Destiny Earth Read online

  DESTINY EARTH

  TONY MAZZARELLA

  Alexon Books 2014

  Destiny Earth Website - www.destinyearthbook.com

  Facebook - www.facebook.com/authortonymazzarella

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to names, places, characters, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental. This is a work of the author’s imagination.

  Copyright © 2014 by Tony Mazzarella

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1494433567

  ISBN 13: 9781494433567

  Front and back cover art by Jacqueline Nowakowski

  Maps and imprint logo by Jacqueline Nowakowski

  www.jacquelinenowakowski.com

  Special thanks to Dustin Knarr for the conversation that led to trying something new and to Jacqueline Nowakowski for her talent in helping to bring my vision of this world to life.

  I also want to thank all of my friends and family, including my UPS family, for their support throughout the years.

  For my wife Maria, and my children Matthew,

  Lauren, and Nicolas.

  You are my destiny.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 Telos

  Chapter 2 The New Direction

  Chapter 3 The Folands

  Chapter 4 New Mission

  Chapter 5 Revelation

  Chapter 6 Old Wounds

  Chapter 7 The Journey Home

  Chapter 8 Twenty-Five Thousand Feet Up

  Chapter 9 The Scarred Planet

  Chapter 10 The Face

  Chapter 11 Telos Reborn

  Chapter 12 Special Delivery

  Chapter 13 Ileana’s Secret

  Chapter 14 The Long Way Around

  Chapter 15 It All Becomes Clear

  Chapter 16 A Distant Signal

  Chapter 17 New World Order

  Chapter 18 Alexon

  Chapter 19 Sianese Tea Party

  Chapter 20 The Red Door

  Chapter 21 Escape

  1

  TELOS

  Sixty-Six Million Years Ago…

  The quiet darkness of space was disturbed by the thunderous sound of the probes’ braking thrusters. The Telos probe plunged into the blue planet’s atmosphere with a fiery streak as the heat shield absorbed the enormous forces of entry. The Telos missions had six times before put robotic rovers on the surface of Earth, but there was a special significance to Telos 7 for its creator Dr. Will O’Neil.

  “I can’t believe we’ve done this seven times in two years,” said Jonas Crouse as he anxiously awaited the reacquisition of the probe’s signal.

  “Seven? We’re not down yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Will, knowing that anything could happen in the next few seconds and make what was thus far a perfect mission a total disaster.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, boss. Let’s hope for a great landing so we can get some time off this damn station. I need to smell some fresh Manikar air. I’m tired of the constant stench of armpit that seems to be trapped in this place.”

  Manikar City was a beautiful place, and Will longed for some time there to recover from the painful events of the past year. Having had an extramarital affair was bad enough, but having it publicized by a colleague for his own personal gain was unforgiveable.

  “Jonas, did you ever consider that the smell of armpit might not be the station?” said Will as he sniffed in Jonas’s direction.

  “Very funny,” said Jonas as he looked around and took a few embarrassed sniffs of his right armpit. “I’m glad your sense of humor is still intact because we’re thirty seconds late on reacquisition of signal.”

  Will quickly turned and watched from his position in the command center, making sure everything went perfectly. He and his team had spent most of the last four years aboard the massive Collosum station, which orbited high above the planet’s surface. It had been a strain on the families as they made the confines of her corridors their home, but they knew that after this mission there would be a chance to get back to the surface for at least a short time. He had mixed emotions as he thought about this part of the project ending. Downtime meant that he’d have to face the harsh reality that his marriage was all but over.

  “Jonas, check your readings.”

  “There she is. Looks good, boss. She should be setting down right on target…more or less.”

  Jonas was a brilliant young engineer who was eager to be a part of the Space Quorum’s important projects, and none was more important than this. He smiled at Will, but he knew that the time for jokes was probably over. A few feet variance in the lander’s position could mean the mission’s failure, and Jonas knew that nothing about the failure of Will’s life’s work was funny. “Sorry, Will. We’re right on the money. She should be touching down in four minutes.”

  “OK, let’s prepare for landing,” shouted Will to the rest of the team members, who were waiting eagerly at their consoles. “This is the final mission before we start colonization planning, so let’s not screw it up.”

  Will knew a colony was several decades away, but seven successful missions would easily assure a manned mission within five years. He also knew that it would assure that he received the bulk of the Space Quorum’s funding, which had always been a battle, but a battle that he seemed to win repeatedly. The data from the rovers would take years to compile as they continued to map out the terrain of their sister planet, and that certainly would be costly.

  Androv Larsen watched from the catwalk above the control center with nervous anticipation. Larsen was Will’s rival in the quorum and believed that humanity’s destiny lay in deep space exploration. Unfortunately, he’d had less success in his past endeavors and as a result rarely had funding for projects of this grandeur. He was a bitter rival and one who found great joy in Will’s failures, which unfortunately for him, were few and far between.

  “Looks like the son of a bitch will get lucky again,” whispered Larsen to his assistant.

  “It looks that way, sir.”

  “That’ll mean the quorum will probably fund this thing for the next twenty damn years, and we’ll be left with the scraps again.”

  Cheers rang out as the one-minute countdown to landing began. The lander had survived entry and everything was going perfectly. Larsen watched as Will cautiously smiled at this milestone. He hated everything Will stood for and made no secret of it. He’d always felt that the people should accept their circumstances and not waste time and energy trying to colonize Earth. The contrast of Mars’ arid desert environment to the images of Earth that Will showed the public were the key to his support. Only one small area on the planet, which was called the Folands, resembled Earth, and it was revered as a paradise. Will’s missions promised a colony on Earth, which was mostly seen as a paradise, waiting to be inhabited. As a scientist, Will had always tried to balance the images of blue water and lush rainforests with the alternative images of giant volcanoes and parts of the planet that looked less inviting. It didn’t matter to the media though, as they offered the war-torn population something to hope for. While Will had no control of how the media presented his project, Larsen felt Will exploited this for his own gain and blamed him for the fact that his own projects always took a backseat.

  “I suppose it’s too much to ask for a thruster failure. I’d love to see that thing in pieces,” grumbled Larsen in his assistant’s ear.

  “Yes, sir. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”

  “I suppose not, but one can hope.”

  Janie O’Neil watched from her quarters as the first images from Telos 7 were about to be broadcast throughout the station. Janie had met Will at a lecture he’d conducted on Earth colonization ten years earlier. She was immediately drawn to his rugged good looks, and piercin
g blue eyes, but soon found out there was more to him than just that. She’d quickly become enamored with his ideas, and the two had become inseparable soon after. It was only recently she’d found out about his infidelity with a coworker and decided that she’d be taking their daughter Edena back to the surface and leaving Will. They had both agreed to wait until after this mission to explain things to her.

  “Why can’t we watch from the control room, Mommy?” asked Edena.

  Janie knew how much Edena had enjoyed being near her father during these missions, but she just couldn’t face more public humiliation. The station had become a prison for her since the man she loved and admired betrayed her trust.

  “Daddy is very busy up there, Edena; we need to watch from here. We’ll see Daddy later.”

  Janie heard the com ring out and could see it was a call from the mission command center.

  “Edena, looks like a call for you.” She hadn’t spoken to Will in any substantive way for weeks and wasn’t going to answer this call.

  “Hello, Daddy,” said Edena as she eagerly ran to the com console. The image of her father filled the screen.

  “Hi, sweetheart. Are you watching? We’re about to land.”

  “Yes, Daddy, but I wish I was there with you. Why can’t I—”

  “Edena,” Will interrupted. “you have to stay with Mommy this time.”

  It ripped his heart out to know the pain he’d caused Janie and was now causing his daughter. He sincerely loved his wife, and had never intended to betray her trust. The truth was that he’d begun to spend more time with coworkers than he did his own family, and things had just happened. He’d begun to fall in love with a young scientist named Anna Trace who had worked closely with him on the earlier missions. When the revelations of their affair were made public, Trace resigned from the mission, and they hadn’t spoken since. She felt it was best to let Will try to mend his relationship with his wife. Janie was humiliated, and Will felt ashamed and alone as they grew further and further apart. He’d allowed the pressures of his obsession with Earth to ruin his family and cause him to betray the one person who had stood by him from the beginning.

  “Five seconds!” shouted Jonas excitedly. There was total silence as the five seconds passed. Jonas checked his readings and looked up with a smile.

  “That’s it. She is down. She’s down!” shouted Jonas to the rest of the team.

  Cheers erupted as team members began hugging and celebrating. Jonas ran up to shake hands with Will, who stood looking relieved that this part of the mission was over. His love was science and exploration, and he always hated the technical aspects of getting to Earth. After several minutes data started to flow into the control station, and Will quickly gathered his team back to reality.

  “OK, now that the easy part is over, let’s see where we are.”

  The view screen began to flicker as the cameras on the lander began sending images of its landing site. As the screen cleared up, the first images came into focus, once again to cheers and celebration.

  “Will, it looks great,” shouted the director of quorum operations, who was a few feet from Larsen. Will looked over his shoulder and gave a reserved thumbs-up. He couldn’t help but notice the grim look on Larsen’s face, but he ignored his negativity as he always did. He tried hard not to let Larsen’s jealousy overshadow moments like this. He knew Larsen had leaked the information about his affair to the public in an attempt to kill his project. Fortunately, Will offered so much hope to the people that they quickly dismissed it as hearsay. That was little consolation, as he knew it would cost him his family, and for that he despised Larsen.

  “OK, let’s pan the lander’s main camera and see what kind of terrain we’re dealing with. We’ve got to find a safe path for the rover,” said Will, nervously pacing the floor.

  The camera began to pan left, showing rolling grassland in the foreground with large boulders scattered in the distance. There were immense trees off to one side and a small stream about ten feet away. The landscape was breathtaking in its size and beauty.

  “Look, boss. She almost went for a swim. Lucky I programmed the coordinates and not you,” Jonas laughed.

  This time, with the pressure of landing over, Will gave Jonas a smile and shook his head. The pictures were also being fed to all parts of the planet, and they didn’t disappoint. They were everything Will had hoped for and more. Out of the seven landing sites, only one had proven to be this pristine looking, and Will had named it Eden after his eight-year-old daughter. Several others had rocky, mountainous terrain. One had a large active volcano a short distance from it and was eliminated as a possible location for a colony.

  “What’s that over there? Stop the pan,” said Jonas. “Look about twenty feet from the lander by that large rock formation. What is that?”

  It took several minutes for the signal to reach Earth and pan the camera back to the location Jonas had referenced.

  “I see it. What is that? Can we zoom in on that spot?’ asked Will.

  “I’ll try,” said Jonas, diligently working the command console.

  Although a bit of a joker, there was no one Will trusted more on the project than Jonas. Anna Trace had held that honor until just recently, and in some ways Jonas felt like he was promoted when she left.

  “Zooming camera one. Oh my God, that looks like…”

  “Like a giant footprint,” said Will, now concerned with the discovery. They had confirmed that Earth had life forms such as smaller animals, but this footprint would have to be from a much larger creature.

  “Maybe we’re seeing things,” said Jonas as he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Any creature that could make a footprint like that would have to be huge.”

  “Jonas, let’s pan the camera further left and see what we can see. If that is a footprint, they would go off in that direction, and we’d be sure to see more.”

  As before, a few minutes passed, and the camera began to move slowly. As the camera panned, the first image of the enormous beast came into focus. A huge creature with large back legs and much smaller arms was ripping apart a smaller animal with its huge razor-like teeth. There were gasps and screams of horror throughout the command center at the sight of this immense creature and the carnage that was displayed before them on their view screens.

  In her quarters, Edena ran into her mother’s arms at the site of the beast. Will was keenly aware that these horrific images were being broadcast to the entire planet in real time. As he watched in paralyzed horror, the giant creature shook its head violently, propelling the bloody remains of its prey right at the base of the lander. Crimson red blood splattered across the camera’s lens as the fierce beast sprinted toward its waiting meal.

  It had never before seen the creature that stood below it, but that didn’t matter. It was an invader to its territory, and its instinct to fight was as keen as any creature on Earth. The beast stopped just short of the lander, looking confused at this new threat to its dominance. It tilted its head in confusion, as it watched steam rise from the lander’s still glowing heat shield, making it look even more threatening. The beast honed in on what it was looking for, the metal invader’s eyes. If there was to be a challenge, it always looked into its opponent’s eyes to gauge the fear or willingness to fight. Most times, it could quickly and instinctually use this to its advantage, but this invader was different. Its single black eye gave away nothing as it slowly moved with the motorized sound the beast had never heard before in this lush river valley. Brutal and ferocious instinct, built over hundreds of thousands of years kicked in, as the creature’s guttural roar announced his intention in a split second. The camera shook as the beast ferociously slammed its snout into the lander and ripped off pieces of its thin titanium shell. The control room filled with the creature’s ear-piercing scream as the camera went black and all communications abruptly ended.

  Will looked back at the quorum director, knowing that this would mean the end of the project. There could
be no colony if these monsters inhabited Earth. He could also see the smug grin on Larsen’s face as he and his assistant turned and walked out of the control center. In the few seconds that had just passed, Will knew his dream of an Earth colony was just as dead as his Telos seven lander and his marriage.

  Two Years Later…

  After the disastrous landing over two years ago, Will was relegated to a small office in the Space Quorum’s planetary command center in the capital city of Manikar. Space Quorum Headquarters was a large building that had its upper floors constructed to look like an astronaut’s space helmet looking up at the stars, representing the desire to explore and look to the heavens. For Will it had become nothing but a harsh reminder of his lost dream. Most of the funding had shifted from the Earth project to Larsen’s deep space program, and many of Will’s colleagues wrote him off as a discontent and had no interest in his continued obsession with his dead project.

  Will sat in his chair staring at the split screen monitors that showed the status of all seven Earth rovers. Telos rovers one and three had fallen victim to power failures, two had gotten too close to a large cliff and plunged over the edge. Rover four was still functional and seemed to be in a beautiful, peaceful part of the blue planet. Rover five had most of its camera obstructed by ash from a nearby volcanic disturbance and essentially was blind. Six had been stuck in the same position for over a year and could not be freed up, so it was basically useless. Rover seven had been able to escape the destroyed lander and was the primary focus of his daily routine.

  “Fat Bob eating the locals again?” asked Jonas. “He really needs to brush those teeth.”

  Will looked up from his screen with an expression of resignation. “Do you have to name these things?”

  Jonas had pet names for all of the creatures they had encountered, but had a special fondness for the largest of them. Fat Bob was the same creature that destroyed the Telos Seven lander, and Will’s hopes for Earth colonization.

  “Absolutely!” said Jonas enthusiastically. I know you have a harder time hating them with names like Fat Bob and Lazy Larsen. Luckily, Fat Bob ate Lazy Larsen so he saved you the dilemma of liking a creature with his name.”