by A. G. Riddle
“Ma’am,” Aguilar calls out, “the relay balloons have reached altitude. We have active comms with Carthage.”
“Retrieve aerial imagery.”
Izumi, Min, and Grigory arrive in the Command Post in time to see the first image from the Carthage, which shows Eos’s dark side from orbit. Ice covers the ground and mountain peaks that border the valley. Wide, winding rivers stretch across the expanse. For the first time, there’s a massive storm on the dark side, formed like a hurricane, with a wide eye and spiral arms lashing out. It’s hovering at the intersection of two major rivers.
My first thought is James. I grab a radio from the table and speak quickly. “James, this is Jericho CP, do you copy?”
I wait, but there’s no response.
“James, do you read?”
Still no response. Was he close by when the storm formed? Is he trapped? Or worse?
I turn to Brightwell. “We need IR from the Carthage.”
She nods and Aguilar types quickly at his terminal. “IR overlay requested.” He pauses. “Delta image caps downloading.”
A second later, the image on the screen updates, showing the storm’s arms churning counter clockwise. It’s moving up the river, toward the mountains and the valley.
“Get Doctor Morgan in here,” Brightwell says quietly, still studying the storm.
Charles Morgan was one of the top climatologists in the United States before the Long Winter. His team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, or NOAA, modeled the Long Winter and made some of the most precise predictions.
His eyes go wide when he enters the command post and sees the screen.
“Doctor?” Brightwell asks, snapping him out of the trance.
“Is this all you have?” he whispers.
Aguilar hits a few keys and the screen snaps into motion, the delta image caps joining to make a choppy video that shows the massive storm moving along the river, toward the mountains that border our valley.
Morgan leans forward, adjusting his thick glasses. “This is... unexpected.”
“Will it impact us?”
“Of course.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“About the storm? No. I’m a climatologist, not a meteorologist—”
“Doctor,” Brightwell says, voice tense. “What can you tell us? Quickly, please.”
Morgan takes a deep breath. “All right. How fast is the storm moving? And what’s the top wind speed?”
Aguilar answers a few seconds later. “It’s moving at ten klicks per hour. Max windspeed is one hundred and fifty kph.”
“Show me telemetry from the valley and desert.”
“It’s seven hours old,” Brightwell says. “That’s when the Jericho last flew over. We’ve got two drones transiting the jungle. They’ll reach the desert in...” she eyes Aguilar, who says, “six minutes.”
Morgan shakes his head. “This is bad.”
Brightwell exhales impatiently. “Again, can you be more specific, Doctor?”
“Not really. Not with this much data.” He throws his hands up. “We lived on Earth for millions of years—studied its climate for thousands of years. We’ve been here a year. We still have no idea what Eos is capable of. We don’t even know—”
My voice calm, I lock eyes with Morgan. “Doctor. Please tell us anything you think might be helpful. Time is of the essence.”
He takes a deep breath. “The planet is turning slightly because of that rouge planet passing by. Its gravity is pulling at Eos. The effect is that our valley is being pulled toward the star—just slightly, but enough to cause some major issues. Namely, it’s making the valley hotter and more humid. Warm air from the desert is spilling into the western jungle. The worst is what’s happening to the rivers. This valley serves as a natural filter between the warm and cool sides of the planet. Warm water flows from the desert into the valley, where it cools before it reaches the dark side. That’s not happening enough anymore. The water reaching the dark side is too warm.”
Morgan points at the screen. “That storm is going to travel up that river, feeding on the warm water like a power source. If it reaches the mountains, the storm surge will send water back into the valley and the storm could possibly shear the icecaps from the ridges, allowing even more warm air out of the valley and onto the dark side. It’s a spiraling process until that planet passes.”
“What does that mean for us—here?” I ask.
“At a minimum, this valley will see some flooding. Maybe a lot. That’s probably why this area is grassland—and why I told you we should have studied the planet for longer before we settled here—”
“That’s enough, Doctor Morgan. We’ve been over this. We didn’t have enough rations on the Jericho for a prolonged study—”
“We could have settled in the mountains.”
“We can’t grow crops in rock,” I reply. “And there are too many predators there.”
At that moment, the footage from the drones catches my eye. The jungle canopy is thinning. Massive trees lie on the ground, shattered and tossed around like toothpicks.
Our enemy lies dead on the ground, some crushed by the trees, other seemingly unharmed, but the heat of their life signs is gone. What killed them?
Even before we came down to the planet, we knew that the Eos Rex was the most dangerous predator on this world. We call them E-Rex because they resemble the T-Rex dinosaurs from Earth’s past. Both are lizard-like, with thick, scaly skin. The E-Rex also runs on two muscular back legs. But where the T-Rex had two small arms on its torso, the E-rex has four: two longer arms and two shorter. It also has a long tail with a sharp spike at the end. We’ve seen it spear its prey with it, then use the arms to rip it apart.
To date, the E-rex have killed seven of our people—five soldiers and two adults who were hunting in the Western Jungle. We’ve killed twice as many of the E-rex, and it wasn’t easy. Their skin is tough—not tough enough to withstand a gunshot, but the bone in their skulls is. It takes two or three shots to pierce skull, though a shot through the eyes, nose, or mouth will kill them in one. As fast as they move, that’s a tall order.
Their vision is principally infrared, which, along with a heightened sense of smell, is how they locate their prey. Once we figured that out, we created the suits like the one I’m wearing. That enabled us to move unseen, and to counter the threat—assuming there weren’t too many of them.
That’s not the case now. The herd of E-rex moving toward Jericho City must number in the thousands. If it were a dozen, we could stop them. A few dozen, probably. A hundred? Doubtful. Against this herd, we don’t stand a chance.
And I wonder: what are they running from?
On the screen, the drone footage shows the Western mountain range, which borders the desert. Above the ridge line, a wall of sand and wind spreads out.
“A sandstorm,” Brightwell says quietly. “Is that what the herd is running from?”
“Maybe,” Morgan whispers. “At least one of the sandstorms breached the mountains and flattened some of the jungle.” He steps closer to the screen and points. “There, look. Focus on that downed E-Rex.”
The image zooms in on the fallen beast. It’s not moving. Deep cuts run all over its body, as if a razor blade sliced into it a thousand times.
“This is why they’re running,” Morgan says. “It’s not the sandstorm. It’s a predator. Some animal that lives in the desert—on the other side of the mountains—has come across with the warm air.” Still pointing at the image of the dead E-rex, Morgan turns to Brightwell and me. “If this predator can do that to the E-Rex, we don’t stand a chance against it. If that sandstorm comes deeper into the jungle, it will bring that animal with it. And if the storms meet—the blizzard and the sandstorm—we won’t survive it. We have to go. Right now.”
Chapter Four
James
A whistling sound screams from the mouth of the cave, reaching down into the darkness like a monster calling to me.
Arthur turns slightly toward the sound. “The storm has begun, James. Leave now.”
“There’s something down here you don’t want me to find.”
“Or maybe I just don’t want you to get yourself killed.”
I push off from the cave wall and step toward the piles of bones, the lamp from my helmet lighting my way. It’s the saddest, most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen, people lying in piles, the skeletons of children hugging the adults.
The wind grows louder by the second. The storm out there is picking up.
I skirt the edge of the bones, careful not to disturb them. Tiny insects are crawling over the cadavers. That’s what took them down to skeletons.
Deeper into the cave, the insects are absent and the bodies are better preserved. The skin is grey, the hair and nails brittle. They look almost like corpses in a morgue. Indeed, the cave provides an almost ideal place to preserve the bodies—it’s dark and cold.
Ahead, my headlamp passes over a pair of blue coveralls similar to the ones I wore in the warehouse in Camp Nine. The face is grey and sunken, but I recognize my old friend lying among the dead.
“Harry,” I whisper as I move to his body. Fowler is beside him, Charlotte a few feet away, hugging two smaller bodies.
These are the Carthaginian colonists. Our lost colony has been found. But why here at the origin—or termination—of the Eye of the Grid?
My light catches on something in Harry’s hand. I reach down and gently move his stiff fingers.
It’s a small data drive.
I swallow and stare at it a long moment. I bet it’s a message from my old friend. He left it here where he knew I would find it, deep in this cave no one else could find, safe from the storms and predators and whatever else is waiting for us on Eos.
I plug the drive into the tablet. There are hundreds of files. Documents. Charts. Logs from medical devices. Blood test results.
At the top of the list is a video file named _Hello-World. I play it and Harry’s face fills the screen. He’s sitting in a cave—this cave by the looks of it. A dim light shines up on his face from below, bathing him in an unnatural glow. His voice is soft, as if he doesn’t want the people nearby to hear him.
“Welcome to this week’s episode of Tales from The Crypt.”
He raises his eyebrows theatrically, then settles into a somber smile. “That’s probably not as funny as I think it is, but hey, how many times does a joke like that present itself? Actually, that show was probably before your time anyway.”
He pauses then stares directly into the camera. “I’m leaving this for you, James, because I figure you’ll be the one who finds this place. I hope learning what happened to us will help you. It’ll become obvious soon why we didn’t go back to our camp, why we came here.”
He swallows, as if gathering his thoughts.
“It all started with the storms.”
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Author's Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading The Solar War. When I began writing this novel, I intended for it complete The Long Winter series. But, as sometimes happens, the story had other plans. There will be a third and final volume in this (now) trilogy. The title is The Lost Colony, and it will be a novella (about 200 pages in print). Since it’s a shorter book, it will cost half of what The Solar War did.
I’ve always been committed to using the fewest number of words (and books) to tell a story. The Long Winter happened to take two and a half books. I hope you’ll stick around for the final installment. It will be a little more sci-fi in nature—more speculative—than the first two books. If that’s not your cup of tea, I understand that too.
As for things at home, the last year since my mother’s passing has been difficult but also quite healing. Life will never be the same, but that’s simply the way life is.
We’re under construction on a new home which I hope will be a great place for the kids to grow up (and for their father to write and return fan mail).
Thanks again for reading, and I hope you’re in the best season of your life.
- Gerry
raleigh, north carolina
10 may 2018
writing as A.G. Riddle
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have completed The Solar War without the extraordinary team around me.
My thanks first go to my wife, Anna, for her support during the incredibly trying period when I wrote this novel. Things have taken a turn for the better, and I certainly feel a new appreciation for the good times in my life.
I also want to thank my literary team, including Danny and Heather Baror, Gray Tan, and Brian Lipson. They have been tireless champions of my work, putting it on the map in countries around the world (and in the US).
A special thanks to Head of Zeus—my UK publisher—for the production of this book. Richenda Todd edited The Solar War and did a terrific job, improving the story by leaps and bounds.
Several early readers made significant contributions that greatly improved the work: Michelle Duff, Lisa Weinberg, Kristen Miller, Katie Regan, Norma Jean Fritz, Julia Greenawalt, and Cindy Prendergast.
And I want to thank you, my readers, without whom this show simply wouldn’t go on. Thank you for following my work.
- Gerry
About the Author
A.G. Riddle spent ten years starting internet companies before retiring to pursue his true passion: writing fiction.
His debut novel, The Atlantis Gene, is the first book in a trilogy (The Origin Mystery) that has sold over three million copies worldwide, has been translated into 20 languages, and is in development to be a major motion picture.
His fourth novel, Departure, follows the survivors of a flight that takes off in 2015 and crash-lands in a changed world. HarperCollins published the novel in hardcover in the fall of 2015, and 20th Century Fox is developing it for a feature film.
Released in 2017, his fifth novel, Pandemic, focuses on a team of researchers investigating an outbreak that could alter the human race. The sequel, Genome, concludes the two-book series.
His most recent novel, Winter World, depicts a group of scientists racing to stop a global ice age.
Riddle grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill. During his sophomore year in college, he started his first company with a childhood friend. He currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, who endures his various idiosyncrasies in return for being the first to read his new novels.
No matter where he is, or what’s going on, he tries his best to set aside time every day to answer emails and messages from readers. You can reach him at: [email protected]
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