Colony: the first one : Complete edition

J.M. Varlet

Description

The Earth sends a colonization mission to Lone, a planet where living conditions would be identical. Eight hundred volunteers, civilians and soldiers, embark on a mission of no return after a thirty-eight year journey in stasis. They have planned everything: state-of-the-art equipment, a large sample of the fauna and flora of their mother planet, and even the latest generation of artificial intelligence.
It is a new civilization in a virgin world that begins.
But this planet is already occupied, and when data is missing, nothing goes according to plan.

Sujets

• Fiction
• Science Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Les Éditions du Net
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782312131979
• Langue: English

Extrait

Colony: the first one
J. M. Varlet
Colony: the first one
Complete edition
LES ÉDITIONS DU NET
126, rue du Landy 93400 St Ouen
Du même auteur
The beach (one volume)
Colony: the first one
Colony: the natives (not yet translated)
Colony: the renegades (in progress)©

© Les Éditions du Net, 2023
ISBN : 978-2-312-13197-9
Summary
Men have sent a colonization mission to a planet where the living conditions would be identical to Earth.
About eight hundred volunteers, civilians and soldiers, embark on a mission of no return. After a journey in stasis that will last thirty-eight years, they must build a colony on the soil of this New World that they have named Lone.
They don’t start from scratch. Everything has been studied and planned. The huge holds of the New Hope are full of material (modular constructions, vehicles, extraction tools…) and enough food to survive until they become autonomous.
In addition, the ship has a last generation artificial intelligence which must lead them to a good port and integrate on the spot terrestrial species, fauna and flora, which should help them to settle and develop.
It is a new civilization on a virgin world that begins.
« Virgin », it all depends on the point of view in fact.
… and life has no plans.
Foreword
I didn’t want to do it.
That said, I wanted to make it clear that we are not here to indulge in literary masturbation, but just to have a good time and be entertained.
I hope you do.
Happy reading to all, may my imagination take you away from your daily worries.
(So I did one! course, but one anyway!)
Ps: for the serious and very educated people that this type of story can’t interest: go away, you’ll find a lot of authors much better than me to torture.
… and then concerning the mistakes: I apologize in advance. I’ve reread my work and gone through three different proofreaders, one of which is very good… not to mention my beloved wife (very expensive!!), as well as my friend and passionate photographer Sylvain, but nothing works!
In order to share my imagination, I used deepl to translate it. I hope this story will take your mind off of things and make you travel just like I did while writing these lines. Please see in the awkward turns of phrase that this translation could have left a trace of my « damn » French accent.
Sincerely
Introduction
– Sharona! What are you doing? « he grumbled in his big voice
– …
– Sharona! » he called louder.
Only the creaking of the wood echoed in the silent house as the wind gusted.
Charles straightened up with a sigh.
The aches and pains came back to his mind at once. He felt as if he had been trampled by a whole herd. Cutting down trees for the coming winter was hard work. They had to stock up as much as they could, having little insight into the rigors of this dreaded period which lasted twice as long as on Earth. The girls had school almost every day, and Elisa, in her seventh month of pregnancy, was already quite busy with the burden of running the camp.
The air in the room was frigid.
In the night, he guessed, more than he saw, the condensation coming out of his mouth to the rhythm of his breathing.
The damn kid had let the fire go out. It wasn’t very complicated though: a nice piece in the fireplace at night when you go to bed and open an eye from time to time to make sure it didn’t need to be fed.
She was sitting with her sister in front of the fireplace, what could be simpler?
At his side, Elisa, their mother was sleeping a deep sleep despite his calls. As soon as he had sat down, she was already occupying the warm space freed by sticking to him.
He rubbed his face with his calloused hands and slid to the edge of the bed, bringing the fur blanket with him. Behind him, Elisa grunted as she pulled the precious, thick, warm coat to herself, under which she disappeared.
Completely naked, Charles had no choice but to throw himself into his icy clothes and hope they would warm up quickly. He was a colossus of almost two meters, with a body deformed with muscles, whose weight was well over 150 kilos. Brown, with a short beard, tribal tattoos covered his two arms from shoulders to wrists, memories of a very distant Terran youth… in many ways.
In the dark, he painfully elbowed the log wall, railing against the girl, the object of all his nightly grievances
He opened the door and stepped into the hallway, the floor creaking under his weight despite his best efforts at discretion. The glow of the moons through the disjointed shutters barely made out the landing of the stairs that led downstairs.
As he expected, there was no light source from the large fireplace at the back of the living room.
– Sharona!
Still no answer.
Stubbornly, he went downstairs holding onto the banister, blindly. In front of the fireplace, on top of a thick fur, two cocoon-like beds were side by side. The closest one was the girl’s.
– Seriously Sharona, we don’t ask much of you though…
He bent down and tried to shake her by the shoulder. His hand sank into the cold, empty blankets.
Surprised, he groped everything at his feet, in vain.
– Kyra? Kyra?
He stretched his fingers toward the other extended form, dreading the same thing.
This time, the sleepy voice of a little girl answered him as her thick hands rested on a warm mass
– Daddy? What’s up?
– Kyra, where is your sister?
– Well, she’s asleep.
He sighed.
– If I ask you, it is because she is not here! Where is your sister Kyra?
She sat down, still surrounded by her blankets. In the half-light, the shape of her head, dominated by a messy head of hair, emerged.
– I don’t know! She said she had to pee, but I don’t know. I was sleeping. She’s not here?
– No.
– It’s cold, Dad.
– Yes, I’ll take care of it.
Worried, he still took the time to stir the ashes.
Some embers remained.
He put a split log and blew gently until the first small flame appeared.
– Kyra, take care of this, will you?
She sighed as she dragged herself to the edge of the hearth.
– … and stop bitching. It’s not complicated! I’ll go see what your sister is doing.
– It’s always me…
He took a deep breath, fighting an irrepressible urge to pick up on this mood that strangely reminded him of their mother.
– Do what I tell you!
He crossed the room and involuntarily pushed back a bench that was in his way, far from the place that should have been his.
The series of swear words that followed was whispered, always in the interest of discretion. He staggered to the door where he stumbled this time on the pile of shoes abandoned there.
After finding his own, he opened the unlocked entrance.
Outside, the sun was just coming out.
The small two-story wooden house faced a barn that was as high as the house, but four to five times larger. Between the two was the barn, attached to the house.
The temperature was cool, but not yet cool enough for the dew to turn into frost.
He shivered in spite of his thick shirt and walked across the yard toward the out-of-the-way cabin.
At this hour, everything was quiet, even the animals needed to sleep.
He walked to the dry toilet and rapped his fingers against the wooden panel.
– Sharona?
Under the repeated shocks, the door swayed gently and swung inward.
No one.
Suddenly worried, Charles turned back to the constructions.
There was nothing in particular. The access to the barn remained locked from the outside by a prop placed across it, no chance for the girl to be there.
The wide opening of the barn showed the front of the ranger, the huge all-terrain vehicle used to transport camp personnel. He was walking toward it when a noise caught his attention.
The camp was lurking against the edge of the forest. The vegetation, whose bushy tops rose towards the dark skies, grew denser and denser until it became a kind of dark and mysterious impassable jungle.
A high fence of about six meters went around it, made of tree trunks side by side attached to each other. In the center, in front of the buildings, there was a courtyard as wide as half a soccer field. A derrick, dominated by a wind turbine, occupied the middle with, at its feet, an open and shallow reservoir. It ensured the supply of drinking water.
From his position, he could make out the props of the huge gate of the enclosure that were still in place.
The sound came from outside.
A faint grunt could barely be heard over the wind rustling the long stems of wild grass that covered the plain around them.
This enclosure was not built for aesthetics. There was a lot of unknown wildlife living here long before they arrived, and they weren’t exactly at the top of the food pyramid. It was unclear from the studies that had been conducted up to that point whether these defenses were sufficient to ensure their safety.
Charles, worried, headed for the ladder leading to the lookout platform next to the entrance.
The bars of the ladder groaned under his weight, but their thickness was far too great. To her great relief, the teenager was there, silent. Sharona was totally obsessed by what was happening in front of her.
While the sun was still only an orange line behind the hills on the horizon, the small and large moon were still above them, bathing the plain in their faint yellowish halos.
Just a few meters from the door, an animal as big as an elephant, covered with a thick, shaggy coat, all in length, was peacefully ruminating, staring at them, its nose in the air. He was lying down in the middle of the grass as high as the girls. His huge head, directly connected to the neckless body, was dominated by a tuft of hair that fell on his muzzle. From time to time, to clear his field of vision, he shifted his lower jaw to blow back the strands that stood up under the powerful exhale.
Invariably, they would return to their original position as the wind blew through the grass and their coats.
– Sharona! What are you doing here? You’ll catch your death of cold! Get inside and keep warm now!
– One