Horizon Alpha: Predators of Eden (Horizon Arc, Band 1) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

D. W. Vogel is a veterinarian, marathon runner, cancer survivor, boardgame developer for SolarFlare Games, and current president of Cincinnati Fiction Writers. She is the author of the Horizon series, and Super Dungeon Explore: The Forgotten King from Future House Publishing. 

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We never would have come to this planet if we’d known.
If Earth’s scientists had had more time to study the skies, they might have realized. But there wasn’t any time. Their first report of Mercury’s wobble projected that Jupiter’s gravity would pull Earth’s neighbor out of orbit in only eighty years. Eighty years until Earth would be destroyed. They had less than a century to build the Horizon fleet, four city-sized Arks. Less than a century to choose four potentially habitable worlds and equip the Arks to be self-sufficient for generations. To figure out how to propel a ship the size of a small town across the galaxy to a brand new planet. To choose the lucky group of refugees who would carry the seeds of our doomed species.
That was two hundred years ago.
All four Horizon ships left Earth’s orbit, and because Tau Ceti e was the closest habitable planet, our distant ancestors on the Alpha ship had the shortest journey. Even then, when they boarded Horizon Alpha for the one-way voyage, they knew they would never set foot on solid ground again. Generations were born, lived, and died aboard the city-size ship, breathing the recycled air of a dead planet. They kept busy: they read and played games, they grew crops in the gardens, and they bred sheep, the only farm animal deemed useful enough to devote space to. They trained the next generation of scientists to spend years studying how two centuries in space would affect all the living things they brought from Earth. They fought the despair that must have plagued all those unfortunates who knew they wouldn’t live to see the new world, humanity’s last hope.
Our ancestors were still luckier than most. Horizon Gamma never made it out of Earth’s solar system. Every year we take a moment of silence on Day 45 for Gamma’s five hundred souls and Day 138 for the billions more who never got to leave Earth at all. The Beta and Delta are still out there somewhere, speeding toward distant stars and other worlds.
At least, we think they are.
It’s been over a century since the distance between our ships ended communications, but neither of them was scheduled for planetfall for at least another 300 Earth years.
Ceti’s orbit is faster than Earth’s, so we get just under three hundred days a year here. We’re a bit closer to our sun than Earth was, and a lot bigger. It’s hotter here day and night, and Ceti is younger than Earth. In the panic to get humans off our home world, nobody realized what those conditions might mean when they pointed us here.
By the time Horizon entered orbit around Tau Ceti e, it was far too late to turn back. We had only enough fuel to get here and set up a preliminary city. The long-dead scientists of Earth expected us to figure out the natural resources here and sort out a new life for ourselves. They must have envisioned a preindustrial society, Earth’s descendants making campfires and living off a new land.
We never blamed them. They meant well.
After centuries of travel, Horizon Alpha arrived. We launched probes to test the atmosphere and found it oxygen-rich and clean. Our sensors sent back data that told us of a warm, damp planet teeming with plant and animal life. We had no way to know what the plants would be like, but we had crops and seeds on Horizon to sow this new world with familiar foods. We had dreams of domesticating the animals, whatever they might turn out to be. Surely this was a new Eden, a garden of plenty where humanity would thrive.
I was born twelve years before we entered Ceti’s orbit. My brother, Josh, was four years old then, and my mom had just completed her medical training. And our dad was captain of the Horizon Alpha. We were the lucky ones. The first humans in generations to set foot on the natural soil of a living planet.
Horizon herself was far too large to make planetfall, but we had plenty of shuttles to carry us and everything we’d need down to our new home. My father would be the last man to leave the ship. He would engage the solar-powered autopilot that would keep Horizon in geosynchronous orbit, our eternal eyes-in-the-sky above our proposed base.
The plan was to deploy our communication satellites and scan the planet to determine the best place to land, but the satellites showed us images of dense jungles, wide rivers, and vast oceans. We couldn’t see past the thick canopy and had no idea what animals had evolved here, but we were thrilled to finally be so close to the end of our journey.
We started loading a single shuttle to send to the planet’s surface. The team inside would scout out the planet while we waited for their report.
Moments before the shuttle took off, an explosion rocked Horizon’s hull.
The shock wave pulsed right through my shoes. Sirens blared and lights flashed.
“Emergency evacuation. All personnel report to your transport shuttle for immediate departure.” The robotic voice repeated the message over and over.
Mom told Josh and me to grab everything we could carry from our home unit and run for the shuttle. We were assigned to transport 36, halfway across the width of Horizon. People were running everywhere, babies screamed, and the air started to smell thick. Josh carried my little sister, Malia, and we pushed through the crowds toward our evacuation assignment.
“Where’s Dad?” I yelled in the chaos, even though I knew he was probably in the control room, keeping the ship flying.
When we got to bay 36, the shuttle was gone. One of Horizon’s officers herded us onto the next shuttle, and we crammed in as tightly as we would fit. We all got seats and belted ourselves in, but more people kept boarding and there wasn’t enough room. My ears popped when they closed the shuttle doors and the cabin changed pressure.
And then we were falling.
I looked out the window to see Horizon in the black sky above us, before the window was obscured by fire as we entered Ceti’s atmosphere. I thought the burn would last forever as the little ship bucked and shook. Finally the window cleared, the engines kicked on, and we were flying high above a green world.
Ceti is larger than Earth, so its gravity is stronger. We were supposed to fly in formation to an orderly landing, all the shuttles together. But we were losing altitude too fast. The pilot kept us in the air as long as he could, searching for an open field to land in. Finally he saw a likely spot, and we raced for the ground.
The final leg of our one-way trip was over, and as we bumped to a halt on the ground, Mom started to cry.
“It’s okay, Mom, we landed. We’re all right.”
She shook her head and clutched Malia so hard that she started to cry, too, huge tears on her little cheeks. I tried to comfort her, but I didn’t understand why she was crying.
Somehow Mom knew when we landed that Dad wouldn’t leave his damaged ship. Our shuttle’s pilot told Mom that Dad had sent out a final message of hope to all the shuttles that had escaped Horizon, and that he loved us very much. In the three years since, Mom has never mentioned his name again.
Seven of the launched ships landed in the riverside clearing that became Eden base. Three of them were huge transports like the one we were on, and four more were small shuttles intended to go back and forth to Horizon as we removed all its contents and set up our new home.
We had brief satellite contact with a few of the other transports, but they were scattered across the planet, too far to join us here. I don’t know if any of them survived. There might be other settlements elsewhere on Ceti, but if they’re out there, we haven’t...