Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“hello? Is this thing on?
Ah good there we go. …. Phew where do I start? So much has happened, so much strife and hardship…. I guess I should start by telling you my name. My name is Dr Augustus Swift, and I’m leaving this message as a historical record of what really happened on our early days on Perda, so that maybe whoever you are, you don’t copy our terrible mistakes. Odds are this recording will be completely at odds with what you have learned about the history of our planet, and you may question my intent or even my sanity as I tell you this tale. I beg of you, give me time to tell you the truth so that you may see the truth for yourself.

We never really did find out exactly what happened on the fateful day our race arrived on Perda. Our massive colony ships arrived from the warp jump, hovering in orbit over our new home, but something went terribly wrong, either as we arrived, or before we were ready to descend onto the planet's surface.  Only a few managed to make it to the escape pods, moving as many of those in stasis as they could.  Barely half of the pods were launched before one of the ships warp drives went critical, enveloping the surrounding 4 colony ships, tearing them apart. Barely 4000 people of the 2 million strong colonists survived long enough to begin their entry into the atmosphere.

The pods screamed down through the atmosphere, a magnetic storm throwing the pods far off course, spreading them out across the alien landscape. Many of the pods landed badly, the occupants killed from the botched landings, their pods landing in the sea, shooting to the bottom of the ocean, drowning them long before they reached the surface. But enough of us survived, stumbling dazed and confused from our pods, still groggy from effects of emergency stasis release. My pod came down on the northern section of a large continent on the upper hemisphere, the climate warm, with mild winters, well suited to farming.

It was hard to adapt in those early days after our emergency landing. Not all of us had made it in one piece to the surface. We had managed to escape the destruction of our ship, but the situation was dire. Of the 40 people who had managed to reach the pod, eight of us had died during the emergency landing. We had barely enough food to last a week with our numbers, and our only power was from the emergency generator. As the only doctor on the pod, i had to quickly shake my feverish state from the emergency thawing. I worked in a blur, setting broken limbs, inspecting injuries as we tried to comprehend what had happened. Thankfully we still had our comms and geo-mapping systems, though they were limited in range and we had no idea how long they would last on the emergency power.

 We had intended to arrive on the planet with plenty of resources and tools to quickly adapt to our new lives, but those had been on the colony ships. All our emergency pods had were basic food supplies and limited basic tools. Thankfully though, our group of survivors had a broad range of skills, we had an engineer, a trio of builders, a few crew from the colony ship, an agricultural scientist, and most importantly a first officer. The rest of us of us were civilians, shocked and scared from the sudden crash, and to this day i'm still amazed with the way first officer Vargbran managed to take control. Though scared and out of his depth himself, he went between us, reassuring, comforting, supporting us, before making a speech to the group. He outlined the situation, and that our existing colony plans could not be used, and we would have to adapt based on what we had. He sent out a small squad of crew members to find a nearby river and bring back some fresh water, organized the engineers and builders to salvage what they could, assigning a few volunteers to bury those who died in the crash.

When the crew members came back with fresh water it was getting dark. We had a fire going, and held a brief funeral for those who had died. We barely knew them, most of us were linked by the coincidence of just happened to be closest to this particular pod d but we still felt like we owed it to them. After all, any of us could have easily have been in their place. I remember that night clearly, lying on my back staring at the new alien sky, unable to sleep, terrified but at the same time ashamed of my own excitement. I could see the wreckage from our ships dropping through the atmosphere, burning comets against the clear sky. It seemed sick that something so beautiful to come out of such a tragedy. I remember. After hours of lying awake, exhaustion finally took me and I surrendered to the peaceful oblivion of sleep.