Ten Thousand Fleets Chapter 2: 2: Vidako

Read chapter 2 of Ten Thousand Fleets by DavidNiemitz on NovelPedia.

2: Vidako Space Elevator, Vidako Imperium Stellarum August 12, 2847 The framework of the space elevator which descended from Pinnacle Station to the surface of Vidako was hexagonal in shape, so that six elevator cars could move up and down the tracks on each of the sides, forming an arrangement roughly modelled after that of a beehive. As the car in which the cadets rode descended, having passed the point where motors were needed to propel it downward, a rising car shot past them to one side on its way from San Teodoro to the station. The sky changed from black to blue as they entered the atmosphere to the clap of a sonic boom, and Arc knew that dozens of systems were at work to prevent the car, and the people inside it, from dying in just as many horrible ways. Simply falling to the ground at this speed would have seen all of them consumed in fire, gasping and suffocating from a lack of oxygen, or broken and smashed into little more than a wet, sticky paste upon impact. The same technology which produced an artificial gravity field above their heads, on Pinnacle Station, gentled the g-forces which would have crushed them into their seats. A heat shield at the bottom of the car protected them from the friction of atmospheric reentry, though Arc could see beads of moisture fogging the windows. Still, he knew that before the Alu’ka had joined the Imperium, nearly a century ago, it wouldn’t have been possible. The first space elevators had taken days to climb out of a world’s gravity well, or to descend from orbit. The materials science expertise the Alu’kan mega-engineers had brought with them had revolutionized everything, and most human colonies were still catching up. They plunged through white fog, and he only realized once they’d left it behind that they must have passed through a cloud. The land below was closer, now, and Arc could make out the shape of the coast: the deep blue of the ocean on the one hand, and the strange, muddy hues of the native foliage marking the land, on the other. Unlike Arc’s homeworld of Zurah V, this system revolved around a pair of binary stars, one red and one orange. The familiar olive-green shade of Zuran mulberry trees would have seen foliage starved of the light they needed to survive here. Instead, Arc knew from reading the academy’s student handbook, both the native flora and the genetically modified terran stock relied on leaves of brown, red, and even, in some cases, color so deep it was nearly black. As they drew closer, Arc could pick out the city of San Teodoro itself, a splotch of brighter gray that spread across a single peninsula jutting north and east into a twice-sheltered inner bay. Traces of urban development could be just made out along the edges of that bay, connected to the city itself by thin, bright lines that Arc realized were bridges. The elevator itself fell directly toward an island just off the coast, but even the size of the space port couldn’t distract Arc from the realization of just how much wilderness there was outside of San Teodoro. Beyond the city, the dark jungle stretched out and out, broken only by the thin ribbons of sparkling rivers or lakes, and the upthrust peaks of mountains. It was as if humanity had reached out with a single finger to mark a city, a single smudge on the glass of a wide window, and then walked away. “There really is nothing around it,” Arc muttered. He hadn’t forgotten Cassie was at his side—not precisely. In fact, he was intensely aware of her presence in a way that kept him constantly on edge, lest he move in a way that upset her by some accidental intrusion into her space. But he also hadn’t exactly been seeking a response. “The academy likes it that way,” she said. “They use the jungle for training. There’s supposed to be indigenous predators that can rip a Tyro in half. Look.” Cassie pointed a finger at the window, and Arc leaned over once again to search the vast forest. He thought—thought!—he saw movement of some kind, a shaki