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Captain Dunstan heard the footsteps approaching his cell. He eased himself off his prison cot and rubbed his forehead. A prison guard stopped outside and opened the cell door. A priest entered, followed by a tall man in black robes who carried a thick scroll in his hands. Captain Dunstan almost laughed, but decided he hadn’t the energy to do so. “My sins?” he asked, nodding towards the scroll. “You sure it’s thick enough?”
The tall man didn’t answer. The priest held out his hand towards the captain. A bracelet of prayer beads dangled from the priest’s fingers. Dunstan shook his head.
The priest spoke softly. “Take them my son. They shall be a comfort to you.”
Dunstan glanced at the priest’s face, then down at the beads. There was little point in offending a man of the cloth. He gave a shrug and took the beads. “Thank you,” he murmured.
The priest nodded, made a Sign of the Hand. “Use each bead, for each question,” he said. He gave a curt bow and exited the cell. Dunstan watched him leave. What questions? And where were his last rites? Was he to die without a blessing?
“Are you ready, prisoner?” The tall man asked, unfurling the scroll.
The First Colony – Plans
July 15, 2149, Hawking
“Penner, we’re going to drop you off at the lift landing site. O’Sullivan and Cash, you two go with Penner and make sure you secure it as instructed,” Karen said, passing Penner a tablet.
Soon they were lowering in a flat spot, previously decided upon. The massive elevator loomed above them; a dark monolith in the now night sky. Thousands of stars blared down at them from the distance and for a moment Karen forgot where she was. A voice shook her out of her daydream.
“Are you sure you won’t need help?” Penner asked, concern thick in his words.
“Grant is a pro with the lander, and if we are going to sneak into the cliff, the fewer the better. Use the tablet to direct Boone up top, and let’s get our people down to the surface.”
Prototype 01: Rocket Raptor
“So what is it?” I asked Steven, as he stood there with his arms wide and grinning like an idiot, like he was P. T. Barnum or something. Steven and I have worked at Oberon Tec. for almost five years. To be fair, I don’t really know they guy. We say hi from time to time and share what projects we’re up to. He caught me just as I was heading home and managed to drag me into his lab and literally unveiled his pet project to me by pulling a big tarp away.
In the middle of his lab stood a titanium body cage, with a full-grown Utahraptor strapped into it. It was just like the ones they make for WWC: Brawl on TV. You know the type: big purple feathers; large claws, with one giant one on its feet that could go through flesh as if it was paper; angry eyes with slit pupils darting around and looking all over the room for a fresh kill. It even has the Upstart Inc. logo imprinted into its colours, so you wouldn’t forget who made this deadly creature. This was a top-of-the-line revival clone. So earlier, when I asked what it was, I got that it was a genetically engineered dinosaur. But the part I didn’t understand was why there was all this gear bolted on to its back and head; the visor on its eye; something I assumed was a rocket launcher of some kind stuck on its back; submachine guns attached to its claws – all these knicknacks that seemed kind of redundant considering its reputation.
“Its my prototype,” Steve said. “The latest in military combat weaponry. The past and the present combined to become the soldier of the future. Introducing: Rocket Raptor!”
The First Colony – Truth
July 15, 2149, Hawking
The foot of the massive lift was lowering from the skies as night approached, and they could see it from miles away. It seemed Carne was planning on getting the people transported to the surface quickly. At least that meant the Santa Maria, Nina, and Pinta made it safe and sound. The safety of the last remaining humans was really all that mattered to Karen now.
“So why did they take your transmitter?” she asked Grant in the middle of him telling his story again.
He shrugged. “Not really sure. I think they’ve been given some sort of objective from the ships they drew in the caves. Probably wanted to keep me from sending messages back to Earth in case I found anything. The message you intercepted said they were coming for Earth, and they thanked Carne for the transaction. What do you think it means? Is it as clear cut as it seems?”
“I think so. Carne traded them for this planet. They seem to have a foothold on the indigenous people here, and their technology is evident in the cliff caves you were in. Why would they want to trade this fresh planet for our damaged atmosphere with sick people everywhere? It doesn’t add up.” Karen knew it was time to contact Carne.
Beneath the IT Department Lies
“It?”
“Yep! That’s what I call it,” said the disheveled old man who sat cross-legged on the cement floor rocking back and forth. “Don’t know what it is. Don’t know what to do about it. Just puttin’ up with it.”
The new IT support tech, Barry Monroe, scrawny in a Megadeth T-shirt, jeans and curly brown hair, raised an eyebrow. He wondered if the old man was crazy. More accurately, he wondered how crazy the old man was. He kept a respectable distance from him.
The old man was entangled in a mass of mismatched cables. He explained he was responsible for maintaining the old systems, but could use a bit of help.
Barry’s manager sent him downstairs, beneath the IT department’s data centre, to determine why one of the old systems outside the cloud kept generating random, meaningless error messages referring to an unnamed ‘it.’
The First Colony – Rescue
July 15, 2149, Hawking
Grant noticed the lander flying toward him just when he was sure his life was almost over. A massive shot of adrenaline coursed through him as he now had hope of survival. The lander turned and softly settled down two hundred yards ahead of his current path. He took the time to do a quick check over his shoulder, and caught a stone with his foot at the same time. He tumbled to the rocky ground, his pack falling off his shoulder. The imager was in there and he knew it was imperative to translate that data. The creatures’ feet boomed behind him, the echoes cascading around the cliff-like alcove as they got closer and closer.
He got up and grabbed the pack, ignoring the shooting pain on his knees from the tumble. He didn’t have long now. Laser fire shot past him and at the ground, causing rocks to explode behind him. They just missed hitting him; a few shards softly hit his back as he ran and then dove from the beams.
A woman stood, feet planted firmly, with a pulse rifle firing past him.
Brain Child
‘You called me, Doc. So what’s going on?’ I looked up at the camera and threw it a grin. When Riddles opened the fire door, my jaw dropped. His head was wrapped in aluminum foil. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I pinched my nose. ‘You look like… crap, and you smell like—’
‘I know, I know. Get in here. Put this on.’
He handed me a silvery foil hat. The hollow look of his eyes and the dark stubble kept me from hurling more insults.
‘What’s this?’
Riddles leaned out as if making sure there was no one else outside. Entering through the loading dock of the BioGentics Research building gave me a bad feeling.
‘Keep your voice down, Jimmy, and put the hat on.’
The First Colony – Translation
July 15, 2149, Hawking
Karen looked around the decimated lander and searched for any sign of Grant. His supplies were gone, along with the picture of his daughter that she knew he took on every flight. Everything he would need to survive a new world for at least a few weeks was not here. They already knew he hadn’t crashed —he’d shot them information when he’d landed, then the lines had gone silent.
“Penner, any sign of the transmitter?” she asked.
“Still nothing. I can say without a doubt that it’s not within a square mile of this wreckage.”
That was interesting.
“Commander, we’re getting a message from Breena. She says it’s urgent,” Officer O’Sullivan’s eyebrows raised as he spoke. They all wanted to know just what that alien message had said.
Applied Cosmology
Times aren’t easy in academia here but our astronomers can recognise a pork barrel at 50 megaparsecs and scrape it clean from a lot further than that. So after the climate crash/panic of ’47 we focused our instruments on new pots of money.
This is our first attempt at communication. Dark matter signatures prove you are out there, and we expect each of you discovered us and our many brethren. We hope you’ll understand this or one of the accompanying translations.
Here (as for you?) with sea levels rising and coastline property values tanking, Congress threw money at any half-baked scheme to fix the environment. Geoengineering was the favourite from the more reasonable ideas, but we got in there swinging; we can handle a gift horse. We needed millions but a drowned government isn’t expected to pay its debts so we got funded.
Then I got in touch with good people worldwide: here, Europe, Asia, South America, Africa. Cosmology, like sea level, is truly international.
The First Colony – Broadcast
July 15, 2149, Hawking
Grant ducked and hoped he’d been fast enough to avoid being spotted. He knew there were dozens of the monstrous beasts in the hollowed out cavern, and he had no idea what direction they would come at him from. His stun-gun sat uneasily in his now sweating palm, but he knew there wasn’t enough juice in it to take all of them down. He would have to be lucky. After a moment of silence, he once again heard an occasional grunt, and the constant humming of the large, blue, glowing power source from the centre of the room.
Knowing he had to do something, and quick, he crawled down the hall. The floor was a dusty, red shale and his hands and knees were getting cut up and raw from rushing across it. Better sore hands than being dead. He slipped into a small opening in the wall and crouched down, hoping to catch a peek of what was going on in the room. Apparently at this point, he hadn’t been seen, but he knew his luck would run out sooner or later.
A voice began blaring through the speakers of the cavern. The acoustics, mixed with the fact that it was in an entirely alien language, gave it an ominous tone. His heart raced at the new information. This couldn’t be from the grunting, howling monsters, so it had to be from an outside source. Was there another race on this planet, or was this voice being transmitted from far away? Perhaps from one of the ships depicted on the cave walls in a crude triangle shape. Continue reading