Portaterra: Coming Home for the First Time

Dryfus stared through the portal he’d just opened, his heart seized by a sudden rush of fear. He could see a barren, rocky landscape backed by a stormy sky — nothing to hang his hopes on. This was not one of those commercial gateways kept open for long stretches as tourists and travelers stepped between worlds. This was an emergency portal. It had the capacity for only a small group for a very short time. They had been distributed to the cadets by groups, a failsafe should everything go wrong.

And everything that could go wrong, had gone wrong. Over the last 46 hours, his group of 16 had dwindled by twos and threes until now it consisted of only one. The portal pack had been passed from one cadet to another, as they each met their untimely death, picked off by a dying planet, unable to support anything more complex than a virus. The toxic air seared the lungs, and was barely tolerable with a rebreather on. Water was nowhere to be found, at least within any reasonable distance from their drop point. Or should that be their crash site?

What was meant to be a routine first mission for a new cadre of graduating cadets — a final test of their training — had turned to a disaster of epic proportions, all because of Lieutenant Cadet Foreman, a true ass if ever there were one. He’d come from a family of Space Corp officers and he behaved as though their achievements were his own.

Dryfus thought him completely pathetic. What was Foreman doing with the enlisted cadets if he were all that? Why wasn’t he in officer training? To make matters worse, the CO had made him a cadet lieutenant, after which, there simply was no living with him. If it hadn’t been for the unspoken rule among cadets, that Space Corp had each other’s back, he’d have washed out right away. Instead, they covered for him, sometimes by ignoring his orders, other times, by taking the blame when things went wrong.

Now, too late, Dryfus saw the folly in that thinking. It would have been so much wiser to have let him hang himself and allow a new company leader to be selected. By covering for Foreman, he squeaked through undetected by the instructors whose job was to sort out the bad apples. Instead, they all had paid the price.

Dryfus realized, as he paused before the shimmering circle, that the warp drive breaking, was not Foreman’s fault. It was everything that happened after, everything that led to the crash onto the surface of this restricted planet, and the death, so far, of 15 cadets, including Foreman. He shook himself, and pulled to him, as much equipment as he could. He’d tied a triple cord through the straps of most of the now dead cadet’s backpacks. He couldn’t budge the bundle when it included everyone’s equipment, so he’d sorted through it, focusing primarily on food supplies, water, first aid, and weaponry. Shelter and communication gear, and the personal fliers, were simply too much weight and might or might not make that much difference in a survival situation.

He’d dialed up no fewer than six different portals, each one more dismal than the last. They didn’t have the power to reach very far, so it limited his selection. On top of that, he didn’t have the power to pull up telemetry on each target to determine suitability. All he had was a visual, and nothing more. That, and a gut feeling.

Then the unit indicated only enough power for this final window, and it was time to roll the dice. Win or lose, he had only the choice to stay or go. Staying was only an option if his intent were suicide. If he wanted any chance at all to live, stepping through this portal was his only hope. If it proved fatal, he was already dead. Anything else would be a win.

The circle collapsed in on itself, as Dryfus pondered. He worked the dial, and tapped the unit, like he’d seen his father do with their atmospheric unit back home. It appeared to do the trick, as the circle flicked back on, this time with a crackle and a bit of static.

It was now, or never. Dryfus pulled on the harness he’d made, with all the equipment he could carry attached and dragging across the ground. Then bending low, he ran for the circle, aiming to haul it all through before the portal collapsed. He’d delayed so long, he wasn’t sure he’d make it through himself, let alone any of the survival gear.

There was a charge of energy as he passed through, like a shock to your skin when the humidity is just right and you touch your cat to pet it, a jolt of electricity, and then he stumbled forward, sprawling across the alien soil, having lost his footing on the uneven ground on this new planet. He’d fallen hard, bruising his shoulder, then struggled to regain his feet. He realized that gravity here was heavier handed than what he was used to, but not unbearable. The weight of his baggage train, had likewise increased, and he realized that not all of the gear had cleared the portal.

Though it still flickered severely, it remained open. For how long, Dryfus had no idea. He began pulling on the cords that led back through the opening, pulling each backpack one by one. He’d gotten four more clear when the portal closed, leaving two leads cut off and one bag cut at about the two thirds mark where the portal had been. All in all, not a bad hall. He wasn’t yet sure what hadn’t made it through, but between the backpacks and the duffels, he’d rescued the lion’s share, and felt his chances improved.

Now to assess his new situation. The sky above was heavily clouded and shot through with reds, oranges, blues, purples, as though painted with great abandon. The ground for as far as he could see in every direction, was dark, almost black, and very uneven. The sun hung just above the horizon and he didn’t know if it was rising or setting. Opposite the sun, the horizon was hazy, but he was almost certain mountains rose in the distance and stretched at great length in either direction.

The air was breathable, with none of the searing bite he’d just left behind. It bore a musky and dank scent he could not identify. There were no plants in view, just the clumpy, disturbed looking soil. A steady breeze blew in from the direction to the right of the sun. If the sun set shortly, he would call that direction north. It had a chill to it, suggesting he was right.

There was nothing he could see that could be hastily turned into shelter, and he’d carried none with him. He made a quick decision, to prepare for the worst. Digging through several backpacks, he found some hand tools, and he began to dig a trench, not deep, just enough to create a mound of soil in a line perpendicular to the wind. On top of it, he stacked the backpacks and duffle bags, curving them around in a short crescent, and sliding each layer out to overhang the bag below it. In this way, he quickly formed a small redoubt, a buffer against the wind. Then he began removing some of the impacted soil beneath the redoubt, carving out a slight hollow that, if he pressed himself against the embankment, he could further increase his protection.

When he finished, he found some rations, and taking it into his shelter, he huddled down and ate. As he did, rain began to fall from the sky, landing in big splotches at first, slowly, but soon hitting faster, and faster. Dryfus stood for a moment, arms outstretched, letting the cool liquid splash against his face. He had never seen rain in his life, having grown up under a dome on a barren moon, then moving to a space station for university, and then to an asteroid for cadet training. It was glorious to behold, this water, and he assumed it was water, raining down from the heavens.

Slowly, he sank again to the ground, and pressed against the wall of the redoubt. He didn’t know what his chances for long-term survival were — his hunch was about as long as the rations lasted. After that, who knew? But to die with the sun, the wind and the rain on your face — who could ask for more? With that thought, he slept, even as the trench began to slowly fill up, too tired and too content to care.