Part I:
Grounded

“Let not he who thinks a new day dawns believe that history will record his own era as unique or special in the recorded annals of time. There are events, which transpire uniquely, but surely the passions of men are no different than they have ever been. We have seen and experienced this truth for nearly one thousand years and share our wisdom with you, the future dying generations.”

Opening statement, “Advent of the Hiding.”

•••

Chapter 1

“The future is the real substance; we are only a shadow of what is to come. Today I fear the shadow is long and cast from the sunset of the world.”

- Highlighted passage from the last chapter of the
Judgment Day novel, “Fleeing the Sunrise.”
From the personal library of the late Governing Ambassador Arla Sonra.

Tellen So'tar stared through the floor port across the Great Plain. Nearly six million circular kilometers, it was the most desired land on Terra. As Tellen watched its broad area come into view below him, he knew he would miss it.

From high on a tether, it seemed you could see from one end of the continent to the other, the most popular view being west of Tether Base, toward the sparsely populated City of Nations. Holoviews in the passenger cabin displayed what fablers said it was like more than fifteen hundred years ago, when a shaft of light emanating from the King's palace shone brighter than Sol for thousands of kilometers into space.

Children in tour groups activated their seat displays to simulate the beam in their link visuals. The beam burst into the sky. It was so brilliant it caused the eyes to see variations in color like a rainbow shaft exploding from a single point and encompassing the sky like an umbrella.

According to fablers.

It was a wonderful holiday story, great for seasonal business and greeting card companies; but every parent knew that by the time their children began to mature, they would stop believing in the Great King and the capital City of Nations. As so often happens, they would question everything their parents said and anything they could not see for themselves. They could not see the Great King or the City’s former splendor, but looking up they could see City of Heaven. More magnificent than a fable, it could be seen from almost anywhere on the ground, but was especially impressive on a first visit up the tether.

First Officer Tellen So’tar deactivated the floor port transparency and returned his attention to his piloting duties. The transport hugged the tether, the low hum of magnetic pulsators sending a barely discernible vibration through the cabin. Some people swore it helped them relax. Others said the stray magnetism of the field played with synapses, causing a tired euphoria. Many passengers had their own myths about gliding—the safest mode of travel, or horror stories of the stratospheric sphere, where ring tethers disappeared or their passengers disappeared, never to be seen again. With each new technology, a new form of urban myth arose. Tellen had little use for myths. His world was firmly grounded in what he knew.

The transport ring increased its velocity slowly to minimize the effects of acceleration-induced gravity. From its launch, it slowly built to a top speed of nearly four hundred kilometers per hour. As it climbed toward maximum rise, the details of Tether Base faded. The city’s elegant curves and sharp angles blurred, bustling transports became ants, then disappeared, leaving only the breathtaking views of a river-crossed landscape and burgeoning mountains, until wisps of cloud obscured even the finest detail of the grand view. Tellen knew that, like clockwork, that's when most of the twenty-three hundred passengers would turn their eyes to the sky ports and look above. The lights of City of Heaven could always be seen from the Great Plain. Even from the Mediterranean and the curve to Asia, it angled in the sky like a child’s top perched precariously on a thread, ready to fall over at the slightest wind. But City of Heaven never moved. It was a stone in the sky, as steady and sure as the ground itself, as present as Luna, but more touchable than the stars. Even by day, the presence of the massive city was clearly observable from the ground. At night, it was more beautiful than the stars themselves—its tens of thousands of lights like glittering diamonds hung low in the sky. It was an ever-present reminder that there was always something to achieve beyond what ground-life offered. Yet for all its technological wonder and awe, there was still no denying the allure of a simple story, taught by every child's fabler: Terra in chaos, planetary domination by the powerful Sher’rosuu, the City of Nations under siege, and the most celebrated event of history—the coming of the King with Ooranian warriors to crush the reign of Aru’Vahl the Immortal.

Tellen So'tar had no use for modern myths, except this one. It alone was rooted in history. The heritage of City of Nations was not about the days of peace and brotherhood. For Tellen it was much more. He believed all its ancient myths were true: the benevolent king, the Great Generation of peace and prosperity, the mythos of the planetary capital, and the Isian Masters of the King’s Tradition. For Tellen, it was not mythology; all of it was true. It was just that no one believed it anymore, except for Tellen—and a precious few others.

Like many of the unlucky who had to work the holidays, Tellen’s attention drifted from his task to fond remembrances of Judgment Eve: the traditional pronouncements and commemorations of the King’s rise to power, door dressings, and the presents his parents lavished upon him as a child. He wanted to pass the traditions to his own family. But a child's dreams and a man's realities seldom meet unless he has children of his own.

Thankfully, Tellen So'tar had none.

“A good Judgment Day, ladies and gentlemen,” Tellen spoke smoothly into his link for the nearly twenty-three hundred people sitting below in the passenger ring. “You’ll be happy to know that we’ve reached our targeted glide velocity of three hundred and forty kilometers per hour and we’ve just cleared the thermosphere. We will arrive at Center Node, our transfer point, in approximately twenty minutes. When we arrive, we will change tethers, gliding along String One for the remainder of our journey, delivering each of you to your node of destination. Following the tether transfer, you may unbuckle and enjoy the microgravity. Our cabin crew will also serve refreshment packs. Arrival time at Alpha Node is expected to be inside of three hours. Thanks for gliding with us.”

Tellen switched off his link and rechecked the ring’s velocity. “I'm desperate to use the head.” He motioned to the captain. The elder man gestured his approval.

One compartment out from center ring, Tellen attended to business. He opened the stall, flipped the vacuum lid closed, secured the seat, and punched open a scrambled channel on his personal link. A text message flashed in his eye. “How soon?” Tellen tapped out the response on his neck. “Less than 10 minutes.”

“Problem?” came the response.

“No, just confirmation. Are you go?”

“Confirmed, everything is in place.” Tellen did not respond. “Are you prepared to go through with it?” the other end asked.

“Yes. My best to you.” There was no reply from the other end, just a closing of the connection. Taking an additional minute, Tellen opened two previously saved messages, encoded them to send, and then set his link to continuously transmit his activities.

Tellen returned to the center ring and strapped in. “Thanks. I hate zero-g toilets.”

“Who doesn't?” the captain replied and then returned to his duties. “Transfer Node Nine, this is Ring Transport three-seven on approach.”

“Confirmed three-seven, we have you on approach, awaiting transfer to North, Alpha, String One. Approach is nominal.”

“How long is your layover at North?” the captain asked Tellen.

“Me? Not long, just enough for passenger pick up and delivery.”

The captain turned from Tellen back to his view of Center Node. Its complex webbing of adjoining tether curved around and through the circular hub. A center band rotated, providing artificial gravity for a narrow segment of the station. “I've arranged for an extra day off to tour Operations Control at Center Node once the drop-offs are done. I'm hoping to transfer to a permanent node assignment.”

“Spacer huh?” Tellen asked.

“Well, I'd at least like the experience, just to say I did it. I know that probably isn't your way.”

“It was my way a long time ago. City of Heaven was my home before my teen years. I’ve got a lot of fond memories there, but my real life is back on the ground with the movement.”

The captain eyed him. “No offense, this being our first glide together, but I’m already familiar with your reputation.”

Tellen kept his gaze ahead. “Word gets around.”

“In your case, the word gets around at orbital speeds. So as I said, no offense, but I’d appreciate it if you kept your Royalism to yourself.” Tellen's silence was all the captain required to change the topic. “Ninety seconds to transfer node.”

“Confirmed, prepare to release guide clamps and engage burst for tether release.”

Tellen flipped the manual release. There was a soft pull as the magnetic pulsators reduced output. No longer driven by the magnetic push, the ring coasted momentarily on its inertia, then began to slow through natural deceleration as the planet’s gravity reasserted its influence. “Manual release engaged,” Tellen responded, “separation in twenty seconds.”

All tether transports had dual section cabins. The inner ring housed magnetic propulsion and standard thrusters to glide the outer ring and its passengers to their destination up the tether, some five hundred forty kilometers into space. Just before reaching the transfer node, the center cabin would release its locking mechanisms from the passenger ring and engage a thruster burst from the top of the ring to slow down the propulsion cabin, causing the center and outer rings to disconnect. The outer ring would rise past the center to another propulsion cabin connected via a transfer cable to one of the space-borne tethers that connected the various nodes of City of Heaven.

City of Heaven was an extra-Terran habitat resembling a giant web. More than a thousand kilometers in diameter, it contained more than fifty base nodes with homes, shops, resorts, and research facilities tethered to one another along the multi-layered web. More than a million citizens called City of Heaven home.

“Time and mark,” the captain noted. “Release cabin.” The vibration of cabin clamps separating from the passenger section gave the expected jolt. “Engage thruster burst, five seconds.”

Without warning, Tellen flung out his arm, smashing the auto-release on the captain’s restraints, then hit an override and took thruster control. Instead of engaging forward thrusters to slow their approach, Tellen reactivated the magnetic pulsators and engaged the aft thrusters at full, propelling the cabin upward at incredible speed—far more than the rated three hundred kilometers per hour.

Automatic warning alarms sounded. “Extreme acceleration, engage reverse thrust,” the computer called out. Another alarm sounded, “Passengers in distress, reduce velocity.”

Tellen reached down and pulled a lever under the captain’s seat, dropping the back to a reclined position. With the sudden change in acceleration the pilot sailed out of his seat smashing into the back wall of the cabin. Since the passenger cabin wasn't held in center by the pilot ring, but rose from its own inertia, the force of separation and blast of the pilot ring’s aft thrusters pushed the passenger ring back down the tether. It slammed violently against the nano-carbon structure, back and forth along its inner surface disappearing from view. Just before the propulsion cabin plowed into the Center Node transfer station, the passenger cabin, with twenty-three hundred men, women, and children aboard, broke apart in the thermosphere, severing Tether Nine.

Fighting against the g-forces, struggling to get back to the controls, the captain screamed, “Why?”

Tellen pulled back on the control stick even harder, increasing velocity. G-forces slammed the captain back again. Tellen pulled back once more, for a last burst of thrust, then screamed as he saw the Center Node fill his window, “For the City of Nations and the King!”

The propulsion cabin exploded in a fury with Center Node. Three more tethers ripped violently away. The shock wave from the blast began rippling through the thousand-kilometer-wide web.

City of Heaven began to fall.

***

Alarms sounded on command nodes, tether nodes, and transports. All communications with Tether Base unexpectedly ceased. As technical and ground directors were trying to diagnose what they thought might be a communications problem, the ground crew was abruptly silenced.

The havoc began as a vibration in the floor, low, almost imperceptible. Controllers first felt it in their seats. Some of the screens blurred as the vibrations began. Then the noise began, a sound like a deep hum, followed by intense trembling. A screech came from Tether Launch—metal upon metal, the high-pitched sound of nano-carbon flexsteel tearing. Windows burst like bombs, sending shards of glass into workers like a hail of bullets. The injured ground crews looked through the empty panes to see something the engineers said would never happen, could never happen. In the distance, Tether Nine swayed, then Three, then Four. Then all twelve began swaying in different directions. An earthquake hit the ground station. Ground crews jumped through broken windows to escape the building, others ran for cover, but no cover was to be found as the twelve massive tethers, each five hundred forty kilometers of electrically charged flexsteel thirty-five meters in diameter, made of the most indestructible nano-carbon known, began coming down.

As the tethers began to sway, high voltage arcs built up, then released like lightning in the air and on the ground. The strikes multiplied until hundreds of strikes per minute pounded the area.

On Tether Four, a transport carrying elementary school children on a field trip lifted off only two minutes before the havoc. Without power and well within Terra’s gravity, it plunged to the ground, exploding at the ground station. Chunks of tether tore away and Tether Four broke free. Its thirty-five-35-meter thick base moved eastward, toward Ammos, the city Tether Base called home, carving out canyon-like swathes of land, demolishing everything in its path. As millions of tons of flexsteel ripped like paper from the force of its own contortions, high-pitched sound waves of metal grinding against metal shattered glass and drowned out terrified screams.

It took hours for the tethers to fall. Higher in the atmosphere, as the tethers were pulled by gravity, large sections broke off to become dazzling fireballs. Some burned up, some hit into the ground long before the larger sections came down.

The ground shook violently. From deep underground, where each tether was anchored, the vibrations increased exponentially. Long before the last tether completed its destructive journey, Tether Base was destroyed, its walls, pillars, and partitions flung apart, shattered, and smashed. Ammos was virtually destroyed. As the dying raised their heads to see the calamity falling upon them, none saw the splendor of City of Heaven.

The sky was falling.

Continue to Chapter 2...