Horizon Alpha: Transport Seventeen

by D. W. Vogel

  Mr. Borin was Brent’s dad. He’d taken the news of Brent’s death better than I expected. He already knew Sara and I were the only survivors of our mission to retrieve the power core. We thought we’d use it to power the electric fence around our little haven in the jungle, but instead we used it to juice up the shuttles to fly all our people here to safety. By the time Josh and I got back to Eden with the core, Mr. Borin knew Brent was gone.

  He asked me about it one day shortly after we arrived in the caves.

  Mr. Borin was confined to a wheelchair that he’d made from parts of a small forklift that had been on one of our derelict transports. Those had been left behind in the clearing we called Eden. His chair had thick rubber wheels that would have let him roll all over the valley, but there was a steep stairway down from the Painted Hall level to the plateau outside, and since it had taken three people with ropes to haul him up from the shuttle into the caves in the first place, he would probably never see our new, safe valley. He wheeled to the edge of the jungle-side tunnel now and then to see daylight, but said he was content to know about the valley, and if he never left the caves again, that was all right with him.

  He had rolled up to my room a few nights after we moved here.

  “Caleb?” He peered in the open doorway.

  “Hi, Mr. Borin.” I had my own room here, next door to Mom and Malia’s.

  “May I come in?”

  I almost laughed. Before I left on the shuttle mission that killed my whole squad, nobody would have asked permission to come into my room. Not that I’d had my own room. Adults would have just walked right in. Or wheeled in, if it was Mr. Borin.

  “Sure, come on in.”

  He rolled up next to where I sat on the pile of leaves and grass covered with a blanket that I called my bed.

  “Caleb, I was wondering . . .” He trailed off, looking out the open doorway. I knew what he was going to ask, and answered the question he couldn’t bear to say aloud.

  “Brent was amazing out there. You would have been so proud.”

  He looked at me and I’ll never forget the haunted expression in his eyes. I knew the look. We had all worn it at some time or another.

  “When General Carthage was killed, Brent led the group. He was so brave.”

  I was exaggerating a little. I’d thought long and hard about what I was going to tell Brent’s dad about the way Brent died. Why not make him a hero? Sara would never call me out on it.

  “We were carrying the power core and all of a sudden we heard it. Wolves.”

  I knew the expression that took over his face at that word. It was the same expression anyone had when Wolves were mentioned.

  “Brent was carrying the core and he heard them first. He held them off us so Sara and I could get up a tree. He tried to climb up after us, but . . . they were so fast. I don’t think he felt a thing.” A total lie, but one I could see Brent’s dad appreciated. “If not for him, none of us would have made it.” I gestured around, meaning not just Sara and I, but the whole colony. “He sacrificed his own life so we could all live.”

  Mr. Borin nodded, wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Brent was never afraid of anything. I just wish . . .” He looked around my little room, bare stone walls lit with a dim solar-powered light. “I wish he could have lived to see this place.”

  I thought about that night on my way down the corridor toward the Painted Hall, where the rest of the community was gathering for the service. There were so many people who should have lived to see this place. The survivors of Horizon Alpha had endured three years of constant fear, huddling in the middle of the jungle in a clearing surrounded by electric wire. Now we could thrive in the safety of these caves and the lush, green valley.

  Mom and Malia were already there, and had saved me a place on the stone ledge that ran most of the way around the huge cavern. Josh and Erik sat on the floor near the back of the hall, and I didn’t see Shiro anywhere.

  Mr. Borin rolled to the front of the room. “Citizens of Carthage, tonight we gather to remember Horizon Gamma, our sister ship lost in humanity’s desperate bid to survive.”

  The words echoed around the cave, the first time they’d been spoken here. My mind wandered back to the morning’s climb, and the voice on the sat trans. Everyone in Carthage knew who I was. But whoever was on the trans this morning had sounded so surprised to hear my name.

  Chapter 6

  Ryenne’s Diary: Year 3, Day 52

  This is probably my last entry.

  It’s getting really bad here.

  Officer Halsey is totally nuts, all paranoid and angry. The eighteen other people shut up in this disgusting transport are all going to starve to death when the food runs out. Nobody is completely sure when that’s going to be, because Officer Halsey won’t let anybody get a good look at what’s left of the food stores she’s hoarding in the cockpit. She’s keeping it all shut up with her, and she was keeping a secret all this time.

  She has a gun.

  If she’d sent it out with one of the parties that went looking for help, maybe they’d still be alive. But she kept it hidden away with all the other stuff she’s hiding, and yesterday we all found out the hard way.

  She shot Mr. Graham.

  All this time we’ve been waiting here, watching the dinosaurs troop by, terrified every minute that one of them would figure out we’re in here and we’re food, and poor Mr. Graham gets shot by his own leader.

  He’d gone up to the cockpit for the day’s food ration, and I guess he’d had enough of being told what to do. He pushed his way in and we all heard him yelling at Officer Halsey, yelling about the food and the sat trans and what was her plan and was she just going to sit there and watch the little kids starve to death? She wasn’t yelling back and that should have been a warning to us, but nobody knew. We heard a scuffle, and a lot of banging around, like Mr. Graham and Officer Halsey were fighting.

  The next thing we heard was the shot. It blasted through the transport and everybody just stopped breathing. The dinosaurs outside the windows heard it, too, and jumped away on the beach.

  Nobody said anything for the longest time. We had never heard a gunshot for real. Only in movies. But there was no doubt what it was. Nothing in the world makes a noise like that.

  After a really long time, the cockpit door swung open.

  Officer Halsey was standing there looking down at something on the floor that wasn’t moving. A dark puddle was spread around her feet.

  She didn’t say anything at first, but then she started muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again. Mr. Everhart and Mrs. Moning crept up to the door and when Officer Halsey didn’t move, they dragged Mr. Graham’s body outside. It left a big smear on the floor.

  Officer Halsey just stood there, staring out at nothing. The gun was in her hand, smelling of metal and smoke. She backed up into the cockpit and sat down in the captain’s chair, just staring back at us. Nobody knew what to do or say. I was able to peek in the door and see the piles of canned and boxed food that was left.

  It isn’t much.

  Somebody’s going to have to do something. And it’s going to have to be me.

  Everyone else is scared of Officer Halsey now, but I saw the food pile. We’re going to starve. Soon.

  I’ve been practicing for a year now, climbing up and down the metal shelves around the transport inside, and climbing up the outside of the transport at night when I go out to pee. I thought I was just burning off steam, trying to keep from going crazy cooped up in the tin can of death we call home. Now I realize, I was training.

  Rogan and I have a plan, and tonight’s the night.

  He hasn’t had a panic attack since we landed. Tonight’s going to be a doozy.

  He’s going to have an old-school freakout in the middle of the transport. Everybody is going to freak out right along with him.

  Everybody but me.

  He’ll keep it up until Officer Halsey comes out. I know it wi
ll work. She’s going to be afraid all the noise will bring the dinosaurs, and she’ll have to try to shut him up.

  That’s the first reason this is risky.

  But she won’t shoot him. I’m sure she won’t. She only shot Mr. Graham because he attacked her.

  And because she’s gone nuts. But I can’t think about that right now.

  When she comes out, I’m going in. I know where the sat trans sits on the cockpit dash. I know she keeps it charged because we hear her sometimes at night, calling into it endlessly, “Is anyone out there?”

  That’s the second risky thing.

  The third risky thing is that I’m leaving with the sat trans. I wish I could take the gun, too, but there’s no way she’ll leave that behind. I’m going to grab some food, whatever I can carry, and scoot out the door before anyone knows I’m gone. Rogan will time it so there’s nothing too dangerous outside.

  At least, nothing we can see out the windows.

  I have to go south. When we first landed, that’s what Officer Yi said. Go south. Get over the cliffs and up to high ground where the satellites can pick up the signal. If anyone else is alive on this planet, that’s how I’ll find them.

  Nobody will come after me. They’re all too scared. If I’m being honest, and there’s no reason not to be, I’m scared, too. Terrified.

  But I don’t see that I have any choice. If we stay here, we’ll all be dead in a couple of weeks. We can’t hunt, we can’t fish, and we’re nearly out of food. If we all go out together, we’ll never make it anywhere. We don’t know where we’re going. And we have little kids. All of us together would be a magnet to the dinosaurs. Alone is safer. Scarier, but safer.

  I wish I could take Rogan with me. We’ve never been apart before, and he’s going to have a hard time without me. Without him to cause the commotion, though, the plan won’t work. He understands why I have to do this.

  So I’ll climb. I’ll head south. I’ll walk all night until the satellite gets my signal.

  If anyone is out there, they’ll hear me. If they can, they’ll come and save us.

  And if no one is out there, then it won’t matter if I starve to death here in this transport, surrounded by the last, pathetic members of the human race, or get eaten by a dinosaur on top of the cliff. I won’t be much of a meal. There’s not much left of me.

  I’m leaving my diary in the transport. If you found it here with a pile of old skeletons, then you’ll know what happened to everyone else on Horizon Alpha Transport Seventeen. You won’t know what happened to me, because I won’t be here. Live or die, tonight I’m leaving.

  Chapter 7

  After the Gamma Day memorial service, I hung around the Painted Hall with Josh.

  He was eating a canaryfruit, soft and yellow. “How’d you guys do today?”

  “We made it.”

  Josh cut a slice of the fruit with his pocketknife and held it out to me. “I see you made it. Did you get the dish up?”

  I nodded, sucking on the sweet fruit. Soon the first of our Earth crops would be ready, but until then we subsisted on the fruits we gathered in the valley and the fish and tiny hopping ‘saurs we could gather from the lake. In the early days we’d been able to hunt some of the other, larger ‘saurs that climbed around the rocky mountainsides, and some of the small grazers on the valley floor, but they’d gotten wise to us and we didn’t waste our precious ammunition. Once the fields were properly farmed, we’d be fine.

  “We got it up, but I bet it won’t last the year. Too windy. The wire will never make it.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty dumb idea,” Josh agreed. “And we don’t need it. Who cares if we don’t get satellite trans anymore? We’re all here in the valley and nobody’s going anywhere. We’ll know the weather when it gets here.”

  I shrugged. “Just doing what General E wanted.”

  I started to say more, but Josh silenced me with a pointed look and a sudden, fake smile. “General Enrico, how are you tonight, sir?”

  He was standing behind me, closer than I would have thought he’d get without me hearing him. You’ve lost your edge, Wilde. I shook my head. All this soft, safe living was making me dull and slow.

  “I’m well, Josh, and you?” General E moved up next to us.

  “Fine, sir, thanks for asking.”

  I stifled a snicker. Josh wasn’t a fan of General Enrico. His super-polite voice didn’t fool me.

  General E turned to me. “Caleb, I need you to turn in your sat trans.”

  “Why?” The question escaped my lips before I could even put on my fake super-polite voice.

  He cocked his head, expecting the “sir” I didn’t say. “We’re keeping them all in the armory, along with the weapons and non-essential supplies. No need for anyone to carry one, and we don’t want people wasting them. The charge lasts a long time but we don’t have extra chargers and they won’t last forever. We’ll check them out as required when anyone needs them.” I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t happy about explaining his actions to a fifteen-year-old kid. But I wasn’t just any kid. I was Caleb Wilde, hero of Eden Base. It didn’t carry a lot of weight, but even General E knew what I’d been through. “We collected all of them yesterday, except the one you took up the mountain this morning.”

  I nodded. “Sure,” I said, patting the pockets of my cargo pants. “But I don’t have it with me. Left it in my room. Okay if I bring it by in the morning?” I faked a huge yawn. “The climb wore me out.”

  He peered at me for a moment, then said, “That’s fine, soldier. Bring it in the morning.” He turned and strode away.

  Josh waited until he was out of earshot. “Collecting the weapons and the communications. I thought we were a military outpost when we lived in the jungle. Now we’re safe and he’s acting like we’re still in the middle of the scatting ‘saur jungle.”

  “Won’t matter too much longer,” I said, reaching for another slice of the canaryfruit before Josh ate it all. “Election’s in three days, and Mr. Borin is going to be in charge. We don’t need a general anymore.”

  I left Josh at the edge of the cavern. He and Erik still roomed together, but after living my whole life on a spaceship with five hundred other people, then the last three years in makeshift housing in the downed transports in the jungle, I was surprised to find I preferred having my own space.

  A flowing stream cut through the cave system, the water draining out the front of the mountainside. We used the closest one as a bathroom. It made me smile every time I used it, thinking about my waste splashing out somewhere into the jungle. Maybe right on some Wolf’s snaky head. I washed my hands upstream from the toilet area and headed for my room, stopping to bid my mother and little sister good night in their room next door.

  Laying on my newly-woven grass mattress, I pulled the sat trans out of my pocket. General Enrico’s words were swimming through my head. They’d collected all the other sat trans last night. This was the only one in use this morning. When I had heard a voice. A voice that knew my name.

  Are you sure? I was hot and tired, the morning sun beating down on me after a strenuous climb. Maybe you imagined it. Maybe they missed one.

  And the voice was faint, broken up, as if the sender was right on the edge of the satellite’s range.

  It had happened early in the morning, so I didn’t expect to hear anything late at night, even if someone really was out there. I didn’t talk, just turned on the sat trans to receive and waited. Some time later I fell asleep, the sat trans in my hand.

  Hours later I jolted awake. The cave was always dark, but I’d gotten good at judging time by some internal clock I hadn’t known I possessed. It was the wee hours of morning and the caves were silent except for the constant drip drip of water flowing through the cracks in the rocks.

  That wasn’t what woke me. I gripped the sat trans in my hand, staring at the dark screen.

  “. . . Caleb . . . are you there?”

  The voice sounded stronger than it had t
his morning, less broken and much clearer. Hearing it again left no doubt in my mind. My cousin Ryenne, who hadn’t been aboard any of the transports that landed at Eden base, was alive somewhere on Tau Ceti e.

  Chapter 8

  I didn’t bother pulling on my boots, but raced down the dark corridor, bare feet slapping against the cold stone.

  “General Enrico!” I yelled as I approached his room next to the room he’d commandeered as an armory. “General, you have to hear this!”

  None of our cavern rooms had doors, but his had a piece of cloth hanging over the entrance. Ordinarily I would have paused and waited for him to come out. Tonight I plowed right through.

  He was sitting up in his bed, a real metal cot brought from one of the transports. He glared at me with bleary eyes. “What on Ceti is wrong, soldier?”

  Even in my excitement, I couldn’t help but wish General Carthage was here. He wouldn’t have been sitting on his bed half-awake. If one of his soldiers ran down a hall yelling, he’d be on his feet, weapon at the ready no matter the hour.

  “They’re out there!” I shouted, thrusting my sat trans into his hand. “Ryenne and Rogan, and seventeen other people. They’re alive!”

  General E stared at the sat trans like some new species of fungus while my words penetrated his brain. His stupor was broken by Ryenne’s voice on the trans.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  The general grabbed the trans. “Who is this?”

  “Um . . . I’m Ryenne. And I’m on top of a cliff.”

  I hopped from foot to foot, grabbed the sat trans, and yelled over General E. “Ryenne, you need to get up a tree and stay there.”