The rise of daan, p.1
The Rise of Daan, page 1
RISE OF DAAN
(CHRONICLES OF DAAN: BOOK 1)
By
D. Ward Cornell
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Dana Henderson
Copyright © 2021 by D. Ward Cornell
All rights reserved. In accordance with the United States Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author at dw.cornell@kahakaicg.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Dedicated to my family and friends who have been supportive through this adventure, especially those that have been willing to read the manuscripts and give me feedback.
Thank you all for your support and encouragement.
Special thanks to the members of my pre-readers program, your feedback is valued more than you can know.
Extra special thanks to Theresa Holmes whose feedback makes every story come alive.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOG
CHAPTER 1: CELEBRATION
CHAPTER 2: COMMERCE
CHAPTER 3: TENSION
CHAPTER 4: ENTRAPMENT
CHAPTER 5: TRIAL
CHAPTER 6: TRANSPORTATION
CHAPTER 7: EXILE
CHAPTER 8: ACCEPTANCE
CHAPTER 9: FRIENDS
CHAPTER 10: DEVELOPMENTS
CHAPTER 11: SOLUTIONS
CHAPTER 12: CRISIS
CHAPTER 13: QUARANTINE
CHAPTER 14: VISION
CHAPTER 15: RETURN
CHAPTER 16: BREAKTHROUGH
CHAPTER 17: PRODUCTION
CHAPTER 18: SYNTHESIS
CHAPTER 19: JUNGLE
CHAPTER 20: CRISIS
CHAPTER 21: REUNIFICATION
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
COMING IN 2021
ALSO COMING IN 2021
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS by D. WARD CORNELL
PROLOG
I was born on a Protected World. You’d think that would be a good thing, but in truth, not so much. You see, a protected world is a sentry world. One located along the edge of human space, there to sound the alarm if there’s an alien invasion. A world that is marginally habitable, so unlikely to be a target, yet well connected to the rest of humanity, so able to sound the alarm.
And that’s the real problem. Marginally habitable worlds can’t support a significant population. And for the few of us that live here, it’s difficult to scrape out a living.
It’s not like there are no benefits, though. Because of their unique role, protected worlds have the fastest, most reliable network access in the Confederation. All essential services available online are ours for free. I got to attend the best online schools as a kid, and I’m currently studying in the online Electrical Engineering program at the Faraday Institute on New London. It is truly one of the best programs in existence. Few students on the central worlds get to do their studies there. But growing up in a place this isolated, where opportunities are so limited… It’s hard to describe how difficult it is.
You might ask why anyone would want to live in such a place. I ask that question all the time. The short answer is that these worlds were given away to anyone that had the means to claim and settle them. A lot of adventurers couldn’t resist the opportunity. My grandfather, six generations back, was one of those people.
His name was Jared Daan. He was a rugged individualist who struggled under the boot of government oppression. He leaped at the possibility of escape, of becoming the king of his own world. And, as the idea took hold, he decided he wanted a big one.
He filed a claim for a world that was 1.2 times the diameter of the Earth, the largest one available. When his claim was granted, he named the planet Jaredaan in honor of himself. These days, most people just call it Daan.
Daan is cold and dry. It’s located at the far edge of the habitable zone in this system. Its only water comes from the great ice fields at the north and south poles. Despite the cold, most of us live near the north pole. It’s the warmer of the two and has the most easily accessible water. There’s a narrow green zone near the equator that turned green for the first time a hundred plus years ago. My great uncle Herold Daan came up with a scheme to move ice from the poles to the equator. The family granted him a large swath of land along the equator as an incentive to build the system. He spent most of his life doing it. The only green on the planet now belongs to his children.
Most of the rest of the world is desert. It’s cold, dry, and barren. Forgive me if I mentioned that already, but for the uninitiated, its more cold, dry, and barren than you can probably imagine.
You might wonder how we survive here. The answer is simple. There are massive deposits of precious metals near the north pole. This was known at the time my ancestor claimed our world. The major mining consortiums also knew of these deposits. They deemed them unprofitable to mine because they were too deep in the ground, and in too deep a gravity well.
They were mostly right. What they failed to understand was the strength of our planet’s magnetic field and the magnitude of charged particles in our air. My ancestor was an electrical engineer, apparently an incredibly good one. He came up with a scheme to harness the electricity in the air. It powers our town, the mines, and the rail gun we use to launch our metals into orbit. The metal trade is what powers our economy.
One of the few benefits of being a ‘protected world’ is that we are guaranteed duty-free trade with every planet in the Confederation. Even though we are far from the nearest populated world, we are one of the lowest cost providers of high-end raw metal for use in space in this sector. We are completely free of taxes and have more or less free access to space because of my ancestor’s cleverness.
There are many stories about my ancestral grandfather. He was apparently quite a character, eccentric as well. Many of his sayings are built deeply into our culture, and most involve the number six. Spend a day in town and you’re likely to hear them. ‘Better to do one thing well than six things poorly.’ Or ‘better to have six good days than one good week.’
Of his many sayings, there’s the one my mother quotes all the time. ‘The sixth son of the sixth generation will stand above them all.’
Well, it turns out that I’m the sixth son of the sixth generation. My father and his five forefathers were the eldest sons of eldest sons from the great Jared Daan. I was my father’s sixth son. Son of the sixth most direct connection to our founder. My parents gave me the name of my ancestor, Jared Daan. I’m the first to bear that name since the great man passed. My mother says I’m destined for greatness. I think that’s crazy talk. But my five brothers hate me for it.
CHAPTER 1: CELEBRATION
I come from a big family. Mother, father and six sons; eight of us in total. I’ve read in history books that colony worlds tend to have large families. Their authors claim that large families were needed to work the land. Children were cheap seasonal laborers, so the more kids, the more economically successful the family would be. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, but it surely doesn’t apply here. Our family of eight is one of the largest. Most families only have two kids. Three is considered large.
You might ask why. In some sense the answer’s obvious. We live on a marginally habitable world. On worlds like ours, the biggest shortage is food. And unlike the agricultural worlds in the history books, there’s little work here that kids can actually do. So generally speaking, large families here are less prosperous. Ours is probably the only large family that’s not on assistance.
That’s kind of what makes today so crazy. It’s my birthday. I’ve reached my majority, been granted my rights under the colony’s charter, and Mom and Dad are throwing me a big party. I’m sixteen years old today.
“Jared? Could you come here for a second, sweetie?”
That’s my Mom. Whenever she wants me to do something, she tacks a ‘sweetie’ on the end. It’s always my first clue that she’s going to ask me to do something I don’t want to do.
“Coming.”
I’ve got to give her credit. She’s making more or less all the food for this party. She’s rented the community party hall on the second level. My dad and five brothers are up there now getting things set up. My second-oldest brother, Jonah, is even helping. His wife Esther is here in our apartment, helping Mom get ready.
“Hey, Mom. What do you need?”
“Hi Sweetie. Could you run up to the garden for me? I need a bunch of carrots. I forgot to pick them up yesterday.
“Sure Mom. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
ESCALATOR UP TO LEVEL ONE
Our town is named Jaredstown in honor of our founder. There aren’t that many places like it. It’s located near the north pole and is 3,500 feet underground. The garden is on the top level, level one. Our home is on level three. There are three ways to get up to level one: the elevator, the escalator, and the stairs. I’ve suffered a little elevator-phobia since the incident last year, so I’m opting for the escalator today. The top 24 levels of our town are connected by escalator. The escalator shaft is isolated from each floor by
THE GARDEN, LEVEL ONE
Level One is where all the surface feeds come down. The feed of consequence for the garden is the light pipes. The garden uses air, water and electricity of course, but plants and animals both do better when there’s natural light available.
Level One is the coolest level in town because of its proximity to the surface. It gets increasingly warmer as you go down. Down at the lowest mining levels, about 6,000 feet down, it’s just plain hot. I don’t see how people can work down there.
Coming out of the escalator lobby, I turn left toward the garden. It’s at the end of a long access way. The power company, where I hope to get my first paying job, is at the other end.
The entrance to the garden is through a pair of glass doors. The doors are closed, as most doors in the colony are, to control air flow. On the other side of the doors is the reception area where customers can pick up orders they’ve placed.
As I walk in, I see that Nana is on duty.
“Well, if it isn’t the birthday boy himself.”
“Hi, Nana.”
I’ve been sweet on Nana for years, but she’s 18 and I don’t have a chance. Still, she’s pleasant to think about.
“I have your carrots.” She holds up a basket with carrots in it, then sets the basket on the counter. “I’m coming to your party.”
That’s probably the best news I’ll get today.
“Good.” I can feel a big goofy smile spreading across my face. “I look forward to seeing you there.”
I’m back in the hallway, heading toward the escalator. I have to pass the elevator to get there. It’s on the right, so I walk close to the left wall. Elevators creep me out.
As I think I mentioned earlier, I have five brothers that hate me. The two oldest, Aaron and Jonah, have both moved out. Aaron works in the mine. He’s apparently quite good at it. He has a cheap place on a lower level that’s closer to his friends. Jonah is married and has a couple kids of his own. For the most part these two don’t bother me that much anymore. But I still do my best to keep a distance.
The other three, Asher, Seth, and Jude are a different story. They still live at home and take every opportunity to mess with me. Mom clamped down on them after the incident with the elevator that nearly killed me. But they still get in every dig they can.
So, about the elevator incident. Seth, who has a real knack for mechanical things, got the elevator to stop one story below the level our home is on, even though the electronics showed it as arriving on our level. Jude, pretending to be nice to me, offered to take me to the movies, seven levels below. I was standing with my back to the elevator door talking with Jude when the doors slid open. Jude stepped toward the door, saying something like, “We need to hurry. The movie’s about to start.”
I turned and stepped into oblivion. Thankfully, there was an old fiberboard landing I managed to grab. It was rotten and it broke when I grabbed it, but it slowed my fall. I woke up two days later in the hospital.
Seth and Jude were arrested, which they’d apparently expected. Because shortly after arriving at the jail, witness after witness came in to tell the cops that the brothers were not there at the time of the incident. They’d rounded up enough liars to get them off the hook.
As I said before, my brothers hate me.
ESCALATOR TO LEVEL 3
I enter the escalator shaft and start down. I’m maybe a quarter of the way to Level 2 when there’s a sudden pressure drop and music floods up from below. Several people have apparently just come into the shaft. The music sounded like the band warming up for the party. Just as suddenly the music drops, pressure increases, and I hear the voices of the new entrants. By the sound of it, two are going down, one is about to come up. The one coming up steps into view and its Asher. A smile spreads across his face.
“Well, if it isn’t the little Runt.”
The up and down escalators are about 2 feet apart from each other. He will pass me on the left, so I scootch over to the right as far as I can without scraping against the wall.
As we pass, he leans way over into my side. “Hey, I’ve got a present for you.” I see the fist coming but have no place to go. Red hot pain explodes in my left shoulder. My head hits the wall, seriously scraping my ear. And the carrots go flying.
“Happy Birthday, pissant. Hopefully, this one will be the last.”
That’s the kind of crap I get all the time.
I scurry to collect the carrots before they get ground up at the bottom of the escalator.
HOME
When I get home, Mom takes one look and knows something happened.
“Why’s your ear bleeding? And what happened to these carrots? Did you fall?”
“No. Asher punched me. My head hit the wall of the escalator and I dropped the carrots. He said it was my birthday present.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’m so sorry. I’ll have your father speak with him.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line. I love my Dad. He’s a genuinely nice guy, my mentor. But he’s not a disciplinarian. If he’s the one in charge, nothing will happen.
...
There are still a couple hours before the party, so I head back to my room to work on my project.
One of the miracles of the modern Confederation is that the worlds are all connected by what’s become known as the exo-net, the internet of interworld communications. It has truly allowed remote places like Daan to have access to first-class education and training. My entire formal education has been done remotely, using online training materials and course work. It allows reasonably smart and motivated people like me to get education that’s almost as good as the best universities, and to do it at my own pace.
I have one course left to complete and I need to get it done quickly. My dream job, engineer with the power company, is about to open up. Dad’s friend and colleague Levi Grayson is retiring at the end of the month. There are three other candidates for the position, none of whom are very good. The company wants to hire me. But I need to have finished my power engineering degree to be eligible.
At the university, where this course is taught live, it takes 12 weeks. When I started the course, I only had 26 days to finish before Mr. Grayson’s retirement. I’m done except for the project and I have 5 days left.
My project is kind of cool. It’s a bit of an adaptation of my ancestor’s technology for energy capture, but for personal use. My ancestor’s big idea was to use huge arrays of carbon nanotubes to capture lightning bolts. Configured as a capacitor, nanotube arrays can hold almost as much power as a regular battery of the same size. Well, maybe a battery of half the size.
But that’s only half of what he did. He added nanotube thyristors to the entry and exit points of the array. Ah, sorry about that. Not that many people know what a thyristor is. They’ve been around forever, but only people into electrical power have ever heard of them. Thyristors are devices that allow one-way current flow, the direction and duration of which can be controlled electronically. They were discovered in the semiconductor days of prehistory. Now they’re made from nanotubes. My ancestor’s big idea was to combine types that are useful for short-term energy storage with the types used in control circuits.
Why hadn’t anyone else figured this out? Well, I’m sure they did, but to what end? This is one of those things that’s only a competitive solution in super-high current flow applications, like capturing lightning strikes.
But back to my school project, my device is a capacitor made from nanotubes, both types. I can store enough energy in a 1-inch cube to power most personal electronics for a couple days. It can be charged from any source. Anything from electrostatic shocks, like you get when shuffling your feed on the carpet, to just plugging it in the wall. But, unlike regular batteries that take hours to charge, these can charge more or less instantly given the right power source, two minutes max with standard Confederation household power distribution. Plug it in, come back two minutes later, and bingo! A full charge.
