Патрик Томлинсон: Children of the Divide

Children of the Divide

CHILDREN OF A DEAD EARTH BOOK III

Patrick S. Tomlinson

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

This book is dedicated to the rebel living inside all of us.

The naive dreamer who risks all

for a chance to build a better world.

Find yours. Let them run.

Long fight ahead.

I’ve got your six.

And I’m really fucking cranky.

One

“That’s not supposed to be there,” Jian Feng remarked as a small handheld fire extinguisher tumbled past his face and gently bounced off one of the shuttle’s cockpit windows.

“Goddammit.” Jian checked the countdown timer. Eighty seconds to undock. He unlatched his restraints and grabbed the bright red cylinder out of the air. “I said secure the cabin!”

“Sorry, commander,” one of the harvester techs said from the back of the split-level flight deck. “I think I bumped the latch with my foot.”

Jian shook his head. He pushed off from his chair hard enough to float to the rear bulkhead, then reoriented and kicked off to where the offending tech sat strapped into her seat. He waved the bottle at her face.

“Technician Madeja. Do you really want this banging around in here while we’re burning under six gees?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Do you want the top to snap off and send it flying around the cabin like a missile, striking control panels, breaking windows?”

“No. Of course not.”

Jian put it in her hand. “Then you’re going to hold onto it.”

“Sir? Shouldn’t I secure it in its cradle?”

“You should have. But you didn’t, so now you’re going to hold it.”

The tech swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Both hands, don’t let go until after we’re coasting again.” Under their six gee burn, the little red can of inert gas would go from three kilos to eighteen pushing down on the tech’s chest. Certainly not enough to keep her from breathing or crack any ribs, but heavy enough to make the next few minutes an uncomfortable and embarrassing lesson.

Jian returned to his chair just as the thirty-second burn warning sounded.

“A little hard on the tech, weren’t you?” his copilot, Kirkland, asked.

“Not as hard as that canister would’ve hit me in the head if I hadn’t spotted it. Maybe next time she’ll remember to secure the bloody cabin.”

Kirkland shrugged. “Your ship.” They’d gone through flight school together. He’d come in a few points behind her on the final tests, but he’d drawn the first command billet. Jian knew her well enough to know she was a little salty about it, but she was professional enough not to let it show.

Jian was still fumbling with his straps when Flight Control’s voice burst through the cockpit speakers. “Fifteen seconds to burn, Atlantis . Board is green. You are cleared for departure.”

“Roger that,” Jian said. He glanced at the red command stripe on his skinsuit’s shoulder. It was the first time he’d worn it. If this milk run of a mission went to plan, it wouldn’t be the last. “We’re buckled up and ready to transfer local control. Switching over… Now.” Jian pressed the button that flipped navigational control over to the shuttle from his console to the Ark’s traffic control computers, a necessity while they were still so close to the ship and its elevator ribbon. Any mistake this close had the potential to do tremendous damage and set back the Trident’s development plan by months, even years.

“We have the ball. T-Minus five seconds to undock. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.”

On the count of zero, the mechanical latches that held the shuttle Atlantis in place among the small forest of other shuttles released. Maneuvering thrusters gently pushed the shuttle away from its nest in the aviary on the outside of the Ark’s engineering module. They drifted away at less than a meter per second, slowly revealing the immense bulk of the first and only interstellar generation ship mankind had ever built. It was thirteen kilometers of aluminum, steel, and carbon composites, down from sixteen kilometers after its stardust shield had been ejected in preparation for insertion into Gaia orbit eighteen years ago. Behind them was the reactor bulb, which held a pair of fusion reactors whose size was matched only by their thirst.

Which was why the harvester techs were hitching a ride on his boat. One of the Helium-3 harvesters had gotten stuck trolling through the regolith of Gaia’s small moon, Varr, and bent an axle. Which was a hard thing to do in three percent gravity, but that had just been their run of luck as of late.

“ Atlantis ,” Flight Control said, “I have Ark Actual on the line.”

Jian held back a sigh. He knew the pep-talk call from the captain was inevitable, he just wished it wasn’t also coming from his father.

“Put him through,” Jian said.

“Mission Commander Feng,” Captain Chao Feng said in a booming voice. “This is Ark Actual. On behalf of the crew, and everyone on both ends of the tether, I wish you good luck, and Godspeed.”

“Thank you, captain. We won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t, son.”

Oh lord, here it comes.

Chao’s voice took on a softer, more nurturing tone. “Your mother would have been very proud of you, Jian.”

I sure wish I could’ve heard it from her directly, Dad , is what Jian managed not to say, either aloud or into his plant. “Roger that, Actual. Atlantis out,” he said instead, in a curt, professional voice only a few degrees warmer than the empty space on the other side of the shuttle’s hull.

By then, they’d drifted past the invisible line that marked the minimum safe maneuvering zone, where their thrusters and main rocket motors could operate at full power without worry about damage to the Ark’s hull. Thrusters at the shuttle’s nose and wingtips fired, spinning it around and away from the Ark, bringing the white, blue, and lavender jewel of Gaia herself into view. Sitting as they were in geosynchronous orbit, the planet could be viewed in its entirety. As consolation prizes went, it was pretty spectacular.

In the eighteen years since mankind had put down stakes, they’d mapped the entire surface, from its low, rolling mountains and endless windblown plains, to its deep valleys and canyons, extending all the way down to the craggy sea beds of its oceans. Over sixty thousand species of plants and animals had already been described. And although the old biome wasn’t nearly as diverse as Earth at her end, it was expected that number would continue to grow for generations.

Reaching out from the Ark, the gleaming carbon ribbon of the space elevator streaked all the way down to the planet’s surface like an impossibly long cat whisker. At its base, the bustling hub of human civilization, Shambhala, went about another day, the majority of its fifty thousand plus inhabitants blissfully unaware of all of the work happening in orbit to keep them alive and in comfort, or the risks being endured on their behalf.