Hello again. While I've been away working on stuff, I checked out a few other FanFic stories looking for ideas I could steal... I mean looking for inspiration. I noticed a lot of stories took the HTTYD characters and put them in modern settings (often high school or college) and though I liked the Idea, I could not bring myself to take them away from Berk, but then it hit me.

I had tried to write a different kind of story but it really didn't work out and it sat abandoned for most of the year until the idea hit to re-write it with the same style as the HTTYD FanFics but done with original characters. It really helped as the people in the old story finally came to life as the descendants of the Dragon Riders (I guess I'm just a one trick pony after all).

The first short book is finished (hence you are about to read the first part) and the second has 16 chapters done. I hope you like the characters and the story,
Marty

Life on the Belt Series
(prologue)
The Ship

Gerwin Haddock was a very strange person. He was born on the 16th of July 1969 at 1:32 pm and he died in 2058 aged 89. Of course his entire family mourned his passing, but none more than his 6 year old great granddaughter April. To everyone else, Gerwin was simply a crazy old man with tales of Vikings and Dragons but ever since she was a little toddler, April loved to listen to Great Grandpa tell his amazing stories about her family's ancestors much to her mother's dismay. April's father felt sure Gerwin's tales were harmless fun, but her mother was worried by the fact that Gerwin thought they were all true.

Everyone would have been most surprised to learn the family history was indeed true even though some facts had become a little bit fuzzy over time.

"The Dragon Master had the body of a tree trunk and was stronger than a dozen oxen" Gerwin would say "and he bent the dragons to his will by sheer brute strength. What's more the Norse gods were so impressed by the beauty and wisdom of his noble wife Astrid the Fair, they bestowed upon her the gift of invisibility."

Even Gerwin himself would have been surprised at how inaccurate his history was, but he had no way of verifying the stories passed down from generation to generation. And so it was, the physical description of the Dragon Master had gotten mixed up with his father Stoick the Vast, while his wife's stealth skills had somehow been turned into something more supernatural.

April also enjoyed hearing Great Grandpa tell about what life was like on Earth before the meteors came. For centuries ago when the Dragon Master was a child, fiery death from above came in the form of murderous dragon hordes but for young April, it was fiery rocks raining down from the sky.

The first quarter of the 21st century had been plodding along quite well with only the usual problems humanity commonly inflicted on itself. Wars, crimes, corruption and drunken tourists were among some of the usual suspects but not long into the second quarter, a mostly metallic asteroid named Sholf-4 did a very foolish thing; it struck a massive rock asteroid at an incredibly high speed and shattered it into countless pieces. The result of this collision would eventually become catastrophic for all life on Earth because the newly formed cloud of rock and dust over 500 000 kilometres long settled into an elliptical orbit and regularly crossed paths with the home of all higher forms of life in the solar system.

Sometimes there was little more than pretty lights in the sky, but these shooting stars no longer brought joy and wonder to the people who witnessed them because everyone knew something far worse could be amongst the lights. When the Earth and the Sholf-4 cloud occasionally came together the result could be any combination of explosions in the sky, tsunami, or huge craters where towns or cities once stood.

Looking back, so many astronomers had assumed the end would come from one planet killing meteor; no one suspected it could be long and drawn out by thousands and thousands of smaller ones over many decades.

A few months after the first strike, everyone realised the only way humanity could hope to have a long term future, was to evacuate at least one thousand people (but more would be better) to a new home on the planet Mars. Several years later when robotic construction was well underway and the first human team were being chosen, many powerful people suddenly realised they had no hope of ever being included on the list of eventual colonists due to their general uselessness in survival situations. The result of this realisation was the formation of a new political force, the Earth First Alliance.

The EFA put to the people of Earth a new survival plan where instead of undertaking the difficult task of constructing an underground base on Mars for only a few thousand people, the effort would be much better spent building many such shelters all over the world where millions could live in relative safety. The fact that the Earth was slowly dying because of the semi regular bombardment, added to the risk of the original Sholf-4 iron meteor ending the planet in one flash of ultimate destruction, meant nothing to the hierarchy of the EFA. If they were going to stay on Earth, then better to have all effort put towards their survival and the rest of humanity be damned. (And so now we have the bad guys of our story.)

This was the world little April Haddock was born into; almost fifty people were already on the red planet doing their level best to make the base habitable for the thousands to come, while a useless and wasteful state of war existed between the EFA and rest of the world. One of the prime targets for the anti-Mars forces, were the various rocket construction and launch sites around the globe. It was assumed if nobody could get supplies to Mars during the early stages, it would simply fail and the idea would have to be abandoned.

To stop this from coming to pass, a new plan was begun nine years before April was born. At three mountainous sites on the equator in Venezuela, Kenya and West Sumatra, tunnels were built for powerful electromagnetic railgun supply launchers. From deep underground below sea level, projectiles the size of a bus (but much more aerodynamic) were fired into space, exiting the railgun from the top of a mountain. The railgun at Mount Singgalang, West Sumatra Indonesia, was also chosen as trial site for the Mars base underground survival systems and so this is where the story really starts, but not quite yet.

Maybe it was the dragon stories she heard from Great Grandpa Gerwin, or maybe it was because she was just that kind of kid, but little April loved to play with lizards, frogs and snakes as well as the bugs she would feed to them. As she grew and moved on to higher learning, her interests evolved into the good and bad relationships the agricultural sector had with various insects and the best ways to take advantage of biodiversity. As a young woman of high intelligence and academic drive, she entered university just before her sixteenth birthday and was immediately drafted onto a team designing and perfecting indoor agricultural systems for the rapidly growing Mars colony. Less than one year later, April was chosen to become a member of the Martian community.

April's work with soil, insects and hydroponics was now intermixed with intensive training to prepare her for the trip to Mars. This training of course, brought with it many new challenges; one of whom was fellow trainee Luis Dias.

Twenty two year old Luis from Columbia had formerly served as the pilot of fighter aircraft for the international coalition protecting all space launch assets from EFA attack, until his aptitude for micro gravity manoeuvres showed up on simulator tests. Now as trainee for a future career as commander of the Mars Transfer Vehicle, Luis found it difficult to concentrate on his work whenever April Haddock was nearby. Every time they were in the same room, April could not escape the sensation of Luis's gaze and whenever he caught her eye she always noticed the same look on his face; it was a kind of cross between puppy dog and blissful joy.

Six months later, in a vain attempt to change Luis's mind and make him think again about pursuing her romantically, April agreed to go on a dinner date with him during which she talked about the strangest and most disgusting insect facts she could think of along with the most boring things related to plant biology. Much to her surprise, the date went very well so she pulled out the big ammo of direct accusation.

"You haven't understood a word I've said all evening, have you?" she sneered.

"Of course not; but I would listen to you talk about the lower intestine of the Yangtze River Dolphin just to hear the sound of your voice."

"Just what is it you want from me Luis" April asked forcefully.

"I want to spend my life at your side, raise a family of children with your beauty and intelligence before dying of old age in your arms."

They were married three months later, several weeks before Luis left Earth for the final time, while April continued with her work and awaited her eventual departure as well.

One of her Viking ancestors once bragged about how fertile the women of her family were and April soon discovered she was definitely a chip off the old block. So as she continued to test and perfect the Martian agriculture systems both in the lab and inside the West Sumatra test site, her superiors did their best to try and get her to go off the planet while she could still fit into a fight suit.

In an interesting twist of fate, April would soon fly on a dragon just like the people who came before her, but hers would be white, metal and almost 200 feet tall.

And so, it begins. Sorry there will be no more funny Moon stories now he is gone, but next week begins the first real chapter of the story (7 more to go).

Bye :-D