Plot

Dr. Laura P. takes a job on a cargo spaceship for 4 years plus 4 years back. She'll join her sister on Rhea. 44 months later, in Laura's shift, strange things happen in cargo. The crew is reanimated and the captain dies mysteriously.

In 2270, Earth is completely depleted and no one lives there anymore. Those that have money move to Rhea; but most of the population lives in orbit in space stations. Dr. Laura Portmann decides to work in the cargo ship Kassandra in an eight year travel to Station 42 that is in orbit of RH278 to raise money to meet her sister Arianne in Rhea. They keep in touch with each other, but their messages take three years to reach the other. Laura joins Captain Pierre Lacroix and his crew composed by the First Officer Anna Lindbergh; Communication Officer Miyuki Yoshida and Igor Prokoff and Claudio Vespucci. The Sky Marshall Samuel Decker joins the team since the terrorist group Luddites, led by Klaus Bruckner, is bombing the stations. Lacroix organizes shifts of eight and half months for each crew-member while the others rest in cryogenic sleep. Three years and eight months later, Laura finds that there is apparently a stowaway in the cargo compartments and Decker and Lacroix are awakened to investigate the incident with her; however, Lacroix has an accident and dies and the crew is woken up. Further, she finds that Arianne's transmission to her took only twenty minutes. What might be the secret of the cargo transported by Kassandra and where the spaceship is going?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Year 2267. The ecosystem of Earth has been destroyed and mankind is forced to live in orbit. The story of CARGO takes place on the derelict spaceship KASSANDRA on its 8 year journey to a remote freight-station in deep space. The young and inexperienced medical officer LAURA PORTMANN (Anna Katharina Schwabroh) is the only person awake on board. The rest of the crew lies frozen in cryosleep. During her daily patrols, through the eerily empty ship, she begins to get the feeling that she may not be alone on board. She wakes up part of the crew. A dangerous reconnaissance mission into the vast and ice-cold cargo hold ends in a catastrophe, where the captain of the ship dies. The remainder of the crew is awakened. During a second discovery mission into the cargo hold, the crew finds out that the ship carries something completely different than officially declared. Laura uncovers a large-scale conspiracy, where the government is withholding groundbreaking information about the current state of evolution back home on Earth, as well as the fate of thousands of deep-space colonists. After a dramatic showdown, Laura is able to shut down the source of misinformation and bring back proof to uncover the conspiracy. However, this inconvenient truth may start a revolution.

(LONG SYNOPSIS ***SPOILERS***)

Beautiful images of endless wheat fields and bright blue skies. A tall and good-looking woman dressed in white gently touches the ears of the wheat. Suddenly, a superimposed text says: "Come to RHEA"; the images were a commercial by Kuiper Enterprises for the planet Rhea on a free-floating TV billboard in space. Behind the billboard, a derelict, uninhabitable planet Earth appears, with a giant space station rotating in its orbit. The sun rises on the horizon. The year is 2267.

In a departure gate on the station, a young medic called LAURA PORTMANN (Anna-Katharina Schwabroh) is waiting for her flight to leave. She tapes a video message for her beloved sister ARIANNE PORTMANN (Maria Boettner) who lives on Rhea, telling her that she has decided to work as a medical officer on a cargo ship named KASSANDRA. The KASSANDRA will spend 8 years in deep space transporting building materials to a remote space station: 4 years to get there, and another 4 to get back. Most of the time, Laura will be in cryosleep. The only reason she has taken this assignment is to earn enough money to pay for her long awaited journey to the planet Rhea, and reunite with Arianne and her family. Rhea is the new Earth: intact nature, back to the roots, but only the rich can afford to live there. Most of the people of Earth had to flee the planet due to famines and epidemics, and live in the many overcrowded space-stations orbiting Earth.

Laura enters the Kassandra, which looks old, derelict and spooky. The crew consists of the captain, PIERRE LACROIX (Pierre Semmler), first officer ANNA LINDBERGH (Regula Grauwiller), security agent SAMUEL DECKER (Martin Rapold), technician MIYUKI YOSHIDA (Yangzom Brauen) and two flight engineers, CLAUDIO VESPUCCI (Michael Finger) and IGOR PROKOFF (Claude Oliver Rudolph). Their destination: the remote Space Station 42, an automated freight distribution station in orbit around planet RH278. The KASSANDRA's cargo will be used to change Space Station 42 into a transportation hub from where more interstellar journeys can be started towards the Promixa system, where there are hopefully more planets for colonization.

Decker shows the crew an informational video about the "Luddites", terrorists who fight against and destroy technology, led by their leader GEORG BRUCKNER (Gilles Tschudi). His people already bombed several space stations in the recent past and have threatened to sabotage cargo flights as well, so all cargo ships now have a security marshal on board and the crew is asked to report any suspicious incidents immediately to Decker. The ship takes off, and the crew enters the cryosleep tanks, with one person being awake at a time in rotating shifts. Lacroix will take the first wake shift for eight-and-a-half months, Laura will take the next-to-last one before they arrive at the station.

Three years and 8 months later. The KASSANDRA is in deep space, four light-years from Earth. Laura is over six months into her shift, the rest of the crew remains frozen in cryosleep. She watches a video message she has received from her sister Arianne, and tapes a response. Because messages take a long time to arrive at and return from distant Rhea, they are from two months ago and already outdated; no real-time communication can take place. Laura's routine consists of patrolling the ship, tediously filling out report forms and subjecting herself to the ship's unrelenting day/night-cycle. During her repeated inspection tours, she starts to suspect that someone else, or something else, is on board, until one day, she hears a loud and disturbing bang from the cargo bay. When she checks the lower decks, she suddenly sees someone scratching the cargo hatch window from inside the hold! In panic she runs away, finding security agent Decker awake. He was automatically awakened because the cargo hatch was opened, so they proceed to the cargo hatch.

After finding enough convincing clues that someone has been in the cargo hold, they awaken captain Lacroix as well. The cargo hold is completely sealed from the rest of the ship and is strictly off-limits for the crew, but the computer indeed confirms that it has been accessed illegally several times during Laura's shift. They decide to have a closer look and enter the hold: it is vast, dark, icy and consists of enormous cubical containers, so they split up to inspect different parts of the hold. But the reconnaissance mission becomes a fiasco when Laura suddenly witnesses Lacroix falling from great height to his death. As Laura and Decker try to take Lacroix' body back into the ship, the cargo hatch suddenly tries to close again. They barely make it safely to the ship before getting trapped inside the hold.

The two survivors wake the rest of the crew. First officer Lindbergh, next in command, orders Laura to do an autopsy on Lacroix's body, and asks Yoshida to check the cryotanks for any unauthorized awakenings. Decker remains silent. In Lacroix' skull, Laura surprisingly finds an artificial eye, which contains a video recording. When she plays it back, she sees that Lacroix opened a container in the cargo bay marked with a "Danger - Biohazard!" sign before he fell down. She shows it to Decker and they undertake a second expedition into the cargo hold. They open one of the containers, and discover a coffin-like cooling tank with a little girl inside. The hold is full of these tanks, and in each tank lies a body! With the help of Vespucci and Prokoff, Laura and Decker try to bring the tank with the girl on board the main ship. But without any warning, the containers in the cargo area suddenly start to shift. Laura almost gets squeezed and thrown into the deadly abyss. With her last strength, she manages to hold on to one of the containers until Decker comes to her rescue.

Upon their return with the tank, they meet with an angered Lindbergh: it's strictly forbidden to go into the cargo area. Laura questions the presence of comatose people in the hold, and is convinced that something dangerous is on board which has tried to silence them. Lindbergh retorts that whatever is in the cargo hold is the company's responsibility, and the "assassination attempt" was just an automatic shifting of the containers, which is necessary at times to prevent them from freezing in place. She is also convinced that Lacroix' death was just an accident: opening the container must have released a quick outward pressure change that blew him off the ledge. Lindbergh wants the tank back in the hold, but this time, Decker is on Laura's side. As a security agent, he can insist on an investigation over Lindbergh's objections, so he gives Laura permission to see if the tank is in any way related to Lacroix' death.

While opening the tank, Laura and Decker get to know each other a little better, and Laura explains her wish to reunite with her sister, who won a visa to Rhea seven years ago. Decker voices his doubts about Space Station 42 and the nature of their mission, but doesn't elaborate. They share a quick kiss before the tank opens. Inside the tank, they discover that the brain of the GIRL (Noa Strupler) is invaded by inorganic tissue that has grown in from outside into her skull. Decker believes it is a virtual reality connector. Laura doesn't dare to disconnect the girl and get her out of coma as long before she had found out more about the neural tissue. Decker tells her to keep these findings quiet from the rest.

Laura makes another video message for Arianne, and tells about the girl. She is surprised to receive a direct answer back within minutes; normally, these messages take several months to go back and forth. She tells Decker about this, asking him what he knows and why there is need for secrecy. However, he dodges the question by making love to her.

Since Lindbergh doesn't trust Decker, she has her assistant Yoshida do a check on him. They discover that Decker has secretly left his cryosleep tank several times during the wake shifts of the other crew members. Lindbergh confronts Decker with her findings, accusing him of being responsible for Lacroix's death. Decker says that as security officer, he has to do regular inspections, but he doesn't have enough good arguments to disprove the accusations. He tries to disarm Lindbergh, but the others manage to subdue him. Lindbergh orders the others to put Decker back in cryosleep for the remainder of the journey, and Laura to take the tank back into the hold. Laura protests because the girl is unstable, having received medication to make the artificial tissue in her brain regress, but Lindbergh doesn't care.

While preparing Decker for his cryosleep, he secretly tells Laura that the KASSANDRA is not flying to Station 42, but to Rhea. Laura thinks that this may be a final attempt to change her mind about him, but as Decker is put into forced cryosleep, Laura remains suspicious. She asks Yoshida to secretly examine the target coordinates of the KASSANDRA. Yoshida says that these coordinates are classified and encrypted, but she is certain that their target is not Space Station 42. Coordinates can never be altered during the trip, so wherever they are going, it was already planned from the start and Decker couldn't have altered it. Only Lindbergh has access to the real coordinates, and she is clearly lying about them. Yoshida will try to find out if they are really going to Rhea, as Decker claimed.

The remaining crew members have a little party in crew quarters before they go back to cryosleep. Laura goes to check on Yoshida, but finds her brutally murdered in the lower decks, and Decker has been manually released from his cryotank! The crew starts to search for him and the other stowaway. Under a ventilation shaft, Laura finds a secret storage room, filled with wrappers and leftovers of food. She is then suddenly attacked from behind - by the head-terrorist of the Luddites, Bruckner himself! After a brief struggle, seemingly out of nowhere, Bruckner is shot and killed. Laura looks around - but there is no one to be seen. She finds pictures and military equipment of the Luddites, and a touch panel containing a video message. The message shows images from Earth: plants are growing, and vegetables are cultivated in greenhouses - nature has taken over again, and it's all green and alive! Bruckner appears on screen. He talks about the big governmental lie: Earth has been habitable again for a long time, and the Luddites are able to survive outside the system. Then Decker appears on screen, next to Bruckner, wearing the uniform of the Luddites, and proudly holding a big "Luddites Unite!" banner in front of the camera.

Back on the main decks, Decker has been captured by Prokoff and Vespucci. They torture him to get information about the Luddites. Decker tells them that Rhea doesn't exist; the colonists on Rhea are actually living inside an elaborate virtual reality simulation that is run by their brains. The artificial neural tissue in the girl's head is proof of his theory. However, the expensive flights to Rhea are so profitable that Kuiper Enterprises keeps these facts secret from the public. The crew is still sceptical: how can video messages come from Rhea if that is true? Decker doesn't answer but admits he was the one who killed Bruckner, who had gone crazy and also killed Lacroix. He doesn't claim responsibility for Yoshida's death, though. Prokoff and Vespucci take him away, but out of sight, they ask Decker to tell them more about Rhea.

Now that the child is stable, Lindbergh wants Laura to take her tank back into the cargo hold. She will also take over Laura's watch. This raises Laura's suspicion, but it's too late: Lindbergh is already pointing a gun at her forehead. After cuffing her, Lindbergh starts to confess: the first colonization mission on Rhea many years ago was a complete failure; the changes made to the planet's ecosystem backfired, making it completely uninhabitable. Pending the discovery of a new planet for colonization, Kuiper Enterprises built a giant simulator in Rhea's orbit: Station 42. "Rhea" colonists never leave their cryosleep coffin, but are directly plugged into the simulator once they arrive on the station, where they "live out" a virtual life. Lindbergh herself has seen the simulation, and it is flawless, so the people in there have a good life without realizing the truth. The simulation is just a temporary measure, but the secret about "Rhea" was crucial to maintaining the peace back home, and keep the people in the extremely cramped space stations from revolting. Since Laura and Decker know the truth, they will have to be silenced, but then Prokoff and Vespucci return, having learned the truth from Decker. They arrest Lindbergh and put her in cryosleep.

Laura agrees to help Decker finish the Luddites' mission, as long as he helps her rescue Arianne from the simulation. The plan is to let the KASSANDRA dock with Station 42, but delay the automatic unloading of the colonist tanks by 30 minutes. During that time, Decker will connect Laura to the simulation hardware of the station's mainframe with an external VR interface, so that she can send a message from inside to Earth. This will prove that "Rhea" doesn't exist. In the meanwhile, Decker will look for Arianne's tank and destroy the antenna system - Laura's message will be the last message ever sent from the simulation. The colonists will continue to live inside, but they can never send or receive messages again to or from Earth.

Months later, the KASSANDRA finally arrives at the fully robotized Station 42 in orbit around RH278/Rhea. Laura and Decker have grown closer together, and she tells him about her desire to disconnect Arianne from the simulation and take her back to Earth, where nature thrives again. Decker warns her that they can't be sure to find her tank, and in what state she will be after all those years. As they prepare, the little girl from the open tank appears in the manhatch, wide awake; the medication has finally made the artificial nerve tissue in her brain regress. Although only little time remains before the KASSANDRA will start to unload automatically, Laura chooses to bring the girl to her bunk and wrap her in some clothes, so Decker will go on ahead alone.

But Vespucci and Prokoff have a secret plan of their own: they can never afford a trip to Rhea, and since they hate their life on the cargo ships so much, they prefer to connect themselves to the simulation now. The plan is to throw two people out of their coffins, and step into the tanks themselves. However, to open the cargo hold, they need Lindbergh's access badge. Vespucci rips the badge off from the cryogenised Lindbergh, but he inadvertently contaminates her cryo-liquid, which triggers a timer for her wake-up. He also resets the unloading timer to 10 minutes, or else their tanks will not be unloaded. They meet in the cargo hold and enter one of the containers. Their plan seems to work.

Meanwhile, Decker exits into space, and attaches the explosives to the antenna system of Station 42. He then locates Arianne's tank, but discovers that her body is already decomposing - she is beyond saving. In the meanwhile, Laura has left the KASSANDRA in her spacesuit and tries to navigate towards the main hardware module of Station 42. But she suddenly discovers that her jetpack doesn't work properly, as the fuel cell is defective. Without any possibility to steer, she floats through the gigantic station towards the open space, but at the last moment, Decker brings her safely to the hardware module. Decker tells Laura that Arianne has been in her tank too long. The only thing he can offer is to let her into the simulation close to Arianne, so that Laura can meet her sister for one last time and send the message from there. Although saddened by this news, Laura agrees to the new plan. Then they suddenly see the KASSANDRA starting to unload; Vespucci and Prokoff have betrayed them! They only have about 7 minutes to enact their plan and get back aboard the KASSANDRA to catch a ride back to Earth.

Decker connects Laura with the simulator. Laura starts to hallucinate immediately - and suddenly she finds herself in the simulation. She is amazed by the beauty of it. It's completely "real". It's perfect! But she has to move on and find her sister. While Laura is in the simulation, Decker exchanges her fuel cell with the one from his own jetpack.

Laura arrives at a country house, and there she meets Arianne. After a long hug, she tries to tell her sister the truth about everything. But when she sees the idyllic world, she isn't able to destroy her beloved sister's illusion. In tears, she runs away into the woods. There, she tapes the final message, revealing the truth about Earth and Rhea, and the company's conspiracy.

When Laura awakens from the simulation, the ship is already about to start. Decker tells her that only she can go back since they have only one functioning jet pack, and Laura needs to take the girl, their only proof, back to Earth. Suddenly, the engines are firing. Huge shockwaves emerge from the ship, pushing Laura and Decker away from the module. They tumble and float towards open space. Decker swings her back in the direction of the station, while he sacrifices himself for Laura and the little girl as he floats with high speed towards the planet. In his final line to a tearful Laura, he professes his love for her. Laura is able to start and steer her jetpack again, boarding an airlock of the departing KASSANDRA at the last second. Immediately after she enters the manhatch, the explosives detonate and rip all the antennas of Station 42 to pieces.

In tears, Laura returns to the little girl, but she is gone! While Laura is frantically searching the ship's corridors for the girl, she is suddenly attacked by Lindbergh. After a fierce battle, Laura manages to lock Lindbergh into an activated airlock that sucks her out into space. Laura finally finds the girl safe and sound in the crew quarters as the KASSANDRA autopilots back to Earth.

The last scene shows how Laura's message arrives on all the screens of the space stations orbiting Earth. People get up and listen to the message attentively. Laura's last sentence: "We will now destroy the antennas."

Cut to black and credits.