Terra Nova (The Terra Nova Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  An alarm sounded and the orange safety strobes changed to red as the large bay doors began to open. Terra Nova hung in the void outside.

  It looks so much like Earth, Carson thought, craning her neck to get a better view.

  A metallic clunking echoed through the frigate’s hull as the docking clamps unlocked and detached. The ship dropped slightly as the onboard engines engaged and sputtered slightly.

  “Add that to the list?” Lincoln asked.

  Carson and West exchanged apprehensive glances.

  “Problem?” Carson asked.

  “Not if we want to get out of a gravity well stronger than Earth’s,” Greer said. “But we can repair it on the way.”

  Leaving it at that, the pilot tapped on his screen and pushed the throttle forward. The constant thrumming from the drives pitched up slightly as the frigate accelerated, and five seconds later, they cleared the bay doors and entered the void.

  “We’ll be on boosters for a bit,” Lincoln said, turning them away from the planet below. “We’ll hit a slingshot around the moon, then ride the momentum until we kick on the anti-grav drives for the rest of the trip. Should minimize our detection signature.”

  “How long are we looking at?” Carson asked.

  “About twenty-nine hours, give or take.”

  Carson shot West another sidelong look. “Give or take what?”

  Greer twisted in her seat to look back at the chief. “Hey, I can give you the entire list of things that can go wrong on this flight, or you can leave it to the professionals and enjoy the trip in blissful ignorance.”

  West laughed. “I choose ignorance.” He turned and stepped through the hatch at the rear of the compartment.

  Carson put a hand on the pilot’s seatback. “Just give me a heads-up if we come up on something major, would ya?”

  “I’ll have a prioritized list of repairs and adjustments to make in two hours,” Greer said. “Guess you all can slack off while we make sure this shakedown cruise doesn’t turn into a shake-apart-and-die cautionary tale.”

  Carson bit back a retort, turned, and left the pilots to their work. She stepped through the hatch onto a small platform, then made her way down a short flight of stairs to the open cargo bay.

  Most of her team had formed up around the Rover, which sat in several pieces in the middle of the bay. Birch sat on the deck, his back pressed against the largest cargo crate, chin resting against his chest. Nunez and Popov had spread out several feet away, both curled around their gear bags. Moretti had pushed two smaller crates together into a makeshift bed and lay with his hands clasped over his chest.

  West turned as Carson approached and nodded. “They’re at tracer burnout. If we don’t get any rest, we’ll make stupid mistakes when we assemble the rest of the Rover. Shouldn’t take more than five or six hours to get the Rover together. We’ll have plenty of time for that before we reach Negev.”

  Carson stretched. “I feel like I could sleep for hours. What about you?”

  “Don’t need it. I fuel up on anger, caffeine, and the souls of inattentive junior enlisted soldiers. Chief of this boat is a bit saltier than me. This bucket will be flying just fine by the time we get to our destination.”

  The pain in her leg flared again and Carson sat back against the stair’s railing, rubbing it. “What do you think we’ll find out there?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m just hoping we find some survivors and learn something that will give us a fighting chance against whoever took them. By the looks of things, the original colonists got caught with their pants down—at least I’m hoping that’s the case, and that the enemy isn’t something like the Xaros.”

  “You and me both.”

  “But if there’s anyone alive that can figure out some way to win this, it’s Hale.”

  Carson laughed. “The great and powerful Ken Hale. Hero of the Breitenfeld, star of the Last Stand on Takeni, galactic negotiator. Who doesn’t have a…” She trailed off, finishing the thought in her head. Who doesn’t have an ounce of faith in me.

  “You think he doesn’t trust you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What happened on the Belisarius wasn’t your fault.”

  Carson looked back at her team sergeant. “Some would disagree.”

  “You were cleared. Everyone else can have their opinion. I side with those that did the investigation and weighed all the evidence.”

  “Being found not guilty carries an asterisk when your first contact mission ends in a bloodbath and an entire world being quarantined,” she said.

  “I’ve read the whole report, Chief, not just what the media wanted to release. In your position, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Were there some casualties? Sure. But there are way more people alive because of what you did. You objected to Captain Gavin bringing those aliens aboard. What happened is on him.”

  “Gavin’s dead,” Carson said. “And I should’ve disobeyed that order. Maybe the Kwan’Shi would have made a different decision if they didn’t have a starship ripe for the taking.” Carson took a long breath and let it out. “Well, for what it’s worth, thanks. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people that don’t share your sentiments.”

  “The Corps is a small organization. What happens to one, happens to us all. I’m sure there isn’t anyone with their wings that wasn’t affected in some way because of what happened. But I’m with you, Chief.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Now you should get some rest. I have a feeling there won’t be much opportunity for it once we get to where we’re going.”

  “You’re probably right.” Carson stretched again, then nodded to the collection of cargo containers. “I just hope that Rover isn’t in too many tiny pieces. I’m about done assembling things.”

  West laughed. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  ****

  Birch hefted a wheel onto the Rover’s front axle and held it in place while his Gremlin screwed down the nuts. The drone chirped and flew up.

  “You said that the last time,” Birch said as he grabbed the handle on the jack beneath the wheel well and pulled it free. The Rover thumped against the deck, pneumatic shocks hissing.

  The rest of the team, and several of the sprinter’s naval crew, had gathered near the front of the Rover. Carson spoke with West and the ship’s chief petty officer. As she spoke, Nunez moved through the crowd, holding a small sack, collecting small strips of paper from those assembled.

  Carson nodded to the petty officer.

  He turned around and shouted, “Company! Atten-tion!”

  Chatter stopped as the Pathfinders and sailors snapped their heels together.

  “At ease.” Carson walked along the front rank. “I’ve been around the Navy long enough to know that being on a ship that hasn’t been properly christened is bad luck.” The Navy personnel gathered nodded their agreement.

  Nunez held the bag in front of Popov, and she dropped dozens of slips of paper into it. Nunez then hurried over to Carson, handed her the bag, and fell in at the back of the formation.

  “So,” Carson said as she shook the bag, “I’ve asked all of you to submit some names for consideration, and hopefully we’ve got a winner in here.”

  The crowd chuckled as one of the Navy ratings slapped another on the shoulder. Popov looked over and saw Nunez grinning, whispering something to Moretti.

  Carson finished shaking the bag and pulled out the first slip of paper. “The Confidence.” One or two murmured acceptance, but the rest seemed indifferent. Carson shrugged, dropped the slip to the floor and pulled out a new one.

  “The Aluminum…Falchion?” Carson said, her brow furrowed in confusion. She mouthed the name again and tossed the paper aside.

  In the ranks of the assembled crew, someone failed to smother a giggle.

  “The Schwanz.” Carson frowned and read it again. “What’s a ‘schwanz’?” Several shrugged. The chief tossed the paper aside.

&nb
sp; “Oh, come on.” She held up the next slip. “The Richard Head?”

  The shoulders of one sailor heaved up and down in silent laughter.

  “Spacey McSpace Face. Ho Lee Fu—OK, who did this?” Carson gave Popov a dirty look and the junior Pathfinder opened her mouth to protest, but a grunt from West kept her quiet.

  Nunez, in the back rank, had a poker face.

  “Sparkle Motion?” Carson tossed a slip over her shoulder and pawed through the bag. “I don’t even know what ‘Mudak’ means.”

  Popov gasped, hand over her mouth. In the back rank, a sailor buried his face in his hands, smothering his laughter.

  Carson looked right at Popov and read, “The Heywood Jablow…me.”

  Sergeant West stepped out of the group. “All right, people, lock it up!”

  It took a few seconds for the laughter to subside. When it did, West turned to Carson, jaw set, eyes hard. “Sorry about that, Chief.”

  “So, this is how it’s going to be?” Carson asked, holding up the bag. “Jokes. We’ve got jokes. This is why we can’t have nice things around here. Fine, the next name I pull out is the name we’re going with. You guys want to explore the star system in the-the Fartknocker or something, be my guest! No more discussion!” She pulled the paper out, cleared her throat, and looked over the slip, then dropped the paper without reading it aloud, her face red.

  Finally, Carson pulled another slip of paper from the bag, read it, and sighed. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Valiant.”

  The crowd cheered.

  “Petty Officer Torgeson, Sergeant West,” Carson said, tossing the bag aside. “A word please.”

  A silence fell over the crew, but they remained in formation.

  Moretti leaned close to Popov. “Way to go, idiot.”

  Popov held up both hands to her side. “No, I picked ship names from Russian history.”

  Nunez hissed from the rear rank to her, “We’ll be spit shining every last inch of this bucket for the next year. I saw what you did.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Alright!” Torgeson shouted, walking back to the formation. “You jokers want to play games? We’re going to play a little game I like to call ‘squat thrusts until you puke.’”

  Everyone in the formation let out a groan.

  Torgeson grinned. “Ah, you’ve heard of it before? Good, I won’t have to explain the rules then. Everyone get some spacing. Three-count exercise, sound off like you mean it! Ready, exercise!”

  ****

  Carson and West stepped through the hatch and into the Valiant’s cockpit, stopping behind the two pilots. Ahead, the reddish-brown planet hung in the void against a background of alien stars. Small white areas marked the polar caps; large swaths of dark brown and black marked several mountain ranges stretching across the surface.

  “Could be Mars,” Carson said.

  “It’s not that far off,” Lincoln said, tapping his screen. “Sensors say it’s only slightly larger than Mars with sixty percent Earth gravity. Most of the atmo’s been stripped away and there’s no magnetic field to speak of.”

  “Definitely not a prime honeymoon spot,” Carson said.

  “Don’t see any major geological features like Mars’ Olympus or Valles Marineris,” Greer said. “Which you’d expect on a world that sputtered out on the way to being habitable like Terra Nova.”

  “It’s a lot of ground to cover,” West said.

  The pilot held up a finger. “That’s why I called you up here, Sergeant.” Lincoln tapped on his screen again and a grainy image appeared. The image was slightly out of focus, but Carson could definitely make out the sharp lines and angles of a human-designed spaceship.

  “That’s an ore miner,” West said. “I worked for the Ibarra company in the asteroid belt before the war. Recognize that thing anywhere. Good for ripping apart rocks for the good parts and slow hauls across a system. Not much else.”

  “Stephen said there was a rock ship over the city when the corrupted doughboys attacked,” Carson said. “Guess this is why they weren’t there to greet us when we showed up.”

  “I concur, Chief,” West said.

  Carson felt her chest tighten as the view changed. A long trench scarred the landscape where the ship had plowed through the soil during an apparent crash landing. Debris littered not only the trench, but the surrounding area around the ship as well. The image changed again and West cursed.

  “Is that…” Carson trailed off, knowing the answer before she finished the question.

  Near the bow, one of the exterior hatches had been blown open, leaving a large gaping hole in the hull. Among the debris extending out from the hole, Carson counted three bodies. She couldn’t tell if they were doughboys or human.

  “Those ships weren’t designed to haul passengers,” West said. “At least not in the numbers we’re talking about. Not without extensive modifications to the life-support systems.”

  “They wouldn’t have been able to fit all the colonists aboard that thing, even with mods,” Carson said.

  West rubbed his chin. “The Christophorous was more of a modular conglomerate of ships inside a single frame. Modular, just like the Spirit. This ship must’ve been part of the Christophorous. There were several of these ships built onto the support structure of the vessel.”

  “How many?”

  “At a guess, maybe two or three.”

  “Then where are the rest? There’s nothing left of the Chris but a frame and some empty cargo pods?”

  Carson turned to Greer. “How much of the surface area have you been able to scan?”

  “Not much. The radar return on that ore ship was the first thing we picked up. You want a full scan, it’ll take another day.”

  Carson played over her options in her head. She didn’t have many, and she didn’t like the ones she had. Ideally, she’d spend a week surveying the surface of the planet, but they didn’t have that kind of time. “Will the Valiant hold up for a surface landing?”

  “As long as no one starts shooting at us, we should be fine.”

  “OK, set us down here.” Carson leaned forward and tapped the pilot’s screen. “We can take the Rover the rest of the way in.” She turned to West. “Thoughts?”

  The Master Sergeant pursed his lips, considering the map. After several seconds, he tapped a different part of the map. “If we land here, we’ll have a better line of sight to the crash site and should be able to get at least within small-arms range before anyone would be able to see us.”

  Carson looked over the approach and nodded. “Good. OK, Greer, set us down there, then return to a low orbit. Just stay close enough to provide close air support and evac if we need it. We’ll come back up and keep looking if that ship’s a dry hole.”

  “Roger that, Chief.”

  Chapter 8

  If Mules were a tight fit, the Rover was downright claustrophobic. Carson sat in the passenger seat, next to Birch, who sat behind the controls, running last-minute checks on the vehicle’s systems. She looked back over her shoulder at the rest of her team, all strapped into seats on either side of the Rover’s cargo bay.

  “Sergeant West, how are we looking?”

  West flashed her a thumbs-up. “All personnel locked and loaded, Chief.”

  Carson clicked her IR over to the Valiant’s channel. “Open her up, Greer.”

  Through the Rover’s windshield, they watched as the Valiant’s rear cargo ramp folded open, revealing the dull, rust-colored landscape of Negev. Wind howled against the all-terrain attack vehicle, rocking it slightly.

  “Twenty-five meters,” Lincoln reported. “Twenty.”

  The Valiant kicked up a whirlwind of dust and dirt as it neared the surface, temporarily obscuring the Pathfinders’ view. Carson was more than a little apprehensive about trusting their departure to someone she barely knew, but she knew there wasn’t any other way.

  “Ten.”

  Birch pulled the release on the Rover’s parking brake. �
��Hold on to your butts.”

  “Five, four, three, two…cleared!”

  At the signal, Birch slammed the throttle forward and Carson’s stomach turned at the abrupt drop as the Rover raced off the ramp and dropped to the surface. They landed with a jolt and, despite preparing herself, the impact jarred Carson around in her seat, her helmet knocking off the bulkhead.

  Birch turned the wheel and they drove out of the dust cloud left behind by the Valiant. They continued to turn until they saw the sprinter rising back into the air, its ramp already closing.

  “Rover-1 down,” Carson said.

  “Roger that, Chief,” Greer answered. “Good hunting. Call me if you need anything.”

  From the back, Nunez mumbled, “Just once I want to set down like a normal person. Do the shuffle through security. Stand in line at some old spaceport, pay too much for a cup of coffee, and pick up my luggage.”

  “Lock it up, Nunez!” West shouted.

  Carson tapped on the small display mounted in front of her seat. “Keep an eye on the road, Birch. Looks like we’ll be able to piggyback off the Valiant’s sensors for now, but there’s no way to tell how long the connection will last.”

  West appeared in the hatch between them. He held onto a piece of frame above him, holding himself steady against the Rover’s rocking. “Nice work, Birch.”

  “Easier than Phoenix traffic,” the driver said.

  “We’ve got about fifty klicks to go before we hit that spur,” Carson said. “Let’s stay frosty, Sergeant.”

  “Roger that, Chief.”

  As they rolled across the barren landscape, the team unbuckled and moved around the tight space readying their gear. After their engagement in the colony, Carson had the team in full combat kit. They drew carbines from the armory with integrated grenade launchers and all carried a variety of explosives. Hale had sent her down on a recon mission, but she’d rather have the firepower and not need it than need it and not have it.

  Popov leaned between Carson and Birch. “Hey, Chief, you think there’s going to be more of those alien doughboys out here?”