Serendipity

by Dennis Ingram

  Serendipity

  Book Three in the Foothold Universe

  Dennis Ingram

  Imaginative Possibilities Ltd

  Contents

  Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  More to come

  Free Fiction

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  SERENDIPITY

  Copyright © 2016 by Imaginative Possibilities Limited

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Cover by Streetlight Graphics

  Edited by Sue Copsey

  www.suecopsey.com

  Published by Imaginative Possibilities Limited

  dennisingram.com

  ISBN: 978-0-473-37108-1

  Introduction

  Serendipity picks up the story of the Tau Ceti colony a month after the events that unfolded in The Seasoning.

  The colony has survived the traumatic events following the arrival of Edward Harper and more than a hundred other colonists. Edward may be no more, but Carla remains and she has a new plan. The rift between the original colonists and the new arrivals still exists, and she is determined to widen it to achieve her own selfish ends.

  Acknowledgments

  This book is for you, my readers. I hope you enjoyed the first two books in the Foothold series, and are looking forward to the conclusion of the colony foundation trilogy.

  Thanks for buying my book – your support will enable me to continue the series.

  Many thanks again to my loyal beta readers, without whom I couldn’t have finished this story to the same standard as Foothold and The Seasoning.

  Thank you all.

  1

  The loudspeaker blared. “T-minus ten minutes.”

  David lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at Ernie. “A countdown?”

  Ernie rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s the way it’s done, with rockets.” He grinned at David. “Besides, I’d have a hard time stopping them.” He motioned with his head to the control center behind them. “They’re like kids with a science project. I don’t have to motivate them much.”

  David returned his grin. “I kind of got that feeling.”

  In the distance, a tall, slender, white rocket stood on a launch pad, reaching for the sky. Vapor streamed from ports on its sides, man-made clouds drifting in the morning breeze. Now and then they heard the distant whoosh of escaping gasses as the frigid liquid propellants boiled off and vented.

  David leaned forward and gripped the railing of the observation deck, wishing he could get closer. He knew all about rockets but had never seen a launch up close. By the time he’d joined the starship program, shuttles launched from spaceports, like airplanes. The age of rockets had passed.

  “It all comes back, right?” he asked, glancing at Ernie.

  Ernie nodded, his eyes gleaming. “That’s right. It launches as a stack. First stage, second stage, and capsule. The first stage separates after three minutes and flies back. It lands right over there,” he said pointing, “tail first. The second stage separates after nine minutes. It’ll orbit right around the planet then re-enter and fly back too. The final part – the capsule – will dock with Hope. When it returns we can re-stack everything, refuel it, and send it up again.”

  “Huh.” David looked again at the rocket, curiosity and doubt wrestling in his mind.

  “You’ll see. Don’t worry,” Ernie said. “This is old technology, tried and true. They sent hundreds of these up in their day and they almost never failed.”

  “Almost never?”

  Ernie shrugged. “Nothing’s perfect.”

  “T-minus five minutes. Cradle retract starting.”

  “But this one, it’ll work?”

  “It ought to. Of course, we’ve never built one before, or flown one, and no one’s ever launched a rocket from Serendipity.”

  David wrinkled his forehead but didn’t say anything. They’d find out soon enough if their new rocket would fly.

  “T-minus four minutes.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Ernie said. “You’ll see.”

  “Second stage is venting.”

  Two long streamers of vapor jetted from the sides of the rocket, high up, followed by a loud whoosh a few seconds later.

  “Is that normal?” David asked.

  “Oh yes,” Ernie said, reassuring him. “The fuel tanks are under a lot of pressure, and the fuel is so cold it’s constantly boiling off. We have to let the pressure off.”

  David nodded again, his eyes not leaving the rocket.

  So much depended on this launch. Two months ago their lead engineer, John Coultas, had almost sacrificed himself to save them. They’d launched a daring mission to rescue the crew of the starship Inspiration, trapped in a dangerously low orbit. The Inspiration had been minutes away from a fiery re-entry when John freed their shuttle and allowed David, Elizabeth, and the ten crew of the Inspiration to escape. John had remained behind, orbiting the planet with only his spacesuit for company, contemplating a slow, lonely death.

  And then salvation. Their own starship, Hope, came to his rescue.

  No ordinary ship, Hope had navigated an improbable journey to self-awareness. She’d befriended one of their children, Kurt Thompson, and he’d asked her to save John. His reprieve had bought him only a few months, though, as food supplies onboard were running low.

  John was getting hungry.

  After two months of intense effort, they now had the means to save him once again. The rocket in the distance carried food for John and memory modules for Hope, to feed her insatiable appetite. The capsule would then return John to them.

  “T-minus three minutes. Vehicle is now on internal power.”

  David gripped the handrail tighter. He could almost taste the anticipation in the air as the clock ticked inexorably toward zero.

  “T-minus two minutes. Vehicle final sequence has started.”

  “Of course, we had to make some modifications,” Ernie said, glancing at David.

  “Modifications?”

  “There’s no helium here. The original model used helium to pressurize the fuel tanks.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Ernie said, squinting toward the rocket in the distance. “The test fire seemed OK.”

  “T-minus one minute.”

  David nodded. It would be OK. It had to be OK.

  “So what did you use instead?” he asked, more to cut the tension than from a need to know.

  “Nitrogen. It should work fine,” Ernie said, rubbing his jaw.

  “T-minus thirty seconds.”

  David flicked him a glance before looking back at the rocket, shrouded in mist.

  “T-minus fifteen seconds.”

  They had to get John back. They had to.

  Powerful jets of water cascaded toward the launch pad to dampen the roar from the rocket engines.

  “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Ignition sequence starting.”

  They saw a green flash from the base of the rocket, followe
d by an intense blue-white glow as the nine engines of the first stage ignited. Clouds of steam and smoke billowed from the launch pad.

  “ …Two. One … Liftoff!”

  For a moment the rocket poised on its bed of fire, then rose like a phoenix reborn.

  The sound hit.

  David gripped the rail until his knuckles whitened. Deep, raw, and powerful, he felt the roar of the engines through every bone in his body. The noise drowned the commentary from the loudspeaker as he watched the rocket gather momentum.

  “Vehicle has cleared the tower!”

  He felt the beginnings of relief as the rocket gained altitude.

  He frowned.

  It should still be accelerating. It wasn’t.

  Relief turned to horror as the rocket slowed to a stop then slid back toward the launch pad tail first, tilting to one side. David shot a look at Ernie, who stood there, knuckles white as he gripped the guardrail, mouth open, the whites of his eyes stark against the tanned skin of his face.

  For a moment the early morning sky boasted two suns as an enormous fireball lit the sky where the rocket once had been.

  David looked away so Ernie wouldn’t see his expression.

  A thunderclap split the air as the shock wave arrived, rocking them back on their heels.

  Blood drained from Ernie’s face as he looked at David. Neither of them needed to say anything, they both knew.

  John was in serious trouble.

  John slumped over the view screen as he watched the debris from the explosion fall to the ground in a rain of metal, plastic, and fire. He had no words. He stared at the screen in front of him as if that could somehow change what had just happened.

  It didn’t.

  It couldn’t.

  “John?” Hope asked.

  John didn’t reply. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen, still willing the outcome to be different.

  “John?”

  He buried his face in his hands. He’d been waiting for this for days, weeks, months. In his mind he’d ticked off the days as he counted down toward the day he could eat. Eat something other than dehydrated pasta masquerading as food.

  “John, what will we do now?”

  John’s stomach growled like an angry dog, reminding him he hadn’t eaten for a day. He straightened and took a long swig of water from the bottle in front of him.

  He had plenty of water. Thousands of liters of the stuff, sloshing about in Hope’s fuel tanks.

  “I don’t know.”

  He thought of the fettuccine carbonara in the galley – his most hated meal of all those they’d brought with them on their mission, so long ago.

  He frowned. How long was it? He thought for a moment. Sixty-three years. Maybe a bit less with the time dilation, but near enough. That’s how old that bloody pasta was, and he was pretty sure it tasted awful when new. Age hadn’t improved it.

  He got up and shuffled toward the galley. He opened the pantry door, his daily ritual. There were just as many empty shelves as yesterday.

  He counted the remaining meals. Sixty-four. There were sixty-four packets of fettuccine carbonara waiting to be eaten.

  He sighed. It seemed like a lot, but at two meals a day he had only enough food for another month. He’d have to cut back to one a day.

  “John?”

  “Yes, Hope.”

  “I need –”

  “Memory. Yes, I know. You need more memory.”

  “Yes.”

  John sighed again. Hope always needed more memory.

  2

  “It isn’t fair.” Carla ran her fingers through Franz’s short, spiky hair. “You deserve better than this.”

  Franz van der Westhuizen was the designated captain of the starship Inspiration. The designated captain. He should have led a crew of eight on their voyage from Earth and had assumed he would found a colony of his own. Instead, Edward had drugged him and his crew and thrown them into stasis, giving the captaincy to Vasily Abramovich. Out of some perverse sense of honor toward the nations instigating the mission, Edward had brought them all the way to Tau Ceti, only to abandon them in orbit.

  A low orbit that would have led to their certain death, had they not been rescued by David, John, and Elizabeth.

  Most men would’ve been grateful.

  Not Franz.

  Franz focused on what he’d lost, not what he’d gained. Rather than feel grateful to David and the others, he felt beholden. He resented Vasily for stealing his glory. He even resented John for denying him the opportunity to be a hero.

  Franz turned his head and brushed his lips against Carla’s. “You understand.”

  “Of course I do. I had to suffer as you did, living in Edward’s shadow. But he’s gone now, and we can make a new future. Together, we will take back what is ours.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Ours.”

  Then he lost all interest in anything besides Carla’s urgent kisses.

  Professor Scott Brand yawned and stretched. The clock showed midnight and he’d been working non-stop through the day as the results from their simulations came in.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said.

  Nigel looked up. “It checks out?”

  Scott nodded. “The facts support the hypothesis.” He stifled another yawn. “If I’m right, these five locations here,” – he pointed them out on the map projected on the wall – “should have the evidence to confirm it.”

  Josh stood up, his chair clattering behind him, his eyes shining. “We need to go see!”

  Nigel grinned. His friend had lost none of his enthusiasm over the years. Chasing extra-terrestrial life forms had led them down many blind alleys, but he always jumped at each new opportunity as if it were the first.

  “Yes, we do,” he said with a yawn. “But not now. We all need to sleep. We’ll talk to David tomorrow.”

  Josh’s face fell, but the yawns proved contagious. “Tomorrow,” he said, stifling one of his own.

  “So that’s how it is.” Carla looked up at David with narrowed eyes. “A trial.”

  David nodded. “The leadership council debated what to do with you. We disagreed, so we decided a trial would be the fairest way.”

  Carla snorted. “I’m surprised there was any division. I doubt there’ll be any fairness for me.”

  David said nothing. There had been disagreement, but she was right – most of them had been for punishing Carla for Edward’s murder. After all, there could be no doubt – she’d shot him right in front of them. The only debate might be whether she had just cause for doing it.

  David paused for a long moment. “It’s the best you can hope for.”

  “Do I get a lawyer?”

  David shook his head. “We have no lawyers.” A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “No one seemed to think they were important enough to bring.”

  Carla’s nostrils flared. “You may find this amusing, but my life depends on it!”

  David’s expression became serious again. “I doubt that. None of us have any appetite for capital punishment.”

  Carla leaned in closer and looked up at him. “Is that what you think?”

  David stepped back as if allergic to her closeness. Her question had touched a nerve. “No one wants any more killing.”

  “Then how would you punish a killer?”

  David pursed his lips. “That remains to be seen. First you have to be found guilty.”

  Carla sucked in her breath. “You don’t think I am?”

  “I didn’t say that. Only that we can’t punish someone until they’re found guilty of the crime.”

  He turned to go.

  “Wait!”

  David looked back.

  “We don’t have lawyers, I get that. But do I get someone to represent me?”

  David crooked a half-smile. “You can have someone to support you, if you can find anyone.”

  “And when will this trial be?”

  “One week from today.”

  Carla stared.
“That gives me hardly any time to prepare!”

  David met her gaze. “That’s the thing about Haven. We don’t have the time for red tape. We don’t need it. If you’re innocent, you already know your story. All you have to do is tell it. Right?” He watched her, looking for a reaction.

  Carla’s face flickered as she fought to control her expression. David knew she had no choice but to agree – begging for time would only make it look as if she needed it to invent an excuse.

  “Right,” she said.

  David held her gaze a moment, then nodded once and left her to her thoughts.

  “OOF!” The breath whooshed out of Simon’s lungs as he hit the ground. Again.

  He’d come across Nigel working through his morning martial arts routine. Simon had seen him do this before and had wondered what it would be like to fight him. Simon fancied himself as being more than useful at hand-to-hand combat, but his training had been in bar room brawls rather than a dojo.

  So he’d asked Nigel if he’d like to spar.

  “Are you sure?” Nigel had asked.

  Simon had been sure.

  He should’ve known what was coming by the smile of anticipation on Nigel’s face.

  Simon kicked off his running shoes and squared off, hands held at the ready. The two men circled, eyes narrowed. Nigel waited. Simon lunged, one meaty fist aimed at Nigel’s head. The result had been Simon on the ground, blinking at the speed he had transitioned from vertical to horizontal.

  He tried again. And again. The only thing that changed was the number of seconds it took to hit the ground. After his tenth attempt he had to admit he might not win this time.

  Nigel offered a hand to help him up.

  Simon smiled, shaking his head. He dusted himself off. “I’d like to know how you did that.”

  “Practice, mate, lots and lots of practice.”

  Nigel and Simon turned to find they had an audience.

  Joyce Ng.

  She looked at Nigel, her eyes shining. “Can you teach me how to do that?”