New Earth

Chapter Six: New Earth

Terry woke up feeling stiff as a board, his throat was painfully parched but at the same time the thought of sitting up seemed as daunting a task as scaling Mount Everest. When he finally managed to muster the willpower to pry his eyes open, he was assaulted by blinding white.

"Go slowly," a gravelly voice said. "Waking up from six months in suspended animation is no stroll through the angiospermae."

Terry felt a straw pressed to his lips and eagerly sucked down some of the gloriously cool and sweet liquid. After a few moments he tried opening his eyes again. His nurse had a webbing between her fingers and the moist-looking skin of an amphibian. She smiled at him, "Better?"

Terry nodded. "Yeah," he said then took another drink to sooth his throat. He spent the next two weeks recovering at the docking station in geosynchronous orbit around New Earth. From the station windows he was able to look down at his future home. At the foot of the space elevator that provided transportation between the station and the planet's surface was a vast bay, roughly the same area as the Mediterranean sea. A ring of deep pits were being excavated around the bay to prepare sites for the cities being transported to New Earth.

The evacuated dirt was being spread into fields and used to build up three pillars across the mouth of the bay. When the cities were placed the San Francisco peninsula would extend from the southern mouth of the bay with the Golden Gate Bridge stretching to join the city to the Island of Singapore. The Cape Town peninsula was to be placed at the northern mouth of the bay and would link to Singapore with just a small extension of the former Malaysia-Singapore Second Link. Together the three cities would gate the mouth of the bay.

The ring of cities bulged out to encircle a fertile plain at the east end of the bay which was in the process of being planted to farm land. Further east, about three hundred kilometers inland a dam was going up for drinking water, irrigation and hydroelectric power. New roads linked the cities and ventured delicately into the farm lands. A dense band of houses followed the path created by the new highways that join the city sites together.

Fifty miles past the perimeter of the circuit marked out by the cities defensive fortifications were going up. The Nova Empire had told them the planet had been uninhabited for eons. In spite of those assurances Earth's refugees chose to huddle together and building walls to keep the alien world out was high on among their priorities. From his vantage point on the space station, Terry could just see the ruins of an ancient, alien city looming on the horizon. As he let his eyes linger on the jagged darkness Terry felt his powers stir. Even from 35,000 kilometers up the long dead city was still seeped in such fear that his powers reacted. Terry shivered and looked away. He was only surprised that there were priorities besides defensive fortifications.


Seeing the Ravager captain standing at the entrance to the cargo hold Quake started picking her way through the crowd of milling Inhumans to learn what brought him.

She smiled a bit at the sight of little Luna carefully building a nest of odds and ends to hold their shrunken city secure for the journey, there wasn't much else to smile about. Lines were forming in front of the few facilities that made the ones at Disneyland look insignificant. The cargo hold was kept reasonably warm and most of the blankets they'd brought had been turned into privacy screens but the air had turned uncomfortably humid overnight. There'd been a few fights due to the crowding, thankfully everyone was too aware of the vastness of space and the thin skin of metal shielding it from them, so nothing went past shouting and shoving.

Melanie and Max arrived from other directions at about same time as Quake. "Is there something wrong?" the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent asked the Captain. "I noticed the increased humidity."

"Too many people breathing," the Captain grunted. "The reclaimers can't pull the condensate fast enough, but you've got bigger things to worry about."

"Is there enough water?" Melanie asked. Quake noted that, despite her composure, her eyes were very red.

"We'll all be hating sonic showers by the time we get there," the captain said. "But yeah, long as we ration no one's gonna be hurting for water. Food on the other hand. We stocked enough for a hundred to eat comfortably. You brought two-hundred and twenty-eight plus there's my crew of thirteen. Now I'm a decent sort, so my folks'll be on short rations… Given your lot recognizes that you owe us for it. You'll have to figure out how your people are going to manage it. It's only two months, I figure you'll all make it but you're not going to enjoy it. The crew'll be by with the day's portion in a few hours, though I'd give you a heads up." Having said his piece he turned and left.

"Some of us should stay strong," Max said, lowering his voice, "We need to guard against these pirates trying to double cross us."

Melanie and Quake traded a look, "No," Melanie said firmly. "What we have, we'll all share evenly." Her gaze strayed toward Crystal and Luna, "Maybe a bit more for the children as they can't tolerate deprivation as well."


The weeks wore on, everyone grew to hate the muggy and cramped cargo hold and the hollow feel of never having enough to eat. For the most part irritableness had settled into listlessness. Max and Melanie maintained an ongoing argument about forming a sort of elite guard and keeping them well-fed at the expense of the others. Sometimes Quake thought Max might have a point about them needing to be prepared for treachery from the Ravagers but most of the time she thought the Ravager captain was sufficiently upfront about the barrel he had them over that worrying about backstabbing was borrowing trouble.

Earth's sanctioned refugees had received plenty of support. The official New Earth colony was well planned and well supplied both from Earth and from the Nova Empire. Genocide was monstrous crime to any civilized society. The ruling officials of the Nova Empire didn't want to explain to their descendants how they'd decided to wipe out an entire species of sentient beings, so they made the effort to preserve at least part of the human race. It wasn't as if there weren't unpopulated planets within the Empire's borders. Perhaps they could have done more to evacuate the human race but they did have other priorities, bringing back the troop-transport ships full after using them to move the Nova Army into position on Earth was enough of a salve for their conscience, especially when many of those ships had come back with empty berths. They'd offered the humans a way out of the potential blast-zone that was enough, it wasn't Nova Prime's duty or right to force them to take it.

The space station? It was quickly paying for itself in the savings of not having to organize mass transit from the troop transports to the planet's surface and not having to leave the ships in orbit for an extended period while the humans recovered from a cryo-process that hadn't been tailored to their species and that they hadn't been conditioned to withstand, not the way Nova Corps soldiers had been. In the long run, the Nova Empire hoped trade would develop with the new colony, there was curiosity about the Terran crops the humans were importing with them. The planet itself had resources, of course, nothing sufficiently unique or abundant to be a reason to colonize the place but now that there were people living there it would likely be worth trading for them.

On Earth, the colony world was an insurance policy to many. Those who actually believed that the Earth wouldn't survive were the ones who left but many of those who intended to stay still supported having something in place if the worst came to be. If the war turned against them there might still be chances for retreat but it would likely be disorderly, desperate. Setting up a place to retreat to ahead of time was just good sense. In some quarters there those who were optimistic about the war were discussions about overpopulation and how it was the best, maybe only, chance Earth would have to get help colonizing a new planet from a galaxy spanning empire. Take the chance, win the war, New Earth would still be theirs afterwards. The Nova Empire was underestimating humanity or had built Thanos up into some untouchable boogeyman, it would work out, seize the opportunity they'd been offered. For one reason or another a healthy majority of Earth's population supported New Earth and put technology, money and resources into making the colony succeed.

The Inhumans had none of that. They had their city and their powers and that was it. The Ravager captain wasn't shy about detailing that they'd almost inevitably need supplies imported and how he could help… In exchange for the occasion use of their powers. The Inhumans had been an experiment in creating sentient weapons and the experiment had been a success. Hidden away as they were, with only Ravagers to turn to, those powers were also at the Ravagers' disposal.

Crystal's scream drew Quake out of her musings. A crowd quickly formed around the blond and a small Terrigenesis cocoon. "I don't know what happened!" Crystal exclaimed. "Luna just started transforming. There was no Diviner, nothing."

Melanie glanced toward the shrunken city. "We had Diviners in the city, maybe something happened to them when it shrank," she suggested. "Luna's spent more time than anyone else close to it."

"It wasn't my fault, I was rushed!" Max protested.

Luna remained cocooned and over the following days several of the other younger Inhumans also spontaneously began Terrigenesis, some of them for the second time. There was speculation about the tainted fish oil pills and then about survival pressure on their already malleable genetic structures as none of the cocoons shattered.

Thirty-two fewer mouths to feed helped the food situation but not enough and the stress not knowing what was happening didn't improve things overall. But after two of the longest months of Quake's life the Ravager ship landed on the smallest of New Earth's nine continents. They stumbled out of the cargo hold, hollow cheeked and bleary eyed. "Best of luck and I look forward to future dealings with you," the Ravager captain said with a cold, covetous smile before leaving them to their own devices.

Then there was no other option but to set about the business of surviving. The cocoons and the shrunken city of Lai Shi were carefully moved to a safe spot. The Awakened Inhumans divided themselves by their powers. Melanie led a group down to the shore to try their hand a fishing, Quake took another group to inventory and organize their scanty supplies while Max took another group inland to see what hunting or gathering was possible and Crystal lifted herself on the winds with the two other fliers to scout the area for a source of fresh water, for a site for their city. The other two thirds of the Inhumans, those without powers, quietly organized themselves into similar parties and went to offer their help.

Two days after they arrived several of the cocoons shattered. One of the newly Awakened proved to have a plant affinity. His power put an end to the acute danger of starvation as he was able to determine what plant-life was edible and induce those plants to produce a harvest in hours instead of a season.

Crystal's fliers found a site for the city within two days' hike of their landing site. Using her powers Quake opened up a sinkhole to settle their city into. Max carefully set up the stolen equipment to suspend the shrunken city over the pit then he triggered the mechanism that restored the city. Lai Shi, Afterlife, reappeared with a massive boom of displaced air and settled into it's new home. The city was a disaster. The area where the staves had been too widely spaced hadn't shrank at a uniform rate and the the city looked like it had been struck by a sizeable earthquake. There was nothing they could do but try to rebuild.

The last of the cocoons broke open releasing Luna into her new home. "Something bad happened here," she declared as she buried her face against her mother's shoulder.


Notes: So the horribly misnamed one shot finally ends and it's a very open ended end. There's an outside possibility that I'll tie New Earth's mysterious history into the Infinity Stones… But scope creep is becoming an issue with this series and I want to be sure that I don't leave it unfinished, so odds are this is the end for this plotline: When placed under stress the issues with the Accords started showing, but the Avengers and allies aren't just awesome when it comes to alien invasions, they're also capable of working with normal people and resolving problems with the laws under which they function. New Earth is set up but it's not a utopia. There will probably be future problems between the humans and inhuman settlements. The Inhumans have their own internal problems that they brought with them and their debt to Ravagers to deal with. And the new world has it's own mystery, which is not likely to a nice one. I probably should have done more with the baggage that the human settlement brought with them.