D. W. Vogel - Horizon Alpha: Homecoming

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Future House Publishing

Homecoming

Future House Publishing

Cover image copyright: Shutterstock.com. Used under license.

Text 2018 Wendy Vogel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at rights@futurehousepublishing.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-944452-92-6 (paperback)

Cover image adaptation by Brad Duke

Developmental editing by Emma Hoggan

Line editing by Stephanie Cullen

Copy editing by Isabelle Tatum

Interior design by Emma Hoggan

Fly free, Josh Vogel

Chapter 1

Captains Personal Journal. Year One, Day One.

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 Earths 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 planets 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, theyll 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 were down to basic life support. It will take some time. And it hardly matters. Even the smallest shuttles wont 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 didnt 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.

Were all thats 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. Its right that I should spend my final days on this dead ship, huddling in darkness. Its not right that others are stuck here with me.

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

Chapter 2

Caleb

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 werent 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 Horizons remaining crew is a very slow process, but heres what weve 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 dont 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 dads name. These past three years we had been sure he was dead, left alone on the Horizon. All that time hed been up there listening to us on our sat trans when the Horizon was in the right place in the sky. Hed 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. Hed listened as my mission fell apart, and when General Carthage died.

I looked down at my half-brother, tiny and perfect in Moms arms. He was the Generals son, named Teddy after my dad. My dad who wasnt dead after all. What must Mom be feeling about that?

The mayor spoke again. Well 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 didnt work like other peoples. 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.