Rift

by Nathan Hystad

  “What’s your name, kid?” she asked, walking forward as the line kept moving toward the next room.

  “Ace…” He silently cursed himself for not thinking clearly. The girl had him too distracted. “I mean, Edgar.”

  She looked at him like she was trying to determine the next move in a complicated puzzle. “Edgar? I’d stick with Ace if I were you. What, did your parents see you squirm out of the womb and think, ‘We need a name to match the face’?”

  “Go on, I’ve heard them all. And just what name shall I call you?” he asked, finding himself having fun just speaking to another human without being embarrassed or thinking about food.

  “You may call me Majesty. Everyone else knows me by Serina.” She stuck her hand out, and he shook it. Her hand was warm, her grip firm.

  “Very well, Majesty,” he said, and was delighted when her light gray eyes lit up in surprise.

  “Next,” a woman called, and Serina turned around. The Fleet woman looked Serina up and down, took a scan with a handheld device, and chose a pile of clothing from a shelving unit behind her.

  “Next,” she said again, and Ace watched Serina disappear into one of the many makeshift changing stations that ran along the room’s long wall. She gave him a quick grin before ducking behind the flap of cloth.

  He felt the clothes pile hit him in the chest, and he stuck his arms out, just catching it.

  “Next.”

  When he finished changing, Ace tucked his new “used” clothing into a bag, and another Fleet worker scanned his hand, taking the bag and tossing a sticker on it. It pained him to watch them take his sack of new possessions away, but it would be fine. They’d return it, but who needed it anyway? He looked down at the uniform, a beige jumpsuit that fit too loosely. He didn’t care. It felt perfect at that moment.

  He was heading to boot camp. He was going to join the Earth Fleet and become a famous pilot. It was in his cards, and his deck was stacked with aces, so he couldn’t lose.

  Ace felt a hand shove him forward as he stood inside the doorway, gawking at the line approaching the nearby landed ship. It was much larger than he’d expected, clearly fitting hundreds of new recruits. He looked back when the hand pushed him again, and saw a mouth-breathing giant, eager to make enemies. Ace had seen a million guys on the street like him, and he did what he always did to survive. He didn’t react.

  “Get out of the way, Tiny,” the bully said, getting a laugh from the two other guys behind him.

  Ace stepped sideways, waving his hand in the air, welcoming the tormenter to have his spot.

  The oaf looked dumbfounded at the action, and hesitantly walked forward, taking Ace’s position. The other two goons protested, and Ace let them sneak ahead of him too.

  “Told you he was a pushover, Ceda,” the widest one said to their evident leader.

  An Earth Fleet officer, this one with three stars on his collar, walked down the line toward the ship. “Sorry, everyone. This one is almost full. Another is right behind it.”

  Ace dreaded a long wait with these three just ahead of him, but just when he was about to find a spot even farther back in line, he saw Serina waving him forward from right in front of the ship’s entrance.

  He wasn’t sure she was directing her attention at him, so he pointed down to his head and mouthed the word ‘me?’. She nodded, and the three-star officer waved for Ace to come to the front of the line.

  Ace did his best to bite his tongue as he walked past the goons to the front of the line, where he followed Serina aboard for the last two spots. It was clear she had some connections, and Ace couldn’t believe his luck.

  He beheld the huge gray exterior of the Fleet transport ship, and stepped within it. He’d only ever dreamt of being inside a ship, and he was the ultimate blend of nervous and excited.

  “Come on. Let’s find our seats,” Serina said, walking onto the ship with an air of authority.

  Flint

  “Didn’t we already count all of this?” Kat asked, looking down the cargo bay wall with a frown.

  “We did, but since we couldn’t offload anything at Mars, we’re going to have to make contact with a few buyers on the Moons.” Flint didn’t mind Jupiter, or at least not the Moons. Some of the smaller ones were home to exotic housing for the rich, and Flint had spent a few days on such a moon last year, staying with one of his customers. He never understood their fascination with Old Earth antiquities. They paid his bills, but if he was that wealthy, he wouldn’t care about having some relic from a thousand years ago on his mantel.

  “Let’s start with this side. Here’s the manifest” – he left out “if the Fleet boards us” – “and here are the real manifests.” They were coded, but Kat had the ability to decipher them. She’d actually created the code after he’d nearly ended up in prison a couple of years ago. She still brought that up far too often.

  They spent the next few hours going through everything, item by item. Hidden away were various mood enhancers, and Flint tucked them back into their hiding places. He hated moving product like that, but Clark had assured him there was good money in it, and he had the right contacts. Now that Clark was detained, Flint guessed he’d never see the man again. Once the Fleet heard about a drug trafficker, they typically ended up dead. On Mars, that meant buried in the middle of nowhere, amidst the rock and dust.

  Flint tried to not care what he was hauling, as long as it wasn’t people. He was many things, but a murderer or kidnapper he was not.

  “What’s this?” Kat asked. Her fingers were holding an old comp plug-in stick.

  Flint shrugged. “Hell if I know. What do we care?”

  “I don’t, but it was hidden at the bottom of a package. The only reason I even looked inside was because of the scan code on the outside of the box.” Kat turned the metal box on its side, and Flint used his tablet to scan the code square.

  “Item: Mineral Sample. Year: Urgent. Destination: Unauthorized.” Flint read off the lines, confused by a few things. “You’re right. Something’s wrong here.” He glanced at her hands, which still held the small object. He wanted to tell her to stick it back in the box and to forget she’d ever seen it.

  “Flint?” she asked, eyes wide with worry. “What do we have here?”

  “It’s probably nothing.” He said the words, but his gut was telling him otherwise. Against his better judgment, he said, “Let’s just take a quick look to be sure.”

  They left the room as it was and headed back to the bridge. Flint prided himself on his nerves of steel, but there was something about this old-era data stick that was breaking him down. He took the pilot’s seat, Kat beside him.

  “Here goes nothing,” Flint said, until he realized he didn’t have the proper receptacle for such an old stick. They fumbled around the bridge, looking through drawers for an adapter, and after ten minutes, ended up back at the console, Flint’s nerves fully fried.

  He plugged it in, scanning it for any virus before allowing it to open. The first thing he saw was the date stamp. It read 2385.

  “Flint, this thing is over ninety years old!” Kat shouted in surprise.

  “It appears that way.” He kept looking at the file. There were some encrypted notes he’d look through later, but what piqued his interest were the video files.

  He swallowed through his dry throat, accessed the first video, and sat back. The image appeared on their holoscreen, large across the front of the bridge. A date was stamped on the lower right corner: August 2nd, 2385. He stole a glance at Kat, who was staring at it in tight-lipped silence.

  The video subjects were clearly on a ship’s bridge. Earth Fleet uniforms adorned the man and woman. The man looked too young for the four stars on his collar, denoting him an admiral. The woman had three, but she did the talking.

  “We’re awaiting the arrival. If they come as expected, it will be in less than five minutes. This marks the seventh time that we’ve seen them arrive. Speculation among the group is that they’ve been visit
ing for far longer than that. That every thirty years they briefly appear, before retreating back to where they came from. Anomalies have been recorded in this region from as far back as the twenty-first century, so the speculation has merit.

  “We have yet to try communication because we’re not ready for them, should they prove hostile. Admiral Kane, would you like to discuss today’s mission?” The woman sat back, giving way to the young leader.

  “What are we seeing?” Kat whispered, but Flint didn’t answer. He was wondering the same thing.

  Kane’s voice was surprisingly deep as he spoke. “We’ve done our best to stay off their radar, though we don’t know how far it stretches. Our ship will power down all functions, to emit no frequencies and limit our energy readings. We’ve never been this close to them before.” Kane looked like he’d seen some action; pain burned in his hard brown eyes, but he seemed nervous. Tense.

  “We have a surprise today. We’ll be firing probes through the Rift. Fifty of them, each with a programmed trajectory once through the jump. We hope to learn what’s on the other side, and where they come from.”

  Goosebumps raced up and down Flint’s arms; the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up like a startled cat’s. “What the hell is this?” He wanted to think they’d stumbled on some sort of film, fiction for the masses, but this was real. He could feel the authenticity.

  “We’re about to find out,” Kat squeaked.

  The female officer began hitting buttons and flipping switches. “The Rift is opening,” she said, and the camera switched to an outside view. Flint couldn’t tell for sure where they were, but he estimated deep space, outside the Kuiper Belt. A blue light started glowing in a small dot, and soon it had spread wide open. “Our power is off. We’ll be shutting down the camera feed in a moment.”

  Flint leaned forward, his arms hitting his knees as he watched a ship emerge from the blue light. The front end was square, boxier than anything the Fleet ever came up with, even the early models. On each side, a large cylinder shape protruded parallel with the ship, and Flint guessed them to be immense thrusters. Just as it was halfway through, dozens of tiny probes raced toward the Rift. They each glowed with green light as their small thrusters burned. The camera feed ended.

  Flint stared at the black screen. Sweat dripped down his forehead, nestling on his eyebrows.

  “Is this real?” Kat asked.

  “The bastards have been keeping this from us all these years!” Anger coursed through Flint’s veins. The damned Earth Fleet was hiding the fact that there was other life out there, and no one had a clue.

  “If this video’s ninety years old, and they said it was the seventh event, then the Fleet has known about these ‘visitors’ for three hundred years.” Kat stood, walking to the viewscreen. Her hand touched the surface of it, the video still showing a static-covered black image. The picture snapped back on, startling her. She stumbled back, catching her footing as they began to talk again.

  “The probes made it through!” The woman was grinning from ear to ear; Kane, her superior, even had the decency to crack a smile alongside her. “Getting readings… wait. This can’t be right. They’re all disappearing from our sensors.”

  The video was showing a split scene, and Kane frowned as he tapped on a console. “The Rift, it’s closing.” His voice was panicked.

  Flint watched, now noticing the blue opening still there in the center of the camera view, showing otherwise empty space. It started to open larger, and the nose of the ship poked through. The feed went dead.

  The video was over.

  Flint sat back in his chair, unsure what to think.

  They weren’t alone in the universe.

  4

  Wren

  “Prisoner 5589. What are you doing?” the android guard asked.

  Wren thought it was pretty obvious. She was staying hydrated. “I’m just having a drink of water.” She was sweating fiercely; the smelters felt like they were on overdrive today.

  “You have reached your maximum water intake for the shift. Please proceed to your work station.” The android stuck an arm out, and Wren flinched back, moving away from the fountain. She’d never heard of a limit to their water intake, but it pissed her off. Most of the workers at the prison moved like they were half-dead, while she overexerted herself to do the work. No one noticed or cared that she did twice as much labor as the other women.

  She backed away from the guard and stumbled into another prisoner.

  “Watch where you’re going,” Slicer said. She was a head taller than Wren, and half again as wide. Wren didn’t know her real name, but her nickname was an apt descriptor. Rumors were she’d cut her husband into a hundred pieces before throwing them off the roof of a skyscraper in Old Boston.

  Wren raised her hands in the air, ready to apologize, when the other woman’s fist flew at her. Wren strained to avoid the impact, but she was too late. The meaty paw caught her cheek, and her eyes flashed red before she saw flickering stars. Wren’s hand flew up defensively, but the next shot hit her in the side. Air pushed out of her lungs in an instant, and she felt her knee give way to a kick. The floor found her face, and she curled into a ball while the beating took place. It happened quickly, but the guards weren’t there soon enough. Eventually, they arrived, breaking it up.

  Every inch of Wren ached, and she painfully opened an eye to see Slicer being dragged away by an android. The large woman’s body went limp. Another guard came to Wren’s side, brandishing a needle. She felt a small prick penetrate her skin, and all went dark.

  She woke in an unfamiliar room. Where was she? Had she fallen in her laboratory? Her injuries were numb, and her mind floated around, trying to recall exactly what happened. Then it hit her. She was in prison. Dread dripped down from her brain, enveloping her body, and she started to cry. The tears turned from sadness to full-on grief as her body was racked with heavy sobs. Her life was over, and for what?

  It was the first time she’d let herself think about it since she arrived, and she cursed the drugs for letting her have this moment. She needed a barrier to separate who she used to be from who she had to be now.

  Eventually, she stopped, the tears dried up, and she could feel the once-wet streaks tighten on her face. She felt empty; devoid of feeling. The room was dim, soft lights glowed from strips on the walls, and she noticed her feet were strapped to the table now: loosely, but enough to keep her from going anywhere.

  The door slid open, and light footsteps entered the room. They weren’t the heavyset stomps of the androids, and for a moment, Wren thought Slicer was back to finish the job. She found the energy to lift her drugged head, and saw a man wearing a suit casually standing a few feet from the end of the bed.

  “Hello, Wren Sando.” The man’s voice was smooth, like he’d modified it to sound that way.

  “Hello,” she managed to croak out. Her throat was dry, and he moved to her side, passing her a thin tube attached to the side of the bed. She sucked on it, cool water hitting the back of her mouth.

  “I’m sorry it had to go down like that,” he said, and she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

  “What…” She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”

  “The altercation. I only told her to hit you, not try to kill you.” The man’s eyebrows were upturned, like he was trying to look concerned. He needed to work on his acting skills.

  Wren tried to grasp what he was telling her. He’d set up the attack? “Why?” she got out.

  “I needed to talk to you, and this way, it wouldn’t look out of place,” he said, as if that redeemed him from arranging her beating.

  Her sadness was gone, quickly replaced with hatred. She stared daggers at him. “What do you want?”

  “You are Wren Sando, correct?” he asked.

  She managed a nod and took more water. “Doctor Wren Sando.” As if the title gave her any more power.

  “Then I want to speak with you. You worked in New
Dallas as a biotechnologist?” the man asked.

  “Who are you?” she countered.

  “I know what you found. I know why you’re here. I can help you,” he said, but the words fell cold. His face was too eager, and she focused on him now. He was older than his body was showing her and was clearly well-off or well-funded, because he’d had countless modifications. His eyes belied the truth. They were those of an eighty-year-old, not the forty-something he appeared.

  “How can you help me? I don’t even know who sent me here,” she said, not allowing herself to feel hope.

  “The testing you were working on. You know what it was. The vaccine he had you creating…” The man stopped as Wren cut him off.

  “I was a biologist,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I am a biologist, and it wasn’t a vaccine.”

  He looked surprised. “Then what was it?”

  She didn’t want to talk about it. That was her old life. But what if he could help her? She decided to play along. Her situation clearly wasn’t going to get any worse. “A weapon.”

  His eyes widened, and he nodded, as if some pieces to a mysterious puzzle fell into place before him. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “What about it? How can you help me?” Wren asked, her heart beating fast.

  “And you spoke out about it, correct? Who did you tell?” The man’s hand came up, and she noticed something in it for the first time.

  “Are you recording this?” she asked.

  He looked abashed, as if she’d caught him doing something wrong. “I am. It needs to be. Otherwise, we can’t stand against him.”

  “Who is ‘him’?” Wren asked, but he shook his head.

  “I asked you first. Who did you tell about the weapon they were having you build?” The smooth candor was gone from his voice. It was heavy now, rushed.

  “Fairbanks. It was Councilman Jarden Fairbanks.” It felt good to say his name. Wren had pictured the old man’s face countless times over the years but hadn’t said it out loud.