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  Into the Hinterlands

  David Drake

  John Lambshead

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

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  Into the Hinterlands

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by David Drake & John Lambshead

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3461-0

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First Baen printing, September 2011

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  tk

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  For our late friend Jim Baen,

  whose idea it was.

  “Speak not of doleful things in a time of mirth or at the table;

  speak not of melancholy things as death or wounds, and

  if others mention them change if you can the discourse;

  tell not your dreams, but to your intimate friend.”

  —George Washington

  CHAPTER 1

  The Continuum

  The Continuum was angry.

  Sometimes you could see forever through its violet tints. Today, turbulent currents spilled colors with such energy that Allenson could not keep Jem Hawthorn’s frame in sight. He was reduced to following the silver track of its wake.

  Allenson pedalled a similar frame, a machine not unlike an exercise bike in appearance. It had a central column with pedals at the bottom and a seat on top. A control panel and a display screen were slung between handlebars projecting between his legs. His rucksack was clipped to the back. The entire machine was made from paper-light ceramic and carbon composites.

  Thin filaments of carbon enclosed him; balls of green and blue light rolled slowly along them. If Allenson concentrated he could see the faint shimmer of the interface between his reality bubble and the raw energy of the Continuum. That delicate bubble was only maintained by constant pedaling, as the frame had little capacity for storing energy.

  The bubble field could be phased to move the frame through the Continuum. It was tuned to leak light in the visible frequencies, so the pilot could navigate, but was otherwise impervious. It was unsafe to allow too much interaction between reality and the Continuum. Inevitably, heat build up became an issue on long trips. The harder you had to pedal the more sauna-like it got. Allenson had to work very hard to push his frame through the turbulence.

  Hawthorn reappeared suddenly, his frame materializing out of a boiling purple mist. Allen Allenson twisted his hand throttle forwards to brake. Colliding frame fields could produce unpleasantly terminal interactions.

  He kept a wary eye behind for Royman Destry. Destry had spent fifteen years of his youth on the home world, highly civilized Brasilia. He had taken a degree at Blue Horizon College, part of the prestigious University of Freelanding.

  Allenson thought highly of Destry’s education but the downside was that Destry had neither the physical fitness nor the wilderness skills of the other two men.

  The Continuum lay outside of reality—our reality—where mankind evolved. The universe was a 4D-membrane floating in the Continuum. There might be other universes, the mathematics suggested the possibility, but no one had ever discovered one. The Continuum’s infinite dimensions twisted and changed scale, folding in to nothingness before uncurling in an endless dance.

  Its drag on elements varied according to their sub-atomic properties. Metals were particularly troublesome.

  Frame technology offered mankind the means to cross interstellar distances but at a price. Frames were delicate and transportation of goods, especially metals, was difficult in anything but small quantities, or in very large ships. The Continuum heaved, tossing frames like coracles in a mighty ocean. Some currents were strong and persisted, allowing easier travel in certain directions. One of the most important was the Cutter Stream that crossed the worldless Bight to the galactic west of the Home Worlds. This stream made possible Brasilia’s five Cutter Stream Colonies, situated as they were on the far side of the Bight.

  Allenson, Hawthorn and Destry had the task of surveying the Hinterland to the west of the Cutter Stream Colonies for the Harbinger Project. This area was thought to be rich in exploitable worlds. There was already a trickle of migration into the area. Brasilia had agents keeping an eye on one or two of the faster growing colonies. Most of the Hinterland was unexplored and known only be hearsay and traveller’s tales.

  Hawthorn looked around and made an overtaking gesture. Allenson glanced at his watch. Surely it was not yet time for him to take point? The position of the minute bar confirmed that Hawthorn was requesting to be relieved early. It was most unlike him not to serve his full shift. The leader of a column of frames created a wake that eased the path for those following. The ‘going’ at the front of their small column must be very difficult indeed.

  Allenson raised a hand to signal acknowledgement and steered his frame out of Hawthorn’s slipstream. It rocked in the turbulence and he had to press harder on the pedals to maintain speed. He checked the charging bar, wh
ich showed that his frame’s small capacitors were only at three-quarter storage.

  Allenson was a fit young man of twenty two. He was tall, strong and healthy but he nevertheless felt compelled to adjust his frame’s power flow such that it all went straight to the frame’s energy field. This fractionally eased the loading on his pedals. Out here in the wilderness, that could mean the difference between survival and destruction.

  Destry was the Chief Surveyor of the Harbinger project, as befitted his social rank as a member of the Brasilian aristocracy, but it was understood that the Assistant Surveyor, Allenson, would lead the team.

  * * *

  Allenson considered his options. Normally, he would have consulted his friends but discussion from frame to frame was not possible so he had to make a decision for the whole team. He would probably have gambled on pedaling on through the turbulence had it been just Hawthorn and himself but he had Destry to consider. Destry was struggling to keep up. It would go ill for the Allensons if he lost a member of the Destry family tree, even such an unimportant colonial twig as Royman. To Allenson’s credit this was not at the forefront of his mind. Destry was his friend and, more importantly, his responsibility.

  Allenson decided that they had no choice but to land and rest while the gale blew itself out but that was easier said than done. The survey team was in uncharted wilderness so choosing a direction to find shelter was problematical.

  Large gravity fields projected shadows in the Continuum that were usually visible for great distances but not today. Allenson ran blind, peering helplessly at the swirling energy. He was tempted to turn into a search pattern but the danger was that they would become confused and pedal round in circles.

  Pilots tended to see things in the Continuum’s colored patterns. Experiments with cameras had shown that the visions were at least partly hallucinations caused by some unknown direct interaction between the Continuum and the human mind. Many an academic and mystic had topped up their pension fund by speculating at length about the meaning, if any, of these phenomena.

  Allenson kept seeing an image of his stepmother. She smiled at him with love in her eyes, holding out her arms and eagerly beckoning to him. This was an intensely irritating fantasy, all things considered. He shook his head to clear his mind. This was not the time to get distracted.

  Allenson slowed to check that the rest of the team were still with him. The Continuum gale had not blown out; indeed conditions were deteriorating. Allenson noted that Destry’s pedaling was increasingly erratic. They were fast running out of options.

  Hawthorn blipped the phasing on his frame causing it to flash to attract Allenson’s intention. He gestured exaggeratedly to his left. Faint orange coils spun lazily into the distance. That meant only one thing—Rider tracks!

  Riders liked storms no more than did people but they knew the Hinterland intimately. Allenson swung his frame behind the dissipating coils and followed. He had been pedaling for what seemed a lifetime and his vision was blurring. When he first glimpsed the shadow ahead he thought it was just fatigue but it was a star’s gravitational field distorting the continuum. He peddled with renewed energy and soon spotted the smaller shadow of a planet. They were saved. He followed the Rider’s spiraling trail right down to a point on the world’s equator.

  Allenson carefully and slowly adjusted his frame’s phasing until reality became visible as a ghostly monochrome image. He could see out of the Continuum tolerably well but he would still be quite invisible to anyone in the realspace. Long shadows showed that he had materialized in the twilight zone between night and day.

  The Riders had set up camp in a clearing surrounded by a forest of tall, cone-shaped trees covered with needle-like “leaves”. Something fleshy cooked on a spit over a fire. Fat dripped, flashing when it caught alight in mid air. Allenson noticed a dozen or so near-naked riders huddled around the flames suggesting that the weather was cool even on the equator. Riders were more or less human. They were short—most were less than one and a half meters—and thin, with long greasy hair that hung around their shoulders.

  The group was mostly male with a few scrawny girls. The genders could only be distinguished by the scrubby beards on the men.

  Large crystal boulders were scattered around the campsite. A flickering shadow showed where one moved, twisting around before settling like a dog in a reed bed. Where there were Riders there were inevitably Rider beasts. Long crystals on the beast slid against each other and opened. A rider jumped out and made his way towards the fire. Riders got their name because they rode crystal beasts through the Continuum, protected in some way by the crystal latticework around them.

  Hawthorn’s frame gently solidified into half-real. Allenson pointed at the Riders and then gestured that the Team should move around the planet into the night zone. Hawthorn nodded in agreement. Riders were capricious and could be dangerous even when unprovoked.

  Destry’s frame flickered briefly into view before vanishing back into the Continuum as he over-compensated on the phasing slider. Destry then reappeared, his frame dropping fully into the material universe with a flare of energy. He was too exhausted to achieve the delicate control needed to examine the Riders unobserved.

  Several of the beasts stirred, phasing in and out of the Continuum like frogs sticking their head out of a pond to check on the surface world. The beast’s agitation attracted the Riders’ attention.

  Allenson was not the type to waste time cursing over events or pointlessly allocating blame. The situation was as it was and must be handled. His mind clicked coldly through the options. Fleeing was the least attractive. The Riders could easily chase down tired men and flight suggested weakness. Riders despised weakness and they attacked what they despised.

  There was only one realistic course of action. Allenson phased fully into the real world. He descended to ground level in the Riders’ clearing by slowly de-energizing his frame, allowing gravity to take hold. His legs trembled slightly with cramp when he climbed off.

  He busied himself with unloading packs and breaking down his vehicle. A single-pilot frame was designed to fold up into a small load that could be slung over one shoulder. He made a great show of ignoring the Riders, although he took the precaution of unclipping his lasercarbine and swinging it over his shoulder.

  Hawthorn followed him in, swinging a leg over his frame’s saddle to drop to the ground almost before it had landed. Allenson greeted his friend with a slap on the shoulder. Hawthorn was a tall man so he could meet Allenson eye to eye but Hawthorn was lean and rangy whereas Allenson had a burly physique that had won him a place as anchorman on the school tug-of-war team. Hawthorn had a shock of blond wavy hair and deep-blue eyes. These were untypical for Cutter Stream colonists and gave him a distinctly unfair advantage with the fairer sex.

  Allenson had the dark brown hair and eyes that were the human norm. He gave an impression of clumsiness that translated to stupid people as lack of intellect.

  Hawthorn casually swung a powerful laserifle in his left hand as if he had forgotten it was there. The laserifle was a big game hunter’s weapon. Several of the Riders rose to their feet clutching spears and divers close quarter weapons. They were clearly undecided how to respond.

  Hawthorn’s laserifle was made of a gray polymer that was indistinct in the twilight. Hawthorn stretched. He tilted the rifle barrel so that firelight reflected off the synthetic focussing crystal at the muzzle. The Riders sat down again.

  “I’m so, so glad to be off that saddle,” Hawthorn said. “Another hour of that and the ladies of the Red Lantern would have cause to sue the frame’s manufacturer for loss of earnings. You’d think they could pad them a little more.”

  Destry made it down beside them with a thump caused by a failure to time de-energization with ground level. Still, every one that you walked away from was a good one—as the old saying went.

  “I’m sorry, Allenson . . .” Destry began.

  Royman Destry was a small slender man with narrow
features and a long sharp nose. He had the jet black, curly hair typical of Brasilian aristocracy. He made quick movements with his hands when he talked, accentuating his likeness to a bird.

  “Say nothing but look haughty,” Allenson said, in a tone of great respect.

  Fortunately Destry grasped the situation quickly. His family were not noted for their foolishness. He waved a hand languidly at Hawthorn.

  “Deal with my frame, there’s a good chap,” Destry said.

  Destry sported the clothes that a Brasilian gentleman wore when visiting the wilderness to “take the air”, which was usually a euphemism for slaughtering the local wildlife or an illicit assignation. His attire was brightly colored in blue and yellow. White lace ribbons floated in the slightest breath of air. He carried this outfit off to the manner born, or should that be manor born? Allenson made a note to check the etymology of the phrase when he returned to civilization.

  Hawthorn and Allenson were gentlemen, meaning that their families had sizable land holdings in the Cutter Stream, so they were theoretically Destry’s peers. However, some peers were more equal than others.

  Allenson and Hawthorn wore the functional toned down dress in the autumn camo-colors of colonial country gentlemen. The clothing material was hard wearing and tight fitting, the jacket short to the waist to free the legs for pedaling. Both jacket and trousers were generously equipped with sealable pockets. They also wore webbing, to which more pouches and equipment were attached.

  Destry’s close friendship with the other men would have puzzled a Brasilian but social ranks were relaxed on the frontier. The Cutter Stream branch of gens Destry had adopted the Allensons. Destry’s sister, Linsye, had married Allenson’s brother, Todd. That made the Allensons family, not clients.

  Allenson and Hawthorn were friends because they had grown up together, attended the same schools, kissed the same girls—well Hawthorn had done most of the kissing—and fought the same battles.