The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  Something on this planet almost certainly killed a team of the ISA’s best scouts. How are we supposed to be ready to deal with it if we don’t know what it is? And if we’re not ready, will we survive?

  The Engineering Department set up shop at the eastern edge of the Landing. They’re working out of an open-sided tent built over the 3D printers. Eventually they will have a proper 3D shop and a hangar for the flyers and jeeps. But at the moment both of our flyers are parked in the meadow outside the tent.

  Flyers are Vertical Takeoff and Landing vehicles, so the long, spindly rotors that bristle from the ends of their narrow wings rotate once they’re off the ground to become propellers, then tilt up again when you land. That way you don’t need a runway. They’re bigger than Grandpa’s Cessna—big enough to hold ten people and cargo—but they’re really easy to fly. The autopilot can handle almost everything. If I do pass out, the flyer can probably get me home on its own.

  I climb into the closest one and settle into the pilot seat. I feel energized and also vaguely nauseous, like I just drank one of the huge, caffeinated frappes that Beth loves. The little voice in my head reminding me that this is a stupid idea gets quieter as I bring up the navigation app from the wall screen. It feels so right to be back in the pilot seat. Like the ghost of the girl I was just slipped under my skin.

  “Computer, switch to exterior cameras, please,” I say.

  A three-sixty of the meadow and the 3D shop tent flickers onto the wall screens around me just in time for my sister’s voice to fill the audio feed.

  “My electron microscope needs to be moved to the top of the queue, Chris. This shouldn’t even be a debate.”

  Crap. What is Beth doing out here? I don’t see her in the meadow. She must be in the 3D shop with Chris. Just my luck. If Beth catches me, she’ll tell Mom. I’ll end up locked in the mess hall with Dr. Kao twenty-two hours a day like a little kid who can’t be trusted on her own.

  I scramble out of the flyer. I’m just closing the rear hatch when Beth, Chris, and Jay emerge from the 3D shop.

  “—to the commander, if I have to,” Jay is saying. “I’m acting on her orders. Security at the Landing is priority one.”

  “By all means,” Beth snaps. “Let’s consult my mother. A secure food supply is just as important to our safety as weaponry, and I cannot properly evaluate the Stage Three bacteria’s engagement with our soil samples without electrophoresis—”

  Chris takes me as a perfect opportunity to ignore both of them.

  “Hey, Joey,” he says. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were on construction duty.”

  Before I can come up with a reasonable lie, Jay says, “Looks to me like Hotshot is stealing a flyer.”

  How the hell did he know that?

  I’m about to protest when Beth says, “Jo has no reason to steal a flyer. She is physically incapable of safely piloting an aerial vehicle.”

  “And thankfully, you’re always here to remind me of that,” I mutter. “Just in case I forget that pesky heart condition.”

  “There’s no need for sarcasm, Joanna,” Beth says.

  “It’s more of a want than a need thing.”

  Jay bursts out laughing. “You’re a hoot, Hotshot, you know that?”

  I try not to glare at him, but I totally fail.

  Jay chuckles again. “Don’t worry, I won’t rat you out. Assuming you tell me why you’re trying to steal the birdie. Too much curiosity gives me a headache.”

  “It’s about the Rangers, isn’t it?” Chris says, bubbling with excitement. “You found something out. You must have. What else could be worth sneaking off for?”

  Damn it. Sometimes being surrounded by people who’ve known you your whole life just isn’t fair.

  “Maybe,” I say. I pull off my flex and hand it to Chris. As he scans the GPS data, I give them the short version of the story.

  “It would be a quick trip,” Jay says, leaning over Chris’s shoulder to study the Rangers’ GPS route. “And unlike Hotshot, I’m cleared to fly.”

  “Mom went up to the Pioneer again to double-check the automatic systems. There’s some kind of glitch in the superluminal transponder,” Chris says. “And Dad’s leading a foraging team on the eastern coast. Nobody’ll notice I’m gone.”

  Beth sighs. “There’s no need to be sneaky. Dr. Howard gave me clearance to recruit people for short-range foraging expeditions in his absence, so if we take some cuttings while we’re out, then we won’t even be breaking the rules.”

  “Classy,” Jay says. “I’m in.”

  “No,” I say. “You’re definitely not coming with me. None of you are. It’s too risky.”

  Chris arcs a dubious eyebrow. “For us, but not for you?”

  “Yes,” I snap. “My idea. My risk. Not yours.”

  “Too bad,” Jay says. “’Cause if you go, we go. Or nobody goes.”

  His smile is both pleasant and implacable. He means it.

  “It’s your call, Hotshot.”

  Four

  It’s good to be off the ground, even if I’m not at the controls. Soaring over the rolling green prairie makes me feel, I don’t know, giddy, I guess. It’s hard to sit still. I want to untether from my seat and press my face against the wall screens so I can watch Tau flow past us.

  Cliffs of cloudy crystal rear up out of the prairie as we head west into the Diamond Range. The gleaming, translucent peaks crash and swell over deep ravines and canyons drenched in shades of green.

  I can feel my lungs working harder as we climb into the mountains, like I’m running instead of strapped into a seat. My pacers are struggling with the altitude change. I brace myself for the sparkly mist of oxygen deprivation to cloud my vision, but it never comes. I’m glad. I don’t want to miss this.

  The Rangers’ last coordinates lead us to a narrow ravine cut deep into the glittering cliffs. It’s tiny, smaller than Pioneer’s Landing will be when we’re finished with construction. My head swims as the flyer descends. By the time I catch my breath, Jay has opened the rear hatch and lowered the ramp. I untether myself and follow the others out.

  The air has a chilly bite. It smells like cedar and sugared pears. There are no signs of the Rangers. No abandoned flyer. No ruined cabins. Just trees. Clusters of skinny, white-barked trees with crowns of feathery, blue-tinged fronds scatter across the ravine floor and cling to the steep, translucent cliffs. They look like a geneticist got drunk and crossed a palm tree with a parrot. The parrot palm clusters tower over low-slung trees with massive, gnarled trunks and meaty, circular leaves the size of my hand. I recognize them from the survey report’s species index. They’re carnivorous plants, like the fido trees by the Landing.

  Beth is in heaven. She spends an hour collecting samples while Jay and I search for any sign of the Rangers. Chris is “helping” her by walking the river looking for shore and aquatic species. I think it’s just an excuse to go wading. I don’t blame him. The river is shallow and just fast moving enough that it dances around his knees.

  “Looks like fun,” Jay says, stopping beside me to watch Chris splash.

  “It does,” I say as I start walking upriver again. “Kind of against protocol, but this whole outing is . . .”

  “Rebellious?” Jay says, finishing my thought.

  “That’s one way to put it,” I say.

  “Those rules about not disrupting the native ecosystem always struck me as wishful thinking anyway,” he says. “You can’t become a part of something without changing it. Whether you want to or not.”

  I don’t say anything for a while. I just walk and watch the dappled sunlight spin as the corkscrew breeze plays with the trees. He’s contradicting the thesis we’ve been working toward my whole life—that it’s possible for humans to live on other planets without environmental impact. I want to argue with him, but my brain keeps going back to the jarring pop and crumble of the brittle solar tiles in the Rangers’ dead settlement. That noise belongs at Langley, outside Grandpa�
�s office on base, not here. But it’s a part of this place now, because we are. We’ve already changed Tau. I hope that turns out to be a good thing.

  We’ve almost reached the end of the ravine. Water runs down the ragged cliffs, tumbling into the river. Jay reaches out to let the gentle waterfall flow over his fingers.

  “Careful,” I say, gingerly poking at the spikes of crystal that jag through the running water. They’re hard and crazy sharp. They feel more like metal than the crystals you’d find on Earth. “Come on, let’s check out the other side of the river,” I say, wading into the shallows.

  Jay pulls a stun gun from his belt and clips it to his shoulder harness before following me in.

  “Gotta keep these things dry,” he says, catching what must be a weird look on my face.

  “Right,” I say, like it’s no big deal. But it totally is. Why is he armed? Stun guns aren’t lethal, of course, but weapons aren’t standard equipment, even for the squad. I remember Mom and Dad arguing about whether to even include them in the 3D printer’s gear catalogue. Mom thought we should leave guns behind on Earth. Dad thought that was naive. Guess he won.

  “You think you’re going to need that?” I say, gesturing to his stun gun as we slosh through the water.

  “I hope not,” Jay says. “But the commander ordered the whole squad to carry at all times.” He hesitates a second, like he’s deciding whether to say something. Then he adds, “She’s got the perimeter patrols at the Landing wearing body armor and carrying rifles.”

  My stomach clenches at the thought.

  “No way,” I say. “Mom hates guns.”

  “Maybe so,” Jay says. “But she gave the order. All patrols have been fully armed since Tau Day Four.”

  That’s so out of character for Mom that I have to resist the impulse to argue with him. There’s no reason to think Jay is lying. But Mom didn’t want to bring guns here at all, and now she’s arming our patrols. I think that might be more terrifying than all the other secrets put together.

  My wet jeans cling to my skin, and my feet squish inside my boots as we climb out of the thigh-high water. The banks of the river are covered in patches of tiny, purple-leaved plants that are so closely packed together they feel squishy underfoot, like the ergofoam deck tiles on the Pioneer. The trees on this side of the river are bigger and farther apart. Unlike the fido trees, they have sprawling, thick branches that would make them look a lot like the ancient oak trees on my grandfather’s farm back on Earth, if not for their fan-shaped leaves, which roll in on themselves when we brush past them like oblong tongues licking at the air.

  The trees are so far apart on this side of the river that you can see all the way to the other end of the ravine. There’s no sign of anything remotely human.

  “Maybe this isn’t the last place they went,” Jay says. “Maybe their GPS broke down or something while they were out here, and the return trip just wasn’t tracked.”

  “I guess,” I say. I stop and twist back, turning to take in the tiny valley. The blue-and-green-leaved trees. The vibrant plants clustering over the ground between them. The tumbling river and the dull sparkle of the veined cliffs. It’s untouched. Pristine. “If they were here, it sure doesn’t look like they stayed long.”

  My flex buzzes against my wrist. “Excuse me, Joanna,” the computerized voice says. “I’m picking up a transmission.”

  “There shouldn’t be any comms out here,” Jay says, startled.

  “There aren’t,” I say. Then, to my flex, “Locate the source of the transmission, please.”

  “The transmission originates from an automated beacon seven meters due southeast,” the flex replies. The compass app pops up automatically, displaying a three-dimensional image of an old-fashioned compass with a flashing white light indicating the direction. I pivot until it turns green and start walking.

  “It must be a passive RFID alert,” I say. “ISA flexes are set to scan for them at all times.” I duck under a spray of low-hanging branches, snag my jeans on a bush bristling with yellow thorns, and half stumble into the little clearing.

  Three oblong piles of rock lie at its center.

  Graves.

  I’m stunned. I don’t know how long I stand there, staring. Long enough that Jay puts a gentle hand on my shoulder to get my attention.

  “I’m going to go find Beth and the kid,” he says. “You okay here on your own?”

  I nod. “I’ll scan the tags.”

  “Good call,” he says, disappearing through the trees.

  I crouch next to the graves and shake out my flex to scan them. It finds three passive RFID tags buried in the tidily arranged stones. The graves belong to Dr. Rylan Pasha, Dr. Amahle Obasi, and Dr. Vitor Sousa. There’s no other information in the tags, other than a request to leave the bodies in place if they’re discovered.

  “Whoa,” Chris says as he and Beth follow Jay into the clearing. “Mystery solved, I guess.”

  “Three of the Rangers are here,” I say. “Dr. Brown isn’t. She must be the one who buried them.”

  “I wonder if she’s still alive,” Chris says. The thought of Dr. Brown standing over these graves makes me sick to my stomach. I can imagine how lonely that must have felt. I wish I couldn’t.

  “According to the burial markers, these graves are five Earth-standard years old,” Beth says, unfolding her flex to scan the tags herself. “It’s unlikely Dr. Brown survived alone here for that period of time.”

  I hope not.

  How terrible is that, to hope that someone died? But the thought of being utterly alone for years on end is worse.

  “We should erect a particle shield around this area,” Beth says. “Until it can be examined further.”

  “There should be a portable shield in the flyer’s supply kit,” Jay says.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, starting back toward the flyer before they can argue. I need to be alone for a minute.

  I don’t know why I’m so freaked. I knew the Rangers had to be dead, but seeing the stone cairns made me feel tight and weird. Those graves might answer the question of why the Rangers didn’t leave Tau, but they raise a dozen more. What happened to them? Is Dr. Brown still alive? If she isn’t, what happened to her? Why did she abandon their ship and their settlement? And why are parts of the survey report classified? What did the Rangers find here that ISA decided to keep secret from everyone, including us?

  I’m so busy sorting out my questions and secrets that I’m not looking where I’m going. I trip over a gnarled surface root from one of the hybrid trees and go sprawling face-first into the dirt.

  Damn it.

  I roll onto my back and sit up.

  My wet jeans are coated in sparkly gray dust, and my hands are bleeding. Fabulous. Now I’ll have to go to medical and get checked for unknown Tau bacteria and whatever else might be in the gravel that’s embedded in my palms. Maybe Miguel can do it, so I can avoid a lecture from Doc. Miguel has been up on the Pioneer for a while, putting the insulated-sleep system in standby mode, but I think Leela’s bringing him down with her this trip.

  I stand up.

  The ground crumbles into dust under my feet.

  My brain stutters. For half a second, I’m falling out of the Pioneer again, tumbling through the endless void of space. Memory sears my skin with the frozen fire of solar radiation.

  Then I hit the ground.

  The impact snaps me out of my panicked flashback. I’m lying on something soft and damp in what seems to be a cave. It isn’t deep—I can see the cave ceiling less than three meters above me. I can’t see much else. The shaft of light that tumbles through the hole I just punched in the ground only makes the shadows deeper.

  The tree’s massive taproot has grown right through the center of the cave. It stretches down into the cave floor in a massive tangle of hairy tendrils that almost look as though they’re glowing. No, wait. They are glowing. Their pale-pink light is barely bright enough to be seen with the daylight pouring in from above,
but it’s there.

  I sit up cautiously, and the mushy thing I’m sitting on squishes wetly under my weight. What is that? Do I want to know? Mysteriously moist things found in caves are almost guaranteed to be gross.

  I switch my flex to flashlight mode. White light blooms from my wrist. I brace myself and look down. I’m sitting on what’s left of an ISA sleeping bag. It’s just like the one on my cot at the Landing, but shredded and gray-blue with what looks like mold.

  Yuck. I scramble to my feet and dust myself off. Then I play the light from my flex over the sleeping bag. Where the crusty blue stuff has been knocked loose, I can see the original fabric is red. Vulcan colors.

  I look around, holding up my wrist to pan the light over the rest of the cave. Except it isn’t just a cave. It’s a campsite. Or what’s left of one. There’s a makeshift fire pit in the middle of the floor and a tiny combo 3D printer/recycler in the far corner. The kind they stash in the emergency kits on flyers just in case you get stuck somewhere for a few days and you need to print basic tools. Twists of cable run up from the little 3D to the ceiling, where shattered fragments of solar paneling dangle like holiday garlands around the hole left by my fall. There must have been solar panels up there that got covered in dirt. They were probably too brittle to hold my weight.

  “Joey!”

  “Joanna!”

  “Hotshot, talk to me!”

  “I’m okay,” I call up to my friends. “Just be careful. The ground isn’t stable around the roots of this tree.”

  Jay swings himself over the lip of the hole and drops into the cave. He looks around and whistles appreciatively. “Gotta hand it to you, Hotshot. You have a talent for stumbling on mysterious stuff.”

  “Falling,” I say. “In this case.”

  Jay bursts out laughing like that was a way funnier joke as Chris lowers himself through the hole. He moves more cautiously, dangling for a moment before he drops.

  “Crazy,” he says, flipping his flex to flashlight mode. “These tree roots are huge! You could build a house in there.”

  “These trees are Chorulux neon, so named for their bioluminescent root systems,” Beth says as she leans over the edge of the hole to drive a climbing anchor into the rock. “According to the survey report, the glow attracts subterranean invertebrates, which the tree then dissolves and consumes.”