Torran Read online

  Torran

  A Crashland Colony Romance

  Leslie Chase

  TORRAN

  Editing by Sennah Tate

  Copyright 2019 Leslie Chase

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Lisa

  2. Torran

  3. Lisa

  4. Torran

  5. Lisa

  6. Torran

  7. Lisa

  8. Torran

  9. Lisa

  10. Torran

  11. Lisa

  12. Torran

  13. Lisa

  14. Torran

  15. Lisa

  16. Torran

  17. Lisa

  18. Torran

  19. Lisa

  20. Torran

  21. Lisa

  22. Torran

  23. Lisa

  24. Torran

  25. Lisa

  26. Torran

  27. Lisa

  Epilogue

  About Leslie Chase

  Sci Fi Romance by Leslie Chase

  Paranormal Romance by Leslie Chase

  1

  Lisa

  I woke to darkness in a space the size of a coffin. The brochures warned us about hibernation sickness, but I hadn’t expected it to be this bad. My head felt like a mule had kicked it, my joints burned, and when I pried open my eyes I couldn’t see.

  A moment of panic later, I realized the stasis tube’s lights hadn’t come on. The only illumination was a faint glimmer shining through the cracks around the edge of the tube’s door. A door that should have sprung open automatically.

  Great, so what else has gone wrong? I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I was alive, and I’d made it. The Wandering Star must have reached Arcadia Colony — otherwise it wouldn’t have woken me up.

  A smile spread across my face despite the pain. Another world! Escape from Earth and all its troubles, the water wars and the pollution. So what if some systems failed on arrival? I’d made it to my new home.

  Bracing myself against the wall, I pushed the door as hard as I could. It took all my strength to move it, but it did move. Bright light poured in through the gap making me wince and squeeze my eyes shut. I threw my weight against the door, pushing it wide and tumbling out onto the cold metal floor of the colony pod.

  Everything seemed to be at an odd angle, the light was far too bright, and an unsettling hum filled the air. For a moment I let myself worry — had something gone wrong? Had the pod malfunctioned, woken me in the depths of space with months to go before we arrived? But fresh air filled the room with the scent of alien plants, reassuring me. A sweet and pungent smell like nothing on Earth filled my nostrils and I laughed aloud, lying back to let myself adjust to the new atmosphere.

  “Sis, is that you? I’m stuck.” Malcolm’s petulant voice pulled me back to myself and I sat up with a groan. Great, little brother, you’re not even going to let me enjoy the first minute of a new planet before you start complaining.

  Unfair, of course. If he’d gotten out of his stasis tube first, I’d have been demanding he let me out right away. Still, I’d have liked just a few minutes to soak in the wonder of the new world.

  “Coming, Mal,” I grumbled, pushing myself off the cold floor with an effort and looking around. The two coffin-sized hibernation tubes took up most of the space in the small room, with lockers for our personal possessions filling the rest. Bright sunlight streamed in through the transparent roof, and that was the only light. I frowned — when we’d boarded the pod there’d been dozens of holographic displays to look at, but all were dead now. This wasn’t how I’d expected to wake up.

  As I struggled to pry open my brother’s tube, I heard other colonists moving around outside. The pod held three families, all winners of the colony lottery system back on Earth, and from the sound of it we weren’t the only ones having trouble.

  First things first, let’s get Malcolm out, I told myself, and with a final heave managed to pull the doors of his tube wide. Malcolm grinned up at me and threw his arms round my neck.

  “We made it!” He shouted the words, petulance forgotten as soon as he was free. “We really did, didn’t we?”

  I grinned, lifting him out of the tube. It wasn’t as easy as it used to be, my little brother was growing fast, but I managed to get him on his feet. We were both a little unsteady, staggering to our lockers and pulling out our wristbands. They ought to link up to the colony computer network, but the red ‘no signal’ light came on instead. Not even local wifi from the colony pod. That wasn’t right.

  “Maybe the others know what’s going on?” Malcolm asked hopefully, switching his off and on again. No change. “There’s probably a power outage or something.”

  I didn’t think that sounded right. Back on Earth power outages had been a common problem, but out here on a new world with brand new infrastructure things ought to be better. The wristbands only had short range radio links but surely they should pick up something?

  Standing around looking at the error message wouldn’t tell us anything, so we made our way into the communal space outside. The big round room was meant for all the colonists to share, a dining room and meeting room in one. The doors to the other colonist families’ rooms were still shut — we were the first to emerge, though I heard our neighbors’ voices. It didn’t sound like anyone was in any trouble, so I decided to leave them alone.

  “Is it just me, or are we on a slope?” Malcolm asked as we walked to the long table and sat down. I frowned, wanting to say it was just the hibernation sickness. But he was right. The room tilted to the side, only a little but enough to notice. I remembered the briefings — the pod ought to have picked a nice flat safe place to land.

  “You rest here, I’ll see what’s going on,” I told my brother, pushing myself back to my feet with an effort and making my way forward. If none of the others were ready to go yet that suited me fine. It gave me the chance to be the first of our party to set foot on Arcadia.

  To be on the safe side, I stopped in our secure store and picked up a rifle. The wildlife wasn’t supposed to be very dangerous, but then the Arcadia Colony Company had packed the laser rifles for a reason and I’d feel better with one slung on my back.

  Most of the pod was storage, with our living quarters at the core. The secure store and the sickbay were next. Beyond that I had the choice of the engineering bay or the cargo holds. Without power, engineering’s external ramp would be hell to get open, so the cargo hold it was.

  As soon as I opened the hatch, I saw that something had gone badly wrong. The stored equipment, everything we should need to set up our new home on a fresh world, had been secured to the walls.

  Now it lay scattered across the floor, the cabling that ought to hold it in place torn loose from the fittings. I blinked at the devastation. Had we crashed?

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said aloud, trying to convince myself. “We made it down in one piece, and someone will come and help us if we need it. We made it to Arcadia and everything’s going to be fine.”

  Trying to believe that, I made my way through the devastation to the outer door. I wasn’t about to let a lack of power stop me from seeing my new home, so I pried open a panel to reach the emergency crank.

  Warm air gusted inside as the door slowly slid open, carrying that strong sweet scent. The light was bright and somehow different, looking subtly wrong to my Earth-raised eyes. I shaded my eyes, feeling nauseous but unwilling to let that stop me.

  Yeah, w
e’d come down in the wrong place. That much was obvious at a glance — trees stood all around us. I’d seen pictures of the land we’d won in the colony lottery, good grassy plains beside a lake.

  This was a forest on a hillside. I hoped we hadn’t missed by much because I doubted the colony pod would take off again any time soon.

  Our location wasn’t all that was wrong. Probably every colonist had the same obsessive interest in our new home I did, and we’d all been through every bit of data we could find. I’d walked through Arcadia’s forests in a dozen virtual tours and not one of them showed these strange purple trees. Frowning, I tried to shake off the feeling of wrongness and jumped down from the ramp.

  My boots sank into alien soil and everything else left my mind. I’m standing on an alien planet, I thought exultantly. My heart pounded and my mouth was dry as I sank into a crouch, digging my fingers into the dirt.

  Free of Earth, free and safe to make a new life for myself and for Malcolm. We’d made it out of the grinding poverty and now everything would be alright. A huge grin spread across my face.

  If only our parents could be here with us, it would have been perfect.

  Refusing to let that thought darken my mood, I turned to look at the colony pod. Back on Earth it had been shiny and new, pristine at the start of our journey. We’d only seen it once when we boarded and got into our stasis tubes for the long trip, but I remembered that as though it was yesterday.

  For me, it was yesterday — I’d spent the months of flight frozen in stasis.

  The pod hadn’t been so lucky. Its surface streaked with soot and bare spaces where insulation tiles had torn away, it had clearly been through a rough landing. I swallowed, thanking my lucky stars we’d come through it intact.

  “What happened?” I asked aloud, taking a few steps back to get a better look at the damaged pod. “You were meant to come down nice and smooth on good farmland. What went wrong?”

  The pod stayed silent, keeping its secrets, and I started to circle it. Best to survey the damage before wandering off into the forest, though I wanted more than anything to see my new homeworld.

  My wristband beeped as I made my way around the ship, catching me by surprise. I grinned in relief, answering it and hoping that it was a call from the colony authorities with an explanation. No luck: it was just Malcolm calling from inside the pod.

  “You’d better get back in here, sis,” he told me. “The Carringtons are up and about, and they want a meeting.”

  Of course they did. All through our short training the Carringtons had assumed that they were in charge, and that got old fast. If there was one thing about the colony lottery I didn’t like, it was being teamed up with that family at random.

  They weren’t wrong, though. We did need to get together and sort out what had happened.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I told Malcolm, signing off before he could protest. Mr. Carrington might want me to hurry back, but I didn’t owe him anything.

  I checked the wristband again. Local signals showed, but still nothing further afield. Nothing from any of the other colony pods, or the Wandering Star, or the satellites that should be in orbit.

  Even if it couldn’t put me in touch with anyone else though, I didn’t have to be alone out here. The virtual companion program had sounded like a silly idea back on Earth but in the spooky silence of this alien forest I had more appreciation for it.

  A couple of flicked switches and Henry appeared beside me with a bark. The faintly translucent Pomeranian holo-puppy bounded around my feet and I couldn’t help grinning.

  I’d never had a pet back on Earth, not even a simulated one. Having Henry jumping around like a mad thing took the edge off the eerie quiet and I felt a little better as I continued my circuit of the pod.

  We’d definitely crashed, and we were lucky it hadn’t come down any harder. Maybe, with a lot of work, our pod might fly again. I didn’t want to trust it, though, not with the engines banged up like they were. At least the pod’s autopilot had found a relatively open area in the woods to come down, but even so we’d smashed into a few trees as we landed.

  Could be worse. We could have started a forest fire. It looked like there’d been a lot of rain recently and if our landing rockets had started any fires, they’d burned out fast. I tried to take comfort from that, but the feeling of wrongness nagged at me. The trees looked nothing like the Arcadian trees we’d seen in the simulators and there was no sign of the planet-wide communication network that the Arcadia Colony Company had promised us.

  “Don’t be silly, Lisa,” I told myself, hoping that speaking aloud would help me convince myself. “This has to be Arcadia. Anything else is impossible. Right?”

  Henry turned and looked up at me, barking reassurances. They felt as hollow as my words. But he did give me an idea. I crouched next to the holo-puppy and pointed to a flower, a bright red point amongst the purple trees.

  “What’s that, Henry?” I asked. Our companion holograms were loaded with data on Arcadian plants and animals — he ought to be able to tell me all about them.

  Instead he whined and nuzzled at my leg, his built-in forcefield letting me feel the touch. It was like being nuzzled by a ghost.

  My frown deepened and I turned to another plant, a weird fractal fern. “How about that?”

  Nothing but a whine from Henry. I tried again with one of the purple-leaved trees. Nope. None of the plants were in Henry’s database.

  I couldn’t avoid the obvious conclusion any longer. An empty pit opened up in my stomach as I admitted what I’d known deep down since I stepped out of the pod. Somehow we’d ended up on the wrong planet.

  By the time I returned to the pod, everyone had gathered in the central room. Mr. Carrington (never Simon, he’d made that quite clear on our first meeting) paced around the circular room, his three sons watching quietly from their seats at the wall. The whole family had been distant through training and I hardly knew them.

  Alex and Maria Dietrich had pried open an inspection hatch and the two of them worked together, their daughter Tania handing them tools. She was about Malcolm’s age, and I hoped that they’d be friends. There wasn’t much hope with the Carrington boys — back on Earth they’d made it clear that they were adults now and had no time for hanging around with children.

  Everyone looked around as I came in, and I waited until I had their attention. Now that they were all staring at me it seemed silly, but I had to tell them what I’d learned. Better just say it, I thought.

  “I don’t think this is Arcadia,” I said.

  “That’s not possible,” Mr. Carrington interrupted before I could say more. He was the oldest of our little group, leading his sons out of the remains of Britain with a fierce discipline that was a little off-putting. “No time for foolish jokes, Lisa. We need to get in touch with the Wandering Star and find out why we’re in the wrong place.”

  “We do,” I agreed, trying not to let him get to me. “But we’re not just in the wrong place, we’re on the wrong planet.”

  “Impossible,” he said again, face reddening as I contradicted him. “I know that this is exciting but don’t let it go to your head, young lady.”

  I bristled at his tone. “None of the plants are in the database, and the sunlight is the wrong color.”

  He shook his head briskly. “We’ll see about that. Ms. Dietrich will get the power working and then we’ll contact the other colonists, find out what’s what. Until then, we’d best do some scouting. I’ll take my boys out and get a feel for the lay of the land. Why don’t you pack us some lunch, Lisa? We’ll be gone for a few hours at least.”

  My jaw tightened, and I was about to say something I’d regret when Maria Dietrich caught my eye and shook her head. There was a spark of amusement in her eyes that made it easier to put aside my annoyance.

  “Do not be silly, Mr. Carrington,” she said, her faint German accent coloring her words. “What will you see that Lisa hasn’t? We do not wish to ris
k losing you or your sons. Wherever we have landed, there will be unknown dangers and we need you to protect us.”

  Carrington’s face reddened, but he nodded. The suggestion that his family would be the protectors of our little colony seemed to mollify him. “Very well, very well. We will stay and protect our new home. David, fetch out the rifles.”

  His oldest son nodded quickly and almost ran to open the armory. Both of his brothers practically vibrated with excitement as they waited for him to return. I winced. The Carrington boys seemed to be looking forward to shooting something, and while I didn’t mind hunting for our dinner, their cheerful enthusiasm for killing was unpleasant.

  But Carrington was right, we might need defenses. Who knew what dangers lurked out there on this unknown planet?

  2

  Torran

  The planet rose to strike me like a giant fist and I struggled for control of my ship. Nothing worked, not the thrusters, not the communicator, not the weapons. All around me ships of the Silver Band rained from the sky, drained of power and helpless.

  Some struck mountains and exploded in balls of fire. Others plowed into the ground, tumbling end over end and disintegrating. I fought to keep the fighter’s nose up, to shed as much speed as possible before the inevitable crash.

  As much as I would like to claim that my skill brought me down safely, luck had at least as much to do with it. Luck and perhaps fate. Maybe the ancestors still had plans for me.