Rift (2 page)

Reterraforming, Bonhert’s faction said, was all a matter of geoengineering. The geo project could slow the mantle’s convection and deep mantle volcanism by dissipating mantle heat. Geo nanotech was the key. Most people clung to this view, decrying Cyrus Calder’s crackpot starship idea.

But to Cyrus the majority viewpoint was patently foolish. Lithia had sent humanity packing and unraveled nine hundred years of terraforming in a geologic instant. With a tectonic shrug, she had forced their evacuation to the space station—for the few it could accommodate—and year by year became more inhospitable. And as for geoengineering schemes, Lithia would churn nanotech into slag as easily as it converted iron to sauce in its infernal depths. You could try to battle a planet’s tectonic forces, Cyrus always said, but you would lose.

Reeve watched as the great continent of Galileo hove into view, its terran-green Forever Plains veined in blue rivers. And there, cleaving the continent in two, the Rift Valley, that colossal fracture zone of old and new volcanism. Across the land, overlaid in a lacy froth, were the reddish-brown outbreaks of the world’s preferred flora. Like a snake preparing to shed its skin,
the first cracks revealed the new coat beneath, with its unterran red, its unruly growths daring to thrive where Earth-based grafts had failed.

North of the Rift Valley, a smudge of lavender marked the domain of the orthong. The irregular, spreading patch of purples and blues defined a habitat that, over the sixty years since orthong arrival, had grown to be visible from Station with the naked eye. Station telescopes showed the alien habitat as ropy masses, hexagonal lattices, and walls of faceted protrusions, often in shades of lavender, punctuated by vivid yellow, blue, and white. Wherever they had come from, the orthong had brought their flora with them. And underneath this canopy they themselves remained hidden except in glimpses and what little might be learned from the sporadic radio transmissions of the human enclaves. But radio transmissions were more and more infrequent as the claves drifted into ignorance and savagery. What Station learned of the orthong from claver radio was less than scientific, along the lines of,
If you meet an orthong, kill it before it kills you
. Still, the clavers had seen the orthong, and even traded, guardedly, while Station remained utterly isolated.

He gazed along the slope of the hull to catch a last glimpse of the continent where orthong roamed … but a movement on the wheel itself caught his attention. A coldwalker, like himself. In fact, two of them. The helmet had restricted his peripheral vision and now the figures were close enough to notice him. He balled himself up behind the array as tightly as he could, given the suit’s bulkiness, and cursed his luck in choosing this exact time to be out-Station. Switching on his receiver, he scanned all channels. For now, they weren’t talking. They were twenty feet away, partially eclipsed by the space telescope’s primary mirror, but he could still make out, in a flash of sun, B
ONHERT
, G.
on one man’s sleeve. And neither of them wore mag boots, either; they were merely tethered, doing their job—whatever it was—quietly.

A rivulet of acid etched into his stomach. Dear Lord, please let them finish in a hurry and
turn in the other direction
for whatever they had to do. For a few minutes more Reeve had the fine advantage of being sunward of them, and therefore hard to spot with his white suit against white hull. But:
Bonhert
. Damn and damn, to get busted by the Captain himself would mean waste collection duty for weeks, or worse.…

Bonhert was working out a kink in the other walker’s tether, or rather, cutting the tether. But that couldn’t be right. No, there it was again, a flash of a small knife—and by the time Reeve’s brain stumbled into gear, the tether was floating free and Bonhert was shoving the person off. Reeve’s muscles spasmed into action, unfolding him from his crouch, a hopelessly slow movement as the figure glided toward him. There would just be time for him to kick out his line and meet the castaway. He staggered up, and then his face plate was two feet from Tina Valejo’s surprised face. He reached out and she flailed to grasp his hand, but she was slipping beyond reach, cord trailing. Reeve kicked off, playing out his tether, but it was too late. She was moving away, with the radio still silent and she mouthing her shouts to him while he shouted back, “I’ll get help!” Words that filled his helmet, going nowhere. They’d send the scooter out after her. He turned back to see Bonhert disappearing around the curve of Station.

Reeve was on the com, hailing station ops. “This is Reeve Calder, out-Station; send help, emergency. Over.”

A long pause and then, “This had better
not
be Reeve Calder out-Station. What the hell?” It was Brit Nunally, third cousin, and no friend of his.

Reeve blurted out: “Tina Valejo is adrift. She’s falling away; get a scooter in lock four. This is an emergency. And yes, sorry, I’m unauthorized out here.”

“
Tina Valejo
is unauthorized out there. If you’re playing games, Calder, you’re fertilizer. We’ll feed you to the ponics, hear me?”

“No game—she was pushed off, he tried to kill her, and she’s going to be scared shitless, so
hurry
. Please.”

A pause. Com crackled to life again. “You are on your way in-Station, Calder. State your nearest lock.”

“Lock three, Brit.”

“Sir, to you.”

Screwing up his face, he made himself parrot: “Sir.” And while they were playing soldier on parade, Tina was drifting into the void, and hope to the Lord there were no knife rips in her suit.

“By the way, Calder, who pushed Tina off? Looks like you’re the only one out there.”

Reeve held back an instant. Could say,
Station captain, that’s who
. But he wouldn’t. He punched in the command at lock three, looking for Captain Bonhert, who was nowhere in sight. Opening the hatch, he hauled himself into the air lock, sweat lubricating his skin like a sleeve of grease in a piston. After a standard count of five he started to unbuckle the fasteners and ripped off the helmet, just as the panel signaled air pressure and just as the inner hatch swung open. Station guards hauled him into the corridor, making him trip over the suit leggings still clinging around his ankles.

As he fell to his knees, the guards—Kurt Falani and Lin Pao—backed away to let him pull off the suit. At that moment an earsplitting roar screamed down the corridor, and Station shuddered in a way Reeve had never felt before. Alarms clanged. Kurt and Lin Pao dashed away, leaving Reeve on his hands and knees when the second explosion hit. It roared from deep around Station bend, a sickening blast, rippling the
corridor under his knees. Screams echoed down main corridor, now filling with black chemical smoke and running crew.

Reeve coughed as the acrid fumes lanced his throat. There were air packs at emergency stations in the corridor, but everyone was vying for them. Reeve scuttled back to the hatch, punching in pressurization commands and trying to hold his breath until the green light flashed. He scrambled into the air lock, pulling the hatch shut. As Station resounded with thudding feet and muffled shouts, he crammed himself back into his space suit, fixed his helmet in place, and opened the inner hatch again, making his way by the bulkhead rail in the direction of his emergency station in electrical systems, one deck down. Pandemonium met him. Up ahead, a crowd was hammering against the fire wall, which must have slammed across the corridor, separating them from Shuttle Bay One. A vicious, shoving melee ensued. Reeve turned back to try the emergency access panel to the lower decks, but as the panel released, fingers of flames leapt through.

Any minute it would get better. Any minute sprinklers would kick in, fans would vent the smoke, crew would
contain
this thing. They’d drilled for these situations. Fire, explosions, orthong raids—they’d drilled for them all. Everyone had their role and backup role. Every system had two backups. Station couldn’t fail.

Another explosion quaked the deck. He couldn’t hear it, but he felt it, felt Station heave. Rushing now, he headed toward station ops, lights flickering in the corridor. Then they died, and he stared through his visor at utter blackness. Groping at the bulkhead with his gloved hand, he shuffled forward, calling up a mental map of the corridor, counting hatches and servicing panels and bulkhead fittings. He tripped over something. A crew member was down, but there was no time to stop. He plunged on toward ops, thinking
they’d need his suit in there. Somebody had to stay conscious, had to
control
this thing. On com, he scanned all channels, saying, “Station command, Reeve Calder here, delta corridor, heading to ops, over.” Static answered him, and he shuffled on, fighting off cold dread, intent on not overshooting the door.

And then he was standing in front of the operations center. The door was open—Lord, open—the room lit with the strobing light of bursting electronics and dozens of small electric fires. Abandoned. He swallowed, felt the bile trace a groove down to his gut. He heard his voice cracking: “Reeve Calder here, outside ops. Ops is abandoned. Anybody copy?” Static on all channels. Again: “Calder here, anybody working this mess? Anybody?”

And broken up, barely audible, he heard:
“Get down to Bay Two, Reeve. You have twenty seconds. Haul ass, now!”

“Marie?”

“Haul!”

He hauled. Stumbling over fallen crew and debris, he raced as fast as the bulky suit allowed, guiding himself with his right hand along the corridor guide rail, scanning all channels, his voice breaking. “Cyrus, Cyrus, this is Reeve, where are you? Get to Bay Two, Dad, they’re loading the shuttle at Bay Two.…” His mind began tumbling out of control—they were abandoning Station. Lord of Worlds, Station was dying. “Cyrus!” he called, again and again. Where was the bay? He turned in confusion. Then, from behind him, someone was dragging him sideways. He yanked away, struggling—until, in the gloom, he saw emergency lights pulsing, showing B
AY
T
WO
, and Marie Dussault was pulling him across the bay to the ramped hatch opening of the shuttle, its running lights sparkling in preflight mode.

The hatch slammed behind them.

“Secure!” Marie shouted.

“Go, go, go!” someone yelled.

But the cabin was nearly empty. Only five people, including him and Marie.

“No!” Reeve shouted. He ripped off his helmet. “There’s room for more!”

Dana Hart was next to him, and she swung to face him. “No time! Station’s going to blow.”

“No!” Reeve threw back, making his way forward to the cockpit.

And in an instant, he was thrown back against the empty flight seats as the shuttle lurched out of Station. A violent pitch of the craft and the sound of wrenching metal registered in every cell of Reeve’s body. Behind him someone yelled, “She’s breaking up!” And then someone else: “Oh my God. Station … Station … it’s blown to pieces. Lord God.”

Reeve turned to Marie, his voice a hoarse plea: “Cyrus … is he onboard?”

Beside him, Marie’s lined face was ghoulishly white. A long, slow shake of her head confirmed his fears. “No. He didn’t make it.”

In the gloom of the cabin, someone was sobbing. Overhead, a cabin screen projected the unthinkable: A huge section of Station lay twisted into an odd angle, ejecting smoke and debris. And even as they watched, Station quaked and sundered, separating from the central hub casing. Reeve heard a moan escape from his chest as an incandescent explosion engulfed the hub and remaining structure, obliterating Station and life itself. The flash of Station’s demise reflected off a second shuttle, receding fast, downward to Lithia.

Over the speakers came the panicked shout: “We’re hit.… Secure all gear, we’re going into a tumble.…”

Reeve buckled in as the shuttle fell into a gut-wrenching
yaw. It was all over. This was the end of it. Now they would follow the Station to oblivion. Outside, the hull roared with reentry burn and the craft shuddered endlessly, filling his ears with thunder. He never knew death would be so loud or so welcome.

2
 

1