Among the Stars: Colony One

By Elliott Findley

With her life’s goal complete Sandra Fay struggles with what comes next. Bringing humanity across the stars Sandra and Nex preparing to be ambassadors must meet with leaders from across the galaxy. When the colony settles on Aladrone, Nex and Sandra decided to have children adopting a human orphan. But when both humans and Aluri alike start to harass the couple, the family leaves Aladrone for something more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writing Under The Moon Inc.
• Release date: Sep 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781999387785

Elliott Findley

Elliott Findley has been writing for over 20 years with over 7 years and 1.4 million words written in national novel writing months. Elliott a shy, anxiety ridden, writer, spends most days as any writer does. Drinking to much coffee and sending memes to their friends well they listen to emo music and struggling to write.

Book preview

Aladrone date Axis 3 -4-XX-MMM-XX-VIII 2:456

Hours until Aluri ship Ufruri arrival 10:40

The artificial sky of the gardens inside the Colony One was a bright blue and shone with sunlamps lining the streets. Trees and garden beds growing with vegetation were in a perpetual spring time bliss.

People walked up and down the garden beds stoping here and there to touch the greenery and lean against trees, wanting to feel a little piece of the earth there with them. Wanting to feel close to the nature that had been burned to dust on the wind just as cities had crumbled. The atmosphere had filled with radiation so that even in places where the bombs had not touched were soaked with the debris of fallout on the wind. The atmosphere was heating, the ocean boiling, and soon even if they had escaped the radiation and their would be little left.

But the garden was green and alive and there was no sight of the burnt earth from the singular point inside this domed expanse of this centre most point of the ship.

Sandra walked along the grape vine path in the western court and breathed in the deep rich soil as she worked her crop rotation. Picking a singular grape from the vine she let it burst inside her mouth a sour sweet tartness flooding the tastebuds as she bit down on it. The tartness was something akin to a strange fruit that bloomed in the middle of a cacti’s flower on a desert plant light years away. It awakened in her a memory of long passionate nights spent in a river bed with her mouth pressed to that of the alien Nex. Her soulmate.

Fresh wanting passed though Sandra and she stood transfixed a moment by the grapevine and the strangeness of this place. Missing a place she had come to know as the library.

Sandra, may I speak with you asked a curt voice pulling her from her revert she looked up suddenly and found her father standing close by. Had he been calling her for some time.

Hello, yes. I was just finishing up she said brushing off her hands and turning to her father.

Idly she said the grapes will be ready for wine making soon, within another week or so.

That is good to hear but I am actually here to talk business her heart thudded in her chest as she looked up at him.

She had been back on the ship now a week, only a week and they wanted to know where she stood on the judgment of the previous caption. They wanted to her to make an executive decision, after all she was now ambassador of earth, she spoke for them all didn’t she. She had never planned on making a political life, or having to get into politics, but it seamed it was thrust upon her. Sandra sighed and nodded.

What can I do for you, Caption Sandra added the official title on the end just to make thing clear that she was not going to be given special treatment for being his daughter. She had always lived in the shadow of her mother and she wasn’t going to start to live in the shadow of her father now that he was such a high ranking official. Though technically speaking she did out rank him.

I need your statement, we’re collecting the information on what and who Margaret Campbell was colluding with. I would also like your official report on what exactly happened when you left earth. Since. His voice faded away as if he didn’t want to say it.

Since people are starting to think that I left because I was on some special mission from her, and other people think that I outright collaborated with her, Sandra said her eyes sharpening, he looked away from his daughter as if unwilling to acknowledge that he had asked it of her.

She took a breath and then looked at him with an intentness that was dignified I will have those reports ready for you first thing in the morning, do you want a report from Nex as well?

Who? Her father asked

My mate

Ah, the Aluri who has stollen your heart he smiled at her yes please.

She nodded curtly and dismissed herself, walking towards her room, the metallic structure that was the colony pressing in on all sides. After everything she had seen on Proxima Centuri, after meeting Nex and seeing the courts of Zenti, nothing felt normal anymore. the colony felt less like home, and less like she belonged. If she was being honest she had been feeling like she didn’t belong for a long time, since she had started receiving the messages warning her of earths destruction, if only she had listened and then maybe their would be an earth to come back to. So many people had died and she blamed herself more then anyone else.

How could she write her experiences down and not acknowledge that, she was guilty, she had killed earth. It hadn’t been directly in her hands, but if she had just shared what she had known for so long. If she had simply acknowledged the truth then maybe she could have stopped it before it happened.

Sandra found her way into her room and closed the door, leaning against it and closing her eyes tightly as tears welled up in her eyes.

She was tired, so tired, but there was always more work to do. Always another project and more people to talk to and make sure they were fine, everything would be okay.

Sandra picked up the metallic sphere that Nex had given her and pressed her hands against the sides letting her fingers trace lines across its glass like surface. Sandra had studied the device in detail, it was one solid stone, a crystal ball of sorts. Obviously some kind of mineral attached to the essence (for want of a better word) of aladrone. There was something within this sphere that connected it to the rest of aladrone, the chemical components she was still trying to work out. There had to be a scientific reason why a crystal ball could connect to electronics could send messages though the vast vacuums of space across the galaxy. It was a stone, there had to be some reason why it could do these things, connect to ships and the planet of aladrone itself. There had to be a reason. But sandra pushed this thought out of her head. Maybe she would find out more about the chemical and mineral compounds of Aladrone once she arrived, if she arrived for now she had to talk to Nex. Her Nex, the only person, being, element they were that made Sandra’s heart flare