Tales From The Edge: Emergence

by Stephen Gaskell

  In his mind, time fractured, its passage no longer continuous, but marked by a parade of frozen tableaux. A snarling protester hurling a rock. A vandalized digital marquee, electronics hanging from the wound like spilled intestines. A talking head on the side of a skyscraper petitioning for calm.

  Soon he walked through empty streets.

  Close to St Lorca Station, a rumble shook the ground, snapping him out of his bewilderment. He turned. A roiling dust cloud unfurled, bouncing off the glass facades of the distant buildings in slow-mo, clogging the sky and obliterating the view onto all but the largest ships. Far off, people the size of ants emerged from the murk, scattering for shelter, or running directly away. Something flared white hot near the top of one of the smaller spires to the left, ascended rapidly like an inverted shooting star.

  Kelvin edged backwards.

  Some maniac was firing missiles.

  An explosion rocked the sky.

  Retaliatory laser fire from on high converged on the shooter's position, a vector spear of green lines that vaporised the entire top corner of the building, leaving it in smouldering ruins.

  Kelvin turned and ran.

  Now he was alive to every nuance of the night. The sweat prickling the back of his neck. The blaze of sirens. The chaotic choreography of panicking civilians, their terrified expressions contrasting with the order and grim stoicism of the squads of medical, fire, and military teams speeding through a city in uprise.

  Most of all, the muted screams coming from somewhere behind.

  At the station, a large presence of Foundation soldiers and their robotic charges loitered, awaiting orders, and for a horrible moment Kelvin thought all the trains might've been cancelled, but checking the departure holos he saw that most of the routes that avoided the city's flashpoints were still running. Without breaking for breath, he interrogated a virtual auto-vendor for the best train to get him closest to Levan's Crossing, then digitally transferred the payment from his chit. The holo scanned his eye, simultaneously confirming the purchase while conveying his retinal identity to the station cloud.

  Four minutes after being scanned through the departure gate, Kelvin sped out of the besieged city, the first rays of dawn chasing the Edge from the eastern sky.

  *

  "Kelvin!"

  Dog tired, Kelvin stopped trudging up the tower staircase. Through a thicket of steel beams and wire mesh grids, he watched his little brother zig-zag from their prefab's front door, along the gangway, and down the staircase, his rushing footsteps reverberating through the structure.

  Billy slammed straight into his older brother, gripped him in a hug that went round both Kelvin's legs. "You scared me!" he cried, his voice muffled by Kelvin's fatigues.

  Kelvin tousled Billy's hair. "I'm right here, buddy."

  Billy broke away, stared up. "Where've you been, K?"

  Kelvin glanced up at their home. His mother stood in the doorway, shaking, her fingers steepled by her mouth. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  "K," Billy said, tugging at Kelvin's arm. "Where've you been?"

  He didn't want to answer with the exact truth, but he didn't want to lie either. For the first time he felt how his parents must've felt for so many years, torn between a salving fiction and a despairing truth. Billy was his brother though, and his first role was to protect him.

  "Nowhere special," he said. "Just wandering."

  "Oh," Bill said, kicking at the step. He sounded disappointed. "Ma's been crying all night, calling Uncle Marty and everyone else she knows, and Pa's been tearing round town looking for you. You're going to be in big trouble."

  "I know."

  Billy skipped back to the prefab, taking the stairs two at a time, and Kelvin followed, slowly but not breaking his gaze from his mother's eye.

  At the door she drew him into her, her fingernails gouging his skin through his T-shirt, every fibre of her being inhaling his essence. "My baby."

  His eyes filmed over, but he didn't cry.

  For a short while he stayed in his mother's embrace. Then they went inside.

  His father slept on the battered sofa, and his mother squeezed his shoulder. "Smith, wake up." She turned to Kelvin. "Your father was getting an hour's shuteye before he was going to start looking for you again."

  "I'm sorry," Kelvin whispered.

  He'd put them through hell.

  His father's eyes blinked open, the expression on his face confused, his mind elsewhere. "Kelvin?" His gaze darted between his son and his wife. "Kelvin!" A look of utter relief crossed his face, but it had evaporated before he'd even swivelled to a sitting position. "You know what you've put your mother through this night?"

  His mother reached to her husband. "Smith--"

  "No, Dee," his father said, shrugging off her hand. He rubbed his jaw. "I won't sugar coat this. He's put a lot of people through a helluva lot of drama with his disappearing act. And that's not even mentioning his attacking old Earl. Poor guy needed ten stitches."

  "Let's get his side of the story--"

  "His side of the story?"

  "Stop it!" Kelvin screamed, raking his hands through his matted hair. "Just stop it!" He paced back and forth. "Billy, can you run to the U-Mart, grab me some of those noodles I like?" He magicked out the chit from behind his brother's ear and laid out his palm flat so that Billy could take it.

  Billy scooted into the sunlight, the sound of his footsteps receding.

  "Where'd you get that?" his father asked.

  Kelvin closed the prefab's door, turned around.

  "I know about the Edge."

  The atmosphere in the room changed in an instant, like somebody had pumped gallons of chilled air into the space, frozen everyone on the spot.

  "Who's been telling you tall stories, son?" his father finally managed, trying to sound casual.

  "Don't," Kelvin said.

  "Don't what?"

  "Don't lie to me anymore!"

  His mother reached out to his father, and this time he took her hand in his own, steadying her.

  "I went to Whitesands," Kelvin began. In a steady voice he relayed his night's adventures--hitching a ride on the maglev, the flash fighting in the outskirts of the city, the stream of craft leaving the planet, the demonstrations that turned violent. His voice trembled. "And I learnt that that thing in the sky that I thought was something magical, something beautiful, was something that one day is going to kill this planet and everybody on it who hasn't been able to leave."

  Tears had come back to his mother's eyes, her free hand over her mouth like she might be sick, and his father--a man who Kelvin had never seen cry--was as close to breaking down as he'd ever seen him, his jaw quivering.

  "I know why you've kept me in the dark," Kelvin continued, "know why you've kept all the kids in Levan's Crossing in the dark: you didn't want us to carry that burden, didn't want us ever thinking we weren't going to have a future. I understand that. And I love you for that. But I want you to be truthful now." He blew out a long breath. "Are we going to die on Craster?"

  His father stood up, hobbled closer to his wife, wrapped an arm round her, offered his other hand towards Kelvin. "Come here, son."

  They stood in a triangle of enveloped arms, foreheads resting on one another, the only sound his mother's whimpers, the rise and fall of their breathing.

  "Your mother and I are not going to let that happen, you hear me?"

  After a long time, his father spoke again.

  "Let's hit the workshop," he said. "Maybe you can help me get this damn ship to fly."

  *

  The skimmer rumbled up the rugged track, the sun bright in a clear blue sky.

  Despite everything, Kelvin felt hopeful. The Edge might've been a death sentence hanging over Craster, but by day no sign of its coming could be seen, and the warmth of the sun on his arms was a comforting feeling.

  He turned to look at his father, caught him frowning.

  "What is it?"

  His father nodded at
the ground they flew over.

  Kelvin studied the rushing earth, but the ground was a blur, and he could see nothing more than small ridges of sand left by the action of the forward thruster. "I don't see anything."

  "Look further up the track."

  He did--and saw them.

  Footprints.

  "They're not mine," he stuttered. "Last night--I didn't come up the trail--"

  "I know." His father gunned the skimmer harder, the engine cycling up another octave. "Question is, whose are they?"

  Kelvin had an idea who they might belong to: Earl. He massaged his wrist, remembering how determined the man had been to know what was in his father's workshop.

  But I didn't talk!

  Seeking distraction, he let his eye be drawn by the distinctive mesa to the right, a flat-topped hill with steep sides that looked like it had been extruded from the surrounding country. Above, he spied dark specks in a cloudless sky: scavenger birds, circling.

  Dead meat.

  At the container, he had his worst fears confirmed.

  The door flapped wide in the breeze, making a clanking sound against the metal wall, but what really made the world drop away was the vast pit in the earth at the back of the workshop. He left his father on his knees, clutching sand, staggered over to the hole's edge. Staring down at the secret basement, already drifts of sand had started to fill the void left in its middle.

  He gazed upwards, shielding his eyes from the sun.

  Up near the mesa he spied a plume of smoke, and in his mind's eye his vision was consumed with an image of a tattoed man in a burning wreck of metal and glass.

  Fighting the emptiness inside, he stumbled back to his father, grabbing hold of his shirt. "Come on, get up," he said, but his tugs had no effect. "Come on, we should search the wreckage. Come on!"

  His father said nothing, did nothing, just kept staring into the distance, still as a statue.

  THE SHIPYARD BY TOMAS L. MARTIN

  The rugged robots, entrepreneurial colonists and terraforming technologies of the Epirian Foundation have been one of the driving forces of humanity for millennia. After the first epoch of human expansion across the galaxy ended in a terrible war, the colonised worlds were disparate and far apart. Even with the discovery of the first cybel tunnels, progress across the galaxy was limited by the number of planets suitable for human inhabitation. Many star systems were overlooked because their planets had no atmosphere, a poisonous environment or an ill-suited temperature, and so scores of light years often separated the worlds where humans could easily settle. The Epirian Foundation, at that time a small transportation and logistics conglomerate with only a few thousand employees, sensed an opportunity. They began investing money into the fledgling terraforming industry, purchasing patents for technologies that would alter a planet's atmosphere or remove toxic materials.

  They began to purchase the land rights to planets that the rest of humanity had long since forgotten about and didn't think were valuable. Quietly, over many years, the Foundation sent robotic crews to the planets to begin turning them into inhabitable worlds. Vast walking robots clambered across the barren worlds, mining away toxic deposits, and planting vacuum-hardy bacteria and plants. Swarms of smaller robots scoured away unwanted organisms, and giant orbital factories pumped out the gas-producing algae needed to turn vacuum into atmosphere. Over decades and centuries, the investments into a handful of worlds paid off, as the Epirian Foundation could sell inhabiting rights to new settlers, who worked for the corporation in exchange for plots of land on the newly formed worlds.

  As the money from the original settlements and the sophistication of the terraforming technology grew, the Epirian Foundation could apply their world-changing ideas and tools to more and more previously unsuitable planets. Before long more colonists were heading to Epirian terraformed colonies than to naturally-habitable planets. The Epirian Foundation, and a handful of imitator companies that followed in its wake, became some of the major economic and political powers in the spiral arm. At one point, the Foundation looked like becoming the dominant force in human space – until the Maelstrom came.

  In ‘The Shipyard’ by Tomas L. Martin, a young Epirian bot handler patrols a facility building evacuation ships. But other forces also have eyes on the shipyard...

  Alana tightened the clasps on her combat vest and grabbed her helmet, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She powered up the helmet, checking that her drones were active. Three green pips lit up on the side of her gloves, indicating that all three robots in their charging cradles outside were ready. Taking one last sip from her cup of pareto, Alana stepped out of the guard room.

  Outside, the peculiar purple-red of the Maelstrom lit the shipyard. The sun wouldn’t come up for another three hours, and a few years ago the sky behind the half-completed spaceships would have been a dark black. Now, like many aspects of life on Zycanthus, things had changed. The tidal wave of dark energy that would soon destroy the planet created a sickly purple light from dusk till dawn, a nightly reminder to the citizens of Zycanthus of their impending doom.

  Although it was late, noise still arose from the shipyard gates, where scores of protestors had their encampment. The number of shacks and tents grew every day, new refugees desperate to get a place on the evacuation ships by whatever means necessary.

  When Alana had enlisted in the Epirian Foundation, she hadn’t imagined she’d be a patrol guard, protecting one of Zycanthus’ shipyards from its own citizens. But these were difficult times.

  Her drones beeped a greeting as she approached their charging cradles. The wall outside the guard room was lined with the grey metal boxes that charged the drones, and around a hundred of the robots were connected to the facility. It was easy for Alana to pick out hers, by the way they leapt out of their charging cradles in recognition of her presence.

  “Hi, Brakka, Couples, EeeBee,” she said. “Activate.”

  The drones made agreeable noises and unplugged themselves from their charging cradles. The robots were about the size of a suitcase, painted a dull grey similar to that of the concrete building they protected. Although they were built around the same modular chassis, each drone was fitted with different propulsion methods. Brakka the firefly drone hovered, his rotors spinning with a faint whine, whilst Couples rolled along the ground on caterpillar treads and the team’s newest recruit, EeeBee, stood on four robotic limbs like a giant metal bug.

  “It’s time to get to work.”

  They queried her about the mission, flashing messages up on her wrist computer.

  “Just a normal patrol today guys,” she told them, “Standard scouting setup.”

  The drones beeped in acknowledgement and rolled, flew and clambered their way towards the equipment station. As they slid into place, robotic arms reached down to install sensors and weapons onto their backs.

  The drones were about as intelligent as a dog, able to follow simple commands but not able to truly think for themselves. As their handler, Alana was responsible for their training, and commanding them both in routine work and in the heat of battle. As drone handlers, they were encouraged by their instructors to give their drones names rather than the simple alphabetical designation given by the factory, so that they would care more about their charges.

  “Hey Ally,” said Barrett, one of the other handlers. He was just finishing his sweep, and his two bulky Hunters stomped along behind him, heading for their charging stations. The Hunters were much taller than Barrett by several feet, their bulky frames and chainguns far more of a threat when the fight got started.

  “Hi Barrett.” Alana grinned and pretended to prop her eyes open. “Nice early start again… anything happen overnight?”

  “Not much.” He jerked a thumb towards the shantytown outside the gates. “The great unwashed are getting restless, though. Keep an eye out.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Barrett began pulling the chainguns from his Hunters and preparing them for cle
aning. He looked up as Alana left the compound.

  “Fancy grabbing something to eat later? I hear there’s a new shipment of vegetables from offworld.”

  “Can’t tonight,” she said. “I’m expecting a call from my family. Command reckons they might have got to the next staging post.”

  “Great!” Barrett said. “What’s that, two more to go until they can settle?”

  “Three,” Alana said, “but yeah, pretty close.”

  “Couple more years and you’ll be heading out that way too.”

  Alana glanced up at the purple skies, and thought about the destruction that approached.

  “Yeah…” she said. “Only a couple more years of this. No worries.”

  Barrett laughed, and waved her out. Alana used the control pad on her wrist to send her drones the waypoints for their patrol, and settled into a stride around the shipyard compound. Brakka shot out ahead, skimming through the air at head height, his infrared cameras scanning for movement. Couples scooted a few metres in front of Alana, whilst EeeBee, still quite unwilling to stray too far from his handler, skittered across the ground, keeping close to her side.

  “It’s ok,” she told EeeBee, “You’re doing a good job.”

  She wasn’t sure the four-legged drone’s processor could feel nervous, but EeeBee was definitely still very cautious. Brakka and Couples had been given to Alana when she started her training, along with a third, Appleby, her favourite. He’d been destroyed in an attack by members of the Karist Enclave a few months later, disintegrated by a blast of destructive cybel energy whilst they guarded an important supply convoy from the mines in the mountains to the north.

  Appleby’s replacement, Drigger, had only lasted a few weeks. He hadn’t been as well-trained as the others, and his lack of caution had got him destroyed by a booby-trap on the shipyard’s fence. Alana was determined not to make the same mistake with EeeBee, and had been giving the spider drone extra training on her days off.

  They made their way along the tall perimeter fence, all four of them scanning for threats. It was easy to get bored or distracted doing this everyday, but Alana had seen too many surprise attacks and jury-rigged traps to lose focus. It was hard to imagine anything more important. The shipyard behind her churned out a new vessel every month, rugged tunnelhuggers that could take a few thousand lucky souls away from their doomed world. By joining the Epirian Foundation and signing up to this rotation, Alana had secured her parents and little sister a place on a ship that had eventually left a few months ago. Now they were far away from the Maelstrom, and the destruction and chaos of Zycanthus as society collapsed under the strain of impending apocalypse.