The Stark Divide
By J. Scott Coatsworth
Liminal Sky: Book One
Some stories are epic.
The Earth is in a state of collapse, with wars breaking out over resources and an environment pushed to the edge by human greed.
Three living generation ships have been built with a combination of genetic mastery, artificial intelligence, technology, and raw materials harvested from the asteroid belt. This is the story of one of them—43 Ariadne, or Forever, as her inhabitants call her—a living world that carries the remaining hopes of humanity, and the three generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers working to colonize her.
From her humble beginnings as a seedling saved from disaster to the start of her journey across the void of space toward a new home for the human race, The Stark Divide tells the tales of the world, the people who made her, and the few who will become something altogether beyond human.
Humankind has just taken its first step toward the stars.
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Author’s Note
Map
PART ONE: SEEDLING, 2135 AD
Prologue
Chapter One: The Three
Chapter Two: Smoke
Chapter Three: Falling
Chapter Four: Warnings
Chapter Five: Cross
Chapter Six: Cutter
Chapter Seven: Void
Chapter Eight: Transplant
Chapter Nine: Evacuation
Chapter Ten: Flight
Chapter Eleven: Confession
Chapter Twelve: Seedling
PART TWO: COLONY, 2145 AD
Chapter One: The Hammond
Chapter Two: Transfer Station
Chapter Three: Data Core
Chapter Four: Forever
Chapter Five: Grand Tour
Chapter Six: North Pole
Chapter Seven: Flight
Chapter Eight: Jackson
Chapter Nine: Quest
Chapter Ten: Challenges
Chapter Eleven: Torrent
Chapter Twelve: Tunnels
Chapter Thirteen: Aftermath
PART THREE: REFUGEE, 2165 AD
Chapter One: Moonjumper
Chapter Two: Liminal Sky
Chapter Three: Darlith
Chapter Four: Refugees
Chapter Five: Jump
Chapter Six: Hiss
Chapter Seven: History, Repeated
Chapter Eight: Blow
Chapter Nine: Coming Home
Epilogue
Glossary – The Stark Divide
About the Authr
By J. Scott Coatsworth
Visit DSP Publications
Copyright
Liminal Sky may have been written by just one author, but it was beta’d by three. Special thanks to Rory Ni Coileain, Carole Cummings, and Kendra Carmichael for taking a rough stone and helping me to polish it into a diamond.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to my mom and dad for both bringing me into the world (the one thing they agree that they did right together) and for their ongoing encouragement for my writing career.
But there’s one person who makes this thing I do possible, every single day. My husband Mark supports me in so many ways I see, and so many more that I never even realized he was doing. He doesn’t mind if I write at odd hours in the middle of the night, if I hang out in front of the TV with my laptop, and he knows when I need him to hug me after a rejection and when I need him to let me work on a deadline.
Mark, you are my everything, and this is as much your victory as mine. Love you madly.
Author’s Note
THE STARK Divide is my second novel, and the first in my “Liminal Sky” series. But it has a long and (forgive the pun) storied history.
Way back in high school, I wrote my first novel. It was a horribly derivative, poorly plotted fantasy sci-fi story with pegasuses (pegasi?) and elves and talking monkeys that to this day sits on a shelf in our office closet.
But my next book, On a Shoreless Sea, was something altogether different. It sprang out of the idea of mixing sci-fi and fantasy – creating a fantasy setting within a sci fi one. I was hugely inspired by sci-fi-fantasy authors like Anne McCaffrey, who built living, breathing, amazing worlds that combined dragons and spaceships. Places I wanted to visit, places where I wanted to live.
As a closeted gay teen, these places were my magical getaways, and as a budding author, I longed to create something similar that would be all my own.
I spent years working on that novel, bit by bit after work, late at night, and on weekends. Most of it was originally written before my coming out in 1992, so it didn’t contain any queer characters.
It was going to be my big break, the novel that would put me on the map in the publishing world. When it as ready at last – on October 26, 1995 — I sent it to ten of the biggest sci-fi publishers. And then I waited.
One by one, they came back to me, and it was a bloodbath: “no longer accepting unsolicited unagented material;” “this material is not suited to our list;” “we are unable to review unsolicited manuscripts;” “we are not in the market for this kind of book;” “this book just isn’t to my taste;” “the work often seemed overworked and lacking focus;” and “It’s just not for us.”
On October 10, 1996, almost a year later, I received my final rejection:
“The work is unusually promising, as the care you have given to nurturing your characters and your language is evident. I find, however, that the plot doesn’t quite pull together.”
Bless them for at least actually reading it and giving me some real feedback.
After that, I basically gave up. I made sporadic stabs at authoring again, but it never really stuck. Not until 2013. My husband Mark’s mother passed away, causing a big upheaval in our lives, and I made an offhand comment about how it had derailed my attempt to start writing once again.
Mark looked at me and called bullshit. “If you want to write, then write. The only thing stopping you is you.”
He was right. It was like a thunderbolt out of the blue. I had been making one excuse after another to avoid facing my own fear, that I wasn’t good enough to make it as a writer. It was time to get serious.
I pulled out On a Shoreless Sea, and re-read it. It needed work. A lot of work. But there was something there. The world I had created was fascinating, and I wanted to do spend more time in it.
Yet I had little to no idea how it ticked. What made this world work? Who built it? How, when and why?
So I set about finding out by writing the backstory. I wrote the initial part of the prequel, “Seedling,” in 2013-2014, telling the story of how the world started.
I went away from Forever for a while to write some other tales, but Forever kept calling me back. In 2015, I wrote part two, “Colony,” jumping forward ten years to see what has happened with the characters, and to tell the story of this new settlement in my rapidly growing world.
Finally, in 2016, I finished part three, “Refugee,” which starts another twenty years later, and deepens and richens the experience of this world to set us on our way.
At the Dreamspinner Retreat in 2015, I asked Lynn West to read Seedling. She liked it, and encouraged me to submit the whole thing when it was finished. I did, and DSP bought it in February 2017. It only took 21 years and four months from that first submission to finally see my little world get published.
So what about On the Shoreless Sea? I has plans. I want to rewrite it from scratch with a queerer cast, once I finish the intervening stories.
Don’t worry — I’ll get there. Turns out it’s a much shorter trip than the one between the stars.
Prologue
LEX FLOATED along with the ocean current. Her arms were spread out wide, her jet-black hair adrift on the surface of the water. For once, she felt at peace. Truly herself.
The sun shone above her, and she soaked up its rays, basking in its golden glow. Her blue eyes stared up at the equally blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
Soon she’d be called back to duty. Soon she’d once again have to face her limited, jury-rigged day-to-day existence.
Now, for a few moments, she was free to just drift.
THE DRESSLER, a Mission-class AmSplor ship, sailed steadily toward her destination, a city-sized rock named 43 Ariadne, harvested from the asteroid belt and placed in trailing orbit behind Earth.
The starfish-shaped ship flew on the solar wind, drinking in ionized hydrogen and other trace elements that allowed her to breathe and grow, coursing slowly through the dark reaches of space between Earth and the sun. The Dressler lived on solar wind and space dust, accumulating them with her web of gossamer sails between her arms, filtering them down into her compact body for processing.
The detritus flew out behind her, leaving a jet trail across the void to mark her passing, leading back to Earth.
Somewhere out there, their destination awaited them, an asteroid floating on a sea of stars.
Chapter One: The Three
“DRESSLER, SCHEMATIC,” Colin McAvery, ship’s captain and a third of the crew, called out to the ship-mind.
A three-dimensional image of the ship appeared above the smooth console. Her five living arms, reaching out from her central core, were lit with a golden glow, and the mechanical bits of instrumentation shone in red. In real life, she was almost two hundred meters from tip to tip.
Between those arms stretched her solar wings, a ghostly green film like the sails of the Flying Dutchman.
“You’re a pretty thing,” he said softly. He loved these ships, their delicate beauty as they floated through the starry void.
“Thank you, Captain.” The ship-mind sounded happy with the compliment—his imagination running wild. Minds didn’t have real emotions, though they sometimes approximated them.
He cross-checked the heading to be sure they remained on course to deliver their payload, the man-sized seed that was being dragged on a tether behind the ship. Humanity’s ticket to the stars at a time when life on Earth was getting rapidly worse.
All of space was spread out before him, seen through the clear expanse of plasform set into the ship’s living walls. His own face, trimmed blond hair, and deep brown eyes, stared back at him, superimposed over the vivid starscape.
At thirty, Colin was in the prime of his career. He was a starship captain, and yet sometimes he felt like little more than a bus driver. After this run… well, he’d have to see what other opportunities might be awaiting him. Maybe the doc was right, and this was the start of a whole new chapter for mankind. They might need a guy like him.
The walls of the bridge emitted a faint but healthy golden glow, providing light for his work at the curved mechanical console that filled half the room. He traced out the T-Line to their destination. “Dressler, we’re looking a little wobbly.” Colin frowned. Some irregularity in the course was common—the ship was constantly adjusting its trajectory—but she usually corrected it before he noticed.
“Affirmative, Captain.” The ship-mind’s miniature chosen likeness appeared above the touch board. She was all professional today, dressed in a standard AmSplor uniform, dark hair pulled back in a bun, and about a third life-sized.
The image was nothing more than a projection of the ship-mind, a fairy tale, but Colin appreciated the effort she took to humanize her appearance. Artificial mind or not, he always treated minds with respect.
“There’s a blockage in arm four. I’ve sent out a scout to correct it.”
The Dressler was well into slowdown now, her pre-arrival phase as she bled off her speed, and they expected to reach 43 Ariadne in another fifteen hours.
Pity no one had yet cracked the whole hyperspace thing. Colin chuckled. Asimov would be disappointed. “Dressler, show me Earth, please.”
A small blue dot appeared in the middle of his screen.
“Dressler, three dimensions, a bit larger, please.” The beautiful blue-green world spun before him in all its glory.
Appearances could be deceiving. Even with scrubbers working tirelessly night and day to clean the excess carbon dioxide from the air, the home world was still running dangerously warm.
He watched the image in front of him as the East Coast of the North American Union spun slowly into view. Florida was a sliver of its former self, and where New York City’s lights had once shone, there was now only blue. If it had been night, Fargo, the capital of the Northern States, would have outshone most of the other cities below. The floods that had wiped out many of the world’s coastal cities had also knocked down Earth’s population, which was only now reaching the levels it had seen in the early twenty-first century.
All those new souls had been born into a warm, arid world.
We did it to ourselves. Colin, who had known nothing besides the hot planet he called home, wondered what it had been like those many years before the Heat.
ANASTASIA ANATOV leafed through her father, Dimitri’s, old paper journal. She liked to look through it once a day, to see his spidery handwriting and remember what he had been like. It was a bit old and dusty now, but it was one of her most cherished possessions.
She sighed and put it away in a storage nook in her lab.
She left the room and pulled herself gracefully along the runway, the central corridor of the ship, using the metal rungs embedded in the walls. She was much more comfortable in low or zero g than she was in Earth normal, where her tall, lanky form made her feel awkward around others. She was a loner at heart, and the emptiness of space appealed to her.
Her father had designed the Mission-class ships. It was something she rarely spoke of, but she was intensely proud of him. These ships were still imperfect, the combination of a hellishly complicated genetic code and after-the-fact fittings of mechanical parts, like the rungs she used now to move through the weightless environment.
Ana wondered if it hurt when someone drilled into the living tissue to install the mechanics, living quarters, and observation blisters that made the ship habitable. Her father had always maintained that the ship-minds felt no pain.
She wasn’t so sure. Men were often dismissive of the things they didn’t understand.
Either way, she was stuck on the small ship for the duration with two men, neither of whom were interested in her. The captain was gay, and Jackson was married.
Too bad the ship roster hadn’t included another woman or two.
She placed her hand on a hardened sensor callus next to the door valve and the ship obliged, recognizing her. The door spiraled open to show the viewport beyond.
She pulled herself into the room and floated before the wide expanse of transparent plasform, staring out at the seed being hauled behind them.
Nothing else mattered. Whatever she had to do to get this project launched, she would do it. She’d already made some morally questionable choices along the way—including looking the other way when a bundle of cash had changed hands at the Institute.
She was so close now, and she couldn’t let anything get in the way.
Earth was a lost cause. It was only a matter of time before the world imploded. Only the seeds could give mankind a fighting chance to go on.
From the viewport, there was little to see. The seed was a two-meter-long brown ovoid, made of a hard, dark organic material, scarred and pitted by the continual abrasion of the dust that escaped the great sails. So cold out there, but the seed was dormant, unfeeling.
The cold would keep it that way until the time came for its seedling stage.
She’d created three of the seeds with her funding. This one, bound for the asteroid 43 Ariadne, wa
s the first. It was the next step in evolution beyond the Dressler and carried with it the hopes of all humankind.
It also represented ten years of her life and work.
Maybe, just maybe, we’re ready for the next step.
THE CREW’S third and final member, Jackson Hammond, hung upside down in the ship’s hold, grunting as he refit one of the feed pipes that carried the ship’s electronics through the bowels of this weird animal-mechanical hybrid. Although “up” and “down” were slight on a ship where the centrifugal force created a “gravity” only a fraction of what it was on Earth.
As the ship’s engineer, Jackson was responsible for keeping the mechanics functioning—a challenge in a living organism like the Dressler.
With cold, hard metal, one dealt with the occasional metal fatigue, poor workmanship, and at times just ass-backward reality. But the parts didn’t regularly grow or shrink, and it wasn’t always necessary to rejigger the ones that had fit perfectly just the day before. Even after ten years in these things, he still found it a little creepy to be riding inside the belly of the beast. It was too Jonah and the Whale for his taste.
Jackson rubbed the sweat away from his eyes with the back of his arm. As he shaved down the end of a pipe to make it fit more snugly against the small orifice in the ship’s wall, he touched the little silver cross that hung around his neck. It had been a present from his priest, Father Vincenzo, at his son Aaron’s First Communion in the Reformed Catholic Evangelical Church.
The boy was seven years old now, with a shock of red hair and green eyes like his dad, and his mother’s beautiful skin. He’d spent months preparing for his Communion Day, and Jackson remembered fondly the moment when his son had taken the Body and Blood of Christ for the first time, surprise registering on his little face at the strange taste of the wine.
Aaron’s Communion Day had been a high point for Jackson, just a week before his current mission. He was so proud of his two boys. Miss you guys. I’ll be home soon.
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