Allen, Roger MacBride - Chronicles of Solace 3 - Shores of Tomorrow

591 Pages·2016·1.43 MB·English

by  Allen Roger Macbride

THE
SHORES
OF
TOMORROW

Third book of
THE CHRONICLES
OF SOLACE

ROGER MACBRIDE ALLEN

BANTAM BOOKS
THE SHORES OF TOMORROW

A Bantam Spectra Book / December 2003

Published by

Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2003 by Roger MacBride Allen

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Note: A Glossary of Terms and Gazetteer of Places and Ship Names appears
after the main text of the book.

Wandella Ashdin:A historian and expert on Oskar DeSilvo.

Ulan Baskaw:Scientist who lived approximately five centuries before the main
action of the story. Little is known about her—it is not even certain whether
Baskaw was a woman or in fact a man. Baskaw invented many terraforming
techniques that were later appropriated by DeSilvo. Baskaw also discovered
certain mathematical principles underlying the science of terraforming.

Villjae Benzen:Acting Director, Groundside Power Reception, NovaSpot
Ignition Project.
Haress Bevard:Chief Engineer, NovaSpot Ignition Project.

Jerand Bolt:Member of the crew of theDom Pedro IV, recruited after departure
from Solace.

Lieutenant Commander Burl Chalmers:Commanding officer, operations section,
Chronologic Patrol Intelligence Command Headquarters.

Norla Chandray:Second Officer aboard theDom Pedro IV .

Sindra Chon:Starship crew member aboard theDom Pedro IV.

Oskar DeSilvo:Architect and terraformist and director of the project to colonize
Solace. He managed the centuries-long project by using cryosleep and temporal
confinement, arranging to have himself revived from time to time in order to
oversee critical points in the process.

Zak Destan:A rabble-rouser who touched off the Long Boulevard riots and
vanished the next day. Apparently commenced criminal/political operation upon
return to Solace.

Berana Drayax:Director of the NovaSpot Ignition Project.

Neshobe Kalzant:Planetary Executive, Solace.
Admiral Anton Koffield:Formerly commander of the Chronologic Patrol
ShipUpholder, then a passenger aboard theDom Pedro IV when she was
sabotaged. Indeed, the ship was sabotaged because he was aboard. Later, he
received authority from the Planetary Executive of Solace to hunt down Oskar
DeSilvo.

Beseda Mahrlin:Engineer, Groundside Power Reception, NovaSpot Ignition
Project.

Elber Malloon:A former “gluefoot,” or refugee, on SCO Station, who has
become a file clerk in a shipping office on the station.

Jassa Malloon:Wife to Elber Malloon. Their dead son Belrad lies buried in the
grounds of a drowned farm on Solace.

Zari Malloon:Infant daughter to Elber and Jassa.

Captain Felipe Henrique Marquez:Captain of theDom Pedro IV .

Bosley Ortem:Junior Engineer, Groundside Power Reception, NovaSpot Ignition
Project.

Dixon Phelby:Cargo officer of theDom Pedro IV.
Karlin Raenau:Station commander of SCO Station, orbiting Solace.

Hues Renblant:Disaffected officer aboard theDom Pedro IV who resigned from
the ship’s company.

Buran Rufdrop:Chief Designer and Director of Groundside Power Reception,
NovaSpot Ignition Project. Killed in a crash three months before Ignition Day.

Boland Xavier Shelte VI:System Maintenance Director, Canyon City, Last
Chance Canyon, Glister. Sixth of that name since the founding of the city.

Captain Olar Sotales:Director of the Station Security Force aboard SCO Station.

Curthaus Spar:Junior Engineer, Groundside Power Reception, NovaSpot Ignition
Project.

Yuri Sparten:Formerly an assistant to Karlin Raenau on SCO Station. His
parents, as children, were refugees from the fall of Glister. Later, assigned to
accompany—and monitor—Anton Koffield as Koffield searched for DeSilvo.

Lieutenant Kalani Temblar:Chronologic Patrol Intelligence Investigator.

Ballsto Vaihop:Junior Engineer, Groundside Power Reception, NovaSpot
Ignition Project.
James “Jay” Ruthan Verlant V:Alternate Member of the City Council for
Technical Issues, Canyon City, Last Chance Canyon, Glister. Fifth of that name
since the founding of the city.

Clemsen Wahl:Starship crew member stranded on Asgard Five by equipment
malfunctions aboard his ship. Later, recruited to serve aboard theDom Pedro IV .
He ran off from a landing party during a visit to Rio de Janeiro.
Part One

THE PRESENT PAST
Chapter One

THE RUINED WORLD

MARINERCITY
MARS

June 15, 5343 (Earth Reckoning, Common Era)

The lift door opened, and Kalani Temblar stepped out into the wreckage of the
ruined city. She had been working hard, but that wasn’t what had her perspiring.
It was fear of what came next, not the effort of what she had just done, that had
drenched her brow and neck with sweat.

She did not attempt to wipe the sweat away. That would have been impossible,
even had she been wearing an ordinary pressure suit, and the suit she wore was
far from ordinary.

She stepped away from what was officially called the Emergency Evaluation
Vertical Covert Entrance, Technology Storage Facility. According to the files,
the last Chrono Patrol agents to use it, hundreds of years before, had simply
called it the Dark Museum Drop Shaft. Whatever it was called, Kalani sincerely
hoped she never had to go down it again. There was too much down there in the
underground museum, too much in too many ways.
Still beats being out on the surface,she told herself.Best to be off-planet as soon
as possible. She patted the bulge of the data recorder in her suit pocket. What she
had recorded already in there would turn everything—everything—upside down.
The evidence she had uncovered in the Dark Museum was going to give the
Chronologic Patrol’s Central Command fits. If she stayed alive long enough to
get it to them.

She stumbled through the thrice-cursed cityscape. Mariner City had been
abandoned to plague a thousand years before, then entombed by the murderous
symbiote-mold—then wrecked by an explosion in the Dark Museum hidden
underneath it. She made her way around the smashed buildings, giving as wide a
berth as possible to the thicker clumps of symbiote-mold that covered
everything. The old files said that, way back when, the stuff had been even
thicker and more virulent outside the city. Unfortunately, she was about to have
the chance to find out if that was still true.

Lurching and stumbling through the crumbling, mold-covered wreckage, she
arrived back at her lander—and was disheartened to see that it had already
acquired a thin dusting of mold. She could almost imagine that she could see it
growing. She glanced at the arm of her suit and didn’t need to imagine anything.
The thin tufts she had first noticed a few hours ago were now plainly visible.

The lander was purpose-built for landing on, and traveling across, Mars: a short
fat cone with three legs and thrusters in the base. Nothing fancy. The cabin
wasn’t even pressurized. No sense sending something sophisticated down to this
place. The Interdict Law made it clear that any ship that landed on Mars had to
be incinerated, for fear of contaminating whatever else it might touch.

Her pressure suit was actually two suits, one inside the other. Once she was off-
planet and safely back in space, alongside the one-person Chrono Patrol
transport that had gotten her to Mars orbit, the first thing she would do would be
to beam all the data she had captured over to a datastore that wasn’t hopelessly
saturated with Martian contaminates. Then she would abandon the lander,
sending it into a burn-up trajectory with the Martian atmosphere. Then she’d seal
herself in a fabric bubble, pump in a pure oxygen environment, and ignite the
outer suit. It would disintegrate completely, leaving her in the supposedly
fireproof inner suit. She sure as hell hoped it was fireproof.

Watching from the inside as her pressure suit burned was going to be a new
experience for Kalani, but the people she was tracking had done it, or something
very like it. She was going to have to do a lot of the things they had done. She
could see that now.

She climbed up into the lander and sealed the hatch. The hatch, and the hull
itself, for that matter, weren’t designed to hold pressure in but merely to provide
a reasonably smooth aerodynamic surface during transit through the atmosphere.
Even so, it felt good to havesomething between herself and that horrific
landscape.

But she wouldn’t just get to lift off and leave the damned planet. Oh, no. She
would have to land one more time, in order to finish her investigations here and
seal off a massive breach in security that had been there for at least a century
before she was born. What was the near-ancient phrase—“closing the barn doors
after the horses have already gone”—something like that. Still, orders were
orders. The tunnel would have to be shut.

She strapped herself in and fired the lander’s main thruster, not even bothering to
calculate a flight plan. Her destination was so close that it wasn’t worth the
effort. She had the coordinates she needed from her suit’s inertial-tracking
system. All she had to do was fly up, fly due east five kilometers, and land again.

The lander jumped into the sullen sky and nosed over as it reached the apex of