Exodus: Extinction Event Read online

  Exodus:

  Extinction Event

  By

  Kaitlyn O’Connor

  ( c ) Copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, July 2017

  Cover art by Jenny Dixon, July 2017

  ISBN 978-1-60394-

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  If she’d blinked, most of it would have been over by the time she opened her eyes again.

  “There, but for the Grace of God, go I.”

  Monica whipped a startled look at the speaker, shocked enough by the comment—and the identity of the speaker—to be distracted from a galactic event of epic proportions that she’d been privileged by pure accident to witness—

  With her own eyes—

  In real time.

  At a safe observation distance.

  In effect, an extinction level event for any living things unfortunate enough to have been residing on the planet they had been approaching at warp—or folding as some referred to the recent technological leap that had enabled humans to achieve galactic travel.

  It would prove to be a life saver—the drive—for millions, Monica was sure, but the discovery like many before it had been accidental.

  The unfortunate group that had developed it had thought they were designing a new protective shielding for the Exodus Project.

  Unfortunate because they had warped—folded space when they hadn’t expected to—and no one had seen them since.

  Dr. McNeal—who had never, to her knowledge, expressed his feelings in religious terms before, because he was a man of science and didn’t believe in mythology—turned to meet her gaze for a long moment and then returned his attention to the events unfolding. “There’s an irony here, I believe.”

  Monica wasn’t certain if he was talking to her or not. They weren’t the only ones crowded at the viewing port to stare at the planet that had been their expected destination—their group’s designated colony world.

  Or at least the one considered most desirable.

  It looked like they were going to be making a detour to plan/planet B.

  She searched her mind for a possible explanation for Dr. McNeal’s comment. “Because we left Earth to avoid just such a catastrophic event?”

  “If one were superstitious one might almost think it was some sort of omen … or perhaps the wrath of a deity.”

  So he’d just been quoting something he’d heard or read when he referenced the grace of god?

  He smiled sourly. “Purely an … unfortunate coincidence, of course, but this sort of situation is the very thing that made the ancients superstitious, you know.”

  Before Monica could agree, disagree, or debate the statement, one of the others crowding around them—Dr. Thomas Hobbs—spoke up. “I believe I’ll head to the lab and see what the long range vids picked up.”

  As one, the entire group turned from the viewing port and headed in the direction of the lab. The course took them through the recreational lounge and there they discovered the captain had ordered, or allowed, the video captured of the event to be broadcast on the TV monitors around the room. The colonists were gathered in dismayed groups around each.

  Happy they hadn’t reached the planet and suffered with the natives.

  Unhappy that they must continue their journey when they were already sick to death of life aboard the Spartan colony ship.

  Monica hesitated, tempted to join the other colonists. As a junior scientist with very little standing, it wasn’t likely that she was going to get much opportunity to study the videos, at least not in the near term. But if she stayed to watch in the lounge/recreation area then she wouldn’t get to listen to the other scientists discussing the event.

  She didn’t want to miss that, she decided.

  It was far quieter in the lab. The science team was studying the event on the monitors, discussing their thoughts in low murmurs that seemed to convey a great deal of reverence, but she thought it more likely they were just still too stunned to take it all in.

  That thought sent her mind off on a less scientific tangent.

  Naturally, every effort had been made to study the target colony planets as thoroughly as possible—meaning specifics—once they’d gathered as much information as they could to winnow out the less desirable planets. But they hadn’t really had the luxury of time or resources to be as thorough as they’d wanted to be.

  Most available resources had been focused on building the colony ships and stocking them.

  Because Earth had an Extinction Level Event pending and nothing that had been tried had seemed likely to avert it.

  They’d left a nightmare behind them.

  With the best will in the world, they simply could not come up with transport for the entire population.

  They hadn’t managed to stop or divert the mountain sized asteroid bearing down on the Earth.

  In fact, there was some fear that they might well have made the situation worse.

  So they’d moved as much of the population to the space stations and colony ships as they could and built the best shelters they could on Earth for those they were forced to leave behind.

  No one really thought those left behind would survive.

  But then their own survival was no sure thing—not by a long shot.

  Every escape vessel had been equipped with the new and completely untested warp drives because that was their only hope of survival—to be able to reach a livable planet before supplies ran out. They’d done their best to make the vessels self-sustaining, but they didn’t know how well that was going to work and realized they had to accept that they might not have more time than the supplies that they’d gathered held out.

  Thankfully, it was the nature of humans to grow accustomed to the most horrific conditions. When they’d begun to fold, Monica had been absolutely terrified, expecting any moment to feel her body implode or explode. When nothing happened beyond a little ‘motion sickness’, she’d relaxed fractionally and had been easing toward acceptance ever since.

  She hardly thought about the folding anymore or the possibility of warping into a star or planet.

  Thankfully, space was unimaginably vast.

  It wasn’t that hard to navigate emptiness.

  Not that the ‘seas’ were entirely empty, but ‘mostly’ had proven to be good enough—at least so far. The ship had shields to protect from dust and micro-meteors—even slightly larger rocks. Anything larger than a basketball was liable to cause some damage, but otherwise they were safe.

  She’d been self-absorbed enough with her own fears—and separation anxiety—to divert her mind from the people left behind, but now a sort of convergence occurred, maybe transference as she listened to the drone of her colleagues voices and stared at the doomed world.

  Had there been intelligent beings there?

  They’d thought it was a strong possibility that there were primitives at the very least—beings that could well be very similar to humans.

  The planet was that close to being an Earth twin—which at least suggested that similar things would have evolved there. And it was old enough for some fairly advanced animals to have emerged.

  But could they tell, from this distance, if the devastation was sufficient to kill everything on contact? To break down the food chain and kill off everything that had survived the initial impact?

  Had it been instant death? Or were there poor souls that were going to die slowly?

  Almost as
if Dr. McNeal had read her mind, he voiced the same thought. “This looks like a massive extinction event, but there’s no way we can tell from here. We need a closer look,” he said decisively.

  The rest of the group turned to look at him with clearly mixed emotions. They were scientists and the suggestion was an exciting one. But they were doubtful, and fearful, about what might be a suggestion that they take a very close look at the devastation and either there weren’t nearly as many enthusiastic to that point or the doubt in their expressions arose from their certainty it wouldn’t be allowed.

  Hobbs challenged the unspoken suggestion that they make an effort to get closer. “The captain isn’t going to risk the other colonists—however important this might be even to us.”

  It took Monica a few moments to switch gears from empathy for the unfortunate inhabitants to self.

  It would’ve been better to keep the tongue from wagging until her brain had shifted. “How would it affect us?” Uneasiness washed over her when everyone turned to stare at her as if she’d grown another head. “I mean—obviously we can’t consider it as a colony anymore, but ….”

  McNeal actually looked pitying.

  Hobbs blasted her for her lack of foresight and her impulsive tongue. “The research could be invaluable and extremely pertinent to us! This world is a very close mirror of Earth—now even in its destruction! I’m guessing you haven’t completely forgotten that we’re currently homeless because Earth is facing a similar collision?”

  Monica felt her face redden until she could feel the pulse of her heartbeat in her cheeks. She sucked in a breath to respond but saw that McNeal was frowning at her. He shook his head infinitesimally.

  She hesitated and then decided to keep her tongue between her teeth and not risk giving Hobbs more ammunition.

  “We should speak to the captain and see what, if anything, can be arranged. This should give us some insight on what to expect on Earth and we might be able to come up with a reasonably accurate recovery time so we’ll know when Earth might again support life.”

  The statement was enough to disperse the group.

  No one wanted to be present when Hobbs presented his case to the Captain—who was notoriously short tempered, no doubt a combination of his nature and the tremendous strain of leadership.

  The urge to cry assaulted Monica when everyone, including McNeal, had left her in sole possession of the lab.

  It was something that had hit her fairly frequently since the Exodus had gotten underway.

  She might be a fresh-faced scientist in the community and not taken all that seriously despite the many degrees she’d earned, but she hailed from a family of scientists and that, plus her own degrees, had insured her a place on a colony ship.

  As much of a relief as it was that she was saved—hopefully—and her immediate family, they were not all assigned to the same colony—and neither were the handful of people that she could count as friends or at least friendly co-workers/acquaintances.

  She knew she had a lot more to be grateful for than to be weeping over, but pep talks didn’t help to ease the loneliness or the anxiety that she wasn’t likely ever to see them again.

  She could comfort herself with the odds in favor of them still being alive and having a life to look forward to on a new home world, but until they managed to establish the colonies and set up communications, there wouldn’t even be a possibility of checking on one another—certainly not chatting and/or having them as a part of her life.

  It took an effort, but she stiffened her spine and beat back the urge to give in to showing her vulnerability by crying. She didn’t think it had ever really been safe to show others that you were weak, but it certainly wasn’t when everyone was in survival mode.

  Nobody wanted to tackle survival trying to lug someone else’s weak ass.

  * * * *

  Kaelen Redtail paused to catch his breath and check his back trail. Faintly, in the distance, he could still hear pursuit.

  He frowned.

  He had a clear lead, but was it enough?

  If he led them to his and Dar’s lair, they would have to die, and he was not certain Dar was up to a death battle yet.

  Deciding to err on the side of caution, he headed in the opposite direction, paused long enough to hide his bounty—which was what had attracted the ravening hoard to start with—and then backtracked and picked up the original trail.

  He discovered he had miscalculated on the time it took to hide his prizes. They were close enough to spot him only moments after he took up the trail again and that inspired them to increase their speed.

  It also supplied him with a spurt of fresh adrenaline, however, and he managed to gain some distance—enough to set a trap.

  He’d hoped to begin with that, if he could stay far enough ahead of them, they would give up and look for easier prey. But he had reckoned without the desperation the men were obviously feeling with the scarcity of food so close to the city.

  The size of the mob had dwindled, though. So either roughly half had decided to look for something easier to catch or—unnerving thought—they’d split up to surround him.

  It was almost as disturbing to think they might have diverted to look for the food he’d stashed as it was to think they might have out flanked him.

  Fortunately, the latter didn’t seem to be the case. Only four men fell into his trap. The debris he’d dragged up forced them into single file and the trip wire the first one activated released the pulley driven ram, skewering the first two and incapacitating the third. The fourth managed to leap out of the way, but Kaelen wasn’t worried about a single opponent. He’d had a few moments to catch his breath while he waited for them to catch up to him and fall into his trap. And he’d had enough experience in hand to hand combat since the world had ended that he was confident in his fighting skills.

  Again, desperation drove his opponent, but Kaelen was nearly as desperate and just as determined. He pounced on the last man before he had a chance to decide whether to flee or fight, shoving him against the wall of debris. The impact dislodged some of the stuff Kaelen had used as building materials and it rained down over both of them. Fortunately, he was in a position to leap back and had anticipated the waterfall of shattered stone, concrete, metal, and plastics. His attacker tried to evade but with less success.

  They clashed in a brief battle of grunting and growling determination to dominate and then Kaelen was able to thrust his opponent away and strike a deadly blow. He stared down at the fallen man dispassionately for a long moment. “Do you think, now, that it is easier to kill someone else and take their food they have worked hard to find?”

  “Please,” the man gasped.

  Kaelen felt a rise of bile in his throat. He had no idea whether the man was asking for help or for Kaelen to finish it rather than leaving him to suffer.

  But there would be no rescue. Kaelen had no knowledge of medicine beyond a modicum of first aid and no medicine.

  He dispatched the would-be assassin and returned to check the others to make sure none would be following him.

  Dar was awake when he finally made it back to their lair. He looked Kaelen over through narrowed eyes. “How many?”

  Kaelen shrugged. “Four by the time I made it to the dead drop. One after they tripped the trap. I managed to take him out before he recovered enough to put up much of a fight.”

  Dar studied him. “So that is their blood?”

  Kaelen looked down at himself and grimaced. “Mostly.

  “You should go to the reservoir and bathe before you pick up something you cannot put down.”

  Kaelen was tempted to argue. He was exhausted. But disease was one thing that had survived the firestorm created by the asteroid impact very well—and viruses, and bacteria.

  In fact, it almost seemed as if they had proliferated.

  The slightest nick in the wrong place and time could mean death—and not a pretty or easy one.

  They were fortunate that they
’d managed to put together a water collection system that filtered out most contaminates.

  And that no one had found it yet and taken it or tried to or destroyed it for spite because they could not steal it.

  Kaelen did not know which was worse—the death of his world or the death of his belief in the basic goodness of his people.

  Survival brought out the good, the bad, and the ugly—but mostly the ugly.

  The people who had tried to help others had been mostly wiped out by the bad who only wanted to profit from the misfortunes of others.

  Not right away.

  In the beginning, in the first little while after they had dug themselves out of the shelters, those who had lived through the catastrophic event had simply been too shocked to do much more than wander around in search of people they had been separated from. Thirst and hunger had finally driven them back down below the surface to nurse their wounds—both emotional and physical—while they depleted the stores they had lain in. A few here and there had finally woken to the realization that this was not a nightmare they were going to wake up from. It was life. They had faced the end of the world as they knew it and now how to step up and build a new one if it was possible or they were facing a worse death than those who had been fortunate enough to be vaporized on impact. It seemed unlikely, as horrific as death must have been, that their minds had been able to process extinction in the split second they had had for awareness. It seemed unlikely that pain would have had time to travel to the interpreters in their bodies.

  One second they were going about living and the next—nothing.

  The new world order became clear within months of emerging onto the devastated surface.

  They were facing extinction.

  They had not dodged a bullet. It just had not killed them immediately.

  If they did not adapt, and very quickly, they were not going to make it as individuals or as a people.

  Chapter Two

  Monica didn’t know if she was more terrified or more excited.

  She was certain, though, that both were churning in her belly and making her feel elated one moment and ill with apprehension the next.