Horizon Alpha: Transport Seventeen

by D. W. Vogel

  The ocean wind whipped around us as we climbed, scuffling up the shifting rocks. No one spoke; everyone concentrated on placing their feet along the edge and pressing their backs or shoulders into the wall. We reached the top without incident and made the turn around the mountain’s shadow into the baking sun.

  We’ve got this. We’re going to make it.

  Shiro’s dad was last in line and struggling. He leaned on his son as best he could, sweat dripping from his nose. Shiro’s leg wouldn’t hold them both for long, but he’d never let his father see him limp.

  I checked on Rogan behind me. He was watching my boots, putting his feet directly into my footsteps.

  A harsh cry split the air. The hairs on the back of my neck rose and my mouth went dry. I knew that cry. I’d heard it months before from the air, and we heard it in the safety of our valley, the only noise that still sent us scuttling for cover.

  I scanned the air around us, searching for the source, but Rogan saw them first.

  In his flat, unaffected voice, he said the word I’d dreaded since we set out yesterday morning.

  “Pterosaurs.”

  Chapter 17

  Three of them swooped by our precarious perch, the wind from their beating wings buffeting us. They passed close enough for us to smell their sour skin.

  For a moment everyone froze on the mountain.

  General Enrico at the front of the line turned so that little Shanna strapped to his back was protected against the wall. The three other adults including Officer Halsey who were roped to the little kids pulled their charges in close.

  Maybe they didn’t see us.

  We were all wearing Horizon-issue clothing, drab brown or green which might blend into the surrounding rock. Nobody knew how acute a pterosaur’s sense of smell might be, but the Seventeen survivors hadn’t bathed in quite a while. I could smell them. Bet the fliers can, too.

  The three large males turned lazily in the air, riding the updraft next to the mountainside.

  Rogan muttered next to me. “Quetzalcoatlus. But bigger. And teeth. So probably Ludodactylus.”

  “Shut up, Rogan,” I hissed, my eyes on the huge predators whose eyes were on us.

  Oh yeah, they see us.

  Every nerve in my body screamed run. But there was nowhere to run. We were inching along the ledge, still hundreds of feet up.

  They came in for another pass, black shiny eyes turning to look at us.

  “Pterosauria have weak legs and feet. They can’t grab us,” Rogan said, staring at the brown leathery talons.

  “Maybe on Earth they couldn’t. We’re not on Earth.”

  I pulled the pistol from my pocket. The ‘saurs weren’t diving for us, and I didn’t know if I should shoot or not. It would take a lucky shot right in the eye to kill one, but maybe I could tear a wing and convince them we were too much trouble to eat. Then again, maybe they didn’t see us as a threat and would ignore us as long as nobody took a shot.

  A rifle cracked from behind me.

  The closest ‘saur wavered in the air, its skin twitching. It turned its huge head to stare at us.

  “Open fire!”

  At the General’s command, all of us that had firearms unloaded at the fliers. The air filled with the sound of gunfire and the smell of metallic smoke. The lead ‘saur pulled a wing in sharply, then veered away from the mountain.

  One down.

  The second in line, a brown-winged monster, circled above our heads and out of firing range as the third made another close pass. I fired and fired at the third and smallest one, iridescent green wings shining in the morning light.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw it. The brown ‘saur diving in from the sky. Before I could even turn my weapon toward it, the ‘saur had grabbed a woman from the back of the line and plucked her off the mountain. I could still see her struggling in the ‘saur’s talons as it flapped away across the hills. I wasn’t even sure who it was.

  The third ‘saur came in slower, choosing its victim more carefully. It seemed to happen in slow motion.

  I fired one shot at it as it approached, and the next time I pulled the trigger, all I got was an empty click. I fumbled in my pocket for a fresh magazine, eyes on the huge ‘saur.

  It focused on one of the kids, and folded its wings for the dive.

  Officer Halsey jumped in front of the child, shielding the little boy with her body. The ‘saur grabbed her instead. But she was still tied to the child.

  She scrambled against the huge ‘saur, struggling to grab the rocky cliff. Shiro was just behind them and he grabbed the little boy, bracing his heels against the jutting stone. Another man grabbed the boy from in front.

  I had no time to think. If I shot at the ‘saur, I might hit Officer Halsey in its talons. If I killed it, it might fall hundreds of feet down the cliffside, dragging Officer Halsey and the boy she was roped to along with it.

  The ‘saur strained against the rope binding his victim to the screaming child in Shiro’s grasp. It flapped its huge wings against the rocks, struggling to pull free. Nobody fired, staring in shock at the horror unfolding.

  Shiro’s feet were slipping on the loose scree. In a few more seconds he’d lose his footing completely. Then he would either have to let go of the boy, or be dragged over the edge along with him.

  Officer Halsey’s left arm was free, her right side gripped by the ‘saur’s talons. She pulled a knife from her boot.

  Oh stars, she’s going to . . .

  She cut the rope attaching her to the child. Shiro and the boy were flung back into the ledge as the taut rope shredded against the blade.

  The ‘saur bounced away from the ledge, dropping beneath us with the added weight in its claws. I popped the new magazine into my pistol and fired until it was empty, but the green-winged flier soared away, Officer Halsey hanging limp in its grasp.

  Chapter 18

  No one spoke for the rest of the climb. It took well over two hours to reach the more level foothill where we could gather up into a group instead of inching along single file.

  The Seventeen survivors were in shock. They had lost people before, but Ryenne told me they’d never actually witnessed it. They had sent out scouts that just didn’t come back. Officer Halsey had kept everyone close to the transport, allowing them out to collect water from the pool only after moon rise when the parade of ‘saurs stopped for the night. Ryenne had never been allowed to go. The farthest she’d been from the transport’s metal walls was only a few meters away to use the bathroom. Most nights she climbed up to the top to lie under the stars with some of the braver survivors, but mostly they hunkered inside. Three years. No wonder Officer Halsey went crazy.

  General Enrico addressed the group. “We’re almost there now.” He pointed around the hillside. “Our shuttle is parked just around the bend there. In a few hours we’ll be safe inside Carthage Valley, and no one ever has to come out here again.”

  Someone spoke up from the front. “Can we . . . can we take a moment? To remember Officer Halsey and Myra?”

  That must have been the woman who was taken first. Myra. I fished into my memory of our days on Horizon and came up with the image of an older woman, late thirties, maybe a nurse? It’s only been three years. Who else did you forget?

  The General shook his head, glancing up at the sky. “We’ll have a service when we get to safety. Daylight is far too dangerous to delay. We need to get to the shuttle ASAP.”

  We trooped along behind him. The Seventeen group clustered together and the Carthage soldiers moved around the periphery. I was in the back left of the group with Shiro walking ahead of me, supporting his dad. Ryenne stayed right by my side with Rogan drifting around her, eyes darting all over the landscape.

  “It’s just so . . . big,” Ryenne said.

  I snorted. “Yeah, it is.” The mountain was a flat wall behind us and we were surrounded by hills blocking the horizon. “You can’t really even see how big yet. When we get down to the bottom of this to
where the shuttle is, you’ll be able to see right out over the trees.”

  “Why couldn’t you fly to the beach?”

  “No way we could get over those mountains. They’re even higher than the ones around our valley.”

  Ryenne looked back at the cliff behind us. “Then how do the dinosaurs get there?”

  I pulled out my sat trans and fired up the map. “Look here.” I showed her the stretch of beach where the transport sat. My finger traced a line parallel to the brown sand. “This is the mountain range. There must be a pass somewhere that’s big enough for the ‘saurs to get through, but we would have had to fly almost two hours out of our way to get around them. We just can’t go that high.” I shrank the image to show a larger view. “We’re right here. And way over here,” I pointed to another section of the mountains, “that’s where we’re going. We had to fly all the way south around the mountain range to get to you. And we wanted to be darned sure we had enough power to fly all the way back once we had you.”

  She took the sat trans from my hand and studied the map. “There’s a big break in the mountains here. What’s that?”

  I looked at the trans. “Just more jungle. Maybe swamp. We’ve never been there, but we flew over it yesterday morning.”

  She nodded and expanded the image over Carthage. “And that’s where we’re going to live?”

  “Yep. Huge valley full of fruit trees, plenty of room for crops and sheep. There are some little ‘saurs around, but nothing dangerous.” I glanced up at the sky. “Nothing dangerous on the ground.”

  She handed the trans back and I tucked it into my pocket with the three remaining magazines I had for the pistol.

  “We’ve seen a lot of dinosaurs here.” Ryenne looked to Rogan. “He has names for a lot of them, but some of them are just plain weird.”

  We plodded on down the hillside, the rocky ground and scrubby bushes giving way to waving grasses and short, wide trees. I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and checked the load. ‘Saur country.

  “Time to quit talking,” I whispered to the group around me. “We’re close to the shuttle.”

  My eyes searched the grass, watching for any movement. The front of our group scared a couple of small ‘saurs which hopped away through the grass, but so far we had been lucky. Nothing had seen us.

  Or if it had, we didn’t know it yet.

  The plant life here wasn’t big enough to camouflage any of the biggest predators . . . the ambush Crabs or venomous Gilas. A Rex would be visible for miles, and we’d hear it coming. And then what would you do? I scanned the hillsides around us. No trees to climb and escape. If a Rex comes, some of us will die. And if Wolves find us, we’ll all die.

  I was looking over my shoulder at the trampled path of grass we were making when the group in front of me stopped and I ran into the back of the man walking ahead of me.

  Everyone was looking over the hillside and I pushed through the crowd to see why we had stopped.

  Shiro was standing next to General E, staring down the path we had climbed the morning before.

  Our shuttle sat at the bottom of the hill. Even from this distance we could see that half of the back was crushed, and one wing sat crumpled twenty feet away, ripped off the body of the shuttle in a twisted gash of metal.

  The last working shuttle on the planet was never going to fly again.

  Chapter 19

  Nobody spoke for what felt like hours.

  Finally General Enrico turned to the group. “Let’s get everyone inside.”

  He didn’t say what we’d do next, because I’m sure he didn’t know.

  We trooped down the hill and into the field where the ruined shuttle sat. ‘Saur prints were sunk into the dirt all around it and Shiro and I paused to look at them.

  “You think this was a Rex?”

  Shiro shook his head. “Prints are nowhere near big enough for a Rex. And there’s a bunch of them.” He stood up and squinted over the field. “Either a small herd of . . . whatever this was, or one really determined ‘saur that bashed through here about a hundred times.”

  The rest of the group was filing through the shuttle door, which hung open and useless on one hinge.

  “But why? It was just sitting here.”

  Shiro shrugged. “Who knows? Territory? Breeding fights? Some other insane reason that makes a ‘saur want to smash apart a silent hunk of metal?”

  There was so much we didn’t know about the ‘saurs. And a lot of what we did know, we wished we could forget.

  We followed the rest of the survivors inside. The little kids and some of the adults, including Shiro’s dad, were seated in the rows on the side of the shuttle that was intact. Everyone else crowded into the open area where the embryo freezer once sat. Glad we left that at home, I thought. Shiro and I joined General E at the cockpit.

  “So . . . what do we do, General?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “How far out are we?”

  He just shook his head, tapping on his sat trans. “No signal inside. Everybody wait in here.” The five members of the Carthage team and the eighteen remaining survivors from the beach stood in silence as he stepped through the open hatch. Even the smallest children could feel the tension and huddled close to the adults.

  Laura, Sara’s sister, pushed through the aisle to Shiro and me.

  “You guys have been out here a while, right?”

  We looked at each other.

  “Yeah.” Shiro didn’t meet her eyes. “We were both out for about a week. Mostly alone.”

  “And you know how to survive? What we can eat and where we can hide?”

  I shrugged. “We know how to hunt and we know some fruits and berries that are okay. But we can’t stay here. We’re sitting ducks for every ‘saur downwind of us. If they don’t know how easy we are to kill already, they’ll figure it out really fast.”

  As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. These Seventeen survivors weren’t like us. They hadn’t endured three years of terror in the jungle, surrounded by predators on all sides. They had huddled in relative safety, watching though thick glass portholes as the predators marched past. Nobody in Seventeen had ever killed an animal for food, and until this morning they hadn’t seen a human killed for food by a ‘saur. The survivors that had heard my comment were starting to look panicked.

  “We’re going to be all right.” I raised my voice to be heard all the way in the back. “Shiro and I have survived out here all alone. We know what to do. It won’t be easy, but we’re going to get everyone home safely.”

  And how are you going to do that? I sighed at my own doubts. We’re not. A lot of these people are going to die out here. Maybe all of us. But it won’t help for them to know that. I met Shiro’s gaze. He knew it.

  General Enrico passed back through the hatch.

  “All right, folks, I’ve talked to Carthage Base.” He waved his sat trans. “Right now they don’t have any way to come for us, so I’ve decided we need to sit tight here until they sort out a rescue. It might take a while, but we know how to hunt and gather.” He pointed toward the door. “We can provide here.”

  My mouth opened before I could think. “That’s crazy. The hatch won’t even close. What if a pack of Wolves smells our trail? We can’t even close them out.” Great job. That will calm everyone down.

  The General frowned. “We have weapons and ammo. We can hold them off.”

  “How many of them? You honestly think we could take down a pack of six or seven Wolves trying to get through that door? And we don’t even know what destroyed the shuttle. What if that thing comes back?”

  “Listen, soldier.” His tone told me what he thought of my soldiering. “This is my command and I make the decisions. And we’re staying put until Carthage has a plan.”

  Laura spoke up next to me. “Who made this your command?” She looked around at the rest of the Seventeen team. “We didn’t elect you. Last time I saw you on Horizon you were a nuclear technician. Y
ou might get to decide for Carthage, but we’re not your soldiers.”

  The rest of them were nodding. And most of them were looking at me.

  I’m already dead meat with General E when we get back. If we get back. Might as well go for broke here.

  “General, with respect, we can’t possibly stay here. We need to get up into the hills and find a safer place to wait. Staying here is suicide.”

  A voice spoke up from the back of the shuttle. “Why not go back to our transport? We’ve been safe there for three years.”

  General E shook his head. “Safe, but starving. If we start hunting the ‘saurs on the beach, they’re going to figure out we’re in there and we’ll never get out to collect water again. They’ll pick us off once they know we’re inside.”

  I said, “The General is right. And unless anybody has some nets they’re not showing us, we don’t have any way to fish in the ocean.”

  Laura’s eyes widened. “Don’t go near the ocean.”

  In spite of the danger I grinned. “Yeah, so I’ve heard.”

  The voice from the back spoke again. It was a man I vaguely recognized from Horizon, though after three years I couldn’t remember his name. “So when are they coming? Do they have another shuttle?”

  The General nodded. “There is another shuttle. We had to take some of the parts from it to keep this one running, though.”

  “A tank, then?”

  “The tank isn’t working either.”

  “So how are they going to come get us?” The crowd started murmuring, more alarmed by the second.

  General E held up his hands for silence. “They’ll figure out how to get one of them running and they’ll come get us. We still have engineers alive at Carthage. This is my decision and I say we have to wait.”