– and stared numbly at the fish
circling in the pond before him when the search returned an immediate hit.
It was real.
The file in question contained a report detailing an incident on Thorne more than 125 years before. Out of all the worlds of the Tian Di, Thorne was both the least hospitable and the most
recently colonized, a scrap of rock with a few bare lichens to its name orbiting on the outer edge of a red dwarf star’s habitable zone. It was a far from suitable candidate for terraforming,
but a penal colony had been set up there following the Schism, and later a series of biological research stations had also been established there. That community of scientists, along with those
unlucky enough to be sent there to live out their sentences, huddled in shielded biomes or in deep sheltered caves.
The report detailed the accidental deaths of hundreds of prisoners following a containment breach in a biotech station, but any more specific details had been flagged as restricted. The only
name he even vaguely recognized amongst those attached to the incident was that of Zelia de Almeida – a minor member of the Temur Council who had, at the time, been Thorne’s Director of
Policy.
The report also mentioned that de Almeida had been removed from her post following the incident, while an investigation blamed the whole incident on criminal negligence. There was nothing to
connect any of it with Winchell Antonov; nothing to explain why he had asked Luc – in a dream , of all things – to come looking for this particular file.
Or maybe he’d come across the file in the past and forgotten about it, until he had incorporated it into a trauma-induced fantasy about secret transfer gates.
He stared hard at the report, visible only to him where it hovered in the air. You have a choice , he told himself. You can either decide the dream was just that, or you can act like it
meant something real.
Luc stared past the report and at the upwards-thrusting skyline of Ulugh Beg, feeling as if he were balanced on the edge of a precipice. He had requested, and been granted, further scans, but
there was nothing inside his skull that shouldn’t have been there. If there ever had been, it was long gone.
He reached out, meaning to dismiss the record. Instead he opened it for editing, adding in five words: I’m calling in my favour .
He saved and dismissed it, feeling like a fool. With any luck, he’d never have to think about it ever again.
Luc found himself back home within another few days, staring around his apartment like he’d never seen it before. It might as well have been a million years since
he’d last stood upon its threshold.
He ordered the blinds to open. They parted to reveal the city spread out before him, the fat spindle of the White Palace dominating the evening skies where it floated above Chandrakant Lu Park.
The Palace itself was constructed from a series of stacked tiers, with a number of biomes arranged around its upper surface, each filled with the native flora and fauna of any one of a dozen
worlds. The whole thing hovered above the park on enormous AG pods. Few people outside of the Temur Council were granted the opportunity to visit the White Palace, and fewer still got to pass
through the private transfer gates in its upper levels that led to Vanaheim, an entire world reserved for the sole use of the Council.
Further out from Chandrakant Lu, bridges like spun diamond straddled Pioneer Gorge and the small, cramped buildings from the original, pre-terraforming settlement that had once been located
there. People came from all corners of the Tian Di just to see a view like this.
Even though Reunification was still a few weeks away, holographic images of dragons and other mythical beasts were already being projected into the void of air surrounding the White Palace,
along with images of the orbiting Coalition contact-ship that carried aboard it a transfer gate linking back to the Coalition
circling in the pond before him when the search returned an immediate hit.
It was real.
The file in question contained a report detailing an incident on Thorne more than 125 years before. Out of all the worlds of the Tian Di, Thorne was both the least hospitable and the most
recently colonized, a scrap of rock with a few bare lichens to its name orbiting on the outer edge of a red dwarf star’s habitable zone. It was a far from suitable candidate for terraforming,
but a penal colony had been set up there following the Schism, and later a series of biological research stations had also been established there. That community of scientists, along with those
unlucky enough to be sent there to live out their sentences, huddled in shielded biomes or in deep sheltered caves.
The report detailed the accidental deaths of hundreds of prisoners following a containment breach in a biotech station, but any more specific details had been flagged as restricted. The only
name he even vaguely recognized amongst those attached to the incident was that of Zelia de Almeida – a minor member of the Temur Council who had, at the time, been Thorne’s Director of
Policy.
The report also mentioned that de Almeida had been removed from her post following the incident, while an investigation blamed the whole incident on criminal negligence. There was nothing to
connect any of it with Winchell Antonov; nothing to explain why he had asked Luc – in a dream , of all things – to come looking for this particular file.
Or maybe he’d come across the file in the past and forgotten about it, until he had incorporated it into a trauma-induced fantasy about secret transfer gates.
He stared hard at the report, visible only to him where it hovered in the air. You have a choice , he told himself. You can either decide the dream was just that, or you can act like it
meant something real.
Luc stared past the report and at the upwards-thrusting skyline of Ulugh Beg, feeling as if he were balanced on the edge of a precipice. He had requested, and been granted, further scans, but
there was nothing inside his skull that shouldn’t have been there. If there ever had been, it was long gone.
He reached out, meaning to dismiss the record. Instead he opened it for editing, adding in five words: I’m calling in my favour .
He saved and dismissed it, feeling like a fool. With any luck, he’d never have to think about it ever again.
Luc found himself back home within another few days, staring around his apartment like he’d never seen it before. It might as well have been a million years since
he’d last stood upon its threshold.
He ordered the blinds to open. They parted to reveal the city spread out before him, the fat spindle of the White Palace dominating the evening skies where it floated above Chandrakant Lu Park.
The Palace itself was constructed from a series of stacked tiers, with a number of biomes arranged around its upper surface, each filled with the native flora and fauna of any one of a dozen
worlds. The whole thing hovered above the park on enormous AG pods. Few people outside of the Temur Council were granted the opportunity to visit the White Palace, and fewer still got to pass
through the private transfer gates in its upper levels that led to Vanaheim, an entire world reserved for the sole use of the Council.
Further out from Chandrakant Lu, bridges like spun diamond straddled Pioneer Gorge and the small, cramped buildings from the original, pre-terraforming settlement that had once been located
there. People came from all corners of the Tian Di just to see a view like this.
Even though Reunification was still a few weeks away, holographic images of dragons and other mythical beasts were already being projected into the void of air surrounding the White Palace,
along with images of the orbiting Coalition contact-ship that carried aboard it a transfer gate linking back to the Coalition
Similar Books
