The Rift War

By

Uncial Press       Aloha, Oregon
2010

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-054-0
ISBN 10: 1-60174-054-9

The Rift War
Copyright © 2011 by Michelle L. Levigne

Cover design
Copyright © 2011 by Judith B. Glad
Background:
NASA photograph by Robert Gendler

All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work
in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or
hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

Published by Uncial Press,
an imprint of GCT, Inc.
Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

Before the ending of all things worthwhile and strong,
there will be three drops of blood born to the bloody sword.
The daughters
shall walk in light and be strong, but the son shall overstep them.
One shall
serve and one abominate and one will triumph.
One will sleep and one shall
wait and one shall suffer.
They shall do so forever, and yet even to forever
there is an ending.
The blood drawn from the third shall open the doors and
smooth the road and waken the sleeper.
Protect the strong and vigilant, so
that the three drops of blood may come.
Though you look for the
abomination, you will not find her until she has destroyed innocence. Keep her
from the blood drawn from the blood, or all is lost.

Science Directorate Headquarters
Goarlotte-Welcairn
Moerta

2,000 years after the defeat of the Nameless One

"It works." Grego Cavvon sat back in his chair and watched the data stream across his
desktop screen in his lab in the Directorate's main building. In the back of his mind, he heard the
cheers of the crowd as he defeated the obstacle course in the last Archaics tournament he had
participated in.

"Finally." Sevron Kayn, the Science Directorate's liaison to the military, and Grego's
co-leader in the star-metal reclamation project, braced himself in the doorway of the office. With his
lips pursed and his forehead wrinkled, only the brightness of his eyes indicated that he was
pleased. Grego had remarked to some of their teammates in the project that Kayn had two
expressions--his furious scowl and his pleased scowl.

"What do you mean, 'finally'? We're half a moon ahead of schedule." Grego turned back
to the screen. He would rather watch the data spilling in from the sensor satellites than Kayn's
swarthy face, anyway.

"
Your
schedule." He stayed in the doorway, and that suited Grego just fine.
"What?" he snapped, when Grego flinched at a flare of blue light that appeared on the portion of
his screen that displayed a map of the coastline.

"We've found a sizable deposit of star-metal already." He stroked his fingertips across
the edge of his desk, bringing up the touchpad so he could tap commands into the system and get
verification, or resolve what had to be a major blip in the program.

The sensors specifically designed to find deposits of star-metal had taken moons of
work to design, refine, and then program. Grego wouldn't have reached his position of power so
soon in his career at the Science Directorate if his graduate thesis hadn't focused on tapping into
the radiation-heavy metal and finding ways to purify the ancient scourge and tame it, to use as a
power source. He had taken far too much mockery and scorn from his fellow students for
insisting that the ancient legends of Athrar Warhawk and Quenlaque had some element of truth
in them, and star-metal could be "tamed" and used. He had been able to prove one foundation
theory after another, and the mocking turned to silence, then interest, then support. Success so
early in this stage of the project was beyond his wildest dreams, but a niggling sense of unease
grew stronger as he watched the verification data spill across the screen.

"Isn't that what we wanted?" Kayn crossed from the door to stand next to Grego's chair
and looked across the desktop screen, one meter deep by two meters wide, and every square
centimeter covered with data streams; graphs, charts, satellite imagery, all updated
constantly.

"It's agreed that all the star-metal on the planet, other than the refined bits lying in
museums, is either in the center of the Death Zone, or else so deep underwater it will take robot
submersibles to bring it up. But according to this, there is enough star-metal within twenty
kilometers of us to..." He shivered and a surge of nausea took his voice.

"To what?" He leaned his too-lean frame past Grego, breaking his well-known rule of
protecting his personal space, to tap the square of screen where the troubling data appeared. He
dragged the square across the desk to bring it closer to the edge, to read it easier. The map was
attached to it, and came with the data, while the other graphs and charts rearranged themselves
on the desktop.

"To make two LAVs, at the very least," Grego blurted, when he wanted to say,
Enough swords, knives, and spearheads to arm every Archaic within five
kilometers.

His membership in the ranks of historical re-enactors devoted to the days of Athrar
Warhawk and the battle against the Encindi had been a subject of mockery by Kayn and his
supporters in the Science Directorate. If they hadn't needed Grego's genius to develop the sensors
and the process for refining star-metal, they would have lobbied to have him ejected from the
Science Directorate altogether, not just from the reclamation team.

The hard and bitter truth, for both sides of the equation, was that Grego Cavvon was
necessary if the government of Goarlotte-Welcairn wanted to gain the upper hand in the
centuries of stalemate against the fourteen other countries that made up the continent of Moerta.
Rumors said several of their unfriendly neighbors had developed dangerous new weapons.
Goarlotte-Welcairn needed to be able to not only defend itself, but intimidate its neighbors into
being peaceful and respectful.

"Can you imagine?" Kayn continued studying the map, tapping commands to refine the
details and increase the satellite images as the data continued to feed in. "An entire fleet of
Land-Assault-Vehicles armored and powered with star-metal?" He snorted and glanced at Grego, and
that greedy, delighted gleam in his eyes turned to mockery while his scowl never changed. "I'd
wager that would trump a couple dozen magical swords you and your play-actor friends keep
nattering about."

"Most definitely." He shrugged and fought to keep his expression calm. He hoped the
other man was just mocking him, and he wasn't hinting that he had spy-bugs to listen in on
Grego when he got together with his friends.

"Here we go." His scowl deepened. "I swear... Cavvon, is that your home?"

"My home?" A huff of attempted laughter escaped him. Grego choked as he leaned a
little closer to Kayn and realized that satellite imagery did indeed show the sprawling wooded
estate on the rocky coast that he had inherited from his grandparents. "Now I know those sensors
aren't working. If I had star-metal anywhere on my property -"

"It's your neighbors' estate." Kayn tapped the image, then traced his fingertip along the
faint silver line superimposed by the computer to show the boundary between the Cavvon estate
and the grounds of the estate owned by Illis and Emmi Rakkell, Grego's closest friends and
fellow Archaics. Old Master Illis and his granddaughter had been part of his life since the day he
came to live with his grandparents, orphaned at the age of nine.

"If the Rakkells had star-metal, I should think they would tell me. I spend enough time
there, and I've bored both of them often enough with my theories." He flinched when Kayn's
head snapped around and that light in his pale blue eyes burned with the paranoid viciousness
that made stronger men resign from the Directorate. "Star-metal is a favorite topic of Archaics,
and Master Illis and his granddaughter are passionate Archaics."

"That's right." The fire cooled and Kayn's lip curled upwards for a moment in scorn.
"Ironic."

"What is?" Grego stared at the data that had settled down and no longer flickered and
adjusted. He couldn't make sense of the numbers, even though he was the one who had designed
the sensors and wrote the program for the computer that controlled it all.

"Your Archaics friends are sitting on top of enough star-metal to poison the entire
country. According to the lore, of course." He leaned over Grego again, commandeering the
touchpad, and tapped in the commands to copy the information to his desk in the laboratory next
door.

"Then the sensors must be wrong."

"We can't risk that." He paced several steps away, arms crossed over his chest, almost as
if he embraced himself with the delight that gleamed through his scowl again. "It will take at
least three days of paperwork and convincing the right authorities, to get us clearance to go in
and tie up the property through eminent domain and national security."

"You could just knock at the front door and ask Master Rakkell if he will let you survey
his property."

"And risk a security leak?" Kayn snorted derisively. "If it wouldn't cause so much fuss
to go in and just haul everyone away, we would do that. There are too many soft-hearted fools in
the upper ranks who would protest a completely necessary step for the security of our country.
We have to seize the property and evict the old man and his granddaughter legally, without
leaking any dangerous information."

"If there were even a tenth of the amount of star-metal indicated by the sensors, there
should be no one alive. That much radiation..."

"Why don't you figure out why, then, while I take care of clearing the way for our next
step in the program?" Kayn stalked out of the room without a backward glance.

Grego didn't waste his time glaring at the man. He copied the data to his home computer
system and then shot off a report to his and Kayn's superior, along with a strong recommendation
that the project team stick to its plan and schedule. Once the sensors had been proven reliable,
the fleet would take off across the sea to the Death Zone, where Archaics believed the continent
of Lygroes had once lain, to brave the radiation and poisonous gases, obtain star-metal, and
begin the next step--refining the radioactive metal and taming it for defensive and
power-generating use.

Faint images born of memories and imagination, yet totally indecipherable, came to him
as he worked. They generated an ache in his temples and a churning sensation low in his gut. He
thought of his childhood friend, Emmi, showing him her skill in working fine steel to make
beautiful yet strong weapons and pieces of armor for their Archaics friends. Legend said the
Rey'kil enchanters had tamed star-metal and forged it into jewelry, weapons and armor, to
enhance their
imbrose
. Grego wondered what Emmi would do with a tamed chunk of
star-metal.

"If I had enough, I would make myself a suit of armor and go after Edrout's head,"
Emmi said in his memory. She had been maybe twelve years old, he had been sixteen, and
they had laughed together at the image of a silvery-blue suit of armor gleaming with an eerie
light that could burn the enemy without harming its wearer.

Grego's headache met the churning in his gut. The workday was nearly over, so no one
remarked on his leaving early for the first time in recorded memory.

Except Brysta. Her personal radar and impeccable timing had prompted him to remark
more than once that if anyone in the modern world had
imbrose
, she proved it. With her
long, white-gold hair and green-blue eyes and slim, elegant carriage, she could have played
Queen of Snows at any Archaics gathering. However, she refused to participate in the
tournaments to earn the points to gain that elevated rank. It was a testament to her affection for
Grego that she actually attended two or three tournaments every year with him.

"What's wrong?" Brysta met Grego just as he reached the slide-walk leading to the
underground transport station. She hooked her arm through his and clasped his wrist between
forefinger and thumb, checking his pulse. "You look ready to collapse."

"Probably a short-term bug. My stomach feels like it slid into an alternate dimension."
Grego tried to smile. Through his throbbing headache and nausea, he tried to remember if they
had plans for tonight. Images of Emmi Rakkell pushed through the spinning that tried to knock
him off his feet. Maybe he was supposed to visit her, to plan their Archaics group's battle
strategy for the next tournament? He couldn't think straight.