by Mark Oliver
The Rift Rider
By Mark J. Oliver
Copyright © Mark J. Oliver 2014
Mark J. Oliver has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these
fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out
or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition,
including this condition, being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.
For Victoriya
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Prologue
"He's not coming," the woman said, shifting in the co-pilot's chair. The seat had grown as hard as rock. She wore a pilot shirt that finished an inch above her navel, struggling to cover her swollen belly. Under the stretched blue skin kicked her unborn child. She was eight months along and the child was growing restless.
"He'll come," the pilot said, placing his silver hand over hers and squeezing softly. "He needs us as much as we need him."
She moved her lover's hand over her belly. "Do you feel that? The child wants out. If we don't get through the Pass soon, we'll be having the baby right here."
"The pathfinder will come," he repeated.
She stared out at the Wrake Pass, her eyes fixing on some indeterminate point in the middle of that vast emptiness. She tried to push the dark thoughts away and focus on the life that lay ahead of them; a life free from tyranny and persecution. It was so close she could almost reach out and touch it. Beside her, she knew her lover was thinking the same.
But first they needed to cross the Pass and for that they needed the pathfinder.
And so they waited, each praying the red man would keep his word and guide them through the emptiness to the safety of Poklawi, the exile moon beyond it.
Despite the discomfort and stabs of anxiety she fell asleep. She dreamt of the child within her.
When she woke, stirred by the steady beeping of the ship's computers, she had already forgotten the dream.
The incessant droning and the cramp in her back made her wince. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked at the screen. What she saw made her blood run cold.
"Wake up, Heilo," she said, shaking the man beside her. "Wake up."
He opened his eyes and looked at the cockpit screen. It showed two blue specs, one considerably larger than the other.
"A Corporation destroyer," he said, his voice taut.
"Then, it's over."
He turned to face her. The bright screen made his face glow even more silver. It wore a look of defiance. "No."
The woman swallowed, and reached out for his hand. "If we stay, they'll take us alive so they can publicly torture us back on Seenthee." She paused. "But if we go through the Wrake Pass without the pathfinder, we'll vanish like the others. Either way, we're dead."
"No. There's another way."
She looked at him, a question in her eyes.
"The device," he said. "I should be able to hold a rift open long enough for us to pass through. I can programme it to send us out on the other side of the Pass, near Poklawi."
She eyed the approaching destroyer on the screen. "Is it safe?"
He cleared his throat, and said, "I don't know."
She shook her head. "And that's our only hope?"
He reached out, held her chin in his hand and raised her face to his. He still has such soft hands, she thought. I wonder if all silvers do.
"Trust me," he said. "I can do this."
She looked straight at him. His green eyes glowed with quiet certainty. "You're a lunatic, Heilo Krest. But I love and if you say we have a chance, then that's good enough for me."
He smiled, leaned in and kissed her hard on the mouth. She kissed him back harder.
While her lover fiddled and tweaked the device, assembling and attaching it to the small ship's engines, she kept vigil over the ship's screens. Slowly and steadily, the destroyer closed in on them. It had their scent now. As long as they stayed outside the Pass, they were as vulnerable as a new-born baby.
She stroked her stomach, and silently prayed that her lover knew what he was doing.
By the time he had finished installing the device into the ship's engine systems. She could almost sense the target drones heading towards them, sending their beeped messages back to the destroyer's energy cannons, no doubt set to incapacitate. The destroyer would pull them back to where the Corporation's finest torturers lay in wait.
"They're almost on us," she said.
The silver man looked up from the mass of cables and wires in his lap. "They're too late. It's ready."
He held up a palm-sized slab. Waves of white light rolled across its dull blue surface.
At that moment the ship's alarm systems sprang to life. The target drones had locked onto them. The incapacitating pulse would come any second.
She took once last look at the empty space in front of them and then wrapped her arms around her lover's neck. "Do it."
Chapter 1
The surfer ran his hand through his hair, pushing back the loose brown strands, revealing eyes that sparkled green under the midday Balinese sun.
He let the first wave pass. A local kid seized the moment and took off on it. As the tanned youth raced across the wave, his legs pumping, the surfer smiled. The next wave was his.
He took a deep breath, and thrust his arms into the water. The water felt cool and fresh against his bare skin. The instant he felt the rear of the board rise, he gave two powerful strokes and then leapt up, his feet landing with a soft thud on the board.
He adjusted his stance, shifting his weight onto the board's tail. A quick thrust and twist of the hips brought him into the centre of the wave just in time to duck under its cascading tip.
He ducked low and grabbed the rail to greater balance himself against the rushing water. His rigid supple body flexed with excitement as the barrel enveloped him.
As the water rolled over him, he silently counted off the seconds. Ahead of him, through the teardrop at the end of the tube, the blue of sky and ocean merged to become one.
Seconds later, he came thundering out of the tube to a chorus of cheers. He turned to face the beach. Row after row of girls, bikini clad and beautiful, jumped and waved, their exposed curves rippling and bouncing. They were screaming something.
The surfer strained to hear what they were calling. He smiled. They were calling his name: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
"Charlie. Hey, Charlie Scott. Snap
out of it. Hawk Insurance doesn't pay you to daydream."
Charlie refocused his eyes and found he was staring straight at the paisley shirted chest of his boss, Mr Colddown.
He looked up. Two flared nostrils, each with a veritable forest of nasal hair sprouting from them, greeted him.
To the army of black hairs, he said, "I'm sorry, Mr Colddown."
"You've been sitting there, staring vacantly into space for the last ten minutes. I think it's about time you got some work done, don't you?"
The words came flowing out in a Welsh accent so thick it made Tom Jones sound like an Eton scholar. Not that he minded the accent. The prospect of buxom Welsh girls with their singsong voices had been one of the deciding factors when choosing to study in Swansea. But the days of chatting up Welsh honeys in the student union seemed a distant memory right now.
"Sorry," Charlie repeated. "I just kind of drifted off there."
"Well, drift on back. Those customer application forms won't input themselves."
Charlie stared at the pile of papers stacked up on his desk, his spirits sagging.
"If you don't get them done by five," the nostrils continued, "you'll have to stay after work. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Mr Colddown," Charlie said, turning away from the nose. He made a show of typing in the details of a new customer into the company's database.
The nostrils and the grey man attached to them hovered at Charlie's shoulder, saying nothing, watching him input data onto the green black screen. Finally, the manager muttered something about monkeys and peanuts and then waddled away, his fat bottom trembling in his too tight trousers.
"Wanker." Charlie masked the word in a cough. It rang out clear enough for those around him to hear, but with enough vagueness so that the departing manager had an element of doubt about whether he had been insulted or not.
Charlie sighed, and leaned back, tilting the chair onto its back legs. The cheap plastic creaked but held firm. For a while, he rocked back and forth on the two legs. Then he decided to face the inevitable and get back to work.
He brought the chair down with a soft thump and, wondering how much time he had left, pulled away the post-it note covering the clock in the corner of his screen. He had put it there to stop himself from looking at it every five minutes. When he peeled it back, he let out a moan.
13:35.
It had been eighteen minutes since he last checked, but it felt like eighty; eighty minutes of tortuous boredom, death by paperwork.
"Old Coldbones on your case again, I see."
Charlie looked up in time to see the heavily pimpled face of Tim Davies emerge periscope like from from behind the opposite computer. The two men had been mates ever since the Swansea University placed the two wide-eyed, spotty eighteen-year olds in the same six-roomed flat.
In the four years since, Charlie had graduated, moved out of student halls and lost his spots, but the pair of friends remained as close as ever. Whether on the rugby field of their local club, in the Gower surf breaks or in the dreary corridors of Hawk Insurance, the two of them always looked out for each other.
"As ever," Charlie said, shaking his head ruefully. "I think he's got a thing for me. Doesn't the poor bastard know I've got a missus?"
"It's not your heart he wants Charlie, it's your soul."
Charlie laughed. "Just that?"
Tim had a way of making him feel better about things.
"Eleven months you've been temping here," Tim said, waving his finger, "teasing him with your monthly extensions. You slut. Didn't you promise to sign on full time last year?"
Charlie shrugged.
"Look. Keep your promise and go full time. I guarantee you, he'll be a lot nicer."
Charlie said nothing, and leant back on his chair.
"Serious, mate. Do you ever see him have a go at me?"
He was right, Charlie knew. The boss let Tim get on with his work, and even let the joking around slide, most of the time.
Charlie dropped the feet of his chair back on the ground. "Tim, you know why I haven't gone full time."
Tim grunted, and said, "Yeah, the surf trip." He said surf trip while holding his fingers up like rabbit ears. "You've been talking about that since before we graduated. Let it go mate, it's never going to happen. A year from now, you'll still be sitting opposite me, inputting data. Only, if you accept your fate and sign on full time, you'll be getting paid double."
Charlie slumped in his chair.
Tim must have seen the look on his face. He tried to shift the conversation in a more upbeat direction. "Come on, Charlie. Cheer up. This is a good company. The work may be dull as bog water, but with your smarts you could easily work up the ladder. If you set your mind to it, in five year's you could be in Coldbone's office."
Charlie frowned. He preferred it when Tim was trying to make him feel bad. "Is that the most we can hope for?"
"Mate." Tim had a way of lengthening a word whenever he had a point to emphasise. "Look at the economy. We're bloody lucky to be working as it is. Most graduates are living at home, getting seventy pounds a week on Jobseeker's."
"Maybe media studies grads," Charlie said.
"Hey, fuck you man."
Charlie laughed. He loved winding up his friend about his choice of degree. "Come on mate. Don't be so touchy. Anyway, being on benefits wouldn't be too bad. We could spend every day surfing."
A warning cough echoed across the office. Mr Colddown stood, glaring at them from inside his cubicle.
Tim ducked behind his screen, and said, in as soft a tone as he could manage, which was not very, "Still on for a sunrise surf tomorrow?"
Charlie cringed. "Sorry mate. Amy called. She wants to meet up. I thought I'd cook her dinner in the van and then bring her home for the night." Charlie coughed. "She won't want to get up early on the weekend."
Tim groaned. "But you promised."
Charlie clenched his teeth together and raised his eyebrows. "I'm sorry mate. She said she wanted to talk about something. What could I do?"
Tim shook his head. "You're so un-bloody-reliable."
"Hey. I'm still up for the rugby." He glanced over at his boss. Coldbones shot him "get to work" a look. Charlie made a big deal out of stacking the pile of papers on his desk. "Who are we playing, again?"
"Tondy."
This time it was Charlie's turn to groan. "Those valley commandoes?" The last time they had played up there, he had come back battered, bruised and with bits of him in pieces. He ran a finger along the edge of his jaw remembering the punch his opposite number had given him after a teammate had let slip about Charlie's English origins.
"On the plus side," Tim said, a smile in his voice, "they always provide free sausages and chips and a pitcher of Brains after the game."
"True," Charlie agreed.
The rest of the afternoon passed so slowly at times Charlie feared he was actually moving backwards in time. For every two minutes forward, he took a minute back. He half expected to lift his head be called in for the horror that was the Friday morning teambuilding meeting.
But eventually the day came to a close. The Friday evening shiftlessness began to pervade the office as the staff sniffed the freedom of the approaching weekend. When Charlie peeled away the post-it note, the clock read 16:51. Nine minutes to go.
He smiled. Two days of surf, rugby, drinking and shagging awaited him. He could almost taste the beer.
He stretched his arms high above him, yawning happily. At this time on a Friday, even Coldbones had his mind on other things.
Charlie shut down his computer and crammed the application forms into his drawer. As he packed up, his mind grew clearer, more awake. His body lost some of the tiredness it had carried through the day, an unwanted passenger that had crept aboard when the alarm clock had gone off.
Within thirty seconds of the office clock striking five, Charlie and Tim were striding through the building's front doors, having successfully avoided several misguided attempts at conv
ersation from colleagues. They stepped through the doors with smiles on their faces. A machine gun volley of raindrops shot down their grins.
Charlie brought his hands to his face. A foolish move as this left the bulk of him exposed to the elements. The cold Autumn rain soaked his shirt, and ran in streams down his trousers. He shivered and wrapped his arms around him, turning his face away from the rain.
Beside him, Tim stood wrapped up in his long coat, smirking. "I told you to bring your jacket when we left home."
Icy water sneaked down Charlie's collar. He twisted in the rain like an Indian dancer. "It was nice this morning. "
Tim laughed. "Four years in Wales, and you've learnt nothing."
Charlie looked at the office behind them. If it was a choice between staying at work and getting wet, there was only one real choice. He shrugged and strode out across the car park.
Tim followed in close pursuit. "Are you going to take Amy out in the love mobile in this?" He said, shouting so to make himself heard against the wind.
Charlie nodded. "It's cheaper than going to a restaurant."
The two men had reached their vehicles by now. Tim stood beside his mud brown Ford Mondeo and Charlie beside his a Volkswagen Kombi, glowing fluorescent green-yellow in the rain. He had yet to get round to painting it a different shade than its former owner, his hippy weed dealer, had elected for it.
"I guess you'll sneak back into the house tonight," Tim said, getting into his car. "I know she hates us."
"She doesn't hate you. She's just shy."
Tim rolled his eyes, and closed the door.
Charlie fished about in his soggy trouser pockets for his keys. He found them, unlocked the van door and climbed in. He took one whiff of the damp seat covers and wound down the window. Rain was better than this stink.
After three minutes flirtatiously coaxing the ignition, choke and clutch, the old German engine fired up.
Charlie flicked on the heaters and plugged in his I pod shuffle. The rousing strings of Tchaikovsky’s third symphony came flowing out of the van's ancient speakers. Charlie closed his eyes, took a breath of the Autumn air and put the love mobile in gear. The van chugged out of the car park and into the weekend.
