First Expedition The fires of Alpha. Where monsters live. NextColony SCI-FI "RPG Story Contest" #3 - THE ARRIVAL ON ALPHA

What did Amana, later called a hero by many and praised by countless generations of neoterrans, see?: dust.

Lots of dust.

A shining desert under the blue twilight of the horizon α-1, the small planet of Alpha Centauris that nostalgics would call NeoTerra. In fact, it was the third of the system orbiting around an eccentric yellow dwarf star, identified decades ago, during the Great War, and marked on the maps of the quadrant that the New Life Consortium had purchased as an opportunity of rather modest exploitation potential.

Amana knew very well where he would go and what his task was. He was in his forties and optimistic. Of medium height, skinny and with muscles strengthened by a hard life outdoors, he had the dark and blue skin of Mador's men. A long mane, of disordered braids crowned a sharp face, of thick eyebrows on the very black eyes. He had a long and elegant neck, inherited from his mother, who was a dancer and very beautiful. From his father he had inherited a taste for flowery shirts, solitude and a fine ear for music. However, when he had to choose a profession, he opted for Science.He had managed to employ himself as a field explorer for a family of Indian merchants, shareholders of the New Life Consortium. He had got a good deal: after two full orbital periods he would own his own unit and a very small exploitation area. Not bad for a geophysicist whose most notorious curricular merit was to have been a mercenary tracker at the beginning of the postwar period, when still some potentates believed they could find ecologically healthy territories not occupied by the Free Peoples. But he suspected that his employers had not had good luck with their percentage of the quadrant, when, following the rules of the Partners Table, the exploitation locations were raffled off.

One-man patrol, had to be very alert for measurements. The only thing that could make his unit's situation worse was a bad choice of settlement location. And the only thing that could worsen his choice was the absence of water. If there was no water in their part of the quadrant, they would be forced to negotiate with the neighbors. It would not be cheap.

The receiver crackled: the chief, Captain of the APH-233 Business Unit under NexColony's trade agreements for the New Life Consortium; in fact, owner (with certain dramatic tendencies), who commanded the mother ship was another employee. He sympathized with the subject.

"Mr. Amana, do you copy?"

" I copy you loud and clear, Chief." He replied with a low smile. She insisted on speaking through the intercom as a Star Trek character and he was no one to contradict her.

"Report the parameters, please."

"The drones make their way, Chief. They're 15 minutes away from the first verified report. The sample collection unit has covered only 18% of the journey. So far I can confirm atmosphere, luminosity, thermal variation and radiation very acceptable and within the parameters reported by the Consortium... and a beautiful desert. Mountains of dust. Consider the dust markets, Chief."

Silence. Crackles. More silence. He suspected the success of his joke. He'd never get used to it. More than four years had traveled from Earth to α-1 and I still forgot the Chief's unwillingness to humor. Drama, yes; humor, no.

"Have you already made direct observation of the terrain beyond the ring of the ship's shield?"

"I'm on it, Chief. Adjusting security equipment and supplies."

"Good. I wish you luck. Please report as soon as possible."

But Amana's report did not arrive soon. In fact, Amana would arrive a full orbital period later and the narration of his journey would earn its place, on its own merit and simultaneously, in the history books and intergalactic conspiracy archives of α-1, NeoTerra for the nostalgic.

*****

Amana took one last look at his ship, a modest corvette, part of the small fleet of the mother ship Ashanti I, where his bosses orbited. He unfolded the scouting chart again on the viewfinder. Estimated travel time: 48 hours, just over two days of α-1. He had plotted the routes following the quadrant maps provided by the Consortium. And although it was clear that the maps provided were not exhaustive and everyone risked their resources in their settlement, the horizon of Amana, after six hours of walking outside the ring of the ship's shield, did not coincide in greater proportion with what the maps approximated.

There was water. It was a relief, but subterranean, and deep (a vein of precious water that, if they were enormously lucky, would emerge later to the surface within their quadrant), but why weren't the caves in front of him on the maps? A small system of caves rose above what looked like a ravine. Such a formation was impossible to overlook, even for the Consortium's explorations.

When it reached the edge of the ravine, an hour later, the unit had already given its first communication error report with the drone, and Amana had already seen what he had seen through the viewfinder:

How many greens could the bottom of that ravine contain?

Amidst the lush vegetation, the enormous beasts moved in small herds. They seemed to advance gently pushed by a green tide. Wouldn't it be fairer to call them a shoal? No consortium report reported superior life on the planet.

It aggressively zoomed in on the viewfinder, but needed more perspectives, so it activated the emergency drone.

The floating green sea turned out to be a sea of spores that the enormous creatures devoured with pleasure. They jumped elegantly, despite their large size the fat on their backs, and caught them on the fly with their dark, giant seal snouts. The hooting of the herds was a constant pulse that filled the air. The different views of the drone allowed him to establish some constants in the groups: The largest drove the herd, followed by the smaller ones, which also had lighter coats. The younger ones seemed to be the last ones, whose coat was almost white. When a small one separated from the group, an adult returned it to the herd holding it with the snout by the tail, which was thick at the base and ended in a tip gracefully curved upwards and very black.

Amana squeezed the eyepieces of the visor against the bridge of his nose, excited. Those creatures, as large and perhaps as heavy as an adult cow, did not walk supporting their thick, sharp claw legs on the ground, but floated.

Absorbed, Amana didn't see the swarm coming.

The stinger struck him in the column and knocked him down.

He grabbed the animal's leg. He locked his left hand, painfully, in the spikes so as not to fall.

It hurt. It burned.

He felt the air burning and entering his lungs to burn him inside.

By a reflex, when hit by the stinger, he had clung to the base of the visor and ripped it out. He used it to fight for his life. He struck the beast with the heavy tube in the parts that he perceived soft in his abdomen, until he began to drip a milky and slippery fluid that left him with a blind eye.

The animal twisted without ceasing to fly, trying to detach Amana, who harassed him to force the animal down. He struggled to reach it with the stinger, but it was at a difficult angle.

Then the varmint did something even more unexpected: it twisted and looked Amana straight in the eyes. It made a noise that tried to calm him down. Amana had no doubt: It was a word, though it sounded almost like a buzz.

The face of the beast was amazingly... human? although its head was completely bald and polished with a kind of fat, crowned by antennas that moved frantically.

Amana felt that the hand that held him suddenly abandoned its strength.

He lost consciousness when his head bounced off the first stone of the cliff.

*****

For a few seconds, the world was a hot flash in disbanded.

And then it stopped.

He floated.

The spores waved him and calmed him with their heartbeat. It was spike and germ. Bristle and seed. And, behind the pulse, he heard a song that called him up. Light.

Then pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Amana emerged from sleep with great mortification.

Consciousness emerged from his spore dream and brought him ashore with pain.

The head was a heavy, pulsating stone. The left hand punctured and extended a flare across the arm, to the shoulder.

But the chants rose again and flowed into its torrent. The pain subsided and lassitude invaded him. The dream closed his eyes again.

Where was he?

*****

An'Tangari elbowed Nat'Tangar. The scatterbrain had fallen asleep again. "Sing, sing, Nat'Tangar," she spat.

An'Tangari peered into the translucent sheath they had woven for the creature. He lay placidly lulled in a soup of sage. He was beautiful. Fragile and small. Soft and hairy. And he was shattered and had sting venom.

"Is he broken? Is he broken? Is he broken?..."

"Young Nat'Pangar asks, asks, asks, asks. My ears rise and hurt. Shut up, shut up, Nat'Pangar, you old cocoon. Impatient. The creature wakes up. An'Tangari pulled a braid at her.

"Does the creature stay, An'Tangari? How did the creature get here?", insists Nat'Pangar.

And suddenly An'Tangari is speechless and very still: She doesn't know.

She has lived eons. She has seen a few galaxies form and dissolve into dust. Once, she saw nothing contract upon itself in a darkness blacker than any abyss between the stars.

She saw the night give birth to an explosion and the beautiful Najé arose, which illuminates the sky of the rock they tread on. When she arrived she was alone on the cracked rock. She called the water that flows softly and unfolded and formed her sister. From then on they were An'Tangari and Nat'Tangar and they had to speak to each other in words that they invented. Then Nat'Tangar made Nat'Pangar, so that the young person could ask questions and tell him everything they knew. "When we are dissolved, you must be us," they said.

An'Tangari had lived a long time and talked to the stars. She had slept eons as if she were dead and had woken up again, but An'Tangari did not know this.

How had the creature entered the True Valleys?

He was only suddenly there, watching the beautiful cattle eat. And the swarm attacked him.

An'Tangari even knew why the swarm attacked the beautiful cattle and the small creatures, but this about the creature crossing the crack of time to the True Valleys she did not know.

---

Sealed in its spore pod, Amana dreamed it flowed into a green sea.

A song, a heartbeat would lull him into a vegetable embrace and he was happy.

However, the time to wake up would come and it would be the end of an era.

*****

We are singers. We are wise.

Old,

Old ,

Old ,

We have spoken to the hungry night that spits out planets.

We are wind from ancient galaxies. We are star dust.

Ask the time if it remembers our face.

Even time has forgotten us.

But behold, the man came to show us our empty vessel.

And we had to fill it with words.

His name was love.

His name was pain.

His name was betrayal.

Then we chose for him the name dust.

When he had forgotten us,

We got up again.

We are the monsters. Be careful.

There is no coming back from the True Valley.

From the Book of Ages. GenaTerra, the first year of colonization.