by Richard Fox
Sarah squeezed a coin worked into a bracelet and there was a faint pitch. She pushed up on the light and it popped out of its housing. Behind the light was a matte-black box with inlaid gold wires. She pinched two corners and the gold lines melded into the black.
“House is rebooting. What do we need to talk about?” she asked.
“Do we need to take the risk? You know Corporate will shake us down as soon as we return to the station over Paradise. If we get caught with those gene samples and—”
“We don’t have the Tyr’s genetic codes, then we really don’t have anything, do we? They’re just another humanoid species that Corporate—and any other government—will write off as ‘native fauna’ when it comes time to move on to their next exploitation,” she said. “I’ve got the proof surgically implanted. Corporate isn’t that thorough.”
“You really think the Tyr are the proof the Society needs?”
“Any proof is better than theories.” She stretched her arms in front of her. “And the Tyr’s mythology matches the fossil records. I’m certain they’re adapted to this planet; they’re not of this planet. If they’d developed the tech to do a proper gene sequencing, the Tyr would know this too. Corporate doesn’t want that answer. Which is why they don’t equip survey teams like ours with complete bio suites—also why’s Hower got suitcases full of animal samples in Tyr formaldehyde?”
“Let’s hope your contacts can do what they promised, else we wasted ten years of our lives,” Daniel said.
“Not completely.” She looked back at her son. “We trained up the best ambassador to the rest of the galaxy that the Tyr could ever have.”
Hower smacked his lips and stirred. Sarah placed the AI core back in the roof as the other man awoke.
“What? What were you doing to House?” he mumbled.
“Rest stop’s coming up,” Daniel said. “Double-checking his radio linkup to make sure there’s no checkpoints ahead. Do you want to explain to a Blooded officer why you have a bunch of dead birds in your luggage?”
“Linker business,” he said with a scowl. “Those knuckle draggers are smart enough to know when to leave well enough alone. I wouldn’t mind one last kaf if we’ve got the time.”
“A kaf…yeah?” Sarah nodded.
Daniel glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
“Might as well. We’re ahead of schedule, and if a ten-minute rest stop burns it all down, it was going to burn down anyway.” He turned a dial to activate the turn signal and pulled into a rest stop.
****
“But there was a shrine back there.” Michael looked through the back window as the car rumbled down a dirt road through a forest.
“No,” Sarah said.
“I’m almost at the gods’ age,” the teenager whined. “If I was a real Tyr, I’d be going through seminary like Lussea is right now. Can you imagine what the caste fathers would do if they knew you forbade your only child to meet his religious obligations to—”
“Well, you’re not a real Tyr, are you?” Sarah snapped. “So no, you can’t go pick up the bowl of psycho-active fungus a forest hermit left at a shrine at the roadside. Do you know what the oaxa will do to you if you eat it?”
“It’s probably not poisonous to humans,” Michael said.
Hower raised a finger to interject but opted not to join in the conversation after a brief glance from Sarah.
“There was that one guy from the mission before ours that tried the oaxa,” Michael said.
“And he thought he turned into a glass of orange juice for a week,” both Michael and Sarah said together.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said that a million times.” Michael rolled his eyes.
“And after the millionth time, you’d think you’d learn.” Sarah shook her head. “We share a number of physiological similarities with the Tyr, but we’re not identical. A substance that alters their consciousness won’t do the same thing to us. Just ask the only biology doctor in the car, right, Aaron?”
“Listen to your mother,” Hower said.
“We’re here,” Daniel said, an air of sadness to his words. He pulled the car into a gravel driveway dotted with grass and weeds and up to a cabin overlooking an ocean-side cliff. A generator on the side of the cabin looked rusted over, and one of the supports on a tin tank on the roof had failed, listing it to one side.
“Gateway to paradise.” Hower chuckled.
“House, status?” Daniel kept the car idling.
“Hide site lambda security protocols are intact. No Tyr presence since last contact. Warning. A den of mistles is present in the attic.”
“I hate mistles,” Hower said. “I excluded them from my samples intentionally. I won’t be responsible for those things spreading through human space. I don’t care how much of a royalty I might lose.”
“Relax, Aaron. It’s not like they bite,” Daniel said.
“You know full well that they bite! Must I show you the scar? Again?”
“I’ll take care of the mistles.” Daniel turned the car off and opened his door. “Michael, help unload. Michael?”
The boy had drawn his knees into his chest and buried his face in his arms.
“Go, get the pre-flight started,” Sarah said, shooing him away.
Daniel took a long flashlight from the side of the door and gripped it by the end like a club. House remotely popped the locks on the cabin as he approached, and lights inside flipped on and off. The simulated growl of a kerlinx—like an extinct mountain lion of Earth but with more scales—blared from the car.
A streak of brown fur shot out the door as he opened it, followed by two more as Daniel danced aside.
“Fire! Use fire!” Hower shouted and scrambled onto the hood of the car.
Daniel peered into the cabin. Hanging pots and spoons swayed from pegs on the wall, disturbed by the mistles’ flight. Mildew stained the kitchen sink, and the thick smell of animal droppings hung in the air.
The scampering of claws ran across the ceiling, and Daniel whacked the head of the flashlight against the wooden planks overhead. There was a thump from a bedroom and a mistle crashed into the hallway wall.
The creature was dusty-colored and had lizard-like paws that jutted out from the poof of fur. A sharp snout sniffed the air and it hissed at him.
“Git, you varmint, git.” Daniel sidestepped and rapped the flashlight against the wall. It skittered to the threshold, turned and rose on its hind legs, and hissed again.
A rather feminine shriek came from Hower as the mistle bolted away.
“Will you chill out?” Michael asked from outside. “They’re just hairy armadillos.”
“With pointy teeth and venom!” Hower shouted.
Daniel gave the cabin a once-over. The place promised little comfort and the smell would drive away any Tyr that considered squatting. But that—and the remote location with a reputation for predators—was part of the facility’s camouflage.
He grabbed a spoon hanging from the wall and pulled it down. The nail clicked and a hatch opened in the floor. Cool, sanitized air rushed up. He went down the narrow staircase and lights turned on around him as he descended into a hangar.
The shuttle was right where they’d left it when they first arrived ten years ago. No oil spots, no hint of corrosion. The five-seater Bahadur-Getty system jumper was just as he remembered it.
There was a faint hum as systems came online and a ramp lowered out from the back. Even though he’d been around such tech his entire life…it felt alien to him.
“Systems check green across the board,” House said through a speaker in the shuttle. “You have three hours and nineteen minutes to depart or you will miss the nexus portal. Failure to return Corporate property as per your contract will result in sanctions to include—”
“Thanks, House, I know the fine print…are you going to miss us?”
“Query unknown.”
“I don’t know how any of us will manage without you nagging us. Promise to go easy on th
e replacement team.” He went up the ramp and into the small passenger compartment/cockpit. “I’ll miss you too.”
Not much different from the room we have in our sedan, he thought. But our next road trip will have a bit of a different view.
“Everything still here?” Sarah asked as she came in behind him.
“You remember how to fly this thing?”
“Oh, easy.” She sat in the pilot’s seat and her hands hesitated over the controls. “Like riding a bike. A bike with an anti-matter power core and gravity inversion drives. Pre-flight checks…pre-flight checks.”
“I’ll get us loaded up.” He touched her shoulder.
“We have to leave.” Her hands fell to her lap. “Have to. This place has been home…now we’ve got to protect it.” She looked over at the fifth seat, the one that would be empty on their return trip.
“Julia loved this place too. Maybe Aaron can heal once we finally leave,” Daniel said.
“Go. Let me…remember where the wheels are on this bike,” she said.
“Should I be worried?” he asked. “Being stuck dirtside for another cycle is one thing. Being stuck in the void on a long, slow float to the next star is another.”
“Shush, you!”
“I’ll get the bags.”
****
At a Speaker caste monastery built into the side of a cliff, two aspirants sat in the lotus position atop a small rock outcropping.
They stared up at the red sky as the sun set, watching as the visage of the gods appeared in the nebula. Their eyes struggled for focus as the oaxa mushrooms they’d eaten an hour before sent different patterns across their vision, melding clouds into the swirl of the nebula.
The shuttle hidden beneath the cabin several miles up the coast shot out over the ocean, then pulled into a steep climb, the dull yellow flare from the engine like a falling star in reverse.
“Whoa,” said one of the priests, rocking back slightly.
“You…saw that too?” the other asked.
“Yeah…whoa.” He gripped the pillow beneath him like he was about to fall over.
“Double vision from the gods…what does it mean?” The other looked around, like he was hearing something. “It’s too much.”
“Whoa.”
Chapter 8
Daniel stepped out of the small washroom, his skin tingling after removing his entire synth layer. His flight suit felt too large now that his faux-skin was in a vacuum-sealed pack in his hand.
His wife at the shuttle’s controls and both Hower and his son in acceleration chairs were all bare of their synths. They all looked almost like strangers to him without their Tyr countenance, and he knew he was just as alien to them as well.
A silver moon grew closer and Daniel felt a tinge of homesickness for Luna. Earth’s moon was a shade darker and pitted with hive cities in the craters, and a ring of space debris had accumulated over the centuries since it was settled. Ashtani, the Tyr name for the inner satellite, was pristine by comparison. The kingdom had landed a few probes since they’d achieved space flight. Even the Worthy Peoples had managed to reach the moon with a single unmanned mission—that ended up crashing into the surface and breaking into a million pieces—but they’d made it.
“We’ll slingshot around for a bit of a velocity boost,” Sarah said. “Sensors picking up bullshit particles at the Lagrange point behind Kleegar…right on schedule.”
“Must we?” Hower asked meekly before burying his face in a barf bag.
“Da-a-d,” Michael said, “he’s almost used them all up.”
“You all right back there?” Daniel turned the air scrubbers up to maximum as Hower lost what little breakfast remained in his stomach.
“Simple motion sickness.” Hower wiped his lips. “Can’t take anything to settle my stomach or the nexus transit will be even worse.”
“Too bad we can’t land.” Michael leaned against the glass to watch as the moon passed beneath them. “We could write out something in the dust. Really mess with the Tyr astronauts when they finally send a manned mission.”
“That is…so irresponsible, it’s not even funny.” Sarah clenched her jaw for a moment. “You know how superstitious the kingdom is. They find anything that upsets their worldview and there will be another Schism. They almost had a civil war over interpreting that scroll found in the plains.”
“Just joking, gosh.” Michael wafted his hand under his nose as Hower disposed of his bag into a flap at the back of their compartment. “Would still be funny. ‘Eat more tarka leaf’ or something.”
The inner moon fell behind them as the shuttle flew toward the outer moon, a dark sphere against the nebula. Kleegar was the smaller of the two satellites and held a bit more ominous place in Tyr religion. The Tyr were marked by silver and black, like the moons, and Kleegar held the negative connotations of everything the Tyr considered in their makeup. As such, it was the theological home to demons and the damned. While the Tyr knew it was another moon like Ashtani, there were no plans to land a manned mission—or even a probe.
One satellite had taken photos, but those had been suppressed by the kingdom. Only House’s constant surveillance of the communications grid had intercepted the pictures, which were all benign by Daniel’s standards. The place was simply too evil in the Tyr’s mind, though, for grainy photos of craters and ancient comet strikes to be released to the public.
“Mr. Hower, we can’t even feel the acceleration with the dampeners. I don’t get it,” Michael said.
“Age,” Hower said. “You get old enough and then things start hurting for no reason at all.”
“Dad, you think the Tyr got us on radar when we left?” Michael asked.
“Doubt it. The hull is non-reflective and there’s no heat from the drives. Might’ve upset some satellite orbits on the way out with the gravity fluctuations. It’s not like they have any weapons that could catch us either.” Daniel shrugged.
“The Pasdar particle readings are…way too high.” Sarah frowned. “It’s on the dark side of the moon, so we won’t have visual for a few more minutes.”
“What does that mean?” Michael leaned between the two forward seats.
“It means buckle up. Something might be wrong.” Daniel raised a hand in front of him and pulled up a holo screen.
“Cut velocity?” Sarah asked.
“Better safe than sorry. We go through an unstable wormhole and there’s no telling where we might end up,” he said.
“Or we’ll end up smeared across the system as subatomic particles,” Hower added.
“Thank you, Aaron,” Sarah said tersely. Their approach to Kleegar slowed. “We can land on the dark side if we need to. Sometimes it takes a nexus a few hours to stabilize for transit.”
“The partial oscillation is in the low femto range.” Daniel peered at a chart on his holo. “That’s not quantum noise.”
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Michael said.
“Just stay in your seat…you may get your chance to write your name in the sand after all.” Daniel swiped the screen away as the shuttle came around the dark moon.
The nexus point was a pulsating pinprick of light, flashing ghostly waves against the moon.
Daniel’s heartbeat increased and he took slow breaths to calm himself.
Sarah’s controls went red and her eyes widened. The shuttle lurched to one side as a starship emerged from the nexus on a collision course.
The shuttle rolled over, narrowly missing a cannon turret bigger than their vessel. Sarah spun them into a tight spiral toward the moon, an old combat maneuver.
A massive ship stretched out of the nexus, a utilitarian nightmare with a compressed hexagon hull and a second ship docked beneath it. The smaller vessel had missiles locked to the hull and several cannons arrayed across the underside.
“Oh no…” Sarah put a hand over her mouth.
“What? I thought the replacement team was coming in a shuttle like ours,” Michael said.
“It’s a…that’s a torch ship,” Daniel said. “Corporate sends those ahead to worlds marked for…”
“They can’t be serious.” Hower gripped his armrests. “The Tyr are too advanced. There’s no way they can—”
“Undesignated shuttle, this is the Leopold,” came through speakers. “Stand by for Director Zike.”
To the aft of the big ship, panels opened and beams of light shot out, tracing a circle around the nexus point.
“Bastards,” Sarah said, banging a fist against her controls. “Those bastards can’t do this!”
“What? Do what? What is that thing?” Michael threw off his restraints and gripped the top of his parents’ seats. The shuttle stopped descending, the nose pointing up at the Leopold.
“It’s a torch ship,” Hower said. “Those lines in the back are quantum stabilizers. They’ll keep the nexus point open even after the system gravitics shift. They’re holding the door open for another ship. One that’s even larger.”
“They’re going to colonize Tyr,” Daniel said.
“How? The planet wasn’t anywhere near screened for human habitation when we arrived.” Sarah’s hands opened and closed. “This is foolish. Stupid, even for the Corporation.”
Zike appeared in a screen that filled up most of the forward window. “Mission leader…Clay, is it? Pleasure to see you.” He squinted. “Oh, no synth on you. Well, there won’t be a handoff to another survey mission. As you can tell, we’re—”
“What’re you doing here with a torch ship?” Daniel asked.
One of Zike’s eyebrows jumped. “I doubt you’ve been away from company operations so long that you don’t recognize a settlement effort. Though your time with some xenos may have affected your manners. We’re detecting unanticipated levels of radiation in the planet’s atmosphere. Can you account for this?”
Daniel’s jaw clenched and he simply stared at the man.
“If it’s a minor detail, then I won’t bother with it,” Zike said. “Transmit your mission report before you transit the nexus. There may be some useful information before operations begin.”
