The Lion in Paradise
Page 1
The Lion in Paradise
Timelines #3
Nathan C. Brindle
Curmudgeon Press
All Col. Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., USSFM – the Lion of God – wanted was a little piece of paradise to call her own.
Being stuck on a desert world – even if she was the CO of the premiere battalion of the 1st U.S. Space Force Marines that was based there – was not getting her any beach time. Mostly because, without an ocean, there's really no beach at all.
But she's got a fix for that problem.
Now, if only the academics studying the problem of terraforming the exile world of al-Saḥra' would get out of her way . . .
. . . and if only the religious fanatics who want their planet left as a desert, despite all the water from the planet's former oceans being accessible only a few miles down, will leave the terraforming project alone long enough to see the good it will bring them . . .
. . . then, the Lion would truly be in Paradise.
But even in paradise, black clouds – and black ships – can herald danger for the Lion, herself, and for her daughters as well.
Copyright © 2021 Nathan C. Brindle
All Illustrations Copyright © 2021 Nathan C. Brindle
All Rights Reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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 publisher.
Cover and internal images made with DAZ Studio 4 Pro
Cover font: Hammersmith One
Version 1.0, published August 2021
http://nathanbrindle.com
Also by Nathan C. Brindle
The Seasons Series
Saving the Spring: A short fantasy
A Midsummer Night's Hunt: A short fantasy
Autumn's Smile: A short fantasy
The Timelines Saga
The Lion of God
The Lion and the Lizard
The Lion in Paradise
The Lion and the Darkness (upcoming)
Timelines Shorts and Novellas:
The Reason (prequel short story)
A Fox in the Henhouse (novella)
A Dragon in the Foie Gras (novella)
A Cleric in the Kitchen (novella, upcoming)
All Precious Stones and Peoples (novella, upcoming)
Dedication
To the lovely and incomparable pianist
Anna Borysivna Fedorova
whose Rachmaninoff Concertos powered the last phases of this book. Thank you for the inspiration of your beautiful and masterful playing.
Браво і дякую!
Table of Contents
Author's Note on Pronunciation
Maps
The Lion in Paradise
Prologue: Speak To The Rock
PART I: THE LION, HERSELF: 2121 AD
Chapter 1 When In The Desert, Have Dessert
Chapter 2 Compartmentalized Visions
Chapter 3 Visions, Whiskey, and Piracy, Arr
Chapter 4 Revelations, Revisions, and Recon
Chapter 5 Whose Idea Was This, Anyway?
Chapter 6 In The Desert's Depths
Chapter 7 Then The Airborne Space Marines Arrived
Chapter 8 A Kind Word And A Plasma Cannon Beats A Kind Word Alone
Chapter 9 A Tangled Mesh Unwound
Chapter 10 A Day of Guns and Scimitars
Chapter 11 Upon This Rock Build We Peace
Chapter 12 Upward Flows The Water
PART II: THE LION AND HER DAUGHTERS: 2249 AD
Chapter 1 The Musician
Chapter 2 The Scholar
Chapter 3 The Siren
Chapter 4 The Socialite
Chapter 5 The Warrior
Chapter 6 The Musician, Redux
Chapter 7 The Scholar, Redux
Chapter 8 The Siren, Redux
Chapter 9 The Socialite, Redux
Chapter 10 The Generals
Chapter 11 The Warrior, Redux
Chapter 12 And Having Writ . . .
EPILOGUE: THE LION IN PARADISE: 2321 AD
The Eskaasali'i
The Tomb
The Guardian
A Preview of The Lion and the Darkness
Chapter 1 Hot Time In The Old Town
About the Author
Author's Note on Pronunciation
The Arabic name of the planet formerly known as Sanddoom, الصحراء (transliterated "al-Saḥra'"), is pronounced "ăl-SĂCH-răʔ", where the CH is pronounced as the CH in German "Bach" or "Ach" (a voiceless pharyngeal fricative), and the hamza signified by the trailing apostrophe in the transliteration is a glottal stop (IPA character ʔ) and is effectively silent, at least for those who do not speak Arabic.
Just in case you were wondering where that "h" with a dot under it came from, and the extra apostrophe, too. They're not typos, and they're not crud on your e-book screen. Though you could probably stand to wipe that screen off from time to time – but hey, no judging, here. You do you.
Maps
I could not get the quality to where I wanted it for e-books, so maps of Sanddoom/al-Saḥra' can be found on the website, at http://nathanbrindle.com/maps .
The Lion in Paradise
"And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
"And God said: 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good."
– Genesis 1:6-10
"The planet al-Saḥra' unquestionably harbors sufficient liquid water beneath the surface to create large oceans, should the present terraforming project go forward. The problem is creating, a 'firmament', as Jehovah called it, but in reverse, to make that happen."
– "Preliminary Notes on a Report of the Feasibility of Terraforming al-Saḥra'," United States Department of the Interior, 2043
"Well, shit. Next thing, they'll be calling me Moses."
– Ariela Rivers Wolff, seconds after creating a water geyser on al-Saḥra', 2121
Prologue:
Speak To The Rock
It all started so innocently.
Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., Colonel of Space Force Marines (indeed, CO of the 1st Battalion, 1st U.S. Space Force Marines), AKA the Lion of God, was bored.
Bored, bored, bored.
"Here we sit," she complained, "on this God-forsaken desert of a planet, running training exercises and protecting a clot of scientists—"
"That would be a crew of scientists," noted her husband, Fred Fox, battalion Sergeant-Major, and her unofficial aide-de-camp.
"Bah! Clot. Just like blood cells around a wound. They clot things up and nothing happens," Ariela fumed.
"You're starting to sound like your father."
"Which one?"
Fox shrugged. "Take your pick; they're both curmudgeons."
Ariela, of course, was either lucky or unlucky enough to have two fathers – the same man, but one (the real one) in the timeline she'd been born in, and one in the timeline she chose to live in. And she had to admit, Fox was right; both of them were curmudgeons – but lovable curmudgeons, for
all the former was a major state-level politician and king-maker, and the latter was the Lieutenant General in charge of the SF Marine Intelligence Division.
"Anyway," she picked up where she'd left of, "protecting a clot of scientists who are trying to decide the best way to play God and make oceans on this God-forsaken sand dune of a planet."
Despite her spite, it was a lovely day on al-Saḥra'. Insofar as any day on that planet was lovely; the sun was beating down, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and they were sitting under a tarpaulin where the temperature, even in the shade, was something over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
And there was no breeze. But there was an insulated pitcher of ice water, and two insulated tumblers to go with it. Ariela picked up her tumbler in her left hand and sipped, while fanning herself with an old-fashioned paper fan held in her right. She glanced over her shoulder, wistfully, at the USSF Tumtum, her official pinnace, sister ship to her father's RV Frumious Bandersnatch. "Air conditioning," she murmured, under her breath, and sighed.
"Could you do better?" inquired her husband, idly, drawing her back into the conversation.
Ariela shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "I can see the fucking water; in this part of the planet, it's down there about two, two and a half miles, and there aren't any caves below us. Rather, the Mesh is pretty thick above it. Water's incompressible, of course, but it's under a lot of hydrostatic pressure. You'd think all they'd have to do is drill down to it and it would come up of its own accord. The problem then is preventing it from draining back down where it came from, and in fairness, if they're careful and cap the borehole, that's really the only way it could go back down." She "looked" again, with her special talent, and nodded. "No faults or rifts around here; but that big, deep rift out in the middle of the really huge desert west of us is probably what caused the water to drain down there in the first place. Though what caused that is anyone's guess; it doesn't seem related to the normal tectonic churning of the planet." She shrugged. "So, probably the same thing that smashed the planet's moon and left it a bunch of trailing Trojans. And if it still needs to be fixed after all this time, I can manipulate the Mesh sufficiently to close it."
"Did you tell them that?"
"Hell no! Nobody's supposed to know about the Mesh. Not yet, anyway. The only reason you do is because I seem to talk in my sleep, or some shit."
Fox shook his head. "No, Ari, that's not true," he retorted. "I saw what you did to our daughter, years ago, and I'm smart enough to draw my own conclusions; and what you couldn't do was lie to me when I asked you about it."
Ariela rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
"As far as the division goes," Fox changed the subject, "the TRAINEX is going quite well. All that time we spent in the sandbox back home paid some dividends."
Ariela nodded, remembering:
In a war that started up in 2113 between the Russians and the South Chinese over the effectively-deserted West China desert, the Americans had ended up playing the role of coat-holder while the outnumbered Russians nevertheless managed to pound the numerically-superior but badly-outclassed South Chinese to a standstill, and the two sides had settled down to a long war of attrition. After five years of this, the Americans declared themselves, if not peacemakers, then warstoppers, and since the Americans had not only ground forces to spare, but also the only space fleet and the only Rods from God in the game, the two sides sullenly settled down to glaring at each other from long range, while a reinforced United States all-services corps – something on the order of 60 to 70,000 warfighters at any given time – pointed big guns both ways in between them.
And there was at least one frigate sitting in geosync above them at all times. Often, two or three, if only to get away from the traffic chaos at SF Station Clarke, where they normally docked and were serviced.
The American troops on the ground consisted of a mix of U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, and Space Force Marines, with U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Space Force airborne, seaborne, and spaceborne support. The idea was, everyone could use the deployment time for training; and if it came to a fight, well, all of the ground-pounder organizations were perfectly capable of slicing and dicing the opposition, with air assist from USAF and USN aviation, and spaceborne KKW and plasma weapon assist from the frigates in orbit if the really big guns needed calling up. There was also a lot of cross-training on everybody's differing equipment and vehicles, which was viewed askance by most of the Pentagon brass, while the troops on site thought it was the bee's knees.
It wasn't every day Space Force Marines got to drive and fight (even if just on a range, and then only virtually) an M25 Leonidas main battle tank. Nor every day their sister organizations got to ride in SFM dropships, even if the SFM wouldn't let them actually fire the plasma cannons.
You'd think there would be a lot of inter-service rivalry. And there was. But nobody ever let it get out of hand, and the brass at the top set the example by getting along themselves. In particular, the USMC and the USSFM got along like a house afire, if only because they'd already been coordinating for years on the ground at al-Saḥra'.
But the 2113 war had started eight years ago – and US diplomats still hadn't been able to get the two sides to back off and go home. Or at least split the wasteland between themselves and several other interested parties who had been there first. There was literally nothing there of value; at issue for the Russians and Chinese was national pride or some shit. The area was historically Chinese; the Russians (typically) wanted to occupy it just to piss off the Chinese. Which completely ignored the Indians, Pakistanis, and Persians, who had actually started to colonize it, peacefully, under a mutual agreement they'd come up with themselves (the US State Department, when consulted, gave its blessing and otherwise stayed out of it, miracle of miracles) until the other two countries started fighting over it.
Which of course was why the Americans had gotten stuck in; see above re: holding coats.
("What about the UN?" Right. You think the kleptocratic United Nations, friend to all tyrants and dictators, enemy of freedom and liberty, survived the 21st Century? Not in this timeline, friend.)
"This area used to be a sea, or part of one, the scientists think," said Fox, more to break the silence than anything else.
"Possibly," replied Ariela. "According to the map, and based on data the researchers have already developed, it's a depression that hasn't sprung back all the way to what we think was the original sea level. Like the Great Lakes back home. My read is that's because the Mesh has got it pretty tightly wrapped. I'd guess that if it were filled with water again, what's now the surface would sink back to its historic depth, whatever that is, and those mountains behind us," she gestured vaguely, "would be an island. And this basin, for lack of a better term, isn't covered with dunes, it's more of a Gobi-style desert; hard surface, rocky, and dusty. Kind of what you'd expect of a former seabed. If they take cores, they'll find it's mostly dried mud, and full of fossil sea plants and wigglies."
"Wigglies, like the ones they found in the cave lakes?"
"Yeah, but those critters have evolved like cave creatures back home – no skin coloring, blind, and so forth. And the plants down there are weird, too; so dark green, they're practically black, and it's all they can do to pick up what light filters down through the sand and limestone crevices into the shallower, upper levels of the caves."
She lapsed again into silence; Fox rolled his eyes, and returned to concentrating on his holotab.
Ariela, though, looked down at the water again. It just seems like it wouldn't be that hard to bring some of it to the surface, she thought. She imagined a drilled well and what it would look like. "Not too large," she murmured, "maybe eight inch? How big are oil wells?"
Fox ignored her, knowing her method of working things out.
Maybe he should have paid more attention.
Ariela thought some more. Let's say eight inches. So that would look like . . . wait . . . no . . . no! Hold it! Stop! "STOP!" she shouted
, frantically.
Roused from his holotab perusal, Fox jumped up and grabbed for his M11. "Stop? Stop what?" he asked her, scanning the nearby area for threats.
The ground trembled. Then it trembled harder.
"Oh no," groaned Ariela, pointing generally out in front of them.
"I don't see any—"
With a roar, a geyser of water burst through the hard-pan surface, about a hundred yards away, and started soaking the entire area.
"Holy shit!" breathed Fox. He looked up as water started pelting the tarpaulin above their heads. "What did you do?"
Ariela looked up, through the tarp, closed her eyes, and sighed; the geyser topped out at around two hundred feet. The falling water was starting to pond near the breakthrough, and she realized she needed to do something about it, or they were going to be flooded out.
She reached out again, and imagined pinching the "borehole" shut, about twenty feet down. The Mesh obliged her by constricting the hole for about fifty feet below that point, and the geyser suddenly tapered off and ceased. About thirty seconds later, the torrential downpour stopped, too.
But there was a pond around the hole. She estimated it was about thirty feet in diameter, and the water that had landed clear over past Tumtum was draining back into that area.
Her comm rang.
She looked, and sighed. It was the boss scientist. She sent the call to voice mail.
"I spoke to the rock," she explained, mostly to herself, but Fox grimaced as he realized what she'd done.
"That means—"
"Yeah. Well, shit. Next thing, they'll be calling me Moses."
"As long as they don't ban you from entering the promised land."
Ariela laughed. "Fred, you can be such an asshole sometimes."
PART I:
THE LION, HERSELF:
2121 AD