Colony One

by E. M. Peters

  Something in Richardson’s eyes snapped and the monster on the inside emerged, “As many as possible. As many of you filthy breeders that could be crammed onto one of those ships, no matter what the cost or effort!”

  His words echoed throughout the courtyard and a horrified gasp rose up from the crowd. An angry rumbling began and there was an effort made to quiet them down so another question could be asked.

  “Did your superiors know of your intent?”

  Richardson laughed and pulled at his restraints. “Did they know?” he asked bitterly. “They asked me to design a final solution for population control. They came to me.”

  Around the world, a great silence resonated with his words. Final solution. They echoed in the minds of all those who had family on the colony missions, all those who were slotted for future missions.

  It was a silence that preceded a firestorm unlike any other the planet Earth had ever seen.

  20

  Colony One, Mission Duration: 9 Months

  With the attack Runners retreating into the distance, an oppressive silence settled over the cargo bay. Passengers looked at each other with stunned expressions that indicated that they were still experiencing the shock of the situation.

  “Is she dead?” A voice finally asked. It came from a male passenger who had shuffled over to Alexa and asked over her shoulder. Alexa felt numb and unable to speak.

  “We’re all dead!” Another passenger cried out.

  This proclamation caused murmurs and stirring throughout the cargo bay. The noises quickly escalated to a roar.

  “Calm down!” Javier shouted into the wall of noise. “Hey!” He tried again and the volume only seemed to rise.

  “Yes,” Alexa breathed the word. The softness of her voice made the roar of noise quiet but did not stamp it out. “Yes,” She said a little louder and forced herself to stand. “The Captain is dead,” she finally answered. This caused silence to blanket over them again.

  “Who’s in charge?” Someone asked with an air of desperation in their tone.

  “We have to wait for the co-pilot and his men to return,” Javier stepped in. He clapped a hand over Alexa’s shoulder and squeezed hard. Her look was distant – he knew that she was beyond shock and had hit a level of understanding of their situation no one else had – not even himself.

  “What if they never come back?” Another voice rose up.

  “We’ll make do.” He assured. The crowd’s doubt was clear as they shuffled anxiously.

  Alexa’s eyes refocused and she looked from face to face of the crowd, she let her eyes be drawn to the unmoving bodies laid across a landscape that was supposed to be their new beginning, then back down to the Captain. Her features were peaceful – in stark contrast to the bloody mess she was. “We must bury our dead.” She asserted.

  Soft wails of pain escaped the mass of people – those who had lost family members to the intense heat of Colony One’s engines, or from the assault. There were no protests to her words and together, as their first communal act as colonists, they created Colony Alpha’s first graveyard.

  ɸ ɸ ɸ

  Duel specks of sunlight were dying behind a distant rock formation by the time the last grave was filled in. Alexa stood by propping herself up on a shovel and watched as Bob went from grave to grave, saying a silent prayer. The temperature was dropping rapidly, but she couldn’t move, feeling rooted to the ground – covered in blood, dirt, mixed with sweat and spirit dangerously close to breaking. The thoughts that kept her mind from darker spaces were that they would eventually need to create an enclosure for the plot of land they had laid the dead to rest, and possibly gravestones – if the planet had anything suitable to fashion them out of.

  As the work slowed, passengers filtered back into Colony One, too tired, too sore, and simply emotionally spent to do anything else but seek shelter and rest. A silent consensus seemed to rule – tomorrow we will reflect on what has happened.

  No one had had time to ask the important questions.

  No one had had time to think about when their last meal had been.

  No one had had time to think about how little food they had.

  Javier had been just as dedicated to the effort of tending to the dead, but the moment the work slowed, he abandoned his shovel – they had farm equipment in excess – and went in search for Demetri. He, like everyone else, was not happy with the way things were shaping up but he could read the writing on the wall. Demetri had a weapon, and that was a big deal.

  He found the trio – Demetri, Lucy and Ndale surrounding a small camp fire they had built within the ship. The main power was out and so far no one could figure out why or how to turn it back on. The ship was insulated, but with the cargo bay door open all day, warmth was lacking. Auxiliary power was available, but no one dared use it unless absolutely necessary. No one knew what the reserves were and all the people who did were either missing or dead.

  “You’re going to smoke us all out,” Javier commented as he came up on them.

  Ndale pointed up. They had found a space that had a vast expanse above them, almost like a silo. Smoke rose up and dissipated easily.

  Javier only grunted. He was suddenly hit with how spent he felt, “We need to talk.” He locked gazes with Demetri.

  “Oh yea? What about?” Ndale asked in place of Demetri.

  “Just him,” Javier clarified.

  “It’s about the gun,” Demetri guessed casually.

  Javier turned a narrow gaze to Ndale, “It was yours, wasn’t it?”

  Ndale nodded and said with false gravitas, “It did save many lives.”

  “How many do you have? Where are they? What do you intend to do with them?” Javier asked in rapid succession.

  Ndale laughed, “Go get some rest, Javi. You don’t look well.”

  “Of course I’m not well,” he responded, feeling something grip him in his gut and not let go. “People died today. We’re stranded and leaderless. And you’re laughing,” his words spilled from his mouth and his eyes welled with involuntary wetness. The false calm he kept for the sake of those around him was beginning to crumble. “The last thing we need now is someone like you using…”

  Ndale stood abruptly, “Someone like me?” he wondered with clear distain. Demetri stood to flank his side.

  “Yes, someone like you,” Javier growled, undaunted.

  “And what is that?” Ndale wanted to know.

  “A slum lord.” He continued plainly, “The last thing we need is someone like you reenacting the worst slums on Earth.”

  Ndale’s stare lasted for only am moment before his white teeth were bared in a wide smile, “Javier, if you want to gain of place of safety within my ranks, just say so. I just happen to be recruiting, especially in the light of recent events.”

  Javier scoffed, eyes darting from him, to Demetri and Lucy. “You don’t even know what kind of situation we’re in yet.”

  “Exactly, but I do know we’re the ones with the guns.” Ndale reasoned.

  Javier’s jaw set as he narrowed his eyes, “I know your secret. Just remember that,” he warned and left them without waiting for a response. His footsteps echoed off the bulkhead in the distance.

  “He’s going to be trouble,” Ndale said in his wake.

  ɸ ɸ ɸ

  “Patrick and the others should have been back by now,” Luca said as he climbed the ladder after Jia that led to Colony One’s cockpit. He directed a flashlight beam upward as they moved – their only light. The Runners weren’t back, and Luca suspected they may have had the unlucky experience of crossing paths with their earlier attackers. He said none of this – he didn’t have to.

  “Yes,” Jia answered plainly.

  Both bore the dirt stains of grave digging.

  Jia reached up and pushed the hatch open. When she climbed in, she reached down for the flashlight and held it as Luca pulled himself into the space.

  They sat on the edge of the bulkhead for long moments as Jia ran
the beam across the floor of the cockpit. They were at a loss for words for several minutes.

  The cockpit was a wiry, jumbled mess. Circuit boards were strewn across the decking, panels along the walls ripped open, wires exposed and tangled.

  “What happened here?” Luca asked, though not expecting Jia to be able to answer.

  He had convinced Jia to come with him in hopes she could determine the source of their power loss. Now they both sat with defeated demeanors, observing the electronic ruin.

  “This is going to take a while to fix,” Jia finally spoke.

  Luca nodded.

  “I will need a soldering tool,” she explained.

  “Okay,” Luca did not know where he was going to find something like that, but even in his most defeated moment, he resolved to do everything he could to find one.

  “And splicing materials,” she added. She had no idea where she was going to start to try and undo such damage.

  “Okay,” he repeated.

  “And sleep,” she finished, secretly hoping she would wake up and find that the past 24 hours were a terrible nightmare.

  Luca was nodding along like he could hear her thoughts, “Okay.”

  ɸ ɸ ɸ

  That night, passengers abandoned their bunks and joined together to sleep in large piles for the heat and combined warmth of blankets. Their numbers were noticeably lower. They had identified all the dead, but no one had run a tally of how many they numbered. Such statistics waited for the bright, harsh light of morning.

  21

  Colony One Scouting Mission,

  Day 1 on Colony Alpha

  An hour into his mission, Patrick found himself wholly unimpressed with Colony Alpha’s landscape. His Runner skimmed the surface of the land, flanked by the two others. He hadn’t felt comfortable allowing his scouting party to split up, and he was feeling more and more doubtful about Colony Alpha by the minute.

  It was nothing like the commercials on the Viewer, or the recruitment video for the pilot program he had entered for the mission. There were no waterfalls surrounded by lush forests. There was no green space at all, in fact. Since Alpha Centauri was a binary system, the heat and glare of two suns required some adjustment. The flatness of the topography was strange and alien to him compared to the sea of skyscrapers of Earth. The closest he had seen to such a flat surface on Earth was the Ocean – and even then, intricate networks of docks, oil rigs and current turbine equipment created some level of dimension to them unless you were lucky enough to find yourself on the edge of all of it. He’d only witnessed such views remotely.

  Skylar had wanted to see the stars; Patrick had wanted the fresh abundance of an unspoiled planet.

  Instead, the terrain was rocky and barren – at least in this stretch. One of his first tasks would be to find the engineers and agriculturists sent out ahead of the Colony mission. It was difficult to get a reading from orbit, so he and Skylar had agreed to put down somewhere easy and use the Runners to make contact with the others. He scanned the communications console for the countless time – all was quiet outside of the other two Runners traveling with him.

  He was beginning to think they had picked a bad place to park their ship.

  If he was unable to make contact with their predecessors, he was to find the best location for putting down crops and, if they were lucky, a nearby location to tuck Colony One away in. The ship would be dismantled to build housing units and various production facilities.

  With a sigh, the pilot leaned forward and flipped a switch on his console, “I’m going up for another look.” He announced.

  “Copy,” returned two voices.

  Patrick keyed a few items on the glass console and his engines re-calibrated and thrust him directly upward to a peak of 1000 meters in a cloudless red sky. The craft hovered there and he made small corrections so he could maneuver a slow turn, surveying the land below in a 360 degree pass. He squinted into the distance – most of it blended into one tan color. It reminded him of the pictures of the Arizona desert he’d seen on the viewer as a child – only it was missing the great fissure in the ground.

  Something finally stood apart from the bland blur of rock and dirt – in the distance, he could make out a patch of raised elevation. It wasn’t quite the color green – at least not from this distance – but it gave him the first ping of hope since they had set out. Trees, he thought to himself. Big, beautiful trees.

  “Adjust your heading,” he spoke into his headset, lined up the path to the outcropping and read off the numbers to the Runners below. The descent was fast – faster than usual, colored with Patrick’s excitement.

  The trees came into view after a several minutes of travel – tiny in the distance at first, then larger. They were like no trees Patrick had studied on his viewer. They had the right shape of trees, but the texture looked off. As they got closer, he noticed what was bothering him – they weren’t swaying in the wind like he had seen in the records. They stood, petrified like stone, as tall as skyscrapers. It was eerily like home and not all at the same time.

  The Runners slowed as they approached and Patrick radioed to stop a hundred or so meters out. They powered down their transports and shared looks of cautious optimism with one another.

  “This is the only…” one of the Runner pilots began, then paused to contemplate the correct word. “Structure for kilometers,” he commented as he stepped down from the cockpit.

  “It’s not nothing,” Patrick agreed. “I didn’t get anything on hailing frequencies.”

  “Me either,” the third pilot spoke. “If nothing else, it looks like it’d make good shelter.”

  “Sensors show there should be water nearby,” Patrick continued, evaluating the readout on his OMNI that was streaming data from his Runner.

  The others looked skeptical – everything was dry and dusty as far as the eye could see. After a pause, they made the long walk to the tree line, necks craned upwards as they walked to marvel at the overwhelming size of the things. “Did we put this here?” One pilot wondered.

  “I don’t know…” Patrick answered absently. Their footsteps crunched as they walked over the tiny gravel mixed with the rocky landscape. Their footfalls had slowed, then stopped at the question. Silence followed, which allowed Patrick to hear the faint sound of footsteps. It was an ordinary sound, but it made his stomach wrench – like his body knew something that he did not. He gave away his apprehension when he snapped his head to the side, searching out the noise.

  Then it was a thunderous noise of dozens of footfalls on the rocky terrain, beating the ground at a fast clip.

  Danger his primitive mind shouted. It wanted him to find a weapon to defend himself. Their mission had no need for weapons. His primal mind was not welcome on this mission. They were here to start over, start fresh as race with an enormous wealth of technology and thousands of years of evolution.

  From behind the large trunks of the petrified trees, dozens of people rushed at them. He couldn’t see their faces; he couldn’t open his mouth to speak words. It was all over in an instant – his vision going black before he could even think to say… we’re friendly.

  Day 2 on Colony Alpha

  Alexa was vaguely aware of someone’s hand on her shoulder. It shook her, summoning her from her sleep far sooner than she wanted. She tried to roll over, hoping that the hand was an apparition she could wish away.

  “Alexa,” A voice whispered. “They want to talk to you.”

  She groaned and tried again to roll away. She might have frozen to death outside, playing watchman for the new graveyard if it hadn’t been for Bob convincing her to take shelter with him. They pulled mattresses from their bunks and found spots on the edges of a large, slumbering pile of passengers and let the darkness consume them. It didn’t feel like that long ago to Alexa. To make matters worse, she had gone to bed with a numb body but now… it ached with the exertion of the day before.

  “Alexa,” The voice insisted.

  “Wh
o?” Alexa croaked, rolling back over and squinting up at the man trying to wake her.

  “Everyone,” Luca responded.

  This forced awareness onto Alexa a little more. She sat up on her elbows and continued to squint. “What? Why?”

  “Everyone’s meeting in the Red passenger’s area. It’s the biggest and can fit… what’s left of us.” Luca explained. “To talk about what we should do next.”

  “Why do I need to be there?” Alexa wondered as she pulled herself into a sitting position. She looked around the room and found it empty except for her and Luca. Mattresses were strewn across the floor with piles of blankets decorating them. It was quiet, but there was a dull roar filtering in from elsewhere, the ship carrying noises easily through its mental haul.

  “There is some debate as to who should be in charge. You’ve been nominated.” Luca explained.

  The news was startling to Alexa. She had no desire to be in a leadership position. She barely even wanted to join the mission, let alone lead it. She’d have to make an appearance, specifically to renounce the nomination.

  Luca watched her eagerly until she finally sighed, “Fine” and stood stiffly, her muscles and bones protesting. “Lead the way.”

  The roar of voices became louder as Alexa followed Luca to the Red section. It was bigger because it was intended to house the passengers who had brought children. It was the part of the ship Alexa purposefully avoided.

  They walked through the large entrance and as they did, the crowd quieted.

  Alexa was baffled by their response. She was certain she looked like death warmed over, still brushing sleep from her eyes.

  “Finally,” Ndale was the first to speak.

  She followed his voice to find him standing on the ground floor with a group of people tightly circled behind him. The large chamber was filled so completely it could easily be described as claustrophobic – people lined the railings of each bunk levels, a few people deep on each level. Some sat with their legs dangling over the edges, other perched dangerously on the railings. Her eyes ran up to all those looking down at her and the rest gathered in the open space in the middle of the chamber.