“The landing gear,” Riggs suggested.

“Yeah? What about them?”

“Did you lower them?”

“No. Why? What are you thinking?”

Riggs pointed with his biostick toward the metal panel bolted aft of the seats. “We go out through the landing gear shafts. There’s a maintenance tunnel that runs the length of the ship big enough for the grease monkeys to crawl through. We just need to unscrew that panel—” Riggs fumbled in his kit. “Should be a multi-tool in here.”

“Good thinking.”

“Thanks,” Riggs said. “It isn’t something you can learn from a simulator. Hell, if you hadn’t tied me up, I betcha I could’ve landed this thing with my left hand.”

Cole bit down on what he wanted to say; there was no room in the tight confines of their predicament for making Riggs angrier. He’d rather take more blows right on his nose and keep smiling, wearing out Riggs’s rage with a bit of patience.

“Lower the gear with the manual crank while I work on the panel,” Riggs instructed.

“Okay,” Cole said, as pleasantly as he could muster his voice. If they were going to survive this together, he was going to have to build up some trust.

He would start by carefully and meticulously restraining himself for a change.

2

Following her controversial speech before the Circle, Anlyn travels to the Great Rift, accompanied by Edison and an escort of volunteers.
They hope to be present for the invasion foretold by prophecy.
They don’t yet know they are at the wrong rift.

“What are you doing?”  Rend asked. He yanked Dor’s hand away from the weapons rack.

“I was just going to touch it!” Dor insisted.

“Are you crazy?” Rend eyed the lance warily. The large weapon stood upright in a padded harness parallel to a dozen others. It rested there as if it were no different than its neighbors, but he knew better. “That’s Lord Campton’s lance,” he said in a hushed whisper, never taking his eyes off it. “The Lance of a Thousand Suns.”

“A thousand suns? That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, I heard it was forged from the magma of Hori I and Hori II and pounded into shape on the coldest corner of Drenard’s dark side.”

Dor narrowed his eyes. “Those are fairy tales, like flying Wadi. How old are you?”

“Same age as you, hot-head, but my dad was there when the lance was wielded for the first time. He said it went off with the power of a thousand suns, and that it made a noise like the universe coming alive.”

“Your dad’s been in the Wadi juice, sounds like.”

“No he hasn’t, my dad—”

Anlyn cleared her throat behind the bickering boys before the argument could get personal. The volunteer peacemakers spun around, and she took as much pleasure in their shocked expressions as she had amusement in their whispered delusions.

“Am I interrupting?” she asked.