Coyote Rising Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Coyote Rising

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by Allen M. Steele

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-5557-2

  AN ACE BOOK®

  Ace Books first published by The Ace Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: February, 2005

  Ace books by Allen M. Steel

  ORBITAL DECAY

  CLARKE COUNTY, SPACE

  LUNAR DESCENT

  LABYRINTH OF NIGHT

  THE JERICHO ITERATION

  THE TRANQUILLITY ALTERNATIVE

  OCEANSPACE

  CHRONOSPACE

  COYOTE

  COYOTE RISING

  for

  Ginjer Buchanan . . .

  who was present at the creation of the world

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  New Florida Colonists

  Matriarch Luisa Hernandez—colonial governor

  Savant Manuel Castro—lieutenant governor

  Allegra DiSilvio—composer

  Benjamin Harlan—drifter

  James Alonzo Garcia—architect

  LEVIN FAMILY

  Cecelia “Sissy” Levin—chicken farmer, original colonist

  Chris Levin—Chief Proctor, Cecelia’s son

  THOMPSON FAMILY

  Clark Thompson—mayor, Thompson’s Landing

  Molly Thompson—wife

  Lars Thompson—nephew (older)

  Garth Thompson—nephew (younger)

  CHURCH OF UNIVERSAL TRANSFORMATION

  Rev. Zoltan Shirow—founder and pastor

  Greer, Renaldo, Doria, Ian, Byron, Clarice, Ernst, Angela, Boris, Jim, Dex, and others—church members

  Klon Newall—construction foreman

  Frederic LaRoux–geologist

  Enrique Constanza—electronics engineer

  Jaime Hodge—field worker

  Lonnie Dielman—Thompson’s Ferry militia

  Juanita Morales—Thompson’s Ferry militia

  Tomas Conseco—child

  Midland colonists

  Robert E. Lee—Mayor of Defiance; former commanding officer, URSS Alabama

  Dana Monroe—Lee’s partner; former Alabama chief engineer

  MONTERO FAMILY:

  Carlos Montero (aka “Rigil Kent”)—resistance leader

  Wendy Gunther—Carlos’s wife

  Susan Gunther—Wendy and Carlos’s daughter

  Maria Montero—Carlos’s sister, resistance fighter

  DREYFUS FAMILY:

  Jack Dreyfus—former Alabama engineer

  Lisa Dreyfus— wife

  Barry Dreyfus—son; resistance fighter

  Ted LeMare—former Alabama ensign

  Jean Swenson—former Alabama communications officer

  Tom Shapiro—former Alabama first officer

  Kim Newell—former Alabama shuttle pilot

  Kuniko Okada—chief physician

  Henry Johnson—astrophysicist

  Union Guard/Union Astronautica

  Capt. Fernando Baptiste—commanding officer, WHSS Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars

  Savant Gregor Hull—member, Council of Savants

  Patriarch Leonardo Samoza—chief of operations, Copernicus Centre

  Capt. Ramon Lopez—squad leader

  Lt. Bon Cortez—expedition member

  Warrant Officer Giselle Acosta

  Sgt. Arthur Cartman

  PROLOGUE

  MARE IMBRIUM, LUNA—2.24.2260

  “Have you ever been to Earth?”

  At first, Fernando Baptiste didn’t realize he was being spoken to; his attention was on the lunar landscape passing by the maglev. Mare Imbrium was a grey, flat wasteland pitted here and there by ancient impact craters. Far away, he could make out the hulking forms of He combines, 3 massive crawlers that scooped up powdery regolith and seined it for volatiles. It was the middle of the Moon’s two-week day; stark sunlight, polarized by the train windows, cast long shadows from the high peaks of the Apienne Mountains.

  Every seat was taken, but it was late, and nearly everyone was asleep; the lights were turned down low, and only the steward moved down the narrow aisle. The young boy sitting next to Fernando, though, was awake. He had the straight black hair and angular features of someone of Hispanic ancestry, but his face had the sallow complexion of a child born and raised on the Moon. No more than twelve or thirteen, Baptiste guessed. A book lay open in his lap, a luminescent holo of a dinosaur displayed on its screen. He wasn’t looking at it, but rather at Baptiste himself.

  “Sure,” he said, quietly so as not to disturb anyone dozing around them. “Not recently, but I was born there. In a small town in Belize.”

  The boy nodded once, then stared down at his book. Baptiste watched as he idly touched the upper right corner of the page; the tyrannosaur took a couple of steps forward, raised its head, and bellowed silently. Unimpressed, the boy touched the side of the book; the screen changed, and another Jurassic animal appeared. Baptiste didn’t know much about dinosaurs, so he couldn’t identify this one.

  “Have you ever been there?” he asked. “To Earth, I mean.”

  The boy shook his head. He didn’t say anything, yet Baptiste noticed the way his eyes shifted to the insignia on his charcoal black uniform. Most Selenians were reticent in the presence of a Union Astronautica officer, but this child wasn’t quite old enough to be intimidated. He was curious about the spacer sitting beside him, yet he had probably been taught not to bother strangers.

  Baptiste gazed again out the window. For the first time, he noticed Earth hovering above the horizon. Perhaps that was what had prompted the boy’s question: the sight of the cloudy blue-green orb, juxtaposed with the UA officer next to him. He had satisfied the boy’s curiosity, and perhaps he should let it go at that, yet it had been a long ride from Archimedes, where he’d boarded the train, and it was probably another half hour or so until they pulled into Copernicus Centre, his final destination. He’d slept for most of the trip, and he wasn’t ready to pull out his own book and study the material he’d been sent. Perhaps a little light conversation might take the edge off things. Besides, what harm could come from talking to a child . . . ?

  “I haven’t been to Earth lately,” he said, “but I know of a place that’s very much like it.”

  The boy had just turned another page in his book; this seemingly offhand remark caught his attention. “What do you mean? There’s nowhere like . . .” Then he frowned. “Oh . . . Tranquillity Centre. My father once took me there on holiday. It’s not the same.”

  “You’re right.” Baptiste smiled. “It’s not the same. The domes are just giant gardens, with manicured trees and tame animals no more threatening than a teb . . . and a young man like you has outgrown tebs, haven’t you.
” The boy grinned; he was past the age of needing a teddy bear as a playmate, even if he wasn’t old enough to appreciate the miracle of forests growing beneath vast domes on the Moon. Baptiste crossed his arms and lowered his voice. “No, I’m talking about something entirely different . . . a world far away from here, so far away that, if you were to leave for it today, by the time you arrived, everyone you left behind would be very old, perhaps even dead.”

  The boy stared at him for a long moment, not realizing what he was saying, then his dark brown eyes widened. “You mean . . . ?”

  “Yes. I’m talking about Coyote.”

  Once again, the boy seemed self-conscious about whom he was speaking to: a spacer, one of those who voyaged into the outer system. The lunar colonies boasted a population of over 7 million, with a couple of million more living on orbitals scattered across cislunar space, yet Mars was still a frontier of only a few hundred thousand residents, and even fewer lived on the Jovian moons. It was rare to encounter a uniformed Union Astronautica officer, and Baptiste knew without asking that the boy recognized the gold braid on his shoulders, the silver bangle dangling from his left ear. This man wasn’t just an officer, but a ship’s captain.

  “I’m . . .” The boy hesitated. “I’m joining my family at Copernicus. We’re supposed to be going there. Coyote, I mean.”

  “Really?” Baptiste raised an eyebrow; now it was his turn to be surprised. “A future colonist, eh?” The boy nodded. “And which ship are you taking?”

  “This one.” The boy touched the side of his book. The dinosaur vanished; he closed the book, ran his finger down the index bar, then opened it again and touched the upper corner of the page. A hologram of a starship appeared. “The Spirit of . . . um . . .”

  “The Spirit of Social Collectivism Carried to the Stars.” Baptiste hid a smile behind his hand; no sense in telling the lad the truth. Or at least not all of it . . . “I’ve heard of it. The newest colony ship. A fine vessel. Are you nervous? About leaving home, I mean.”

  “A little.” The boy idly rotated the image; the Spirit turned on its axis, displaying the unfolded flanges of its diametric-drive engine along its cylindrical aft section, the enormous dish of its telemetry antenna raised from the blunt prow of the forward section. “The Moon’s always been home. Never even been to Earth. And now . . .”

  “And now you’re going all the way to 47 Ursae Majoris.” Baptiste tapped his lip with his forefinger. “And that frightens you, doesn’t it?” The boy said nothing; he stared fixedly at the image in his book. “So tell me, what’s your name?”

  “Tomas. Tomas Conseco . . . Tom.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Señor Conseco. I’m Captain Baptiste.” He gave Tom a sly wink. “For the time being, you can call me Fernando . . . but that’s just between you and me, eh? If there’s anyone else around, you just call me Captain, or Captain Baptiste.” The boy nodded. “Here. Let me show you something.”

  Baptiste reached into the pocket of the seat back in front of him and pulled out his own book. He pressed his thumb against the verification plate on the cover; the book beeped twice, and he selected a coded prefix on the index table, pressed it, and spread the book open in his lap. The holographic image of a planetary system appeared: a tiny star, orbited by four planets. A tap of his fingertip and the tiny system rose from the book, the planets slowly revolving around the star.

  “That’s 47 Ursae Majoris,” Baptiste said, pointing to the miniature sun. “It’s a GO-class star, about forty-six light-years from Earth. A little less luminescent than our own sun, which means it’s—”

  “I know.” Tomas squirmed impatiently. “We were taught all that in Basic Astronomy. I got an E,” he added proudly.

  “Really. So you’re an expert.” Baptiste touched the upper margin of the right page, and the third planet of the system expanded, becoming a ringed jovian surrounded by six major satellites. “That’s Bear, its primary,” he said, pointing to the gas giant. “It’s the third planet of 47 Ursae Majoris. Now, tell me . . . which one is Coyote?” Tom peered at the satellites, then pointed to the fourth one. “Very good. Now then, tell me about the Alabama.”

  “That was the first starship. It left Earth in 2070.”

  “Excellent. I’m impressed. And who was aboard?”

  “Some people from the United Republic of America. They were led by Captain Robert E. Lee. . . .”

  “Umm . . . almost right, but not quite.” Baptiste closed the page, opened another one. A flat image of the URSS Alabama appeared within the book: a smaller vessel, less than half the size of a Destiny-class starship and not nearly as elegant in design, the conical scoop of its Bussard ramscoop protruding from the spherical main fuel tank at its bow. “R. E. Lee was the commanding officer, and about half of his crew were loyal to the URA, but the other half were political dissidents whom Captain Lee led in a successful effort to steal his own ship. The theft of the Alabama was the first major event in the downfall of the Republic. You haven’t been taught this in history class?”

  Tomas looked embarrassed. “I didn’t do so well in history,” he admitted. “I got a U.”

  “Well, now . . . we’ll have to make up for that, won’t we?” Baptiste opened another page; an ancient photograph appeared, flat and unenhanced by holographics: Lee standing at the lowered gangway of one of the Alabama’s shuttles, shaking hands with an older gentleman. “That’s Captain Lee with Roland Shaw, the Republic’s Director of Internal Security. This picture was taken on Merritt Island, the old Gingrich Space Center in Florida, just before Lee escaped with the forty-seven dissidents he managed to smuggle aboard the Alabama . . . quite a story in itself. No one knew it at the time, but Shaw was part of the conspiracy. He secretly worked behind the scenes to help Lee get all those people aboard the Alabama.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Shaw? He was arrested for high treason and was executed. . . .”

  “No, I mean Captain Lee.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself.” But the boy was clearly fascinated, and so Baptiste obliged his interest. “The Alabama managed to escape with only minutes to spare, and no one’s heard from Captain Lee or his crew since then. Whether they’re dead or alive, no one knows. They’re still on their way to 47 Uma, and won’t arrive until 2300 . . . by our reckoning at least. It’ll seem a little shorter for them.”

  “That’s the part I don’t understand.”

  “Well, when you approach the speed of light, time passes more slowly. Since Alabama has a cruise velocity of twenty percent light-speed, this means that, even though two hundred and thirty years will have passed by the time it reaches Coyote, for everyone aboard it’ll seem as if only two hundred and twenty-six years have passed. A difference of a little more than four years.”

  Tomas looked unsettled by this knowledge, and Baptiste smiled. “But since the Spirit has a cruise velocity of ninety-five percent light-speed, it means that it will take only a little more than forty-eight years to get there. For everyone aboard it’ll seem as if only about fifteen and a half years have passed. By Earth reckoning, you’ll arrive in 2308, about eight years after the Alabama.”

  Tomas’s eyes widened. “You mean I’ll be able to meet Captain Lee?”

  “Maybe.” Baptiste shrugged. “His ship still hasn’t arrived, and neither have the four colony ships that have been launched since then. Remember, radio waves travel at the speed of light. Since nothing travels faster than light, no one here will hear anything from Coyote for quite some time to come. So we won’t know until we . . . that is, until you . . .”

  “You’re the captain, aren’t you?” Tom didn’t look away as he said this. “The captain of the Spirit, I mean.”

  No point in hiding the truth any longer. Baptiste closed the book and put it away. “You’re quite intuitive.”

  “I figured it out when I saw your uniform.” Tomas looked straight ahead. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you . . . sir, I mean. Captain Baptiste.�
��

  Across the aisle, a woman opened her eyes. Baptiste met her curious gaze, and she quickly looked out the window, feigning disinterest; her companion continued to snore softly. “Well, for the short time we’ve got left together, let’s keep on being friends, shall we? I’m still Fernando, and you’re still Tom. Okay?”

  “Okay. Sure.” The boy’s voice was very soft; now that he’d admitted knowing who his traveling companion was, he seemed more nervous than before. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “You may ask anything you like.”

  “Is it . . . ?” Tom hesitated. “Is it very dangerous, where we’re going? Coyote, I mean?”

  “It’ll be difficult, yes,” he replied, carefully gauging his words. “Like I said, there are things you’ve taken for granted before that you’ll have to do without. And you’ll have to work hard to make yourself at home. Coyote is a whole new world, so it’ll be like starting over on Earth back when hardly anyone lived there. You’ll have blue skies and fresh water, and you won’t have to worry about airlocks or radiation or . . .”

  “I know. That’s what my father tells me. But . . .” He stopped, still refusing to look at Baptiste. “That’s not what I meant. Could I . . . could I be killed?”

  How could he give an honest answer? All available information indicated that Coyote was habitable. The Alabama had a hundred and four passengers aboard when it departed from Earth, and four more ships had gone out since then, each carrying a thousand passengers. By the time they arrived in forty-eight years, the colony on Coyote should be well established. Indeed, toward the end of its flight, the Spirit would probably pass the first Union Astronautica ship, the Glorious Destiny, on its return trip to Earth.