Dead World [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 3]

by Michelle Levigne

  Bain sighed and grinned and turned to glance over his shoulder at the galley. Lin met his look, and grinned back.

  He still held his breath while he pressed the buttons and switches for the last phase. Lin paused in setting out their plates. In the momentary silence, Bain heard as well as felt the deeper rumbling come up through the deck plates as the engines came back to life. He felt a little push, a momentary flicker of gravity as the ship accelerated. For a count of ten seconds, Bain felt the weight of his body, pushing him against the cushions of his seat. Then the ship reached speed and leveled out. The acceleration died, and free-fall returned.

  “Lin, what would it be like if a ship just kept accelerating for the whole trip? If they had enough fuel,” Bain hurried to add.

  “Well, they'd have gravity. It'd probably be in the wrong direction for comfortable living. The ship would have to be built in a tube shape, with the floors pointing down at the thrusters. Otherwise the walls would turn into the floors during a long voyage. I wouldn't like that at all.” Lin paused as she took cups of steaming mint tea out of the heater unit. “The ships would have to be huge, I think. They'd have to have multiple reinforcement so they could stand up to the stresses of constant, growing acceleration.”

  “That would mean they'd need more fuel for the extra weight they were carrying, and they'd have less room for passengers and cargo.” Bain felt rather proud that he had thought of that problem. It had been mentioned in one section of his new phase of lessons.

  “You'd only want gravity if you were on a generations-long trip, to avoid calcium loss in the bones.”

  “But that would mean you'd need even more food and water, and more room to live in and exercise in, and more fuel. The ship would have to be huge.”

  “Maybe too big to be workable.” She brought the tea over to the control station, and settled down in her chair. “Legends say First Civ had ships like that, though.”

  “First Civ?” He turned to look at her, puzzled.

  “First Civilization. The star-traveling civilization before the Downfall.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, taking note of that verbal shorthand. Then he remembered the original track of the conversation. “But why generation ships? Stasis chairs and stasis tubes work a lot better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they're safer.” Bain groaned when he realized Lin was testing him. “Because stasis tubes have full life support and shielding, if something happens to the ship. Because when people are in stasis, they don't need food or hygiene facilities. You can fit a whole colony of people into a big Ranger ship, and hardly use any more food than a month-long voyage for us. But nobody needs stasis tubes much anymore, because now that we can use Knaught Points, we don't have the years-long trips from one solar system to another,” he added. Lin always wanted him to add more information than was really needed to answer a question. Redundancy, as she always lectured, and as his parents had always said, was the key to survival.

  “What about the people who can't get onto ships with Spacers for pilots, or their ships are in areas with months or years of travel between Knaught Points?”

  “Oh ... well, I guess they'd use stasis tubes then.” Bain sipped at his tea. Lin hadn't put enough sweetener in it, but he still liked it. He always believed that mint should be sweet enough to make his teeth hurt.

  “Imagine what it was like before there were Spacers and they found the Knaught Points. Every trip would take years. Our ancestors climbed into their stasis tubes knowing there was a one percent chance they wouldn't wake up at the other end of the voyage.”

  “I bet they were scared.”

  “All sensible people would be—but the adventure and the challenge kept them moving out anyway. Thank Fi'in for the Order, or there would have been twenty times more accidents and deaths and danger than there was.” Lin finished her tea, and tucked her cup into her belt before she pushed off to fly over to the galley again.

  “What did the Order do?”

  “What kind of history have you been studying?”

  “I have Order history in this unit,” Bain hurried to say. “In my Spacer history unit, it just said the Order sponsored us.”

  “They did more than that. They kept us from being killed off.”

  “What?”

  “Don't frighten the boy,” Ganfer scolded. “His pulse just doubled.”

  “How much have you learned about the Downfall and all the damage that resulted on Vidan and all the colonies?” Lin pulled their meals out of the heater, and gestured for Bain to come over to the galley booth.

  “Lots of nuclear weapons and sterile land and mutations. We lost almost all our colonies. We couldn't feed them, or send repair or supply ships or medicine, and they starved or couldn't defend themselves or died from plagues.” Bain shook his head when he couldn't think of anything else. He unstrapped and pushed off the chair to float over to the galley.

  “Exactly. That's why the Colonization Authority won't let any colony be established unless the people can support themselves.” Lin put their plates down in the anchor grooves so they wouldn't fly off around the bridge, and settled down into the bench. “What else?”

  “Uh ... Lots of starvation and sickness and civilization breaking up into little city-states.”

  “And what else?” Lin picked up her fork, but she didn't start eating, waiting for his answer. “What caused most of the destruction, when the civil wars broke out?”

  “Nuclear weapons. Oh—radiation and mutation. All those diseases and people with destroyed immunities.” Bain slid down into his bench, and tucked his foot behind the center post to anchor himself into place.

  “Exactly. Mutations. When people were first learning about the Spacer talent, they were still worried about mutations. They thought we were a mutation.”

  “We are, aren't we?” he asked, in a very soft voice. Bain wondered why he hadn't thought of that before.

  “The people back then believed so, and they were ready to drag all the relatives of the first Spacers in for forced sterilization, but the Order stopped them. Master Scholar Kilvordi III argued that Humans only use a small portion of the brains Fi'in gave us. Who is to say what wonderful talents and gifts are hidden in that unused potential? Who is to say that Fi'in hadn't decided to bless us by allowing the Spacer talent to appear—or even reappear—in the Human race? Maybe, he said, it was a sign of Fi'in's forgiveness for the sins Humans had committed against each other, which brought on the Downfall.”

  “So that's what they mean when they say the Order sponsored the first Spacers.” Bain felt impressed. He had always known it was something special to be a Spacer, and that he owed obedience to Fi'in in thanks for the gift. Lin's explanation put a whole new light on the idea.

  “The Order also financed research into building ships, and helping the first Spacers explore, and took care of the widows and widowers and orphans, when those first pilots died in crashes, or never came home.” She finally dug into her steaming green and red peppers and beans. Lin chewed a few times and swallowed. “Order scientists traveled with the first Spacers, and they were the ones who figured out how to salvage the wrecks of First Civ ships that became our ships and ship-brains.”

  “Wow,” Bain almost whispered.

  “If the Order ever asks anything of Spacers, we give it. We owe them our existence.”

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  That night, before he went to bed, Bain spent his study time concentrating solely on the Order history lessons. Spacer history interested him, along with the little bit he had been able to study of pre-Downfall history theory. He had never thought Order history would be interesting, until Lin had told him how that branch of the Church was so tightly involved with Spacers.

  Scholar Kilvordi, a renunciate of the Church, had established the Order nearly sixty years before the power of flight was rediscovered. Under his guidance, scholars gathered together to reclaim civilizatio
n in all beneficial areas: medicine, arts, literature, agriculture, transportation and limited industry. With the scholars of the Order constantly guarding against misuse and damage, civilization re-emerged on Vidan after an estimated two hundred years of medieval, brutal living, where infant mortality was nearly seventy percent, and only the rare individual lived past the age of forty. When Kilvordi died at the age of one hundred and twenty, the Church honored him by naming his school of scholars the Order of Kilvordi.

  The Order had its own army and space-going fleet, and acted as an impartial judge and jury when petty city-states warred against each other. They enforced peace, and took over law enforcement in areas where the authorities could not be trusted. Their high standards and the difficulty of even joining the Order, much less attaining any position of power, made it impossible to corrupt from within. Everyone trusted the Order, even those who insisted Fi'in didn't exist, and the Downfall had never happened.

  When every new advance in transportation, medicine and technology appeared on Vidan, the Order was somewhere in the background, resurrecting lost knowledge, and protecting the world against abuses or monopolization of power. Free enterprise was encouraged. Competition, the Order maintained, was the means to advancement. A smothering, protective attitude and consolidation of control were dangerous. The Order encouraged and supported every venture that benefited Vidan, and it strove to stay on the sidelines and in the shadows. As a whole, the Order avoided leadership roles. It only intervened to prevent harmful mistakes, such as the fear of mutation that had nearly destroyed the Spacers before they had begun.

  “I never knew all this,” Bain said, two days later, after recounting a little of his reading to Lin during lunch.

  “They sound too good to be true, don't they?”

  “Yeah.” He felt a little relieved that Lin felt the same way.

  “They are too good to be true—but they are very real. I've met some very important members of the Order. One of their psychologists spent some time with me after Ganfer and I finally made it back to civilization. What impressed me about Sister Deeria was that she had all the time in the universe to devote completely to me. Her one goal was to make sure my mind and soul were healed and whole after my years of struggle, with no company but Ganfer. Whatever she told me about the Order, I believed, because she had proved she was real and sincere, and she practiced the things she said she believed.”

  “Sister Koril, back at the orphanage—she talked with all of us whenever we wanted.”

  “Alert,” Ganfer said.

  “Mashrami?” Lin pushed off hard from the galley booth, and flew so fast across the bridge, she nearly bounced off the control panel before she grabbed hold of it.

  “Possibly.”

  “How far away are they?” Bain asked, as he followed Lin at nearly the same speed. He bruised his fingers before he got a good grip on his chair, and flung himself into it.

  “We are presently beyond their known sensor range.”

  “Initiate shut-down,” Lin said. She studied the screens, frowning slightly in concentration as her hands played over the control panel.

  Bain put everything he had into his work. This was no drill, where he could catch himself and back up and correct his mistakes. Ganfer would still warn him, but they didn't have the time to spare for mistakes.

  “How soon until they're in range?” Lin asked.

  “Five minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” Ganfer said, without a second of hesitation.

  “Okay, here we go.” Lin nodded as half the sensor screens vanished, and the others changed to passive displays. “We're going to change our course just enough that we drift into their path. Well,” she added, a crooked grin lighting her face for a moment, “not completely into their path. If we get too close, they could just blast us out of their way instead of going around us. Close enough that they have to look us over, far enough away for a margin of safety.”

  Bain decided right then that the safety margin needed to be a whole galaxy wide, not just a few kilometers.

  The bridge had never felt so quiet and small before. Bain held his breath and listened. He heard the soft hissing of air cycling through the ventilation system. The passive sensor screens beeped softly when the displays changed every ten seconds. Other than that, total silence reined. Bain had never felt this cut off from everything, so small and insignificant, even when he was in the observation dome with the plates slid back, and all the depths of space surrounding him.

  Maybe it was the inability to see what was happening that made him feel so alone, even with Lin sitting next to him.

  “There we go,” Lin whispered. She hunched over the control panel, her eyes half closed, her hands hovering over the compass-shaped grid of buttons that operated the thrusters. “Feel that?”

  Bain nodded, even though he didn't actually feel the change of direction. That was good, he supposed. If he didn't feel the thrusters move the ship and change its drift, then the Mashrami wouldn't notice, either.

  Lin leaned in toward Bain, studying the sensor display screen nearly under his elbow. She nodded slowly as the numbers in one column changed, a hundredth of a decimal point at a time. It took a few seconds for Bain to remember what those numbers represented, then he nodded, too. It showed that Sunsinger was, indeed, moving closer to the Mashrami flight path, but slowly enough that the change hardly registered at all.

  “That's good, isn't it?” Bain whispered.

  Lin burst out laughing. She caught herself after only a few seconds, while Bain just stared at her, and wondered what he had done.

  “Oh—I'm sorry.” Lin sniffed and shook her head, as she fought to control her giggles. “You—whispering. I didn't realize until a moment ago—We're taking this awfully serious, aren't we?”

  “Shouldn't we?”

  “Well, yes.” Another chuckle escaped her. “But there's no need to whisper inside our own ship. Even if we shouted and played loud music and danced until we bounced off the walls, the Mashrami wouldn't pick up the vibrations until they were nearly on top of us.” She patted Bain's shoulder. “Yes, those readings are very good. I may just be a better pilot than I thought.”

  “Fi'in spare us,” Ganfer drawled.

  This time, Bain started laughing before Lin. When she told him to go fetch their dinners from the table, he didn't hurry. Everything was happening slowly, and that was good, and he wasn't worried about missing anything.

  The Mashrami didn't come close enough to be caught on exterior monitors for nearly six hours.

  When they finished their meal, Lin had Bain bring his reading screen to the station and explain his lessons to her. Bain was surprised that there were some things about the Order Lin didn't know. She had him skipping back and forth in the text and glossary and index, finding answers and jumping weeks ahead in his lessons. This was much more fun than following the lesson plan that came with the disk. Bain almost forgot that they were on alert, waiting for the Mashrami to get close enough to put the shields to their first test.

  Lin left Bain ‘on watch’ while she went to the galley to make them a snack. It was long past shipboard time for Bain to go to bed, but Lin didn't mention it, and he didn't want to leave the control station until the Mashrami had passed them by. Bain put his disk reader in the net pocket on the back of his chair, for safekeeping, and concentrated on the screens. Over the last two hours, he had watched the numbers in four different columns creep higher, closer to the danger zone of the true test.

  The numbers jumped an entire digit. Bain stared, half sure he had blinked and missed the change. He stared until his eyes got dry and started aching, and his vision started blurring at the edges. The numbers moved slowly, as they had been doing for the last six hours.

  Then they jumped another whole digit. Bain blinked and rubbed at his eyes.

  “Ganfer, is there something wrong?” he asked.

  “No. The Mashrami are making adjustments to their course, and we're finally close enough for the changes to regist
er on the passive scanners.” The ship-brain sounded unconcerned.

  “That close already?” Lin said. She flew over from the galley, clutching a bag of cheese and cracker sandwiches and a cup of chocolate in each hand. She set down the cups and grabbed onto the back of her chair before she floated away. She put the bag into the net compartment hanging from the front of the control panel before sliding into her chair. “This is where things start getting interesting.”

  “Should I get ready to re-start the engines?” Bain asked. His face got hot when he realized his voice wobbled.

  “No. Not yet.” Lin gave him a tight smile, and leaned over the board, studying the screens. Her hand hovered over the thruster controls again.

  “In range in twenty seconds,” Ganfer said.

  Lin and Bain held still, waiting, while the ship-brain counted down. When he stopped, the silence on the bridge throbbed until Bain could feel it in his chest.

  “Sensor sweep.” The ship-brain's voice had never sounded so mechanical and cold before. Bain wondered if that was how Ganfer hid his fear—if a ship-brain could feel afraid.

  More silence. Bain started counting silently, every other throb of his heart. He needed something to be sure time did pass, and he wasn't just imagining that hours and days were speeding by while he and Lin sat at the control station, and the passive sensors recorded everything that went by in space.

  “Time,” Lin said. Her voice cracked a little, like she had a bad cold.

  “Four minutes, eighteen seconds.” Ganfer still sounded oddly mechanical.

  Silence set in again. Bain stole a look at Lin, and was shocked to see a sparkle in her eyes. She still hunched over the controls, and her hand hovered over the buttons and switches as if she might need to correct their course at any moment.

  “There they are,” Lin said. She pointed as a formerly blank screen flickered into life.

  There wasn't much light coming from that sector of space to backlight the Mashrami ship, but Bain could still see it. At first, it was just an extraordinarily large blob of darkness among the stars. Then, as it crept closer with every second, he was able to discern the outline.