5: Renegades of Ophelia's World

By Dante D'Anthony

Louis Silvera of the transport vessel La Sirena was awakened early on his shift by an emergency com from the bridge. All around his cabin were posters of various daring-do resort hotels across the colonies. Jump from Space at New Procyon. Swim the whales at Thander's down. Dance in New Cuba.
He made his way out the cabin ignoring the collection of a bachelor's life.
Holograms of Cuban dancing girls reached out from the walls as he made his way down the ship's halls, "Morning Capitan!" each said and blew him a kiss.
"Turn off the holograms Artie or there is going to be trouble!" he bellowed, but the kisses followed him all the way to the bridge where a whole troop of them were dancing around Artie who had his feet up on the command console."
Silvera slapped a toggle on the wall and the girls disappeared. Artie, however, remained, slightly perturbed.
"What?" Silvera growled.
Artie said nothing but touched some screens and diagrams came up all flat.
"This is a full spread of the hypercasts we are receiving" he finally quipped. "De nada."
Silvera tilted his head sarcastically and made a face, "Soooo-fix it. Don't wake me up for this shit and turn off the holo-girls in the hallways it doesn't cheer me up any more. I'm going back to bed" he said and turned to leave.
"Not broken." Artie said quickly before Louis could escape.
"Uhh, hello-it has to be broken or there would be some chatter on that screen. You know, a whole bunch of yapping lonely freighter pilots, advertisements for cheap resort hotels on obscure little asteroids, droning bull feathers cast about the universe aye? Fix it."
"Not broken." Artie repeated. His eyes left the floor where they had been examining his boots which he had removed from the console. They met his Captain's face waiting for the implications to finally sink in.
"So there's nobody broadcasting from the other side?" Silvera's eyes went dark....

The streets never looked as dangerous as they did this day. Anyone might be a kidnapper ready to abscond away with him for ransom. He passed the familiar taverns and heard familiar songs drifting through to the alleys and passageways. Perhaps the betrayers even now celebrated their evil act among those fellows. Millin climbed among some forlorn bell towers and slept.
Alone, hungry and afraid, he watched the lake.
Sooner or later a starship would port there. He would stow away on it....

Gravity simulators went wild on both ships. Every object not battened down went flying off in different directions.
Borges was MERGED, "Spatial distortions! List to port hard; we've got anomalies out of smooth space! Jagged edged, moving, linear event horizons! Radiation flares, temperature contrasts, moving out full ahead!" For all the urgency in her voice she was steady.
The crew watched as the universe ripped open.
Boada groaned, "Tu Madre!" and plunged himself into a cannon cockpit.
Amazingly, like two canyons of darkness and lightning springing out of a sea of normal space, a sputtering of white dwarfs and neutron stars the size of moonlets came lifting up like an eighteenth century balloon show. Comets and bits of asteroids, Predecessor station ruins, busted planets; a hurricane menagerie spilled before them.
Twisting in the storm, their ships fought to maintain equilibrium. "What the devil is this?" Mel roared across the com...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dante D'Anthony
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301963591

Dante D'Anthony

From South Buffalo New York. Producer, writer, artist. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4873327/Currently heading up the launch of the “Pandoran Age Chronicles” franchise and the “Magnificent Raiders of Dimension War 1” feature film. D’Anthony has worked in Finance, NYSE Licensed broker with AG Edwards. He has worked in Commercial finance and project development in Miami with $70M in assets under management as the personal assistant to the owners at DCA International Real Estate and several high end Design, Architectural, and Development firms working on numbers of projects from conception through all aspects of Design Development, Financing, and Project management. In 2003 he won the Florida Communities Trust Grant ($6M) with his designs for parks in Southwest Ranches Florida. He has owned and managed two art publishing companies that have published art on clothing with national retailer accounts while maintaining ongoing bricks and mortar galleries. His current venture (a full animated studio launch) with a major Hollywood Producer involved includes a complete matrix of a feature film and merchandising franchise and a full console video game. Education: Undergraduate work at SUNY Buffalo, across from the venerable Albright Knox, Bachelor of Science in Design 1985 with a Concentration in Urban & Environmental Design. Included were seminars in Urban Planning and Design, and studios Interior Des, minor in Art History. At FIU in Miami graduate level Coursework in Fine Art & Special Education (continuing certification for Florida Department of Education) included figure drawing studies under the noted Richard Duncan. Additional Graduate Work in Architecture, Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture. NYSE Series 7 broker License, A.G. Edwards And Associates. U.S. Army reserves Corporal.

Book preview

Renegades of Ophelia’s World

Pandoran Age Chronicles: 5

Copyright © Dante D’Anthony2013

Smashwords Edition

For Patti & Scott

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge Patti Nash and the Daytona Pirate Mafia Crew.

–Dante D’Anthony

Contents

The Kith Blade

Riptide

Ossa

Harry’s Tale

The Derelict

Leon’s Last Stand

Mohanga River

The Freighter

The Kith Blade

ObscuroFrio, Sagittarius Arm,

Obscuro! Frio!

So it is said, Obscuro….frio were the first words muttered by a Spanish speaking Arcturian as he stepped from a ruined starship and looked out at serrated glacial peaks stretching dark and magnificent in all directions. Refugees from the Arcturian genocidal wars, it was their last planet of call.

There was no more fuel.

Literally, Obscuro Frio means, Darkness and cold. It was apt nomenclature. The planet’s dying sun cast an ugly light over jagged teeth of mountain ranges. The biome on that frozen world consisted of pumped up vermin. Bottom feeders that had managed to evolve when grander and higher life forms died away.

A world were the lowest and most despicable of creation had stepped into the eco-niches of giants.

Orbiting a fading Red-giant star at the end of its life-cycle which had passed Red-giant status and was now fading to cool, it was the last chapter of the planet’s existence. Eons had ebbed away in the sputtering twilight of that world when mankind stumbled off the refugee ships.

Amazingly, the indigenous life forms had been evolving right along with the slow and dreary death.

How the planet’s life forms had survived the stars expansion was a matter of conjecture.

Steve Allman

A barely temperate zone at the poles? The crushing depths of dark seas?

The stars retreating heat then had been slow enough for the vermin to conquer again the icy globe.

Snow spiders mimicked rubble to avoid ice worms that hid in the glacial rivers fearing sudden clouds of stoneflies that smelled them in search of a place to lay larva. It was a looters struggle for the last energies left of better days.

Someday the star would nova, but there was still an eon or two to play out.

The refugees fought a vicious battle for survival. Their solution to stay alive is a legendary testament to their will. Among the Out worlds, a story of overcoming unnatural odds is the first story of each place. But the ObscuroFrioian’s story is the most arduous.

One can still see the ships logs at the Brady library and witness what happened there in 3197.

Louis Silvera of the transport vessel La Sirena was awakened early on his shift by an emergency com from the bridge. All around his cabin were posters of various daring-do resort hotels across the colonies. Jump from Space at New Procyon. Swim the whales at Thander's down. Dance in New Cuba.

He made his way out the cabin ignoring the collection of a bachelor's life.

Holograms of Cuban dancing girls reached out from the walls as he made his way down the ships halls, Morning Capitan! each said and blew him a kiss.

Turn off the holograms Artie or there is going to be trouble! he bellowed, but the kisses followed him all the way to the bridge where a whole troop of them were dancing around Artie who had his feet up on the command console."

Silvera slapped a toggle on the wall and the girls disappeared. Artie, however, remained, slightly perturbed.

What? Silvera growled.

Artie said nothing but touched some screens and diagrams came up all flat.

This is a full spread of the hypercasts we are receiving he finally quipped. De nada.

Silvera tilted his head sarcastically and made a face, Soooo-fix it. Don’t wake me up for this shit and turn off the holo-girls in the hallways it doesn’t cheer me up any more. I’m going back to bed he said and turned to leave.

Not broken. Artie said quickly before Louis could escape.

Uhh, hello-it has to be broken or there would be some chatter on that screen. You know, a whole bunch of yapping lonely freighter pilots, advertisements for cheap resort hotels on obscure little asteroids, droning bull feathers cast about the universe aye? Fix it.

Not broken. Artie repeated. His eyes left the floor where they had been examining his boots which he had removed from the console. They met his Captain’s face waiting for the implications to finally sink in.

So there’s nobody broadcasting from the other side? Silvera’s eyes went dark.

They were hauling twelve tons of frozen fish and three hundred colonists to Rearden, a boomtown on an asteroid of the same name at the frontier. The fish were illegal-the La Sirena didn’t have the proper facilities to haul them.

Artie had rigged up a bunch of liquid nitrogen tanks and handed the inspector a 500 credit note. The inspector got a case of gotta go real quick. Silvera had asked him if the fish would keep till they got to Rearden and Artie had replied with a shrug.

Rearden’s meat processing vats had gone bad when they had been running twenty four seven trying to accommodate the boom. The price of meat sub and fish had gone through the roof. Silvera was looking to clean up.

The colonists were your usual bunch of green civies who imagined themselves more rugged and adventurous than they usually ended up being. Whole families eager to get claim on a world or worldlet and were ready to risk all.

Artie and Louis often ran bets on how many would run home and then checked the transport manifests on future visits.

Sometimes they stayed, sometimes they fell out. Louis was figuring this particular crop looked like the grand collection of wimp extraordinaires.

I’ll take you up on that assessment, sir. Two to one, over half are still on Rearden next time we drop shipment.

So now Louis was facing dead casts from the Rearden side of hyper and a ship full of melting frozen fish and soft civilians.

Marauders? Louis looked expectantly an Artie, but Artie was too cynical to even throw him that bone.

"No S.O.S. signals? None of their usual psycho howling and strutting? If somebody hit Rearden, they did it with military precision. Fast. Take out communications, Then mop up at leisure.

The targets run around in confusion unable to organize a response. Artie returned a sardonic smile.

Yeah, well…those targets would have been our friends and colleagues this go round. Louis conceded grimly.

We come out of hyper for three seconds. Autoscan a wide field, then punch the hole again and go right back into zero space. We can go through the autoscans from hyper. If everything is five-five-five, we turn around and come back.

If it isn’t? Artie asked, certain in his own mind the autoscans were going to be scenes of carnage on Rearden.

Thank the great Space Ghost we put those extra drives in the ship to outrun the inspectors aye?

There was no one left at Rearden.

They made a quick burst out of hyper in a daring sweep of the colony and found it a radioactive wasteland. Artie had been right.

Captain Silvera pressed the ship deep into the Sagittarius Spiral Arm. They watched for pursuit and were relieved when none followed. However, La Sirena was an old ship.

Silvera had managed to buy it from Air Corps surplus. He was planning major retrofitting at Rearden-he had pushed her as far as was reasonable and they were now blasting through the universe with chewing gum and duct tape holding together systems in dire need of care.

There were no more colonies on their current vector. Even the charts were scant on information. It was then, when the two bachelors felt the old boat was flying blind into a great unknown, that a strange passenger appeared at the bridge doorway like someone out of a mystery holo.

The Arcturian colonies weren’t warm to cyborgs, but the passenger was obviously wearing headgear the screamed of enhancements.

Mental enhancements.

Artie remembered him then. Born with congenital brain damage, the passenger had been licensed certain hardware that allowed him to function in regular society.

Ian Brady, born with a brutal disability and having spent a lifetime of social ostracism, had now become a lifeline for their survival. He had databases in his head which included information from university probes and research stations on a world they could reach.

An unnamed globe orbiting a red giant. M6103. There was a breathable atmosphere. Indigenous life forms. Lakes located near several geothermal vents. The rest of the planet was largely an ice ball of wicked mountain ranges.

La Sirena would have to make it to one of the geothermal vents. They could survive there because of lakes.

In a heroic attempt the ship crash landed a thousand miles short of their destination. In the weeks that followed it became apparent they crew and passengers would freeze to death. Again, it was Ian that provided a solution. His enhancements had enabled him to pursue a career in biological sciences.

Desperate to survive, he offered the crew and passengers of the castaway’s genetic enhancements by recombinant DNA from some of the indigenous life forms. They had been freezing, now they could endure the cold. They had been facing starvation, now they could metabolize the local fauna. So began a new people.

Atlas Mountains, ObscuroFrio

Sagittarius Galactic Spiral Arm, 4120

Aggregate ice lay in furrows along the edges of New Aiguilles Expupery range. Black stoneflies, long and waspish, flew in a maddening frenzy when the boy appeared. Hovering over a corpse, they were a cloud of sudden, surprising motion.

The boy recognized the corpse immediately, it was his father.

Just like that, a glance, a moment, his life irretrievably diminished.

Swallowing hard, young Millin Quinoa pulled out his Kith blade from his long white boot and swung a full circle scanning for the murderers. They had gone, leaving the body exposed to the wildlife for food-an ultimate sign of contempt.

He stood among the flies, approached the body. The flies came at him to sting and lay larva but Millin swung his blade wide side, and the crack of hard fly bodies smashing sent the whole buzzing mass away.

He took his father’s tools and small belongings as mementos, but it would be the flies that he would remember. Their buzzing calls like words from the dead.

ZZZZZZ Remember this! Remember and be spared it.

A giant half circle of sun spanned the horizon, resting enormous over the marching stretch of jagged mountain peaks. Millin's wet eyes scanned the escarpments and drifts about him again. His father’s betrayers might leap at him any moment.

ZZZZZZZ.

He buried his father’s corpse and sat sentry by the grave, watching stoneflies land on the icy rocks, returning now to search for their hidden meal. When he could sit no more, he stepped away and clambered down the ice with expert steps.

His father had always been a wide smile and a booming greeting, a determined step into action-they had made him a helpless patch of fly covered shame.

Roy Rudder

Millin glanced warily across the stretch of jagged peaks, seeing for miles and miles. There was no end of them on this world. Any one of the villages tucked among the rocks and valleys might harbor the murderous betrayers who'd made quick end of his father.

He would become caution; it was Millin they were after, Millin and the kith blade.

Angered that his father had chosen Millin instead of them as the next holder of the blade, the killers had to be among his own kith.

He