Across the Great Rift

by Washburn, Scott;

  “But what?”

  He hesitated, not sure how best to word the thoughts which had been growing in him for days. “It… it occurs to me that if the Venanci who are coming here are destroyed or forced to flee then you will be… isolated. If they are victorious, then I can understand that you will go with them. But if that choice is not open to you, what will you do then?”

  “Die, probably.”

  “I would not wish for that.”

  “Well, me neither, but it seems a very likely outcome. The Anderans will not rest until they have me—one way or another.”

  “Alone and friendless you would have little hope, it is true. But in spite of my clan’s recent disaster, I do have many friends and many who owe me favors among the other clans. They could give us refuge, or at least help hide us. It would be much easier to arrange that if you were still my wife.”

  “Once the Anderans are secure here, their influence will grow enormously. I doubt any refuge would remain safe for long against the pressure or bribes they could produce. Better you distance yourself from me, Brannon. You could survive this even if I don’t.”

  The thought of her dead was like some sharp object wedged next to his heart. “Then we can flee this system. Starships do call here regularly. With word of the Newcomers spreading, more ships than ever will come. The Clorindans have other settlements in the Perseus Arm. We could travel far away, beyond the reach of your enemies.”

  She looked surprised. “You would do that? Leave your home and your people, everything you’ve made for yourself here, to save me? Why?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. But I have spent much of my adult life bringing new people into the universe and I always make sure each new person has a place and a family. It is not good to be alone and surely few people have been as alone as you are. Your plight… makes my heart ache.”

  Carlina was silent for a long time, but her eyes never left him. “I’ve always been alone,” she said, at last. “Ever since my family was killed. Other people saw to my needs, but they were never family. And they told me again and again that the others, the people on the street, the children in the schools, were not my friends. I was different and I must remain apart and stay secret and trust no one. Don’t talk to people, don’t laugh or play with them, for fear of giving yourself away. Oh yes, I’ve always been alone.” She was talking faster and faster as if she’d open the stopper on a compressed gas canister and the contents were gushing out. Tears glistened in her eyes and one dripped down her cheek. “The people in the camps, the ones where I was trained—the students, I mean—they were almost friends. We had to endure the same things and we did not need to be secret with each other. But the camps only lasted for a month each year and the same people weren’t there the next time. And then I had to go back and be alone again. When I was ordered to join the navy, it was even worse. I was surrounded by dangerous enemies and yet I could never get away from them. I think that was the worst…”

  She trailed off and hung her head, as if ashamed of her confession, and wiped away the tears. “So I’m used to being alone,” she said, suddenly jerking up her head and staring at him. “Don’t let your soft-hearted pity lead you astray, Brannon Gillard. You’ve looked into my head with that damn machine of yours. You know what I am and what I’ve done. Trust me: I’m trouble and you should have nothing more to do with me.”

  “I have looked into your head,” he answered slowly. “But I’ve looked into your heart, too, Carlina. Ruthless men trained you to commit a terrible act, and even though it was your hands which did the deed, it was their hands guiding your every action. I don’t think that in your heart you are a murderer.”

  “So, you would absolve me of my sins, priest?” she cried, a note of anger and hysteria in her voice. “I don’t think even your Lifegiver has strength enough for that!”

  “The Lifegiver’s strength can be found in each of us, Carlina. It is for you to find your own absolution from inside yourself. I cannot forgive you since you have done me no harm. But I am willing to stand by you and lend you what small strength I have. There is no need for you to face this alone. If you will have me, I am yours.”

  Carlina’s lip was quivering and new tears dripped down her face. “It would be nice to not be alone,” she whispered. He got up from his cushion and sat beside her. They looked at each other for a moment and then she buried her face against his chest. “I’ll have you, I’ll have you!” He put his arms around her and held her tight, rocking her like he would a baby.

  Her sobs did not go on long, but she clung to him for some time. Finally, she pulled away and smiled. “You are a good man, Brannon. Far better than an evil bitch like me could ever deserve.”

  “I’ll thank you not to talk that way about my wife.”

  She laughed the first true laugh he’d heard from her, and it was nicely musical. “Uh, naturally,” he said awkwardly, “in spite of being man and wife I’ll not force myself on you physically—not that I could, you are a far more accomplished warrior than I.”

  She smiled and then frowned and then smiled again. The smile faded and she looked very thoughtful. “Is that…? Is that even possible?”

  “With the proper precautions, I suppose it could be done. Some of my bodily fluids would be quite irritating to you, but with precautions… but, heh, I don’t think we’re quite at that stage yet…” He trailed off into an awkward mumble.

  “Perhaps not,” she said, but she was still looking very thoughtful as she snuggled up against him.

  They were still sitting there like that when the door to the room suddenly slid open. The buzzer had not sounded and he was sure the door had been locked. They both shot to their feet and saw a half-dozen Seyotah warriors and two other men wearing Anderan uniforms.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  “You are being relocated,” said one of the warriors.

  “To where?”

  But they gave no answer as they seized them, clapped a respirator over Carlina’s face, and hustled them out of the room.

  * * * * *

  “So, whadaya think, Hon? Kin ya do anything wid this iceball?” Regina stepped away from the sonic probe she had been studying and smiled at the speaker. This was Galgrin, her Frecendi guide. The man reminded her a bit of an aquatic mammal she’d seen pictures of in school. She couldn’t remember the species or even what planet the creatures lived on, but Galgrin definitely looked like one. He was large, with thick layers of fat for insulation against the cold, and a huge rib cage for expanded lungs to deal with very thin atmospheres. His legs were of normal size, but looked tiny because of the larger torso. Regina was pretty sure her half-remembered mammal didn’t have fur, but Galgrin certainly did. Most of it was concealed by his environmental suit, but his clear helmet revealed long braids of gray-white hair coming down from his head, and an enormous mustache which looked very much like the tusks the mammal had sported.

  His modifications allowed him to exist in environments which were very cold and with not much air. But even the Frecendi could not survive in the place they were now. Regina, her guide, and several of her technicians were standing on a sheet of ice near the north pole of the fourth planet, ‘Shangi-Lo’, as the Frecendi called it. It was very cold here; Regina could feel it even though the heaters in her suit were going full-blast. And the air was too thin even for Frecendi lungs.

  “I think so,” she said in answer to Galgrin’s question, gesturing to the probe. “At least some; the ice caps are thicker here than initial tests had indicated. That’s a good thing. More ice—and a good bit of it is frozen carbon dioxide—will mean more water and more air when we melt it.”

  “So mebee we won’t need these?” he asked, tapping his helmet. “Sure be niceta walka round without ‘em. Least I think it would—never did it, ya know.”

  Regina pursed her lips. “Well, I don’t know if that will ever be possible, Galgrin. Atmospheric pressure is only about three perce
nt of standard and your people can tolerate about a minimum of ten percent. Melting the ice caps might bring it up to around five. There’s some oxygen locked up in the rocks and soil too, and with some special bacteria we have we might be able to release some of that, but it would still only be another couple of percent. Maybe in some deep valleys the air might get thick enough, but it would be iffy.”

  “Howabout the cold? Damn chilly hereabouts.”

  “At the equator the temperature should go up five or six degrees on average.”

  Galgrin’s mustaches seemed to droop. “Hardly worth all the work,” he grumbled. Regina did not comment that her people would be the ones doing all the work.

  “Well, the only other thing we can really do is try to tap the magma pockets, but we’ve already warned you about the problems with that.”

  “Yeah! Blowin’ us all to bitsy-bits! Nothankya!”

  “Actually, we have located two pockets which might be safely tapped, but your ruling council isn’t convinced to let us try. If we could do those, we’d be looking at another percent or two to the air pressure and a couple of degrees of temperature. You might be able to walk around without a helmet then.”

  “Hmm, might be wortha shot. Thinkya will?”

  “Not up to us, Galgrin. But I think we’re done here. Time to get back to Hijanstan, if you don’t mind.”

  “Don mind atall! Freezin’ me buns off out here!”

  The technicians had all the equipment packed into the shuttle now and Regina and Galgrin climbed aboard. She gave the go-ahead to the pilot and the small spacecraft’s engines roared to life. A minute of medium thrust pushed them into a sub-orbital trajectory that would deposit them back at the city of Hijanstan in about thirty minutes. Galgrin quickly fell asleep and Regina spent the time looking at the planet rolling past. The ice cap was quickly left behind and the gray and dun plains and mountains stretched away to the sharply curved horizon. Regina sighed. Given a free hand and time she could make this planet bloom. The dust and hard rock could turn to green with blue lakes and rivers flowing. She’d done it elsewhere (or at least it would someday be like that—even with these methods the deed took time) and she could do it here.

  But not without killing most of the planet’s inhabitants. There were at least thirty sizable magma pockets which could be tapped, but nearly all of them were too close to the Frecendi domes. Between the shock waves from the nukes, the blasts from the suddenly released magma, and the inevitable earthquakes that would follow, scarcely a single dome would be left intact. And with over a million people here, relocating or evacuating just wasn’t an option. Oh well. It irked her professional pride to only do half a job, but if she could make this place even a bit more friendly to the people here, she would have to be satisfied. There were other planets on this side of the Rift—a great many planets—which she could do a proper job on.

  She pulled out her computer and began reviewing the current version of the Thermal Enhancement Plan. She supposed almost anyone other than a terraformer would call it the bombardment plan since it involved showering a planet with nearly a thousand very large thermonuclear devices, but her profession avoided that sort of terminology. She’d been over the plan a half-dozen times in the two weeks she’d been here, and she always found her thoughts wandering back to Charles Crawford. She missed him. And she was worried about him. Right now the fleet was making frantic preparations to meet the coming Venanci squadron, and when the fight came, Charles would be right in the thick of it. She wished she could be there beside him when it was time—better yet, she wished that he would be here with her when the time came!

  A sudden thought struck and she nearly laughed out loud: suppose there were no Venanci coming? What if they’d set Citrone on her murderous mission and then had second thoughts and canceled the rest of the operation? Or what if there’d been technical problems that had forced them to call it off? Everyone here would be in a panic over nothing! The idea appealed to her very much, but, of course, there was no way to know for sure and they could only prepare for the worst.

  The shuttle’s descent engines activated with a muted roar that startled her out of her pleasant fantasy. They were coming in to land. Hijanstan was a cluster of connected habitation domes, a few were transparent, but most were opaque. She saw one dome which had collapsed; it looked to have happened a long time ago and never been rebuilt. In the short time she had spent dirtside, she’d gotten the impression things were not going too well for the Frecendi. Facilities seemed to be run down and technicians either poorly trained or poorly motivated. The place felt… shabby.

  They landed on a pad of cracked and crumbling ceracrete and Regina went inside the dome for a few minutes to talk with the local officials and say good-bye to Galgrin. They asked her the same questions Galgrin had and she had to give them the same answers. “We’d hoped ya could do more, but anythin’ atall would be welcome,” said one of them.

  “We’ll do what we can, sir,” said Regina. She shook hands with them and headed back to the shuttle. They’ve lost hope, that’s what the problem is. The history she’d learned about the clans told her that the original colony ship had only brought about a thousand of each of the different types of Terraformers, and there was not a great deal of equipment to spare. When they’d arrived here, the Frecendi had chosen to colonize the planet instead of remaining in space with the others. So they’d been dumped here with enough equipment to build a few domes and not much else. The planet did not have much in the way of resources, so trade with the other clans had been limited. To a certain extent, Regina was impressed that the Frecendi had been able to grow as much as they had, although nearly all of their settlements were small mining communities scattered across the globe in search of what metal deposits there were. But it was clear to her that the growth had stopped a long time ago and the Frecendi were in a long, slow decline to extinction if something did not change.

  It was a well-documented pattern, actually, which had happened many times before, back in the Orion Arm. Any society exclusively based in space or restricted to domes on a hostile planet had to devote so much of its resources to life-support, that real growth was extremely difficult. After a while, the growth stopped and the people became satisfied with just maintaining the status quo. And then after a while longer, they couldn’t even do that anymore and the long retreat began. Most people who lived on hospitable worlds never appreciated just what a treasure free life support really was. The space-faring clans in this system were doing better, probably because there was enough out-system trade to maintain a spark of hope. But even they clearly weren’t growing at any great rate. Their low numbers and lack of technical progress were proof. And the Frecendi were cut off from nearly all of whatever progress the others did make.

  Perhaps I can change it. Do something to give them their hope back.

  She studied the TEP all the way back to Bastet, looking for any trick she might have missed. It would only take the relocation of three very small mining outposts to give an adequate safety margin to tap those two magma pockets. And if these other four could be evacuated, we could tap two more! She was still excitedly working out alternate plans when the shuttle drifted into Bastet’s docking bay. She walked through the ship’s corridors to her office, nose nearly pressed to her computer tablet, oblivious to the people scurrying around her.

  “Reggie! There you are!” She looked up with a start. Jeanine was standing there, looking peeved. “Where have you been? Your shuttle docked ten minutes ago!”

  “Oh, just walking and thinking. I’ve got some new ideas for the TEP that I want to… what’s wrong?” The look on Jeanine’s face brought her up short.

  “We just got word from the fleet. Long range sensors have picked up a dozen ships dropping out of hyper.

  “They’re here.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Squadronlord Guilbert Dardas stared at the sensor display and frowned deeply. What it showed made no sense. Or rather, what it showed was comp
letely at odds with what his briefings had led him to expect. If all had gone according to plan, there should have been some faint emissions from the Anderan super-ship, plus a homing beacon set up by the agent aboard. In that case, his orders called for him to rendezvous with the super-ship, debark the security troops, and turn the gate building operation over to Commissioner Hadronal. After that he merely had to provide back-up security to make sure the new serfs stayed in line. A two-year wait until the gate was completed and then a swift trip home to a hero’s welcome by the Queen herself. His genetic code would be given priority and he, himself, could expect another set of enhancements.

  In the event that the agent failed in its mission and the Anderans were fully awake and carrying out their tasks, then his orders were equally clear: deny everything. If the gate could not be seized—or destroyed beyond any hope of repair—then the squadron was to claim that it was merely an exploration expedition which had come, quite by chance, to this star system. It would be an absurd claim considering the millions of other likely stars on the edge of the Rift to which they might have gone, but in all probability the Anderans would be just as eager to avoid a war and the explanation would be accepted, if not believed. In that case, the squadron was to use its modest refining capacity to refuel and then come home again, the way it had come. Dardas did not like the prospect of spending yet another ten years in cold-sleep, but orders were orders and they would be obeyed.

  Except none of his orders seemed to cover the current situation.

  Sensors had quickly picked up a large cluster of contacts which must surely be the Anderans, about two hundred million kilometers away. The level of the readings clearly indicated activity and the expected beacon was missing, so Dardas’s initial conclusion was that the agent’s mission had failed. But in addition there were a great many other things—literally thousands of them—showing up on the sensors spread all over the star system. What did this mean? They were surely not all the Anderans; there were far too many and intercepted radio messages were in codes and languages totally unfamiliar. Was there someone else present here? It was a great puzzle, and Guilbert Dardas had never liked puzzles. Nearly an hour had passed since the squadron emerged from hyperspace and he had sat immobile, pondering in his command chair while his officers cast nervous glances at him. That in itself was annoying, but his flag bridge officers only had level two enhancements and required firm leadership in uncertain situations. He castigated himself for this passive show of weakness.