The Ochiran Chronicles

by Joe Horan

  Three more exotic matter vents had opened up. Radiation was pouring into the atmosphere; they had hours to get everyone off the planet. Shuttles were being turned round as quickly as possible. Time was running out. They were concentrating on clearing the eastern evacuation points now as they were in the most danger.

  Princess Desiree stood outside the main gate of Ochira City. She was adamant that she was going to be on the last shuttle; nothing the Star People said would change her mind. They wanted her to put on one of those orange suits they were wearing.

  “Have you enough for the rest of the people?” she asked.

  “No. We only have a few, but we’ve found one for you.”

  “Then I will not wear one. Keep giving me the injections if you have to, but do not expect me to wear one of those suits if my people must do without.”

  She had never felt ill in her life. She had experienced pain during the battle when her flesh was cut by enemy blades and weakness afterwards when the healer stitched her up, but that was the inevitable result of her battle wounds. Sometimes the partly healed sword slash across her chest and belly still hurt and she had to consciously control the pain, but she had never felt ill until now. She felt weak and sick and her skin burnt. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up, or rather they were being broken up. Something in the atmosphere was tearing them to shreds and sweeping them away towards the west.

  Lieutenant Gann checked the radiation reading. Eight hundred and rising rapidly now; everyone without protection was going to need immediate regenerator treatment. There were earth tremors every few minutes; the planet’s crust was breaking apart. She glanced at the teenage princess beside her, outwardly calm in the face of the catastrophe that was consuming her world. In every other evacuation she heard of the leaders were on the first ship out, not the last. This was what true leadership meant, the ability to project calm confidence for the sake of your people even when the world was burning.

  Another shuttle lifted off. The last of the transports left orbit four hours ago and they were cramming everyone aboard the Garatomba now and she was already grossly overloaded. They had lifted every survivor from Ochira plus a few from Whesthan and Kaun, but so many ships had been loaded over LSL that it was by no means guaranteed that all would make it to their destination alive.

  Only about twenty Ochirans remained and eight Atumcarians. One more shuttle would be enough. It dropped through the streaks of tortured vapour the clouds had become and came in to land…

  Suddenly the eastern horizon blazed with light, every colour of the rainbow.

  “Is that…?” said Lieutenant Gann.

  Desiree, standing beside her, heard the reply coming through the comlink.

  “Yes. A vent’s opened up fifty miles east of you. Radiation’s off the scale. You’ve got two minutes max.”

  The shuttle touched down and the door opened. The Star People were screaming at them to go so they ran towards it. A woman in front of her fell, so Desiree picked her up and half dragged, half carried her towards the door. They were at the shuttle. They were through the door. It swung closed and the crew slammed the locking lever across.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  The shuttle lifted and climbed towards space, lurching and rolling as it hit shockwaves in the atmosphere. Desire vomited, a horrible bloody fluid.

  “Garatomba, shuttle two-six incoming with medical emergency,” said Lieutenant Gann. “Twenty with severe radiation exposure.”

  On the Garatomba’s bridge they watched the screen in silence. More and more vents were opening, spewing exotic matter and radiation. The mood was sombre; they were watching the death of a world.

  Chapter 11

  Refugee Ship

  Desiree woke up. There was a slight but persistent vibration being transmitted to her body through the bed, the air smelt funny and when she tried to move she couldn’t. She opened her eyes and found she was lying in a small room which was lit by a glowing panel in the ceiling. A metal frame covered her body and another stopped her from moving her head.

  I am on one of the Ancestors’ ships of fire. I am on one of the Ancestors’ ships of fire and the World is gone. She tried to blink away the tears but they wouldn’t stop. My World has ended. All that I knew is gone, but my people live on. Thanks to the Ancestors my people live on.

  A young woman came in. She was wearing a green tunic, which Desiree knew meant he was the Atumcarian equivalent of a healer. She saw her eyes were open and went out. A minute later another, older woman came in.

  “I’m Surgeon Lieutenant Alyce Helmslaw, Chief Medical Officer on the Garatomba,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Weak, and I don’t like it. I’m not used to feeling weak. And why can’t I move?”

  “You’re in a full body regenerator. You took a very high dose of radiation, one that would have proved fatal without treatment.” She paused, then continued, “I notice you have an injury across the front of your body, a very unsightly scar.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, please.”

  “Not without your permission. How did it happen?”

  “A sword. King Shalmazar caught me with his blade.”

  “How did you control the bleeding?”

  “Bloodweed.”

  “Bloodweed?”

  “Yes, it’s a small plant that grows everywhere on the World – grew everywhere. The first thing you’re taught as a child is that if you cut yourself to rub bloodweed on it. It stops the bleeding almost at once. When we go into battle we have it under our armour against the skin in case we’re wounded.”

  “A natural coagulant, and a powerful one at that! Without it you would almost certainly have died from loss of blood. Have you got any of this bloodweed?”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t go to our new home without taking it.”

  “I’d appreciate some. And about your scar, don’t worry. A few sessions in a cosmetic regenerator should get rid of it completely, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes please.”

  Tears were threatening again. She never cried, not since she was a little girl.

  An hour later Captain Lay came to see her.

  “We are seriously overloaded,” she said. “We have almost twice the number of people our life support can sustain, so we’re heading for the nearest base at maximum speed. The troopship Chalize is undergoing repairs there and when she’s ready she will take you on to your new home. We are still five days away, so the air is going to get very bad. The Garatomba will have to come out of service because by then the carbon dioxide filters will be clogged. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but I’m sorry I won’t be able to take you all the way.”

  “Thank you for your help,” said Desiree. “When we are settled in you will always be welcome.”

  Shania had received a high dose of radiation as well, though not bad enough to be immediately life threatening. Others were worse so she had to wait for regenerator treatment; the Noquelia was an old troopship that had been taken out of mothballs in a hurry. She had limited medical facilities. When she woke up she was transferred to a crowded dormitory where she spent the first week lying in a hard and uncomfortable bed, throwing up every time she tried to eat. The drive was out of balance and the ship vibrated heavily, though Shania had no way of knowing that this was not normal.

  After she had been aboard for a week her turn came. She was put in a wheelchair and taken through what seemed like miles of crowded metal corridors to the sickbay, where the two full body regenerators that someone had the foresight to put aboard before the ship left C2 were working their way through the refugees who had received more than a level-1 dose of radiation. She spent six hours in one of the machines and was then pronounced fit. She was still weak, but she could keep her food down now (horrible, tasteless ration bars). Hopefully now that she was eating she would get a bit stronger. There was nowhere to exercise apart from the crowded corridors and her legs still hurt, so she spent most of the time lying down. Sh
e had managed to bring no personal possessions with her at all, there was nothing to do and nothing to read. The people in her dormitory recognised she wasn’t well and looked after her as best they could, even trying to get her to eat extra ration bars.

  There were just under ten thousand people on the Noquelia; her LSL was eight thousand, two hundred and sixty. After three weeks the air was getting foul; there was a foetid smell to it that an experienced space traveller would recognise as clogged carbon dioxide filters. The refugees were told to move as little as possible which suited Shania fine. The bad air made her feel sick again and she spent most of the day lying on her bed.

  The Noquelia was old and slow; the journey to their new homeworld would take at least two months. The crew had got on top of the filters and though the air was still bad it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been. There was nothing that could be done about the vibration, though. Rebalancing the engines was a dockyard job.

  They turned the lights down for eight hours every day to help them sleep. It didn’t work for Shania. She just stayed awake until she passed out from exhaustion and then woke up far too soon. The journey was taking on the character of a never-ending nightmare.

  Then someone in her dormitory died. A fifteen-year-old girl went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up in the morning. The healers came and did their best with their technological machines but they couldn’t revive her. They took her away and Shania had no idea what happened to her. The brother she was travelling with was distraught. Shania wondered how many other people had died. She didn’t ask because she didn’t want to know.

  And still the nightmare journey went on. Two and a half months they said now; speed was dropping as the balance of the engines grew worse. The constant vibration, the stench of the air was getting to everyone. Ochirans knew how to endure patiently, which was just as well. There was a village elder in their dormitory and she took charge, settling the petty disputes that inevitably arose. A few romances were starting, though the total lack of privacy was against them. At least she had got control of the pain in her legs; the fact that she wasn’t using them helped.

  Then early one morning (ship’s time) the engines stopped altogether.

  There was a brief announcement:

  We have a small problem in the engine room. We will have it fixed and be on our way shortly.

  They were stopped all day and all the following night. Every so often there was an announcement that they would be on their way shortly. Finally, about twenty-four hours after they first stopped, came the final announcement:

  This is the captain. I’m afraid we have a major drive train failure. The ship will have to be towed to a heavy engineering facility for repairs. Another ship will rendezvous with us in about ten days to take you on to your destination.

  To say that morale plummeted would be an understatement. The silence was worse than the continual vibration. There was only the distant hum of the environmental pumps and the gentle hiss of air moving through the vents. The ship was tumbling slowly end over end; with no propulsive power there was no way to stabilise her. The hull creaked gently with occasional louder metallic bangs. Shania found herself lying awake at night listening to these, unable to sleep. There was the occasional reassuring announcement to say the rescue ship was on its way. The irony was not lost on the refugees; the rescue ship now needed a rescue ship.

  Eleven days after the Noquelia broke down it was announced the liner Grande was ten hours away. The refugees were to prepare for transfer.

  It wasn’t practical to hard dock two large ships when one of them was tumbling slowly with no power. Transfer would have to be by shuttle. The Noquelia had three in her bay, the Grande had four and with the added difficulty of docking with a tumbling ship the transfer was expected to take six hours. They had to queue up at their respective docking ports and wait their turn for transfer. For Shania it meant another long period on her feet and her legs soon began to ache, though the refugees in her dormitory looked after her as best they could. Eventually they reached the front of the queue and boarded the shuttle for the ten-minute trip across to the Grande.

  The first thing she noticed as she came through the docking port into the Grande was the smell, or rather the lack of it. The air was positively fresh. The Grande was a large, modern economy-class liner with dormitory accommodation. The beds were larger and more comfortable that those on the Noquelia and each had a curtain that could be pulled round it to give at least the illusion of privacy. There were lounges scattered throughout the ship with a vid screen on which films could be shown, or music videos, or GNS[†] when they were in range of a suitable relay. Compared with the Noquelia this was luxury. Food was reconstituted dried meals served in spacefleet-style cafeterias, an infinite improvement on the ration bars they had on the Noquelia.

  Shortly after the last of the refugees came aboard there was a safety announcement telling them what to do in an emergency. As a commercial liner the Grande had by law to carry escape capsules for all on board; the Noquelia was a military troop carrier operated by the spacefleet and had none. Shania listened to this dutifully, then pulled the curtains round her bed and went to sleep. The clean air, the comfortable bed and the almost complete lack of vibration meant she was able to catch up on some of the sleep she had lost.

  The Grande was considerably faster than the Noquelia and it was only ten days to their destination. To Shania those ten days felt like a holiday.

  Everyone crowded into the lounges. The feed from the ship’s external scanners was being routed to the screens and the small spot in the centre was their new home. The Grande had been on her deceleration curve for a couple of hours now; bringing such a large and heavy ship down from its interstellar cruising speed was best done gradually.

  The refugees had seated Shania in one of the comfortable chairs at the front; they knew how physically frail she was and looked after her. She even had a cup of juice someone had got for her. She watched as the speck on the screen grew steadily larger. In a few hours they would be in orbit and then they could start shuttling down. She had lived through the journey. She only knew of the one death, but she suspected many had not made it. The bad air on the Noquelia, the bad food, the residual effects of exposure to radiation must have taken many who were already old, weak or sickly, but somehow her fragile body had survived.

  The planet had been named New Ochira. Most of it was in darkness, but the scanners automatically compensated. As they got nearer, more details became apparent. A few days ago a basic map had become available on the video screens, apparently compiled from orbital scans. As a cartographer Shania had studied it carefully and was able to relate what she was now seeing to the map of the globe she carried in her head. A large ocean filled most of the disc, with islands scattered across it; that must be the Great Dividing Ocean. There were two continents to the west; one must be the Northern Temperate Continent where the colony was being established, the other the Trans-Equatorial Continent. They were arriving during the afternoon at the colony site, though it was midday on the Grande. Ship time and local time were about four hours out.

  There was a sudden juddering vibration which shook the whole ship, then it settled down again. They all looked at one another, remembering their experience on the Noquelia…

  This is the captain speaking. Just for your information, that was our sublight drive starting. We will be entering a low planetary orbit to assist shuttle transfer. It is about five o’clock in the afternoon at Ochira City, and as there are no facilities for night shuttle operations we will start disembarking you tomorrow morning, about three o’clock ship’s time. I recommend you get an early night. Breakfast will be served in the ship’s cafeterias from one a.m.

  The Grande’s captain kept them informed what was happening. On the Noquelia they hadn’t been told a thing until the engines broke down. She supposed that was the difference between a passenger ship and a military transport. Despite his advice no one was going to get much sleep that night.
r />   Chapter 12

  New Ochira

  The lights in the dormitory came on at one. Shania put on clean clothes – grey tunic and black trousers, the standard wear they had been provided with during the trip. She hadn’t slept much, if at all. She had heard people talking softly all night.

  “Pay attention,” announced Keila, the village elder they had chosen as dorm captain. “We are scheduled to leave from docking port three at five twenty-five. Be back in the dorm at four thirty. We need someone to take care of Shania.”

  “We’ll do it,” said Alicia Bondo, speaking for her family.

  “Now go and get some breakfast. We’ve lived through hell, but we’re alive and we’re nearly there.”

  Shania breakfasted with the Bondo family; mother, father, three teenage daughters and a ten-year-old son. An older son died in the sun scorch. They had a farm just outside Ochira City and intended to get another farm on New Ochira. They hoped all the best land had not already been taken; the Grande’s passengers were by a considerable margin the last refugees to reach New Ochira.

  After breakfast it was back to the dormitory to wait. At ten past five a crewman arrived to take them to their departure point. The Bondos made sure she kept up. They joined the back of a queue which moved forwards by sections every time a shuttle loaded. By five forty-five they were at the docking point. Two of the Bondo daughters had stationed themselves either side of Shania to make sure she was all right.

  A shuttle docked, the door opened and the crew started to count them on. Shania entered the shuttle and sat down, still flanked by the Bondo girls. Her legs were hurting from the standing, but she could control the pain. The crew closed and locked the doors, it separated from the ship with a jolt, tipped over and started to drop towards the planet.

  It was the first time any of them had experienced atmospheric entry in a shuttle and there was a little stir of alarm as flames started to shoot past the windows.