“I imagine they’re dead,” Eva said. Sadness filled her soul, but she concealed her emotions.
“Is this the reason we’re here?” he asked.
Eva gathered her thoughts before she answered, aware that everyone was watching, including the security team now standing at the edge of the trail. Jax, always her rival, looked at her in a horrified new light.
“She told me this world would support us, and that the next would be our death if we chose to go there. I don’t love her. She terrifies me even in dreams. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s seen everything in the galaxy. There are worse options than listening to her advice.”
Montgomery glared at her and Jax shook her head.
“We’re here. We can’t leave until we build industry capable of processing raw materials into fuel,” Eva said.
Dark storm clouds passed overhead. Montgomery took a step closer to Eva. He motioned back toward the cryosleep pod. “Are you going to wake her up?”
“Why would I?”
*
Over the next several days, the rest of the colonists were brought down from the ship. The third landing site proved to be well-suited to the needs of a basic colony. Montgomery kept a guard on the tomb of Pyr. Survey teams decided there were significant mineral deposits in the canyons below the ice spiders. Plans were made to collect geological samples.
When cloud cover cleared, the FCF Legacy discovered there were grasslands to the east that extended for thousands of miles, without variation.
“Not sure what lives there,” Jax said to the department heads and team leaders assembled in the long mess hall tent. “The grass is estimated to be three meters tall. That’s probably good news, because it means it’s possible for larger, more advanced life forms to live in this biosphere.”
“After the spiders, nothing will surprise me,” Amanda said.
“Thanks for jinxing us,” Carter said.
Several conversations broke out. Eva watched the colonists talk and wondered when they would get around to discussing Pyr. Most were content to speculate about the shrines and ancient ruins already located. Was there sentient life here? If not, what happened to them?
Eva couldn’t help but feel sad. She had brought them here and could think of nothing more to do for them. Spiderfall, as they were calling the planet, had plenty of resources. In time, this place could be a permanent settlement, or a way station where fuel and other materials were gathered.
She waited until the double moons were full and she could barely see the dense cloud fields beyond them. The trail to Pyr’s tomb was colder than the rest of the planet, lonely in ways she couldn’t explain. The guard gave her a nod when she stepped into the small clearing. Heat from the pod kept ice back in a perfect circle.
“Take a walk, O’Brien,” she said.
“Ma’am,” he said, stepping to the head of the trail where he could see her without violating her privacy.
Eva leaned her head against the clear shell. She relaxed, but sleep eluded her. Pyr’s words were like her own thoughts, never heard, seen, or felt… not exactly.
“Why did you bring us here?” Eva asked.
Wind brushed over the mountain tops and through the pass below the isolated plateau. Night clouds drifted toward unknowable destinations.
Eva waited, content with the silence.
“I begin to make amends,” Pyr said.
“You can never return what you’ve taken from so many people,” Eva said, or thought.
“I may be of some use to you and your people. Sooner than you think, unfortunately,” Pyr said.
“Should I open your cryosleep pod?”
“Not yet.”
Scott Moon Biography
Scott Moon started reading and writing science fiction and fantasy at an early age. He spent several summers of all night Advanced Dungeons and Dragons gaming before joining his first garage band and running off to Hollywood, CA to attend the Musician’s Institute. Always a dreamer, it was the writing muse that always screamed loudest.
Years later he is still writing, still dreaming, and connecting with authors and readers through the Keystroke Medium YouTube show and Podcast (www.keystrokemedium.com). Examples of his speculative fiction projects include The Chronicles of Kin Roland (military science fiction / adventure) and the Son of a Dragonslayer trilogy (urban fantasy / horror / adventure) available in different formats on Amazon and other fine distributors.
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Colony: Earth
By Robert M. Campbell
1
John Smith was born at home on April 5th, 2263, in the abandoned town of Westfield, Vermont. His mother Jane and father Paul had help with the delivery from the Grants, their only neighbors for fifty miles. Samuel Grant was an older gentleman who’d been a farm veterinarian all his life. His wife Mildred, also his assistant helping to run the business, was blind in one eye from falling off a horse in her more sporting years.
The delivery was, by all accounts, perfect, and little John came into the world with a strong set of lungs and a keenness to root stronger than some foals, according to Sam.
The Grants stayed the night while Jane slept with her new baby, and Paul watched over them with a glass of whiskey and some tobacco in a pipe he’d found in the neighbors’ house after burying the owners, the Hawkes. He’d found them dead, together in the living room, the shotgun still in old man Hawkes’ hands.
That was last winter just as the last of the food supplies were running out.
*
John grew up in the long winters of Vermont. His earliest memories were of him and his father on long drives through the barren empty wastelands of New England in the short summer months. The orange sun cast its warm light on them through the scrawny trees. Scavenging became harder and harder as the years passed. The short growing season meant they had to augment the larders from nearby villages and then from further into the remnants of cities, never into the populated ones. One summer, they ventured north across the border into Canada and found a small town along the highway named Cornwall. They’d been turned away by men with pitchforks and shotguns and told never to come back. The highways were covered with derelict cars and farm equipment. Disabled robot trucks were stripped down for parts and positioned across the highway left as barricades.
He wasn’t allowed into the stores when he was younger. He and his mother would have to wait in the truck, hunched down in the back as Paul sneaked in, bag over his shoulder and a revolver in his hand. John had never heard him fire the gun, but one summer in ’67 he’d come running out of the store with a man chasing after him. The image indelibly printed on John’s four-year-old mind of the scrawny, hairy scavenger running after his father, mom screaming beside him at the vehicle to start and it not listening to her because she wasn’t in the control seat. Paul reached the truck door ahead of the scavenger, dove inside and ordered the car to back up and give him manual control. The rest of the day they drove in silence as far as they could.
John could see his father’d been shaken by the encounter.
They were able to grow some corn and root vegetables for the winter. Turnips, carrots and parsnips. Squash and pumpkins further out, while they still had enough light to feed them. They had a hay field and some goats and an old dairy cow named Bessie who passed away in ’68. That year was the last time John had eaten beef. That was also the last year they’d had a dog. John remembered the hurt as his father took Sally out back into the field and put her down. The gunshot still rang in his ears.
It was hard living, but it was good too. His mom used to read to him whenever she could. She taught him the Bible and they had a good collection of printed books in the house. They had the whole library on their tablet. Sometimes, he’d wander into a room and catch his mom watching something on the handheld screen, voices on low volume.
“What’s that?” he might have asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just something from before,” she’
d say.
From before everyone had left, and those left behind had rioted and burned their own cities, was what she meant.
He knew she wasn’t exactly telling him the truth. “Can I see?”
“No, you’re too little. Maybe next year,” she would say, then ask him if he wanted to help her make cookies, and the screen would be forgotten.
*
Those early memories of his mother’s videos were young John Smith’s first suggestion that there was more out there in the world.
One winter night, they huddled around the fire for warmth. He was maybe twelve. The stars sparkled overhead and a sea of distant particles swam in the night sky. In the north, sheets of green and purple rippled across the ionosphere from the constant solar winds.
“Where is everybody?” John asked his father.
“What do you mean?” Mom and dad exchanged glances.
“You know, everybody else? Not just the scavs, but you know, people.” He paused and poked at the fire with a stick raising sparks. “Where are the other kids?”
He could see the hurt look on his mother’s face then, but she tried to hide it.
“There ain’t any, son. They’ve all gone,” his father said, closing the screen to the fireplace.
“But where? Can’t we go there too?”
“No.”
“Paul,” his mother said. “He’s old enough to know. He needs to know.”
His father looked at her hard then. He wasn’t a violent man, but he was stern; he had good reason to be. He got up and went into the other room and came back with the tablet. They never used it at night, always fearful of running down the batteries. It was used sparingly, charged up on the house’s power system of solar panels and wind generators. They’d already lost one cell and hadn’t been able to replace it, the house no longer storing the charge it once could.
“It happened thirteen years ago. A year before you were even born. A great evil came to our solar system. They said they were stars, like our sun, but they had minds of their own. They came here to destroy us.”
John listened to his father tell the tale of Empyrean and his offspring. The battles of Jupiter and Mars. The blasts of fire from the sun and the many millions of lives that were lost in the great searing that broke the orbitals and left the sky in ruins. Huge tracts of Earth had been scorched in the violence, with incredible losses of life.
“And then they left. Our sun is dying, John. It’s lost a tenth of what it was and it’s going to lose more. They don’t know how long it’ll take, but it’s going to die. So everybody got onto these space ships and they left the earth. Went out there among the stars to find new homes.”
They were quiet for a long time after that.
“Dad? Why’d you stay?”
His mom smiled at him then and took his hand and answered for both of them. “Because this is our home.”
2
Fifteen.
John was on a hunt with his father, walking through the pine forest through ferns and fallen needles. Their feet sank into the soft earth, still wet from the rains of the past weeks. It was approaching dawn, the sky beginning to brighten into what passed for days. The winds and rains were near constant this summer. They’d barely seen the sun, and the crops were struggling.
“You think we’ll get any heat this year?” John asked.
“Hush.”
A crack and then silence and they peered through the trees, crouching low. Paul nodded to his son, and he raised his .308 and quietly released the safety on the hammer. John sighted through the scope, the young buck turned and looked towards him through the trees, and he squeezed the trigger. Birds flew from their roosts into the trees above as the shot rang out through the woods.
The buck staggered and fell and the two men ran towards it, jumping over fallen logs and through bushes to reach their quarry. The buck, on its side, struggled and kicked once and then lay still, breath bubbling out of its mouth and nose. A red ring grew on its neck.
“Good kill, son. Let’s get to work.”
“He’s pretty scrawny. Only ten points.” John safetied his rifle. No need to waste a bullet now.
“We’ll have steak tonight.” His father grinned.
They spread out and began gutting the animal on the ground. Father and son passed a metal cup, drinking the blood.
A sound like tearing fabric and then a loud explosion knocked them on their backs. John looked up to see a blazing light crashing through the sky above, tail of fire ripping the clouds apart in a burning torrent. A nearby tree exploded, sending a shower of splinters and needles at them just as an even louder blast erupted down in the gully below.
“You all right?”
John’s father was over him, checking for injuries. His ears were ringing. “I’m OK. You?”
Paul nodded and looked through the trees below. The tops of the trees were smoking.
John stood up and ran to the edge of the clearing. “What was that? Meteor?” He stopped himself before calling it an angel. He’d read more about space in the intervening years since talking to his mother on that cold, frozen night outside. None of the books in their libraries had anything about the cloud of debris orbiting earth and moon since the war, but he’d made inferences.
“I don’t think so. Let’s get our deer back home and we can come and check it out.”
“I’m going down there.” John jumped down the side of the hill, skittering on his side, gloved hand bracing him. He was halfway down the hill when he realized he’d forgotten his rifle.
His father called after him. “John! Wait!”
They ran forward, crashing through the brush along the smoking trail of smoldering pine tops, the wake of destruction widening as they neared the wreckage, half buried under a furrow of dirt and uprooted trees.
It was big. John slowed and approached the blackened chunk of space debris jutting out of the ground more cautiously. It looked like the corner of a pyramid, standing almost as tall as the neighboring pines. The corner appeared reinforced, still shiny and obviously made of sterner metal than the rest. Triangular vents decorated the surface near the corners, hissing smoke. The whole thing was crackling and pinging as the metal cooled after its violent re-entry.
“Don’t get any closer, John. Get down.”
John looked at his father, who stepped past him, rifle to his shoulder pointed at the triangular craft. He wondered whether it was a satellite or something that could carry people, when one of the vents lit up brighter than the day and made a coughing sound. Paul staggered backwards and fell on his ass. His gun fell beside him.
“Dad!” John scurried to him and his father waved him away. His face and clothes were blackened and smoking, hair singed.
Another hiss from the fallen construct and the whole side nearest them gave way, dropping down to reveal a complex nest of compartments, densely-packed triangular spaces containing intricate machinery and storage and components neither of them could fathom. In the center, a larger pyramidal volume contained three inhabitants. A gigantic shape reared up and staggered to the edge on two legs. It raised a metal-clad arm and reached out with a three-fingered claw before toppling out, suspended by cables and hoses.
“What do we do?” John asked his father, who coughed and staggered to his feet. He picked up his gun and raised it at the metal monstrosity in front of them. He approached, cautiously, circling in.
“There’s two others up there. They ain’t movin’,” John said as his father stepped up what passed for a ramp to the dangling alien before them. He stuck his gun into the thing’s head or helmet or whatever it was and poked it. The thing raised the arm again, fingers spread.
“I think it’s hurt,” John said, coming up behind his father. The thing was massive. Had to be over nine feet tall and probably half as wide. The helmet was set deep in the shoulders, no neck visible. The tiny visor offered no visibility to whatever may be inside. “Is it a… a robot?”
“Don’t think so. There’s somethin
’ in there.”
“We should get it out.”
Paul lowered the gun and put the butt on the ground beside him. “Might kill it if we open it up.”
John considered this. “I’ll call Doc Grant.”
“You better run. Get your ma to help with the deer.”
3
It was months before the creature showed any signs of recovery. One morning, they went to check in the barn and their goat, Ralph, had been ripped apart. Blood and fur were on the huge, three-fingered hands of the alien and around its wide mouth.
Doc Grant had found broken bones and was worried about internal injuries when they’d brought the thing in here. They’d needed to use the tractor with it’s trailer to move it back to the farm. We called it an “it” because Doc Grant didn’t know if they had male and female, and couldn’t tell from his examinations that he’d performed when it was unconscious.
“Best I can do is hope for the best, I guess. I’m more worried about those burns on your face and chest, Paul.”
“I’ll be fine, Sam,” his father had said. In the following weeks, the skin had peeled and left behind black spots on his face and neck where the alien craft had burned him. His eyebrows never grew back.
They survived that winter with only half the goat’s milk (yes, Ralph was a girl), but the fall hunting season had been bountiful, with four deer and a freezer full of rabbits.
John watched the alien whenever he got the chance. He’d sneak into the barn after chores and watch it sleeping. It spent a lot of time curled up in the straw and blankets they’d left for it. It slept so deeply they couldn’t tell if it was breathing or not. Doc Grant thought it might be a kind of hibernation.
“You might not want to be around when it wakes up,” he’d advised. “It’s going to be hungry.”
Explorations: Colony (Explorations Volume Four) Page 15