Transmigrant - Chapter 2
Copyright © 2024 Stephen B. Anthony
To walk among the engineered as one untouched by their design is to tread a path of uncertainty.
—Christine Silman Decker
CHAPTER 2
Tellarius, orbiting Eos at 153 million kilometers, seemed like Earth’s twin—its stable climate, breathable air, and liquid water created a deceptive sense of familiarity. The planet’s flora and fauna could almost convince a person they were on Earth, but the illusion faded when remembering the dangers lurking there—like the renders that had once torn through the colony, leaving brutal reminders that this world was still alien.
Ray Decker knew this all too well. In the decade since their arrival, he’d seen the harsh reality of this place, which is why he always kept a shotgun within reach while working in the cornfields. His gaze often wandered toward the weapon, hanging just a few rows away, a small comfort against a threat that might never come again but was never far from his mind.
Ten years ago, renders had killed nineteen colonists in under four minutes—thirteen of them children. The colony never truly recovered from that day, the loss deepened by the failure of their reproduction systems. Until the jump gate was completed, no new children would come to replace those they’d lost.
Some wounds heal. Others never do.
“Hey, Ray, you still alive out there?” Cal Roberts’ voice crackled through his earbud, snapping him from his thoughts.
Ray smirked, shifting his grip on the hoe. “Barely,” he replied. “What’s up, Cal?”
“Just checking in,” Cal said, his voice a welcome reprieve from the monotony. “Heard Garner’s been sniffing around production yields again. Think he’ll stop by today?”
Ray wiped the back of his hand across his brow, leaving a smudge of dirt. “Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s always got something to complain about.”
“Yeah, he’ll probably say we’ve got low yields,” Cal laughed. “Like we aren’t keeping quotas for six thousand people, but there’s only four thousand of us left.”
“More than enough food. Almost half of it rotting every year.” Ray shook his head, kicking dirt off his boots as he moved to the next row. “But Garner? He’ll still find something to whine about.”
Ray scanned the field briefly, his grey eyes narrowing as they caught the shimmer of the sea in the distance. The sun beat down on him, his skin a permanent reddish-brown from the countless hours under its glare. His thoughts drifted for a moment, that familiar far-away look settling over his features.
“You sure you’re good out there on your own?” Cal’s voice brought him back to the present.
Ray glanced over the expanse of corn, absently running a hand through his dark, wavy hair. “I do it every day, Cal. Someone’s gotta keep this place running.”
“True,” Cal’s voice softened. “Still, you should come into town more often. Could use some company, you know? Oh, and hey—happy birthday, by the way.”
Ray let out a dry laugh, dragging the hoe across the soil. “Yeah, nothing happy about it. Didn’t think anyone remembered.”
“Of course I did. You’re a big deal, remember? The first person to leave the Perseus and step foot on Tellarius and all that.”
“Feels like a lifetime ago,” Ray muttered, glancing toward the horizon again. His muscles ached, but his mind—it craved something more, something the field couldn’t provide.
Cal’s voice grew more serious. “You know, Ray, it’s okay to admit it sucks sometimes. Life out here, the way things are.”
Ray paused, leaning against his hoe as the wind stirred the surrounding corn. “It’s not so bad,” he finally said. “Besides, I do my best thinking out here.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Cal replied. “But things are going to change, you know. Two more years. That’ll change everything.”
The jump gate, orbiting the star, had been a decade-long project. If successful, it would reconnect them with humanity. It had taken over two centuries to reach this system on the generation ship, and twelve years to build the gate. In theory, it would take just seconds to return to the Solar system through the wormhole.
Ray had his doubts. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. “Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.”
“Might even mean the birthing lab can come back online,” Cal added hopefully.
Ray’s expression darkened. Twenty years had passed since the lab had shut down, since they’d lost the ability to have children. “Yeah, that’d be something,” he said, his voice quieter.
“It’ll happen, Ray,” Cal said, trying to sound more upbeat. “We’ll get our chance again. Just don’t get too lost in your thoughts, okay?” Cal’s voice started breaking up, distorted and faint.
Ray was about to respond when a faint whine in the distance pulled him from the conversation. He looked toward the road, spotting a cloud of dust. “Hang on, Cal—”
“Ray? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, but you’re cutting out.” He tapped the earbud, frowning. His earbud crackled with static before cutting out completely, leaving him in silence.
The electric hum of an approaching vehicle grew louder. Ray squinted at the cloud of dust coming up from the road to New Virginia. No doubt, Nicodemus Garner, the mayor, was making his way over. Ray sighed, bracing himself for another lecture on crop production. The last thing he wanted was a conversation with Garner today.
He completed weeding the end of the row, kicked the dirt off his hoe, and moved on to the next row. The electric motor hummed louder until the vehicle came to a stop at his barn and went silent. Ray slipped into the cornstalks, hoping Garner wouldn’t come trudging through the dirt in his ill-fitted and tattered three-piece suit.
Unfortunately, Garner was more stubborn than Ray had expected. He kept coming. Ray concluded that hiding would be pointless. Stepping out of his hiding spot, he grasped his hoe, wiped his brow, and braced himself to argue about the value of cultivating food they didn’t even need.
He expected to see Garner’s frowning face, but he didn’t recognize the man, at least not from this distance. That was immediately unnerving. Ray took a few steps closer.
The man looked up, his eyes vacant and sunken. “You Ray Decker?” he asked, his voice carrying a strange inflection that made Ray’s skin crawl.
“Who’s asking?”
The man didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he raised his left arm, and before Ray could react, his earbud shattered with a sharp pop, leaving a ringing in his ear. Ray yanked the smoking earbud from his ear and dropped it into the soil.
“What the—?” Ray’s words died in his throat as he looked up, adrenaline surging through his veins. His eyes locked on the nickel-plated pistol gleaming in the man’s right hand. Ray stumbled backward, breath catching in his throat, his mind struggling to process the danger. Fear clawed at him, but he fought to stay in control.
He felt the bullet strike before he heard the gunfire. The numbness spread from his abdomen, weakening his knees. He staggered sideways and fell backward through a row of corn, hiding him from the shooter.
Ray cupped his left hand over the hole in the right side of his abdomen, feeling the dampness and trying to ebb the flow, knowing that it would be futile without medical help. Lying in the cornfield with a nine-millimeter hole in or near his liver was a death sentence if he had any intention of surviving. But grimacing and whining weren’t a solution. Action was.
He pushed the pain away, grabbed a corn stalk in one hand, his trusty hoe in the other, and scrambled to his feet to confront the assailant. Somewhere, off to his left, his shotgun hung from a sturdy cornstalk. It was his only chance, but he needed to survive long enough to reach it.
He struggled to catch his breath. His face twisted, not in fear, but in fury that blazed hotter than the sun overhead. His jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, and his eyes narrowed to slits. How dare anyone take away what little life he had left!
His assailant’s voice cut through the air, taunting, “Hurts, doesn’t it? Won’t take long now.”
His hands, slick with his own blood, gripped the hoe’s handle with white-knuckled determination. Every muscle in his body tensed, coiled like a spring ready to unleash its pent-up energy. Through gritted teeth, a whisper escaped, barely audible over the rustling corn stalks. “I will not die here today,” he said. His voice was a low, guttural growl, vibrating with the raw intensity of his resolve.
Ray saw the silhouette of the man advancing, pistol ready. Ignoring the pain, he prepared to defend himself with the only weapon at hand. He stooped to reduce his profile and retreated diagonally, attempting to place extra rows between them while getting nearer to his shotgun. Ray fought to maintain control of his body, determined to push through the pain and fight back.
“Nothing personal,” the man taunted. “Just business.”
Ray retreated into the cornstalks, now three rows between them, obstructing the man’s vision. A second shot cracked past him, missing by inches.
He pictured the man in his mind, anticipating his approach. He could almost feel how the man was standing, the location of his hands and feet, where the pistol was. When the worn barrel and gloved hand appeared between cornstalks, it was exactly where Ray had expected it to be.
“This won’t take long,” the shooter bragged.
Ray swung the hoe at the pistol, making contact as another shot rang out. The bullet grazed his ear, the sound muffled like he was underwater, making the moment even more surreal.
The hoe struck with a solid crack, sending the gun flying into the undergrowth, where it vanished among the cornstalks, lost in the dense foliage.
Ray heard a muffled curse from the man, who scrambled away, seeking his lost pistol.
Ray followed, swinging the hoe with all his strength. His opponent rolled onto his back just in time, raising a forearm to block the strike. The impact splintered the wooden haft, sending the jagged hook flying and leaving Ray with only the broken handle in his hands.
Muscle memory from his training on the Perseus kicked in, and without hesitation, Ray spun the shaft in his hands, aiming a sharp thrust at the man’s exposed chest. But the man twisted at the last second, the makeshift spear stabbing into the dirt.
The attacker rolled onto his stomach, pinning the broken handle beneath him and wrenching it from Ray’s grasp. Ray staggered, catching himself on the cornstalks. Seeing the man’s back exposed, he lunged, throwing himself on top of him. With raw fury, Ray drove his fists down, one after the other, pounding into the man’s skull in a relentless, desperate barrage.
The attacker instinctively raised his left hand to shield his head, but his right hand groped through the dirt until it found the gun. He lifted his upper body, trying to bring the weapon into play, but Ray swiftly reacted, locking his legs around the man’s waist.
The man twisted, guessing his position. He fired blindly over his shoulder and missed. The deafening crack and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air, but Ray didn’t loosen his grip.
With both hands, Ray slammed the man’s weapon hand forward to the ground. The gun fired from the impact and bounced free, disarming his attacker for a second time.
The man tried to turn onto his back into a guard position, but Ray rolled with him, hooking his feet into the man’s inner thighs. They struggled as his assailant tried to pry Ray’s feet from the inside of his thighs. Ray wrapped his right arm around the man’s neck, but the man lowered his chin to protect himself from a choke.
The hoe remained trapped under them. With no other weapon, Ray reached behind him and grabbed a handful of soil, slamming it over the man’s face and nose, and then hammered the stranger in the ear with his left fist. In response, his attacker brought up his own left hand, cupping it over his ear to protect from the blows. He tried rotating again to face his opponent, but Ray stayed in position on his back, his feet locked onto the man’s thighs, rolling with him.
Ray slammed his palm under the man’s chin, creating an opening to lock in a choke. His assailant dug at Ray’s right arm, trying to pull it free.
He applied pressure to the back of the man’s head with his left hand and tried to straighten his body to strengthen the grip, but his legs shook from the exertion and his abdominal muscles weren’t working right. The blood loss was taking its toll.
His arms weakened, and his vision faded. Ray shook his head, trying to catch his breath as wave after wave of pain emanated from his abdomen. His strength was waning.
The shooter turned his head into the crook of Ray’s elbow, and he bit into Ray’s flesh, bringing a yell of pain from Ray, and loosening his arms. His opponent escaped the choke hold, and they rolled away from each other.
As they rose to their feet, Ray’s opponent seized the initiative, driving a knee into Ray’s face that sent him sprawling backward into the soil. Blood streamed from Ray’s nose, stinging his eyes, and filling his mouth with the metallic taste of iron.
Struggling to rise, Ray’s hand found the wooden handle beneath him. Just as his assailant lunged forward, Ray grasped the handle and swung it upward. The butt end of the handle connected with his opponent’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
As the man staggered from the blow, Ray swung the wooden handle again, striking the man in the jaw. He heard bones break from the force of the blow as he spun the handle in his hand. Gripping it, he drove the splintered spear into the man’s throat.
The shooter fell sideways, blood spurting from the wound. His eyes bulged, and both hands reached at the handle as he tried to pull the makeshift spear out of his neck, but he had no strength to do so. He rolled to his side, the handle of the hoe still impaling him. He gasped a few times and then lay still, an occasional twitch passing through him as he lay dying, staring off into the rows of corn as his eyes glazed over.
Ray knelt, gasping for breath, his strength waning. He scanned the cornfield for any additional threats, but found none. The gun was nowhere in sight.
His eyes drifted to the dying man before him, then to his bloodied hands, and back to the body. The weight of what he had just done settled heavily on his mind.
He ignored it for now and examined the man. The neoprene clothing was new. Everything else was old and well-used. The worn black leather gloves smelled like lanolin. He searched the body, finding a full fifteen-round magazine for the missing pistol and a strange device that was now hopelessly broken. The man had used it somehow to destroy Ray’s communicator. He found no identification, and the man lacked a communicator as well.
It made little sense. The man had said it was a job, not personal. Ray did not have significant wealth for someone to take. He knew of no enemies. There was no logical explanation for this, and he could not put the pieces together. Who wanted him dead and why? What was the man doing here?
With no means of communication, he was isolated from the town. The only hope was to get to his barn and his tractor. The barn that his father had helped him build.
“Dad,” he murmured, his voice barely a whisper. “I wish you were here.”
His parents both passed away within days of their fortieth birthdays, just a year apart. His perfectly healthy father had collapsed in the driveway. His mother had been talking with him, peeling an onion at the table. She had simply bowed her head mid-sentence and was gone. Like all his ancestors, they had been victims of a cure. A cure for a disease called elderly.
Death was better, they said. The disease robbed you of your hair, hearing, eyesight, and physical strength. Your emaciated body would become a husk of its former self. Your brain would rot, and you would forget your friends and family. The cure that had taken his parents had eliminated all those years of suffering.
Most accepted it as an inevitability of their existence as colonists. But Ray was not convinced that another few years would have been bad. His parents had been perfectly healthy. There was no guarantee they would get the disease.
Plus, the so-called cure hadn’t eliminated the suffering. It just changed the type of suffering. The sense of being stalked by the Grim Reaper was its own form of anguish. Ray had felt that sense of foreboding for some time now, and given his current state, a hole in his abdomen, leaking blood, he half expected a rider on a pale horse to show up before he made it to the barn.
Ray shivered, and his eyelids felt heavy. A part of him wanted to go to sleep. What was the point of trying to stay alive? Humanity was happy to use him up and toss him away when they were done with him. What difference would it make to human civilization if he stopped existing now? They would never even notice if he was gone.
He spat, tasting blood mixed with bile. Weariness overcame his body, but anger took over his mind. He winced and got up, using the broken handle as a makeshift crutch, and moved through his field toward the barn that seemed such a long way off.
Halfway across the expansive field, he released the splintered wooden handle, opting instead to retrieve his shotgun. With renewed determination, his focus shifted to reaching the safety of the barn. Once there, he could access the tractor parked at the rear entrance, and from there, make his way to town. The medical clinic awaited him there.
As he stumbled, Ray reached out, clutching at the sturdy corn stalks to steady himself. Each step was a battle against the searing pain radiating from his abdomen, his mind racing with a jumble of thoughts. The broken birthing lab, the forty-year lifespan, the jump gate that was still not working. He knew it added up to something just beyond his grasp. It was hardly the first time he had thought about it, but now add to that, someone trying to kill him. Why?
When he reached the end of the corn, his right knee buckled, and he went down. He struggled to breathe. Each inhalation required more effort than the last. For a moment, he rested, and his eyes stung as sweat droplets fell from his brow.
Ten years. He had survived ten years here. Disease had killed some, renders had killed others, and many had reached the end of their genetic clock. But Ray had survived. The completion of the jump gate, signaling the start of a new era, had been his hope, but now he wasn’t sure he would live long enough to see it happen.
He stood up and started moving again, this time determined to keep going. He felt the world spinning around him, and his eyesight clouded, turning red at the periphery of his vision and then black. At some point, he dropped the shotgun but kept walking.
Ray stumbled toward the barn, his hand trailing a smear of blood along the weathered wood of the rear door as he forced it open. Collapsing against the textured rubber of the tractor’s front wheel, he fought for breath, each inhalation a struggle against the tightening grip of nausea. Despite the overwhelming fatigue and pain, he refused to yield, but the prospect of mounting the tractor overwhelmed him.
He only had fifteen more years to live, anyway. Why kill him now? Why rob him of what little life he had left? Each time a wave of despair washed through him, a hot wave of fury and a renewed sense of determination immediately followed. He gritted his teeth and focused on the task at hand.
Struggling with each movement, he raised his foot onto the tractor floorboard after several agonizing attempts. Doggedly, he reached up to grab the steering wheel, intending to use it as leverage to hoist himself up. However, his bloody hand slipped, and he tumbled backward, the impact stirring up a cloud of dust and dry hay as he collapsed onto his back, utterly drained.
His breath came in ragged gasps, his body refusing to move off the barn floor. He lay gasping, each inhalation reminiscent of the heaves of someone who had wept for hours. Resting in the barn was futile; his condition would only worsen if he stayed. He had to move—now—or it was over. Every breath was a battle, his vision narrowing to a pinpoint as darkness crept in.
Ray shook his head, clearing his vision. He looked up at the rafters, remembering the day that he had cut them from trees on the land. He turned his head sideways to look at the lumber mill tucked in the barn’s corner, now covered in a black tarp. After the barn, there should have been a house, but with no one to share it with, he had never built one. He had been holding out for the jump gate, the re-connection with the rest of humanity. But that dream was slipping through his fingers as darkness closed in on him again.
A sudden gust of wind stirred the dust, sending debris into his stinging eyes. As he blinked against the grit, a faint hum vibrated through the air, barely perceptible over the sound of his own labored breathing, but he could not discern what it was, nor did he care. Amidst the overwhelming despair, fear eluded him. Instead, a profound sense of loss washed over him, accompanied by the bitter pang of unfulfilled promise. Regret gnawed at him, knowing that he had left so much undone in his life.
Summoning what little strength remained, he lifted his weary hand as though reaching for the sky. But even this simple gesture proved too much for him. His hand trembled, slipping back toward his chest like a deflating balloon. Gazing at his hand in dismay, he grappled with the realization that he would not live to see the jump gate completed. He would not be there when they rejoined the rest of humanity. His last moments would unfold within the confines of this barn. He accepted that he would die here. If he’d had the strength to shrug his shoulders, he would have done so. Instead, he just closed his eyes.
Footsteps? No—more like a presence. Ray’s heart pounded as the weight of the darkness pressed in. Then, suddenly, a hand gripped his—firm, strong, and impossibly real.
“I’ve got you,” an unknown voice promised.
Transmigrant is available at Amazon & Audible.