Astronomicon 1: Inception Point (Finished)

51 - Fire in the Sky

The three of them returned to the area outside the airlock, mostly to get away from the stench of burnt flesh outside the other end of the Command Module.

"So, you're saying that Lucy was some kind of secret agent. Even though we trained together with her for months, none of us had any reason to suspect that she was working for a terrorist organisation?" Hugo asked.

"She was a terrorist," Chris replied. He shrugged as he had nothing else to add.

"She terrorised me!" added Kate.

"How did she get Fletcher?" Hugo asked. "He was a big guy, easily a threat to her."

"I can only assume that she sneaked up behind him and stabbed him before he knew she was a danger. He was out there alone and probably entirely focussed on the changes to the antenna circuitry. It's my fault. I should have been out there with him."

Kate shook her head angrily. "It's her fault. She murdered him!"

"What do we do without our Colony Commander?" Chris asked, trying to steer the conversation away from recriminations.

"We've lost a lot more than just our commander," Kate replied.

"The obvious solution would be you remaining commander for now," Hugo suggested. "When we've actually got some sort of colony set up, we can hold an election to pick a new leader."

A deep rumbling sound from above caused everyone to look upwards.

"Is that what it looks like?" Hugo asked.

"I believe it is!" Chris exclaimed. "That's a module deploying. Look higher up. It's only a pinprick, but I think there's another one too."

"I didn't realise the flames from the retro rockets were so huge," said Kate.

"I'm assuming it's part of either the Hesperian or the Arcadian," said Chris.

"Looks like it's coming down the wrong side of the ridge," Hugo added.

"No, Hugo, that's the right side of the ridge. They wouldn't want to try setting down here. On the other side, there's a huge flat area and all our modules."

"I can see two more," Kate shouted excitedly. "There's a whole lot of them coming down!"

* * *

Over the next hour, the complete set of Hesperian's modules landed within a few hundred metres of Elysian's Supply Module 1. By the time the Hesperian's Command Module was touching down, Chris was waiting with a welcoming party next to Supply Module 1.

Over the next few days, they ordered the Pathfinder vessels to deploy their modules, dropping much-needed supplies and equipment from orbit. Hesperian's Command Module became the centre of the first colony on Proxima C. They named it Hesperia in honour of the ship.

Three months later, Olympian landed her modules at a site four kilometres away, near the base of the mountains, at a location prepared by the existing colonists. Olympian's Command Module became the centre of a second, small colony which they named Olympia.

While Proxima B remained untouched by humans, the two colonies on Proxima C soon took shape and turned into small towns. Initial constructions were a combination of the empty modules and prefab buildings they had brought with them from Earth, but these were soon augmented with new, larger buildings, constructed with the fabricator machines from the Pathfinder vessels.

Hydroponic farms provided basic food production while they experimented with outdoor planting of many various hardy plant and moss varieties brought from Earth. Other buildings provided accommodation, catering, medical care, manufacturing, vehicle repair facilities, a police station, a gym and even a bar.

They chose the Olympian landing site because of important mineral deposits found there. Mining operations began immediately, soon followed by the construction of a refinery. Within a matter of months, the colony became a hard-working community of people determined to become totally self-sufficient before their Earth-sourced supplies ran out.

The outdoor planting project would be key to the community's long-term survival. Not only would it be a key source of food, but they had brought several dozen plant varieties which had been genetically modified with the specific aim of maximising oxygen production and breaking down surface minerals into soil.

Covering a significant proportion of the rocky surface with oxygen-producing vegetation would take many decades, but would ultimately convert Proxima C's surface into a much more comfortable environment for its new human inhabitants.

A saboteur was eventually found amongst the Hesperian crew a few weeks after they landed. The new-elected Colony Commander had a brig constructed in the Elysian's Command Module, to hold the saboteur until they could find a longer-term solution. Weirdly, they never identified a saboteur amongst the Olympian crew. Chris always wondered whether that saboteur had changed his or her mind and threw in with everyone else, or if there never was a saboteur on that ship. They would most probably never find out the truth.

Three months after Hesperian landed, he honoured Fletcher's intention and incinerated the strange mushrooms and their mysterious silver ball. The science team were furious, when they found out, but Chris had no intention of letting even a single colonist get infected.

Although the colony had a very tough start; conditions were hard, temperatures continuously sub-zero and resources limited, after a couple of years, once the mining operations had located all the elements they required and the farming operation was producing more than enough food, life got a little easier. A mere three years after the Elysian crashed on the surface of Proxima 3, the first child born outside the solar system arrived.

She was the first of many.

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