The latest installment in my space colonisation series, Space Colony One, is nearly finished! To give you a taste, here’s the first part of chapter one in The Scythian Crisis. It’s unedited, so please forgive any typos. 

Chapter One

It had been days since the disaster yet everything remained in chaos. Cariad was exhausted. Her muscles ached and her hands were raw from helping with the relief efforts. Dragging the remains of buildings from the mud left by the tsunami, constructing shelters, giving first aid… She’d forgotten most of what she’d done since the alien attack and subsequent deluge after the Nova Fortuna crash-landed in the ocean.

All the while she’d worked, she’d been tormented by memories of her techs, Florian and Cassie, and Giesen, the pilot, who had gone down with the ship. The first shuttle to arrive from the Mistral to transport the vulnerable out of danger had flown over the crash site. What the pilot had reported snuffed out the fragile flame of hope Cariad had nursed in her breast. A debris field spread wide across the ocean and the a section of the ship washed over with waves was all that remained of the colony ship.

Sweet Cassie and silly Florian and their unborn child, gone forever. Cariad had mentally berated herself over and over again for allowing them to remain aboard during the alien bombardment. They’d wanted to care for the fetuses growing in the reproduction facilities but it had turned out to be a useless task. The babies were dead now too, which meant the long-term survival of the colony was impossible.

Cariad hadn’t told anyone the fact. The timing seemed wrong. How could she tell the colonists that all their efforts to recover from the onslaughts of fire and water were pointless? Besides, a worse and more immediate threat menaced.

She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the holo that hung in the air on the bridge of the Mistral. Everyone was watching the image in silence. Cherry and Phy had come up to the ship along with Cariad for the impromptu meeting to assess the alien threat. Addleson, the Mistral’s pilot, was also present as well as Anahi and Vasquez, whose disabilities meant they were living aboard the ship while the settlement was rebuilt. Addleson had informed the final attendee, Aubriot, somewhat reluctantly from what Cariad could tell. The ex-financier had obviously been getting on the pilot’s nerves.

The image of the alien ship grew more defined. Soft edges sharpened up and the blank face of the ship’s metallic hull was overwritten with dark line markings. Whether the markings were decorative or might serve some other purpose, Cariad couldn’t guess. They looked random, lacking any repeating themes and less regular than a child’s scribble.

The ship’s structure was a simple, smooth crescent, bulbous at the center and tapering to two fine, hollow points. Four protrusions appeared on the ship, above and below, fore and aft. Probably weapons, Cariad mused.

Still no one spoke.

Cariad regarded the half moon shape. This single, strange ship had shot the Nova Fortuna from the skies and brought the colony to its knees. If it hadn’t been for the Mistral, the aliens would have succeeded in their attempt at immediate annihilation.

Predictably, it was Aubriot who broke the silence. “That’s it? Is this holo created from the data collected before the battle?”

“No,” said Addleson, checking a console, “it represents all scanner readings from the duration the ship was within range.”

“What about after I hit it?” Aubriot asked. “What did it look like then?”

“I’ll remove data collected before the ship received a hit,” Addleson said.

The edges of the image softened marginally but otherwise it didn’t change.

“Funny,” said Aubriot. “No signs of damage. No scorch marks. Nothing.”

“Maybe the damage wasn’t detectable due to the range,” said Addleson.

The attack had changed the pilot’s previously relaxed, affable demeanor. He had become serious and grave. But then, Cariad reflected, so had they all. She recalled Addleson and Giesen’s friendly rivalry. Was he suffering from survivor’s guilt? It could easily have been him who had been trapped in the Nova Fortuna when it impacted the ocean.

Even Cherry seemed to have lost her spark. She was glum-faced and pale with tiredness.

Aubriot walked closer to the holo. “Spin it,” he directed the computer.

As the alien ship rotated in front of him, Aubriot peered at it, looking from below and standing on tiptoes to survey the upper surface. “Nothing,” he announced when the starship had completed a full circle. “Not a scratch. Strange. And more than a bit disappointing. I was sure I got in four or five hits.”

Addleson checked his console. “The ship received four direct hits and one contact.”

Four glowing blue spots appeared on the ship in close proximity at its midsection, and a green spot lit up at the edge of the right-hand hook of the crescent.

“Yeah,” Aubriot said. “But what effect did they have? None that I can see.”

“Either the Mistral’s scanners didn’t pick it up or the damage was internal and not visible on the hull,” Addleson said. “Those are the only explanations.”

“Are they?” Vasquez asked, his wheelchair moving him into the open space at the center of the bridge. He faced them. “I can think of another one: we didn’t cause any significant damage.”

“Of course we did,” Aubriot countered. “Why else did they run? They’d already crippled the Nova Fortuna. They were winning.”

“Look,” said Vasquez, leaning on the arms of his wheelchair. “One thing we need to be very clear about regarding these aliens, and any others we encounter for that matter: we mustn’t imagine we can predict how they think. You’re trying to comprehend their behavior in terms of what humans might do. Only they aren’t human. What seems rational to you and I could appear insane to them, and vice versa. Retreating when your ship is damaged makes sense to us, but they might have retreated for an entirely different reason. Maybe they sped away because they wanted to eat lunch.”

“Or because they were bored,” Cherry said. “Or it was breeding time.”

“Exactly,” said Vasquez. “Do you see what I mean?”

Addleson threw up his hands. “I do see, but we have to start somewhere in reasoning this thing out. We have to try to predict what they might do next. Will they be back, and if so, when? And what are we going to do about it?”

“We have to try to protect ourselves no matter what,” said Phy. “Now that we’ve started to recover from the attack the next step is to build defenses.” She was propping her lean frame against a console, her arms folded across her chest. Like Cherry, she was wearing muddy clothes and looked like she hadn’t slept for days.

“Of course,” Cariad said. “We’re only trying to understand what happened during the battle and what we might be up against next time. Wait. I can think of a way we might be able to tell if we damaged the ship. Addleson, when it left, was it traveling slower, faster, or the same speed as when it arrived?”

“Ah yes. The alien ship was traveling thirteen point oh-seven-three percent more slowly when it departed than the top speed the scanners detected as it approached.”

“Bingo,” Aubriot exclaimed. “Its engines were damaged. It was running away. Not going for lunch,” he added, sneering at Vasquez.

The older man glowered.

“I’m glad we sorted that out,” Addleson said.

He took a breath to say more but Vasquez interrupted, “Have we?”

Aubriot bristled, and Addleson lifted his hands, patting the air in a conciliatory gesture. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

I hope you enjoyed that snippet from The Scythian Crisis, book three in my space colonisation epic, Space Colony One. The Scythian Crisis appears at the end of November. For a snippet from book one, The Concordia Deception, go here.