Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

It hit him in the leg, and he stumbled, dropping his gun. I lunged at him, tackling the shorter man to get him away from the weapon. Clare groaned but walked over to us, holding her pistol in her left hand.

“What’s going on back here?” Mary’s voice carried across the room.

“I’m dealing with a stowaway,” I said while getting off the man, leaving my knee on his chest.

Mary came to my side as the man cursed me, tears falling from his eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or the humiliation.

“What are we going to do with him?” Clare asked, her voice grim.

“Collateral.” Mary and I got him to his feet, half-carrying him toward the bridge.

“You won’t get away with this!” he yelled, but I was beyond caring what this man said. I only wanted to get to the planet.

“Where’s the colony located?” I asked him as we entered the bridge. We half shoved him into the communications seat, and he almost slid out, his leg wound obviously painful. I took his tie from around his neck and used it as a tourniquet on his leg, cutting off the flow of blood. He screamed as I twisted it a little more than I needed to. “Where is it?”

“On the eastern coast of the largest ocean,” he said, head slinking down. He called out some coordinates, and Mary quickly moved us toward the planet.

“Clare, are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded, holding her arm.

“It’s just a flesh wound. I wish Nick were here to fix it,” she said, and I agreed.

“We’ll have him back sooner rather than later. I swear.” I hoped I could follow through with the promise.

The planet approached quickly through the viewscreen. It was a beautiful sight. Having followed the hybrids to another planet, and having seen Earth a few times from space, I knew I’d never grow tired of seeing a world from this vantage point. It was awe-inspiring.

Still, no ships followed us, and that meant Slate was up there causing all sorts of issues for them. I took a seat at the helm and checked the radar. Four ships followed a single one that was unpredictably flying away from the planet. I silently wished him luck as we entered New Spero’s atmosphere. The ship shook slightly, and then we were heading down toward the location our now-passed-out friend had given us.

The comm-device beeped, receiving a message. “This is NS-001. Your ship is untagged. Identify yourselves.”

Mary looked at me for guidance. “No point in hiding it. Take us in slowly.” I reached over to the console and tapped the reply icon. “NS-001, this is Dean Parker, Mary Lafontaine, and Clare LeBlanc coming at you from the past, requesting clearance to land this bird.”

There was a pause from the other end before a crisp message came back. “Dean Parker, we’re sending you the landing details. Over.”

Mary keyed them in, taking us over a desert landscape at five thousand feet, slowly descending as we neared the landing pad. The terrain changed as small mountains jutted out from the ground, the land growing greener as we went. Eventually, we were able to spot structures, and I let out a whistle. When I’d first thought of a colony, I pictured straw huts and campfires. I wasn’t prepared for the small city we saw.

There were no high-rises in sight, but a few multistory buildings popped up all over the area. A city full of residential areas, commerce, and agriculture was evident as we flew over it all. My heart pounded in my chest. We were here. New Spero.

The landing pad was a few thousand feet long. Dozens of different types of vessels sat idly, and we chose a slot as close to the outbuildings as we could. If we needed a fast escape, we wouldn’t have to traverse the long runway.

“How’s the readout?” I asked, knowing Clare was working on gathering data from the probes we’d shot as we entered the atmosphere.

“Perfect. It’s warm, like a spring day in California. Within two percent of Earth’s atmospheric blend. This is amazing.” She stared at the screen, her pain all but forgotten as the scientist in her took over.

The ship settled down. “We better bring him,” I said, indicating the groggy suited man in the chair. I tapped his cheek with my palm a few times. “Time to wake up,” I said, unsure of how our first steps on the colony planet would go. We might need him as a bartering chip.

Mary and I lifted him by the shoulders, mostly dragging him back to the bay, where Clare hit the ramp icon to lower it. “Remember, we’re survivors. Whatever we find down here, we’ll make it. Together.”

Mary smiled at me, blowing a kiss in front of the dead weight we were carrying around.

We stepped down the metal ramp, warm air blowing against us. I held a pistol in my right hand, Mary had one in her left, and Clare was in front of us, a pulse rifle raised and ready. I suddenly wished Slate was there with us.

We reached the ground, which was some sort of sandstone-like rock, a good place for a landing pad when you didn’t want to waste a large amount of concrete. No one was there to greet us.

“That was a little anti-climatic,” Clare said, lowering her rifle slightly and scanning the horizon.

We set the wounded man down, which gained a few groans from him. He needed medical attention; he had lost a lot of blood before I’d used the tie on his leg.

A slight hum came from the direction of a nearby warehouse. I spotted a cart, like the ones from the base on Earth, coming toward us.

“Get ready,” I said, holding my pistol up, ready to look for cover if I had to.

It closed in on us, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Magnus. The cart stopped twenty yards away, and a woman in uniform stayed in the driver’s seat as my old friend came rushing toward us. Clare still held her gun up, and I called at her to stand down. She’d briefly known the man, but he did look different. She listened and stepped out of the way as Magnus came crashing into me, his wide arms crushing me in a bear hug.

“Dean, you son of a bitch! Oh my God, it is you!” He held me back, gripping my shoulders tight. I saw his face then, the youth from his thirties gone, wrinkles creased around his eyes as he smiled at me, gray lining his hair and stubble. Tears were streaming down his face, and I found myself crying too. “Mary! I can’t believe you guys are alive.” It was Mary’s turn to be picked up and swung around by Magnus, and she squealed, matching tear for tear with the big man.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you, Magnus,” Mary said, wiping her face with her free hand.

“Magnus, before we do anything, I need you to call up to the base and tell them to stop chasing our friend, and to take it easy on Nick.” I didn’t want to break up the reunion, but I couldn’t let anything happen to my new friends.

He looked at me, confused, before cluing in. “No problem. Laura, comm the station.” The woman had been within earshot, and soon we heard her convey our message.

“They said Andrews is missing,” she called back to him. Magnus’ gaze found purchase on the body slumped on the ground. “The ships are calling off their chase.”

“I think I found him,” he said, grinning at me like old times. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I s he going to be okay?” Mary asked.

Magnus nodded. “He’s fine. Already up and walking. Modern medicine has changed a lot since we last saw each other.” He waved his arm in front of him. “Even in this backwater planet we call home.”

“I’d hardly call what you have here a backwater anything. It looks like paradise to me,” I said, following the man down the street. People walked by on the sidewalks, heading into different stores. They were labeled with basic names – clothing , grocery , seeds – and I couldn’t shake the feeling we were in some sort of science-fiction socialist regime. I wasn’t going to judge it, because under the right circumstances, it had every chance to thrive. The problem was, humans rarely allowed for the right circumstances.