The Kepos Problem (Kepos Chronicles Book 1)

by Erica Rue

  He headed back down the hall to the command center. The new scans would be complete. A notification on his manumed assured him that the Calypso’s transmitters were perfectly functional, and that they had not been the reason he lost contact.

  Deep down he had known that. It was too much of a coincidence for the shuttle’s communications to fail at the same time they got to the planet. Unless the shuttle had been destroyed.

  Zane’s stomach dropped after he examined the scans. No sign of the shuttle. At all. Even if it had been completely destroyed, there should be debris or evidence of damaged trees. But if the pieces were so small that they couldn’t be detected, there might be no physical evidence left.

  Still, he had expected to find something. Even a small change. He was really expecting to find the shuttle, damaged, but intact. It was unlikely that a crash would completely pulverize it. Maybe the imaging scans had missed it.

  No, he had probably missed something. He needed to take a closer look. He called up scans from the previous days, eliminating any that had been taken at night. They had crashed on the planet in the morning, and not much would be visible in the darkness anyway.

  The scans themselves centered on a very specific area that was divided into regions, almost like biomes: forest, mountain, vale, plains, and lake. This was the region that the people on this station were studying, probably testing different biome adaptations. Dione would have a better idea about that stuff. After all, Dione and Lithia had gone down to a research base in the forest biome. It seemed that the station’s rotation was synced up in such a way that it took images of the planet three times a day, mid-morning, late afternoon, and night.

  Zane ignored the last night’s photos. Instead, he focused on the most recent images, taken around late afternoon yesterday, before they even arrived. He put the two images up, side by side. He looked over the general stats for each biome it had labeled, focusing in on the forest biome.

  He didn’t notice anything unusual. The general stats like temperature and precipitation seemed normal, and his visual inspection of the biome, slow and painstaking, revealed nothing. Zane wracked his brain for another straw to grasp. Maybe looking at a scan from the same time yesterday, the mid-morning scan? That would reveal more, right?

  Zane tried to feel hopeful as he called up the previous day’s image, again looking for some change that might give him hope. A disappearing bush, a metallic gleam of the shuttle in the sunlight, anything. Looking at the images side by side, Zane found no change, but that was even stranger. Everything was the exact same, down to the birds in the canopy, including the hawk with a small red-feathered snack in its beak.

  The images that were supposed to be from today were copies of yesterday’s images. Of course there was no evidence of the crash. The current images were missing. Something strange was going on. When he looked into the metadata, he realized that it had only been edited to seem like the new scans. The real image set was nowhere to be found. He looked further into the archives and found that significant portions of the data had been erased. Some of the biomes had no coverage whatsoever, though he hadn’t bothered to check before. Every image was gone. The vale biome only had images of one tiny corner. The rest were lost.

  A shiver made its way down Zane’s shoulders to pool in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know which question should bother him more, why someone had edited the photos or who had edited them. He hoped it was an automated protocol built into the system for some completely sane reason, but things never worked that smoothly. Zane looked over his shoulder, half expecting to see someone watching him from the doorway. He blinked, and realized how dry and sore his eyes were from staring at the screen for so long.

  More digging yielded no new information. He decided he would have to catch the interloper in the act. There was just under an hour until the next scan. He would be ready to recover the images and trace the source.

  While he waited, Zane grabbed some ready meals from the Calypso and took one to Bel. She woke up, looking refreshed. Her fever was down another degree. Maybe she’d be okay after all.

  “Did you find them?” she asked, stretching her arms above her head.

  “No, someone or something is tampering with the images,” he said, explaining what he had discovered and what his plan was.

  “Think someone is on the station?”

  “I doubt it, but we’ll know soon, once the afternoon scans are completed. It’s almost time.”

  “Let’s go,” she said. She winced when she put pressure on her leg, but walked to the command center on her own.

  Zane had the computer copy every image to a secondary location on the Calypso. Just seconds after each photo appeared in the database, it was either gone or replaced. Zane traced the origin of the intruder in the system. It was definitely not an automated function, but it also wasn’t coming from the station.

  The command to modify the image data came from the planet’s surface. He was a little relieved that there was no one on the station sabotaging them, but this was replaced by worry when it led him to his next discovery.

  “Bel, it’s coming from the planet. And some sort of dampening field is emanating from the same place that’s changing the images. I think that’s why there’s no contact from the surface, except for whatever is deleting the images.”

  “So, they’re not dead?” she asked.

  “I still don’t know. We have to go through the images. But that might explain what hit them, if it was a weapon. Someone is hiding something on the surface of the planet, and the sooner we look at these images, the sooner we’ll have answers.”

  Zane downloaded them onto his manumed, just to be safe, before pulling them up on the larger screen in front of them. Zane’s first order of business was to examine the image for evidence of the shuttle crash. It didn’t take long for them to find it, because it looked out of place. Several people surrounded it, and though he couldn’t see their faces, he knew that they were not Dione and Lithia. There were people there, people on the planet that should not have been there at all.

  “Who are these people? Where are Dione and Lithia? What are they doing with the shuttle?” Bel said.

  “I have no idea, but the shuttle looks mostly intact. It’s very likely they survived the crash, and just can’t communicate with us now. Let's look through the other pictures.”

  Zane called up the pictures of the vale biome and couldn’t believe what he saw. He knew there would be a research station there, after all, each biome had one. But the images showed far more than a simple research station. He saw the rows of small buildings laid out in grids and swaths of colorful fabric providing shade over what he assumed was a market. There was field after field, plowed and planted with thriving crops or dotted with grazing livestock.

  “There’s a whole colony here, Bel,” he said. He saw darkness cloud Bel’s face.

  “Did Lithia know about this? How did she even find this place?” Bel said.

  “I know why she was looking into these restricted coordinates,” Zane said, “and she wouldn’t have come here if she knew. She never would have come here if she thought there was a colony.”

  He knew what Bel was thinking, and he almost reached out to comfort her before he remembered himself. It’s what she was always thinking, even when she slept. The Vens. If they did show up, these people would be even more defenseless than the colonies they had avoided, even if they did have some sort of defensive weapon. If it couldn’t destroy a shuttle, it would barely scratch a Ven Marauder class vessel.

  “But why didn’t we pick them up in the initial readings?”

  “The dampening field. They’re so rare that I didn’t even think to look for one until I stumbled across its source. Now that we know that there are people down there who probably attacked our friends, we need to shut down the dampening field and reestablish contact.”

  Bel frowned. “But this dampening field doesn’t stop satellites from picking up the images. It doesn’t make sense.”<
br />
  “I guess they thought that when the readings were unremarkable, no one would bother to actually look.”

  Bel nodded, but she closed her eyes tight, wincing in pain. He saw her reach for the bandage on her leg and resist the urge to scratch it. He offered her more medicine, but she declined. Zane needed to know where Dione and Lithia were, and now he knew what he had to do. Somehow, from all the way up in the space station, he would need to disable the dampening field remotely, all using hundred year old tech.

  Fantastic.

  21. DIONE

  Something made a high-pitched squeal. Brian stared beyond them, raising his pistol in the direction of the noise. Dione turned. A little girl with plump arms and watering eyes stepped out from behind the corner at the end of the hall. She had dark skin and short curly hair. Her bright orange parachute pants were a stark contrast to the muted gray of Brian’s clothes. Finger-sized stains of dirt streaked away from her stomach as if she had wiped her hands clean on her white shirt more than once. Her chin wrinkled, and her bottom lip overextended into a frown.

  Lithia was at her side when the first sob escaped like a hiccup. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.” To Brian, she said, “Put that gun away.”

  Dione watched him lower the gun. What kind of world was this that he would aim a gun at a child?

  The girl, to Dione’s surprise, hugged Lithia. “Do you know my cousin? Cora? You look just like her.”

  “I don’t, I’m sorry. My name is Lithia. And this is my friend Dione. What’s your name?”

  The girl sniffed and took a few breaths before she could speak. “Evy.”

  “Evy? That’s a strong name. How old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “You’re very brave to be out here on your own, Evy. But even brave people get scared sometimes. Are you lost?”

  Evy nodded and let out another sob. Lithia let her cry for minute until she had calmed down.

  “A-are you Ficarans?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not a Ficaran,” Lithia said. Evy’s eyes widened.

  “Then you’re Aratian? Do you know my dad? He’s First Geneticist Benjamin Bram.”

  Dione heard Brian gasp, but he said nothing.

  “I don’t know your father, I’m sorry. But I think we can help you. Are you hungry? Dione, do you still have the snacks you packed?”

  Evy looked at Dione and laughed. “What’s wrong with your friend? Why is she so dirty?”

  Dione became painfully aware of the dirt cracking on her brows when she wrinkled her forehead.

  “Anything for the sake of fashion,” Dione sighed. She handed a small package to Lithia. “How about a cookie?”

  “A cookie?” Brian said, face reddening. “You’re giving this Aratian food, when my people are starving? The Aratians won’t trade with us anymore, and they produce all the food.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dione said.

  “The Aratians know that my people are starving,” Brian explained. “They have plenty of surplus food to trade, but they refuse and then spread lies about us.”

  Lithia dug around in her bag and produced another cookie. She threw it at Brian, hitting him in the chest. “Here. You sound like you need a cookie, too. No matter the issues between your peoples, you can’t expect me to believe that Evy is responsible,” she said. “Brian is a Ficaran,” she told the girl, “but Dione and I are not.”

  “My father says it’s because the Ficarans are destroying our Artifacts instead of fixing them,” Evy said to Brian.

  “Well, your father is wrong, and it’s killing my people. Sometimes things break and you just can’t fix them.” Evy looked like she was about to cry again, and Brian softened his tone. “We’re not the bad guys. We’re just trying to feed our families.” He scooped the cookie off the ground, tore open the package, and took a giant bite. From the look on his face, Dione wondered if he had ever had a cookie before.

  “Maybe I can tell my father,” Evy said. “If he knows it’s a mistake, then everything can be fixed.”

  Brian smiled. “As much as I’d like that, things are never that simple.”

  While Evy enjoyed the cookie and talked with Lithia, Brian pulled Dione aside. “She’s Benjamin Bram’s daughter,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

  Dione shook her head.

  “Benjamin Bram is the First Geneticist of the Aratians. He’s the highest advisor to their Regnator, and also happens to be his brother.”

  “So the Regnator is the ruler, but what does a First Geneticist do, aside from advise?”

  “He’s in charge of guaranteeing their harvests and livestock, and he runs the Matching.”

  “The Matching?” Dione asked.

  “All Aratian marriages are arranged in order to increase genetic diversity and to reduce the chance of disease. Sometimes the matches are… not desirable, but they believe it’s for the greater good. It’s one of the primary reasons the Ficarans split off. We believe in the freedom to choose.”

  “How many people live here, Aratians and Ficarans?” Dione asked.

  “I think the Aratians have more than a thousand people. There are over six hundred in the Ficaran settlement, but our numbers keep growing. People want to leave the Vale Temple, especially women. The Aratians treat them like broodmares.” Brian’s solemn expression crept into a smile. “But if more women want to join our settlement, I won’t complain.”

  Dione thought the Matching made scientific sense, even if she didn’t agree with it on principle. Genetic drift would be an issue for the colonists. With such a small population, certain uncommon traits could become unusually frequent. That was fine for something harmless, like colorblindness, but if there was a high frequency of a deadly genetic disease, that could be disastrous.

  So these colonists knew about genetics, enough to worry about genetic drift in their population, but they still believed in gods and magic. They had shuttles, but didn’t seem to know about the space station. These people were contradictory in every sense of the word. Dione wondered how these gaps in knowledge could arise naturally. Some sort of illness?

  “Okay, Evy is important. What are you getting at?” she finally said. She thought she knew, but she wanted to hear him say it.

  “She’s our ticket out of here. Those trackers won’t touch us if we have Bram’s girl as our hostage.”

  The dirt creased her forehead again as she frowned. “What’s wrong with you? We’re not holding her hostage. She’s a little girl.”

  “She’s Aratian nobility. We don’t actually have to hurt her. The ransom we’d get would feed my people for a year.”

  “No. There has to be another way.”

  “Tell me why it’s so bad. We won’t hurt her. This is the best luck we could have had.”

  “Where we’re from, you don’t threaten children to get what you want. You find another way,” Dione said, surprised at the firmness of her tone.

  “Then it must be nice, wherever you come from, to have other options,” he said, “but when we have no other, I hope you’ll be able to do what’s necessary.”

  Dione hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She hated how familiar she was becoming with the concept of doing what was necessary.

  “We’ll hide. Let’s check out the lower levels,” she said.

  If they didn’t intend to hurt her, would it be unethical to hold her hostage? Could Dione really put a gun to Evy’s head, assuming Lithia even let her? Brian didn’t seem like a bad guy, but he also didn’t seem to have issues crossing lines. Or maybe it was just that his lines were in different places.

  The basement was dark, but Dione had a flashlight. Evy looked at it with suspicion.

  “Why do you have a Ficaran light?” she asked.

  “A Ficaran light? What do you mean?”

  “It’s a stick light.” Evy pulled a small sphere from her bag. “We use glowglobes.” With a vigorous shake, the globe’s light brightened, providing a dimmer but wider radius of soft pink
light.

  Dione stared at it in fascination. What made it glow?

  “Can I see that?” she asked.

  Evy handed her the ball of light. The glow was emanating from some sludge at the bottom.

  “The material allows for some air flow. I’ve seen the light change color based on what food scraps they put in there,” Brian said.

  “What’s glowing? Some kind of bacteria?”

  “Yeah. It was something the Farmer taught them how to do. Can’t turn them off, though. You have to wait for the bacteria to settle again. Not great for situations like these.”

  “But why do you have a stick light?” Evy asked again, impatient.

  “They have them where we’re from, too. We’re from far away.”

  Lithia and Evy stayed on the first basement level while she and Brian explored the lower levels. Rooms were either locked or left no place for them to hide if someone came looking.

  Soon they returned to Lithia, and Dione heard the first raindrops fall on the roof.

  “Any luck?” Lithia said.

  “Nothing. We don’t have time for this. The trackers will be here soon,” Brian answered.

  Evy’s eyes lit up. “Trackers? They’re looking for me?”

  Dione saw him reach for the gun. “We need to move to Plan B,” he said.

  “No!” Dione said.

  “Plan B?” Lithia asked.

  Evy was picking up on the tension. Dione worried about where this situation was headed, yet she felt confident that Brian wouldn’t hurt the girl. That would prevent him from using her as leverage.

  “We didn’t check this level yet,” Dione said to buy some time. There was a side corridor with doors that locked, but that was the problem.

  “I’ve tried them all before,” Brian said. “There’s no way to open them or pick them.”

  This did not stop Dione and Lithia. Each took a side of the hallway, and tried the doors. Dione finished first, with no luck, and offered to help Lithia check her side. Her limp was slowing her down, but when Dione tried the last door on her side, Lithia shooed Dione away.