Horizon Delta by D. W. Vogel

Author:D. W. Vogel [Vogel, D.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Future House Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

My fists slammed into the table, and everyone whirled around to stare at me.

“No! There has to be a way!” I felt heat in my face and water in my eyes. It can’t be true. I promised Shane I’d come back for him. He was counting on me. They all were. If any of them were still alive.

“I’m sorry, Jonah,” Shiro said. “I really—”

I cut him off. “Sorry? You’re sorry? Look, I appreciate the rescue. I really do. But my brother is on that ship. And maybe twenty other people. We can’t just leave them out there to die.”

Tishi’s whistles were translated into my ear. “It’s not that we don’t want to save them. But their ship is invisible. No one has ever found a way to track it.” She waved a wing-like arm toward the outside wall. “It’s out there somewhere, but we have no way of finding out where it is.”

I jumped back from the table and stumbled over to the tanks. Corey and Priya backed away, leaving me alone to stare into the murky water. Everyone else made it. The other two ships. They were living happily on different worlds, and my people were dying, fed to a plant in the middle of a living, invisible spaceship. That was the end of the Horizon Delta. The hope of millions of people from long-dead Earth, sending out a ship full of lucky humans to find a safe place to live. That’s what hope turned into. An acid pit in the belly of a fat, green plant.

Shiro’s face reflected in the aquarium’s side as he walked up behind me. He had a very slight limp I hadn’t noticed when he was wearing the cloak and mask.

“I know how you feel,” he said.

“You couldn’t possibly know.”

“But I do.” He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to pull away. “I was seventeen when we landed on Tau Ceti e. More than half of our people didn’t survive the landing, and of those, more than half were eaten by dinosaurs before we finally found a safer place to live.” His eyes were misty, reliving a troubled past. “I almost died more than once. I watched my friends die.” His eyes grew darker. “I watched my father die to save my life. By the time the Siitsi arrived, I had no family alive on that wretched planet.”

I shrugged. “But you had friends.”

Yes,” he agreed. “I still do. Some of them have kids on this ship. My own son is still there, and my daughter is an engineer on another Siitsi ship. I’ve been very lucky, and I know it’s not the same. But I lost almost everyone. I know what it’s like to want to save them and not be able to. I know how your heart breaks when you remember the people who died while somehow you lived.”

Heat rose in my face again, and I pulled away from his fatherly arm. “But they’re not dead yet. Not all of them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.