First Encounter Read online

  Richard Morgan rose with an easy smile, the images of whatever he’d been looking at on his ARCs fading from his eyes as he gave her his full attention.

  “Ambassador, is it?” he asked in a deep voice. Blond eyebrows drifted up, his blue eyes widening underneath. She took a moment to admire his chiseled frame, visible even through his bulky black UNSF uniform. Her eyes tracked back up to his face, taking in the gleam of short blond stubble on his jaw, matching hair cut short and combed to the side, and a face so handsome that it could have been starring in movies back home. Or running for president. Lori felt the first stirrings of interest. It was late, but she could use the distraction after all those reminders of her ex-fiance.

  Crossing the rest of the way to the couch, she grabbed his hands and pulled him down for a kiss. His lips lingered on hers, and she responded hungrily. Soon they were reaching for each other’s magnetic clasps and zippers.

  Half an hour later, they lay naked and entwined on her bunk, staring at the stars through the viewscreen at the foot of the bed.

  “I waited over an hour for you,” Richard said.

  “Did you?” she managed to say through the dreamy haze that cloaked her thoughts. Before she could wonder where he was going with that, he told her.

  “It wasn’t easy sneaking in.”

  Not again, she sighed. “Richard, this is—”

  “Don’t say nice,” he replied.

  “Okay, it’s horrible. The complete opposite of nice.”

  “Ha ha,” Richard replied dryly. “Just hear me out. Space force regulations don’t forbid relationships between crew members.”

  “Maybe not, but who says we’re in a relationship?” Lori countered. She withdrew a few inches, her naked back pressing against the cold surface of the bulkhead beside her bunk. That cleared her head even more, and she withdrew her arm from his chest to cross it over hers. Stealing the blankets with her other hand as an extra barrier between them, she sat up and pointed to the door.

  “You should go. We need to get some sleep.”

  Richard propped himself up on one elbow, glanced at the door, then back at her. His eyes were hard, a frown exposing the dimples in his cheeks. “Lori, don’t do this.”

  “Do what?” she asked. “We’ll be arriving in just two days. I have a lot of work to get through tomorrow, and I need to get my sleep. So do you.”

  Richard gave in with a sigh and swung his legs over the side of the bunk. Standing up, he gave her a nice view as he went through the room picking up the discarded pieces of his uniform and putting them back on one at a time.

  “Good night,” she said, and rolled over to face the bulkhead.

  “Night,” he replied.

  She heard the door swish open, then shut, and settled in for sleep. She could sympathize with Richard, but relationships weren’t her thing. Not anymore. And he’d known that from the start, so he couldn’t complain about it now.

  Chapter 4

  Clayton saw the planet below, a splash of alien colors and misshapen continents. Fluffy white clouds, and an alien sun. He was free-falling toward it. His helmet on, suit pressurized. The sound of his breathing rasping through the suit, came faster and faster to his ears. Short, shallow breaths.

  As he fell, friction heated his suit and his skin underneath, at first itching, then burning. His skin began to burn through the suit, and he screamed. He watched in horror as orange flames raced over his body, gobbling up the reflective white fabric like a piece of paper thrown into a fire. His rasping breaths grew shallower and more frantic. Then he screamed as his skin caught ablaze and the flames began to eat him too.

  Clayton’s eyes shot open, and he stared hard at the ceiling blinking to clear away the image of his own immolation. It was just a dream. He worked to calm his rapid, rasping breaths. But then he noticed something. He wasn’t the one making those sounds. His eyes tracked over to a shadow hunched in front of his desk and the room’s viewscreens.

  Someone was in his room.

  His heart instantly pounding, Clayton tried to sit up, to activate the lights with a verbal command.

  But he couldn’t. He was paralyzed. He couldn’t even scream.

  The shadow inched closer to him. It was short, with legs bent at the knee, back arched, and claws reaching. He couldn’t see more than a solid black cutout of the creature, it had no features, other than gleaming red pinpricks for eyes. The demon that had haunted him since childhood was back.

  It’s just sleep paralysis, he told himself, working desperately to calm his racing heart. It’s not real.

  The shadowy creature sprang off the deck and landed on top of him, constricting his chest with its weight and making it hard to breathe.

  Clayton tried to struggle, but his body was still paralyzed from his REM cycle. That’s all this is, Clayton insisted. The lingering effects of sleep. He just had to wait for it to pass.

  The shadowy demon bent low over him, its rasping breaths loud in his ears.

  His heart hammered out a painful staccato that echoed in his ears with each beat.

  Then he remembered something. His Neuralink implant. His thoughts were still free.

  Lights on! he screamed inside his head.

  The overhead lights blazed on, momentarily blinding him. The shadow on his chest whirled toward the light and reacted with a shrill cry. Clayton saw its silhouette briefly, still a featureless black shadow that no amount of light could illuminate. But then it began to glow and shimmer, going from matte black to crystal clear in a matter of seconds before vanishing entirely.

  A fading shriek sputtered into a low hiss, and the weight vanished from Clayton’s chest.

  He sat up and dragged in a deep breath, casting about wildly for the monster that had been there a moment ago. But it was gone.

  Sleep paralysis and the accompanying hypnagogic hallucinations had plagued him for decades. It was always the same shadowy creature that haunted him, always that crouching shadow with the rasping breaths.

  When he was little, before he’d gone to sleep specialists and learned what sleep paralysis was, he used to think that the shadow was an alien visitor come to abduct him in the night. Eventually he’d learned that all of his symptoms could be explained by a delayed release from REM sleep. Everyone is paralyzed during REM cycle—the body’s way of protecting itself from harm that could result from acting out its dreams. But not everyone is immediately released from paralysis upon waking, and not everyone stops dreaming, either. Waking hallucinations and paralysis are the result.

  Clayton lay back down with a sigh. Lights to 25%, he thought, and they dropped to a soothing golden glow. He lay staring at the ceiling, wondering about the timing. He hadn’t experienced an episode of sleep paralysis for years. The last one had been after his wife’s funeral. The episodes were triggered by stress.

  So what was he stressed about?

  Arrival. The mysterious blips on sensors. The possibility of real alien contact.

  Half of the reason he’d joined the Space Force was because of episodes like this one that he’d suffered as a kid. Despite the doctors’ reassurances and explanations, he’d still suspected for a long time that his hallucinations were alien visitations.

  Now he knew better.

  Or did he?

  Raising his voice, he said, “Call the Bridge.”

  Hidden speakers began trilling, then a click as someone answered—

  “Captain, is something wrong?” He recognized the voice of Lieutenant Ashley Devon, OOD of the ship’s night watch. Devon was a red-haired, freckle-faced beauty with a reputation for being a ball-buster, which was exactly why he trusted her with the bridge when both he and Commander Taylor were off-duty.

  “You tell me, Devon. Anything on sensors?” he asked.

  “Not a blip, sir.”

  He let out a shaky sigh. “Carry on, then.”

  “Aye, sir...”

  “Cross out.” The call ended with another click, and he rolled over to stare at the spot b
eside his desk where he’d seen the demon after waking.

  Nothing there now.

  He put it down to nerves. He’d visit Doctor Stevens in the morning and get his stress levels checked. Clayton was the captain of an interstellar colony ship. He couldn’t afford to be jumping at shadows—literally—the day before arrival.

  Chapter 5

  —One Day Before Arrival—

  Clayton stared at the dim red star dead center of the forward viewscreens. Scarcely larger than the tip of his pinkie finger at this range, that sun was an ultra-cool red dwarf with no less than seven rocky planets in a tight orbit.

  “Trappist-1,” Clayton breathed.

  “The ice cube of stars,” Commander Taylor commented from where she stood beside him.

  “And the holy grail of habitable star systems, with three rocky planets in its Goldilocks zone,” Clayton replied.

  He turned from the viewscreens to address the rest of the crew.

  “Flight ops—”

  Lieutenant Celia Asher looked up from her station. “Sir?” Her short white-blond hair glowed silver in the light of her screens. Ice-blue eyes gleamed like sapphires.

  “Launch probes to all seven planets, but concentrate our primary efforts on planets C, D, and E.”

  “Aye, sir,” Celia replied.

  “Nav, set course for Trappist E.”

  Clayton looked to Lieutenant Craig “Delta” Sanders, the gray-haired former Marine at the nav station. He was also the ship’s chief of security. The man nodded without looking up, his blue eyes level on his screens. “Setting course, sir.”

  “Placing your bet already?” Commander Taylor asked quietly.

  Clayton turned to see her regarding him with eyebrows raised, her amber eyes sparkling with excitement.

  He inclined his head. “It’s approximately Earth-sized and receives only slightly less solar radiation than Earth. Without any additional data, it’s the most likely candidate. We can adjust course if the probes reveal otherwise. We still have a day before we reach orbit.”

  “Actually, sir—”

  Clayton turned to see Delta studying him from the Nav.

  “Yes?” he replied.

  “That estimate was how long it would take us to reach a safe orbit around the system’s sun. Trappist E is currently between us and the system’s star. We’re looking at an ETA of twelve hours and seven minutes.

  Clayton checked the clock in the top left of his ARCs. 10:15. “So we’ll be arriving at twenty-two hundred?”

  “Aye.”

  “Even better.” Clayton clapped his hands for attention. “All right people, start running through your checklists. Looks like we’ll be making history ahead of schedule!”

  A cheer from the crew answered that news, and he traded grins with Commander Taylor.

  * * *

  Twelve Hours Later...

  Video data from probe flyovers had revealed plenty of flora and fauna. Towering trees with fan-like leaves. Buzzing swarms of insects that schooled like fish. Giant, winged creatures skimming the treetops and scooping them up like whales...

  The day side of Trappist-1E lay directly in front of them. Clayton admired the cloud streaked, gleaming jewel pocked with blue lakes and striated with rivers. Scans hadn’t picked up any oceans, but there were plenty of lakes. Ragged black mountain ranges capped with snow ringed those bodies of water. Clayton suspected those mountains were the rims of old impact craters.

  Mottled blue and green jungles colored the dry land in the valleys between the mountains and the lakes, but those vibrant colors faded gradually to windswept yellows, whites, and browns that filled bone-dry craters around the dark side of the planet.

  “It’s tidally locked,” Commander Taylor said from where she stood beside him. “That means strong winds and a volatile climate around the day-night terminator. We should land as close to the middle of the day side as possible to avoid those concerns. Sunlight will be the strongest there, and the climate should be relatively stable.”

  “Agreed. Hopefully the mountains around the craters will buffer any winds that reach us in the valleys,” Clayton replied.

  “Aye,” Taylor said.

  The probe data had borne out Clayton’s bet. Trappist-1E was the only planet in the entire star system with liquid surface water and an oxygen-rich atmosphere. It was also very close to the size of Earth, with a comfortable 0.7 Gs of gravity. The air was breathable, but not long-term—it was too thin. Unassisted breathing on the surface would be like trying to breathe at the top of Mount Everest. Even if they cleared it as safe to breathe, they would need to supplement with O2 tanks. Atmospheric pressure was a comfortable 0.8 atm at the bottoms of the craters, so pressure suits weren’t strictly necessary, but they’d use them anyway to protect against alien micro organisms and allergens.

  Clayton tore his eyes away from the viewscreens to address the crew. “Lieutenant Davies—”

  The man looked up from the comms station, his green eyes wide and blinking, his shaved head gleaming in the dim light.

  “Alert the ground team, and summon Lieutenant Devon and her section to the bridge for the handover of the watch. We’re going down to the surface.”

  “Aye, sir,” Davies replied.

  “We, sir?” Commander Taylor asked.

  He turned to her. “Yes. You and I are both going down with team Alpha.”

  Taylor’s brow furrowed. “I must have missed you on the team roster.”

  “You didn’t. I added myself at the last minute.”

  “I see. Permission to speak frankly, Captain?”

  “Granted.”

  “I think you should stay with the ship.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to explain.

  A muscle jerked in Taylor’s cheek and one of her dimples appeared. “We don’t know what kind of threats we may encounter. It could be dangerous. We can’t afford to lose you.”

  “We can’t afford to lose anyone, Commander, and I won’t ask my crew to take risks that I wouldn’t take myself. Besides, you can’t possibly believe that I’d be willing to take a backseat on this. That would be like asking Neil Armstrong to stay in the moon lander. And he didn’t have to travel for seventy-eight years to get there.”

  Taylor cracked a wry smile at that. “Fair enough, sir. Did you clear it with the ambassador?”

  Clayton smirked and placed a finger to his lips. “It’ll be our little secret. Why do you think I was a last-minute addition?”

  Taylor’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Understood, sir.”

  Clayton had disagreed from the start with the UNE’s decision to set up both civilian and military chains of command aboard the Forerunners. Now that he was almost a century away from Earth, he’d be damned if he was going to let some politician piss all over his command. Clayton would decide how best to safeguard his ship and its crew, and right now that meant getting his own boots on the ground to identify and analyze each and every potential threat and hazard for himself. If Ambassador Morgan didn’t like that, too bad. Clayton couldn’t disobey an order that he’d never technically been given.

  Chapter 6

  Clayton placed a palm against the inner pane of the window beside him—

  And withdrew it sharply as the glass scalded him. “Damn,” he muttered. The glass had been super-heated from atmospheric entry.

  The shuttle bucked and shivered; cargo straps slapped the sides of the crates they held. Their handles rattled. Clouds swept past the viewports on both sides. Dead ahead, through the cockpit canopy, blue-green jungles peeked through the cottony haze below. Rain drops freckled the glass, streaking quickly away.

  Commander Taylor sat in the pilot’s seat, shaking her head at Clayton.

  He grinned back at her like a kid. “What?”

  “Can’t take you anywhere, sir.”

  A muffled boom shivered through the hull, stealing away his reply before he could utter it.

  “What was that?” he asked to no one in
particular.

  “Thunderstorm, sir,” Taylor replied, pointing to a tower of black clouds to starboard.

  A forking flash of lighting came through Clayton’s window, confirming her analysis. Black clouds towered over the rim of the crater that they’d chosen for their landing site.

  “Looks like some bad weather coming,” Delta commented from the back. “We need to set this bucket down before crosswinds hit us.”

  “I know how to fly, Lieutenant,” Taylor replied.

  “Just saying, ma’am.”

  Delta had been a Scimitar Pilot with the Space Marines until his knees got too old for high-G, so he was something of an expert on the topic.

  “Hopefully we have some time to explore before the storm hits,” Ambassador Morgan added from the row of seats directly behind theirs.

  Clayton frowned and tossed a glance over his shoulder at the other man. As it turned out, he’d read the situation all wrong. Ambassador Morgan didn’t care if he joined the ground team, but Morgan wanted to join them, too—along with both of the mission’s first contact specialists, Doctors Reed and Grouse.

  After seeing all of the alien creatures revealed by the probes’ flyovers, Morgan had insisted he be allowed to accompany the away team. He had apparently decided that the chances of first contact with an intelligent alien species were high enough that he needed to be there.

  Alpha Team had seven members now instead of six. Clayton and Commander Taylor up front. Ambassador Morgan and Dr. Reed in the second row. Delta and Dr. Grouse in the second to last row, and Doctor Stevens in the back. Stevens was the chief medical officer of Forerunner One. He was a first lieutenant, but everyone just called him Doctor Stevens or “Doc” for short.

  The clouds sweeping across the cockpit canopy abruptly parted, and gasps went up from passengers. Even Clayton’s breath caught in his throat.

  “It’s beautiful,” Doctor Stevens said in an awed whisper.

  “Copy that...” Taylor added.

  Towering trees rose to varying heights with massive blue and blue-green leaves interlocking to form several different flat surfaces high above the ground. Islands in the sky, Clayton thought. He wouldn’t be surprised if they could actually walk on them. The various levels of tree canopies sparkled with crimson freckles of light as they flew down past them—the system’s red dwarf sun reflecting off puddles from a recent rain. The sky was pale green where it wasn’t already black with that building thunderstorm, and dead ahead, the lake they were headed for was a dark teal, sunlight shimmering like a field of rubies on the surface.