Galaxyborn: Season 1 Premiere Read online

  Garrettcourt Studios Presents:

  An eBook Series by Garrett Bettencourt

  Copyright © 2021 by Garrett Bettencourt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events are purely the product of the author's imagination. Any license that has been taken is for the tone of the story and the enjoyment of the reader.

  Contents

  Cold Open

  Issue 01: “Blood of the Bold”

  Mark 01

  Mark 02

  Mark 03

  Mark 04

  Cold Open

  Issue 02: “Survive”

  Mark 05

  Mark 06

  Mark 07

  Mark 08

  Mark 09

  Coming up in Galaxyborn:

  In 2095, our Search for Extraterrestrial Life made remote contact with a distant planet and discovered Humans are not alone in the universe. Speaking across vast distances, Humanity formed an alliance with the alien Capruans. Together, we unlocked the secrets of faster-than-light travel and launched a mission to peacefully explore the stars. In the century that followed, we discovered new lifeforms and new civilizations. We settled dozens of colony worlds.

  The year is now 2232, and the descendants from generational starships live their lives on a thrilling frontier, never having seen the skies of Earth. We and our alien allies chase the wonders of an endless horizon. We are no longer born of a single world.

  Now, we are all…

  Season 1

  Cold Open

  CMS McKinney Steward

  In Orbit of Human Planetary Colony Aldrin

  April 11, 2232

  “Will I dream?”

  Eighteen-year-old Karli Hart is staring up at the glass hood above her sleeper pod. She asks the question to buy time. Any second now, it will close over her, sealing her into a high-tech coffin. An IV of morphoplasts will pump through her blood, an anesthetic gas will fill the air, and she will fall asleep. Straps keep her from floating off in the zero-gravity. The memory-foam cushions nestling her body are supposed to provide comfort, but they make her feel as if she’s in a body bag. The medical jump-suit she wears leaves most of her arms and legs bare, and clings to her like a new layer of skin. Her pulse is racing; her armpits sweating.

  “No, Karli, nor will you feel the treatment,” Dr. Baiko replies. Her finger is hovering over the control panel to Karli’s left, where a colorful graphic blinks the word “execute.” Baiko doesn’t wear the green scrubs of government medical staff; like everything on this privately funded research ship, her lab coat is white, spotless, and perfectly fitted, with bright teal and gold accents. With her short sweep of hair and tasteful makeup, she looks more like a fashion model than a nurse. “You won’t experience the passage of time in temporal suspension. Your core temperature will be low but stable. You’ll be sedated, and an IV will keep you nourished and hydrated…”

  The nurse prattles on, and Karli is grateful to hold off the experimental medical treatment for a little longer. She looks around the spherical laboratory. It’s like being inside a giant geodesic ball. Nurses and doctors float in all directions to tend to two dozen patients. Twenty-four sleeper bods jut out of the wall at a perpendicular angle, a few of them with glass hoods still open. Cabinets and computer terminals are welded to the wall beside each, where the staff help those still awake into their beds.

  Directly across from Karli, a pregnant girl she knows sits on the edge of her stasis bed—Alice Jiang. Alice keeps one hand on the vertical rail to her right, which keeps her from floating off in zero gravity. She keeps another hand on her pregnant belly. Their eyes meet, each young woman knowing the other’s hopes. Karli needs this cure for herself and her brothers. Alice needs it for her baby to live.

  “…For the medical staff and the starship crew,” Dr. Baiko continues, “it will be nine weeks at hyperlight speed. For you in the pod, you’ll close your eyes over Planet Aldrin and open them above Planet Thoth. Four lightyears in a blink.” The doctor gives a charming smile.

  “And when I wake up, I’ll be cured?” Karli catches sight of a four-legged bug just a foot in front of her face, writhing helplessly in mid-air. She reaches out and allows it to land on her hand, rescuing it from weightlessness. It’s called a “quaddy,” a turquoise beetle native to her colony world of Aldrin, which somehow wandered aboard.

  The doctor purses her lips. “This procedure is highly experimental, Karli. There are no guarantees. But as a late-stage Morpho Rampancy Carrier, this really is your best chance.” She opens a drawer in the medical console bolted down by Karli’s pod and pulls out a specimen jar. She plucks the quaddy from Karli’s hand and traps him inside. “I’ll take that. Can’t have contaminants in your stasis chamber.”

  “Careful—he’ll suffocate.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take the little guy over to the biosphere module. He’ll be right at home with the aeroponic crops.”

  On the opposite side of the lab, a male nurse helps Alice Jiang into her pod, closes the lid, and keys in a few commands on the nearby console. There’s a soft hissing of air inside, and Alice’s eyes drift closed. Cables thick as pythons run along the walls, from pod to pod, and vanish into a great bundle in the dorsal ceiling. All around, they’re emitting a pulsating hum.

  “It’s just…” Karli swallows rising spit. She’s never been in zero-G, and she feels queasy. It’s odd to look up and see cabinets and consoles upside down, then to look down and see them right side up. The nurses look like bees in a honeycomb as they navigate the handrails crisscrossing the room. Another pod closes, and she becomes the last patient awake. “I was hoping to look out a window when we’re going faster than light. I’ve never left Aldrin. Heck, I’ve never even been to space.”

  “Next time, sweetie.” Dr. Baiko places a hand on Karli’s shoulder, gentle yet firm. She eases Karli back into the capsule. She tightens the straps, so Karli is held against the visco-elastic cushions. “I know the thought of being unconscious can be scary. The ship’s artificial intelligence will be monitoring your life signs every step of the way. We’ll take good care of you, Karli.”

  Reluctantly, Karli settles into the pod. She reaches up to her chest, where the Strider emblem of her late brother Hank is pinned to her medical jumper. On any other ship, a symbol of the Striders would be illegal, but McKinney Steward is different. It took some convincing, but the doctors allowed her to keep it with her in stasis. To have this piece of home and her older brothers gives her courage in this strange place. She runs her fingers over the contours of the badge. The feel of the platinum eagle wings, the gold wreath, and the cobalt space helmet bring her a smile.

  Baiko presses the console, and the lid descends. “Now, just breathe…”

  Cool air fills the pod. It has a lavender scent that feels false, a perfume to mask the smell of chemicals. Karli’s eyes begin to droop, then close.

  “Good Karli. You’re drifting off…” Baiko’s voice becomes an echo. “You’re falling asleep…I’m starting your IV…”

  A fog falls over Karli’s mind. The words blur together. She is powerless to fight a sudden drowsiness.

  “…Null field activating…Good, Karli, you’re doing great…”

  A new voice speaks to her.

  “Activating emergency wake protocols…All suspension can
celed…Shipwide alert…”

  Karli fights to open her eyes, but she feels drunk with sleep. She doesn’t hear Baiko anymore. The voice speaking has a cold urgency. It sounds younger. Emotionless. Mechanized. The air hisses around Karli’s head. A klaxon pounds in her ears like a horn blast.

  “Repeat: Shipwide alert…All patients evacuate capsules…”

  “Wh…what?” Karli says, her voice drunken. She forces her eyes open through sheer will and finds all the clinical staff gone. The medical bay is no longer clean and brightly lit. It’s now awash in orange light and the flashing of sparks from dangling cables. Some kind of greyish scum covers every surface. “Dr. Baiko?”

  But how could so much have changed? She only just closed her eyes.

  “Repeat!” says the voice, which Karli now recognizes as the ship’s Level-4 artificial intelligence. “Critical systems failure. Early awaken protocols activated. All patients evacuate capsules and proceed to Vault Module, Deck 7.”

  A stench like antiseptic and burning rubber fills the pod, driving out the grogginess. Whatever the capsule pumped into the air, it has Karli wide awake, humming with adrenaline. She unbuckles the straps holding her down and reaches for the metal handrail outside her pod. She wraps her bare forearms and calves around it to catch herself as she floats free. Her elastic jumper clings to her sweaty body, alive with glowing blue nodes and optic wires. She finds herself in a world of chaos, wearing material so thin she feels naked. A warning beacon sweeps the room with a wedge of red light. An alarm wails every third second. A stench like a rotting rat carcass collects in her nose. She reaches for the next rail and feels something slippery and wet.

  A slimy white film is slathered on the pole. As the blurriness in her eyes fades, she follows the slime as it thickens toward the walls. Once glossy sterile cabinets, stainless consoles, and mirror-polished bulkheads are covered in a lumpy gelatin. Bright red veins ooze across and beneath its surface, converging on dozens of strange blood-colored pustules. These red sacks expand and contract like lungs, making a slimy squelching sound. Other pods are open, with great mounds of the stuff rising from the cushions. As if the sludge had filled the interior of her neighboring capsules until they burst. There’s no sign of the occupants under the abnormal growth.

  Momentum naturally rotates Karli in the zero-G, and Alice Jiang’s pod comes into view. Each sweep of the whirling red light flashes another snapshot.

  A stalagmite of slimy white fungus burying the capsule.

  Flash.

  Long stalks growing from the mound, waving like the tendrils of a sea anemone. The red pustules “breathing” and sweating milky fluid.

  Flash.

  A hand, frozen in place, reaching among the stalks as though from a grave. And just below this…a face. Alice’s face.

  Flash.

  Coated in the grey slime.

  Flash.

  Contorted in open-mouthed horror.

  Flash.

  A deafening scream buzzes on the metal walls of the sphere. Karli realizes it’s her own.

  Issue 01:

  “Blood of the Bold”

  Mark 01

  Before…

  Planet Aldrin, McNeil System

  389 Lightyears from Earth

  0607 Hours, Omicron Galactic Time

  I hope I live to see my brothers again.

  This is 18-year-old Karli Hart’s thought as she sweats in the back seat of her father’s rover. The fusion-powered all-terrain vehicle speeds across the open landscape of a vast desert valley. Only 6am on Planet Aldrin, and the salt flats are already baking under the glare of a blue sun. The bleached-white sand blurs by at 220kph. Spine-like grass and violet cactus make up the few tufts of life in the valley. The rover’s roll cage and windshield offer little protection against the blasting oven-hot air.

  This will be her last trip into town. It makes her think of the last time she left the farm. She had asked her brother Ty, “Want me to bring you a pop?” If only she had offered a better gift.

  A text pings the Bangl wrapped around her wrist. The thin strip of black polymer comes alive with yellow patterns and projects a floating word bubble.

  From Dylon Treadaway: U on ur way, Sunkissed?

  Karli’s heart flutters. Dylon was only supposed to be a client paying her to fix a broken drone. But during the weeks it took her to make the repairs, she found herself exchanging ever flirtier texts and selfies. It didn’t help that he was a handsome Navy lieutenant from Earth. She is 18 and therefore an adult now, but she still feels guilty enough to keep the texting secret from her family.

  She texts back, Yes, b there soon. Will u meet me?

  From Dylon Treadaway: Sorry, still off world. But u gonna luv Dr Eiden. Will change ur life. Changed mine.

  She looks up at her father in the front driver’s seat, who is blissfully unaware of her plans for a late-night meeting. She peeks into her pack. A black egg-shaped drone sits folded up, shiny as obsidian, nestled in packing paper. Her secret secondary purpose for this final ride into town. She hates keeping secrets from Dad, so to bury her guilt, she pulls up her favorite beamcast, recently downloaded from the Starnet.

  “Lo! What up all you sexy starnauts out there! You are listenin’ to the number 1 pirate beamcast in the known galaxy, with your host, the Pulz, broadcasting from a secure mobile habitat on an an-no-niminous hostile planet where the Agents of Group Think ain’t never going to find me…”

  “Dammit, girl!”

  The gravelly voice of Karli’s father gives her a start. She looks toward the driver seat, where a sun-tanned man with deep lines on his face squints through the dusty windshield. Jake Hart says, “You’re supposed to be watching that rad sink, not listening to conspiracy-theory crap!”

  “I’m watching it, Dad!” Karli pauses the beamcast with a nod to her Bangl. “I’m only listening on one ear.”

  A 14-year old boy looks back from the front passenger seat ahead of her. A mop of brown hair and a smart-visor hide his eyes. He grins, smacking on his gum like a brat, sand grains glittering on his cheeks. “She ain’t listening to the Pulz. She’s texting. Some boy-toy’s getting her all sweaty.”

  “Shut up, fart breath!” Karli launches forward and delivers a Charlie horse to Tate’s bicep.

  “Oww!” Tate rubs his arm with extra drama. “Dummy! That hurt.”

  “I ain’t texting nobody,” Karli shoots back. “I’m listening to Pulz because some of us like to know what’s going on in the galaxy.”

  “Knock it off, both of you!” Dad shouts. “Karli, what’s on the rad gauge?”

  She pokes her head out of the roll cage bars and peers down at the side of the rover. Pulz is still talking in her ear as she checks the rad saturation on their auxiliary rad sink.

  “And the Navy’s all pinching their nipples, lo, cause they just took out another Trueborn seditionist camp on some frozen moon. For those of you living on the ass end of an asteroid—and let’s face it, that’s most of you my loyal and truly, truly beloved listeners—’Seditionist’ is what Earth calls the ‘Trueborn Spacefarers.’ Earth says they’re crazy terrorists, but I got a different theory…”

  It’s dangerous to lean so far over the side of the rover, but Karli’s always loved showing off her agility. She looks down at the 6 rugged tires kicking up a steady stream of sand and the sage smell of the desert flats. She zeroes in on a keg-shaped tank attached to the vehicle’s side skirt. A readout shows a dial of numbers ranging from “0” to “100.” A needle of blue light is creeping past “85”.

  “What’s it say, Karli?” says the voice of an 8-year-old boy in her ear.

  Karli’s brother Cam, seated on the driver’s side, has crawled up behind her. He’s wearing a tank top under thick overalls—just like her. He lost his front tooth recently, and it only adds to his cuteness.

  “Sit down, Cam!” Karli says. “You want to lose your head to a cactus arm?” She shoves him back into his seat a
nd buckles him in, then yells to her father, “Pushing 86 percent, Dad. She’ll make it the last 5 clicks. I told you when I installed it—the sink’s old, but still good.”

  Despite his earlier rebuke, Jake throws her a little smile over his shoulder. “That’s my girl. Keep an eye on it.”

  In the distance, a collection of squat metal buildings, makeshift awnings, and fields of solar panels sit at the foot of a jagged mountain range. The steep slopes rise out of the desert flats like shards of obsidian. One 12-kilometer peak pierces the clouds.

  Karli’s Bangl buzzes again.

  From Dylon Treadaway: K. Got u all set. Remember don’t let anyone see u sneak out. Cool?

  Karli’s gut churns with tension. She swipes the text away. She reaches into her pack, feeling the cool surface of the drone. Why it’s so important to some wealthy doctor, she has no idea. But the big commission he’s offering is worth the trouble. And it doesn’t hurt that this doctor’s handsome assistant Dylon is the one arranging the meet. She taps a quick reply.

  From Karli: Y cool

  She resumes her beamcast.

  “The Trueborn are a fake flag, lo,” Pulz rants. “We bein’ gaslit. The Earth Concordat wants us to believe it was the Rakoi that infected us with Morpho. But I say a bunch of Concordat government types cooked it up in a lab, then hired a bunch of mercs to pretend to be Trueborn terrorists, all so the Earthborns can take control of us spaceborns and colonyborns. So they can keep us down. Lo, ya feel the Pulz on this? Erstwhile in the galaxy, those walking lizardmen, the Rakoi, are just waiting for their chance to suh-MASH us in the face—then ship us off for beef at the ranch…

  “Sweet, time for an ad. Attend: The Pulz loves his tech—which is why I can’t wait to tell you about Tyr 11 Pro from BodGadge…”

  Karli taps skip. She hates the ads—and drooling over tech she can’t afford. Ahead of the rover, the settlement of Clearwater Oasis is taking shape. Modular habitats, once compartments carried on colony ships, are now rusty stacks of apartments and shops. The familiar holographic signs announce the same handful of vendors she’s known since she was born—Love’s House of Waffles and Blues, the Rigfeld fusion stop, and Bayou General Store, among others. At the center of town, a massive tower of girders and scaffolding shoots up from the earth for a hundred sixty floors—an unfinished arcology bearing the company name “Eiden.”