Migrant Thrive: Thrive Space Colony Adventures Box Set Books 7-9 Read online

  Migrant Thrive

  Thrive Space Colony Adventures Box Set Books 7-9

  Ginger Booth

  Copyright © 2020-2021 Ginger Booth

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Raphael Francavilla and Ginger Booth

  Skyship image © Freestyleimages | Dreamstime.com

  Diagrams by Ginger Booth

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prosper & Thrive

  Prologue

  Diagram

  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

  Map of Cantons

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Sylvan Thrive

  Prologue

  Diagrams

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Sentient Thrive

  Prologue

  Diagrams

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  Also by Ginger Booth

  Prosper & Thrive

  Book 7

  Prologue

  Launched on a shoestring, the colonists

  were humanity’s only hope for survival.

  They were failing in the Aloha star system.

  The Thrive crew turned that around.

  Sass Collier took eleven years on Thrive to reach Sanctuary, secret bastion of the Colony Corps.

  Prosper developed a better warp drive.

  They caught up to her in days.

  They liberated Sanctuary from its rogue AI.

  Now the Sanks seek a new home world.

  They hired Thrive Spaceways to assist.

  Will it be Mahina? Denali?

  Or the unknown world of Cantons?

  Diagram

  Prosper floorplan. Thrive is similar.

  Crew shift between the two ships.

  1

  John Copeland harbored deep misgivings about this outing, like the screaming war cries of half a dozen pterodactyls circling above the ship. Pterries for short. He double-checked his children’s breath masks.

  His eldest son, Nico, age sixteen, insisted he wouldn’t be caught dead in shorts and mesh camp shirt. His teen obstinacy was self-correcting. He’d regret it soon enough. In contrast, Cope’s youngest, nine-year-old Socrates, looked like a native born Denali, except for his short dark hair. When his dad told him to wear shorts, Sock aimed to please.

  “He’ll be fine, Cope,” Teke growled, his bald head glistening with sweat. The Denali-born physicist was a good looking guy, with golden skin. He stowed away on Thrive to leave his homeworld half his life ago. “My survival genes are dominant, remember? That’s why you look like me, right, Sock?”

  Sock clutched Cope tighter, his favorite of three dads. The boy would rather be like his brother Nico in every way. But he nodded resolutely, determined to face Dad-T’s homeworld.

  “Teke, he’s terrified,” Cope said. “Look, let’s wait and set up the bio lock first.”

  “If Nico’s going, I’m going!” Sock insisted.

  Nico sighed hugely, too old to be handcuffed to a baby brother.

  “Today he’s my son,” Teke reminded Cope firmly. “Always yours, and yours too, Ben.” Cope’s husband was Captain Ben Acosta, adoptive father to both boys. “But today he meets my world. My friends came to see you, Sock.”

  Sock gulped and grasped Cope tighter. “You’ll protect me, Dad.”

  “W
ell, Zan and Teke will protect both of us,” Cope hedged.

  “And Wilder and me,” Ben insisted, checking his paired blasters. “We enjoy shooting things.” The captain and security goon traded a grin.

  The door from the hold opened. Everyone in the narrow cargo lock squeezed sideways to make room for the latecomers. Cope was expecting Hugo Silva, software expert and envoy from Sanctuary. He hadn’t bargained on Kassidy Yang and her buzzing camera drones.

  Kassidy flashed him a dazzling smile. “Videographer! For Hugo’s people back on Sanctuary. Show them what they’re signing up for on Denali.”

  No one in their right mind would suggest the soft Sanks come here.

  “Time,” Zan reported laconically. He hit the button to open the cargo door.

  And Cope ran out of options. The moment the ramp cracked open, they were contaminated down to their hair follicles. “You’ll be OK!” he assured Sock. “Don’t leave my side, no matter what.”

  “I know, Dad,” Sock insisted.

  “Stay away from me and Teke,” Ben clarified. “We’re not safe at all.” As though to illustrate, he slipped out the side of the ramp before it reached the ground. Zan, Wilder, and Teke did the same. Judging by the cloud of swearing upon landing, Wilder forgot the 1.1 g gravity on this planet.

  Sock let go of Cope to clap his hands to his ears.

  Yeah, baby, the hull muffles the monster cries.

  The outside air hit them like a blast furnace, over 50 degrees Celsius – or 125 Fahrenheit, in the archaic units favored by the locals. Organic smells seeped in despite the seal on Cope’s mask, rich and musty. The air was pregnant with smoke from their guns burning the jungle off the spaceport before they could touch down. Noon-like sun glared through pillars of steam from hot spots on the fused rock and soil. Cope narrowed his eyes. Some of those spots glowed cherry-hot.

  The ramp clanked to the stone. Cope grabbed his sons’ hands and strode forth to meet a huddle of waiting hunters, faces garish in the living red, black, and yellow of their bakkra symbiotes. “Kassidy, you’ll watch Hugo?”

  “Of course!” Kassidy claimed, still intent on her camera drone deployment. “I thought I remembered the heat.”

  The Sanctuary emissary Hugo Silva stood transfixed, gaping at the hellish scene. Pterries dove and harassed each other, maddened by the sonic shield above. One dipped too low.

  The hunters suddenly tackled their guests aside as a stunned behemoth crashed between the two starships, Prosper and Thrive. The monster thrashed feebly, a 7-meter wing flapping and sweeping at the ground, screaming agony as it touched dull red hot spots.

  “It’s hurt, Daddy!” Sock whispered in anguish.

  “Well, it’ll be dead soon,” Cope hazarded, though this wouldn’t comfort the child. Sure enough, Sock gazed up at him, brow crumpled as though betrayed. “Honey, pterries kill people. And they can break a starship.”

  He hustled his kids to clear the thrash-zone with their guides. Kassidy dragged Hugo to catch up, until one of Thrive’s lesser guns had a clear kill shot. Gore splattered out, including a gob on Nico’s long pants. The pterry twitched and lay dead.

  The hunter guides angrily barked at Thrive through their comms to finish the job. A bloody pterry carcass was worse than a live one. Others would swarm for a free lunch. The gun started up again to cremate the thing where it lay.

  “Go!” the lead hunter demanded. He jogged to a couple of stakes in the ground which marked the exit through the invisible sonic barriers.

  Trotting as ordered, Cope tried to explain the system to the boys. But they weren’t listening. He remembered well his own first steps into the Denali jungle, astonished and overwhelmed by the exuberant, hostile life crowding vast and aggressive all around him.

  Nothing lived on their home moon Mahina unless a human put it there.

  Denali was prettier during the polar winter night when he arrived. Not to mention cooler, a mere 30 degrees, or 90° F. Now the summer foliage was furled and ‘cocooned’ to protect tender living tissues from the killing heat of perpetual sun. Brown and yellow and purple seed pods hung like beaded beards from every corkscrewing, zig-zagging, and ferny branch. The underbrush appeared webbed over in thorny dead grass.

  Alas, the predators didn’t hibernate in summer. A waist-high fanged ‘skunk’ hurled itself into the sonic corridor and fell twitching to block their path. A hunter lunged to gut it with a practiced swipe of a knife, then tossed it out, trailing brilliant scarlet blood. This excited a feeding frenzy as other animals rapidly converged to feast.

  “Go, go, go!” the hunter screamed, as soon as the path was clear.

  Cope hoofed it, dragging the boys. He quit worrying about anyone else. This was not the Waterfalls he remembered. He left here in summer. And the sonics controlled the voracious neighbors fine. But now they seemed less effective.

  A hunter beckoned urgently from the sharp bend in the path, to the right with a sudden drop around an enormous tree. Cope remembered the landmark, where they clambered downhill on its roots like giant stairsteps.

  Nico let go of Cope’s hand to run in front because the path narrowed. Three abreast brought the creepy leaf cocoons too close for comfort.

  Just as the hunter ahead waved a swooping arm to demand they hurry up, a ‘jaguar’ pounced on him from behind, ripping his arm off. Cope and Sock stumbled into Nico’s suddenly frozen back.

  The beast didn’t look like a jaguar, any more than the pterodactyl and skunk looked like their namesakes from Earth. Denali used Earth names to dub ‘similar’ wildlife. The beast was slow-slung, fast, and powerful, black with stripes of reddish purple.

  The jaguar dropped the hunter’s detached arm as the man screamed in anguish. The monster switched to gnaw on his meatier shoulder. Cope’s Denali crewman Zan pushed him and his sons aside. He took a knee and aimed his blaster. His first shot exploded the hunter’s head, the second the jaguar’s. Then he ran forward to haul both bodies off the path before any more creatures could swarm in. Teke, Wilder, and Ben trotted by to help.

  This was too much for Sock. He tried to bolt into the jungle, away from the carnage. He made it three steps straight into the sonics. He fell flat, with the barrier crossing his midsection. Cope hauled him back into the pathway, stunned and twitching. The moment the dad was sure the boy’s heart was still beating, he cradled him in his arms.

  Nico tipped off his face mask to vomit by the side of the path. Cope barely managed to avoid doing the same, as Zan and Teke swung the dead hunter’s body into the grassy underbrush.

  “Clear!” Zan called out. “Move it!”

  Cope tugged Nico to close ranks with their protectors. He simply carried Sock. They navigated the tree-root spiral staircase OK. Three steps past the tree, a ‘giraffe’ muzzle dipped into the pathway, then shrieked in agony at the sonic barrier.

  The 16-year-old wasn’t so grown-up now. Nico nearly knocked Cope over clutching him for safety.

  “I need to be indoors now!” Cope demanded.

  Zan glanced around in misgiving. But one of the other hunters, up on current conditions, barked, “Everyone jogs! Now!”

  He led the way. Thoroughly spooked and pouring sweat, Kassidy and a sobbing Hugo kept up. Ben and Wilder dropped back to sandwich Cope and the boys as they ran steeply downhill.

  In a few more minutes, they arrived at the roof of the bio lock, its heavy glass dome overgrown with vines. They piled in and down the spiral staircase into the airlock vestibule. After all the visitors cycled onward into breathable air, the hunter squad exited without a word, back outside to repair the dodgy sonic path defenses which cost them a man.

  Cope collapsed to a bench, holding Sock tight. The others stripped and inserted clothing and gear into slots in the wall for separate cleaning.