“Okay,” Davian called back. “I’ll get things started with lights and power.”
Reconnecting with Dav had been a godsend. He couldn’t have accomplished all of this on his own.
Davian was setting up the solar lights in the cavern next to the truck. They’d brought four industrial-strength light suckers. Each one had a “funnel” that channeled sunlight down a thick fiber-optic cable and diffused it into usable light, and a power trap that siphoned off some of the power to charge a battery that provided a reduced illumination at night.
While Davian set up the lights, Eddy began to uncover the Moonjumper. He removed the heavy plastic tarps that had hidden the little ship from view, folding them up and setting them aside. The craft had a 270-degree field of vision through a wraparound plas window, and a skylight window up top. The metallic panels of the little ship were dull with age, and the plas looked scratched and worn too. This is going to work. This has to work. Somehow they would make it work.
The Moonjumper line had been retired from active service by AmSplor in the 2090s. Eddy had picked this one up at auction from the New Richmond Air and Space Museum a month before, for a song. He hoped to God she was still space-worthy. She’d been out in the elements for at least a decade as a showpiece for the museum.
He’d flown one like it once or twice before at air shows in the South, in Birmingham and New Little Rock. He hoped he could remember how to handle it, if they could make it space-worthy again.
Something was bugging him—his sixth sense. He’d learned to trust his body’s signals during his two tours in the Hong Kong urban battle zone, back when he’d been called Evelyne. He saw no need to change that habit now. He looked at the bright day outside uneasily. “I’m gonna set the fuzzer and then grab some branches to put over the front of the 1050,” he called to Davian.
“Okay. I’ll finish getting her uncovered.”
Eddy grabbed a bag from behind the driver’s seat. He peeled it apart at the magnetic strip and took out the four fuzz balls—small silver spheres that together would create the fuzz field. He set each one equidistant around the edge of the cavern entrance, in front of the truck, activating them as he placed them. When the fourth one came online, the fuzz field sprang into place. It was like a pool of water hung in three-dimensional space, reflecting what was around it and distorting and hiding what lay behind, both visually and electromagnetically.
From the inside, all he could see was a slight film in the air.
He went to retrieve his hatchet. He wanted to cover up the front of the truck with some branches so it would pass at least a casual visual inspection, just in case the field failed.
Eddy was about to step through the fuzz field when his instincts stopped him again, the small hairs standing up on his forearms.
Davian was hauling something around back inside the cavern, making a scraping sound.
“Dav, be quiet a minute,” he hissed, peering up into the sky. He stood completely still and searched for the source of his unease.
After twenty seconds, he saw it, a kuripa drone slipping around a ridgeline into the valley below. It was casting back and forth slowly, as if looking for something or someone.
“Drone,” he whispered to Davian, who had come to stand next to him.
The thing resembled nothing so much as a giant robotic cockroach, its wings fluttering in the mountain breeze with a green metallic sheen. He hadn’t realized the Chafs had gotten so bold, sending their battle drones into eastern Pennsylvania and West Virginia. If he’d been outside the field when it flew by….
He held his breath as it passed within a hundred feet of their hideout. Those things were equipped to sense heat patterns. He hoped to God it didn’t notice the tire tracks that led up to the cavern. Fortunately, it was a warm day, so the truck’s heat signature was probably all but wiped away by now.
At last the drone passed over another ridge and was gone.
“We have to be careful. Only short trips outside of the cavern, and always, always check for drones first.”
Davian nodded. “How long until we can get this beastie operational?”
Eddy glanced back at the dark form of the Moonjumper. “Three days? We’ll do the best we can.” He hoped it would only take three days. God help us if we can’t make her work.
RETIRED DIRECTOR Colin McAvery stepped outside onto the porch and closed the door to his little cottage behind him, staring up at the arc of the world above. It was barely visible at its apex, pale blue lights marking the scattered night plants that gave off a soft glow, along with a few spots of brighter human activity. It was a strange, beautiful world, but sometimes he longed to see the open vistas and blue skies of Earth once more.
Trip was still asleep inside.
Colin liked to get up to see First Light, as the advance of the morning had come to be called here in this new world they were building. After nearly thirty years working with this place, it still amazed him to see it light up around him as the dawn crept from plant to plant and across the sky inside of Forever.
He sat down on his porch with a cup of coffee to await the coming of the day. Being the ex project head had its benefits in retirement. He looked around at the retreat he’d carved out for himself here in the wilderness, away from the demands and pressures of command, and grinned. His home was all alone in the wilderness, far from the towns of Darlith and Micavery—formerly McAvery Port—that had grown up within the colony over the last two decades.
They had access to the world-mind’s network, but he rarely used it anymore. He was happy to leave the world’s worries to Aaron Hammond and his capable crew.
Colin sipped the coffee, enjoying its bold, rich flavor, mostly unknown up here—another perk of his—shipped up at great expense from Earth. No one had yet figured out how to make coffee plants grow properly on Forever. He supposed it was something that the future inhabitants would never know they were missing.
That thought made him sad.
He could see the light approaching now in the distance, as the world-mind stimulated the plants across Forever to awaken. The golden glow raced ahead here and there, approaching like a tide of light, tied to the surge of luthiel in the world’s veins. Soon it flared overhead, lighting up Forever from above.
He closed his eyes, hoping to feel the change in the air as it swept past him. He could almost hear it, like the sizzling of meat on a faraway campfire.
Just like every other morning, he felt nothing—no vibration, no warmth, no physical sensation at all as the plants around him lit up.
When he opened his eyes, though, it was daylight all around, shining from every leaf and bough, and even from the microscopic pollen in the air itself.
He finished his coffee and was about to go inside when he heard hoofbeats.
He stood and looked around. It was coming from somewhere down the road, outside of his neat little yard carved out of the “wild” forest. It drew closer—someone on horseback. A visitor.
Colin set down his coffee mug and ran a hand through his hair. He brushed the lint off his robe, determined to meet the newcomer with at least a modicum of dignity.
ANDRISSA “ANDY” Hammond raced up the narrow roadway from Darlith on the horse she had requisitioned from the guard there.
Unlike her father, Aaron, Andy had grown up at Transfer Station and in Forever, with all the strange contradictions that implied—like leaving a space station in a shuttle, then taking a train from the port city to Darlith, and finally riding on horseback in search of a retired director in the middle of the wilderness. It all seemed completely normal to her.
Andy had left Micavery in the middle of the night. Her father needed Director McAvery’s help in a hurry, and the man didn’t answer his messages.
At fifteen years old, Andy could be trusted to bring the man in.
Things were getting rapidly worse out in near-Transfer space, and down on Earth too. She could see it with every new shipment of tired, sick, and broken refugees dro
pped off on their doorstep.
Her father had taken her on an inspection of one of the cargo pods left by coyotes just a week before. It had been disturbing—so much pain and sorrow and heartbreak.
He’d worn such a look of anger and despair on his face that Andy thought she would never forget it. Aaron Hammond had been the director of the Forever project for five years now, but this was beyond his capabilities to deal with alone.
Andy rode up over the last hill to see the cottage of the retired director. She’d met the man once or twice before, when he’d been running Transfer Station. He had to be in his sixties now. He’d become a bit of a recluse since his retirement, and he lived a long way outside of Darlith on a private estate in the wilderness, such as it was on this small worldlet.
The former captain and director was still handsome and powerful, a bear of a man.
The bear seemed to be missing his claws this morning, though, standing on his porch in a blue bathrobe and bunny slippers, a cup of steaming something on the table next to him.
Andy pulled the horse to a halt and slid off, turning to face former director Colin McAvery. “Morning, sir.” She held out her hand. “Sorry to bother you so early. I’m Andrissa Hammond, but you can call me Andy.”
The director grinned. “Andy it is, then. I remember you, though you were a lot smaller the last time I saw you. Tell me, Andy, what brings you to my little backwater corner of Forever?” He gestured for Andy to take one of the seats on the porch.
“I’m sorry, sir, but do you have something to drink? I’m thirsty from the journey.” Andy swallowed hard, her mouth sore and dry.
“Call me Colin. None of this ‘sir’ bullshit. I left that behind me five years ago.”
Andy nodded. “Will do.” She liked him already. She hoped he was still so friendly once she’d delivered her news and request.
“What would you like? Some coffee?” He held up the steaming mug.
“No thank you, s—Colin. Never got a taste for it.” That stuff is vile.
“Pity for you. How about some redberry juice, then?”
“Yes, please.”
Colin disappeared into the cottage. “We have a visitor,” he called from inside.
Someone else groaned.
Andy smiled. That had to be Trip, the director’s husband. Her own father had done the honors ten years earlier, marrying the two on the shores of Lake Jackson in a small private ceremony. The ex-director was a man of substance, not flash.
She looked around the property while she waited for him. The home was built from local wood—it gave the place a rustic, homey aspect she recognized from some of the Pioneer tridimensionals.
Off to the left, redberry bushes were staked up in neat rows; on the right, there was a large vegetable garden. Everything looked well-trimmed and organized.
The forest line ran around the edge of the property, mostly alifir trees.
Soon the door opened and the director reappeared, this time dressed for company in jeans and a white shirt. Colin handed her a glass filled with red juice.
“Mmmm, it’s good.” She savored the tart sweetness.
“We grow the berries here on the estate.” He indicated the patch of land around the cottage. “But you didn’t come all the way out here to talk about produce.” He took another sip of his coffee and then set the mug down on the rail and put his hands in his lap, waiting for Andy to speak.
“No, sir… I mean, Colin.” Damn, that’s hard to say. “My father sent me. Things are getting bad with the refugee crisis.”
Colin sat up. “Refugee crisis? I’m sorry. I don’t get much news out here. Intentionally.” His tone implied he preferred that it stay that way.
Andy nodded. “Things have gone downhill back on Earth too. The Sino-African Syndicate has a foothold in Oregon, and fighting is being waged all up and down the West Coast. There’s also an incursion in New England.”
“There are refugees? How are they getting up here, for God’s sake?”
“It varies. Some are coming in from the near-Earth stations on regular flights, paying extra or stowing away. Some are finding ways to get up here from Earth and Moon Base. But most of them….” She remembered the look on her father’s face. “Most of them are being brought up by pirates. Coyotes.”
Colin sat back in his chair, contemplating. “How bad is it?” he said at last.
“About half of them survive.” She closed her eyes, remembering the container ship. The stench had been overwhelming when the lock had cycled open. The smells and sights and sounds of human misery. A little boy, all of four years old, dead of heat exhaustion.
Colin nodded, his eyes narrowing. “How many refugees are there, so far?”
“About two thousand. Give or take. But more are coming every day. Dad doesn’t know what to do with them anymore. We have them in a camp outside of Micavery, but there are problems. Our systems weren’t designed to handle such a large influx in a short time. Some of the refugees have started clear-cutting for firewood, and a fire almost got out of control yesterday.”
“That explains the smoke I saw. I wondered about that.” Colin set aside his mug. “So what can I do?”
The door swung open again, and Trip came out. “What do they want with you now?” the silver-haired ex-pilot asked. He still looked good—handsome and trim as he had been when he’d worn his AmSplor uniform.
Colin smiled at his husband. “The refugee thing has deteriorated. I expect they’re going to need me to help sort things out for a week or two.”
So he did know about it.
“But the berry harvest—”
“—is something you’ll manage just fine without me.” Colin pulled Trip down for a brief kiss to muffle his protest. “Just put them in cold storage, and I’ll be back in time to help you process them for market.”
Trip retreated into the cottage, still grumbling. Andy suppressed a grin.
“We’ve become an old married couple,” Colin said with a sigh when Trip was gone. “I used to run an entire world, and now I manage a vegetable patch.”
“If it’s any consolation, I think it’s a really nice vegetable patch.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He grinned. “Count me in.”
DAVIAN PRIED out the Moonjumper’s air circulation unit. The thing was a mess. A decade or two out in the open weather had corroded the intakes, and it was going to take a minor miracle to get it working again. They only needed enough oxygen for about three days in transit—enough time to coast into the vicinity of Transfer Station and call for help. His contacts in AmSplor said station patrol was picking up everyone they could.
He set the unit on his improvised workbench—an old slab of wood propped up across a couple of rocks—and set to work with a wire brush.
As he carefully cleaned the gunk off the unit, he glanced over at Eddy. That had taken some getting used to, especially since they’d dated—or at least fucked around—for a couple of months during the Hong Kong campaign, before Davian’s dark time.
When he’d gotten out of the NAU Marines, he’d dropped out of sight until Eddy had come to find him with his proposal. The whole “man” thing had been a shock, but Davian was one of the best restorers this side of the Appalachians, and Eddy knew it.
Davian was willing to work with his ex if it meant getting off this rock before things really went to hell.
Judging by the news on the x-band, it wouldn’t be long now.
“This thing is practically deadware,” he said conversationally.
Eddy was climbing inside the Moonjumper. “I prefer classic,” he responded with a grin. “According to the museum director, she made three hundred cargo runs before they grounded her.”
“For good reason,” Davian said dryly. “She’s more than halfway to the scrap pile.” He set down the brush, grabbed a hand scanner, and ran it over the unit. “I can get this working again, but not at a hundred percent. It’s gonna get hot inside that can.”
“How hot?”
> “Over a hundred degrees?”
“I can live with that, I think. We’ll bring plenty of water and take our shirts off.” He sounded much more excited about that prospect than Davian felt.
“Sorry, we’re gonna need to wear our suits. If the cabin decompresses, we won’t have time to get them on in that tight space.”
He passed a reverser over the mag bolts, and three of the four popped off. The fourth took a little prying, but soon enough he had the unit opened to expose the internal workings and filters. They were, as he expected, filthy.
Thinking about being trapped in that tin can with the heat rising made him freak out a little. The cavern tightened around him, its walls squeezing closer and closer, and it was hard to breathe.
He closed his eyes and set down the tool, concentrating on pumping his lungs calmly and regularly, willing his heartbeat to slow down. I’m not in the hotbox. I’m not in the hotbox.
Two fucking months in Chinese captivity. Years behind him now, and still, these debilitating flashbacks could hit him at any time.
Now he was going into this new hotbox willingly, to be trapped there for days with Eddy.
He wanted to scream.
Instead he concentrated on breathing in and out slowly until the panic receded just a little. I can do this.
“You okay down there?” Eddy called from the truck bed.
Davian nodded. “I will be.”
When they reached Forever, he’d find a way to put himself in control. He’d learned a hard lesson in the POW camp. You were either the oppressed or the oppressor.
He would never be a victim again.
Chapter Two: Liminal Sky
COLIN PACKED a carry sack with everything he thought he’d need for what he hoped would be a short trip. The bag had been woven from Forever-grown cotton in Darlith and then dyed a handsome sky blue.
Bit by bit, his new world was becoming self-sufficient, but they weren’t ready for this sudden wave of forced immigration, not by a long shot.
The Stark Divide Page 21