The Dystopia Chronicles

Prologue

Seeing his dead mother making tea in microgravity, a hundred million miles from where he’d buried her in Idaho, was the first thing that ever struck fear into Commander Stockard during his thirty-year career as a space jockey. Even seeing the world flicker like a candle just moments before—the lights of the entire night side of the Earth winking on and off as if someone was flicking a switch—hadn’t fazed him.

Startled perhaps, but not scared.

Not like this.

It’s just a hallucination, he tried telling himself, cabin fever from being stuck in this tin can for two months. It’s not real. Keep calm. Panic is the enemy. His dead mother smiled, wagging a teapot in the air—did he want some? He shook his head. No, thank you.

It had to be the stress. Parking a hundred billion tons of comet ice in Earth orbit was a project of destiny. Seven years ago, when the deep space monitoring network picked up comet Wormwood-P/2058D12, it was heralded as humanity’s opportunity to finally—really—begin colonization of near-Earth space.

Commander Deng looked at him and frowned. “Still no comms from Earth. What do you think, solar flare?”

Stockard breathed deep. Maybe, but their instruments would have picked up a magnetic disturbance. “Probably more to do with the fight between Atopia and Terra Nova.” In the two months since the Comet Catcher mission left Earth, the struggle between these two colonies had climaxed into a full-blown kinetic conflict.

The engine burn had been going on for a minute already. The ship rumbled.

Bits of debris from weeks of zero gravity fell as the ship decelerated. A pencil Stockard left wedged next to a display unit bounced off his suit. He tried to grab it, swearing as he missed.

Glancing at Commander Deng, he could see something was wrong. “Everything all right?” Stockard yelled above the roar of the engines.

She blinked and shook her head. “It’s just… I think I’m hallucinating…”

“Burn complete,” announced the system computer. “On target for Wormwood.”

Stockard gazed at her steadily. Should he tell her? Fear was contagious. Out of the corner of his eye, in the reflection of the cockpit glass, Stockard’s dead mother waved at him from just down the access tunnel. Goose bumps rippled across his arms under the thick layers of his spacesuit.

His mother was waiting for him.