Elton laughed. “Always the intellectual, you are,” he said.
Kelsan gave him a good-natured growl. “I haven’t seen you in sparring for a while, Elton,” he said. “How about a round?”
Elton held up his palms in surrender. “No, thank you! Go work on your alien toys, if you must. Just be careful; really careful.”
“Kel’Sar, you coming?” Kelsan asked. He had come to terms with his Strider, after the first few years of distrust, and now found that they were a good working team. Kel’Sar did an imitation of stretching (unnecessary, as the Striders did not have biological muscles), and nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Similar to the crystal’s separate laboratory, Kelsan set up what he called his “ammunition shed,” a small fortified lab even further from the rest of the settlement to do his experiments, as putting the gun back together and determining what was in its cartridges might prove dangerous work. The biggest problem was that they didn’t know just how much stress they could subject the projectiles to without setting them off. The question was whether they could safely take a bullet apart or even safely scan it with a laser or even ultrasound imaging. It was impossible to know if it would even be safe to fire one. Was it just a bullet, or was it something more?
Kelsan talked about his process with the children during their survival training, so they would understand the steps necessary to analyze a potentially volatile item without blowing themselves up. Larana cocked her head. “Why don’t we just go further away from home and shoot it? That would be faster.”
Kelsan laughed. “Because that takes all the science out of it, doesn’t it?”
Larana grinned. “I guess so.”
“This is a puzzle,” Krenek suggested. “Right? Like the crystal.”
“That’s right,” Kelsan nodded, and continued with the lesson.
His work with the rifle was slow, as he didn’t have much time for it, but the first thing he discovered, after fitting it together, was that there were three more cartridges stored in the stock. This indicated to him that it was not a repeating rifle, which implied— with the high level of technology they had witnessed on the apocalyptic moon—that it must be much more than a common rifle.
Kelsan separated one cartridge for experimentation, and finally risked subjecting it to a low-level laser scan. It disappeared without so much as a puff of smoke, so it seemed that crystals were part of the interior of the cartridge. Finally, Kelsan decided to try to cut one open. He used a mining robot, sent it with the cartridge miles outside of the colony, and cut it open remotely. To his relief, he did not blow the cartridge, or the robot, to smithereens, and was able to examine the interior of the cartridge. He discovered two things. First, that its contents, though similar to gunpowder, contained fine crystal dust and that the projectile itself contained a small diamond sized crystal as well. The next step would be to fire one, also using the mining robot; but Kelsan had some concerns about what such a projectile would do. It warranted a great deal more study before he would be comfortable firing it, and the rest of the crew agreed.
Shana turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. The sun was warm on her skin, and there was the gentlest of breezes. The bird life was making an absolute racket of happiness in the trees at the edge of the field. It was a beautiful day. Hope was a beautiful planet, and Shana had come to love it as home.
“What are you thinking, Shana?” It was Lilly, who had looked up from her plot of land to her mother. Lilly looked like a miniature, female version of Elton, with dark moody eyes and curly brown hair that only showed a slight pink tinge in certain light as evidence that she was Shana’s daughter. Shana knew she wasn’t supposed to favor her biological child, but she couldn’t help it, at least to a small degree. Lilly was her favorite—and not just because of biology. Lilly was smart and thoughtful and sweet, and showed more empathy than many of the other children. Still, Shana was careful not to let her extra affection for Lilly become too blatant—she didn’t want to create a divide between Lilly the other children.
“I was just thinking how beautiful Hope is,” Shana smiled. Several of the other children also looked up to join the conversation. Tanya and Kelsan’s son Nippa, who had Tanya’s dark skin and Kelsan’s freckles, wrinkled his nose in confusion.
“What made you think that?” Nippa asked, perplexed.
Shana laughed. The children took their home planet for granted, of course. “Because I grew up in space, so even though it seems like we’ve been here a long time, living on a planet is still relatively new to me. Sometimes it hits me how lucky I am to be here.”
Nippa nodded thoughtfully. Lilly asked, “Do you miss it?”
Shana thought for a long moment. “Sometimes,” she said. Her Link blinked the time at her. Her class was over.
“Alright, kids,” she said, “farming is over for today. Head over to Kelsan for ship systems.”
The kids brushed off their hands and put their tools away, and Shana watched them fondly. For theoretical classes, all the children were taught together, but for practical applications they had divided the children into four teams, and rotated them from one class to another on the practical work days. Students who excelled or were excited about any particular subject received special tutoring in that subject, often from one of the Striders. The children all seemed happy with the arrangement, Shana thought gladly. Their colony was indeed very lucky. She just wished Colin were there to see it. This melancholy thought surprised her; she had not had it in some time. She wondered if that meant Colin was thinking of her and smiled slightly, touching the well-worn stone of her necklace and heading toward the central hall. She could hear the children singing as she got closer, and knew Pixie was teaching them songs while they prepared the afternoon meal. The song was one Elton had written about the plague that had hit Prometheus long before any of them had been borne. It was a simple song, one she had always liked, and found herself humming the tune without realizing it. She could hear the children singing her verses:
Behold the Starborn striking out,
Amidst the sea of myriad lights,
Into the deep and strange unknown,
In a ship of stone they make their flight.
The scions of Argon have taken wing,
To seek out lands blue and alive,
Their voices to the darkness sing,
Of hope, of dreams, of love, of life.
Then the solar winds blew cold and keen,
In empty caverns made of stone,
And plague and death stole in unseen
To sweep away both breath and bone.
To call too many Starborn home.
Behold the Starborn striking out,
Into the deep and strange unknown,
Triumphant over peril and doubt,
In the asteroid’s heart, embraced by stone.
The ship flies onward, star-ward bound,
While bold, fearless songs in the darkness sound.
Prometheus, that restless world,
in its endless quest the galaxy roams,
In hopes of finding a Starborn home,
A colony world to call their own.
A brand new world to call their own.
Shana’s Link flashed, and Kelsan’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Krenek didn’t show up for class,” Kelsan said, “and his Link seems to be offline. Anybody seen him?” It wasn’t unusual for Krenek to get absorbed in a project and lose track of time though he was interested in just about everything—well, except cooking.
Elton’s voice cut in, “I haven’t seen him, and Larana appears to be missing, too.”
Worried, Shana tried first Krenek’s, then Larana’s Links. No response. She scanned the colony site and horizons. Where could they be? “I’ll check the river,” Tanya said over the Link, and Shana could see Tanya’s long, lean figure racing from the medical building toward the river.
“Striders, let’s do a perimeter survey,” Shana said, trying to keep the ris
ing concern out of her voice.
“I saw them both by the ammunitions shed earlier,” Kel’Sar said. “I’m headed that way now.”
“Oh no,” Shana said, and started to run that way. Krenek was always trying to solve the unsolvable puzzles, and Larana pushed every boundary she could. Shana knew immediately what they were doing.
“Kelsan!” She called out as she ran. “Where’s the gun?”
“It’s locked up securely,” Kelsan said, but sounded unsure. Shana could tell he was running, too, and in a moment, they met up, sprinting side by side along the path toward the ammunitions building.
“Are you sure?” She asked.
Kelsan looked pale. “I have it identity locked so only I or Kel’Sar can open it,” he said. “But Krenek and Larana are both very clever. It’s possible . . .”
“I see them!” Kel’Sar called into the Links, and at the same moment, Shana saw them, as well. Two small figures on the edge of the woods, too far away for her to reach. Larana’s long blond hair whipped in the wind, and she was holding something up to her shoulder. The alien rifle. Kel’Sar was moving faster than they’d ever seen a Strider move, but he wasn’t going to make it.
“Larana!” Shana shouted at the top of her voice. “Krenek, don’t!”
The children didn’t even seem to see Kel’Sar approaching, so rapt were they by what they were about to do.
“Gemma; do something!” Shana’s voice was a shriek of panic. With the children’s Links offline, Gemma had nothing to use to project a hologram until Kel’Sar got close enough. Everything converged at once in slow motion. Gemma and Cap both appeared before Larana, in holograph form, arms outstretched in a signal to stop. Kel’Sar reached the children and reared up, grabbing at the rifle with his human hands while shoving Larana away with his front legs. But it was too late; Shana could see the shift in Larana’s posture, as her shoulder pushed back, the nose of the rifle rising into the air. She had pulled the trigger.
There was no sound, no visible bullet, but suddenly a swath of trees in the path of the rifle shot vanished, leaving nothing but a circle of gnarled stumps. The rifle twitched again; not another shot, but the recoil, and then Kel’Sar and Larana, who were falling together from Kel’Sar’s shove, disappeared. Gemma and Cap’s holograms vanished, as their source winked out of existence. Krenek stood there by himself, at the edge of the woods, alone.
“Nooooo!” Kelsan screamed, and began running again. Shana joined him, numb with shock. It could not have happened. They could not be gone. But they were.
When they reached Krenek, he looked up, eyes wide with fear and misery. “I told her not to,” he said, in barely a whisper, “I told her we needed to do more experiments first. But she didn’t listen.”
Kelsan took him by the shoulders and shook him. “What did you do?” He shouted. “They’re gone now! They’re both gone!” Krenek took the scolding silently, miserably.
“Stop!” Shana demanded, grabbing Kelsan’s arm, and he dropped his arms, as if suddenly deflated.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered to Krenek. He gave Shana a long, sad look, then turned and began walking toward home. That was the first time Shana ever saw tears in his eyes and she realized she was crying too.
“I’m sorry!” Krenek cried out suddenly. “I’m so sorry!”
But Kelsan didn’t respond.
“Come on,” Shana said. “Let’s go back and make sure you’re ok. We can talk about whether this showed good judgment at a later time, but we know it was an accident.” She looked with horror at the circle of missing trees, as large as the landing pad for Wanderer, and the space where Kel’Sar and Larana had stood. There was nothing left at all, no remnant of the rifle, the Strider, or the child. No sign of impact, no sound of gunfire; they were simply gone.
It was inevitable that the colony would lose someone eventually; Shana knew and was prepared for it; as if that’s really possible. They prepared the children for it. But it didn’t make it any easier.
That evening, Kelsan methodically destroyed all of his notes and records, and electronic data about the rifle, and did not return to the central hall until almost morning.
“There are more on that moon,” Kelsan said when he returned. Shana looked up at him, weary from a long sleepless night.
“Hopefully, no one will go there for a long time,” she said. “It could be the devil’s own curse to have such weapons, which another race had already learned the hard way.”
After the disaster, returning to normal life took a little time; but people are resilient, and so within two months, things felt almost good again. They’d never be as idyllic as they had seemed to Shana that morning, but of course that was only an illusion, anyway, wasn’t it?
Larana’s Teddy, named Nara, which had been with her most of the time, moped around for a few weeks and slowly formed an affinity with Pixie’s youngest child Ariana, who’d never had a Teddy particularly attached to her. Ariana was happy with a pet of her own, and Nara seemed to perk up with someone to keep an eye on now that Larana was gone. It was good for them both.
All of the children missed Kel’Sar as well. He’d been as big a part of their lives as any of the Striders. Gemma said she could make another, but it wouldn’t have had the personal memories he’d shared with the various children so in the end it was agreed not to remake him unless the absolute need for help arose.
Krenek had become very serious and reserved, but his mind worked as quickly as always, and his reserve seemed to only increase his position of leadership with the other children. They were somewhat awed by what he had experienced, at the guilt which he, at least partially, had to bear. It gave him a degree of gravitas, and some of the children seemed to feel that Krenek’s experience lent his opinions more weight than their own. So he was not, as Shana had feared, ostracized. He accepted the responsibility for his actions and bore through the difficulty with a toughness that made her proud. He was very clearly the one who would lead the next generation of colonists.
One day as he was working with Shana, he told her that sometimes he comforted himself with the knowledge that Larana would have been happy to know that she’d perished pushing the bounds of science, and probably saving others at the same time. Actually, Shana took some comfort that way herself having known Larana to be exactly that way. It still haunted her because no one knew exactly what happened the girl and the Strider, or where they might have been thrown by the crystals. Nobody would ever know anything for sure.
Krenek focused almost all of his free time on examining the crystal, working with everyone who studied it, sometimes even sleeping by it. He was determined to figure it out, although in truth they could do little other than simply examine it and try to reason it out. They used ground vehicles to travel distances and experiment remotely on smaller crystals, but without learning much that they didn’t already know.
“Why would they give it to us without a user’s manual?” Tanya grumbled in frustration one morning over breakfast, when the original six were eating together, without the children for once.
“Maybe they gave it to us, but we just don’t recognize it,” Zak suggested.
“Not very helpful, then, is it?” Tanya complained.
“Perhaps the Saucerites felt that, if we couldn’t figure it out on our own, we’re not mature enough as a race to use it. Like giving an MSC to the Untrans,” Shana suggested.
“Gemma, what do you think?”
Gemma was not visible; but through the Link her voice said, “That’s possible. It could be a test.” They waited, but Gemma did not elaborate. They saw little of her these days, and when she did appear, she seemed preoccupied. Shana felt terrible thinking it, but Gemma almost seemed less human than she used to. But perhaps she was just very busy.
Elton sighed. “How else can we study this thing without losing it? We’ve tried everything possible except for lasers. All attempt to grind crystal materials so far have shown that we have nothing hard enough to even scratch it and
we’d need to be able to grind a million six miniscule facets. Perhaps we aren’t ready,” he grimaced.
“Maybe we could try asking them for one more that we can use in a probe like we’ve done with the raw crystals,” Shana suggested. “I wish we could get one of our probes back with whatever they’ve learned from all of their test jumps. Maybe they’d have enough experience to have some ideas as to how to use it after so many tests.”
“We don’t even know if the Saucerites use a laser as we know lasers to be,” answered Kelsan. “They may have discovered something entirely different.”
“I know, but we know that lasers do work, and I’m willing to bet that it’s the key even if there is some sort of difference,” said Shana. “If they just told us, perhaps we could find Prometheus.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Pixie said with an unusually pessimistic tone. “Perhaps they want us to see how far away we are from learning to navigate the stars. Maybe it’s intended to discourage us?”
“If that’s true, it’s working.” Tanya sighed.
“I refuse to believe that’s what they’re doing,” refuted Shana. Then she gave a little laugh. “That would, however, show a rather nasty sense of humor on their part,” she added.
Krenek burst into the room, eyes bright. It was the first time he had seemed excited since the accident. “I figured it out!” He crowed happily.
“What did you figure out?” Elton asked.
“The crystal, I figured out the crystal!”
“Slow down, did you touch it?” Kelsan asked sharply.
Krenek’s mood subsided somewhat. “No; no of course not. I didn’t go to the shed. But I was studying the video feeds of when you all have experimented on it, and I noticed something odd.”
Shana stood up. “Show us.”
Krenek led them back to his study area, where he had three video screens showing the historical videos from the crystal shed, with crew members and Striders going in and out periodically through its one door. The video was speeded up, and Shana saw herself go in and out at super speed more than once, and at one point a Teddy joined her and they watched her shoo it back outside. Its waddling at high speed was almost comical, but they were all too geared up to laugh.
Starborn Odyssey: Voyage of the Lost (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 3) Page 24