by Richard Fox
Terra Nova
The Terra Nova Chronicles Book 1
by
Richard Fox
and
Josh Hayes
To Harold Hayes, my grandfather
Who charged into the fray for the sake of freedom
&
To Kristy, who carries the future
Copyright © by Richard Fox
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.
ASIN:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
FROM THE AUTHORS
Read THE EMBER WAR for Free
Read BREAKING THROUGH for FREE
Chapter 1
The hardest part was the waiting.
Director Ken Hale stood in front of the captain’s chair on the Enduring Spirit’s bridge, watching as his crew took in last-minute reports from the small colony fleet about to jump with him to Terra Nova, twenty-five thousand light-years away in the Canis Major star cluster beyond the galaxy’s edge.
After years of prep work for the mission, the final countdown before the wormhole jump filled Hale with a sense of foreboding, an oncoming dread worse than what he’d ever felt during years at war.
Earth filled the bottom half of the bridge’s viewport where city lights traced along the Mediterranean Sea. Venice and Athens had been rebuilt in the past decades, but the wide swaths of darkness across Europe reminded him just how far humanity had to go before the damage from the Ember War was repaired.
Along the edge of the view port, enormous basalt-colored spikes poked into view. The Enduring Spirit and the colony fleet sat in the center of the Crucible, a giant gate in the shape of a crown of thorns that would send them all to Terra Nova in the next few minutes.
There would be no return for the Enduring Spirit, her crew, or the rest of their small fleet. They would step beyond the edge of the galaxy and that would be the last any of them ever saw of home.
What lay ahead wasn’t what bothered him; it was what he was forgetting.
Despite years of concerted effort to prepare this colony mission—choosing the crew, overseeing the special construction of the Enduring Spirit, procuring everything the colony would need—and spares—and the endless meetings—he still didn’t feel ready. And he was in charge.
“Sir, good news,” said a crewman named Hue as she spun around in her chair, “the Old Forge found their heavy-metal cargo and the tertiary foundry computer cores.”
Hale breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where were they?” Hale asked.
“Right where they’re supposed to be.” Marie Hale walked down the ramp behind the command deck and handed a data slate to her husband. “Deep in the bays underneath fifteen other containers that were a pain to move. Someone screwed up the last manual count and the Old Forge’s entire crew were jumping through their ass to make sure we weren’t leaving Earth with a foundry that couldn’t produce anything once we got to Terra Nova.”
“Every time the fleet does a manual count, we get screw-ups like this.” Hale swiped a fingertip over the slate, noting all the green status indicators.
“And every time we do a manual, we find something the computers missed,” Marie said.
“Which is why I’m so glad you insisted we do them.” Hale looked up at the viewport, where the great basalt spikes of the Crucible shifted against each other.
“I cancelled the emergency resupply,” Marie said. “Not that Ceres station could have gotten it to us in time anyway.”
“The boys all right?” Hale asked quietly.
“Jerry and Elias are in our quarters. It’s not like a Crucible jump is anything special for them,” she said. “They’re more excited about this than you are.”
“They’re teenagers; they have no responsibilities.” Hale felt the screen on his forearm buzz with an incoming call. “It’s Keeper. We must be getting close. Start the final checks for me?”
“You have to say something to the fleet. You’re the director,” Marie said. “You think I listened to you rehearse for hours and now you’re going to pawn off—”
“I’ve got my speech ready, Marie. Let me check with Keeper and make sure something hasn’t gone horribly wrong before I give a speech about our grand adventure and then have to announce a delay minutes later. I never liked the Marines’ ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality. I’m not going to be the leader that tells everyone to hurry up and wait even more.”
She gave his arm a squeeze and walked toward the workstations.
“Crew, report final checks from all stations,” she said, using the commanding tone of one who’d led void fighters into battle. The sailors responded in a well-practiced sequence, and Hale felt a bit of confidence return.
Hale tapped the incoming call icon on his forearm screen and lifted a holo projection off his arm.
The head and shoulders of a woman with a fit body but elderly face appeared.
“Keeper, you’ve good news?” Hale asked.
“Do you want a long answer with quantum-state algorithms and wormhole loci or the crib notes?” the woman asked.
“Pretend I’m still the dumb Marine you used to know,” Hale said.
“The Crucible’s working overtime to form the wormhole. This is the second time we’ve ever sent a fleet so far with a single jump, but the gravity tides are just as the Qa’Resh promised. Sending you through with zero velocity isn’t optimal, but it’s the only way the math works,” she said.
“My ships are glorified lumps in space,” Hale said. “We have enough engines to get us into Terra Nova orbit and then to shuttle everything down in pieces. Just get us there, Keeper.”
“Say hello to your brother Jared for me,” Keeper said. “I met him a few times.” She touched her face and fractals spread out across her cheek. “I’m not sure how he’d react to me now.”
“Lots of news to pass on.” Hale looked over at his wife and thought of their boys, one of whom they’d named after his brother. “That we survived the war with the Xaros will be the headline.”
“We won that war and now we’ve got to win the peace that comes after,” Keeper said. “No matter what happens back here, I’m glad that humanity’s got an ace in the hole with Terra Nova. A colony in uninhabited space, far beyond the reach of any enemy here. Good luck and fair winds, Hale. I hope our math with the Crucible is correct and that I might get to say hello to your descendants someday.”
“Thank you, Keeper.”
“You’ve got eight minutes.” She cocked her head to one side. “Not sure if your personnel transfer will make it. Excuse me. I have to concentrate for this last part.” The hologram clicked off.
“Personnel transfer?” Hale looked over at Marie.
His wife held up the data slate and pointed to a blinking yellow box.
“Your spiel,” Marie said. “I’ll handle this last emergency.”
Hale’s jaw clenched, but he decided to let it her deal with the issue. Choosing Marie as his executive officer had been the easiest—and best—decision he’d made since he’d asked her to ma
rry him. He motioned to the ensign at the communications station and straightened out the utility uniform he wore over the thin void suit beneath. It never felt right being on a void ship and not in his Strike Marine armor, but here he was.
A whistle blew the notes for “general call” through the speakers. A lens lit up on the ceiling and Hale cleared his throat. His image went to every screen in the fleet.
“Terra Nova expedition, this is Director Hale. In a few minutes, we will embark on our mission beyond the galaxy’s edge, to a brave new world that will be our new home. All of you aboard the Enduring Spirit, Old Forge, New Phoenix, Acme, Vesuvius, and the Standish,” he remembered not to grumble the last ship’s name, “volunteered for this chance, and you are amongst the best humanity can send to sow our future far beyond the Milky Way.
“We leave Earth behind forever, but the embers of what survived the war with the Xaros remain. We carry the torch to Terra Nova, where we will join those who went before us and build our new home.”
Marie leaned over a workstation, speaking low and forcefully to someone on the other end of a transmission. He recalled the rest of the speech, then decided it could be left to a footnote in history.
“All ships, secure for transit. Hale out.” He stepped away from the camera and ignored the applause from the bridge crew as he hurried toward Marie.
“…if you’re not aboard in the next eight minutes, you’re not coming. It’s as simple as that.” Marie shook her head.
“What personnel transfer?” Hale asked.
“Byers, our Pathfinder team chief, got cold feet and pulled his packet this morning,” Marie said. “His girlfriend—who’s not on this mission—found out she’s pregnant. That also happened this morning. So I put in for a replacement from Pathfinder command and she still hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Byers dropped?” Hale’s hand went to his forearm screen, then he looked up at the mission clock. Only minutes until the wormhole formed. “Who did you…why didn’t anyone—”
“Because I’m the XO and you can’t make every single decision,” Marie said. “And when all this blew up, you were doing a photo op with the media and President Garret. You’re welcome.”
“Who did you pick? Why did it take so long for anyone to—”
Marie passed him a data slate, facedown, as she chewed her bottom lip. Hale knew something was up.
“Marie…” He turned the slate over and saw the picture of the Enduring Spirit’s final crewmember.
“No.” Hale shook his head. “Not her. Not in a million years. Send her back.”
“She has the skill set and we’re not going to get someone else to replace Byers,” Marie said evenly.
“I’ll train someone else personally.” Hale reached for the microphone on the station behind his wife but she grabbed his wrist.
“I made the decision for the good of the mission,” she said. Hale stood up and she let him go. “We need her.”
Hale glanced at the plot for a Mule transport closing on the Enduring Spirit, then back to the mission clock.
“It doesn’t matter,” Hale said. “She’ll never make it in time.”
****
Warrant Officer Katherine Carson held a yellow and black handle attached to the side of the Mule’s open cargo bay as the ship banked to one side. Her mag-locked boots kept her secured to the deck, but she almost lost her grip during the maneuver. It had been a long time since she’d been in the void, and it would take some time for her sea legs to come back. Below, distant Earth came into view, the planet’s blue oceans, white clouds, and green land brilliant and clear.
Goodbyes don’t get much better than this, Carson told herself. She smiled and squeezed her other hand into a fist. After years of waiting for a chance to escape her cubicle in the Camelback Mountain military headquarters, today had been her day. A colony mission, and not just any colony: the last ticket to Terra Nova.
An alert chimed and a communications request came through on her helmet’s heads-up display: the Mule pilot.
“Carson, go,” she said.
“Chief, our flightpath is still green, but we are down to the wire here,” the pilot said.
Carson leaned out of the opening and looked to the right. The Ajax, a massive foundry ship, came into view.
“What wire? We’re almost there.” Carson sucked air through her teeth. The mission clock on her HUD was ticking down, and the Mule hadn’t even begun its breaking maneuver yet…
“I’ve got five minutes to land, disembark you and your gear, then launch and get clear before the wormhole forms,” the pilot said. “I know you’re excited about this Terra whatever place, but I am getting short and I want to live on a colony I’ve actually visited before. And liked. Same with my crew. We are cutting it too close. I’m scrubbing this mission.”
“No! Wait, wait…” Carson pulled telemetry data from the Mule and put it up on her HUD. “I don’t care about my gear. You don’t…” She did some quick calculations in her head. “Heck, you don’t even have to land. Can you do a slingshot?”
“You’re insane,” the pilot said.
“If you were a mediocre pilot, I’d be suicidal,” Carson said. “But since you’ve been in for so long, I bet you can do the maneuver. Easy. Yes?”
“I need clearance,” he said. Carson could almost feel the pilot rolling his eyes over the channel. Unlocking her boots, she went to a storage locker, pulled out a jet pack and slipped her arms into the straps. The pack tightened against her shoulders and she took out two hand thrusters. Both gave off a spritz of propellant as she pulled the triggers.
“Carson?” A woman’s voice came through her helmet. “This is Hale. A slingshot dock—at the velocity you’re moving—is at the very edge of what’s survivable. Theoretically survivable.”
“I am aware of the risks, ma’am,” Carson said. “But the Enduring Spirit is at a standstill. This’ll be easy.” Carson hurried back to her spot at the edge of the open cargo bay and locked her boots to the deck.
This will not be easy, she thought. At all.
“You’ve done a slingshot insertion before?” Marie Hale asked.
“Yes, ma’am!” Carson crouched slightly and checked the charge on her jump pack. She didn’t bother to add that she’d done the maneuver only once before…in training.
“Abort if you come in too hot,” Marie said. “Rather have you flying Dutchman for the Crucible to pick up after we leave than a smudge on my hull. Understand me, Pathfinder?”
“Loud and clear,” Carson said.
Carson bit her lip. The fact that it had been Marie Hale and not Director Hale on the line unnerved her slightly. She’d assumed after she’d been cleared to join the mission that Hale, the founder and first commander of the Pathfinder Corps, had finally forgiven her for what happened aboard the Belisarius—or at least finally looked past it. When she’d seen the orders and a Hale had signed off on them, she’d assumed it’d been Ken, but now she realized it could’ve easily been Marie Hale.
Ken Hale’s words from her court-martial echoed in her mind. “Your reckless behavior has cost the Pathfinder Corps greatly and you have put a black mark on this great organization, one that won’t be forgotten quickly. My only hope is that someday you will have the opportunity to redeem yourself.”
Later, she told herself. You can deal with that later.
Carson punched up another number on her display. The range between the Mule and the colony ship was just over three kilometers. She did some quick math in her head and then switched her suit’s IR over to the Mule’s channel.
“You guys sure you don’t want to come along?”
“Lady, it’s bad enough we got shanghaied into this in the first place,” the pilot said. “If you think we’re going with you, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Just point me in the right direction,” Carson said. “I’ve got this. I’ve definitely got this.” A tinge of fear that ran down her spine and into her knees told her otherwise.
The pilot let out a sigh. “This is insane. Hold on.”
The star field outside the Mule swam as the ship flipped over and the massive blocky structure of the Enduring Spirit came into view. A small—very small—shuttle bay was open on its wide flank. At this distance, she could just make out the rows of transports and service vessels arrayed in orderly rows on either side of a long strip of open deck. Her mind told her the runway was at least thirty feet across, but her eyes told a different story. If she was off by just a few feet…
“Slingshot on my mark,” the pilot said. “What about your stuff?”
Carson eyed the crates strapped to the deck, her name stenciled along the side of each. Her entire life packaged into three boxes. Was there anything inside worth missing the trip to Terra Nova?
“Well, they did tell me to pack light,” she said. “It’s all yours.”
“Are all Pathfinders as crazy as you?” the pilot asked.
“Mostly.”
“Good to know. Hang on back there, release in thirty seconds,” the pilot said.
Carson began her breathing exercise to slow her heart rate, but despite years of using the technique, her heart pounded in her chest. She was no stranger to EVA, but working through the vector dynamics of depositing an object with an impressive amount of momentum onto a stationary landing pad was above and beyond the normal call of Pathfinder duty. Especially when she was the moving object and the slightest miscalculations would end her trip as a smudge against the Spirit’s hull.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Do I need to remind you to use your anti-grav thrusters?” Carson asked. “Rather not get cooked when you punch off.”
“Oops,” the pilot muttered. The sound of switches clicking did not fill her with confidence.
She crouched down, mentally preparing herself for what she was about to do. Everything but Enduring Spirit’s open hangar bay faded into an unfocused haze. Either way, this stunt would put her name in the books, whether as an outstanding feat of bravery or a cautionary tale was yet to be determined.