Gateway aurora, p.1
Gateway Aurora, page 1
GATEWAY:
AURORA
BY
Kaitlyn O’Connor
Copyright ( c ) Madris DePasture writing as Kaitlyn O’Connor September 2021
Cover Art by Jenny Dixon
Smashwords Edition
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.
Prologue
In the early days of the race to space to claim as much real estate as possible—all of the choice pieces—the focus was on building bigger and faster ships to sail the vast seas, to develop space folding to cut the time in crossing the enormous distances even more.
But there was a certain impracticality of those methods given the span of the human life.
And when wormhole technology arrived, it was embraced as the ultimate solution.
The gateways wouldn’t just make colonization cheaper for the masses, they would make colonizing possible for those who couldn’t afford life extensions. Because traveling via ship was not only so expensive only people who were at least moderately wealthy could afford it. It took longer to reach their destination even with the development of hyper-drives and space folding than most could afford to devote to it. It didn’t present an insurmountable problem for people who could afford life extensions. The typical lifespan for the wealthy was two hundred years and the 20 years it took to reach the furthest colonies made very little difference to them. For the poor, however, whose typical lifespan was no more than a hundred, 20 years meant no real hope of having the youth and vigor to build a successful homestead. Beyond that, those they must leave behind were very likely lost to them forever. They couldn’t afford a round trip for visits home and even if they could the people they left weren’t likely to live long enough to see them again.
Unfortunately, there were those on Earth and the colonies who didn’t believe the opportunities colonization presented should be open to just anyone. They were the supremists and they felt like the poor were poor because they are inferior beings who would do no better no matter what opportunities they were offered. Allowing them into the colonies would only burden a budding new society with the useless dregs of humanity.
There were also the fundamentalists who believed that Earth was created by God for humans and that was their home and God would bring about the end of Earth if humans abandoned it. To stay in God’s grace, they had to stop the migration of humans across the universe.
On the colonies themselves, there were the first colonists who believed they shouldn’t have competition for the rewards of having taken all the risks and done all the hard work of first settlement.
And there were the natives—the primitive beings whose world humans had stolen for their own …..
Chapter One
Alayna Baptiste had no warning. She’d just put in a full shift at work trying to track down critical missing supplies—actually a shift and a half of, basically, fruitless pursuit and gotten up to head to her hab for a few hours of much needed sleep when they arrived.
Ordinarily, as security chief, she would have delegated what, on the surface at least, appeared to be nothing but grunt work, to a subordinate.
In point of fact, she had—weeks earlier.
And yet the man she’d given the task to not only hadn’t managed to find the root of the problem so that the ‘hole’ could be plugged, the ‘disappearances’ had reached a new level—making it clear that it wasn’t a simple case of things miscounted or misplaced.
Not that she’d believed that any of the time.
The materials in question were parts for the gateway and until it was completed all colony supplies were critical. And, as such, monitored as zealously as the most precious of resources—because they were. They were so far off the beaten path that it would take longer to get a supply ship to replace critical supplies than it would to complete the gateway and transport them to the fledgling colony.
And they were behind schedule on the completion of it already—dangerously so.
They’d had problems with the natives—the primitive humanoid tribe that had considered the planet theirs before the interlopers—Earth people—had arrived, and still apparently thought so. But that had been before they’d realized they had ‘company’ and had secured their supplies from the thieves—who seemed to believe they had a perfect right to anything they could steal.
So Alayna was fairly convinced that the supplies that continued to disappear couldn’t be connected to the natives.
And, in point of fact, had begun to suspect, very strongly, that the natives had been maligned to start with and it had never been them who presented the problem.
And if it wasn’t a simple matter of the things being misplaced or having been miscounted or damaged or used up
That left the colonists themselves.
And since most of it had to do with the gateway it was hard to ignore the very real possibility that someone among them was actually trying to sabotage the gateway.
She hadn’t arrived at that conclusion easily, though.
Because it was just plain insane.
They were all stuck here. Every single life in the colony hinged on making the gateway operational—because they weren’t going to get any supplies until they did.
Who would be insane enough to deliberately delay the completion?
There was no way to profit from it that she could see.
If they hadn’t been stranded light years from Earth, she might have seen the possibility that someone—from a rival company, perhaps—had something to gain by making the colony fail, but since they wouldn’t be able to profit, that removed that possibility as far as she could see.
So … zealot—religious or political.
There was a veritable wall of security agents outside her door, she discovered, when she opened it to leave her office and caught them in the very act of ‘sneaking up’ on her.
They all jolted, instantly bringing their weapons up to train them on her.
“Security Chief, Alayna Baptiste! You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit sabotage! Are you carrying any weapons?” the officer in command bellowed at her as if he thought she might be deaf, grabbing her arm in a bruising grip and yanking her through the doorway and then slamming her against the wall and twisting her arms behind her back. “Search her, secure her—Collins, Smith—search her office and personal files and collect any evidence you discover.”
“Evidence?” Alayna echoed. She was in such a state of shock that it took her many minutes to actually absorb what seemed to be happening. “What the hell?”
A mixture of fear and anger washed over her as they frisked her and then bound her wrists together behind her back. Then the security officer grasped her by one arm and commenced to dragging her, shoving, jerking her along as if she was struggling against his hold rather than stumbling because he kept jerking her off balance and moving faster than she could manage—especially in her current situation.
He succeeded in knocking her down three different times as he hauled her toward the security station. Her fear escalated as the pain from the rough handling and battering increased, resolved itself into a terror that she’d already been tried and convicted and they were ready to execute her for what they thought she might have been trying to do.
It was almost a relief to be processed and thrown into a cell.
She stood staring around at the box briefly, relieved to be safe from the mob that had taken her into custody—at least for the moment—further relieved to see she wasn’t sharing the compartment with another prisoner. Finally, she stumbled weakly to the platform that served as a bunk and plopped onto it, trying to get her shaking under control.
Her thoughts were too chaotic for a time for her to make any sense of what had happened to her. But she finally matched her arrest to the investigation she’d been conducting to discover what was happening with the materials they needed to finish the gateway.
A conspiracy to sabotage the gateway.
How the hell had they put it together when she hadn’t been able to?
More importantly, how in the hell had they been led to her when she hadn’t done a damned thing?
The answer seemed breathtakingly diabolical.
She’d been set up and whoever had done it had made sure to leave enough crumbs to lead the colony security directly to her.
But did that actually make sense, she wondered?
That sounded more like someone with a vendetta against her than someone setting her up to be scapegoat.
Unless they’d been in the process of setting it up when security had stumbled upon it?
Because if there was a lunatic out there trying to sabotage the gateway, they meant to do it, not just threaten it to scare everyone. And jumping the gun meant they were going to have a hard time getting pass security to destroy it now.
She wrestled with possibilities until she had a blinding headache and finally lay down, covered her eyes with her forearm, and drifted into a troubled sleep of physical and mental exhaustion.
She had no clue of how long she was actually unconscious when something woke her but she was next door to drunk with the fatigue still gripping her when she was jerked awake by something out of pl ace.
“Allie!” said someone in a harsh whisper that made it impossible to identify who it was or even if it was male or female.
But only one person she knew called her Allie.
Alayna lifted her head and looked around. “Leah?”
“Shhh! Damn it! They’ll hear!”
That was enough to bring Alayna wider awake and upright. She glanced around the tiny room, trying to figure out where Leah was. “What are you doing here?” she whispered after a moment.
“I came to get you out.”
Alayna’s heart leapt in her chest painfully, but she was more confused. “Out?” she echoed.
“We don’t have time for me to explain. Just know that this is your one and only hope for survival, because when that gateway blows, you’re going to be looking at a lynch mob.”
Terror filled Alayna at that. She might have disputed it except that she was battered now from her ‘detainment’. And no one had attempted to question her. There’d been no offer of any kind of representation.
She moved to the door. It was unlocked and opened easily when she reached it. Leah was standing on the other side with a backpack in her hands. She shoved it at Alayna. “This should hold you for a few weeks. You need to get as far from here as you can—as fast as you can.”
She was still thoroughly confused, wary, scared to leave—terrified to consider staying.
She followed Leah, though, as she led her down the corridor and through a door that should have been locked. They’d reached the door leading out of the detention center when there was an explosion so powerful it shook the entire building and knocked both of them off of their feet.
Leah managed to get to her feet first. “Back gate—as fast as you can. Run!”
Galvanized, Alayna burst through the door and ran.
It was fortunate for her that she had a good idea of where she was in relation to the back gate, because the compound was pitch black and erupting in to chaos even as she charged toward the gate Leah had told her would be unlocked.
Actually, hadn’t, Alayna realized just as it came into view. She’d just said that was her escape route—not that it was unlocked. Could she trust that it would be open? Dare she? Uncertainty settled in her belly like acid, boiling, threatening eruption. She didn’t slow her steps, however. She ran faster. If it was locked, she was going to have to climb—or find another way out.
She didn’t need anyone to tell her that was the gateway that had just been blown to hell and back.
She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she was going to be blamed—because she knew she’d been set up to take the fall when it was blown.
She had nothing in front of her but death by natives, or the wild life or nature of the world they’d chosen to settle on. And nothing behind her but death by dismemberment, bludgeoning, or a noose.
But Leah was right, she told herself. At least outside the colony she had some chance. If she’d stayed she would just be handy for the rage born of fear that was about to tear the colony apart.
She had her training and experience as a soldier to fall back on.
She had her knowledge of the colony world that had been gathered before they set out from Earth.
And Leah had packed her enough supplies to get by until she could get herself into a situation where she had some hope of survival.
It was slim hope. But it was something.
* * * *
It had become Zorn’s habit to ‘visit’ the village of the invaders every day or two since they had arrived and begun to clear a large space for themselves in the middle of his tribe’s territory to see what they were up to. He was not particularly comforted by the fact that they seemed more intent upon establishing a village than conquest of those who owned the lands because there was nothing in those actions to assure him that their intentions were peaceful.
To his mind, quite the opposite.
If they had meant only to live peacefully in concert with those who had prior claim, it would seem imperative not to encroach without permission. It seemed to him that they should have made it a point to seek acceptance.
Instead of which they had simply arrived and claimed what they wanted as if they were entitled to do so.
And since they had not, he considered that they were simply biding their time—focused on establishing themselves for the security of their people before they moved toward aggression.
He was certainly not inclined, as some of his people were, to see them as gods only because they had come from the sky.
Granted, they were strange to look upon—almost as different from his people in some ways as they were similar in others—but he had seen enough to convince him that they were merely flesh and blood as the Kashon people were.
They had strange things that they had brought—the flying things strangest of all—but he saw no magic there anymore than he saw magic in their other things. They were tools, nothing more—however strange and magical they seemed to some. They used them to help with tasks just as his people did. There were no rituals, no chanting or singing to invoke spirits. They simply chose them according to tasks and used them.
In some ways, he thought there almost seemed there must be a kinship of some sort between his people and these strangers, though. They were exotic to his eyes, but in the ways that they were similar they were very, very close to the same.
He wanted to examine them more closely to see if it was truth or the distance and his eyes were merely playing tricks on him.
Because he had seen several females of the group that he had found attractive.
And one in particular that he was more drawn to than any other—even among his own people.
He thought he could not feel that unless these were much the same in all ways physical, at any rate.
They were clearly very different in their ways or they would not have cleared the place they planned to live all the way into the roots of the plants below the surface of the ground—to be certain they were completely dead and could not grow back.
As he made his way around the perimeter of the sky people’s village, taking care to stay within the boundary of the forest, he heard a commotion—loud voices and curses in their language—that seemed to indicate a battle of some kind. He hurried toward the sound to see what it was all about and then froze in shock, disbelief, and dawning fury when he saw the focus of the angry confrontation.
It was the small female that he had been so particularly drawn to. Her hands were bound behind her back and she was being half dragged and carelessly slammed against the ground and walls.
Not carelessly, he corrected himself in building, impotent fury—deliberate.
By large males.
There were females, he saw, within the group, but they weren’t trying to discourage the disgraceful behavior, weren’t trying to stop it. They seemed to be encouraging it.
Struggling with the urge to rush to her aid, he followed the pack, trying to think of some way he could get to her and fight them off of her, until he saw they were taking her into another building. More anger and concern filled him then because he could not see what they were doing to her, but his imagination was not shy in supplying him with a dozen scenarios that made the impotent fury burn brighter within him.
That had him fighting his urge to protect her.
She was not his woman, not his to protect, he reminded himself.
He could not risk leaving his own people without leadership when they would be up against such as these people were. They would need him and his first loyalty was to them.
And yet he was still torn with conflicting urges, still struggling to find a way to help her when she disappeared inside with them.
He did not know what to think when the group filed out of the building shortly after they had taken her inside, but he finally decided they must have imprisoned her.
Unless they had turned her over to others to assault her?
His anger boiling just beneath the surface, he settled to watch, to examine the building for any way he might enter it.
And all the while, he struggled with the urge to summon his warriors to attack.
