Home Coming (A Sunday Night Short Scifi Story)

It was a dead planet, devoid of all life. The punishing sun scorched the plains of desiccated rock. The striations flaking to reveal the colour of life long lost. It was a dead planet, now. He could remember a time it wasn’t. A time phantom hazes of leathery wings would fill the sky with swirling balls of colour. A time gushing streams of aquamarine splashed and splurted through gnarled roots of cream and grey. A time towering foliage would expand in swelling orbs of pale turquoise, dotted with the multi-colour parade of flowering blossoms. One plant, many flowers. One planet, many lives. All dust.

The tumbling breeze caught great swells of the fine particles, assaulting him in a flurry of erosive projectiles. The winds howled undeterred, the last lingering gasp of an atmosphere. This was the lush planet of his boyhood, yet now barely a man, he stood on the dried, cracked earth of a dead planet. In ten years, the planet had become a waste land, the cycles of centuries had ravaged the planets surface.

It was a distant back water. Back in the early days of colonisation, it had been a way stop on a busy guided shipping route. As the colonies expanded, the routes shifted and the once prosperous planet fell into obscurity. That had happened to a lot of planets, but they didn’t crumble in the ageing of epochs in a single decade.

Not a trace of life remained, not a ruin, not a fossil, nothing. To the unwitting observer, it would have appeared a long dead planet, that could only have known life millennia ago.

Ten years away at Education & Specialisation, and Gatley returned to a planet he barely recognised. He would have doubted his instruments had the same moon not waned before the same stars. This was the night sky he had always known, yet the planet that looked up at it was as alien to him as the unknown worlds at the edge of the known limit.

There was not a single scar on the land to belay the life that once flourished. There was no way of telling where the sparkling ocean had lapped against mighty cliffs.

He had experienced a lot of mixed feeling when he was assigned to investigate sudden planetary change in his home quadrant. He hadn’t been home in so long, he both dreaded and welcomed the family reunion he was certain would be waiting for him. He had skimmed the reported on the flight over, his mind filled with the hearty aroma of motherly cooking. It was only after he disconnected from the information port he realised the mission summary at the end of the report.

“Investigate sudden planetary degradation. Locate any possible survivors”

He had been through the bone shattering impact of processing that on the ship, with three whole weeks of travel before he had to confront the reality of survivors only being a possibility.

According to the geolocator, he was standing in the planetary capital, Eskaba. The land was jagged, broken, stripped back. The fine, sharp particles that ripped through the air, contouring every edge, had a shine to them. A glassy, metallic glint shimmered as they torn around the planet. The tiny shards began to build in the crevasis of his suit. The fabric, woven from finely spun particles, created on an atomic level, was designed to stop the aeolian assaults of other worlds.

He had expected ruins, debris, at least abandoned satellites in orbit, but there was nothing. Not a single trace to suggest life had ever found a way in this forsake dust bowl.

Working out what happened here was a job beyond Gatley's limited training. HQ had expected a nice easy answer, civil war, atomic implosion, the usual reasons for planets going quiet. He was barely equipped to navigate the bereft planet.

He sat, where he hoped the great fountains of Eskaba had once stood, their glorious spouts tinting the water in radiate light. Muffed by the helmet of his suit, he could almost imagine the howling winds as the joyous gushing of water. He turned the problem over.

People could not have done this. No one within the known limits had anything that could strip a planet like this. There were weapons that destroyed worlds, damaged climates, interfered with magnetism, but nothing that could do this so quickly.

A voice crackled in his ear, interrupting his musings;

“The ship isn’t holding up too well, time we scadaddled and called it in”

Gatley rose with a sigh, they would follow protocol. This was beyond his remit, so he would have to call it in. They would dispatch him somewhere else, and send a team of experts to survey the planet. He wouldn’t find out what happened here until the rest of the known limit did.

His carefully packed heartbreak was beginning to resonate in his chest. He had to know. He had to find out what happened to everyone he had left behind. The people he had stood on this very spot with twelve years earlier.

“Come on, get a move on”

The voice urged him on. Cataka had no stakes in this world, she was from a bustling metroworld, where business hummed in the skies. She was a no nonsense, follow the book and clock out kind of girl. She would be all too eager to let someone else come sniffing around this one and jet off to a nice reliable, boring visual report somewhere else.

He began to drag himself back towards the ship. This planet was actively repelling him with a bombardment of razor fog, the wind on his back, pushing him on wards.

He didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t think of a single excuse not to. He felt a sharp pain impact the back of his head as pellet sized rocks began to whistle past him. They were getting bigger by the second. He hurried on, rocks now the size of balled fists smashing into his determined form.

“Gatley hurry the fuck up, this is worst than a meteor field, the ship can’t take it”

He pushed on, adrenaline coursing through him, moments ago he had been desperately thinking of a way to stay, now as the rocks steadily increased in size, he was desperately racing towards the soft light, barely visible through the storm.

The soft light, barely visible through the storm, and slowly rising…

“Fuck Gatley, sorry man, I, the ship, she couldn’t, it was now or never. Lie low, I will stay in orbit and pick you up as soon as it dies back down”

Gatley looked around, urgently seeking cover, something solid, anything that would provide shelter from the shredding storm. He could barely see a foot in front of his face. He stumbled forwards, blindly hoping to find a outcrop still hanging on. The huge stones pelted his body with staggering force. The padded suit absorbed a degree of the impact, but the momentum of force buffeted him, driving him on.

By the time the storm passed, he would be a smashed pulp of a man. There was no surviving this. He would die down here, yet his life had barely begun. He suddenly took a sharp comfort in dying on his home planet, where he had lived, where those he had loved had lived, and died. He would join them. He dropped to the floor, curling up, acceptance washing through him. There was no point in fighting it, dragging himself on. He may as well sit, and enjoy the last few moments of his life.

He thought of the family he had left, the friends he had made, the adventure he had faced. He may be young, but he had travelled more in his few years than most ever would. He felt the warm creep of happiness as his body released final endorphins.

A shock cut through him like a sharp pain as his jarred from his thoughts. A hand had hold of his ankle. It was rising up, out of the shifting sands, pulling him down. Gatley had not the will left to fight, he would let death take him to her sinking depths.

---

He relaxed, and the hand yanked him down in an avalanche of sand.

Gatley landed hard on his back, unprepared for the concrete reality below. He struggled to process the face before him. A dirty sunken face, heavy lines encrusted with muck adding years to the feminine form. It was like he had slipped into another world. His wrist display had broken out in the furious red flashing of ‘Sigal Lost’, a red glow in the poorly lit tunnel.

Flicking lights dancing down the passageway, wooden supports held back the weight of the groaning sand.

“It’s not safe out here,” the woman said, walking past him.

He wobbled to his feet, ungainly in his padded suit.

“You can take that thing off inside, come on” she called back.

He lumbered after her, the air conditioned suit adjusted to his body temperature, blowing cooling in the face of his panicked sweat. She was moving quickly, darting through a doorway where the light appear to descend. Crossing the threshold, she paused, waving him in.

He almost fell through the opening, the suit adding to his weight as he teetered off balance. She caught him by the arm, his suit showering her with razor particles as he moved. She didn’t flinch, though red lines scratched her skin, instead gripping his arm with such an intensity, the sensation drowned all others and he found himself steadied.

She yanked him forwards, and slammed the door behind him.

“You should have headed back to your hatch as soon as it noticed you, a suit like that, you must have stood out a mile off.”

He glanced over her, her banded woven clothes had a familiar glimmer.

“What do you know about what happened here?”

She shot him a sarcastic smile, then seeing his concerned expression, registered his question as genuine.

“I don’t have clearance to be wandering around out there, so probably far less than you”

Gatley was labouring with the bulky suit, he had hit the emergency release, and the thing had come loose in a hiss of pressured air, but separating himself from it wasn’t so easy. Valves needed to be turned and disconnected to free him. The woman eyed him with curiosity as he finally emerged, a fine sheen on sweat on his skin.

“That the latest suit to survey the beast from then?”

---

The woman had been called Ishka, she hadn’t been able to believe he had landed a ship out there, swearing ‘the beast’ could destroy a ship in less time than she could click her fingers, snapping them as though proving her point. All Gatley had seen out there was the storm. She led him through winding tunnels and metal descending staircases to come out in front of a large glass entrance lobby. Standing before it, the paved stone below his feet seemed familiar, looking up, he realised they had descended to “ground” level, he stood on the pavement before the submerged Capital Hall of Eskaba.

This is a story I wrote this afternoon, feeling those lazy sunday feelings so thought I would skip my usual few day editing period and share it with you while it was still sunday.

_{I don't know if this will turn out to be a stand alone story or if I will continue it, I know what has happened to this planet and how, but I kind of like the story as it is, I am not sure if more would be adding to it, although I may be tempted to pick it up again at some point.}

Photo Credit which I have heavily edited for the final effect.