Read Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity Online
Authors: David Adams
Tags: #Sci Fi & Fantasy, #High Tech, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Space Opera
Lacuna: The Prelude to Eternity
Lacuna: The Ashes of Humanity by David Adams
Copyright David Adams
2013
Humans thought that they could stand amongst the older races. They believed, in their hubris, that the perils of interstellar travel could be mastered within a single generation. That they would be spared the wrath of the Toralii.
Now humanity lies in ashes. The cradle of our civilization, Earth, is nothing more than a charred husk, a dead world in an empty solar system in an unremarkable corner of the galaxy.
The war is over.
We lost.
Captain Melissa Liao and the remaining band of Humans, numbering barely in the tens of thousands, hold the future of their entire species in their hands. They must settle a new world, encounter friends and enemies new and old, and plant the seeds of hope in the ashes of humanity.
Book four of the Lacuna series.
Books by David Adams
The Lacuna series (science fiction)
Lacuna
The Sands of Karathi
The Spectre of Oblivion
The Ashes of Humanity
The Prelude to Eternity
The Requiem of Steel (coming 2015)
The Kobolds series (fantasy)
Ren of Atikala
The Scars of Northaven
The Empire of Dust (coming 2015)
Stories in the Kobolds universe
The Pariahs
The Pariahs: Freelands (coming 2015)
Sacrifice
Stories in the Lacuna universe
Magnet
Magnet: Special Mission
Magnet: Marauder
Magnet: Scarecrow
Magnet Saves Christmas
Magnet: Ironheart (coming 2015)
Faith
Imperfect
Other Books
Insufficient
Insurrection
Injustice (coming 2015)
Who Will Save Supergirl?
Evelyn’s Locket
––––
A writer does not write in isolation,
for we are the sum of their experiences.
It is from these experiences that inspiration comes.
I thank my family, who allowed me to be who I am,
My friends, who love me in spite of me,
And as always, to my readers.
You made all this possible.
Special thanks to UFOP: Starbase 118 for teaching me how to write,
and Shane Michael Murray,
my tireless proofreader, motivator and partner in crime.
––––
Lacuna
空
白
The Prelude to Eternity
“When time is spent, eternity begins.”
- Helen Hunt Jackson
P
ROLOGUE
The Beach of Bones
*****
Copiapó
Chile
Earth
Seven months after the devastation of Earth
L
IEUTENANT
R
ACHEL
“S
HABA
” K
OLLEK
OF
the Israeli Space and Air Arm first thought the misty sand beach in front of her, on the southern shore of Chile, was beautiful. However, as the boots of her space suit hit the ground, she discovered it wasn’t made of sand at all.
It was bones.
Millions of fish bones blanketed the area, some barely larger than a pinhead, some the size of a basketball. The Toralii worldshatter devices had seared the land and boiled the oceans. Earth’s aquatic life had died en masse, and the bones of countless sea creatures washed up all over the planet’s shores as a new beach. The threshold between scorched land and dark, oily, barren sea was a thin line of death.
The Falcon transport
Piggyback
, Shaba’s brand new baby and the second ship to bear that name, idled behind her, landing ramp extended. She chewed on the end of her cigarette, adjusted her sealed bubble helmet, and stepped into the mist. Her suit chirped at her. The atmosphere was a thick mix of carbon dioxide, ash particles, and water vapour. She exhaled, blowing cigarette smoke against the clear Plexiglas hemisphere separating her from the death soup, the smoke inside the thin polymer dimming the clouds outside.
The atmosphere of Earth was an opaque wall of death. If anyone had survived the initial bombardment—and analysis of the attacks had determined that most Humans had—they would now be dead, burned in walls of flame, choked on an atmosphere they could not breathe, or starved because the water and food that remained would be ruined.
Modern human beings were so dependent on the structures of society—agriculture, medicine, transport—that they could not survive such a calamity. That beach was a suitable landing spot because it had been largely spared the orbital fire. The cities, the urban centres, would be much worse off.
Her parents had died on that planet. Most of her friends had died on that planet. They would be missed.
The man who had raped her, nearly fifteen years ago, had died on that planet. He, not so much.
A lifetime ago she had been sixteen, and he a trusted son of a friend of the family. He was handsome, too—charismatic, tall and athletic, with women just falling over themselves to be with him. He had the pick of anyone he wanted.
It turned out he liked the ones who struggled a bit. The joy was in the conquest, the having of what had been denied him.
Somehow, in defiance of all logic, they had dated for three years after the first time. There were other times. He drank. She still stayed. Shaba didn’t claim to understand what had happened, just that it had.
Now that guy was just a body on a corpse planet—one of billions. His bones were bleaching in the sun, just like the fish. She shifted her weight and crunched some under her boots.
That knowledge didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel bad. It was mostly a nothingness, an emptiness, neither vindication nor defeat—somewhere in the middle.
She hadn’t killed him. Yet he was dead. Her fantasy made no sense.
Even in death, he was taking things from her.
“You shouldn’t be smoking in that thing.” Mace, one of her gunners, grumbled through the comm unit in her ear.
“Yeah?” She chewed on the end of the cigarette. One of their crew, still back on the
Rubens
,
was nicknamed Smoke. He smoked in his suit all the time—enough to earn himself that nickname. Who was Mace to judge her? “Well, maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking
bald
.”
“A shaved head’s a man’s haircut. Nothing good comes from those coffin nails, you know. That’s what I tell Smoke. Don’t be like him.” Static squealed over the line. Mace said something she missed.
“Say again,” she said.
The radiation caused interference; the worldshatter device had ignited practically every fossil fuel reserve on the planet and, in the process, vented a bunch of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
“I said, I used to give him shit about it too. What happened?”
Shaba adjusted a dial on her wrist, and the noise faded. “Nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Look, this place is a ruin. Not bad to visit, but we ain’t ever moving back here.”
“I know, I know.” Mace’s voice was totally normal, as though he were observing a football game he had no interest in. “Well, there’s nothing here. Let’s go check out NORAD.”
NORAD, better known as the Alternative Command Center nestled in the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in Colorado, had been designed to laugh in the face of even an overwhelming nuclear response. NORAD was one of the few places Humans might still be living.
Living Humans still on Earth—strange that it had come down to that. Shaba considered all the events that had ever happened on the planet—so much history, so many things to mourn. Out of all the men in history—caesars, kings, emperors, inventors, painters, artists, creators, rulers, and destroyers—all she could think about was that one guy and what he’d done—how he was gone.
And how she felt nothing at all.
“Whatever,” Shaba said, using her tongue to push the cigarette butt against her visor, snuffing it out as she closed the hatch. Shaba didn’t bother to strip out of her suit and walked back to the pilot’s seat, passing Mace on the way.
“Hey,” he said, his sullen face undercutting his optimistic tone. “How’s it looking closer to the ground?”
“Not much better from out the window.” She walked past him, to the cockpit. Their conversation continued by radio.
“Yeah,” said Mace. “I had hoped it was just a little bit less than total shit.”
“Well, it ain’t.” Shaba slid into the pilot’s seat and commenced the engine start-up sequence. The ship came to life with a pained groan. It was a new ship, and she felt its pain. The increased ionisation and acidic atmosphere could not be good for
Piggyback
’s hull, and there were entirely rational and reasonable justifications for why the reactionless drive’s pitch harmonics might sound off, but to Shaba, the ship seemed to be protesting simply being there. That place. That dead world.
No bird could live there.
Shaba pulled off her gloves. “NORAD’s near enough to seventy-six hundred kilometres away, boys, so we’ll be heading out of atmo’ for this one.” She worked as she spoke, tapping her fingers over the preflight checks. The start-up sequence was second nature to her and came as naturally as breathing. “Little hop-skip-jump into space, and we’ll be hobnobbing with the last survivors of Earth.”
“Assuming there are any,” said Bobbitt, their tail gunner. “Ain’t nothing I can see here but ashes.”
Artificial gravity and inertial dampening systems, check. Life support, check. Transporters, check. Optimal flight path… she was still working on that one. The navigational computer chirped. Check and cross check. Her distance estimate was right on the money. Manoeuvring engines, check. “Yeah,” she said, the work complete. “What a shithole.”
The ship drifted lazily into the sky as the reactionless drive defied gravity. It rose like a lost balloon, steadily accelerating, a thin cone of pressure forming ahead of them as they broke the sound barrier. Grey sky gave way to empty space. The ship was silent as it skimmed across the skin of Earth’s outer atmosphere and then plunged back in, wreathed in flames. When the flames died and
Piggyback
re-entered the atmosphere, the mountains of Colorado presented themselves, blackened, charred, and scoured of all life. Gone were the trees. The city of Colorado Springs stood dead, broken, and empty, scorched black from the impact of the Toralii worldshatter devices. As the ship descended, bodies of cars grew from tiny dots, their paint stripped away by the blasts. They stood piled up against the sides of highways, useless rusted wrecks. The ship rocked as it dropped, buffeted by the constantly howling wind that tore around the planet, mourning the dead.
The location of the Cheyenne Mountain facility was no secret. The various agencies there had been heavily involved in the production of the United States contribution to the Pillars of the Earth, the TFR
Washington
. Finding it was easy.
Getting in was another story.
Piggyback
touched down near the North Portal, a cracked and broken concrete tunnel leading into the mountain. Shaba nestled the ship as close as she could get without scratching the paintwork. Satisfied she could do no more, she powered off
Piggyback
’s systems and met with the rest of the crew in the cargo area.