Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  There was an ambulance outside, and two fire engines, and firemen with a hose watering down the first level of the house, but flames were still flickering out of the windows of the second story.

  A woman in front of the house, was wailing and wringing her hands like it was the end of the world.

  I thought, Where’s Dad? My heart stuttered a beat… and suddenly there he was, coming out of the burning house with a bundle in his arms.

  He collapsed on the ground beside and the bundle tumbled open. It was Maria, and we all ran to them, the firemen, the crying woman, my mother, my brother and me.

  Later I found out that my father had run to the home right after the fire department had been called, to see if he could help. He’d broken a window and ran inside to find the woman’s daughter who was still upstairs, carried her past fire downstairs to safety.

  I remembered the firemen gently pulling me away, and my father on the ground, and his back, and arms, and everything above his chest burned from wrapping the child and shielding her from the fire.

  On his arm, the intricate tattoo was obscured by his burned flesh, but I could still read part of it:

  ARDUA

  As I grew up I dreamed about it, that marred tattoo, and I would wake up thinking: No stars. No stars.

  I remembered my mother clapping her hand over my mouth to stop me screaming, and how my father looked up before he lost consciousness, looked at me, and grimaced a smile, to show he was okay when he wasn’t.

  “You do what you have to do,” he said to me.

  I remembered the sparks from the fire, sputtering out through smoke from the burning roof, like fireworks.

  * * *

  You do what you have to do.

  The ATV’s dust trail disappeared in the distance.

  I got up, one of my legs nearly useless, bleeding. Jake had ripped his shirt and was tying it around his bleeding arm. We both stumbled to Amahle. Jake let out an anguished cry, and I started crying.

  The rhino was lying on her side, legs stretched stiffly out from her body. Her massive body, clad in its natural armor—so imposing, so noble, so regal in life—was splattered with mud and blood. And her head, so grotesquely disfigured without its scimitar horn, lolled back into the soil, eyes vacant, unaware of its own desecration.

  Jake was back at the jeep, yelling into the radio, but only Mark answered, back at the downed spinner. There wouldn’t be any help. Not until it’s too late.

  Ardua.

  I dragged myself to the back of the jeep to get my pack, and slung it to the downed rhino. If I had to do this, I had to do it quickly, while she was still alive. I couldn’t think of paperwork or protocol, not at a time like this.

  I knelt beside Amahle. There was blood everywhere, from the wounds on her body, around the hacked remainder of her horn. I was covered in it, her blood mingling with my own.

  No stars. No stars.

  From my CIRCE pack I prepared a collection kit. I was shaking as I caressed Amahle’s cheek, then I pried open her mouth. With a scalpel and tweezers, I took a tiny piece of her tongue, about the size of a grain of rice. I tried with all my strength to keep the sample steady, and finally deposited it into a collection vial filled with a cryoprotective solution. I sealed and labeled the vial, and inserted it into the portable cooling unit in the pack.

  Jake was beside me now. “Mark got through to base camp,” he said. “They’re coming. We’ll be fine.”

  I shook my head, clenched my lips, and repeated the process for other samples, back-up measures, from other parts of her—gums, soft skin, hide, abdominal section.

  Finally, after a few moments, I was done. I fell to the ground, embracing Amahle, and I wept.

  Part III

  Merlin

  For Immediate Broadcast M4 60 74

  Impact Simulation Identifies Possible Global Events

  In support of the United Earth Force’s Interplanetary Defense Coordination Committee (IDCC), engineers and scientists are putting together three-dimensional models and utilizing one of the UEF’s most powerful hyper-computers to produce simulations of hypothetical compact impact scenarios.

  The results from these studies will help first responders and other emergency services identify and make decisions on how best to react to comet impact related events. This research will be shared with international agencies who develop response plans for potential damage to infrastructure, as well as for public warnings, assessment of evacuation times, and other similar options for the benefit of the public.

  High-resolution simulations of impacts involving primary and secondary comet masses, covering a comprehensive range of mass sizes, compositions, and velocities, were run on the Fischer hyper-computer using UEF’s Archimedes3D modeling software by experts from the IDCC along with researchers from the Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

  The team ran large-scale simulations of the Chekhov asteroid event, which impacted the Russian city in the twenty-first century, causing widespread damage of building infrastructure and injuring several thousand people.

  These large-scale simulations were run on the Fischer system with a view to producing a number of impact scenarios in a time period that is orders of magnitude faster than other current three-dimensional numerical modeling systems used for analysis. The Archimedes3D system allowed the UEF and Ames team to model the detailed fluid flow that occur during the melting and vaporization of the body in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the concomitant effects on a terrestrial impact.

  11

  Gazelles

  Cubewano. A passing word from a newscast on South African radio, just before the world ended for one eastern black rhino. A small, passing, unimportant part of that day.

  The reserve sent out a recovery operation that evening, gathering up the dead and the injured. I heard it again in a segment on the evening news that day, lying in a recovery room in the health unit attached to the game reserve.

  Cubewano. Finally, it clicked, because the reports began to include references to the Ashitaka. QB1-o. The Kuiper belt object. The Comet.

  The United Nations had previously agreed on a plan to accelerate the availability of civilian transport ships, either new or re-purposed military transports, and to initiate a program to construct subterranean silos for those unable to leave. Not much progress was made in the months after that announcement—at least, not much that the ordinary person could point to as progress.

  Most people missed a tabloid report, at that time, that claimed the G20 Summit scheduled for the following year had been officially re-located from Berlin to Valles Marineris on Mars. The article went on to speculate that interplanetary transports were being readied for the Summit that could hold not just the G20 leaders, but the top echelons of government, as well as their immediate families.

  Most people missed that the Board of Directors of some of the world’s largest conglomerates—Weyman Dynamics, Yudovich Communications, Otani Shudan Life Sciences—had re-scheduled upcoming General Meetings, Board meetings, and committee meetings off-world to Valles Marineris, to MetropolisX, to Medusae Fossae, to Origin City, or any number of the inner colonies.

  Most people missed that commercial and civilian launches for industrial cargo destined for the inner colonies were being quietly re-scheduled to later dates in favor of personnel transport. New payload rates were being put in place, with exchange rates suddenly favorable in Nether, an off-world cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, or Marscoin, forked from BitLitecoin. The elite, of course, were the only ones who could afford the new human payload rates.

  As the news vids streamed some of these launches, I thought of gazelles, scattering as the lioness leaps from the bush, fleeing from the watering hole they’d believed was a haven.

  Most people were placated by government reassurances, and had taken a wait-and-see attitude, anticipating the mission status reports for the UES Ashitaka, a starship with the only mass accelerator in the system with enough pow
er to move the Comet from its current collision course with Earth.

  The official updates kept that hope—or was it folly?—alive for months. The Ashitaka had indeed re-deployed towards an interception of the Comet. It was now eight months away, six months away, weeks away. We watched, listened, prayed for the salvation that was to come.

  So this was the news about the cubewano: Before the Ashitaka could do anything to carry out its mission, a flotilla of zook warships and interceptors, originating from either Ganymede or Callisto, had engaged the Earth ship and its escorts, the UES Chihiro and the UES Horikoshi.

  The Horikoshi? That had been the first I’d heard that Paul’s ship was involved in the mission. Of course not, that would have been a mission he wouldn’t have alluded to at all in his messages to Mom or myself.

  The battle between the zooks and the United Earth Force ships was a heated but uneven exchange, and in the aftermath of the ambush, all the zook ships had been destroyed.

  Hidden inside that victory over the zook ships was a terrible loss. The Ashitaka’s mass accelerator had been irreparably damaged, and its own binary propulsion drive had been rendered inoperable, with weeks of repair in store.

  Some said that the destruction of the orbital weapon and the ship’s drive had been the objective of the zook ships in the first place, that it had been a suicide mission to accomplish, and that knowing the risk, they had still gone ahead with the attack—a strategic chess move in the middle-game of the Colonial War. It didn’t matter why.

  The Ashitaka had failed.

  12

  A Great Whale

  The weeks lost in repairing their binary drive meant the Ashitaka would not catch up with the Comet in time to alter its trajectory. No other ship in the UES fleet had the capability to move the Comet. No bang, all whimper.

  Over the weeks that I lay in bed recuperating from my wounds, I had watched as the hospital news channel relayed scenes from around the world—of resignation, of anger, of panic, of despair.

  In London, in Beijing, in Moscow, in Tokyo, in Washington, in Seoul, in Berlin, in all the major capitals of the world people were taking to the streets, clamoring for the capital ships, for the civilian transports.

  Sporadic rioting was taking place, and looting was being reported in city centers all across the globe. Police and militia were doing their best to quell the unrest, mainly directed by governments that were, essentially, no longer on the planet.

  More than the discovery of the Comet eight years ago, more than the announcement three years ago that impact was not just possible but probable, the news of the Ashitaka failure—that was what finally made the threat real.

  That was the day people began talking about the comet the way they talk about the Moon, linked inexorably to Earth. The cubewano, Gabriel’s Comet, became simply this: the Comet.

  * * *

  I told my mother they needed to operate. The doctors determined that I’d need exoskeleton implants on my legs to assist my walking, as well as to stimulate and re-grow the nerves so that I’d be able to walk on my own again. It was a standard procedure, so I told her she didn’t need to worry.

  As I recuperated, my mother recorded poetry, sent them to me so that I could listen to them when I had time. Her voice, expressive and familiar, carried me through recovery.

  Savannah

  A current crosses the darkness,

  stirring the last dry shreds of life.

  Upwind, a Buick stalks the edge of the pavement,

  her voice a gentle rumble in her throat.

  Her eyes simmer like the smoke snarling up

  from a hammered anvil.

  The neon tattoos her skin so it is

  striped orange, a strobed tiger, crouched, impatient.

  Feather and ivory. A slow, livid burning

  in the undergrowth.

  Just under the awnings they flash phosphorescence

  flamingo flamingo and then vanish into air.

  From the antlered shadows a drunkard lurches.

  His legs spindle under him like a newborn gazelle.

  The window blinds drift and flutter,

  hovering wings.

  Somewhere on the savannah something watches

  with incandescent eyes.

  * * *

  I listened to yet another analysis of the Ashitaka mission failure as I navigated a course around the passenger waiting area at O.R. Tambo International Airport. I could walk now, an exoskeleton implant assisting my damaged legs.

  On the screens in the waiting area, a CNN newscaster reported that, while nearly all G20 governments had transported a core of people to the inner colonies, many leaders did stay Earthside. I took some solace in video of my own Prime Minister Trudeau walking among Canadians on Parliament Hill.

  I’d hit the head of the line snaking toward the boarding gate, when my phone lights up. Paul again, I think, but I have just enough time to see the terse summary—She’s not doing well—before the plane’s jammers shut down my signal and I lose the rest of the message.

  The commercial flight to Toronto would last over twenty hours. I’d missed the freedom of the air. I remember wondering how soon I could pass the medicals again—with my injuries—and resume my own flights.

  Outside the window, the clouds drifted like froth at the top of waves, white like icebergs in a dark sea. I couldn’t help thinking of the hidden world beneath it, the desperation of humanity, and the serenity and innocence of the natural world, not knowing what was coming next.

  There was an artist from Canada’s eastern coast, David Blackwood, who crafted one of the most evocative lithographs I’ve ever seen. In Fire Down on the Labrador, a color etching and aquatint, fishermen in a lifeboat flee a ship engulfed in flames of red. The scene of desperation is framed by towers of icebergs in the background, while beneath the waters, and taking up most of the composition, a great whale floats, serene, unmoving, unmoved.

  When the plane landed and I passed the arrival gates, I updated the message. I’d thought it was about Mom, but it isn’t. Instead, it’s Chloe Cotter, one of the staff at CIRCE, giving me an update on Leia, the Grevy's zebra I’d found and brought to Glen Eden almost twelve years ago.

  13

  The Call of Ibis

  The Grevy’s zebra is the largest wild equine species. Its lineage is the most ancient, the modern form arising in the Pleistocene; it still retains its original appearance. It’s taller than either the pains or mountain zebra, with a large, long head, elongated ears, a brown muzzle, an erect mane that extends the length of its back, and narrow stripes.

  It’s also the most threatened of the zebra species.

  Hunting was the major factor in the early decline of the Grevy’s zebra, followed by habitat loss, the displacement of the grass species that it depends on for grazing by invasive species, and competition with livestock for scarce watering holes.

  Grevy's zebra can go without water for up to five days—but lactating females must drink every other day in order to maintain milk production. So habitat loss has resulted in high foal mortality among the wild herds.

  While there are estimated to be less than a thousand individuals in the wild, mostly in Kenya and sparsely in Ethiopia, there’s been some success with captive herds, in places such as at Glen Eden, where several naturally-born foals have been birthed.

  Still, high foal mortality due to the primary environmental factors remains one of the major threats to the species’ survival. To counter this, conservation biologists do research on semen collection, freezing, and artificial insemination.

  Leia, as with several of the animals at Glen Eden, was a result of the conservation research at CIRCE.

  * * *

  It was eleven in the morning when I swung through the arrival gates at Pearson International’s Terminal 1. I scanned the faces of the crowd for my mother. Instead, there in the front row was Chloe, my colleague at CIRCE, cleaning her glasses.

  I shouted her name, and she waved.

&nb
sp; “Your mother called,” she said when I joined her. “Asked me to make sure you got back all right. I’m sorry about Amahle.”

  We hugged. “My mother, how’s she doing?”

  Chloe’s lips thinned. “The same I guess. She’s a strong one.” She put her arm around me as we walked to the taxi area outside.

  “Where to?” asked the taxi.

  “Glen Eden Zoo,” I said. I rang Mom’s office and it went straight to voice mail. As a legal assistant at Gatewood Campbell Watanabe, Mom didn’t answer her phone she was at a meeting with one of the lawyers or a client. I left a message, told her I was fine and that I’d pick her up as usual after work unless she called me first.

  As soon as I got off the machine, my phone buzzed. Paul, as usual:

  See you later, Zara-gator.

  I deleted the message, put the phone away.

  Chloe was telling me about Leia. I’d found her when she was only several months old, so she was approaching thirteen years now. On the surface this was good, but she was beginning to show symptoms of age.

  What was concerning was that, while in the wild, Grevy's zebra life spans were about twenty years or slightly shorter, but in captivity lifespans for naturally-born zebra were as long as forty years. Leia was not naturally-born. She was a cloned Grevy’s, grown from embryo implanted in a mountain zebra, and somewhere in the process CIRCE hadn’t quite gotten it right yet.