Horizon Alpha: Predators of Eden

by D. W. Vogel

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t think we’ll get to see much. We’re only going to be out a few hours.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Jack said.

  After three long years confined inside the cramped perimeter of the fences, my nerves jumped like a prisoner just released from jail. I took deep breaths of the mildew-scented air. It reminded me of the first twelve years of my life, breathing Horizon’s recycled atmosphere as we hurtled through space toward this dense green planet.

  Trees whizzed by underneath us, and I peered across the landscape, hoping for a glimpse of animal life from a safe distance. The shuttle cast a triangular shadow on the canopy below us, but only wind stirred the leaves.

  The soldiers across the aisle pointed at something outside their window. I ripped off my seat harness and jumped up to see what they were looking at.

  “What’s down there?” I called to them, but they didn’t hear me over the shuttle’s rumbling.

  “What’s down there?” Jack echoed, quirking an eyebrow at me.

  I flopped back into my seat and pressed my face against the window.

  “Calm down, rookie,” Shiro said from the seat behind me. “It’s a two hour flight and you’re making me crazy. Just be glad we’re flying and not walking.”

  I laughed. Our destination was much too far away for a land-based mission. Walking would be suicide. Still, I was embarrassed that Shiro had to settle me down.

  “I’m just glad I’m not stuck in a classroom anymore. Even if we don’t see anything out here, it’s better than lessons,” I said.

  “True.” Jack reached over to pull the seat harness back over my head.

  “I got it,” I mumbled, strapping myself back in.

  The General strode down the aisle between the seats. We all sat up straighter as he passed. His footing was secure on the bumpy shuttle, eyes appraising his young soldiers.

  “Does he know where we’re going?” I whispered.

  “They have the coordinates,” Jack said. “I just hope we can find the core when we get there.”

  “We’ll find it,” I said. “I promised Malia I’d be home for dinner.”

  Jack nodded but didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. We both knew that was a risky promise to make.

  Chapter 2

  “Look alive troops, we’ve got fliers!”

  The General paced in the shuttle’s open cockpit. I couldn’t see his face from my seat in the hold but we all turned to look out the dirty windows toward the distant treetops below us. I unbuckled my seat harness again and leaned forward to get a better view.

  The shuttle banked hard to starboard and I fell into Jack’s lap.

  “Sit down, rookie.” He gave me a friendly shove. “Buckle back up before you hurt yourself.”

  But I didn’t want to miss a thing.

  The only time I had flown before was on the way down from the Horizon three years ago. I had never seen pterosaurs from above, only watched them circling high overhead, screeching their raspy calls into the steamy air.

  “Sorry.” I buckled my shoulder belt, stretching forward to look down as the shuttle took an abrupt dive. My breakfast jumped up into my throat for a sickening minute.

  Pilot Bronton was talking to the General, who gripped the metal support post behind the pilot’s chair.

  “I’ve never seen them this agitated before, sir. They usually hear us coming and keep clear.”

  “Well, they’re not keeping clear today.” The General crouched down to look up through the windshield. “They’re everywhere.”

  A dark shadow passed over the pilot’s instruments seconds before a huge brown body soared right over the top of our shuttle. The wind from the enormous wings buffeted our little ship and we lurched in the sky. My knuckles turned white as I clutched my seat harness.

  “Scat them! What are they doing?” The General had fallen across his jump seat and now grudgingly strapped himself in.

  A female voice spoke up from the front row. “Sir, I think . . . I think it’s a dominance flight.”

  “Dominance?” The General swung around in his seat to face the woman who had spoken, and I leaned forward to see our naturalist, Sara Arnson. She was one of my teachers at the Eden base school I graduated from last month. I wondered what on Ceti a naturalist was doing with a bunch of soldiers, but Shiro and Jack looked unconcerned. Don’t ask another stupid question.

  Instead, I looked as far behind us as my harness would allow and saw two more huge forms winging in from right below us. The triangular heads were focused on each other and they passed close enough for me to see the flat black eyes in their scaled faces. They paid us no attention, but the shuttle bounced again from their turbulent wingbeats.

  “There must be a female nearby.” Ms. Arnson craned her neck to see out the windows.

  The female was flying over the distant treetops. The males around us were dwarfed by the solitary female soaring and diving in the humid updrafts. She was surrounded by a swarm of males, the entourage flying uncomfortably closer to our little craft. I watched the males dive-bombing each other, chasing the younger ones away from the female they all circled.

  Ms. Arnson spoke again. “They think we’re a rival male. I think they’re trying to chase us away from the female. I’ve never seen the behavior before, but I’ve read about this kind of thing in Earth animals.”

  The General scowled and looked around with steely anger for someone to blame. “We’ll give them a wide berth, then. They can fight or fly or do whatever they want without us. Come around from the port side instead of straight on,” he ordered the pilot. I flinched under the General’s glare and dropped my gaze into my lap. Jack ground his teeth in the seat next to me, staring straight ahead.

  The shuttle banked hard again and the g-forces pinned me into my seat.

  Bright afternoon sun blinded me as we swung around to avoid the fliers. We had plenty of daylight, which was good since the shuttle’s lights had quit working last year. We had been late getting out this morning because of a code T threat on the west fence, but our target was only two hours away on a good wind. The shuttle was half-empty as we didn’t intend to be on the ground long enough to need much firepower. The General and the pilot, the naturalist Sara Arnson, me, and eight other soldiers all bounced in our seats as another flier passed way too close.

  “Why are they still following us?” the General demanded. “We turned away from her territory.” The female was nearly out of sight, but three males still swooped around us, the wind from their wings knocking our shuttle around like toy boats on a wild river.

  One of the males dove right into another, impacting hard with the huge muscles of his neck. The collision tore the smaller male’s wing, and the beast plummeted toward the ground in a sickening spiral.

  “They’re not just chasing each other. They’re fighting for dominance. They’re knocking each other right out of the sky.” Ms. Arnson’s voice was high and strained.

  My pulse pounded loud in my throat. Ms. Arnson knew more about these creatures than anyone else in Eden. And she sounded scared.

  The thrusters whined as the pilot raced ahead, trying to outfly the two remaining males. I clutched the seat in front of me as the shuttle careened through the sky. My stomach rolled, threatening to return my breakfast. I did not want to throw up in front of the rest of the team. I’d never hear the end of it if I vomited on my very first flight.

  A sharp impact rattled the ship and the crunch of metal echoed in the confined space. One of the males had clipped us.

  “General, we’ve lost the port thruster. I need to set down now!” Pilot Bronton angled the shuttle into a steep dive, and I felt light in my seat as we raced for the ground. The sputter of the damaged thruster warred with the noise of my heartbeat vibrating in my ears. My dry mouth tasted like bile.

  “This is not a good location. We’re too far from the target. Retreat to Eden base.” The General sounded angry.

  I kept looking out the window. Settle dow
n, stomach. Don’t throw up.

  The pilot shouted above the screaming engine. “Negative, General. We’ll never make it back with those fliers on our tail.”

  “Dammit, Bronton, if we set down here we’ll never take off again!”

  My head slammed into the window as the flier hit us from the side. I tasted blood and my vision blurred.

  The General yelled for Bronton to pull up, the shuttle spinning down toward the forest canopy below us. Ms. Arnson’s screams echoed through the hold as we crashed through the thick branches.

  “Mayday, Mayday!” Bronton’s voice yelled from the cockpit. “No satellite, they’re not hearing us!”

  The trees slowed our fall but not enough. The shuttle rolled as it slid across the forest floor. Metal shrieked as the shuttle’s entire port side tore away and empty space replaced the seats where soldiers had been sitting. My hands clutched the straps of my harness and my head bounced off the shuttle window.

  We’re gonna die.

  The crash seemed to go on for hours. When we finally spun to a halt, the open gash in the shuttle faced the sky through a hole in the thick canopy. In the moment before I blacked out, I saw the pterosaur males circle over our heads, then soar away into the cloudless blue sky.

  Chapter 3

  Dull throbbing pain woke me, pulsing through my chest and shoulders. I’m not dead. How am I not dead?

  Jack had slumped over his seat onto me, his shoulder harness broken and dangling in front of my face. My shoulder ached from where he was crushing me into the window of the ruined shuttle. He wasn’t moving.

  “Jack,” I pushed at him, trying to reach my harness buckle. My ears rang and I couldn’t hear anyone else talking. “Jack,” I said louder, and he stirred and moaned.

  Thank goodness. He’s not dead, either.

  “Hurts,” he rasped.

  “I know, but you gotta get off me. We need to get out of here.”

  Even through the haze of pain and dizziness, I knew we had to move. Every ‘saur for kilometers must have heard the crash. With the side of the shuttle torn wide open over our heads, we were a popped can of lunch for the first to arrive. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious, but it couldn’t have been long because I didn’t smell any ‘saurs and didn’t see any huge open mouths reaching in to pluck us out of our seats.

  Jack groaned and rolled off me, and I managed to unbuckle my seat harness. I crouched on the window underneath me, looking up at the clear blue sky. At least four of my fellow soldiers had been in the seats that ripped away when we crashed. I’d been raised with those guys, known them since I was born. Please, let them have died on impact. The alternative was so much worse.

  I did a quick mental check of my status. A knot on my forehead was already starting to swell up but wasn’t bleeding. My shoulders ached from the seat harness. My legs felt wobbly from the aftermath of the adrenaline shock, but on the whole I was intact and functional.

  I stood up to peek over the seats. The General was just getting to his feet. He leaned over to where the pilot slumped and touched the man’s neck. His hand came away bloody and the General shook his head.

  “What happened?” Ms. Arnson’s weak voice was barely audible.

  I ducked under Jack, who had started unstrapping himself, and crawled over the empty row of seats in front of me. Ms. Arnson was alive, and so were Shiro and Brent, the two other soldiers who had been sitting on my side of the shuttle. They were starting to stir in the seats behind me. The General climbed back from the cockpit to join us.

  “Count off,” he said quietly.

  Shiro and Brent both said their names as they struggled to their feet in the overturned hold.

  “Caleb Wilde, here,” I said.

  “Jack Branch, here,” Jack said behind me.

  “Sara Arnson, here.” She hadn’t even tried to stand, just hung there in her seat harness.

  The General crouched down in front of her and started to unbuckle her. “You need to stand up, Sara. We need to grab what we can and get out of here. It’s not safe in daylight.”

  We all knew it wasn’t safe at night, either, but I didn’t say it aloud.

  We hadn’t planned on an overnight mission. We didn’t have much survival gear packed, but we gathered up the weapons and supplies strewn around the hold, strapping on our ammunition with shaking hands. I grabbed a canvas pack and hoisted it onto my back, and we all waited for the General’s order. At his command, we crawled over the last of the seats and ducked into the cockpit.

  The windshield of the shuttle had shattered on impact, and I peeked at the dead pilot as I crawled past him. A large shard of the glass had slashed his throat, and he hung limp in his seat. His dangling arm brushed against my back as I approached the broken windshield, and the touch chilled me.

  “Fly free, Bronton,” I whispered to his corpse as I wiggled out of the shuttle.

  I followed Ms. Arnson and the rest of the team away from the wreckage and turned to see Jack struggling through the opening, the last to leave the crash. A long gash ripped through the front of his fatigue pants and blood soaked his leg.

  “Come on, buddy,” I encouraged him, dropping back to slip my arm under his shoulder. His leg wouldn’t bear much weight, but I helped him hobble into the clearing where Shiro and Brent waited with Ms. Arnson and the General. They were all cut and battered, and Brent’s left eye was starting to swell shut, but Jack had the most urgent injury.

  He sat down heavily on the ground and the General opened his pack. Jack stifled a cry as clean bandages were wound tightly around his leg. I hoped it would slow the bleeding. I shuddered to think of how quickly a ‘saur could track us if we left a blood trail.

  The General stood and faced us. “We went down close to our target. We’ll get to the site as fast as we can and call for help from Eden base. They’ll send another shuttle to pick us up from the target site. We didn’t have sat coverage, so our mayday didn’t go through, and the tree cover is too dense for them to land here anyway.”

  Shiro glanced over my shoulder at the ruined shuttle. “General, should we . . . should we go back and try to find the others?”

  Four soldiers had been sitting on the left side of the shuttle, and were ripped away as we crashed to the forest floor. Viktor and Raj weren’t much older than me. We also lost Cara’s dad and Mr. Hague, who taught me how to shoot a rifle.

  Nobody could have survived that impact.

  The General echoed my thought. “We’re not going back.” He sighed. “If I thought we might find them alive . . . but no. We can’t risk the mission searching for our dead. There will be time to grieve when we’re safe behind the wire again.”

  Silently, we began the hike. We took turns supporting Jack limping through the forest. The General led the way, trying to check our location on his satellite transmitter, but the thick tree canopy blocked his signal. My pack rode hot on my back, and my fatigues were sticking to my skin. I hoped we weren’t too far.

  The sun was still much too high in the sky. It would be safer at night, but sunset was still a few hours away. The most dangerous of Ceti’s dinosaurs were daytime hunters.

  Okay, they aren’t really dinosaurs.

  True dinosaurs lived on Earth and have all been dead for sixty million years. The animals who evolved here in this steamy jungle share no blood with Earth’s ancient rulers. Ms. Arnson had more scientific names for most of the species we’d encountered on Ceti, carefully drawn in her little sketchbook. But when you face a three-story reptilian predator with a head the size of your shuttle that walks on its hind legs and knocks down trees with the swipe of a forty-foot tail, there’s just nothing you can call it besides T-rex.

  Most of the ‘saurs here went torpid at night, their smaller bodies losing heat quickly after sunset. It never got really cold, but Ms. Arnson taught us in school that their metabolism depended on staying a lot warmer than our body temperature. Only the largest had enough mass to retain the necessary heat all night, besides a few
of the little fliers that relied on friction to stay warm. The rest went to ground at dark to hide from the biggest predators. Some covered themselves with leaves and soil to evade the Rex’s heat sensors, which detected a ‘saur’s cooling body temperature.

  A few of the bigger herbivores were active at night, but as long as we stayed out from under their huge, crushing feet, they wouldn’t be a danger to us. Daytime was another matter.

  We were easy prey outside the fence. Gila venom could kill a man within ten steps. They weren’t particularly fast, but they sat so still in the underbrush that you didn’t realize you were too close until it was too late and their poison-loaded tails were swinging around to stab you. The huge, camouflaged Crabs were also a risk, but they were invisible day or night, so we wouldn’t avoid them either way.

  But the real danger was the Wolves. Named for Earth’s pack-hunting mammals, our ‘saur Wolves ran on four legs. They traveled in family groups, sniffing the air for prey and running it down from all sides. A small pack of them could take down the largest brachiosaur with a coordinated effort. If a Wolf pack found our trail, this mission was over.

  Since I was born on a space ship, the first twelve years of my life were spent dreaming about solid ground, about the planet we were heading for. My first steps on solid ground weren’t the triumphant strides I had imagined in my childhood. They were a frightened skitter between ships in the dark of night.

  In the first weeks after we came down from Horizon, we lost over fifty men to ‘saur attacks. Their deaths taught us about Gila poison and Wolf packs. We learned which snakes had the strongest venom, and that if a human ventured into the river, something huge would swallow him in one gulp.

  We had tried to find somewhere safer to settle, but we lost so many scout teams that we had to stop sending them. General Carthage assumed command of our base. He ended the search for survivors and concentrated on making Eden base more secure. We circled the ships and ran wire between them, and the dinosaurs learned they shouldn’t mess with electricity.