The Planetsider Read online

  The

  Planetsider

  G J OGDEN

  Copyright © 2018 G J Ogden

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Ogden Media Ltd

  Cover design by germancreative

  www.ogdenmedia.net

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Sarah for patiently editing and proof-reading this book and helping to make it the best it could be.

  And thanks to you for reading it.

  CHAPTER 1

  Maria Salus tightened her hold on the control yoke as another bolt of energy hammered the hull of the ship. Her fingers were white from the pressure of gripping the stick and her muscles burned from the effort of holding the vessel's course. But the planet's atmosphere was looming large in the window now and she knew that a change in their entry angle could kill them.

  From behind her, Chris Kurren reached out and grabbed the co-pilot's chair to steady himself against the impact. He scanned the controls and watched as warning lights flashed on and off, beaming spots of red light onto his angular, rough-shaven face. Text in red, yellow and green flicked across the panels and Kurren studied it, finding the information he needed. “Thirty seconds!” he shouted, adjusting the controls of the console in front of him. “The heat shields are holding, but the aft armour plating is buckling; if we sustain another direct hit we’re finished!”

  Another red light came on in Maria’s main console, bathing her face in a red glow. She checked the scanner display on the dashboard and analysed the readings from the two fighters in pursuit. A warning light flashed on and off rapidly, accompanied by a shrill alarm. “Hold on!” she shouted.

  Kurren barely had time to react before she jerked the control yoke sharply left then right. The ship’s thrusters responded, forcing the ship to zig-zag violently. Thin strips of energy flashed past the cockpit glass, causing Maria to involuntarily duck, before she centred the controls again and cut back towards the planet’s atmosphere. The manoeuvre was completed with masterful precision, ensuring the ship remained perfectly on course towards the planet’s surface.

  “Nice move, Sal. A little more warning next time, though?” Kurren said sternly. Maria didn't look back to check, but she knew he was smiling.

  “I thought you liked surprises,” she replied, also smiling. Another alarm sounded, focusing both of them once again on the matter at hand.

  Kurren sat in the co-pilot's chair, read his console and then adjusted several more controls. Energy hummed through conduits all around them, adjusting the power distribution to compensate for the damage they had sustained. The multi-coloured text continued to flood onto Kurren’s screen as the ship continued on towards the blue planet. “Twenty seconds!” he shouted to Maria, “Prepare to enter the atmosphere!” The ship was rocked again by another blast from the pursuing fighters. A console exploded behind Kurren, spitting fire over his flight suit, followed by another to his left, which showered the side of his face with white hot splinters of debris, like needles. Kurren screamed and pressed his hand to his cheek.

  “Kurren, are you okay?” Maria shouted, but her voice was drowned out by another explosion that rammed into the starboard side of the small craft. Kurren, already disorientated from the previous blast, lost his balance and fell backwards, landing heavily on the cold metal plating of the ship’s floor. Maria called out again. No answer. More lights flickered on the dashboard – all red – and Maria quickly scanned them, trying to force back her panic and remain composed. The fire from the control panel was spreading now, feeding on the oxygen in the cabin. With Kurren’s comfortingly soft voice gone, Maria was suddenly very afraid. It was a different fear to any she had felt previously, worse even than the stomach-churning anxiety she experienced after accepting the mission and learning of the dangers involved. At least then Kurren had been there to share her anxiety; now she was alone, and this realisation was terrifying.

  Another alarm sounded and Maria responded instinctively, punching three buttons and sending the ship forward into the atmosphere. All around her she saw fire, but still she felt cold.

  Ten seconds until atmospheric entry would be completed.

  Another volley of energy struck the ship, slamming into the forward section next to her command chair. The yoke flew out of her hands and slammed into her thigh, crushing muscle to bone. She screamed in pain, but though she felt the cry rush from her lungs, she heard nothing over the ferocious noise engulfing the cabin as it pierced the atmosphere. The ship penetrated further into the fire and more alarms sounded, continuing to drown out her screams. She grabbed the control yoke again, pushing it away with all her strength, forcing the ship to resume its course. She pressed her hand to her leg as the pain moved up her thigh and into her stomach, making her vomit. Tears streamed down her face, but she held the yoke tightly. More spears of light flashed past the cockpit glass, this time further away.

  “You’ll have to do better than that!” shouted Maria, as the shards of energy missed the ship.

  The fire inside was spreading too, over the legs of Kurren as he lay unconscious on the floor. Blood oozed from the fracture in his skull and pooled on the plating under his head.

  Five seconds and they would be through.

  The pain had subsided and the lights and sounds in the ship were beginning to sound dull and distant. Maria could feel her grip loosening as she reached out to the square panel in front of the yoke and punched the last button in the sequence. A buzzing sound filled the cabin but Maria did not hear it. The control yoke fell through her limp fingers and she slumped forward on the chair’s safety harness, barely conscious. Moments later the shuddering stopped and the cabin was flooded with a brilliant clean light, more intense than had been seen by her or her people for generations. But Maria was aware only of the darkness behind her eyes, and then nothing.

  chapter 2

  Ethan watched as another bright light smeared a fiery streak across the night sky. He was lying on his back, under his favourite tree, on a hilltop next to the walled settlement that was his home, and home to around two hundred others. Strictly speaking, he was not supposed to be outside the settlement’s walls after dark, but there hadn’t been a Roamer attack for weeks, and Ethan would be on the front line if there was one anyway. The governors knew this too, which was why no one reprimanded him about his frequent excursions outside.

  There had been an unusually large number of lights that night, Ethan thought. Their strange, eerie quality had fascinated him since he was a child of perhaps no more than five or six years old. But now they were much more than a mere curiosity to him. As a boy he had been taught about the many theories concerning the lights – what they might be, how they are formed and so on – none of which had any basis in fact, of course. Most were old wives' tales and elaborate fantasies created by philosophers from the twenty-seven known settlements that had discovered each other, generally by accident, long after The Fall.

  The first scholar philosopher that Ethan had known, a blusterous and completely bald man named Mr Boucher (who was more a spiritual leader, Ethan had discovered as he got older), liked to talk about how the lights were really angels that watched over everyone, and guided the people to a better future. For many years Ethan had believed this; he even used to spend hours watching and talking to the ‘angels’ in the sky. But when a large band of Roamers came to attack the settlement, resulting in the death of his mother and father, there were no angels to protect them. They didn’t hear his cries for help, or come to his aid. They left Ethan and his sister, Katie, to be burned alive in their house. They did not save his mother and father, who lay unconscious on the burning floor, while Ethan and Katie were pulled, barely alive, from the furnace. And they did nothing while he sat on the cold, wet earth outside, heari
ng their screams as the flames took them from him.

  It wasn’t just his parents that had been abandoned; Ethan saw that the angels had failed to watch over a great many more people in the settlement that night. Despite this, when the flames had been extinguished, the houses rebuilt, and the walls fortified again, the scholars still continued to talk of angels, and the children still believed it, including Katie. But Ethan did not; for him, a light streaking across the sky was no longer an angel, but a question seeking an answer. And Ethan had so many questions as he grew older, not only about the lights, but also about the world around him – the creeping insanity of the Roamers, the horror of The Maddening, the reason for the devastation of the cities, the ruins which littered the landscape in all directions, and the terrifying, fragile scarcity of living people; the scarcity of life itself. What had happened to leave the planet in this state?

  A gust of cold wind swept over the hill and Ethan pulled his coat tighter around his chest as it whistled passed him and rustled the branches of the naked old tree standing over him. In the distance, he could hear the faint ringing of wind chimes that hung outside his sister’s house inside the settlement walls, and it made him think of her, and her son. He sat up and shivered.

  “I don’t suppose you could turn the temperature up a bit could you?” he said, looking skyward.

  A sliver of light appeared low on the horizon, then vanished. “Thanks a bunch,” he commented wistfully. He thought about Erik’s famous apple wine and wished he’d brought a flask to drink and warm his insides. Erik was the man who had pulled him and his sister from their burning house, and had become a sort of uncle to them over the years. But since he didn't have a flask he decided it was probably a good time to head back to the settlement, where he had a plentiful supply of wine, as well as a comfortable bed.

  He was about to push himself up from the floor when he heard a sound from behind him like a twig snapping, coming from down the hill. Ethan froze motionless and listened. The wind carried the sounds of rustling leaves and branches but there was something else moving. No wild animal had been seen near the settlement for months, and if any had escaped from the farms he would have been called upon by the governors to 'rescue' it long ago. He reached down inside his dense woollen coat and removed a long knife from its scabbard. The sound was getting closer and Ethan recognised it as footsteps, slow and careful. Someone was sneaking up on him. A Roamer he thought, and tightened his grip on the knife’s cold bone handle.

  Slowly, he backed himself up against the tree and got into a sitting position, still holding the knife inside his coat so that it didn’t reflect any light from the moon and alert whoever was approaching. He waited as the footsteps got closer. They were now on the top of the hill close to the oak, still creeping carefully. Then the footsteps stopped. Ethan listened. The wind gusted again and rustled the branches of the tree, but through the noise Ethan heard the man approach. He pulled the knife out of his coat, span around the tree and knocked the man to the ground. The figure fell in a heap and Ethan pounced on top of him, knife poised to strike.

  “Argh! Argh! Argh Argh! Get off me! Argh, Argh! Filthy Roamer! Argh! Help! Argh!”

  Ethan breathed a deep sigh of relief, quickly returned the knife to its scabbard inside his coat and clamped his hand over his young nephew’s mouth. “Be quiet, you little saphead, I almost gutted you!” he said, perched over him.

  Elijah, still trying desperately to scream and shout despite being very effectively muffled by Ethan’s hand, looked up at him and suddenly relaxed. Ethan took his hand off Elijah’s mouth, examined the slimy mess that his frantic bawling had left behind, and then casually wiped it on the front of Elijah’s tunic.

  “Ewww, that's disgusting!” Elijah complained.

  “It came out of your mouth!” Ethan pointed out, smirking at him. “Now, do you mind telling me what you are doing creeping up on me like that? No, wait. Let’s start with why you’re outside the settlement walls, you know it’s forbidden.”

  “You’re outside, though…” Elijah said, meekly.

  Ethan raised an eyebrow. Elijah was as sharp as the knife he had concealed inside his coat. And he shared Ethan's curious nature, something his mother blamed entirely on his adventurous and exciting uncle. “Never mind that,” said Ethan. “I’m not the one who almost got impaled. If your mother knew you were outside the walls, especially with me, that would probably change!” Ethan paused to check Elijah's expression. He looked back sheepishly. “I’m assuming she doesn’t know you’re gone?”

  “Of course not,” said Elijah, defiantly. “I’m not that stupid, Ethan.”

  “Well, at least that’s something,” said Ethan. “So how did you get out, anyway? The Rangers should have stopped you long before you even got near the outer wall. I certainly wouldn't have let a shifty character like you skulk about.”

  Elijah smiled “I got out the same way you did. I watched you to see where you went.”

  Ethan laughed. “You’re more cunning than you look,” he said. “You must get that from me!” Then he took a more serious tone, because being outside at night was a genuinely serious matter. “Still, that doesn’t explain why you’ve risked a grizzly death at the hands of the Roamers, or me for that matter, by venturing outside at night.”

  “I came to see you,” Elijah replied, as if it were obvious, which Ethan supposed it was, after he thought about it. “You’re always telling me about how you like to watch the lights at night, and how one day you’d show me the best spot to see them. I'm guessing this is it, right?”

  Ethan frowned, got up, and pulled Elijah to his feet. “I suppose I did say that,” he replied, annoyed that Elijah seemed to be getting the better of him. “But I wasn’t planning on doing it until you were a bit older, certainly older than ten, anyway. It’s not safe out here, like I keep telling you.”

  “I know, Ethan. I’m sorry,” said Elijah. “But Mr Boucher told us stories about the lights today and, well, it just made me think of you. So I followed you.” Elijah looked around the hill and at the huge tree above them. “This is the place, right?” he asked again.

  “Yes, this is the place,” Ethan replied. He looked around, contemplating the surroundings. “My father used to bring me here, when I was younger than you. From here you can see the light curve around the sky. See, where that peak and the river line up?” Ethan pointed far into the distance at a mountain peak with a river flowing in jagged lines towards them.

  Elijah followed Ethan's hand movements, and then scanned the sky above in the arc he had indicated. Straight away he saw several flashes, some bright and directly overhead, and some dimmer and further away above the mountain peak. “What are they?” he asked.

  “No idea...” Ethan replied, wistfully. He glanced back down at Elijah, who was still staring skyward, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Did you know Mr Boucher used to tell me the same stories? He must be about a hundred now.” Elijah didn't respond. “I suppose he told you that the lights are really angels that watch over us, didn’t he?” said Ethan.

  Elijah’s face lit up suddenly, and he looked at Ethan. “Yes, he did! He told us how the angels watch over the twenty-seven settlements to make sure everyone is okay, and to make sure that the Maddening stays away. We’re lucky that they watch over us, aren’t we?” he asked, his face beaming.

  Ethan felt angry and turned away, trying to hide his bleak expression from Ethan.

  “Isn’t that what he taught you at school?” asked a concerned-sounding Elijah.

  “Yes. Yes it is,” replied Ethan, half-heartedly, still facing away. He sat down next to the old oak and gestured for Elijah to sit down too, which he did, looking slightly puzzled. Ethan fiddled with the buttons on his coat and was silent for a while. Elijah sat patiently, looking at him, waiting for Ethan to impart some great wisdom. The wind, seemingly bored of toying with the branches of the tree, was now playing with Elijah's untidy brown hair; wafting it in loose tufts across his young face, a face so fu
ll of wonder and youth and adventure. Ethan had looked that way once, he supposed. Suddenly he was afraid of robbing his nephew of that innocence. Elijah didn't need that burden, not yet. He turned away again.

  “What is it Ethan?” Elijah asked, breaking the silence.

  “Nothing,” said Ethan, gently. “I was just thinking how much you look like your grandfather, that’s all,” he lied. Strangely, now that he'd said it, Ethan realised that Elijah did actually look a bit like his father, and he wondered why he hadn't noticed before. Ethan had only vague and often fleeting memories of his father and mother now. They had died when he was only nine years old; a year younger than Elijah was now.

  He thought back to his childhood and remembered how the story of the angels had comforted him. He longed to feel that security again; to feel that the world made sense, despite its apparent hopelessness. But in all the years since his parents had been killed, Ethan had felt no comfort, just anger, loneliness, and even despair. In his early teens, he'd even considered suicide. It wasn’t uncommon. It didn’t help that he had few friends. Outside of his family – Katie and Elijah – there was only really Summer that he truly considered a friend and really cared for. Others found him closed off and self-centred. He didn’t really enjoy socialising, and preferred being either alone or with his family. To most people, he was as cold as the barren landscape around them. If it weren't for his sister, and certainly for her son, he would have left the settlement long ago, to go who knows where? In many ways, he resented the fact that they tied him down to the settlement. Often, when he was sitting on this hill outside the walls, he would consider just leaving, and heading to the city, or some other ruin, and hunting for clues about the past; something to put his life into perspective and make sense of it all. But he could never quite bring himself to do it. He had made it about a mile one night, but turned back. Elijah wasn’t like him. He was gregarious and open, and almost too trusting. Ethan had no right to rob Elijah of his blissful ignorance, no matter what his own personal feelings were.