Rift

by Heidi J. Leavitt

  2. Fatherhood

  Tarentino Bay was such a small community that on Jimmy’s home planet, Terra, it wouldn’t have even been considered a town. However, Zenith was a frontier planet, which meant that it had been opened for colonization for less than two hundred years. It was mostly a wide open expanse, with areas of the planet where one wouldn’t see a human being for hundreds of kilometers, let alone a city. On the continent Mandel, Tarentino Bay was the largest settlement, and it was expanding wildly. When Jenna and Jimmy had first moved to Tarentino Bay about a year into their marriage, the town had been a foresting export hub. Everyone who lived there had been involved directly or indirectly in harvesting the teak trees grown in the nearby plantations. Teak was a very profitable export in high demand on other planets.

  Of course, Jimmy hadn’t chosen to relocate his small family to Tarentino for the teak. He’d needed to find somewhere a long distance from Omphalos that still had a vibrant enough economy that he could find parts for Jax’s inventions. Their new home also had to have enough opportunity for the newly unemployed and inexperienced Jimmy to support Jenna and their soon-to-arrive baby. Most importantly, their new town had to be free of any business ties to Logistitec.

  Logistitec was a business that had been so threatened by Jax’s new interdimensional gate that they had tried to kill Jimmy to prevent it ever being built. In the end the company had hired professionals to break into Quintan Tower—where Jenna, Jimmy, and Jax were living at the time—and bomb the original prototype of the gate into cinders, nearly killing both Jimmy and Jenna in the process. It hadn’t stopped the gate from being built: Lev Quintan, Jimmy’s father’s business partner and developer of the gate, had merely rebuilt it. But Jimmy had wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the goons at Logistitec to come after his family again.

  When he’d first come to Tarentino Bay to look for a good place for Jax’s lab, he had known immediately that the abandoned Reber property would be a perfect fit. Old Milo Reber had tried to run a factory building some kind of widgets, though nobody seemed to remember what. He had gone bankrupt a few years before Jimmy arrived and just walked away from it all. The property was a large empty shell of a factory building and completely wired for industrial-strength projects, with its own geothermal power generator and water supply. Reber’s living quarters were connected to the factory and large enough that they could be divided into two apartments for Jax and Mrs. Smitz. The separate transport garage had not been his first choice of a place to live, but he had trusted Jenna to find a way to turn it into something livable for them. She was the most brilliant architect to ever live on Zenith.

  It had been expensive, of course, and Jimmy no longer had access to the spending account that had funded his previous lavish lifestyle. His father had cut him off when Jimmy had decided he no longer wanted to work with Quintan-Forrest Enterprises, not even just as Jax’s intermediary. (Lev Quintan had been willing to risk all of their lives in order to settle a score with a rival.) Since Jax had never had any interest in money (other than in the gadgets it provided for his lab), his own bank account was flush. Jax’s money had always been managed by Jimmy’s father, but when it became clear that Jax was no longer willing to work for the Quintan-Forrest empire without his twin, their father had given in. He had given Jimmy permission to use Jax’s money to find Jax a new place to live, somewhere he could be close to Jimmy but still have all the resources for his research and inventions that he was used to.

  Jimmy suspected that his father was still hoping that Jax would produce something brilliant that Quintan-Forrest could use. Or maybe he was feeling guilty about taking Jax’s gate and planning to roll it out for all the world without paying Jax anything but his salary as an “employee” of Quintan-Forrest Enterprises. Either way, it was the break Jimmy had needed.

  They had remodeled and prepared the apartments and lab first. Throwing every local resource he could find at it, the new lab was ready for Jax within just a couple of months. Getting the garage converted into a house had taken longer than planned; in the end, Jenna had remained with her parents until after Kendra had been born. Unable to stand living apart any longer, Jenna had joined him in Tarentino when the house was still only half completed. Trying to live around the workers finishing up the interior rooms with a six-week-old baby had been challenging, but it had been worth it to have their little family all together.

  When he had bought the Reber property, it had been on the outskirts of town. Now, six years later, the town had exploded outward and grown up around them on two sides. The Barrens had stayed empty—the land was much too rocky for easy development, and the tree plantations were mostly on the other side of town. Their end had become a residential area, mostly, though the houses were still far enough apart to make Jimmy feel separated from his neighbors. It had taken some getting used to—on Terra he had always lived in very densely populated, weather-controlled cities—and despite Tarentino Bay’s booming population, he still felt that he was truly living in the wilds.

  This morning he strode with purpose alongside the main road that led from their property into the town. He was a man on a mission. To repair the water purifier Erik had smashed, he would need some parts from a dealer in town. They did own a transport—a dilapidated, rusted old thing that he used when he needed to haul large supplies in from the shipping depot for Jax or when they brought home their monthly stock of groceries—but Jimmy preferred to walk into the commercial district when he could. It was only about five kilometers, and he needed the exercise. Most days he spent either trying to sell patents for Jax or managing the finances of both Jax’s business and Jenna’s fledgling architecture firm. He’d turned out to have a better grasp of accounting than anyone had given him credit for. Even his father turned over complete management of Jax’s money to him last year, after Jimmy proved for five years how responsible he was. Under Jimmy’s direction, Jax’s patent licensing had grown lucrative enough to allow Jax to completely update his laboratory without touching any money from their father.

  Of course, understanding numbers and money had always come easily to Jimmy. He’d just never had a reason to bother himself about them. It was more fun to play around and annoy his bossy older sister, Cari, with his refusal to pay attention to anything related to the family business. Especially when their mother had gotten sick and Jimmy had wanted to spend all the time he could with her. After her death, he’d never seen any reason to do anything but float around from party to party. His father paid off his debts, his sister managed the business, and Jax had been shipped off to Zenith soon after their mother got ill in the first place.

  Funny how a wife and kids changed all that.

  In the center of town, he turned off onto a side street that led into the second tier level of shops. There were a number of parts and farming supply stores, even some junk dealers. He skipped the first shop he came to; Murdock’s was notoriously overpriced and understocked. At the second he paused before the door. It was a squat gray building with two levels. There was a large window on the second story and an equally large sliding glass door on the first level. It looked like a towering cinder block standing on one end. On either side of the front door, there was a procession of refurbished equipment, most of it automated farming equipment two generations old. It had all been cleaned and oiled, though. Pete was not a fancy dealer like the chain store on the main commercial road, but he took pride in his work. He was a good friend too.

  When Jimmy stepped in front of the door, it slid open. A friendly peal of bells announced his arrival. Neither Pete nor his daughter Angel were in sight, so Jimmy spent a couple of minutes poking among the bins of parts on the rack designated for portable systems.

  “Jimmy!” a deep, booming voice greeted from behind him.

  Jimmy turned, already grinning. “Morning, Pete!”

  Pete, with broad shoulders and massive muscular arms towered over Jimmy. He had a full red beard and squinty
eyes that narrowed to bare slits when he smiled. He grabbed Jimmy’s hand with his meaty calloused one in greeting. When he was younger, Pete had worked on a remote logging crew, one that had harvested wild trees before the plantation trees were mature. His job had been to help operate the mechanical loggers—which often meant climbing between massive boulders and yanking stuck equipment back into place. He retired from logging after losing his left arm; it was crushed by a tree trunk that unexpectedly fell in his direction. Soon after, he started his store. His wife had died two years before, and his older kids had struck it out on their own. All he had left was Angel, but between him and his youngest daughter, they ran the best secondhand equipment shop in the whole town.

  “What can I do for you today? Some of Jaxon’s tools on the fritz?” asked Pete.

  “No, it’s our water purifier. Erik managed to knock it off the counter somehow,” Jimmy explained.

  Pete chuckled. “That boy is my best customer. He sends you in here at least once a week!”

  Jimmy nodded unhappily. Erik was unusually destructive. Kendra and Berry made their share of messes, but Erik took things to a whole new level.

  “I need a new pump plate, an auto flush, and a five-centimeter C ring,” Jimmy detailed, looking at his flipcom screen.

  “Well, Mr. Erik really did a number on your purifier! I know I have the auto flush and the C ring, but I’m not sure about the pump plate. What model do you have?”

  “It’s an Excelsior 10.2,” Jimmy answered.

  “Angel, can you look something up for me?” Pete called. There was no answer. “Angel!” Pete shouted again. “She was just here,” he muttered, craning his neck to try and see over the large, stocked racks. He stomped into the back. Jimmy moved along the front of the store, looking down each aisle crammed with parts and equipment and overflowing bins. Angel was seventeen and not exactly the brightest teen he’d ever met. She tended to get distracted easily. This wasn’t the first time she’d disappeared when she was supposed to be working in the shop.

  Jimmy found her sitting in the last aisle, her back propped against a bin, her eyes glued to her flipcom, and earbuds plugged into her ears. He waved his hand in front of her face. She startled, staring in Jimmy in shock.

  “Oh, Mr. Forrest!” she cried breathlessly, clambering to her feet. “I’m sorry, do you need help with something?”

  “Found her, Pete!” Jimmy called. Pete strode back into the room, grumbling under his breath. In his prosthetic hand he held a tablet.

  “Sorry, Da,” apologized Angel. She flourished her flipcom. “But you wouldn’t believe what’s going on in the Red Zone today!” Jimmy stiffened. The Quintan Edge resort—a part of the Quintan-Forrest business holdings—was located in the Red Zone. Jenna’s best friend, Lilah, worked at the resort. If something awful was happening at the QE again, Jenna would be beside herself.

  “What do I care what’s going on in the Red Zone?” complained Pete testily. “It’s on the other side of the planet! I have a living, breathing customer that you should be helping right here.”

  “But Da!” protested Angel.

  “It’s OK,” Jimmy reassured Pete. “What’s going on?” he asked Angel, a little afraid of the answer.

  “Some kind of public execution! It’s so gruesome, and it’s streaming live! Lev Quintan is killing some of his rivals, it says.”

  Pete blanched. “Barbaric. Why we even need that Red Zone is a mystery to me. Sixty-five hectares of lawlessness. It’s crazy.”

  Jimmy felt his stomach twist. He knew firsthand why the Red Zone existed, and just how bad it could actually get there. “Does it say who’s being executed?”

  “The newsfeed says some guy named Breno Quartos. But there’s a whole group of them, not just the one guy,” Angel answered, turning her flipcom to face them.

  Jimmy swiveled away at once. “No, I don’t want to see. I have some idea of what’s going on, and I don’t think my stomach can take it.”

  It had taken six years for Quintan to track down Quartos and his whole crew. Quartos was a rival who had surreptitiously supplied Quintan’s son, Zane, with the dangerous and addictive drug nanospeed. Zane in turn had kidnapped Jimmy and Jax and traded them to Quartos to pay for his drug habit.

  It had been hard for Jimmy to forgive Zane, but Quintan had pursued his revenge against Quartos ruthlessly. In the Red Zone, ruthlessness was all that kept Quintan’s property safe. Everyone knew that if you crossed Quintan, you would be repaid with torture and death.

  Even if it took six years.

  “Did they mention the QE resort?” he asked, wondering how Angel could stand to watch the feed. Her eyes were glued to her flipcom again. “Or Quintan Tower?” Lilah was a manager over the live entertainment division; she had a suite in the nearby luxury high-rise that housed many of the Quintan Edge employees.

  “I don’t know,” Angel responded vaguely. Her attention was already captured by the feed again.

  Her father snorted in disgust. He tapped at his tablet. “Come on, Jimmy. I’ll get you your parts. My inventory shows that I even have a pump plate in bin sixty-seven.”

  Parts paid for and carefully stowed in his jumpbag, Jimmy bade farewell to Pete and headed back out into the street. Walking a few more blocks, he reached the farmers market. Most of Tarentino Bay’s food was shipped in from the fertile plains about six hundred kilometers to the north. However, there was a growing segment of local vegetable farmers, and there was a good chance Jimmy could pick up fresh tomatoes today. Neither Jenna nor Jimmy had time for gardening of any kind, but Jenna loved tomatoes. He hoped he could surprise her with some.

  The farmers market was under a pavilion in an open square not far from the center of the city. Jimmy strode in and spent a few minutes wandering among the different vendors and peering into portable chiller boxes. Several of the vendors greeted him by name and asked about his family. He replied easily and with a friendly smile, but he didn’t stop to chat. He still had to get home and fix the purifier, and the longer he took to get home, the more likely that Jenna would be frantically tearing her hair out while trying to get caught up on work and keep the kids out of trouble at the same time.

  Finally he found what he was looking for. A large chiller box of huge, juicy tomatoes, the yellow kind that Jenna loved best.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” greeted Selma, from her perch on a rickety pile of empty crates. Her dark hair was tied away from her face in a messy knot with strands escaping every direction. “Need some tomatoes today? It’s my first harvest of the season, but I think they are looking pretty good.”

  Jimmy fingered a couple, gently probing. “I’ll take six,” he decided.

  “Only six?” Selma said in disappointment as she started to fill up a carton with Jimmy’s selections. “Jenna’s losing her taste for my tomatoes, is she?”

  Jimmy laughed. “No, not at all. But I have to fix a water purifier today, so I won’t be able to make her sauce with them. These are just for her to snack on. I’m sure we’ll be back.”

  “Tell Jenna I want to see her next time. She’s the gorgeous one.” Selma sighed in admiration. “No offense, Jimmy, but what did she ever see in you?”

  “She married me for my money,” Jimmy quipped, taking his crate and swiping his flipcom at Selma’s reader.

  Selma laughed dismissively, shaking her head. “Right.”

  Jimmy was just about to turn away when Selma stopped him.

  “Hey, I just remembered, some guy was asking about you the other day,” Selma said, her forehead creased. “Not a regular. He wanted to know if you lived around here.”

  Jimmy shifted his tomatoes to his other arm and readjusted the jumpbag. “A business guy?” he asked skeptically. Occasionally he had locals approach him wondering if Jax invented logging tools or something similar. Once, the new bank branch manager had hired Jax to design the security for their building
. (That had taken some serious pleading on Jimmy’s part. Jax had not been interested, but they had desperately needed the money at the time. Eventually he had agreed and gone overboard as usual. The Tarentino Bay branch of Union Bank was probably the most well-protected bank on the planet.) All of these people, however, commed Jimmy directly. They didn’t ask around at the local farmers market.

  “What did you tell him?” Jimmy asked warily.

  Selma shrugged. “That I wasn’t sure. That I didn’t know the names of everyone who came to my booth. He seemed to accept that.”

  “Odd,” muttered Jimmy. It was true that Jimmy had come to Tarentino hoping to lie low and avoid attention, especially from Logistitec. But anyone who already knew his name and wanted to find him wouldn’t find it that difficult. A terminal search would probably direct them right to the property on Reber Lane. As far as he knew, they were the only Forrests in Tarentino Bay. Why ask about him at the farmers market of all places?

  If it was Logistitec, why try to track him down now? Quintan had rebuilt the gate years ago; he had been testing it on willing guests for at least five years. Logistitec had tried more than once to kill Jimmy personally to prevent Jax from completing the gate, but that was over now. The gate was a reality. Jimmy hadn’t heard of any awful side effects to travelers through the gate either. So far it looked like Jax’s gate was a rousing success. It probably wouldn’t be much longer before Quintan started producing them and selling them outside the Red Zone.

  That would change everything. Even here in Tarentino, they could ship their lumber instantaneously to the deep space launches for export. Their food could arrive instantly from the wheat plains. He and Jenna could actually drop in on Jenna’s parents regularly, when now they could only manage a visit once a year. It would be fantastic!