The Messenger

by J. N. Chaney

  “I think it’s…controls,” Conover said, staring at the Lens. Dash wondered if he’d glaze over and fall unconscious again, but he didn’t. “An operating system, or panel, or whatever.”

  “Good,” Dash said. “Can you see the off switch?”

  “No. I can’t understand it all.”

  “Fantastic.” Dash wondered if jettisoning it would help…but it wouldn’t.

  Shit!

  “We need some way to decipher it,” Viktor said.

  Conover nodded. “A Rosetta Stone.”

  Dash looked at him. “A what?”

  “A Rosetta Stone. It’s another ancient term from Old Earth for a translation key. Something that lets you understand two different languages, by acting as a sort of bridge between them.”

  “Okay…and where might we find something like that?”

  Conover gestured…around. “Somewhere out there, maybe. In the Pasture.”

  “That’s a little too broad…” Dash cut himself off. On a whim, he reached for the comms repeater and shut off the haunting wails and howls still emanating from it. As soon as silence fell, the Lens faded back to its normal, darkly reddish-purple crystalline color.

  “Alright,” he said, letting out the breath he’d been holding. “So let’s get ourselves a little more prepared before doing that again, shall we?”

  “That means,” Leira said, “we need to find Conover’s Rosetta Stone.”

  “Yeah…which might be somewhere out there, in half a light year of spinning, speeding rocks.”

  Conover nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Well, kid,” Dash said, “where exactly would you like to start looking? Which rock?”

  “I…have no idea.”

  “Didn’t think you did.”

  While Viktor and Conover worked on repairing and retuning the Fade, Dash planted himself in the cockpit with Leira and started the deepest scans they could manage. They focused the scanners, meaning they covered less space with each sweep, but did it more thoroughly; they also used the highest power setting they could manage. It meant the Slipwing would shine like a brilliant beacon to anyone looking for her, but given that Clan Shirna were the only ones like to do so, and they apparently wouldn’t enter the Pasture, it seemed like a pretty safe bet.

  “I’m not even sure what we’re looking for,” Dash said.

  Leira, in the copilot’s seat, shrugged. “Me neither. But I suspect it will be one of those, you’ll know it when you see it things.”

  They watched the scans progress for a while, then Dash looked up at Leira.

  “Whatever brought you out here in the first place?”

  “I told you, we found that data aboard that wrecked courier’s ship.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You came flying out here based on some data you found, that you didn’t even know was accurate, or even at all correct. That was an awful risk for, let’s face it, no certain reward.”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “Yeah, but if anyone knows how to manage risk, it’s couriers. And this goes way beyond any sort of reasonable risk-and-reward thing.”

  Leira shrugged. “Honestly? I was bored. Hauling my ass from one shitty job to another…carry this passenger, cart this cargo, pick up this, deliver that…” She shrugged again. “It seemed like something…different. Something worth taking what was—and you’re right about it—a terrible chance.” She looked at Dash. “But it was…I don’t know. Exciting.” Her eyes narrowed. “Anyway, I could ask you the same thing. What brought you out here?”

  “Um…you did?”

  “And you know that’s not what I mean.”

  “Well, you did have an alien artifact on you, so there’s that.”

  “I had a hunk of dark red crystal. It could have been anything…even just a hunk of dark red crystal.”

  Now Dash shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m impulsive and irresponsible. You, on the other hand, just don’t seem to be that type…what?”

  Something on the scan had caught Leira’s attention. “Dash…look at this.”

  He did, then said, “Turns out you were right, that we’d know it when we see it. And I think we see it.”

  The deep scan showed something lurking in the heart of the nearest comet—just a shadow, something more evident from only a slightly increased opacity to their scans. But it was a regular, symmetrical shape, something like a tetrahedron.

  It was tech.

  “It’s in this comet, too,” Leira said. “And these ones. All of them, in fact. It must be whatever the tech is that keeps everything here stable.”

  But Dash dialed the scan to a tighter zoom, focusing in on one comet in particular. It was one of the larger ones, and not too far away—maybe a day, if they burned hard. “I’ll go one better,” he finally said, as the image resolved. “It’s not just tech…it might be answers.”

  The shadowy outline inside the comet was clearly a ship…and it was generating power.

  “It might,” Dash went on, “even be our Rosetta Stone.”

  10

  Dash tapped at the thruster controls, easing the Slipwing closer to the comet. It loomed like a mountain, a massive agglomeration of dust, rock and dirty ice kilometers across. It was large enough to have a slight gravitation effect Dash had to account for, which just made him marvel that much more at the Unseen and their amazing tech. The thought that they could keep something this massive in a stable orbit among millions of other objects, for such a long time…

  “Dash,” Leira said, her eyes fixed on the scanner’s vid, “you want to move…let’s see…plus one kilometer along the x axis, and plus 2 along the y. The z axis looks perfect.”

  Dash nodded and made more thruster inputs, keeping his own attention on the comet itself. This close to something he could actually crash into, he liked to keep his own eyes-on the thing itself. Some pilots were okay with using data and vids and scans for everything, but Dash was old fashioned that way…he liked being able to see what was happening outside his ship.

  “Okay,” he said, “we should be right over the spot—”

  “Dash?”

  “Yo.”

  “There’s a body down there.”

  Dash looked at the vid as Leira zoomed it in. Sure enough, a body—apparently human, or at least humanoid—sprawled on a patch of grubby ice.

  “Is that…an Unseen?” he asked. “I don’t know…I guess I expected an ancient super-race to look more…well, more.”

  Movement behind them, as Viktor and Conover pushed into the cockpit. “The Fade is back online,” Viktor said, “or as online as it’s going to be…” He trailed off. “Is that a body?”

  Dash nodded. “Like I was just telling Leira, I kind of expected the Unseen to be—”

  “It’s not one of the Unseen,” Conover said.

  Dash looked back at him. “How do you know that…since they’re, you know, Unseen?”

  “Did you see them when you looked at the Lens?” Leira asked, but Conover shook his head.

  “No. That’s an old-style vac suit. I recognize it from historical holos I’ve seen.” He stared at the image, then nodded. “Yeah. That’s a human.”

  Dash blinked at the display. “A human? What the hell is a human doing here?”

  “Based on that vac suit,” Conover said, “whoever it is, they’ve been here a long time.”

  They all stared at the image for a moment, then Dash said, “Well, only way to find out. We need to god down there.”

  Dash hated wearing vac suits. They were cramped and uncomfortable, they stank of synthetics and electronics and your own sweat and other bodily emanations, and you couldn’t scratch or…adjust things, if they needed adjustment. But absent an atmosphere, they had no choice but to land the Slipwing and conduct an actual excursion onto the surface of the comet, to find out just what the hell was going on here.

  Dash had put the Slipwing down on a field of ice and gravel, the closest flat spot to the crashed ship big enough to fit he
r. There wasn’t enough gravity to hold her in place, so Dash had set her to station-keeping, her thrusters periodically firing briefly, at low power, to keep her in place. Now, they walked the couple of hundred meters to what was apparently a crash site, using the low-grav shuffle that kept them from bouncing too far off the surface.

  “That is definitely a human body,” Dash said as they approached. The face behind the vision plate, although desiccated into a mummified rictus, was clearly that of a man.

  “And that is an old vac suit,” Viktor said, approaching and examining the body closely. “I’ve seen images of these old suits…saw one in a museum once, too. It must be…well, hundreds of years old.”

  Conover, who had carried to the top of a small rise a few dozen meters away, said, “There’s more over here.”

  They joined him and, sure enough, saw what seemed to be several shelters—portable survival structures intended to keep the crew of a crashed spaceship alive, in a hostile environment, until they could be rescued. Dash always thought they were more of a feel-good thing than actually a practical way of doing any surviving…but, as they approached these ones, it seemed they had kept their occupants alive, at least for a time. Mind you, that had been many years ago—probably centuries, at this point—so what remained were bleached, radiation-blasted tatters hanging from sagging aluminum frames.

  Reaching the shelters, they discovered more bodies in vac suits, all human and mummified like the first. Dash tried to imagine what it must have been like…time passing without rescue, the hours becoming days becoming weeks, the shelters starting to leak as radiation scoured them…frantic repairs finally falling behind the failures, then a last, desperate attempt to survive inside vac suits, until their air and power ran out and the icy emptiness of space could no longer be denied…

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Leira asked.

  Dash stared at one of the mummified corpses. “Just…what a way to go.”

  The silence that followed told Dash the others had been thinking pretty much the same thing.

  Viktor pointed at a rugged field of boulders nearby. “This is the wreck itself, I think.”

  They moved that way, at once noticing metal among the boulders…a hull. Their ship had hit hard enough to bury itself in the ice and loose rock; a few dozen meters in any direction and it would have hit pretty much solid rock. It was unlikely anyone would have survived that. It was either amazing flying, or amazing luck…or probably a little bit of both. Dash took a moment to offer the pilot a silent salute, while the others looked for a way inside the ship.

  Conover found it, an open hatch wedged between two large boulders. Their suit lights showed a drop to a corrugated metal deck, but to see any more, they’d have to clamber down inside.

  “Are we actually going in there?” Conover asked. “I mean…it might not be safe. There could be radiation leaks, debris to snag our suits…”

  “We did not come all this way to see an entrance to an ancient, crashed ship,” Dash said, “and then just turn away and head home.” He looked at Conover. “You can stay here, if you want, though—”

  “No…no. I can do this.”

  Dash led the way, climbing down into the opening. He could simply have let himself fall, but Conover had a point—there could be sharp debris that could snag a vac suit. The suits were tough, and self-sealing, but they weren’t indestructible. So he took his time and care, as did the others as they followed him.

  The ship was definitely old.

  Dash couldn’t identify at all. Neither could Viktor, who probably knew more about ships than he did. It was a completely unknown type, probably because it had been long forgotten. The tech was ancient, using components and circuits that belonged in a historical display. They soon found that essentially all of the ship forward of roughly the mid-point had been destroyed, smashed by the impact with the comet into crumpled wreckage. The rear half was largely intact. Dash was mindful of Conover’s concern about radiation; if there was an old-style fission reactor on board, its fuel might still be dangerous, especially if it had been exposed by damage. But the rad count in what was obviously the engineering bay was only slightly higher than elsewhere aboard the ship, and actually somewhat lower than on the surface. The reactor containment had held, despite the crash and the passage of time—a testament to some rugged, if crude, engineering.

  “I’d say this ship is…at least three hundred years old,” Viktor said, shining his suit light around the machinery and structure of the engineering bay. “Maybe four hundred. That’s the last time this sort of liquid salt reactor would have been used, anyway.”

  “So who the hell would have been flying around out here four hundred years ago?” Dash asked. “I mean, humans would have only just been starting to poke their noses away from the…oh, what’s the name of Old Earth’s star…”

  “Sol,” Conover said. “And I think these are Sooners.”

  Viktor and Leira both said, “Ah…” and nodded, but Dash had turn and push his blank stare at the kid through his vision plate.

  “Sooners?”

  “They were a…group. A sect. Something like that, anyway. They had a reputation as being wild, impulsive…pretty fearless. They weren’t content to wait for humans to establish colonies and trade routes…they wanted to explore and expand now…or, Sooner. You know, like, sooner rather than later…”

  “Yeah,” Dash said, “I get it.”

  Light splashed around the ship as Leira turned. “Wild, impulsive and impatient? Sounds like we found your ancestors, Dash.”

  Viktor laughed.

  “Very funny,” Dash said. “Look, I’m not actually wild or impulsive. I’m…assertive.”

  “Yeah,” Leira replied, “let’s go with that.”

  They left the engineering bay to explore whatever other parts of the ship remained accessible. There wasn’t much…the rest was mostly cargo and storage. Dash frowned at each of the open bays—they’d been ransacked, probably by the crew, as they desperately sought anything they could use to keep themselves alive just a little longer. He barely gave the last cargo bay a cursory glance. Clearly, this was something of historical interest…but he was no historian. It was time to move on—

  “What’s that?” Viktor asked, looking into the same bay Dash had just written-off.

  “What?”

  Viktor entered, followed by Conover. There, on a shelving unit, lay a metallic ribbon about a hand-span wide and maybe three meters long. Dash had dismissed it as a piece of cable or conduit, but as Viktor and Conover shone their suit lights on it, the reflected gleam seemed…wrong. Different than it should be. Too bright. It was as though it actually threw back more light than what hit it.

  “It has…writing on it,” Conover said. “Writing…or symbols. It reminds me of what we saw in the Lens.”

  Dash turned back. “So that’s…alien? Unseen tech?”

  “I think it is,” Conover said.

  Leira, still at the entrance to the bay, said, “Our Rosetta Stone?”

  Dash shrugged, though no one could have seen it inside the vac suit. “Let’s…take it back to the Slipwing and find out.”

  The Ribbon, as they’d immediately started calling it, was indeed strange. It struck Dash that he now had a second, inscrutable piece of alien tech aboard his ship…which was worrying, but, of course, they were here for alien tech, so there really wasn’t any way around it. The Ribbon, though, was a little more disconcerting even than the Lens, which was strange—the latter could apparently blow up stars. The Ribbon had no discernible purpose, which meant it might be intended to do anything…like vaporize cocky ship captains who dared to fiddle with it. For that matter, it had been aboard the crashed ship, so maybe it was somehow responsible for the crash…

  What it was, was a flat strip, made of some unrecognizable alloy or compound, embossed along its length with what might be symbols, or words, or circuits, a combination thereof, or something else entirely. And that was all they could t
ell about it. Stretched along the floor of the Slipwing’s cargo bay, it just lay there, all enigmatic. The Slipwing wasn’t a science ship, and Dash wasn’t a scientist, so the instrumentation available on board was limited, as was any analysis they could perform on it. Even Conover, who’d managed to engage himself closely with the Lens, couldn’t tell much of anything about the Ribbon. It was unusually cold, as though taking an inordinately long time to warm up from the frigid conditions aboard the crashed ship. But even that led to more strangeness. A cold drink had condensation form it, but aside from some wisps of vapor around it, not a single drop had formed on it.

  “Well,” Dash said, crossing his arms and staring at it, “there it is.”

  “There it is,” Leira agreed.

  Dash scratched his scalp through sweaty hair. They all still stood in their undersuits, the tight-fighting garments worn inside a vac suit. And they all…kinda stank. That was another thing about vac suits Dash hated…the way you smelled after wearing one. There was a reason he tended to stick to breathable atmospheres—survival, yes, but also aesthetics…

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  The others shrugged. Conover said, “It’s metal, and linear…maybe it’s meant to carry an electric current.”

  Viktor frowned. “Maybe. We could try that, I suppose, after it warms up enough we can touch it—”

  Without warning, the Ribbon began to move.

  Dash said, “Woah…oh, shit…” and all of the stepped back. It hit Dash that they hadn’t really planned for what do with this thing beyond getting it aboard and examining it…and that included a way of ejecting it, if it proved dangerous.

  Looks like I’m not the only wild, impulsive one, he thought. He would have probably felt a humorous satisfaction to go along with it, if it wasn’t for the fact this could be a real problem…

  The Ribbon continued to move, curling back on itself. It seemed to be reforming itself from a strip to a curve…except it kept curling, until its two ends touched. Now it was a ring—