RIFT (The Rift Saga Book 1)

by Andreas Christensen

  The pilot seemed to consider his options for a moment, and then he slowly spread his arms, changing his grip on the gun. Holding it with two fingers, he carefully laid it on the deck.

  “We don’t have all night,” Sue said impatiently, motioning him to return to the pilot’s compartment. She followed him inside, still pointing her gun at him.

  “First of all, kill the comms and all tracking and positioning,” she said. The pilot hesitated, but then he pushed a few buttons.

  “All right, that’s good. So. I want you to enable cloaking. No lights, of course. Just cut the tethers and move out.”

  A muffled bang from outside as the tethers were cut by the emergency charges.

  The airship engines were silent, even as they began moving.

  “Where do you want me to go?” he asked. Sue considered for a moment. They hadn’t discussed that, only that they needed to get away.

  “Just move out. Doesn’t matter where to,” she said. The pilot hunched and pushed the control buttons, making the airship speed up. They saw the camp below as the ship turned. It still looked quiet down there, even though alarms were probably going off right now. Soon everyone in the Covenant would be searching for them.

  Where was the one place they would never think to look?

  “Take us south,” she said quietly.

  ~

  Sue and Dave sat inside the pilot compartment, right behind the pilot, who was struggling to keep a straight course without the use of many of his usual instruments. They were both exhausted, and neither of them had spoken much since their escape. The sun was rising in the east, its first rays shining through the port windows, giving the entire compartment a glow, as if it were on fire. Sue imagined she could see the Rift far to the west, but she couldn’t be sure. And there was no way she wanted to go anywhere near it, since the terrain on the eastern side would be teeming with Wardens. She looked at the pilot again. He hadn’t spoken since she had given him the order to head south. It seemed he had resigned himself to do what he was told.

  Sue felt hollow, and she had no idea what to do next, only that they needed to go as far south as the airship would take them. She ached to go home, to see her mother and Jason, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She would only endanger them, as well. There were no good options anymore, only better or worse bad ones.

  It was Dave who finally broke the silence.

  “They erased our memories,” he said. She turned toward him.

  “They made us do all these things, and then they made us forget.” Sue thought about her own experience. She had somehow remembered, once she saw the image of Renee, but until then, it had all been hazy, like a bad dream you couldn’t quite recall.

  “They enslaved us, and then they made us believe they saved us,” she said, remembering Renee’s words. Dave nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s probably the worst part. They reinvented history completely.” He seemed to consider his words.

  “But don’t you think that’s what anyone would do? I mean, if the English had come from somewhere safe, and saved the Moon people. Don’t you think we would have told our story, made us into saviors? That’s just a small step from making us rulers and them our subjects…” He trailed off.

  “I’d like to think we would be different,” Sue said. “You know, make different choices.”

  “I don’t know,” Dave said and looked out the window.

  “Sometimes, it’s all about perspective. Other times, it’s all about seeing the truth. You cannot un-see the truth,” he said.

  “Unless they give you Bliss,” Sue replied dryly. “Ignorance is Bliss, remember?”

  Dave half-smiled.

  “Someone told me it’s the other way around,” he said.

  The pilot turned, a concerned look on his face.

  “I hate to interrupt, but we’re crossing into Corpus territory,” he said.

  “Seems you guys know about Bliss. Maybe you should consider whether that would be better than this? There are ways to make you forget permanently, you know. You just repeat the sequence until you’re blank, and you can start all over again.” Sue looked at him quizzically.

  “I didn’t know pilots learned about Bliss,” she said, “even if you are Moon blood.”

  He grimaced.

  “We all learn about Bliss. Without it, the Covenant would unravel,” he said.

  Sue had a hard time holding back her temper, but Dave shot her a hard look. She remained silent, letting Dave speak instead.

  “So… what if it did?” Dave asked. The pilot looked stunned by the response.

  “Why, that would be a disaster. Not just for us, but for you, as well. What do you think would happen if there were no Janissaries to protect us from the savages to the north? Or if the Wardens didn’t keep the westerners out? What if the Corpus didn’t produce all those things we need? And what about population control? There’s a reason no non-citizens can live past fifty. We wouldn’t be able to feed them all.” He stopped when neither of them spoke and turned back to his instruments, shaking his head.

  Sue was too tired to argue.

  There was a world of difference between them, and no argument would settle that. Nobody knew what the future held, but when even the past was a lie, what about the present?

  All she knew was that their entire world had proved to be a lie. Sue and Dave had somehow seen through it, and they couldn’t take it anymore.

  The lies that killed so many and enslaved the rest were too much to bear.

  For they had seen the truth, and there was no going back after that.

  Epilogue

  MARK

  Mark Novak sat in the soft leatherback chair, facing his old friend and partner, keeping his thoughts to himself, studying the head servant’s face as the latter studied the report on his infopad. It had been personally delivered by the master warden himself; a sign of how seriously they took this. Mark kept a straight face. He had come to like Head Servant Lunde as a person, even though he didn’t see how the man opposite from him could be capable of reforming the Covenant. Like himself, the head servant was too entrenched in the old guard. Even more so, come to think of it. Those of the Moon people who had been through the Youth Rebellion tended to think of themselves as the progressive force. Those who had changed the original Lunar society. Those who had led their people back. Those who had taken charge.

  They were rulers now, bent on protecting their vision of Utopia. And Mark wondered how long they had left.

  “You should get the treatment, Mark. I can see it’s about time,” his friend said, brow furrowed.

  Mark waved him off.

  “I can’t. Not now. There’s too much going on,” he said. Mark knew it was time, but he just couldn’t see himself taking months off to stay in a hospital, frozen for weeks at a time. He had to stay on top of this. If he went into treatment now, it could all be over before he got out. And if that happened, everything would be wasted. The world would go up in flames, just because he feared the effects of old age. He knew what would come, but not when or in what order. The first signs would be shocking to anyone of the Moon people, and even some who had earned their citizenship. The wrinkles, the loss of energy. He almost smiled, but managed to keep a straight face. It was absurd to him, but then again, he had lived at a time when all that was normal.

  That would just be the beginning, though. Once his organs began to fail, or perhaps dementia came for him… Now, that would be serious. But he would have to face it for as long as he had to, and hope he still had time once the storm passed.

  Head Lunde just shook his head, but didn’t reply. Mark watched him get up, walk over to his desk, and have a quick glance at his infopad, before he returned to his own chair.

  “Nothing?” Mark asked.

  “Nothing. It’s like they vanished into thin air. Up in smoke. Poof,” Lunde said, gesticulating with his hands, like a magician from the Legacy Circus. Mark looked away, losing himself in the crackling fire from that
old fireplace, like he often did when the two of them sat there. That was one good thing he could say about his friendship with Alexej Lunde; the two of them were able to sit in the same room and think. Not chatter away all the time—just think. It was a rare thing, to have a friend he could sit with and not talk all the time. Had he ever had a friend like that?

  Perhaps.

  He thought of an old friend. Even though he’d been the most careful, sharp, cunning man he’d ever known, he had lost everything, even his life, in the end. Would Alexej end up the same way? Would Mark?

  He was afraid the answer had to be yes, even if nobody could tell how long it would take.

  But sooner or later, all men’s sins catch up with them.

  And their sins were aplenty.

  “I still think you should take it. The treatment. I think I can handle this, Mark,” the head servant said, a concerned look on his face.

  Mark shook his head again.

  “Alexej… Nobody knows more about this than I, and I’m telling you, I will be fine. Just a while longer. There’s too much happening right now. And you do need me,” he said.

  “I wondered what happened to them. Where did they go?” Lunde said absently.

  Mark stared at the fireplace again.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know one thing. There’s a storm coming.”

  ~

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  About the Author

  Andreas Christensen is a Norwegian science fiction author.

  He is the author of the Exodus Trilogy, in which a divided Earth must face the ultimate extinction event. On distant Aurora, more than 40 light years away, humanity must come to terms with its legacy of violence and division and begin to build a new world.

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