Colonial Prime_Humanity

by Kevin L. Nielsen

  Eventually, the slope of the curved shaft allowed him to lean forward into a sort of half-crawl, half-scoot as he approached what he assumed was the first ventilation grate, judging from the way the light spliced across the sides of the shaft. He approached as silently as he could and glanced at his wristband. Only three minutes left.

  He felt a moment of sudden, absolute panic. It had taken him seven minutes to get to the first air grate. Jordan had said they were all spaced evenly, meaning he still had a way to go before he hit the one he needed. He needed to pick up the pace. He spared a glance through the grate.

  People scurried back and forth far below him and Jaelyn experienced a moment of vertigo. It had to have been at least a 15 meter drop from where he was. He swallowed hard, pushing the panic down as best he could, but it was like trying to prune a vine. No matter how well tended it was, tendrils of the thing still managed to get everywhere.

  He didn’t see his mother, though he caught a glimpse of Sheawn Olliard as he rushed toward the door where Commander Esquina and the others were waiting.

  “Time’s up!” Jaelyn said under his breath, moving past the grate at as fast a shuffle as he could muster and still retain some measure of silence.

  He crawled with dogged determination, glancing at his wristband every few seconds to make sure he stayed ahead of the countdown.

  Two minutes.

  Jaelyn picked up his pace. The concussion rifle slipped from his shoulder and struck the ventilation shaft with a dull, metallic thud. Jaelyn didn’t slow. The time for stealth had passed. He looked at the time.

  Forty-five seconds. A loud noise sounded from below. A gunshot?

  Where had the last minute plus gone? It hadn’t felt that long, had it? He urged himself faster. Breaths came in ragged gasps, lungs filling with dry, musty air. Light appeared ahead and Jaelyn noticed the slope of the shaft leveling out. Sweat dripped down into his eyes, but he didn’t slow to wipe it away, ignoring the sting.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Jaelyn reached the grate, finding the shaft around it nearly entirely horizontal. The shaft wasn’t tall, but it was enough for him to swing into a sitting position with his head half crouched over, back bent. The bars in the grate were spaced apart just widely enough for him to get the barrel of the rifle through. He looked down, expecting the vertigo this time and readying himself for it.

  Dr. Martin stood with a gun pointed at his mother. Two still forms lay on the DuraGlass bubble far below them, though they appeared small and insignificant from Jaelyn’s vantage point.

  Dr. Martin had a gun pointed at his mother.

  Zero Seconds.

  The door on the far side of the room burst open, Commander Esquina and his men charging through, silent guns firing as evidenced by the men and women in the room falling over as if shot. Dr. Martin glanced that way, though the gun in her hand never wavered.

  Jaelyn willed his mother to move, to act, as she’d always trained him. She was barely feet from Dr. Martin. The moment of distraction was more than enough time for his mother to cover the distance between them, disarm the woman, and take her down. Amara didn’t move.

  “Come on!” Jaelyn said. He dialed the diode on the side of the concussion rifle, turning up the frequency. It would create a beam so narrow, it would be thinner than most standard bullets. A perfect sniper’s weapon. Getting hit with that sort of frequency not only killed, it pretty much destroyed a person internally as well.

  Commander Esquina’s team had already taken out over half of the people in the Command Bubble. Dr. Martin shouted something and some of the defenders ran for the other door, but Jaelyn couldn’t see what else was happening in that direction from his vantage point. Dr. Martin turned back to his mother.

  Jaleyn dropped his finger onto the trigger of his rifle, sighting through the small scope. He focused on Dr. Martin’s chest.

  He hesitated. Could he do this? Dr. Martin had been his friend. She’d been –

  Dr. Martin fired. The sound of the shot hit Jaelyn like a thunderclap. Jaelyn saw his mother go down, saw her fall over the side of the catwalk and land in a heap on the Command Bubble glass below, next to the two bodies. For half a second longer, Jaelyn sat there, frozen in stunned shock.

  He pulled the trigger.

  As usual, no sound came from the weapon, but almost instantly, Dr. Martin collapsed. His shot had been true. Even at this distance, he knew she was dead, blood coming from one of her ears. Jaelyn felt hot tears on his cheeks, and heard someone screaming. It took him a long minute to realize the screams were his own. His mother…Dr. Martin…he’d failed.

  Jaelyn awoke some time later, coming from blissful darkness to cognizance in between two breaths. Bright, white lights blared down at him from above and…was he lying down?

  He sat up in a rush and immediately regretted it. Blood rushed to his head and he started seeing spots. A headache blared and he hastily brought his hands up to the sides of his head, massaging at his temples.

  “Careful, Jaelyn. Not too fast, now.”

  Jaelyn’s blood ran cold. He whipped his head in the direction of the voice and saw his mother in a sterile, white hospital bed alongside him. Despite the thin, white blanket, Jaelyn could see the slightly off-white bandages wrapped around her shoulder and chest, though, thankfully, no blood showed through.

  “Mom!” he all but shouted, struggling to get out of his own bed while still tangled in the sheets and thin blanket that had covered him. “You’re alive. I – I saw you get shot, you fell, you – ” Jaleyn stopped, mouth working as his mind danced through half a dozen images and memories before finally settling on one. “You’re pregnant,” he finished, lamely.

  His mother smiled and then winced as she shifted in her bed.

  “Yes, I am, Jaelyn. Commander Esquina is the father.”

  “I know.” Jaelyn hopped out of his own bed, ignoring the dizziness, and walked over to his mother’s side, taking her hand in his. She squeezed it gently.

  “You know? I guess that’s not a surprise. Nathan, Commander Esquina, knew too. This mutiny spoiled any chance I had of telling him myself, I guess.”

  “That wasn’t very nice of those mutineers, was it?” Jaelyn joked, though it sounded flat even to his own ears.

  His mother let the silence hang for a moment before breaking it by speaking. “Thank you for what you did, Jaelyn. Commander Esquina told me what happened.”

  Jaelyn shrugged. He didn’t really want to think about it. He sensed the hesitation in her voice, the stiff way she referred to the man who was the father of her baby by his rank rather than his name. She was nervous, he realized. Of him and how he’d react. At least Dr. Martin had been able to teach him something about reading people, even if she’d been a traitor. Jaelyn pushed the thoughts aside, focusing on the moment at hand.

  “You’re my mom. I couldn’t lose you. I...” he felt tears well up in his eyes again, but refused to cry. It was so undignified for one to cry in front of their mother. “I thought I was too late.”

  His mother smiled. “Just in time, I think.”

  “Dr. Martin and the others?” Jaelyn asked, voice soft.

  “Dr. Martin didn’t survive, though many of her people did, including Sheawn Olliard. They’re aboard the Delta and Omega ships, limping back to Earth. They’ll get there in about six or seven years, if their fuel holds out on them. The landing may be a bit rough.” His mother grimaced again and tried to sit up. Jaelyn helped her as best he could, then stopped, realizing something.

  “Wait, they’re aboard the Delta and Omega? How’d you manage that? We would have had to stop completely for that to happen.”

  His mother nodded. “We did stop. We didn’t have much choice, really. We’re back underway again with the other two vessels in tow. They’d managed to hold their own against the mutineers there. Nathan is confident he can get us back up to speed with a few modifications to the engines. He’ll have his hands full, as executive officer and chief engineer, but we’ll
manage. We’ve still got almost a full complement of crew and as many passengers. They’ll shift duties often enough.”

  “That many?”

  Amara smiled. “Yes, that many.”

  “We’re really going then, for reals this time?”

  “We’re really going,” Amara said. “All of us are headed to Villa Nova. We’ll be about a year longer on this voyage than we thought, but it’s not that much longer, relatively speaking. Of course, we’ll need you to take over the gardens and our botany team, son.” She hesitated and then took Jaelyn’s hand again. “You, me, the baby, and Nathan have a chance at starting something new together as a family, Jaelyn. If you want.”

  Jaelyn was surprised to hear the nervousness in her voice, the yearning for his approval and acceptance. In the light of everything they’d just gone through, the stress, the chaos, and terror of the mutiny itself, a new life sounded perfect.

  “I’d like that,” he said, and smiled.

  The proximity alarm on the door sounded and Jaelyn turned as it opened and Commander Esquina stepped inside, stopping just inside the door. Jaelyn couldn’t decide if he should grimace or smile, or both at once, somehow. Commander Esquina, for his part, shifted in his stance, fingers moving back and forth across the datapad he held in one hand. He still looked the worse for wear, but – well, there was something about the earnest look of concern in his eyes when he looked from Jaelyn to his mother that Jaelyn couldn’t refute. Still, his mother…

  “Be nice, Jaelyn,” Amara said, squeezing Jaelyn’s hand. Her voice was soft, but Jaelyn could tell by the slight shift in Commander Esquina’s posture that he’d heard as well.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Jaelyn muttered, but didn’t meet her eyes. Fine, he’d give the man a chance. He seemed a decent enough man, after all. Still, he couldn’t suppress the questions running through his mind. What was the new life going to be? Were Commander Esquina and his mother planning on moving in together? Would they get married? How would that change his life? Jaelyn couldn’t help but push down a knot of fear and anxiety that threatened to strangle him.

  “Nathan,” Amara said, raising her voice a little and beckoning to the man with her free hand, “is everything underway? Holly doing alright?”

  Commander Esquina nodded and stepped forward, reaching out and taking Amara’s other hand as he came alongside the bed. Jaelyn found he didn’t mind sharing, which surprised him.

  “We’re underway and on schedule. The doc says she’ll be fine. A few scrapes and bruises, but she’ll live.”

  “Wait,” Jaelyn asked, “Holly? Chalmers? The weapons officer? What happened?”

  Amara nodded. “A group of the mutineers tried to take back the engineering section while Nathan and you were rescuing me. She held it until Kuthar could get there with reinforcements.”

  “How many did we lose?” Jaelyn asked, licking his lips.

  Amara and Commander Esquina’s expressions immediately sobered. “All together? Seventeen dead on our side, fifty-three on theirs, between all the ships. We lost about fifteen hundred that chose to return to Earth.”

  Jaelyn couldn’t help but shudder. That was almost a third of the entire colonial force. It was a serious blow to their sustainability as a species. Perhaps a fatal one.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Jaelyn,” his mother said, voice stern. “We’ll still make it. I have the geneticists and other scientists working on colonization scenarios already. We have forty-four years to figure this out.”

  “Forty-four years, huh?” Jaelyn said, making a face. “Such a short time, really.”

  Commander Esquina chuckled. “That’s what I said.”

  Jaelyn pointed at Commander Esquina and looked at his mother. “He’s a smart man.”

  Amara smiled and squeezed Jaelyn’s hand, looking from him to Commander Esquina and back again.

  “It’s a new life, Jaelyn,” she said. “A wondrous, happy, new life. Let’s all make the best of it, whatever comes.”

  Looking at the happiness in her eyes, and the smile on her face – the first true smile he’d seen in years – Jaelyn couldn’t help but agree.

  The End

  This project started out as a writing whim. I had a cousin, Nicholas James West, who started writing a sci-fi story called “Cancel the Ark.” At the time, I’d only written fantasy novels and had only every entertained the idea of writing science fiction as a whim. A few days after talking to Nick, I ended up starting a project I called “Whim.” Now, a few years later, we have this story.

  Many people helped me along the way. My wife and kids are my biggest help and support. They make my life full, meaningful, and worthwhile. If you ever get the chance to meet my wife and you enjoyed this book, you probably owe her a cookie or at least a hearty “thank you.” Several beta readers also greatly assisted me with this process. Melissa Meibos (aka Lysandra James), Kristiann Frasier, Shaun DeVore, Rachel Nichole Huffmire, Emma-Louise Smith, Melissa Cluff Cooke, Alyson Peterson, and Mandi Diaz provided invaluable insight and assistance. Thank you.

  Thanks goes to Immortal Works for accepting and publishing this work of science fiction. Also, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the fine work of Garrett Hamon, who did the cover work for this novel. He is as skilled an artist and fiction enthusiast as I have ever known.

  Finally, I’d like to thank you, the reader. None of this would be possible without you. So thank you. And read on!

  Kevin owes his publishing debut to a kindly librarian back in the 6th grade, the LTUE Symposium, a purple shirt, and a passing editor who didn't mind some mild sarcasm. His books have been Utah State Book Awards finalists, Whitney Award Nominees, and #1 bestsellers on Amazon.

  He currently resides in Utah with his amazing wife and three wonderful children. He's still writing and continuing a lifelong quest to become a dragon rider. Kevin occasionally plays duets through his nose and spends too much time inside his own mind wondering why anyone considers Swiss to be an edible variety of cheese.

  Find Kevin on his website, www.kevinlnielsen.com, where he pontificates about writing, living life with three small kids, and balancing writing with a day job and a family.