Horizon Alpha: Homecoming

Book 0: Horizon Arc

by D.W. Vogel

Genres: YA Steampunk

Synopsis

The thrilling conclusion to the Horizon Alpha series

We are alive.

Three words in Morse code change everything.

Caleb Wilde thought his days outside Carthage Valley were over. Safe behind high mountains, the last of humanity was secure and thriving. But everything changes when a message comes through from the spaceship they abandoned in orbit. Twelve crew members, including Caleb’s father, are still alive on the failing ship. And they know of someone who might be able to get them down, except she's at another crash site across a deep sea channel.

As the foremost expert on surviving in the wilds, Caleb is the obvious choice to lead the expedition. He is determined to bring everyone safely back to Carthage. But while exploring new reaches of Tau Ceti e, he learns of an impending migration of piranha-like ‘saurs called the Flood. The migration path leads right through humanity’s cavernous paradise. On the first full moon after the summer solstice, the Flood will arrive in Carthage. 

Across the jungles and mountains of Ceti, Caleb has taken on ‘saurs of all types and sizes and come out on top. Now, he must find a way to stop the Flood from invading his home. If he fails, everyone left on Ceti will fall to the jaws of a million hungry beasts.

Release date: June 9, 2018

Publisher: Future House Publishing

Print pages: 221

Sample

I have failed.

I am Theodore Wilde, fourteenth captain of the Horizon Alpha. Thirteen captains before me all performed their duties. They got us here across light-years of space. The planet is exactly as we hoped, with breathable air and a reasonable climate.

The sequence was planned before Horizon left Earth’s orbit. We send the first probes and wait for their data. We launch the satellites. We send the Horizon Alpha Away Team for first recon. Once they find a good place to land, we load up the transports and shuttles and head for the surface. The transports were not designed to leave the planet, but the shuttles were supposed to be exactly that, shuttling the rest of our personnel and equipment from the Horizon once a safe colony is established.

None of that is going to happen now.

The probe did its job. But the satellites didn’t launch properly. After two hundred years in space, the sensor that should have told me one of the satellites was lodged in the launch tube didn’t work. When the next one was loaded and fired, it crashed into the obstruction and caused the explosion.

Things went south quickly. We evacuated the burning ship, everyone scrambling to get into a transport. No orderly lines, no careful packing. Just people screaming and crowding into the little ships while the Horizon burned. Fire doors slammed shut and alarms blared.

We got almost everyone off. That should have been a relief. But the planet’s gravity is stronger than we anticipated. Our transports got scattered across a continent, and only half of them landed safely. Several of them seem to be together in a clearing, which might help them survive, but the rest are alone, kilometers away from help. And without the satellites, they’ll probably never find each other.

Eighteen of us were left here on the Horizon. The fire system eventually got the blaze controlled, but the ship is a shambles. Of three spinning cylinders, only one is still rotating. The rest are dead and still. The bridge and communications system were devastated, and at the moment we have no way to contact our colonists on the planet. Bethany is working on establishing some kind of communication, but we’re down to basic life support. It will take some time. And it hardly matters. Even the smallest shuttles won’t be able to get high enough to escape into orbit. No one is coming for us.

We can see the beacons of the transports that didn’t crash. We have a rough idea of who was on each one. My wife and sons and my baby daughter were with the largest group. They have the best chance. If the planet is hospitable, they just might survive.

We’re all that’s left of the human race. It was my job to deliver us all safely to Tau Ceti e, to start a new colony where we could thrive.

I failed. It’s right that I should spend my final days on this dead ship, huddling in darkness. It’s not right that others are stuck here with me.

Randa, Josh, Caleb, and baby Malia . . . I love you. I’m so, so sorry.

The Painted Hall was in chaos. Everybody was talking at once and nobody could hear anything. Mayor Borin waited patiently, sitting in his wheeled chair at the front of the great cavern. Eventually the noise lowered to a murmur as people realized they weren’t going to learn anything by shouting questions all at once. They all turned to our elected leader and sat back down, the normal politeness of our society reasserting itself.

Mayor Borin held up his hands for silence. “Communication with the Horizon’s remaining crew is a very slow process, but here’s what we’ve learned so far. Twelve people are still alive on the ship in orbit.”

The crowd buzzed again, but more quietly and for a shorter time.

“We don’t have all the names yet, but Captain Wilde is among the survivors.”

I had already told Mom last night when we first made contact with the Horizon Alpha mothership. She sat next to me on the bench along the side wall under the old paintings done by a long-gone alien race. My brother Josh sat on the other side of her, and my little sister Malia was squeezed between us. Mom held the baby on her lap. Now, even though she already knew he was alive, she jumped at the mention of my dad’s name. These past three years we had been sure he was dead, left alone on the Horizon. All that time he’d been up there listening to us on our sat trans when the Horizon was in the right place in the sky. He’d heard it all, from our first realization that this scatting planet was full of dinosaurs, to the panic when we were down to our last power core in the early days of electrified fencing around our downed shuttles. He’d listened as my mission fell apart, and when General Carthage died.

I looked down at my half-brother, tiny and perfect in Mom’s arms. He was the General’s son, named Teddy after my dad. My dad who wasn’t dead after all. What must Mom be feeling about that?

The mayor spoke again. “We’ll be compiling a list next time Horizon comes into satellite contact. We are communicating by Morse Code, as they are unable to transmit, only interrupt our signal.”

On the floor in front of us, my cousin Ryenne sat with her twin brother, Rogan. No one else would ever have understood the message from Horizon, the rhythmic interruption of our trans communication that was their only hope of reaching us. No one but Rogan would ever have realized. But his brain didn’t work like other people’s. He heard the pattern that was invisible to anyone else. And now there were twelve people alive in orbit around our planet who had been given up for dead three years ago. Twelve people we had no possible way to rescue.

Mrs. Yee stood up in front of the hall. “So we’re just going to sit here and do nothing while they die up there?” Murmurs around the room echoed her sentiment.

Mayor Borin shook his head. “At this moment we have no way to mount a rescue. At the close of this meeting I’ll be consulting with the council. Horizon should be in range, and our first priority is finding out the identities of our loved ones who are still alive.”

The council. That had been a surprise. In the weeks since we returned to Carthage Valley with the survivors of Transport Seventeen, the mayor had put together a group of advisors to help him govern our little community. The idea that we were actually safe enough here to start thinking about our need for government still shocked me. I’d spent too much time out in the jungle to ever feel truly safe again. And the bigger shock came when Mayor Borin asked me to join the council. I was the youngest member, but he said there was no one more qualified than me when it came to surviving outside the valley. Of course, we thought there was no reason we’d ever leave the safety of the valley again.

“There’s a shuttle sitting outside the mountains.” Don Rand was speaking now, one of the Seventeen survivors. He’d been a pill on the long journey back here, but he was no fool. “I saw the thing when we came in here. Can’t we find a way to fix it and go up to get them?”

“I wish it were possible.” The mayor nodded. “We salvaged a lot of parts from that shuttle to repair the one we sent to rescue you.”

The one that was crushed, its wings torn off, probably by those weird dinosaurs that ran into things with their chests. I shuddered at the memory. They could put a dent into the hull of our largest transport, but they were no match for Titanoboa. The huge snake had made short work of them.

Mayor Borin continued, “Besides, even if it were working, we’ve never been able to figure out how to get a shuttle high enough to get back into orbit. Right now there is no rescue plan.”

The room erupted again, and the mayor gestured for quiet. “We’ll keep you informed as information becomes available. For now, we just need to continue what we’re doing here. Thank you all.”

Everyone stood up, chattering in the echoing cavern. Baby Teddy fussed in Mom’s arms.

“Caleb,” Mom said, “do you think I can . . .” She trailed off.

I knew what she wanted. “I’ll ask the mayor. Dad can hear us talking but he can’t talk back. I’ll ask if you can maybe come and talk to him after we get the list of names tonight.”

She hoisted the infant up onto her chest, cradling his head against her shoulder and bouncing gently from foot to foot. “Thanks.” She glanced down at the baby, eyes full of uncertainty.

“He knows about the baby. He knew all along, everything we were doing. He’s just happy we’re all alive.”

Malia wrapped her arms around my leg. She was clingy with me since the baby was born. Or maybe it was just since I got back from the last journey. How many times had she been told I wasn’t coming home? Malia would have no memory of our dad.

She looked at me with wide eyes. “Are we gonna fly in the sky?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, sweet girl. We can’t really fly anymore.”

“But . . .” Her tongue stuck out one corner of her mouth as she concentrated. “But there’s people in the sky?”

She weighed so little as I swept her up into my arms. “There are. But I think”—I shared a look with Mom—“I think they’re going to have to stay there.”

The Horizon wouldn’t be back into satellite contact until late in the evening. Even though I’d been up most of the night, the news that my father and eleven other people were still alive on the ship kept me far too jazzed up to sleep. Everyone was buzzing with the news and the constant questions drove me outside into the valley. I was off pterosaur guard duty today, and had nothing to do with the hours of daylight until we reconnected with my dad in orbit.

No one was quite sure what to do with me. Before the mission to rescue the survivors of Seventeen, I’d been in the early stages of learning to fly the shuttle. We were just getting settled in the valley, figuring out what kind of training we needed to pass on. The remaining adults had all grown up on a giant spaceship hurtling toward Tau Ceti e. Now we were farmers and sheepherders. All the data from Horizon was at our fingertips—how to shear sheep, how to weave cloth from the wool. How to plant the seeds we’d brought from Earth and tend them to feed our growing population. There seemed no need for the advanced nuclear scientists to take apprentices. We weren’t going back into space. The medical skills my mom had learned on Horizon were dependent on the technology we’d brought with us. When we ran out of antibiotics and medications, what would we do? Sara and her science team were studying every plant and animal they could grab on this planet, but I was never a science kid. Since the day we landed and saw the ‘saurs, all I’d ever wanted to be was a soldier, protecting the little colony from the dangers of the jungle. Now those dangers were a mountain away.

Soon I’d have to make a decision and join one of the advanced training teams. Mom wanted me to become a doctor like her. As I emerged from the shelter of the cave into the bright late-morning sunlight of the plateau that led down into our valley, I glanced up at the cloudless blue sky. I wanted to fly. Now I was grounded forever.

I trooped down the carved stone stairs onto the valley floor. People working in the fields and orchards waved to me as I strolled past, heading for the little wooden barn with the staked wire corral.

“Hey Ryenne,” I called as I approached.

She was sitting in the middle of the corral watching her two pet ‘saurs devour a pile of cardinalfruit. Their little heads dove into the soft, red fist-sized fruits and came up with their green faces smeared with juice, smacking happily and making the little contented whirring noise they always made when Ryenne was around.

“Hey, Caleb.” She held a little carved tube of wood in her lap.

“What’ve you got there?” I pointed to the tube.

Her face flushed and she tried to hide it in the pocket of her shirt. “It’s nothing.”

I plopped down beside her and leaned back in the grass, careful to check for ‘saur scat. “What is it?”

One of the ‘saurs—Sparkle or Princess, I could never tell them apart—gave a loud burp and waddled over to Ryenne. It tried to shove itself onto her lap but the ‘saurs had grown a lot since Ryenne had found them as brand new hatchlings in the jungle. They had imprinted on her and nothing on Ceti would ever convince them that Ryenne wasn’t their mother.

She wrapped an arm around the ‘saur and it nestled in next to her. Sitting on the ground, her head wasn’t much taller than the ‘saur’s when it stood up. “It’s nothing,” she repeated, but pulled the little tube out of her pocket. “It’s just . . . kind of a flute thing.”

I held out a hand and she passed it over to me. Hand-carved from the thick, hollow reeds that lined the lake in the middle of our valley, it had been lovingly polished to a shiny smoothness. “It’s really pretty. Did you make it?”

Ryenne shook her head and took the flute back. “Mrs. Desai is teaching music now. I’m way behind on my school stuff, but I think I’m really getting the hang of it. Wanna hear?”

The other ‘saur finished off the fruit and waddled over next to Ryenne.

I nodded. “Let’s hear a tune.”

She raised the flute to her lips and blew into one end. It made a high-pitched whistle, shrill and piercing. Both of the little ‘saurs jumped up away from Ryenne and bolted into their little wooden barn, hissing and heads low.

“Wow, it wasn’t that bad.” I laughed until I saw Ryenne’s face. “Aw, it was nice. ‘Saurs don’t know anything about good music.”

She stuffed the flute back into her pocket and stood up, brushing dirt off her legs. “Apparently not.” She met my eyes, glared for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Well, maybe I need a few more lessons.”

I turned my face to the sun and smiled. “You gotta cut them some slack. Nothing like that’s ever been heard on this planet before. They have no history of music appreciation.”

“Actually that’s not true.” Ryenne picked up a little wooden rake and began to clean up the remains of the ‘saurs’ breakfast. “There’s paintings all over the lower caverns of the birdmen singing. At least, Sara thinks they’re singing. She thinks maybe they had some kind of music rituals or something. Singing to the moon. That’s what the paintings look like.”

I rolled onto my feet and kicked a stray fruit over to Ryenne’s pile. “Shame they’re not still here. You could form a band. ‘Ryenne and the Birdmen.’ Go on tour all over Ceti.”

She glared at me. “Don’t make fun. I’m doing the best I can here.”

It wasn’t easy. All the adults looked out for my cousins, and Mom had taken over their official guardianship since they had no other family here in Carthage. But we were all family, really. The Seventeen survivors had been trapped in their transport for the last three years. They had a lot to catch up on.

“Where’s Rogan?” I asked.

“He’s sleeping. You guys kept him up half the night listening to Morse Code.”

The little ‘saurs peeked out of the open barn door. Ryenne turned and showed them her empty hands. “It’s all right, babies. Mama’s not blowing the nasty flute anymore. You’re fine.”

I chuckled. Mama. Ryenne’s little ‘saurs were our distant early warning system for pterosaur attacks, the only dinosaur that still posed a threat to us in our safe little valley. If she wanted to call herself their Mama, no one in Carthage would bat an eye.

“We’ll need him again tonight. He’s the best at hearing the code and there’s so much we need to know. Like, who’s even up there? Besides my dad, I mean.”

She nodded. “I know. And it’s so good for him to have this job. Makes everybody realize he’s more than just the weird kid with the hose who doesn’t talk much.” She looked up, turning her face into the breeze. “I don’t know what to hope for. Maybe our mom is up there. Would that be great or horrible? I mean, there’s no way we can get to them. So is it better if I know she’s up there stranded or if I never find out what happened to her?”

I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me with despair in her eyes and stumbled into the little barn to be with her babies.

We have completed our preliminary inspection of the remains of the great ark Horizon Alpha. What we have found is not encouraging.

Our ship was constructed with three huge cylinders: fore, midship, and aft, spinning around a central axis. For two hundred years our artificial gravity has been produced by that centrifugal force. We have always been adept at working in zero gravity because the central axis does not spin. It houses the ship’s propulsion system, a complex arrangement of nuclear fusion reactors, fuel rods, and power cores that keep the ship running. We also have extensive solar a. . .