Armand Baltazar - Diego and the Rangers of the Vastlantic

Prologue

Our world did not end the way you might expect. It wasn’t caused by any of the things you hear so much about today: the wars, the unrest, the changing climate. It wasn’t our arrogance, our pride, our selfishness. No, in the end, it was our creativity and brilliance. We thought we were making history by changing the future.

Turns out, we did both.

It came from beyond the stars, a cosmic event we could never have predicted, a rupturing of the space-time continuum that tore apart our entire existence. Not just our present, but our past, our future—everything that humans had been or would be. Gone. And what remained was a void, echoing with the faint whispers of a world that no longer existed.

But that was not the end.

Humankind was granted a second chance.

Out of the great silence, the earth was reborn, but like nothing we had ever fathomed. Dinosaurs roamed the great plains beside woolly mammoths and buffalo herds a million strong. Great steamships and ancient sailboats crossed the harbors among the legs of towering robots. The past, the present, the future—all thrown together. The continents reshaped, oceans re-formed, and mountains sculpted anew. This was the world after the Time Collision.

The hundred million or so humans who survived the cataclysm came from all points in time and found themselves scattered across the planet. The people of the civilized past were called Steam Timers, the people from the in-between times were called Mid Timers, and the people from the future came to be called the Elders. As these refugees from different eras struggled to survive in a dangerous world without order, conflict was inevitable. It was not long before this savage yet beautiful new landscape became a backdrop for war.

After years of fighting, the desperate people finally saw the pointlessness of hurting one another and realized they needed to work together. They declared an end to what came to be known as the Chronos War and grudgingly united to form governments, laws, and communities.

Their fragile peace allowed the surviving cities to rebuild and countries to be remade. Children were born, and the mysteries and wonders of this new world were explored.

But the darkness had not been vanquished. Despite all of humanity’s efforts, there were still those roaming the undiscovered wilds who would never submit to peace and order, and who would strike down anyone who stood between them and the power . . .

. . . to make the world their own.

CHAPTER ONE

A Dream of Flight

On the morning of his thirteenth birthday, Diego Ribera glimpsed his future in a dream. It was a dream he’d had before, one that he feared, and it always began with his father calling to him through darkness.

“Diego. We need more light.”

Santiago’s voice echoed through the vast workshop. He stood high on faded blue scaffolding among the enormous robots that ringed the room. He wielded a wrench the size of his arm, and was leaning dangerously far into the oily gears of a massive shoulder socket. The head, arms, and legs of the robot were spread around the floor in various stages of completion.

Diego sat on a stool, gazing at one of the robot’s enormous eyes perched on the center workbench. He’d been studying the geometric kinks of its iris. It functioned like a Mid-Time camera aperture. Diego imagined the steel plates sliding open in sequence like flower petals. He pictured the tiny pistons firing one by one, how they connected to the steam processors. He seemed to know how these mechanics would work, sensed their purpose. He wondered if this was how it felt to be his father.

Everyone in New Chicago called Santiago a genius: the greatest mind of the new age. He was a builder, an inventor, a visionary. Some had even called him a charlatan, claiming that his creations were so ingenious that there must be some kind of trickery or fraud at work, but those people had never seen Santiago when he was engrossed in his work.

“Diego, did you hear me?”

“Yeah, sorry, Dad.” Diego slid off the stool.

All at once he was standing at one of the workshop’s towering windows.

Moved without moving.

I’m dreaming , Diego thought, though the awareness was fleeting. The edges of his vision swam in watery darkness.

He yanked the heavy curtains aside. Brilliant morning light spilled into the room.

“Is that enough?” Diego asked over his shoulder.

No answer.

“Dad?”

Diego turned. He found himself back in the middle of the room again. . . .

But Dad was gone. So was the robot he’d been working on. And all the others. No scaffolding, the workshop floor empty in all directions.

Except for the table where Diego had been sitting. The robot eye had also vanished, but now something far more interesting had appeared in its place, gleaming in the golden sunlight.

A gravity board.

Five feet long, made of alder wood, Kevlar, and chrome, and decorated in red and white stripes. The portable steam backpack and navigating gloves lay beside it. Of all his father’s wondrous inventions, the gravity boards were Diego’s favorite. He and his friend Petey had flown them around the workshop on many occasions.

And yet the sight of the board filled him with worry: he’d had this dream before.

The board always appeared right after Dad vanished.

There was danger here, something he couldn’t quite grasp.

“Diego.”

“Dad?” Diego peered into the shadows. But that hadn’t sounded like his father. “Who’s there?”

The disquiet grew in his belly. This may have been a dream, but his fear felt all too real.

He spied a silhouette in the dark space between two windows. The figure stepped into the morning light. Not his father. Shorter. A girl? It was hard to tell. She was wearing thick goggles and an aviator’s cap. She looked about his age.

“Who are you?” Diego asked.

The girl stood motionless. When she spoke again, her mouth didn’t move, her voice instead echoing in Diego’s mind:

Fly .

Then she vanished.

A gust of air.

Diego spun to see the girl leaping out the window.

“No, don’t!” Diego rushed over. He gazed down at the bustling street ten stories below, but the girl wasn’t lying broken on the train tracks, nor floating faceup in the canal. Instead, she was speeding away through the air, on a gravity board of her own.

Fly!

The voice burned between Diego’s temples. He had to move. Had to act.

Diego grabbed the gravity board from the bench. He slung the steam pack over his shoulders. The heaviness of the miniature brass boiler and pressure converter threw him off balance, but he got his feet under him and ran for the window. He slipped on the thick leather gloves—covered in dials and fastened to the pack by slim hoses. He attached the power gauge regulator, flicked switches, and heard the familiar hiss as the boiler cycled up—