by Clara Woods
“We don’t know where it leads yet, but in his letters, he speaks of a threat coming from the aliens who welcomed us here,” the doctor answered her earlier question. “All information on that was classified. But if Uz can save the wet hard drive, maybe we’ll be able to figure it out.”
“The aliens who welcomed us here – is he talking about the Cassidians?” Lenah asked, confused. As cold and exhausted as she was, the conversation quickly seemed to be getting too complicated for her.
“We have to assume that.”
Cassius fired again and then nodded toward Lenah, who flipped the Rambler around, getting them further away from the moon. The ship creaked painfully when she tried to accelerate as fast as possible. Their weapons range was greater than the other ship’s, but they were also slower. She just hoped their adversaries had been slowed down enough for them to start the warp bubble.
“How’s that stone coming along?” she asked Persia, while another laser missed them by a few meters. Then two more dots appeared on the proximity radar. “That better not be friends of that fighter back there.”
After all, Lunara Station was a busy place, and lots of ships were flying in orbit, though everyone had pulled away from the skirmish. Everyone but these two, who were coming straight at them.
“I think we’re about to take a beating,” Lenah said when the closer one of the newcomers started to fire at them. The ship buckled when the shields dropped to zero under the ongoing fire.
“Come on.” Lenah tried to urge the ship to go faster. With three ships on their tail and no backward-shooting weapon, they couldn’t turn again. They’d be toast before destroying even one of these fighters. Another hit made the ship jump, and an alarm went off inside one of the rear cabins. The hull wasn’t breached yet, but it wasn’t far from it. “Persia, are you ready?”
“Almost. Just a few seconds longer.”
“Well, make it happen!” Lenah gave up on any attempts to evade shots and focused on getting them away from the moon as fast as possible. She’d already drawn her breath for a triumphant cheer when they were hit again in the rear. This time, red alarms started blaring, indicating more serious damage.
“Hold tight, everyone,” Lenah yelled when they were hit again. The ship trembled violently, and Lenah thought she’d throw up. Someone behind stumbled in the corridor.
Then her screen lit up, asking for coordinates.
“Ready, Persia?”
“But where to?” Persia recovered from where she’d collided with the cockpit’s wall.
“0, 0, 0 is fine with me. I just want to get us out of here.”
When no one objected, Lenah typed the numbers into the screen. The last laser beam from the ships that had followed them became blurry and then faded away. The security of the warp bubble formed around them, and they were finally flying smoothly, engulfed in the beautiful colors.
Lenah took a deep breath. That had been too close.
With the adrenaline fading from her body, she became aware of her shaking again. She was so cold, the only hot place being the wound in her shoulder. Plus, she was still wearing those wet and icy-feeling clothes.
She needed to dry off and then get into bed, under as many covers as possible. Maybe Doctor Lund was doctor enough to patch up her shoulder, even though she knew his title wasn’t at all medical-related.
Getting out of her seat was harder than she thought possible. After failing several times to open the buckle of her safety belt, a large hand came into view to help her out. The same hand, together with another metal one, also caught her when her legs gave out.
“Get her into the common room, now.” Those were the last words Lenah heard before she lost consciousness.
24 Starbound
Whispers woke Lenah. She realized at once that she wasn’t in her bed. Her father let her have the softest mattress money could buy, and whatever she was lying on was hard and uncomfortable. It reminded her of that one time when her mother had convinced her father to go on a camping vacation. Mum had been a geologist, and loved to be surrounded by wilderness. Father, on the other hand, enjoyed resorts and pool bars. But that one time, they’d all slept together in a tent. The inflatable air mattress had lost all its air overnight, and Lenah woke up stiff all over, but eager to explore. It had been the best vacation of her life. After her mother’s death, her father had never taken her camping again.
“I think she’s waking up,” someone said softly, interrupting Lenah’s memory. At first, she had no idea who the voice belonged to, as it was none of the servants in the mansion. But then memories started to come back. She was on the Star Rambler, and had passed out in Cassius’ arms. With some effort she opened her eyes, blinking against the bright light.
“Hey, welcome back.” Persia and Doctor Lund’s faces came into view, and Lenah realized that she was lying on the main table in the common room. Several blankets were piled on top of her.
“Why am I on a table?”
“The doctor made this into our makeshift infirmary, and he wanted to make sure he had easy access to you in case you went into shock from the hypothermia,” Persia explained.
“Easy access? Gross.” Lenah moaned, trying to rid herself of all the blankets, feeling too hot.
“Good, you can complain and make jokes. That means you feel better,” the doctor said, tension in his voice. He turned away.
Persia handed Lenah a cup with broth. It had pieces of real meat swimming in it, and she gratefully took a first sip. “Oh, is this chicken?”
“Yup. We’re finally stocked with decent food. There’s even beer.”
“Beer?” Lenah was sure she hadn’t put beer on the shopping list.
“Yes. I didn’t think nobles like you drank beer, but seems I was wrong.” Persia patted her on the back.
Lenah grumbled, wondering what other non-essential stuff had mysteriously found its way onto her shopping list.
“Only uncultured people drink beer,” the doctor said, making Lenah wonder who had put it on her shopping list. If it was neither Persia nor him, that left only Uz or Cassius. Did Cassidians even drink beer? Sitting up, she remembered her conversation with Cassius about sharing their backgrounds over a beer. Did he want to do that badly enough to sneak it onto the list? And did she find that flattering or concerning?
“Let me see your injury.” Doctor Lund started fumbling with a bandage on her shoulder.
Lenah felt inclined to shoo him away, already feeling better just by sitting up and eating broth, but figured seeing the wound for herself wouldn’t hurt. “I’m all yours, doc.”
Doctor Lund shook his head. “Don’t get your hopes up. My doctorate was obtained purely by writing about the ruins of New Earth.”
Lenah grunted. No wonder he’d connected that device to their stone the other day. He peeled the bandage off her shoulder, and she got a good look at her red and blistered skin. At least the affected area was small and, while it would most likely scar, she didn’t expect it to bother her for long. “We don’t have any quick-heal bandages, so this will have to heal the natural way,” Doctor Lund said as he put a new bandage on Lenah’s wound.
The hatch whooshed open, and Uz came in. Her clothes were dirty, and her hair was the kind of disheveled mess that you only got by not sleeping in days. How long had Lenah been lying on that table?
“What did you find?” Doctor Lund asked excitedly, his emotion a total opposite to Uz’s expression.
Lund’s question reminded Lenah of their quest to reveal the stone’s map. She hadn’t studied the coordinates on a map yet, but vaguely remembered from school lessons that 0,0,0 were the coordinates where the human race had entered this solar system on their Generation Ships, which had taken off from Old Earth. That had been almost three thousand years ago, when there still had been Cassidian-human offspring. That was also why her father’s mage farms were so groundbreaking. The magical Cassidian part in humanity’s blood had gotten so weak over the centuries that warp travel took a lot longer
now than it had two thousand years ago. Corinna Cheung and Starwide Research were pretty much saving humanity from falling behind.
“Nothing useful,” Uz sighed.
“Let’s hear it anyway. I’d like to judge for myself,” Doctor Lund retorted in an inpatient tone, which suggested they’d had this same discussion before.
“In the encrypted files, I found the complete version of the comms. We only saw an edited version before. Joon, the archaeologist, claims that the Cassidians are an evil race.”
Doctor Lund narrowed his eyes when the hatch opened once more and Cassius walked in. “Oh, cyb—Cassius, Uz was just telling us—”
“I heard.” Cassius interrupted the doctor, motioning to his ears.
“Cassius has enhanced hearing,” Lenah said.
“Uh, right.” Uz continued into the pause. “Were was I? Oh, yes. Joon suspects that Cassidians are tricking humanity into settling in their system until they feel safe. Then they’ll come for the humans and kill them all.”
“Well, he obviously was wrong. It’s been three thousand years, and nothing happened,” Lenah said in an attempt to lighten the mood. Uz had her hands curled into tight fists.
“Besides, didn’t your oh-so-peaceful people kick you out?” Persia added.
Uz looked sharply at her. “That doesn’t mean this person, this human, can just go and accuse all of us.”
“This Joon might have been crazy for all we know, Uz.” Lenah tried to ease the tension. “Does he say anything on why he thinks Cassidians are evil? How is this connected to the stone?”
“Good question,” Uz answered. “He goes on to describe a stone: round, of a material unknown to humans. It’s black with an indent, and turned in the light, it reflects swirls of endless colors. He claims that stone is a map to the secret.”
“That description does sound like our stone,” Persia murmured, but this time Uz didn’t acknowledge her.
“He claimed that this stone was the only thing he could smuggle out from some group he was apparently working against. He seemed to be talking about another group of humans, clearly assuming that his friend knew about it. That’s all I know. In his last comm, Joon then tells his friend that he was discovered by them, but that he’s sending the stone, the map, to his friend.”
“So, at 0, 0, 0 we’ll hear galaxy-shattering proof about the Cassidians’s evilness that never became true? That’s not worth having the whole criminal world after the stone,” Persia said.
“Does the UPL and everyone else who’s after this believe humanity is about to be attacked by the Cassidians?” Lenah asked. The question sounded ridiculous.
“That would be a possible explanation why the United Planets Legion is looking for the stone,” Cassius said slowly.
“I don’t want to be in possession of some kind of doomsday prophecy,” Persia said, holding up both hands. “Speaking of UPL, how many units were they paying for the stone, Cassius?”
“One million.”
Lenah almost choked on her broth. That was a fortune, more than most people made in their whole life. No wonder every criminal in the galaxy was after them. It would also be the perfect solution to start a new life somewhere. She’d been wondering about that lately, unsure if she ever wanted to go back to work alongside her father.
“That’s a lot of money,” the doctor said in awe.
“We could go and find out about that map. Once we see for ourselves, we can hand the stone over to the UPL,” Cassius said.
“The stone is with us for a reason,” Uz retorted immediately. “We can’t just go in, check it out, and then hand it over.”
“What are you saying, then? That we should wash the name of the Cassidians clean ourselves?” Lenah asked.
“I’m with Cassius,” Persia said. “We go to the UPL and split the million units. Two hundred thousand each, can you image what we could do with that kind of money?”
“You can’t be serious,” Uz said, shooting her an angry look. In combination with her scarred face and wild hair, she looked outright scary. “We need to find what it says.”
The doctor nodded toward Uz. “I agree.”
“That’s stupid. I already risked my life enough for this stone,” Cassius said. “Besides, a new bidder just entered the market. Starwide Research. We might be able to bring up the price if we play our cards right.”
“Wait a moment,” Lenah interrupted him. “Did you just say Starwide Research wants this?”
Cassius shrugged. “Sure. They’re that corporation who operates the mage farms.”
“The corporation who kidnapped me. Abominations,” Uz murmured.
Lenah couldn’t believe it. “Why didn’t you say that before?”
Cassius frowned at her. “Why would I? And why are you so interested?”
He had her there. Only Persia knew her backstory, and that her father owned that company. Lenah wasn’t too keen for the rest of them to find out. It was bad enough that Cassius already called her ‘rich girl’ just for how she behaved.
Lenah shrugged. “Just what you said. We can drive the price up.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but Cassius’ stare bored into her. He definitely suspected that there was more behind her comments.
But what did her father want with the stone? The small hope she’d been harvesting that the stone showing up at their home was a coincidence had just gotten its final death blow.
“We can’t do that. Aren’t you listening?” Uz asked, sounding slightly desperate.
“We did hear you, but not everyone wants to lose their lives finding — I don’t even know what.”
“So you want to sell it too?” Uz sounded truly disappointed, but Lenah suddenly wasn’t so sure any longer. Her father’s interest in the stone was something she couldn’t ignore.
Everyone was looking at her.
Persia finally said, “Cassius and I are for selling, Doctor Lund and Uz are for going to the coordinates. Lenah, what do you want?”
“You have the deciding vote,” Cassius told her.
“I do?”
Everyone nodded.
Lenah took a deep breath. She didn’t really want to pull the others deeper into this than necessary, but for her, it had gotten personal. They’d still get the money in the end, wouldn’t they?
“We’re going. Let’s follow that map and find its secret.”
25 0, 0, 0
“There is absolutely nothing here.”
“Maybe it’s not the right stone,” Lenah countered.
“It is the right stone. If it wasn’t, why would the whole galaxy be after us?” Cassius said from the back.
They’d left the warp bubble at coordinates 0, 0, 0 a few minutes earlier, and Lenah was sitting in the cockpit, with Persia and Cassius crowding the space behind her. Persia had heated up the stone, and they’d all waited for something – anything – to happen. But it never did.
“It’s not the right coordinates.” Doctor Lund’s excited voice carried through the corridor, accompanied by his heavy footsteps. He stuck his head into the cockpit a few seconds later. “It’s not the right coordinates because of the age of our source.”
Lenah turned around, shooting him a questioning look. Doctor Lund nodded eagerly at her.
“Our coordinate system is human and only dates back a couple of millennia, since humanity arrived here. 0, 0, 0 represents the Origin, the first-ever meeting point between Cassidians and humans, but the stone is older than that, it’s not human, and we need to convert the old coordinates into new ones. Luckily, the same hard drive from Lunara Station explains how to do the conversion. I have it right here.”
“How far away is it?” Lenah asked, hesitation in her voice. Warp bubbles were fast, but depending on the distance, it would take some time.
“It’s right at where we would now say are coordinates 34000, 54, -167.”
Stars, that was far away.
“Won’t that take weeks? That’s in the Fifth Octant. There’s nothing there,” Cassius said
, a deep growl sounding from his throat. His metal hand shot up as if he was about to pound something, or someone, but then he seemed to catch himself.
“It’ll take about ten days. And you’re right; there’s nothing there. No planet, not even a mining asteroid,” Lenah answered, entering the coordinates into the computer and letting it calculate their distance. “We can go, but to get back to civilization we’d be quite low on food.”
“Again. Great,” Persia murmured.
“We can hunt once we get to wherever the map leads to,” Uz said from outside the corridor.
“You seem awfully sure that we’ll find something. What if there is nothing there? It might be a sea of lava for all we know.”
Uz didn’t answer, but turned around with a defiant look.
“Can anyone even hunt? I might have learned how to use my hammer for lots of things, but certainly not to kill wild animals. Or dissect them,” Persia said, breaking the silence.
“I’ve hunted before,” Lenah said, and received a short snort from Cassius.
“Oh, yeah? And what have you hunted? Ducks?”
“Yes, for the most part,” she admitted, “and the occasional Asturian fox.”
This time, Cassius’ snort was more pronounced. “That’s a lot of ducks for the way back to civilization, rich girl.”
“Maybe you can kill us a few boars with your cyborgness,” she shot back.
He lifted an eyebrow at her, but didn’t say anything this time.
Lenah moved her tense neck. Her shoulder was healing fine, the burn only occasionally troubling her, but did she have to injure the side she was used to sleeping on? She couldn’t get used to sleeping on the wrong side, and had spent the last few nights tossing and turning, only to wake herself up whenever she rolled onto her injured shoulder. All the worrying about the stone’s mystery and her father didn’t help with sleep, either.
With a sigh, she typed in the new coordinates. The blackness of space was replaced once again by the colorful swirls of the warp bubble. “All right, people, everyone out of here now. The captain made a decision.”
