Now Available on Pre-Order: Autumnal Threat

Autumnal Threat, this month's first short story title is now available on pre-order. Written to explore the idea of family, love, loss, a different ecosystem, and the kinds of threats a new colony might face, this story follows a father in his efforts to keep his daughter alive, and to make a living on a frontier world.

What's it About?

Autumnal Threat is a science-fiction short story that incorporates: an alien autumn, an unseen predator, deadly burrowers, an oncoming winter, and bugs big enough to ride. Joaquin only wants to warn his daughter of a new danger, to keep her safe, and to make her understand her mother isn’t coming back, all while keeping her alive. But what if he’s wrong?What if Mariam really did survive?What if, when everything looks like it’s going wrong, it’s really going right?

You can find links to where it is available on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/mgyopK, and subscribers to my ReamStories page at the Perimeter Surveillance level and higher can begin reading it straight away.

How Does It Start?

The danger always came with the falling leaves. It came with the golden-brown crunch underfoot, and the blaze of red and orange in the trees. It came with the shift in the wind, and the fluctuating decrease in temperature.

Joaquin had lived with the danger since landing. Now, it was time to teach his daughter to do the same.

Together, they headed out into the trees, forsaking the safety of the homestead, but not forsaking weapons or the orsovite. Joaquin was one of the few to have adopted the native insectoids as mounts.

Most of the other settlers found the number of legs and the semblance to spiders too disconcerting. It was a fear Joaquin had overcome. The orsovite fed on nectar, and they had helped him find more new flowers than he would have found on his own.

His wife, Mariam, had grown to love the orsovite, grooming the soft blue fur that covered their chests and flanks, rubbing dry patches on their chitin with shrew-pod oil, and nurturing their larvae. She had gone out last autumn, and not returned.

Joaquin had never taught her about the dangers in the trees, and he had lived with that regret, ever since. He would not allow the same fate to befall his daughter.

“Hurry up, Rylie,” he called, and she emerged from the greenhouse, locking the doors behind her.

“Are you sure they’ll be okay?” she asked, meaning both the flowers and orsovite within.

“As long as we’re back in two nights’ time.”

“But what if something happens to us?”

“I’ve set the beacon, and left a message.”

“All right, then, dad.” Rylie walked to the young orsovite she’d saddled that morning, and ran a hand across the flat of its face.

The creature gently seized her hand with the cilia surrounding its mandibles, and then let go.

“I love you, too,” she said, laughing as she came around to its side and mounted.

“You know the Billinghams think we’re crazy,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because we keep the orsovite.”

Joaquin snorted.

“They’re the crazy ones. Those horses they brought in won’t last the winter.”

“They’re going to keep them in the new barn.”

This time Joaquin didn’t snort. The Billinghams’ new barn had been the talk of the colony, and there were many farmers watching to see if it worked. It wasn’t that the winters were too harsh for horses, just that something burrowed up through the floor, and ate any livestock it could find. Stone flags had helped to some extent, but the beasts kept in stone-floored shelters had been so stressed by the burrowers constant attempts to get through the floor that none had made it through winter.

The xenobiologists that examined their bodies said it was shock, and scientific tests carried out on the barns had shown signs of burrowers trying to claw their way through the flags.

“They’d have panicked,” one of the scientists had said, referring to the horses. “Night after night with nowhere to run and no way to know if the monsters under their feet were going to get through? It’s no wonder their hearts gave out.”

“Is that it?” Harry Potomin had asked, devastated by the loss of his latest stud. “Shock?”

The xenobiologist had spread his hand wide in a gesture of puzzlement.

“It’s the best we can come up with. There are no toxins in their systems, and no injuries, save what they did to themselves trying to get away. I’d like to give you something more tangible, but it’s the only thing that seems likely. Death from prolonged stress. I’m sorry.”

No one had bought horses after that, but at least they’d known. And then Freddy Billingham had built his barn. Plascrete floors and foundations that went down ten feet, with a basement level below to give the horses some distance to anything coming up underneath. Joaquin half-hoped it would work, but he thought it beyond time the others got over their fear of the orsovite.

“Why don’t you think of them as big ants?” he asked.

Where Do You Find It?

You can find and earlier version of this short story in A Collection of Lost Ships and Colonies, the tenth volume of C.M.'s Collections, or as a stand-alone short story on the C.M.'s Singles Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/rl/cmssingles.