Wetworld (Alien Rebellion Book 1) Read online

  Books by John Triptych

  Wrath of the Old Gods series (in chronological order)

  The Glooming

  Pagan Apocalypse

  Canticum Tenebris

  The Fomorians

  A World Darkly

  Eye of Balor

  Mortuorum Luctum

  Expatriate Underworld series

  The Opener

  The Loader

  Dying World series

  Lands of Dust

  City of Delusions

  The Maker of Entropy

  Ace of Space series

  The Piranha Solution

  Virago One

  Alien Rebellion series

  Wetworld

  Grotto of Silence

  Blood Horizon

  Stars in Shadow series

  Nepenthe Rising

  Copyright© 2018 by John Triptych

  All rights reserved.

  J Triptych Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and/or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design (http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/)

  Interior formatting by Polgarus Studios

  For AE Van Vogt and Ursula K Le Guin

  Author’s note:

  Dear reader, I would like to thank you for purchasing this book. As a self-published author, I incur all the costs of producing this novel so your feedback means a lot to me. If you wouldn’t mind, could you please take a few minutes and post a review of this online and let others know what you think of it?

  As I’m sure you’re aware, the more reviews I get, the better my future sales would be and therefore my financial incentive to produce more books for your enjoyment increases. I am very happy to read any comments and questions and I am willing to respond to you personally as quickly as I can. My email is [email protected] if you wish to contact me directly. Again, thank you and I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it!

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  Table of Contents

  Books by John Triptych

  Author’s note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Also by J Triptych Publishing

  A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries.

  Julian Jaynes

  Chapter 1

  When the indicator showed less than two percent oxygen remained in his life support pack, Roman Wells started to panic. Dusk had fallen, and the sky above resembled a twilit cerulean haze. It had been over four hours since his separation from the tour group, and now the possibility of dying in this unbreathable, muck-filled hell had become all too real. Why oh why did he have to skimp and take the cheapest charter available?

  He started running along the edges of the creek in a vain hope to find someone who could help, his waterproofed boots making mulched, sucking sounds as he continually had to pull them out of the mud. The fading crimson sun was now dipping below the horizon, and Wetworld’s nocturnal predators always came out when darkness fell. Gliese 581 was a red dwarf star, located twenty light years from Earth, and he was on its fourth planet. Roman had arrived barely a month ago after vagabonding his way from Alpha Centauri, intent on visiting every known world humanity had settled in, only now it seemed he had reached the end of it all.

  The automated voice coming from his ear piece was cold and unemotional. The E-suit he wore had a simple AI for the life support pack strapped on his back. “Warning, oxygen reserves at one percent. Please replenish this tank at the nearest station.”

  Roman started to cry as he bent down and placed his hands on his knees. “Goddamn it!”

  The moment he set foot on this planet a series of unfortunate events had began to occur. The money transfer link that was supposed to arrive did not, and he was forced to take low rent accommodations at the seedier districts near the spaceport. When he was finally able to get into contact with the bank, he was told the funds in his account were inadequate. It took another few weeks of frantic negotiations and finally a plea over at the Martian embassy to get things moving again. The next courier contained a message from his parents saying they would be arranging a proper funds transfer to bring him home, but since the next scheduled message carrier wouldn’t be arriving until the following month, then it only meant he was stuck in Wetworld- with minimal funds- for the time being. With not much else to do, Roman decided to take a tour of the nearby swamplands, but since he had very little money he bought a ticket with one of the unlicensed charter operators.

  It was supposed to be a three hour tour. There were about fifty of them, mostly gallivants like himself, and a few locals out for some fun. The afternoon started off on a pretty mundane note as they were herded into an old rickety hovercraft built to accommodate half their number. A few of the couples who sat beside him joked they would have to wear their helmets during the whole tour because the life support system in the sealed passenger cabin was making such god-awful noises and everyone thought it would explode. Everyone knew it was a bargain basement operation with minimal safety systems, so they tended to make jokes to alleviate their worries.

  When Roman looked out of the porthole, he could see a world dominated by narrow waterways and swamps. The official name for the planet was New Bali, but everybody called it Wetworld. With a surface gravity nearly nine-tenths of Earth’s and having a slightly thicker atmospheric pressure, the planet could have easily been considered a twin of humanity’s birthplace. Wetworld’s flora and fauna looked remarkably similar as well. Most of the planet’s surface was covered by gargantuan plants and trees. A few mountain ranges poked out from the dense greenery, while much of the shallow surface waters were choked with floral growth. He had been to Louisiana, and seeing the marshlands of this alien world reminded him very much of it.

  Once past the seeming resemblance to Earth’s wetlands however, there were major differences. The atmosphere was a thick mass of mostly carbon dioxide and methane, completely incompatible with human cardiovascular systems. Every settlement on the planet was fully enclosed within its own life support, and anyone venturing outside had to wear self-contained breathing equipment or they would otherwise die of asphyxiation. Since there were only trace amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere, there was no possibility of starting any fires either. Wetworld had no axial tilt, which meant there were no seasonal variations. While sitting near the window of the hovercraft, Roman overheard two locals who jokingly said Wetworld only had two seasons: wet and rainy.

  When humans first arrived on the planet, they realized it was alrea
dy inhabited by a sentient, indigenous species. At first glance, the c’thlooq seemed to resemble man-sized frogs, but their boomerang shaped heads, manipulative front limbs and complex language clearly marked them as intelligent. These amphibians had a primitive, tribal society, spending most of their lives hunting and harvesting the prey animals they fed on. The first human settlers were wary at first, but soon realized the c’thlooq tended to mind their own business, and largely ignored the colonists when the first settlements were put in place near the base of the mountain ranges. Since the c’thlooq preferred to stay in the low wetlands, there was no immediate competition for living space and the human colonies had expanded quickly.

  More than one hundred and fifty years had passed since the first landings, and now Wetworld had a stable, fully independent human colony, able to export methane and medicinal products made from plant materiel throughout human space. Roman felt like he was born just at the right time; there were plenty of worlds to explore, and the tourist market was booming. All he needed to do was to find the perfect planet to settle in, and who knows, perhaps he would be leading a new generation of gallivants as a tour operator himself.

  After the hovercraft had deposited them in an area surrounded by forests, they quickly put on their helmets and life support packs to walk around and explore on their own. Roman marveled at the plant life. Trees with column-like trunks resembling fish scales towered over him, their Y-shaped branches jutting out from their tops. Another tree species had drooping branches, with leaves looking like ferns from Earth’s Carboniferous period. Small plants jutting out from the water seemed to resemble narrow, greenish trumpets. Although he was advised to use oxygenators as a life support device when he was briefed at the spaceport, this particular tour operator only had cheap oxygen tanks to give out to their patrons. Roman figured with four hour’s worth of oxygen, it would give him plenty of time to poke around before he had to return to the assembly area for the hovercraft to pick them back up.

  Even though he could barely hear the tour guide’s voice on his old com-link, Roman was too engrossed in exploring the world around him to notice he had steadily gotten past the range of the radio communications gear in his helmet. After hearing a splashing sound to his left, Roman turned and saw a native c’thlooq at a nearby riverbank. The creature seemed to look so much like the frogs and geckos he had seen at Earth’s zoos, yet at the same time there was just something alien about it. When the native gave him a short glance before resuming its swim along the waterway, Roman quickly followed as he held up his smartcom device to record a video for his parents back home.

  In a matter of minutes, Roman soon realized he was lost, so he turned around and walked along the edge of the waterway to get back. No sooner had he returned to the clearing when he saw the rapidly diminishing rear deck of the hovercraft making its way back to the main tributary. Using his helmet he turned on the volume to maximum and shouted at the top of his lungs for them to come back, but the vessel continued on until it was out of sight. Seemingly out of com-link range, Roman jumped up and down, throwing his hands up in the air, but it was apparent they had left without him.

  After cursing at no one in particular, Roman vented his rage at the tour company as he recorded it on his smartcom before stowing the multipurpose device back in his belt. Since there was an orbital communications system over the planet, he could have called for help, but his phone application was a pre-paid subscription, and he was out of credits. Roman tried it anyway, thinking they would exempt him for emergency calls, only to have an automated voice tell him the phone account had been canceled due to delinquency of payments. Roman finally lost it and threw the smartcom at a rock and cracked its crystal housing. Realizing just how stupid he was, Roman ran over to it, picked it up and activated the device again, hoping it still worked. Tapping the front part of the smartcom nervously with his gloved fingers, it was apparent he had damaged it severely and it was now broken. Stowing the inoperative device back into his belt, Roman glumly sat by the clearing for half an hour before deciding to look for the native he had been observing earlier, to try and persuade it to help him out.

  “Warning. Oxygen reserves now depleted,” the automated voice said. “Please proceed immediately to any recharging station or to the nearest airlock.”

  Roman’s mouth was trembling. He was starting to hyperventilate as the air in the inside of his helmet constricted around his throat. He began cursing at random while flailing his arms wildly as he continued to run in a haphazard direction, zigzagging his way along the edges of the swamp.

  Just as the visor of his helmet began to cloud up, he noticed two of the native c’thlooq squatting beside a large tree, seemingly oblivious to him. The pair were facing each other and seemed to be croaking in some strange language. The native to the right of the tree had purple skin and was slightly bigger than the other, while the second one had olive and green coloring and there was some sort of beaded necklace around its neck.

  They were at the other side of the riverbank. Roman ran into the shallow waterway and struggled for a bit as he made it to the other side, just a few meters from the two natives. He held his arms up and waved at them. “Hey, you two! Help me, I’m running out of air!”

  The two indigenes didn’t seem to notice him at all and continued on with whatever it was they were doing. The bigger c’thlooq was waving its front limbs at the smaller one, making some sort of gesture Roman couldn’t understand.

  Roman was now on his knees. His legs had buckled and he could barely crawl. “You goddamned froggers, help me!”

  The pair continued their croaking while one pointed up, seemingly at the tree line above them.

  Roman screamed for one last time before the darkness began to tunnel his vision. Panicking, he disengaged the neck seal around his helmet and threw it off, hoping for some sort of miracle to happen. He breathed in a lungful of alien air before rolling his eyes and finally passing out, his lungs unable to process the thick methane and carbon dioxide. Roman’s chest heaved for a couple of seconds and his body finally stopped twitching.

  Only after the dual moons were already high above the night sky did the two c’thlooq stop speaking to each other. The smaller one turned and hopped away into the forest. The bigger one skipped over to the dead body and silently looked down at it. After a short while, it pushed the corpse into the water before it turned around and made its way to the adjoining estuary.

  Chapter 2

  When Sophie Singh opened her eyes, she was instantly blinded by the light. She cried out and closed them again.

  A shadow loomed over her. “Sorry about that, how are you feeling?”

  Sophie gingerly opened her eyes once more, giving her cornea enough time to adjust. There was another woman with long dark hair floating from the back of her head looking at her. Sophie blinked a few more times as her eyes slowly adjusted to the intense light. It felt like she had just woken up from a very long sleep. “I feel okay. A little thirsty and a little hungry, maybe.”

  The woman in front of her wore a white skintight jumpsuit while drifting in microgravity. “That’s okay. You’ll get some food after we’ve finished running a few tests. I’m almost done.”

  Sophie looked around. The room was a narrow cylinder, and she was strapped along its sides. Used intravenous needles dangling off clear plastic catheters were still floating around her. Parts of her arm and the skin above her right breast were sore. Her brain instantly told her she was in microgravity. “How long was I out for?”

  “About six months, give or take,” the woman said as she continued to look at the readouts on an indicator panel beside Sophie. “My name is Dr. Lowell, by the way.”

  Sophie nodded. “Okay, Dr. Lowell. Are we there yet?”

  Dr. Lowell nodded. “Yes we are. We’ll be heading to low orbit in about twelve hour’s time.”

  There were seven other identical alcoves beside hers, and they were all empty, so it meant she was the last in the pod to be revived. “Di
d all the others make it through okay?”

  Dr. Lowell gave her a smile. “They did indeed. You may disengage your restraints now and join them in the observation deck.”

  Sophie smiled back as she started taking off the straps around her torso. Just before the journey from Earth to New Bali had begun, she -along with the others- were placed in this particular cylinder and put in an artificially induced hypothermia sleep lasting for months. Intravenous catheters fed her sleeping body the needed nutrients while the entire chamber was spun at high speed, creating a sort of artificial gravity by the use of centrifugal force in order to maintain bone and muscle mass. Now that she had been revived, the room was back to weightlessness once again.

  Dr. Lowell placed her hand on Sophie’s shoulder as she flashed a penlight at her eyes. She had been monitoring the patient’s vital signs both before and during the wake-up procedure. All her tests were satisfactory. “Feeling any space adaptation syndrome?”

  Sophie grinned and shook her head. “Nope. Can I go now?”

  “Okay.”

  Sophie floated out of the cylinder, pushed her way through a hatch, and proceeded into a long corridor. Sleeping in torpor always made her feel weird, but it was simply the best way to conserve supplies and retain people’s sanity during the long voyages between star systems. She had heard stories of people dreaming strange things while traveling across space, but she hardly believed it. Sophie had spoken to anesthesiologists involved in the program, and they told her the chances of dreaming while under the effects of being in torpor was almost zero. The cryosleep system had been developed over hundreds of years, and despite a five percent failure rate, it was still the proven way for long voyages. Nevertheless, every time a news report came in about someone waking up while in the middle of an interstellar voyage always fascinated her, and she would gobble up the latest articles like a hungry bear munching on a honeycombed beehive.