Finding A New Home. Adult Space Opera 10,200 (standard:science fiction, 9659 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 18 2020	Views/Reads: 1434/1056	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Out of control, an interstellar spaceship is lost in outer space. A curious teenager is instrumental in finding the error. Coming close to death several times, she eventually prevails.

Frantic cries of, “MAMA. MAMA," came from a bedroom, a former
cold-storage locker on the deep-space ship New Horizon. 

Gordana, hearing her daughter apparently caught in another nightmare,
sighed and hurried to the rescue. She found the little girl sitting 
upright in bed, wide-eyed with her brow covered with sweat. 

"Now, now, honey. Mama's here. Everything's alright, dear." 

"Mama, I dreamed I found a Holy Door open. It was horrible. All those
dead people. Some with their heads off and with these big bugs eat--." 

"That's all right, dear. It was only a dream. No one would dare open one
of those doors. Don't even think about it, honey." 

"Then, then there was a window, a very big window." The girl, Veata,
whimpered, shivering at the vision. "And, outside, huge plants and 
trees like in the Book going up into ... an open room. Such a huge 
room. I couldn't even see the ceiling, Mama. There was NO ceiling or 
even a wall. No wall at all! It was so scary, Mama." 

"You might have seen a vision of the Destination, honey. We'll have to
see your Uncle Egbert. It isn't anything to be afraid of. We don't fear 
the Destination but will welcome it when it happens." She held her 
daughter close and whispered, comforting, "You should stop fearing 
those dreams. You might be gifted by the Captain. 

"Egbert, himself, is said to have had such visions when young. It's why
your uncle applied for Holyman training on Deck One." 

---------- In December of 2158 the US, Russia, and Iran decided to fund
an experimental spaceship with the aim of establishing a colony on a 
recently vetted planet circling Alpha Centauri. An unmanned probe had 
not only circled but landed on that planet, verifying it as being 
habitable. 

The terms agreed on, a crew was selected and trained, even as passengers
were picked because of skills needed on the voyage, which would take a 
hundred Earth years. Those highly-trained individuals would be charged 
with passing down their skills to future generations. The “New 
Horizon”, the size of a small city, would initially contain a 12 person 
crew and 100 passengers, At conclusion 400 healthy colonists. Only the 
fittest, most intelligent offspring, animal OR human, would be allowed 
to live, a process agreed on by all concerned. 

Murphy's law prevailed. Many things went wrong. The initial problem was
in the procreation laws, along with human nature. Couples objected to 
their children being sacrificed for the good of the colony. More and 
more of them hid out on the still-vacant dormitory and unmanned storage 
decks. Then, there were the lazy and shiftless, also preferring the 
freedom of not following strict rules. 

The majority, following the rules, became tired of feeding those rebels
and cut off their food supply. That led to theft and killing between 
the two groups. The crew, living separately on the upper decks, tried 
to mediate, eventually gave up and kept their doors locked to prevent 
theft. 

A long war followed, eventually leading to occupants split into
factions, each keeping to their own sections of the huge vessel. By 
that time, although the crew was relatively unaffected, the remaining 
passengers, by then over 200 in number, were split into three distinct 
groups, colonists who insisted on following the original rules; rebels 
who made their own laws; and necessary maintenance workers. 

Giving up on the notion of not feeding the rebels, the colonists fed
them a quota small enough to ensure they didn't increase in number. 
Also, by that time, all non-human creatures had been killed and eaten 
by the rebels. Once the destination was reached they could, according 
to theory, be replaced with freezers filled with sperm and eggs. Even 
the rebels refused to eat cow and pig sperm. 

The New Horizon consisted of twenty-six decks (*See Appendix), many of
which contained supplies and machinery to use in setting up a colony at 
the Destination but of little use during the trip, itself. 


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