New World Read online

  The corridor went on for a couple hundred feet or so, at an ever-declining angle, before opening into a large, cavernous room. Screens were set up at numerous long desks, with a massive screen front and center, where it looked like they could air multiple feeds at once.

  “What is this?” Clare whispered, stealing the words from all our mouths.

  “This is New Spero Central. We have feeds from all major centers here, and we watch for anything out of the ordinary.” Patty walked toward the front row of desks, where five workers sat, headsets on, screens showing various city shots and views from fence lines.

  “You spy on everyone?” Slate asked. The question was so unlike the soldier, I hoped his being around me for a few months hadn’t made him question authority. Or maybe it was a good thing for the man who’d obeyed someone his whole adult life to be a free thinker.

  “We don’t spy on them. This is a new planet. We watch for anything that might pose a threat to the people. We’ve saved countless lives with our perimeter cams catching predators lurking too close to villages and cities,” Magnus said, and I felt better about it all. If my old friend was behind it, then I would blindly follow his lead.

  “What kind of predators?” Mary asked, stepping forward to squint at the screen’s images.

  “Daniel? Can you bring up the feed from 1179, please?” Patty asked, pointing at the large screen in the front of the room.

  It showed a snowy landscape, the area fenced with a twenty-foot-tall barrier. Red lights blinked on the concrete fence posts. It took a minute to see them, but once I did, they were everywhere. They were white, almost blending in with the snow. I couldn’t tell how tall they were, but they had to be four feet at least. The camera zoomed and paused to show us three of them in a cluster, reminding me of a cross between a lizard and a wolf. Long thick tails left lines in the snow behind them, powerful snouts sniffing the air.

  “Holy crap,” Slate said, unblinking as we watched the video. It started up again, and we watched as they approached the fence, trying to touch it but getting shocked by electricity. A couple of them repeated the effort and failed, but were still moving, as if the shock was nothing more than an annoyance.

  One of the creatures ran over to a concrete fence post, which was at least three feet wide. Another one stepped up, and they used each other to lift themselves up, until there were three of the animals stacked on one another, the top one jumping and grabbing hold of the top.

  “We lost twenty people the first night we met these guys. That’s why we watch the feeds live.”

  My stomach sank as I watched dozens of the things get lifted and climb over the fence. They were smarter than any animal I’d ever seen. Patty showed us another video of people forming a violent riot, and how they were able to subdue it quickly. It appeared all wasn’t paradise on this colony planet.

  “Now, enough about us and New Spero. Tell me how you came to arrive seven years later, looking like nothing has changed, in the same ship you left Earth on,” Patty said.

  “Should we wait for Heart?” Slate asked, looking around the room.

  Patty turned to Slate, looking at him silently for a minute before speaking again. “The general isn’t with us any longer. He passed away two years ago: heart attack.”

  Slate deflated at that and sat down in one of the swivel chairs at the long desks.

  “A lot has changed for us. I think you know the new general.” Patty pointed at Magnus, who just shrugged when we looked over to him.

  “Someone had to do it, and it might as well be someone I trust. Me,” Magnus said, getting a tense laugh from our group.

  “I’d say congratulations, but I’m sure you’d rather be sitting on your porch sipping sweet tea than worrying about invasions and space station turncoats,” I said, clapping him on the arm.

  “Speaking of which, where is Mr. Andrews?” Magnus asked Patty.

  “He’s fine. Almost good as new. He’s finding a new home at Terran Three.” Patty tilted her head toward the screen, showing the city covered in snow. “He claims Naidoo threatened to hurt his family back on Earth, but I call BS on that. His accounts have shown some interesting deposits over the years. Either way, I apologize for your treatment, everyone. Can we have the story now?”

  We moved to the back of the room, where a guard brought in refreshments. I guzzled water as we went through the trip, and my own personal emotional rollercoaster. I was ready to put it all behind us after this telling.

  When it was over, Patty mopped her face with a hand, and looked to have aged another year. “After all we’ve been through, she wants to cut a deal with them. That might explain something.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It takes a month to get a message to and from Earth. We’ve sent messages to them but haven’t had a reply in over a month. I was hoping there was just a technical issue on Earth, but it could mean two things. Either they’re choosing to not talk with us” – she paused, leaning forward in her chair – “or they aren’t able to talk to us.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Magnus asked, clearly frustrated.

  “We didn’t want to worry you. You have enough on your plate,” she replied.

  “You wanted me in this position, you have to tell me everything. Would you have held this back from Heart?” he asked, receiving a blank stare from Patty.

  “The Bhlat are coming for Earth, one way or another,” I said. “Naidoo opened the door for them and invited them in. What do we do about it?”

  “What do you mean? We need to worry about New Spero’s safety now. We gave those people a choice, and whoever’s on Earth chose to stay, knowing the dangers. They were all part of the Event, just like all of us. The universe is a dangerous place,” Patty said.

  This wasn’t the president I remembered, always worried about everybody. She was older, tired, and jaded. “It may not be your job to help Earth, but I’ll be damned if we’re going to sit back and wait for the Bhlat to come to us too. Let’s look at it like we’re going on the offensive, and saving Earth is the positive result.” I thought speaking her language might help my cause. It appeared to.

  “It takes two months to get back. It could be too late by then,” Slate said.

  “Or they chose not to transmit because they knew we were arriving and would blow up their story. It might not be too late at all. Maybe a carefully worded message would do the trick,” Mary said, making a lot of sense.

  “Another thing is bothering me,” Patty said quietly.

  “What’s that?” I asked, wondering just what else could be wrong.

  “The hybrids.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d been so selfish to forget them. “The hybrids,” I repeated, a flush coming over my skin. “Where are they?”

  “We thought they were trouble. As far as we knew, Leslie and Terrance were terrorists, and were the reason you were lost to us. They were killers, and we couldn’t trust the lot of them,” Patty said.

  Dread set in. “Where are they?” I asked again.

  “They’re in a prison in Russia. Half the world’s leaders wanted to ship them into the sun, but we compromised on prison. Forever.”

  She looked terrible, the guilt of their anguish evident on her face.

  “We have to do something!” I said, remembering the friendly faces we’d met in Long Island. Seven years in prison, and I doubted I’d get the same reaction from them. “I know where they’re welcome. I’ll send them there to have new lives.”

  She nodded, but it seemed a distant, noncommittal action. “If we get through this, you have my word that you can do just that. I’m sorry about Mae too, for what it’s worth.”

  An alarm chimed from the front of the room, and Daniel, the officer on the computer, called back to us. “General, you’re going to want to see this. Trouble in Terran Five again.” The screen showed us the white lizard-wolves stalking toward the city, this time in a different area. It looked like they were crossing a frozen lake.

  “Wai
t, they aren’t coming for the fence,” Daniel said as we watched them change direction. It was snowing, wind blowing fiercely, causing a white-out. He zoomed in a mile or so, and we spotted a blurry barn. A group of people were outside, surrounded by horses.

  “What are they doing outside like that in a storm?” Magnus yelled. He jumped on to a computer and tried for a few minutes to contact Terran Five. “No luck. The storm must have killed the transmission tower. All this technology, and we still use waves to communicate with each other. Come on, Dean. We have to go help them.” He tapped the face-to-face calling program, trying for any contacts under the Terran Five: Operations listing. They all failed.

  If those creatures were that close, I knew there was no way we’d make it in time, but we had to try. “Are the other Terrans closer?”

  “Good call. Dan, send a request for assistance to Terran Four. We’re taking a cruiser. Anyone else?” Magnus asked.

  Mary and Slate ran after us, heading toward the landing pad.

  ____________

  The ship was smaller than any we’d ever been on, more the size of a helicopter than anything I’d seen, but it acted much the same as the larger Kraski ships. Two seats up front, two in the back, and as much room as a cube van in the back for storage. The walls were lined with climbing gear, medi-kits, and weaponry: everything we needed for a rescue mission.

  We’d tossed on suits before getting on board, and they reminded me of the modified space suits from our recent adventure. These didn’t have the helmet attached, and though they were thin, their primary function was to fend off the cold, with an extremely high puncture rating. That would help prevent one of those lizard-wolves from biting our extremities off.

  “How far is Terran Five, exactly?” Mary asked, sitting up front with Magnus, who was acting pilot on the vessel. Slate sat in the back with me, his large frame tight against the too-small suit he wore.

  “Eleven hundred miles as the crow flies,” Magnus said, the landscape of the planet zooming by as we flew near top speed toward the Arctic-like city. “That makes our trip a quick twenty minutes. Those monsters can go fast, but they were skulking along that snow, the storm probably slowing them some.”

  “Why have a colony city in the snow?” Slate asked, breaking his contemplative silence.

  Magnus shrugged. “Why do people live in northern Canada or Alaska?” He waited for a reply. “No, seriously, if you know, tell me.” He barked a laugh, and when no one else followed suit, he continued. “They have resources up there. A stone much like diamond, that sparkles like a geologist’s dreams and conducts electricity better than anything we’ve ever seen. And it isn’t always snow-covered. Just three-quarters of the year.” This made him laugh again, and I joined in this time, for his sake.

  “Of course,” Slate said, his question satisfactorily answered. “Did those colonists lose a bet?”

  “You’re a funny guy, Slate. I think I’m going to like hanging out with you. We asked for volunteers, and after all everyone had been through, living in a safe place with everything you could need to survive, we didn’t have to do a lottery. We had all the positions filled in a week. We were as surprised as you are.” Magnus tapped some icons, and the ETA appeared on the viewscreen. Ten minutes to destination.

  “Did we get through to Terran Four?” I asked, and Mary sent a message to Dan back at the home base.

  “Dan says they left just after us,” Mary answered.

  “It’ll be close. Everyone ready? Shoot to kill. I know we’re the aliens here, and believe me, we do have animal rights activists on our asses here too, but lives are at stake. Stick together, and hopefully, we can extract the group before too much damage is done.” Magnus lowered us below the clouds, and instantly, we couldn’t see beyond the viewscreen. Snow enveloped the small vessel, but he had no problem flying it using the computer navigation system.

  The plan was to land a hundred yards from the structure in the video, and get between the oncoming creatures and the humans, if we weren’t too late. It took another minute for Magnus to lock in on the coordinates, and when he did, we lowered quickly to the ground, still unable to see much more than blowing white flakes as we bumped the ground softly.

  The doors hissed open, hinging toward the sky, and we got out, pulse rifles in hands. My heart pounded and sweat covered my back, a contradiction to the freezing temperatures outside. Why had we come with Magnus? Shouldn’t we have left this type of thing to the trained soldiers? Then it hit me: I was the only non-military among our group of four, and probably still had more experience in the field than half the actual soldiers now filling that role on New Spero. My confidence increased, my steps becoming firmer and my grip a little lighter on the rifle as I followed Magnus toward the barn we could just make out through the snowstorm.

  “You two go right,” Magnus called through our earpieces.

  Slate and I obeyed, cutting right to flank the people on the other side. Only when we arrived, there were no people standing up.

  The familiar hum of a transport vessel came at us from our other side, and soon another ship landed near us, armed men emerging from the doors, much like we had only moments ago.

  Magnus shook his head. “Damn it! We’re too late.”

  That was when I saw it. The half-eaten horse lay mostly covered by a thin layer of snow, a pool of blood staining the white ground. The closer I looked, the more I saw signs of a struggle, footprints from both humans and animals mixing, but quickly being covered by the ever-falling snow.

  “They might still be alive,” one of the newcomers said to us. “These things will feed” – he pointed at the horse – “and drag anything else back to their nests. We have some at Four, but they’re smaller and fewer. Seen it a few times.”

  “Let’s go after them,” Magnus said matter-of-factly.

  “In this storm, we’ll be lucky to make it a mile without giving up,” the new guy said, the three other soldiers with him keeping quiet.

  “Look…” Magnus started to argue, but we all stopped short as we heard a small voice.

  “Help! Daddy!” it called from the barn.

  I ran toward the sound, gun raised just in case. “Where are you?” I asked, voice rising above the wind.

  A small figure emerged into the doorway, wearing a snow suit and a pink hat. It was a little girl, no more than seven years old.

  “I’m Dean. What’s your name?” I asked, knowing she would be more than scared.

  “Monica. They took my daddy,” she said, fat tears arriving at the corners of her eyes.

  “Who did? The animals?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Which way did they take them?”

  She pointed to the west. “He told me to hide in here, under the hay pile. I miss him. We were out for a horse ride, and Queenie hurt her leg. The horse doctor lady came with some help. Then they came.”

  I didn’t have to ask who they were.

  “I like her.” The tears were starting to fall. “Isabelle, the horse doctor. She makes me laugh. Can you find my daddy?”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Isabelle. My sister was a veterinarian, and Magnus had told me she lived in Terran Five. It had to be her.

  “Guys, we’re going after them.” One of the men from Terran Four came over and gave Monica a heated blanket, ushering her toward their transport vessel. My friends nodded grimly. “I think my sister was among the ones attacked.”

  Mary’s eyes widened. “How’s that possible?”

  “I don’t know. The girl said her horse got hurt, and they were stuck out here from the storm, and a horse doctor named Isabelle came to help. That has to be her.” I was shaking with adrenaline and the need to stop talking and go rescue them.

  “Let’s go. These little bastards are cave dwellers, so we either attempt to follow the tracks being covered by more snow every minute, or we assume they’re going to the mountain three miles west of here and fly there,” Magnus said.

  �
�I’ll follow the tracks and meet you there.” Slate took off on foot. His pace was fast and efficient.

  “You heard the man, let’s get on the ship or he might beat us there,” Mary said, moving for it already.

  “You guys will never find them, and if you do, how do you know they aren’t already dead?” one of the guys from Terran Four asked.

  “We don’t know, and that’s why we’re going. Get that girl back inside the gates, and tell them what’s happening right under their noses,” I said before rushing toward the transport.

  Moments later, we were taking off, and if possible, it seemed the snow was falling even more heavily. As we neared the mountain, I felt a tugging I couldn’t explain. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I sat in the back of the transport, my blood starting to burn. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t.

  “Ma…ry,” I squeaked out through the pain. Her face turning to me was the last thing I saw before all went black.

  FIVE

  When my eyes came open, I was alone in the small ship. My body still ached, but the searing pain was gone.

  I felt for injuries and scanned myself for blood, but everything seemed normal, except for a throbbing headache. I moved to the medi-kit and shot myself with a small dose of painkiller, instantly feeling the thumping subside.

  “Mary, Magnus, come in,” I said into my comm, but no reply came. They must have known I was breathing, and had gone for the people first, hoping whatever happened to me wasn’t fatal. Seeing me passed out, but having to leave my side, must have been more than hard on Mary.

  I threw on an insulated cap and grabbed any weapons I could fit on myself, along with a few rations of food and an emergency kit. One thing I remembered from those outdoor TV shows was you never went into a situation without being prepared. Especially heading into a mountain full of alien monsters, on a planet you’d just set foot on the day before.

  Satisfied I was ready, I lifted the door, exiting the ship. The cold hit me like a brick wall, and I ran through the blowing snow toward the mountains. The footprints were fresh enough that they were still easy to follow.