***
Over the next eighteen years the few surviving humans built the town of Exile roughly a four day hike away from the ruins of Discovery city. The military has deemed them irreversibly contaminated by the radiation pouring out of the rift and quarantined the planet. Supply ships drop necessary items every six months and science teams do yearly surveys but no one is allowed contact with the refugees. The rift has begun to shrink as the dimensional barrier slowly repairs itself and the demons have for the most part retreated back to the other side having found that they weaken if they travel too far from the rift.
Faust has struggled to raise his two children alone having lost Felicity when she died giving birth to Daemon their son. Faust had argued against naming him Daemon but in the end he felt he had to honor Felicity’s decision. The first few years had been the hardest but as Angelica got old enough to help things became easier. Faust loves his son but the evil emanating from the rift is making him less human and more monster as he gets older. Only Angelica seems able to calm him when he loses his temper.
1
“I still don’t understand why Dad hates me so much.”
“Dad doesn’t hate you; he’s just trying to teach you right from wrong.”
“It was only a raccoon; it’s not like it was someone’s pet or anything.”
“It doesn’t matter. There was no reason for you to kill it, especially the way you did.” Angelica Grayson shivered at the memory of the poor raccoon’s twisted corpse.
“Dead is dead. What’s the difference how something dies as long as it didn’t suffer?”
“You broke almost every bone in its body! Of course it suffered,” Angelica snapped back, exasperated at her brother for arguing with her.
“Thirty lashes with the belt was enough punishment. He didn’t have to double my chores for two weeks,” Daemon complained as he swung his ax, slicing through a limb of the tree he’d just finished cutting down, a genetically enhanced variant of the old Earth maple, engineered to grow faster and healthier than its ancestors, but it was shorter, with a thicker trunk because of the slightly higher gravity on Endeavor.
Angelica hopped off the log she’d been sitting on and posed in an imitation of her brother. She was six feet tall with the body of an athlete, but she still looked small compared to Daemon’s muscle-bound six feet seven inches, two hundred-eighty pounds. “The only reason you got the extra chores was your own comment after your whippin’.” She had a hard time keeping from laughing as she mimicked Daemon’s voice. “Okay, Dad, I’m ready, start any time.”
They both laughed at the memory of their father’s frustration.
“He’s probably never going to beat you with a belt again.”
“Yeah, next time he’ll just shoot me in the butt with a load of rock salt.” Daemon chuckled at the thought. “But I’m eighteen. I’m old enough to be on my own. He doesn’t have the right to stop me from going to town,” Daemon complained, revisiting the true source of his frustration.
“Yeah, right. You wouldn’t last a week before you’d be back here looking for something to eat. I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with going to town. It’s not that big a deal and the people there aren’t even friendly. Dad doesn’t let you go to town because he knows someone there is going to take one look at you and want to fight just to prove he’s tougher than you.”
“I know you keep telling me that, but I’ve fought Rift demons. I’m not afraid of some townsfolk.”
“It’s not you we’re worried about; we’re worried you’ll lose your temper and kill someone. I love you, but you can be scary when you lose your temper. Look at what you did to the raccoon.”
The words hurt Daemon more than any beating his father could give him. The anger and resentment faded away, replaced by shame. “You know I would never hurt you or Dad.” He didn’t want to talk about his temper, so he returned to cutting the limbs off the tree.
Angelica could tell she had upset him so she just stood silently watching him as he cut the limbs from the tree, awed at the ease with which he cut limbs the width of her leg with a single swing of his ax.
Daemon wished she’d leave him alone for a while. He finally turned to her. “Could you get me a drink and something to eat? I have a lot of chores I need to finish before Dad gets home.”
“Sure, what do you want?”
“Surprise me.” He replied over his shoulder as he picked up the tree trunk and started dragging it to the log pile.
How could he admit to Angelica that he’d killed the raccoon by accident? The stupid thing had startled him while he was taking out the trash and he had kicked at it out of reflex. He hadn’t meant to send it flying into the side of the barn. Dad had been right that there was no excuse for hitting the raccoon so hard, and he was worried Daemon might hit Angelica like that if she ever startled him. Daemon knew he could seriously hurt someone if he hit them full strength, but how could he convince his father he would never hit Angelica? They had learned years ago that they could tell when the other was close by, and how they were feeling, so it was impossible for his sister to startle him like the raccoon had.
Daemon stopped at the log pile and dropped the end of the trunk. He shifted positions to the center of the log and squatted down, grabbing the two-foot-diameter log and heaved it up onto the pile as he stood up. He looked around until he spotted the next tree his father had marked for removal. He picked up his ax and waved to Angelica, who had just left the house.
She met him at the tree with a canteen and a basket. “Here you go.” She passed him the canteen.
Daemon could tell she had a surprise for him but he couldn’t tell what it was until he took a big gulp of vinegar from the canteen. “You call me evil? That was nasty,” he said when he was finally able to talk.
“You did tell me to surprise you.”
“What’s in the basket, wood chips and dirt?”
“No,” she said, still giggling, as she started to unload the basket. She handed him a bottle of beer and a sandwich.
Daemon sat down to have his snack, setting the beer to the side. He sniffed the sandwich and took a bite: roast venison from last night’s supper. “Dad isn’t going to be happy when he finds a beer missing. It’s going to be a couple weeks before the trader shows up from the valley.”
“I’ll tell him I drank it, unless of course you want to drink the rest of the vinegar?” Angelica shot him an evil grin.
“You can always get a replacement when you’re in town later. You’re going to see Jake, aren’t you? Dad won’t be back from hunting until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Jake is none of your business and I got a feeling Dad will be home early. I’ve been getting a bad feeling lately. Things around here are about to get crazy in a bad way.”
“That’s pretty foreboding. Can you at least tell if we’re going to be all right?”
“No, and that’s what’s worrying me the most.”
Daemon stepped over to comfort his sister. She had always gotten psychic vibes before major events were about to happen. Most of the time, she could tell who was involved and had at least an idea about what was going to happen. Daemon looked around as he gently hugged her, scanning the area for any threat that might be the causing her the worry.
2
Captain Philip Stevenson sat calmly in the co-pilot’s seat on the Bridge, wondering how Lady Luck was going to screw with him on this trip. He hoped it wasn’t going to be anything major, but he had enough experience to know some amount of bad luck was inevitable. It didn’t look like it was going to be trouble with the orbital defense platforms; in another few minutes they’d be safely under their firing arc and he could tell Mac to power up the engines. He should have known better, because as soon as you start thinking about what can go wrong something always does.
“We just got pinged by a proximity sensor,” Stacey stated calmly. “I am checking the source now.” Stacey looked too small to be working the sensor console; at barely five fee
t tall and less than one hundred pounds she looked more like she should be in school than piloting a space ship. Her delicate fingers raced across the console, stopping only to wipe a few rogue strands platinum-blond hair away from her face.
The seconds it took Stacey to locate and identify the source of the threat seemed like hours to the captain, and when Stacey finally spoke again it was definitely not what he wanted to hear.
“Bleen! Proximity mine, range one hundred miles and closing. She’s locked on to us.”
The captain hadn’t waited for the full report before he reached for the alarm. He thanked Mac again for his ingenuity as he hit the lever releasing compressed air into the alarm system. Old-fashioned air horns started blaring all over the ship. His next priority was to try to pilot his ship with the small chemical thruster rockets Mac had mounted to the hull. They weren’t going to do much, but hopefully they would be enough to buy him a little distance.
The unexpected blast from the air horn sent Sara out of her seat and the manual she had been reading flying. She was already running for the main engineering control panel when she heard Mac crash to the floor—he’d overturned his chair when he was startled awake. Sara activated the defensive shields as soon as she got to the console, not that they would be much help with only battery power.
Mac had just gotten to his feet when the concussion wave hit and sent him stumbling across the engine room.
On the Bridge, Stacey screamed in pain when her sensor console exploded, sending sparks flying. The mine had been armed with a nuclear warhead, and had detonated just eighty miles from the ship. Normally, that would have been a relatively harmless hit but without the defense screens up, the electromagnetic pulse shot through the sensor system, overloading and destroying it. The shockwave sent the ship rolling out of control.
The captain fought to regain control of the ship.
Sara was able to stay standing by holding onto the main control console. She moved to the auxiliary control console once Mac finally made it to her, where she worked at getting the power plant back online. The reactor was still warm so it wouldn’t take long before it started producing much needed power. She noted that Mac had sealed his suit, so she took the time to do the same. She finished bringing the auxiliary systems online that would be needed to get the reactor working and then started getting other critical systems operational. When she got to the communications system, she got a malfunction message: The ship’s antenna was damaged and not responding.
“Mac, what the hell was that?”
“How should I know? How close to planet are we?” Mac said as he nursed the controls, trying to get power to the drives.
“I think we’re close, it’s been—” Sara stopped as the captain’s voice came over the intercom.
“Mac, how long before you can get power to the drives?”
“It’ll be at least three minutes before the reactor starts producing power. How long before the platforms open up on us?”
“I’m not sure. Should be five minutes, but they might start shooting early since we’ll be below their firing arc before that. So forget everything else and get me drives now! I’ll try to contact them. See if I can distract their control computers.”
Sara wasn’t sure she should interrupt, but decided the captain needed to know so she activated the intercom at her station. “Captain, the antenna was damaged. We have no way to transmit a signal.”
“Boija! Lady Luck is really doing a number on us.”
Stevenson switched channels on the intercom to med bay. “Nelson, Stacey needs your help on the Bridge. She has some pretty bad burns to her hands and face and is barely conscious.”
“On my way, Captain.”
The next few minutes were a blur of action for Sara and Mac as they worked to channel every bit of power they could to the drives.
The captain used the chemical thrusters and what little drive power Mac was giving him to try to maneuver his unresponsive ship. He tried to communicate with the nearest platform but that was useless without the antenna. He thought they just might make it, when an energy bolt ripped through the ship’s weakened shields and sliced into the port side.
This time luck was with him, though: The energy bolt had been slightly deflected by the shields so it didn’t hit full force. The bolt only lasted a fraction of second but in that time it cut a hole straight through the ship. Airtight doors slammed shut and emergency valves started closing to seal off the affected areas. The impact helped push the ship below the defense platforms firing arc so its next shot missed—by less than a yard, but it did miss.
“How bad were we hit, Mac?” Stevenson yelled at the intercom as he felt power coming to the drives.
“We have a loss of hull integrity center ship, and some structural damage also, so no hard turns or we may snap in half,” Mac yelled over the intercom.
“Robert, that’s your section. What’s going on? How bad is it?” Stevenson asked his old friend. “Robert where are you?” he repeated after a few seconds of waiting. “Alex, you and Jim go check out the damage, and find out where Robert is,” he instructed, concern edging into his voice.
“On our way.” The usual wisecracks missing from his reply exposed Alex’s concern for his friend. Alex didn’t stop to wait for Jim. He just started running for the galley where Robert should be. It didn’t take him long to get to a sealed compartment door. Jim arrived a few seconds behind him.
“Mac, I’m in the main corridor at compartment door S-17. I can’t get it to open. Can you open it from there?” Alex yelled into his helmet microphone as he punched the door controls in frustration.
“That door is showing a vacuum differential. We can’t open it,” Sara replied for Mac.
“Hold on, everyone! We’re about to hit the atmosphere and things are going to get bumpy,” Stevenson announced.
The ship slid effortlessly into the upper atmosphere. Its shields improved its aerodynamic shape at first, but the deeper into the atmosphere they penetrated the less effective the shields were going to be and the greater the turbulence. The captain was going to have to brake hard to slow the ship down, but not hard enough to further damage the hull. Luckily, the captain had set them on a course to enter the atmosphere near the Rift’s location when they started their ballistic entry five hours earlier. They wouldn’t have to fly very far before landing. The only problem now was avoiding flying too close to the Rift. The captain worked to slow their speed as he visually searched for any signs of the Rift since the ship’s sensors were disabled.
The captain caught his first glimpse of the Rift once the ship dropped below the cloud cover. It looked like a black ribbon from this angle. He could not see through it or where it led to; it was only a little over a half mile long and maybe a hundred yards wide. It had shrunk to less than a tenth of its original size. As he maneuvered the ship lower the landscape started to come clear, and he could see that the area around the Rift was covered by miles of dead and twisted trees. He could make out some of the ruins of the city and the road system in the area. It looked like the city had been the center of a large-scale fight with many buildings burned out and showing signs of explosion damage.
A warning light caught his attention as it started blinking, followed quickly by the structural integrity alarm going off. Stacey used the little strength she had to toggle the alarms off while the captain searched for a safe place to land. They were moving in a southerly direction in a wide arc away from both the Rift and the city. The ground flashed by as the ship bled off airspeed and altitude. The ship bucked as the thrust drives pushed against the momentum of the ship, trying to slow it. The aerodynamics provided by the shields were almost completely gone, allowing the headwind to add to the turbulence. The captain was so focused on the flying, he almost missed the small town as they passed over it, but the residents certainly took note of his ship.
Stevenson was finally able to reduce the ship’s airspeed low enough for him to activate the gravity drives. The ship stab
ilized when he shut off the thrust drives, reducing the amount of turbulence inflicted on the ship. The drop in turbulence relieved some of the stress on the hull, but the structural integrity light was still flashing. The captain was going to have to find a place or make a place to set down. Soon. He decided to make one and fired a few missiles into the next flat section of forest. The missiles slammed into the ground detonating on impact. The resulting explosion flattened the trees for a hundred yards in all directions. The ship had plenty of room to land in the center of the crater so he extended the landing gear and settled the ship down as gently as he could. Once the full weight of the ship was on the landing gear, he killed the gravity drives and sighed in relief.
3
Daemon looked up from his chores to watch as the small ship flew by. He had only seen a few of the science ship but he was sure that this one was different. I definitely wasn’t one of the supply ships either. Angelica stepped out the back door and looked around having heard the noise of the craft but was too late to see it so she went back inside. A couple of minutes later she came back out carrying a jug and a couple of glasses. She walked over to the wood pile where Daemon was sawing and splitting the trees he had cut down.
“I thought you might want something to drink.” She said filling both glasses with tea. Daemon set down his ever present ax and picked up one of the glasses. He waited until Angelica drank from her though before taking a sip causing Angelica to chuckle.
“A new kind of ship flew over; it looked like it was smoking.” Daemon observed ignoring his sister’s laughter.
“I know dad is supposed to be back in a few days but I get the feeling he is going to need the big rifle. Do you think you can find him?”
“Yeah, it’ll start getting dark in a couple of hours. I’ll head out first thing in the morning unless you think I should leave tonight.” Daemon could feel Angelica’s concern and uncertainty.
“Morning should be fine, no sense in you getting lost in the woods at night.”
“Alright, I’m going to check the animals and then come in for dinner. You need anything?”
“No, I fix something and have it ready for you.” Angelica replied taking his glass and leaving. Daemon watched her go trying to decide if he should take the rifle after eating and head out to find their father. Between Angelica’s earlier comment about trouble coming and dad’s sudden need for the big rifle Daemon was starting to feel a little concerned himself.