Robert Buettner_Jason Wander_03 by Orphan's Journey

Author:Orphan's Journey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: War Stories, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure, Science Ficiton, Orphans, Space Opera, Fiction, Space Warfare, Human-Alien Encounters, Adventure, Soldiers, General
ISBN: 9780316001731
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2008-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FOUR

AN HOUR LATER, AS THE SUN ROSE, Wilgan put us, his First Mate, and the rest of the crew ashore at a log ramp carved into the river bank. Termites, or Bren’s analogs thereto, had swiss-cheesed most of the deadfall that littered the river’s banks, but the logs that made the ramp looked, and thunked underfoot, solid and fresh-cut.

The ramp joined a ten-foot-wide trail that twisted across a flat gray rock shelf. Unlike the log ramp, the trail was ancient, worn two feet deep into the rock by the foot traffic of centuries.

The crew split into two groups, one ahead of us, one behind. Every man carried a slim Marini rifle, and had a pistol in his belt. Most had put on lacquered leather armored vests.

Then we marched off downriver, east toward the sunrise. Wilgan steered the ship back into the mainstream and passed us by with a wave, headed the same direction.

Within another hundred yards, the pines thickened around us, until we neither saw nor heard the river.

After two hours’ walk, the trail grade dropped away. It switched back repeatedly, and the pines mixed more and more with deciduous trees until we were transiting a multicanopied, temperate rainforest.

The air grew warmer, sweeter with flower scent, and louder with bird cries and a distant rumble.

We had descended a thousand feet when the trail switched back at a bald rock outcrop from which we could look toward the river.

I walked up behind Bassin, who stood at the outcrop’s edge. He still wore the wide brown bowl helmet and thick leather armor of the engineers we had seen the day before, and his hands were on his hips. I looked where he looked.

We stood on one rock wall of a gorge that dropped away a thousand feet below us, and rose a thousand feet behind us. To our right, the Marin thundered in a glistening ribbon, its falls cascading a half mile over a red stone escarpment, sparkling in the morning sun. Rainbows pierced the mist clouds that swirled up from the catch pool at the falls’ base.

I sucked in a breath as I stared at the scene, then I gasped, grabbed Bassin’s elbow, and pointed at the falls. “The ship! Bassin, the ship can’t go over that!”

The First Mate, his rifle slung over a stiff leather vest that covered his shoulders, came up alongside us, smiling. Neither Bassin nor the Mate shared my panic.

I looked again at the falls, at insects crawling on the rocks alongside them, then chinned my magnification.

From the top of the escarpment to the catch pool at the falls base, a series of straight, manmade ribbons dropped. Up one set of ribbons crawled a water-filled box bigger than an ocean liner, within which a Marini sailing ship floated like a twig. Down the other set of ribbons crept a similar box, descending at the same pace the opposite box rose. The sprig of lacquered green floating in the descending box that counterweighted the rising box was our ship.

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