The spaceships were risky and haphazardly put together, but that didn't matter. All they had to do was to fly them from their homeworld to the massive object hurtling towards them.

No one knew what hazards might await on this new world, but according to their scans, the planet did have an abundance of biological material suggesting that it could be habitable and colonized.

It was a dangerous gamble, but one they were willing to take.

A fleet of over 50 million capital class colony ships left the homeworld. On board was every human, species of animal, and resource they could carry.

The ships were launched from the opposite side of the planet, in order to escape the explosion of their planet's destruction as well as to lessen the damage from landing on a celestial body so much faster than their own.

As the ships flew far enough away for their homeworld to look like a small dot, they watched back in horror as their planet and everything they once knew collided with the colossal celestial object, where it shattered into millions of tiny pieces, pouring out its molten core on the celestial body's surface.

In spite of the impact, the surface of the celestial body wasn't even dented by the destruction of an entire planet. The surviving colonists shed many tears before turning their attention to their new home which was fast approaching.

The foreman tightened the ropes on the last truck of lumber. It had been five years since he had sat looking out of the window of his colony ship from the orbit of this new colossal planet.

Time moved differently upon their new home than it did on their old homeworld due to the difference in size, speed and direction of this new planet. At least that was what the egg heads at the control center said. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he did know that a year on his old planet was less than a second on their new home.

How many generations would have passed by now if they had never lost their homeworld?

The foreman got on his truck and started up the engine. They were later than they had expected, so they might be forced to stop by one of the nearby tunnel cities until the downpour had ended. The foreman praised his lucky stars that they were harvesting the front side of the forest today as it meant the hot springs of the yellow ocean and the medical colonies in the great tunnel were closest. If they had been harvesting on the back side of the forest, he might have been forced to stop in the disposal colonies in the waste cavern, and that was a job that scared even a lumberjack!

As the truck's engines revved up, the antigravity pods placed along the load of lumber lifted them up off the pale hard ground. Because the trees on this new planet were so massive, they had to come up with unconventional means of transporting them.

The truly terrifying aspect of the lumber they harvested however was that, while these great redwoods were larger than any building and by far the largest size their people could possibly be expected to work with, they were in fact the smallest trees found on their new home.

Whether they stopped in the hot springs city or the medical colonies, to weather the downpour, after words they would be forced to travel through the ancient redwood jungle to the north with trees so thick and tall that they made the redwoods they had just harvested appear like grass.

If they travelled to the northernmost part of the planet, near where the control center was located, they would find great redwoods so tall that they bent over from their own weight and left the very orbit of the planet.

This planet held many great mysteries, and they had learned a lot about it in the last five years. The greatest discovery made about this planet though was something the foreman still had trouble wrapping his head around.