Horizon Alpha, page 16
***
Raphael flew us away from the crashing mothership as fast as the thrusters would carry us. We didn’t see Horizon separate into three useless hunks of metal. We didn’t see her burn up as she fell into the atmosphere, nor her final flaming plunge into the sea. But that was all I could imagine as we flew away, leaving my Dad to go down with his ship.
Our windows filled with fire as we re-entered Ceti’s atmosphere, and the shuttle bounced and shook in the sky. Finally the windows cleared and gravity grabbed hold of us. Everything in the cargo area settled to the ship’s floor, and all the dust and floating debris dropped everywhere. It was going to be a tough landing with this much cargo.
How am I going to tell Caleb? There was nothing but emptiness inside me, nothing but the pounding of my head inside the helmet. Bethany kept trying to grab my hand, and her words rattled around in the echo of my helmet. Words meant nothing. I had left my dad to die again.
The shuttle was equipped with two huge emergency parachutes. Raphael deployed them and crates smashed to the floor as the chutes grabbed the air and arrested our fall. The plan was to float down on the parachutes for part of the drop to save the thrusters for our final approach.
I looked out the window at the surface of this scatting planet that had cost us so much. From up here, I could see the dark, rolling ridges of a mountain range. It crawled along the planet’s surface looking like the back of some giant ‘saur lying in wait for us to land.
With another lurch, the parachutes were released. Thrusters screamed as we raced for the ground. We had debated long and hard about where to land. If we set down in the middle of the valley, we would have the shuttle there and could lock the children and babies inside it when the Flood came, in case our grand idea with the speakers didn’t work. But the mountains were so high that the landing would be incredibly risky. And once inside the valley, it would never leave.
No reason to. Nowhere to go.
The shuttle creaked and groaned and the ground loomed closer and closer.
“Brace for landing.”
Those who had argued for leaving the shuttle outside the valley had won, and we were heading for the place we’d taken off from, just outside the entrance to the cave where I’d spent months keeping Erik alive after our failed mission in the jungle.
Why did I bother? I couldn’t save him from a stupid fall on a stone staircase. And although I braved a nuclear explosion to fly into space, I couldn’t save my dad either.
I was going to have to tell Mom and Caleb.
My hands felt like ice inside the thick gloves, and sweat poured down my back.
It should have been me.
The mountain rose up outside my window. Too fast. Too fast. The shoulder harness cut into my suit as we slammed into the ground and skidded across the dirt. When we finally stopped moving, Raphael’s voice was the first thing I heard.
“Everyone all right back there?”
I sat back in my seat and reached for my harness. It was covered in blood.
My shoulders ached from the landing, and I ripped off my helmet and gloves, clawing myself free of the harness. My head was throbbing and everything hurt from the rough landing, but the blood wasn’t mine.
A crate of weapons was spilled all over the cabin. It must have worked its way free of the netting. The netting I had left unclamped in my struggle to get to my dad.
The side of the crate was dented and bloody. Next to me Bethany was slumped forward in her seat, her helmet missing and the back of her head caved in.
I grabbed her shoulders and sat her upright, but I knew before I even saw her face.
Bethany Rand was dead.
***
We weren’t much good at funerals. For all those years on Horizon, our people had a simple service, with loved ones sharing memories of the deceased as the body was delivered into the reclamation system that would recycle them into the basic components we all lived on. Since we had finally found safety in Carthage, we still tried to do the whole memory sharing thing. In our early days at Eden Base we had let it slide, as humans often became ‘saur food in numbers larger than one.
But now we were attending our second funeral in two weeks.
We stood around the little patch we’d set aside to bury our dead, those whose bodies were available for such an honor. In the months we’d been here, we’d only buried a couple of people. I stood at the foot of Erik’s fresh grave, the grass not even beginning to grow in over the mound of dirt we’d shoveled over his sheet-wrapped body. Bethany would be laid to rest right next to him.
I had dug her grave myself, laboring all night. Her father was somewhere in the jungle, rumbling back toward Eden in the tank with my brother. He wouldn’t get to see his daughter’s face. She had been so excited to see him. He had risked his life to rescue her, and now we had to bury her before he returned, because there was nowhere cool to store a body.
We had no set funeral text. The people who had been stuck on Horizon with her these past three years all spoke, sharing memories of her on the ship.
Aunt Marci spoke last. “Bethany wanted so badly to see this planet. Wanted to feel real gravity and breathe real air. We used to talk about it all the time. How it would feel to hold the dirt of a living world in our hands. How the grass would feel under our feet.” She paused and wiped her eyes. “Now she’ll be part of that dirt, part of that grass.” Aunt Marci looked up from Bethany’s still body. “Thank you all for trying so hard, and risking your lives so that she could be here.”
My head pounded. No one had accused me of causing her death. No one mentioned a thing about it. But Nirah knew. She had supervised the loading and tie-down of all the gear we were bringing back from Horizon. She knew I had loosened the nets and not clamped them back down. And we both knew that crate would never have jarred loose at our landing if I hadn’t pulled those ropes off.
I looked down into Bethany’s open grave. Covered with the fabric, she looked just like Erik had, lying in the hole I had helped dig for him.
Words were echoing around my head. “Fly free, Bethany.” Everyone was saying it, clustered around the hole in the ground. They were standing right on top of Erik’s grave where we hadn’t even put up a marker yet.
“Josh? Josh, what are you doing? Stop it.” I heard people saying my name, but there was nothing in my vision but the dark hole. People were grabbing at my arms and there was something warm running down my face. I held up my palms. Red, all caked under my fingernails. My vision blurred, and the world turned yellow. I was dimly aware that I was screaming before everything went black.
Chapter 37
Caleb
We rumbled back to the mountains with a day to spare. Since the satellite still seemed to be down, we hadn’t heard a word from anyone. We didn’t know if the shuttle had survived the launch, or docked successfully with Horizon. But when we broke through the trees into the clearing, there it was. It appeared to have been a rough landing, and a huge skid of broken ground made a trail behind its final resting place. It hadn’t been smooth, but the shuttle had survived. I was going to see my dad again.
Before the tank even stopped I had thrown open the top and jumped off. I raced up the rocky incline to the tunnel that led to the Painted Hall.
Staci met me in the narrow tunnel. She barred my way past and grabbed my shoulders. “Caleb, stop, you have to wait.”
But I couldn’t wait. “Where’s my dad? Is everyone okay?” I pushed past her and ran down the corridor.
Just inside the giant hall I ran into Mayor Borin.
“Where’s my dad?”
He looked at me with sad eyes, but I was too excited to pay attention. “Caleb, come on into the briefing room.”
I assumed that’s where my dad would be, getting up to speed on how things worked around Carthage. Of course he’d be on the council. Maybe he’d even take my seat, which was fine with me. Governing was for other people.
There was no one in the briefing room.
“Caleb, your mom is with Josh in the infirmary. She’s got him sedated for now.”
My mouth went dry. “Josh? What happened? Is he all right?”
Mayor Borin told me. It was as if the Horizon Alpha had crashed straight into me, crushing me from space into a flat, dead pile of nothing.
Staci came into the room and put her arms around me, and I sobbed into her shoulder.
Dad wasn’t coming home. And Josh might never recover from that.
I stumbled out of the room and through the hall, numb to the condolences from the people moving around me. In the tiny infirmary ward I found Mom sitting on the edge of the bed where Josh was sleeping. She jumped up and ran to me, and we cried together for what felt like hours.
“Your father said to tell you how proud he was of you,” she murmured into my shoulder. “He saved everyone on the shuttle.”
I pulled away and looked at my brother. His face was all bandaged up. “It’s too soon. He only went up there to save Dad because he couldn’t handle Erik dying. Poor Josh.”
Mom sat back onto his bed. The movement did not wake him. “And there was an accident during the landing. Don’s daughter didn’t make it.”
Bethany. Oh, no. Poor Don. All the nasty things I’d thought about him melted away. Poor Don.
“Josh had . . . an episode at her funeral.” Mom’s hand brushed the bandages over Josh’s eyes. “It was too soon after losing Erik. He was ripping at his own skin, almost took out his eye. I’ve kept him sedated for a couple of days. He just needs to rest.”
As always, there was no time to mourn the lost. “But they got everyone else down, right? And all the stuff we need?” I hated asking about the stupid equipment, but sometime in the next forty-eight hours, the Flood would arrive. As I had done so many times in the ‘saur-filled jungle, I pushed my grief away for the moment. “Are we ready?”
Mom nodded. “They’ve been working nonstop for days, climbing around the mountains and testing the system. If it’s volume that keeps those little monsters away, we should be just fine.”
Josh stirred and his lips opened for a moment before closing again.
“Can he hear me?”
“Maybe. He probably won’t remember when he wakes up.”
I knelt next to the bed and whispered into his ear. “Josh? Hey, buddy, it’s me, Caleb. Just wanted to say I’m so glad you’re my brother. You did it. You saved those people and got us the stuff we need to save everyone here. So just . . .” I sniffled into my sleeve. “Just hang in there. I’m gonna get us through these next few days and then . . . then we’ll figure it out. We always do.”
He didn’t answer and didn’t move.
I gave Mom one more hug and trudged out of the infirmary toward the valley. It wasn’t yet real to me that Dad wasn’t coming home. That we’d found him only to lose him again when we were so close. It would hit me soon enough. But if Nirah and Sara were right, the Flood could be here as early as tonight. And if we weren’t ready, we could lose everyone.
Chapter 38
Shiro
All the able climbers had pitched in to run wire and place the speakers. After a few hours’ sleep in my own little cavern, so welcome after the sweaty confines of the tank, I joined the crew hoisting the last speaker into place at the northwest edge of the ring of mountains around our valley. We didn’t have enough wire to power each one independently, so they were on a huge circuit going all the way around the valley. Each speaker depended on power flowing from the one ahead of it in line. Nobody liked that, but there was nothing else we could do. Fernando and I were on top, with Carmen feeding us wire from just below.
I would have preferred to be up here with Caleb. Carmen was stronger than she looked, but I was none too pleased to have her clinging onto the rocks behind me. Caleb was a mess about the loss of his dad, though, and had been up all night climbing up and down like a madman, frantic to get the wires run. He was dead on his feet and didn’t even argue when I pulled the coil of wire from his hands and shoved him toward the caves. When Carmen stepped up to take his place, I wanted to say no, but she had as much to lose as anyone else, and as much right to be up here as any of the guys.
Just over the edge was a steep drop leading to a wide open plain with a clear lake on the far side where the rocky hills picked up again. Caleb and his gang had gone around it on their way to rescue the Transport Eight crew because there were always ‘saurs there, usually some sort of Brachi or one of the other plant-eaters. But where there was prey, there were always hunters.
No ‘saurs browsed the trees at the edge of the hills today. That should have made me feel safer, exposed at the top of the mountain, but instead it chilled me in the cool height.
They’re avoiding this whole area right now. They know what’s coming.
“Here, hold this.” Fernando handed me the coil of wire.
I patched the wire into the back of the speaker. “Is this it? Are we ready?”
Fernando shrugged. “Our part’s done. If they really do come through here. If this noise thing works at all.”
Carmen spoke up from below us. “If they come and this doesn’t work, we’ll know soon enough. And for a very short time.” Her words sounded cavalier, but the tremor in her voice wasn’t just from the height.
I looked over the edge, out onto the empty field. Movement at the base of the sheer cliff caught my eye. A couple of small creatures had emerged from the tall grass and were scaling the rocks. They headed straight for Fernando and me.
“Hey, look at those.” I pointed down the rocks. “What are they?”
Fernando peered over. “No idea. Quick, though.”
We both had pistols, and new lightning sticks made from the stuff brought down from Horizon. Some of the smaller, rock-hopper ‘saurs got curious when we were up here, and a quick jolt from the lightning stick would send them on their way.
The three little creatures continued their beeline climb. As they got closer, I could see how fast they were, with four legs gripping the wall in sharp little talons. They had short, stubby tails, and large, pointy heads. The whole ‘saur looked about the size of my boot. We’d been digging up rotted bodies with heads just like this for weeks.
Oh, no. We’re not ready.
The first one reached the top of the cliff and jumped straight at Fernando. He wielded his lightning stick like a baseball bat, sending the little ‘saur flying out over the edge.
“Why’d you do that? Sara would have loved for us to catch it.” I knelt down to see the other two close behind.
Fernando snorted. “We don’t need any more pet ‘saurs.”
These would never be pets.
From below us on the Carthage side, Carmen called up to us. “Are we done here? Time to go down?”
“In a second,” I said. “Going to try and get one of these things.”
The first of the two reached the top and jumped at Fernando. He swung his stick at it but missed, and the little beast shot up his leg, gripping with the sharp claws. It buried its face in his armpit and Fernando shrieked, whacking at it with the butt of his lightning stick.
“Get it off! Get it off me!” I grabbed at it and got hold of its back legs. When I pulled it free, it took a large chunk of Fernando’s flesh with it. Without thinking, I flung it over the sheer edge.
Fernando collapsed, clutching his armpit. Blood stained his shirt and seeped through his fingers.
“Stars, that thing was trying to eat you.”
The third one crested the hill, and I zapped it with my lightning stick as it skittered toward me. It fell to the ground, twitching, but in a second was staggering to its feet. I hit it with the zapper again. After three more electric jolts, it finally stopped moving.
“Carmen, get up here,” I called to her. “Something’s bit Fernando.”
She was already scrambling up the hill toward her bleeding brother. We pulled his shirt off to reveal at least seven bloody bites, each one a deep, open gash where the creature’s teeth had carved right through his skin.
“Is this what I think it is?” The chill I’d felt looking over the empty valley returned. You know what it is. You saw this same sharp head rotting on a pile of its own eggs.
Carmen saw the dead ‘saur at my feet.
“It’s here. They’re coming. We have to get down right now. Right now.” She babbled through trembling lips.
I grabbed her hand before she could bolt away down the hillside. “Carmen, we need you. You have to help me get Fernando down. But is this for sure one of them? The Flood ‘saurs?”
She nodded, never taking her eyes off the little body, its mouth still bloody. “There’s always a couple that come right before the rest. They trickle in for the first few hours. Then the rest come.” She looked at me with horror in her face. “Then we all die.”
Chapter 39
Caleb
We kept watch all night.
After Carmen and Shiro got Fernando down from the mountain and into the infirmary, we gave the dead Flood ‘saur to Sara.
“It’s a male.” She turned the little body over in her hands. “Look at the jaw. Just like the dead females we dug up. It’s like a piranha. Look at the teeth.” Her voice was clipped and high, the way it got when she was afraid. “Hundreds of thousands of these are coming.”
Everything was ready. Horizon’s speakers faced out of every low pass. We had brought Ryenne’s little ‘saurs into the lowest room of the cave system and padded the room with cut grass, fabric, and everything else we could find to dampen the sound. They were jumpy when we brought them in from the field, darting around and looking up at the mountains around the valley. They weren’t going to like the next few days, but there was nothing more we could do. Our sheep were locked in their shed with plenty of water and food to last the next few days.
