The Chronicles of Henry Harper

by Jacen Aster

  Several expressions warred across her face before she finally sighed, seeming to collapse in on herself slightly. She sank into one of the visitor’s chairs and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her eyes met and stared directly into Henry's. “He's right, Henry, as much as I don't want him to be. I could really use a friend nearby right now. But are you really alright with this? Do you know the risks? Do you even know what's going on?”

  Henry shrugged. “The risks are obvious, and hardly anything new. As for what's going on, only that there have been three attempts on your life in two months. No idea why. I was out on the rim when Vairc got in touch with me. He said it was politics and that you'd be able to tell it better.”

  “I suppose.” She sat silent for some minutes, gathering her thoughts. Finally, she started to explain. “It is politics, like he said. More specifically, it's about the throne. Father is becoming too old to rule the hierarchy anymore, and as these things go, he will pass it on to whomever he considers his most successful child.”

  “And everyone thinks it will be you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, while we've all done well for ourselves, I've built a massive surveying, mining, and trading empire essentially from scratch. My company, which didn't even exist until seven years ago, is now one of the top ten non-Ring technology companies in the entire Arabuli hierarchy. My newest project should make it even bigger if it works. Possibly one of the top ten even considering the Jump Ring companies, inside the next five years. That's the prediction anyway and it means I'm the obvious choice.”

  “Do you know if it's true?”

  She hesitated, glancing at Vairc.

  “The room has been swept. You can tell him if you want.”

  She nodded her thanks and let out a sigh. “Yes, it is true. Father told me himself. He would have stepped down already if I hadn’t asked for more time. Once I take up the crown, I won't be able to give much time to my company. So I need to get the new technology we're working on off the ground and the company running itself before I feel I can ascend.” She blew a strand of raven hair out of her face. “He was fine with it, expected it I think, but my closed doors visit with him just fanned the flames.”

  “Okay...I'm with you so far,” Henry said, slowly. Something wasn't adding up here. “But why is this such a big issue? I mean, with the hierarchy the way it is, and everyone thinking you're the clear choice, I wouldn't expect this would be an issue.”

  “Politics,” Vairc spit out, as if the word were a curse. Of course, Henry agreed that it was, so that was fine.

  Areina sighed. “More specifically, he means personal politics. My personal politics. Do you remember our discussion all those years ago, about Arabuli royalty?”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Of course.”

  “I told you that nobles almost never leave the homeworld and you admitted to knowing almost nothing about them.”

  “Yep, still wouldn't if it wasn't for you.”

  “And that's just the point. The nobles are isolationists. Even more so than the rest of the Arabuli, and we hardly have a reputation for openness as a people.” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. “I, however, have spent more time off-world than on at this point in my life. I've gone farther and done more, seen more, than nearly any Arabuli, let alone the noble families. The result is that I've been pushing a reformist ideology for the last decade or so. Encouraging our people to get out in the galaxy, try new things, push the boundaries like all good Arabuli are taught to. Given who I am and how successful I've been, a lot of people have been listening. In particular, the young Arabuli are realizing that they can find far more opportunities to shine out amongst the ‘ordinary’ people of the other races. Without the stiff competition from other members of the hierarchy.”

  “Huh, now that you mention it, I have seen a lot more Arabuli wandering around in the last few years. Didn't really connect that to you though.”

  “No reason you should have really. It's not like I've been preaching this stuff from the parapets or anything. I've mostly contented myself with a few business speeches or interviews and such. It hasn't exactly been the main focus of my life or anything, just something I believe in enough to mention when I can. Trouble is....” She trailed off, knowing Henry would get it.

  “Trouble is, it's common knowledge that you feel that way, and the isolationist nobles are terrified of what will happen if you take the throne and push your ideology onto the Arabuli people as a whole.”

  “Yeah, that's about the size of it.”

  “Well, that sucks.”

  She wilted. “Stupid too. I don't even want to rule. I’m probably the only member of the hierarchy that doesn't. It'll trap me on the homeworld most of the time, attending boring functions and meetings for the rest of my life.”

  “Some would say that just means you're better suited for it.”

  “That doesn't mean it won’t suck.”

  “True.”

  She just sighed. It seemed she was doing a lot of that.

  ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

  Henry hadn't hesitated to agree once he got the whole story, and more importantly, had seen how it was affecting his normally irrepressible friend. His acceptance had brought a little life back to Areina, which made it worth any amount of risk as far as he was concerned. Of course, she'd turned positively animated when they began to brief him on what her corporation, Stellar Fire Enterprises, was currently working on. Henry had been, at first, rather alarmed to learn it once again involved rifts and traveling via their energies, but after some explanations he was put at ease. In fact, he was quite impressed with the new idea, and excited for the project itself rather than just being along for the ride to help a friend.

  He had also met Teva, an unusually compact but visibly muscled female Arabuli with short purple hair. It didn’t take long to discover why she had been the obvious choice to replace Vairc as Areina's primary bodyguard. While she was shorter by a head than Areina, her personality was so full of spit and fire that she almost seemed the larger of the two. This was, needless to say, a very odd personality for an Arabuli, but one that meshed well with Areina's own disregard for the status quo. That she was young, and a vocal supporter of Areina's reformist ideals, just made her all the more obvious a choice.

  Three weeks later, Henry, Areina, and Teva arrived at the core of Areina's new operation, the massive city-ship Starlight. Henry stared at it out the front viewport of Areina's small, and very heavily armed, private shuttle. Areina, who was flying the ship herself, deliberately leveled them off with a perfect view, showing off the new gem of her fleet. And oh what a ship it was. Easily three kilometers long and two wide, the massive disc-like ship would have been an impressive sight by any measure. However, in this case, the view was far more spectacular than mere size, for the entire ship was lit up with lines of a glowing sapphire blue, bleeding to purple in places, running all the length and breadth of the ship in complex patterns. Teva, sitting behind them, had leaned forward with a little exclamation, and Henry didn't mind admitting that the sight deserved it.

  Knowing where their gaze had been drawn, Areina grinned. “That blue-purple fire is the contained rift energy. We decided to put it on the outer hull for safety reasons. Not to mention wanting to be able to sleep at some point.”

  Henry frowned. “If it's contained, why can we see its glow?”

  Areina shrugged. “You can't, not really. What you're actually seeing is the glow it gives the conduits themselves. Like holding a strong light to your palm and being able to see a glow on the other side of your hand.”

  “It's that potent? To do that with conduits?”

  She nodded. “Very much so.”

  Teva finally piped up. “Wait, what's rift energy?”

  Henry quirked an eyebrow. “You haven't briefed her?”

  “She complains whenever I go into technobabble.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh, come on!” Teva whined. “You're always way ove
r my head when you do that. I'm a fighter not a scientist.”

  Henry chuckled. “I'll take a stab at a simple explanation then.” He shifted a bit, facing Teva as much as possible. “Rift energy is the backbone of Areina's new project. It's energy gathered from natural rifts in space and subspace then compressed into a useful form. Specifically usable, through the efforts of Stellar Fire's scientists, for launching ships through subspace in a way that emulates natural rifts. That is to say, without the drawbacks of a Jump Ring.”

  “Drawbacks?”

  Henry looked at her in disbelief. “An Arabuli who doesn't know the basics of how Jump Rings work?”

  Teva looked sheepish. “Errr, I might have slept through that class….”

  Areina laughed. “Class? More like you had to have slept through life to miss that one.”

  “Hey! It's not like I didn't know it at one time...probably. Besides, I left the homeworld as soon as I could, you know that. Couldn't stand all the rules.”

  Areina shook her head before taking pity on her bodyguard. “Jump Rings, while wonderful devices, have four major flaws. One, Jump Rings are huge and expensive, therefore numbers must be limited. Two, they can only link up to another Ring if they have sufficient power to bridge the distance. They can bridge dozens of lightyears, but not hundreds. Three, they cannot operate within the confines of a gravity well, meaning they are usually placed well outside a solar system, and thus the majority of travel time through the Ring Transit System is always the movement from a planet in a system, to the extra-solar Ring. A single Ring sometimes even serves a number of systems, though that's pretty rare. Four, and most important to the complexity of things, there cannot be a large gravity well between two connected Rings. This means that you get 'routes', Jump Rings can only jump to those Rings they can ‘see’ with no major gravitational interference.” Areina sighed. “And this is something you really ought to know, considering our race is famous primarily for being the reason the Rings work so well. We came up with, and keep updated, the immensely complicated formulas and databases that allow Jump Rings to compensate for stellar drift, among other things.”

  “Oh.”

  Henry snorted. “Oh, she says. Right genius this one.”

  She huffed and whacked Henry on the shoulder. “So what makes this rift stuff so different?”

  Areina rolled her eyes and tried to explain in simple terms. “It removes the gravitational issues from the equation. Rifts don't care about being in a gravity well, nor do they care about gravity wells between the two points they are connecting. That eliminates two of the Jump Ring's problems. They also don't care about distances. Ten light years or a hundred—it makes no difference to them. That's three down. It still takes a lot of power though, even if not quite so much as a Jump Ring.”

  Teva looked like she understood. “So you've come up with something better than Jump Rings? That's awesome! I think?” Well, mostly understood at least.

  Henry and Areina were both shaking their heads as they closed with the city-ship. Since Areina was busy beginning landing procedures, Henry corrected her. “No. While in theory you could replace the Ring network if you had an infinite supply of rift energy, that isn't the case. Stellar rifts are rare and even if they weren't, right now, the Starlight is the only ship in the known galaxy capable of compressing the rift energy for use.”

  Teva looked confused. “Then what good is it? I mean, sure you could move it around fast, and it's a big ship, but that seems like a lot of effort for just one ship that can do it.”

  Henry grinned. “Ah, but the Starlight actually can't travel that way. That's not what she's for.”

  “Okay, now I'm really confused.”

  “The Starlight, and eventually other city-ships like her, don't travel through the use of the collected rift energy, they launch other ships using it.” Henry explained. “The trip is one way, so ships still have to return via the Jump Ring network. But position the Starlight or one of her eventual sister ships near a major regional trade hub and you can cut all travel times in half. The rift ship launches a trade convoy out to some distant part of the galaxy, instantly, no travel times at all. Then they fill up on trade goods and return via normal methods. Bonus points for exotic perishables that can’t handle stasis.”

  That was something that Teva could apparently grasp, as she gave a low whistle. “Okay, I can see how that is a game changer.”

  Henry just chuckled as the shuttle touched down.

  ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

  Despite outward appearances, the Starlight wasn't anywhere near finished. The ship was the prototype of an entirely new class and the interior was still a mess as a result. No one wanted to button things up, only to tear it all apart again and redo it if a calculation was wrong. Even the rift systems were not finalized yet, still in the final experimental stages, and thus in need of practical tests and fine tuning. Of course, if the ship had been further along, it wouldn't have been needful for Areina to take command of the operation personally. Nor would she have been able to explain bringing in an engineer of Henry's caliber as a full-time adviser for that matter. Of course, Henry’s previous experience with rift technology, in the Gate to Everywhere project, was well known to the Arabuli in general, and thus his inclusion made so much sense that no one really thought to question it.

  After the first few days of awe, the weeks seemed to bleed together as Henry and Areina tried to get on top of the massive project. Before they knew it, a month had passed. Though as they finally seemed to be getting the problems under control they counted it as time well spent.

  Henry kept pace alongside Areina as she inspected Rift 1, the site of the first full scale rift projector. Construction crews and equipment were still scattered around the large hold, but were mostly in various stages of disassembly.

  Areina stopped in the middle of the room, her gaze sweeping the entire operation. “It's on schedule, Henry?”

  Henry nodded. “Yes, after I helped them sort out what was slowing down the rift energy flow to the projectors, they were able to make up the lost time. Everything's back on track. ETA to begin tests is four days, give or take a few hours for the inevitable last minute glitches and panicky minions.”

  She grinned. “I hope you haven't been calling them minions again. Some of the science team seem to have surgically removed their senses of humor.”

  “Yes, I had noticed that,” was his dry return. “Don't worry. I've upgraded the ones with no sense of humor to henchmen.”

  She shook her head in half-fond exasperation. “Whatever you say, Henry, so long as they don't try to lynch you. I can't imagine it would end well for them and I still need them.”

  “I'll try to remember that.”

  Their banter stilled as they saw the chief rift scientist, an excitable Arabuli named Kitho, wave them over. As soon as they joined him, near the rift inflow controls, he addressed them.

  “Mr. Harper! Miss Aerablast! I'm glad you dropped in.” He reached out and enthusiastically shook Henry's hand. “Thank you again, Mr. Harper, for fixing the inflow issue. Brilliant work, and so simple too. I can't believe no one had thought of it.”

  A grinning Areina rescued the beleaguered-looking Henry. “Doctor, did you have something for us?”

  “Hmmm?” He looked half surprised before comprehension seemed to overcome him. Looking flustered, he said, “Oh yes! Of course. Not to worry, not to worry. It's good news this time.”

  “Good news Doctor?”

  “Indeed. It seems Henry's little fix actually pushed us up beyond what we thought were the maximum projections. See, look here.” He fiddled with the controls, bringing up a display showing the power/rift energy curve.

  Henry shifted, tuning the doctor out. He could catch the official report later and something had changed in the sound of work around him. He listened hard, half closing his eyes as he tried to place what was suddenly sending jolts of alarm to his brain. Wait was that—?

  Henry's eyes flew open and he gr
abbed Areina, indelicately throwing her several meters away from their position. A crack like an old-fashioned rifle shot rang through the air as a cable on a piece of construction rigging snapped and the whole multi-ton unit came crashing in towards them. Something struck Henry in the side as he attempted to dive free of the impending crash. He felt hot pain, then numbness as he hit the decking. Trying to roll farther away as his vision turned purple and black, the last thing he saw was Teva, pulling a protesting Areina from the compartment by main force. Then everything was black.

  ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

  Henry had gotten lucky. The pain he had felt was a cable lashing across his back, but it had only grazed him. Hitting the decking had actually caused him more harm, bruising, and a hairline fracture of his right arm, as well as knocking him out. He was up and almost completely healed within the hour, needing only a day or so of wearing a brace to be back up to a hundred percent. Doctor Kitho wasn't so lucky. The good doctor surviving at all had been by purest dumb luck. The console he was working at took the brunt of the direct damage, merely leaving him somewhat crushed, rather than a stain on the decking. Even so, he faced weeks of healing, at least, and it was unclear if he would ever recover completely.

  Areina had been spitting fire at Teva, out of frustration more than any real anger at her bodyguard's sensible action, until Teva finally sacrificed a newly awoken Henry in order to flee and “check on the investigation.” Thankfully, it turned out that she had wanted to see him, and for more than just to see if he was okay.

  “Henry, how did you know to throw me clear?” was the first thing she said when he came through the portal into her suite.

  “Why yes, Areina, I'm fine. Nothing that won't heal in a few hours, and how are you?”

  She grimaced. “Sorry, Henry.” Looking contrite, she nevertheless pressed the point. “How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “I heard something change in the environment that set me on edge. I couldn't figure out what it was at first, but then I realized it was metal groaning under strain. Right behind us. Spend as much time as I have in engineering compartments and you get a sort of sense for these things. I knew it was going to be bad, so I threw you free and then dove myself.”