by D. W. Vogel
General E scowled at me and snatched the trans back. “Where is your transport? How many are you?”
Ryenne’s voice was cutting in and out, so I told the General what she’d told me on my way to get him. “The rest of them are on a beach, a couple hundred kilometers away. See?” I grabbed the trans back and showed him the map, where Ryenne’s position was a small red dot on the edge of the ocean. A broken line of mountains spanned the distance between us. “She had to leave the group to get a signal, but they’re alive.”
Ryenne cut back in for a moment, but it was obvious the satellite was almost out of range. The General directed her to stay where she was and call back as soon as she had a signal.
Shiro was the soldier on watch duty. He lifted up the curtain behind me. “Everything all right, sir?” he asked General E.
I answered him before General Enrico could speak. “They’re alive! Go get Mr. Borin and the rest of the officers!”
General Enrico jumped up from his bed, glaring at me. “I give the orders here, soldier.” He turned to Shiro and opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “Go get them.” He turned back to me. “And you get out of here.”
I stared at him. “Yes, sir.”
As I was pushing through the curtain, he spoke again. “We’ll meet in the armory. You should be there.”
Darn right I should.
Four captains arrived at the armory, followed closely by Shiro pushing Mr. Borin’s wheelchair. We all crowded in and sat on metal crates brought down from Horizon over three years ago, made on Earth two centuries earlier.
General E stood before us. He wasn’t holding my sat trans anymore, but kept touching his pocket where it must have been. I glanced around at the other trans stacked up in this room, all powered off and dark.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen. We’ve had news.”
The captains looked to General E, but Mr. Borin looked at me. Smartest guy in the room, I thought. Knows I have no business being in an officers’ meeting and figures there must be a good reason. Shiro stood silently behind Mr. Borin, and no one asked him to leave.
General Enrico laid out the story Ryenne had told me. Her party was decimated, out of food, stranded in a transport that couldn’t take off. If we didn’t come to their rescue, they’d all die.
“Who is with them?” Officer Galt asked.
“I haven’t asked for a full roster,” General E answered. “The signal is weak. She’s right on the edge of the satellite’s range, but it’s not safe for her to move. We’ll find out who’s alive, how many, and how long they have. We’ll discuss it once we have all the information and are able to make a decision.”
A decision? What decision? My cousins were out there. Alive, but not for long if we didn’t do something. I held my tongue, afraid that if I spoke, General E would throw me out of the meeting.
He continued. “Until we have more data and can evaluate the risks, no one is to speak of this development.” He turned to me, eyes wide-awake and boring into me. “It will not help to throw the entire community into a panic. If we decide to mount a rescue, then we’ll tell everyone what they need to know.”
Mr. Borin said what I wanted to say. “General, I don’t believe that’s your decision alone. We don’t know who’s alive on that transport, but it’s bound to be family for many of us. Everyone has a right to know who’s out there and to vote on what to do.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Borin,” General E said, stressing the mister, as if Brent’s dad didn’t know he wasn’t a soldier, “this is not a decision to make in haste, or out of emotion. Sending a rescue party would risk our own people.” He nodded at me. “Caleb understands. He’s been out there. He knows what’s at risk.”
I took that as an invitation to speak. “But General, that’s exactly why we have to go. I’ve been out there.” I looked at Shiro. “Shiro’s been out there. The two of us longer than anyone else. We know the risks. If we don’t go get them, they have no chance at all. If they leave their transport, they’ll all be eaten in a day without our help.” Mr. Borin was nodding and I turned to him. “We have a working shuttle. There’s only nineteen people. They’ll fit. We can go at first light and be back by dark.”
The words sounded so familiar to me. I’d said nearly the same thing to my sister Malia before I took off on the “short, safe” mission that left me stranded in the jungle. A chill ran down my spine and my bare feet clenched on the cool stone. This time will be different. We know better.
Mr. Borin and General Enrico argued until I tuned them out, my gaze locked into Shiro’s across the small room. We didn’t speak, but I could practically hear his thoughts.
They’re out there alone. We’re going.
Chapter 9
By morning everyone in Carthage knew.
The little room we used as a kitchen was abuzz with talk as we filed through the line picking up our breakfasts of fruit and smoked meat strips. Rumors flew, but no one seemed certain about anything.
“There’s a hundred people out there . . . they’re going to be flying in tonight.”
“No, there’s only ten and they’re dying . . . we have to send rescue.”
“Does anyone know who they are?”
I didn’t answer any of the questions, which weren’t really directed at me anyway. A bell echoed through the cavern, a quick triple ring that was our non-emergency summons to the Painted Hall. I blended into the crowd flowing down the corridor, eating the sweet pink fruit and licking my fingers.
Malia and Mom were already there, on their usual bench along the wall.
“What’s going on?” Mom shifted on the bench, one hand on her round belly. “Everyone’s talking about another ship. Do you know anything about this?”
General Enrico had ordered us to keep our mouths shut, but clearly someone hadn’t followed his command. So why shouldn’t I tell my mother that her sister’s kids, thought lost these past three years, were alive just a few hundred kilometers away? “I got a sat trans signal on the mountain yesterday. Ryenne and Rogan are alive.”
Mom’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth. Tears spilled over her cheeks and Malia snuggled into her side. She wouldn’t remember her cousins. She was too little when we made the panicked escape from our doomed Horizon Ark.
General Enrico stood at the front of the room, Mr. Borin in his chair next to him. The height difference made Mr. Borin look subordinate, which rankled me.
“People of Carthage, there’s been a development and it’s something that concerns us all,” General Enrico said, taking control of the meeting. My eyes roved around the room, watching people’s faces as he told them about the sat trans communication. There was silence for a moment, then pandemonium. Questions were shouted from all corners of the cave.
“Who’s out there?”
“How many”
“Why haven’t we heard from them before now?”
“When are they coming?”
Mr. Borin held up his hands for quiet and the crowd subsided into low murmuring. “There are nineteen people alive on Transport Seventeen.” He held up a sheet of paper and began to read the names Ryenne must have given him last night. Everyone strained to hear, holding their breath in the fevered hope that they’d hear the name of a loved one thought lost.
There were only five hundred of us on Horizon Alpha. Confined to a spaceship, generation after generation, no one was a stranger. I knew from my brief talk with Ryenne that more than twenty people had landed on Seventeen, but Mr. Borin didn’t have a list of those confirmed dead.
I sucked in a breath when the name Udo Yamoto was read. Shiro was somewhere on the other side of the room out of my view, but I couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking to hear that his dad was alive.
“The question we must consider is whether or not to send rescue.” The crowd gasped at General Enrico’s words, and erupted into shouting again.
“. . . whether or not?”
“How can we even think about
not trying to rescue them?”
“. . . they’re family.”
The voices in the cave echoed my thoughts.
Mr. Borin held up his hands again, and the crowd slowly quieted. “My friends, we’ve been through a lot,” he began. “So many lives lost. So many loved ones sacrificed to that jungle. We’ve found safety, a haven here where we can be safe. And of course we want to share that with anyone else who might have survived these last few years. But the risk is great.” He looked out over the crowd, making eye contact with each person in turn. “We’re here because Caleb found these caves. Because General Carthage led a team to secure the power we needed to get here. It cost many lives.”
I nodded along with him.
“That mission cost me my son.”
He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. “But there are other sons out there, and without our help, they will surely die. They don’t have much time. Trying to rescue them could be deadly for any members of our community who leave these safe walls.”
The crowd looked at the stone walls painted with ancient letters in a language we were still struggling to master. In the few short months since we’d found this place, we’d lost some of the terror that gripped us in our wired jungle camp. We felt almost safe here. And none of us thought we would ever have to leave.
General Enrico spoke. “We have one working shuttle, and it contains our embryo storage, our genetic diversity for the future. We risk that if we attempt to fly to the site of Seventeen’s crash. And we risk anyone who volunteers to be part of any rescue mission we mount.”
Mr. Borin shook his head. “We should be able to move the freezer into the grounded shuttle. It will take some work, but we should be able to get enough of a solar array up to keep it working while you’re gone.”
Captain McCarthy, the only pilot left who could fly the shuttle, stepped forward. “I’ll fly.”
Murmurs washed around the room, everyone looking at everyone else to see who would speak next. My body moved before my brain could think.
“I’m in.”
Mom grabbed my arm. “Caleb, no! You can’t go! You’ve been out there . . . you can’t . . . please.” Her eyes crinkled in terror for me.
But I wasn’t a child anymore. I answered her so the rest of the room could hear me.
“I spent over a week out there in the jungle, watching my squadron die man by man.” I nodded to Mr. Borin, acknowledging Brent’s sacrifice. “No one knows better than I do how dangerous this could turn out to be. A million things can go wrong out there, and any one of them can kill you. But that’s why I’m going. My cousins are out there. Hearing the footsteps of a Rex in the dark. Seeing the shadow of Wolves under every tree. I won’t leave them to that. I’ll get them home.”
I sat back down and Mom buried her face in my shoulder, weeping silently. For a brief moment I felt selfish. She’s lost so much. So many people she loved. But I had the chance to bring Rogan and Ryenne and the other survivors home. There was no decision.
Four other men stood up and volunteered for the mission. I looked at Josh, but he kept his eyes downcast, not meeting my gaze. The selfish part of me would have loved to have his company on the flight. I understood, though, that Mom needed him here if I was going out. And Josh did his time in the jungle . . . longer than anyone else could have survived alone with an injured companion.
The last man to stand was Shiro.
He’s really coming?
“I’m going too,” he said, and I stared at him standing stonefaced on the other side of the cavern. His dad is on that transport. Nothing else would have made Shiro leave these caves again.
General Enrico spoke again, grim-faced and stern. “All right then. Six volunteers and our pilot.” He looked down at Mr. Borin next to him. “We leave at dawn.”
Chapter 10
The eight members of the “Seventeen Rescue Team,” as Shiro called us, met in the armory while another team climbed down the mountain to move our embryo freezer into the other shuttle.
General Enrico was pawing through the crates of weapons and ammunition, pulling out handguns, rifles, and shells. “We shouldn’t need much firepower, but we want to be prepared.”
I looked at the small pile he was laying out and shook my head. “General, we need five times that much. All the guns we can carry, and any grenades that are left. As much food as we can pack into the shuttle.” I looked around the room. “Rope. Tarps. Knives. Machete.” I remembered my nights in the jungle. “A sat trans for each man, plus extras for some of the Seventeen crew.”
General E shook his head. “It will be a single day trip if we leave at first light. If we get into a headwind, could be one overnight. That’s it.”
I snorted. “And my last mission was a half-day jaunt. Except it took over a week and cost us almost every person on board.” I picked up a pistol and checked that there was no bullet in the chamber. “Carthage is safe. These weapons do nothing locked up in here. But if something goes wrong, they could mean the difference for all of us out there. We have to plan for the worst.”
Shiro nodded. “Caleb’s right. I’m not going without enough firepower to get us home in one piece.”
The other four men looked nervously at each other. They had all been beyond the wire at some point in the past three years, and knew what hunted the jungle we’d be flying over.
General Enrico grabbed the pistol out of my hand and laid it on his small pile. “I will pack the weapons. Caleb, you and Shiro go down to the kitchen and see what they can pack up for us.” He turned back to the crates along the wall.
“Sir, I’ll go do that, but we’re taking more guns.”
He spun around to glare at me. Shiro moved in to stand behind my left shoulder. The other four men crowded in behind him, a united front facing General Enrico.
He looked at each of us in turn, obviously not believing we were so blatantly disregarding his order. Finally he shook his head and shrugged. “You want to carry more weapons, you can carry them down the mountain. And when we’re home tomorrow night, you can carry them back up.”
We sighed as one, and began loading the crates.
***
Sara stood in the open doorway to my room late that night.
“Hey, Caleb.” She leaned on the smooth round opening, watching me pack for the rescue.
“Hi, Sara.” I stuffed an extra shirt into my pack.
“Can’t believe you’re going back out there.”
I’d heard versions of that sentiment all day. People either thought I was brave or crazy or both. “Yeah, me neither.” I shrugged, checking the soles of my boots for holes. “Other than Josh and Erik, nobody’s been out there longer. I’m the logical choice.”
She smiled. “There’s nothing logical about going back into a jungle full of Rexes and Wolves. But you’re right, you are the best choice if something goes wrong.”
“Even if it goes right,” I amended. We’d been looking at the sat trans map all day, and McCarthy wasn’t sure we’d be able to fly all the way to the beach where Transport Seventeen had gone down. We weren’t sure how high the mountains that blocked it were, but if they were as tall as the ones we lived in, we’d have to set down just this side and find a pass through. “There’s a good chance we’re going to have to do some walking. But it will be through the mountains, so it should be okay.” Are you trying to convince Sara or yourself?
She shivered. “I wish I could go with you.”
She didn’t mean she wished General Enrico would let her join the mission. She meant that she wished she was brave enough to leave the caves.
I smiled. “I do, too. We made some good mileage out there.”
Sara handed me a folded slip of paper. “Here’s a partial list of things I’d love to have for the science team here. If you see any of them, can you try to get them on the shuttle?”
I opened the paper to reveal tiny cribbed writing and little line drawings of plants, insects, and eggs she and her team were hoping
to study. They were meticulously drawn but I knew I’d never be able to tell one from another once I was out in the field, especially if we had to travel by night.
“Sure. I’ll see what we can pick up for you.” I’d grab anything that looked interesting and Sara could sort it out later.
She nodded and I turned back to my packing. Mom had sewn up the holes in the pockets of my cargo pants, but I wished I had an extra pair just in case.
Sara still leaned against the doorway.
“Caleb . . .” she began, then stopped, looking at the clean-swept floor.
“What is it?” She’d never had trouble saying exactly what she felt before.
She took a deep breath. “My sister Laura was on that list. She’s there on the transport. She’s alive. And she’s got a baby, Shanna . . . who is almost four years old now.”
Sara had lost her sister and parents in the evacuation of Horizon Alpha. The weight of it must have been crushing to her these past three years. What must this new knowledge mean to her? That her sister and niece were out there all along, not knowing if Sara was alive, either?
I stood up and shoved my pack aside. “I’ll bring her back. My cousins are out there, too. Ryenne and Rogan.” Sara smiled at the mention of their names. Everyone knew the twins, as different as night and day but bonded like no other siblings on Horizon. “You and I made it back here alone. We’ll have twenty-seven people and a working shuttle. By this time tomorrow night, Laura and Shanna will be here, along with all those other people. That’s . . .” I did a quick calculation in my head, knowing it would please my former teacher. “That’s a ten percent population increase for Carthage in one day’s flight.”
She grinned. “Thanks. I know you can do it. But Caleb, if anything goes wrong . . .” she swallowed hard. “Just please make sure she knows I love her, okay?”
Chapter 11
My heartbeat quickened with the roar of the thrusters.
The shuttle hadn’t taken off for three months since we arrived at the caves with the last of our survivors. The second shuttle was grounded by some mechanical issue that we didn’t have parts to fix. It had taken all night for the embryo team to move the freezer from our shuttle into the other one, and had required pulling the wheels off Mr. Borin’s chair to make a dolly strong enough to move it. Sheets of solar receivers draped all over the shuttle’s surface to keep the freezer running without the power core we needed to fly.