KETTY'S SUBDIVISION Wattys2017

Chapter 15-Part I

Greer choked the last bite of breakfast down and entered the small door off his kitchen where a lift tube dropped him down to the waiting light train. His modest house was tucked away in pristine wilderness on the rural planet known as Foxwood. It was a planet dedicated to homesteads where inhabitants took the Fault-line to do business, go shopping, or get to work. There were no stores, no industry, only sweet air and nature. He was close to the social elite, though his title as head of Fault-line security didn't place him in the bureaucratic cloud of the most powerful people in the government. Greer was a hands on guy who spent as little time in the office as possible, preferring to take on the complex problems he encountered first hand, but lately, he had been chained to his desk. He walked a tight line between the military and political interests, juggling several powerful men and women's agenda while keeping the Galactic transportation system safe and efficient.

Greer glanced at his hand held, avoiding the view out the window where the scenery flashed by at a dizzying speed. To do so would bring instant vertigo and the relentless nausea that followed. Instead he focused on the problem in front of him which seemed to be turning into a nightmare. Stations shut down all the time, but the Dark Matter which circulated through the faults rarely escaped into known space. It wasn't a natural phenomenon for the energy to leave its conduit. Nature kept it balanced as a fundamental quantum principle, funneling it throughout the Universe between black holes and galactic gravity wells. It was as mundane as water in its natural state, continually seeking to balance the background anomalies at a zero state of matter.

A scowling face appeared on the screen, as if sucking a lemon, and he knew by the look, things weren't going well. "You read the brief," Aleece stated, rather than asked. "The Fault-line to Karabellum has been shut down and we have lost contact with the entire solar system." He couldn't break from her mesmerizing gaze, sea green eyes as deep as any ocean, even at a critical time like this, he was distracted. Her lips curled into a tight smile as she cleared her throat. She ran her finger through blond curls, nervously pushing her hair behind the ear.

"Sorry," Greer regained his composure. "It wasn't a manual shut down, as I'm reading the data."

"No, the power surge up the line indicates a catastrophic failure at the terminus. There was a gamma ray dispersal." She waited for a reply, then continued, "That line isn't coming back up any time soon." He knew that Fault line continued into the next Subdivision where the Gort lived and the thought sent a shiver down his spine. They were nasty, and lacked any social grace that might help him consider them as true citizens. He also knew their reputation for taking humans as slaves, though none of that had been proven for over a century.

"So we're cut off from the Gort Subdivision," he rolled that thought around. The light train had stopped and his personal spaceship, which was mounted inside the train, floated down a ramp and onto the waiting double ended ship inside the Fault-line. He would be at work in ten more minutes, a short commute considering it was a seven light year trip and his foot would never touch the ground. Fortunately time dilation was negligible when traveling through the Fault-line due to the massless nature of the Dark Matter or society would be continually out of sync.

"Greer, this is serious. We may never get that solar system back online." He felt a familiar nudge at his leg and looked down to the white furry creature with pointy ears, a miniature husky to be sure, with one small difference.

Everyone in his circle of influence had a personal bot, but his was a dog. For all intents and purposes, it looked and acted like a real dog, but it was a fully functional Artificial Intelligence robot with speech capabilities, though he preferred to keep that function turned off and communicate through his neural network.

He stroked the soft fur behind the ears. "What caused it?" He could guess at the answer, since the Fault-line had been down for over a week and he was privy to some high security intelligence, but he needed to hear her say it.

"You know the only thing is an antimatter bomb, which our security would have easily detected except for the fact our people are probably all dead."

Seeing she was hurt, he tried to comfort her. "We're all frustrated, but I might have something that will help." No! Not that. In his spare time he had researched some robot activity on Karabellum related to the Mc'kee family. Nothing concrete, but it was a lead. He kicked himself for spilling the beans prematurely, but prior to this morning, the line had been operational albeit blocked. Now there was little hope of restoring service for up to a year, or contacting anyone on the planet.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. Sunlight glared through his window at steep angles, indicating his arrival to Sigon Six. People like him with an express pass were able to off load directly into space, and he wasted no time bringing the ship in on manual. The new gravity drive was smooth and silent, allowing a quick descent to the planet's surface.

It was then she noticed the dark circles around his eyes. "You've been up all night."

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