We found seating at the sit-down restaurant, an air of celebration hovering over the table. It was a great evening, and it reminded me why we’d come aboard the Horizon in the first place: to be among friends and family for the big things. It was important: more significant than most events in our lives.
I watched Jules as she interacted with Magnus’ children, and the life she exuded each time she spoke to them. She was caring and strong-willed: my daughter, through and through. She must have caught me watching her, because she averted her gaze. I noticed there was a drawing on her napkin. It was the same symbol again, the one that the Crystal Map claimed was on our starship.
Four angled lines, an oval overtop. And it hit me, slapped me in the face with the understanding. It had escaped me for months. How could I have been so stupid? Jules had basically told me flat-out what it meant, and I’d been too concerned with her odd behavior to even hear what she’d said. I wasn’t going to be that kind of father. What other things had she been trying to tell me that I’d disregarded?
Papa, we can help the tiny people. Then; I see them. They need our help.
I finally understood what she’d been talking about. The blood rushed from my face, and I stood up, staring at Jules’ bright green eyes. “Honey, that symbol is for the shrunken world, isn’t it? The one we got from Regnig’s?”
She nodded like this was old news. “Papa, that’s what I’ve been saying.”
Suma perked up, grabbing the napkin from beside Jules. “Dean. We can travel there. It’s been in front of us this whole time,” she said.
Twenty-Two
We were only a few days out of Mion V9, and a handful of us sat inside my suite, discussing the options again.
“I still vote we use the portal to travel there,” Loo-six said, her green skin darkening as she drank from her coffee cup.
“The first duo didn’t come out,” I said, tired of going over this again. The door notifier rang, and I switched the screen to see who was on the other side. Slate and Loweck stood there, grinning at each other like lovebirds. He kissed her, and I spoke into the speaker. “I can see you two. Come in.” I buzzed the entry open, and seconds later, they were inside the room. Slate’s eyes told me there was news that wouldn’t wait.
“What is it?” I asked him.
Suma cleared her throat, and Silo shifted in his place on the couch. Hugo began to cry from his baby seat beside me, and I turned it on, causing it to softly rock back and forth.
“We’re going to bond,” Slate said.
Mary entered the room from the kitchen. “What’d I miss?”
Loweck spoke before Slate could give it away again. “We’re going to bond.”
“Bond?” Mary asked, eyes meeting mine with an inquisitive look. I pointed to my ring finger, and she quickly understood. “That’s great!”
Everyone spoke at once, hugging and congratulating them. I didn’t know what bonding meant, but I suspected in Loweck’s culture, marriage wasn’t quite the same as ours. I’d have to ask Slate about it later.
Mary found some sparkling wine, and we broke out the flutes the unit had come stocked with. We hadn’t used them before.
“When’s the date?” I asked.
Loweck shook her head. “It’s a process that repeatedly layers over several years.”
“Uhm, okay. To your bonding!” I said, raising my flute in the air. We all clinked glasses and eventually settled into our conversation.
“I’m anxious to send someone there,” Loo-six said. “Datrib and EX9 were brave to volunteer, but since they didn’t return, we have to assume they were also frozen in place the moment they headed through the portal.”
“I agree. We’re close to Mion V9 now, right, Slate?” I asked.
He was staring at Loweck, grinning, and I threw a cushion at him. “You two must be a real treat to be on the bridge with.”
“Tell me about it,” Suma said under her breath, and I noticed Silo move a little closer to his girlfriend.
“Magnus may have warned me once or twice about focusing,” Slate admitted. “What was the question?”
“How close are we to our destination?” Mary asked.
“We’ll be at Mion V9 in two days. We’ve already sent our probes ahead of us, and the sensors are showing we can breathe the air, which is going to make this entire venture that much easier,” Slate said, finally becoming serious.
That was good news. “What about lifeforms? Anything?” I asked.
“Not yet, but we sent those probes a few hours after, and they’re slower to travel. We won’t know about the life readouts until a few hours before orbit. I’ll keep you all posted. I have a good feeling about this one, Boss,” Slate said.
“Yeah? Think we can pull it off?” I asked.
“For sure,” Slate said. “As if there was ever a question.”
Weemsa spoke his deep language, translating through the device on the table. “We now have a vested interest, since we’ve lost two of our Gatekeepers inside. They were brave to volunteer for the mission.”
“If what Fontem thought is true, the entire world is still teeming with life. It’s only frozen in time, much like Ableen was aboard the Collector’s ship. We’ll discover the solution and bring them out of the miniature world,” I told them with a bravado I didn’t feel. The truth was, this could be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but I kept that part to myself. I thought they all understood.
Slate kicked the coffee table as he struggled to reach for a tablet next to him. “Let me check… Yep, the initial mapping drones have sent images over.”
“Can you sync it to the screen?” I asked, pointing to the TV mounted on the wall.
“Welcome to Mion V9, everyone,” Slate said as the raw footage of the world we were nearing appeared. We already knew the Mion system had a giant yellow star centering it, with over ten planets orbiting in concentric circles.
Suma had studied everything she could about the system, and she stood now, talking to our group, relaying her finds. “Mion V9 is the fourth planet from the star. It’s also thought to be the only one with the proper setting for least the kind of life you’d expect from a thriving planet. Even though Slate says the sensors aren’t yet reporting, I fully assume we’ll find a lot of living creatures and plants when we touch ground.”
Everyone nodded along. “If it’s been thousands of years, what happened to the people that inhabited it?” Walo asked. She buzzed softly, like the wasp she resembled.
“We don’t know. We’ve seen this a few times and will certainly come across it again once we expand our foothold in the universe. Dean, Mary, Slate, and I were trapped on Sterona, where an entire race vanished without a trace. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years had passed since anyone had stepped foot there, until we were stranded for a few months.
“We still didn’t learn who they were after all that time,” Suma said, a wash of sadness passing over her face.
“We did learn a lot about them as a people. About their family types, their work ethic, their social constructs,” I said. “Yet we’re at a loss as to how they vanished.”
“I’d guess the lava oceans and constant lightning, but that’s just me,” Slate said from the side of the room.
“It’s possible. But we don’t know what to expect here on Mion,” Suma said, and the image from the probes moved as it passed by a small misshapen moon and into orbit. Even from this far, we could assume the planet was three-quarters land. The oceans were narrow, running east-west along the northern and southern hemispheres. It appeared almost manufactured.
“This is interesting,” Silo said. He was on the edge of his seat, a scientist witnessing the first images of a new planet. “See the way the elevation stays level from the coasts to the center of the land’s mass here?” He stood, pointing at the continent below.
We all shook our heads. “I see the rolling landscape in this region,” I said, jabbing a thumb toward the continent below.
“Papa,�
�� Jules said from behind me. She was rubbing her eyes.
“Sorry, honey. We didn’t mean to wake you,” Mary told her.
Jules stared at the screen, watching as the drones moved through thin cloud cover. I saw the reaction then and didn’t want anyone else to notice.
I caught Mary’s gaze and frowned. “Jules, let me take you back to bed.”
“But, Papa…” Her tiny finger aimed at the lower land mass, and I scooped her up in my arms, carrying her away from the group.
“I know, Jules, but if you know something, you can’t say so in front of everyone,” I advised. I set her onto her bed. The nightlight cast a soft radiance over her room, and her eyes glowed green as she stared into my eyes.
“Why? Aren’t they our friends?” she asked.
It broke my heart. “Yes, they’re our friends, but you’re too special to me. I don’t… I don’t want anyone to know how special, okay? It can be your and my secret. And Mommy’s too.”
“What about Hugo? Can he know about me too?” she asked, on the verge of a breakdown. Her lower lip was shaking, but she was tough.
“Hugo too. Our family,” I said, patting her hand.
“Papa, I feel something,” she said.
“What is it?”
“The people we have to help…” Her gaze drifted away, staring toward the viewers showing the streaking stars as the Horizon raced through hyperdrive.
“What about them?” I asked.
“They used to live here,” she told me.
This was news, and it didn’t make sense. “The people on the shrunken planet? You think they lived here?”
“Yep.” Jules’ mood had shifted, and she was growing confident, her posture straighter and her words surer.
“What else do you know?” I pressed.
“It’s hard to say.”
“How do you know these things, honey?” I asked.
She toyed with a lock of her own hair, twisting it around a finger. “I don’t know, Papa. I see things. Pictures. I can see them frozen in one place, but I can also see them walking around on the planet.”
I tried to decipher this as best I could. If the same people were from both, then that would explain where the population of Mion V9 had disappeared to. “Did they do it to themselves?”
“I don’t know,” Jules said, sounding older than her five years.
“Do you know where we have to go to help them?” I asked.
“We need to use the portal,” she said.
“We can’t. We already tried that, and the Gatekeepers haven’t been able to return,” I said. She knew this already.
She shook her head. “There’s a way. It’s there.”
“Where? On Mion V9?” I asked, hating the fact that I felt like I was interrogating my own daughter.
“Be careful, Papa,” she said.
“Why? What do we need to be careful of?” I asked her.
“Traps,” she said.
“Traps,” I repeated. “Anything else?”
“There’s a city. Near the hills. That’s where we have to go,” she said.
“We?”
“I need to come,” she told me.
“I don’t think…” I started, but she cut me off.
“Papa, I need to help. Otherwise, they are stuck forever,” she said firmly, and in my gut, I believed her.
“We’ll talk to your mother about it,” I said. There was no way Mary was going to be on board with me bringing Jules along for a mission to the surface, leaving her and Hugo alone on the starship.
“We’ll be careful. They’ll be happy to be home,” Jules told me, and I smiled at her, tucking her in. I kissed her on the top of the head.
“I’m sure they will. Sleep tight.” I stood and watched her from the doorway as she easily floated off into sleep again, a skill only pulled off by a child.
The others were arguing about the best course of action, and I already knew. It was on the hilly continent, near the ocean, where a city would lie empty. That was where we needed to focus, and avoid whatever traps Jules had premonitions about.
Mary watched me from the corner of her eye, picking up my mood change. No one else seemed to notice. An hour or so later, the entire group left, leaving Mary and me alone with a sleeping Hugo.
“What is it?” she asked as soon as the door closed.
“Jules knows where we have to go,” I told her.
“Good, then this might not take as long as we expected,” Mary said, clearing dishes from the living room.
“There’s only one caveat.”
“What is it?”
“She says she needs to come with me,” I told Mary.
My wife set the plates on the kitchen counter and blew out a lungful of air. “Dean…”
I walked over to her and set my hands on her shoulders. “I know.”
“Dean, you can’t do this to me again.”
“I’m not sure there’s a choice,” I told her.
“There’s always a choice, but…” I could see her relenting, the way her hair fell in her eyes, the softening of her tight posture. “I trust her, and I trust you. Bring her. Help these people, and come home to your family.”
I almost wished she’d rejected the idea. I moved behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist. I kissed her ear lightly, and she turned around.
“Please be careful,” Mary said. It was beginning to be a common phrase around my home.
Twenty-Three
“That’s it,” Magnus said, patting the top of the final crate in Hangar Two. Three robots stomped over, moving the supplies with ease, setting them on the transport ships to be lowered to the mine site on the surface. “We’re set for Mion Mine One.”
“This is going well, don’t you think?” I asked the Horizon captain. He’d been beaming for the last day. His mission had been to find the Rutelium planet’s location, and almost a year after setting out, we were here, starting to build the Alliance of Worlds’ first mine. It was a monumental moment in our history.
“I wish there was a portal on this planet,” Magnus told me.
“You have one on the ship,” I said.
“But using it would mean we need to stay put here for a long time, instead of six months,” he said.
The door to the hangar opened, and Slate walked in with Loweck. They were each in uniform, and seemed as serious as ever.
“We’ve encountered a little hiccup on the surface, Captain,” Loweck said.
“What kind of hiccup?” Magnus asked.
“You know how we found Mion to be swarming with lifeforms?” Slate asked.
“Yes,” Magnus said.
“Some sort of lizard things are crawling all over our equipment. Thousands of them,” Loweck said.
“Lizards? Like the big ones at New Spero?” I asked.
Slate shook his head. “Tiny.” He wiggled his finger. “Size of your pinky.”
“What’s the problem?” Magnus asked.
“They’re everywhere. Making it hard to work,” Loweck advised.
Magnus ran his hands through his hair, and in an instant, he went from calm and pleased to frustrated and stressed. “Find out what they eat.”
“Eat?” Slate asked. “You want to ask them out on a date?”
“No, Commander. I want to find out what they eat so we can lure them away with a food source,” Magnus said.
“I’ll put Silo on it, sir.” Loweck snapped a salute, which wasn’t protocol on board the starship, turned on a heel, and left with Slate tailing after her.
“You coming to the surface with us on this final run?” Magnus asked.
“Sure. I can’t wait to see it,” I told him.
“When are you off?” he asked.
“The team’s heading for the old city tomorrow,” I answered.
“And you’re taking Jules?” Magnus was close, speaking softly.
“She seems to know what she’s doing. I don’t know how, but she’s picking something up,” I told him. Magnus w
as the only one I’d shared this information with so far, but I was sure Slate and Suma suspected. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bringing a five-year-old on a potentially dangerous mission.
“Captain, we’re ready for you!” a crew member shouted from the transport vessel’s doorway.
“Let’s go see Mion V9 in all its glory,” Magnus said, leading the way to the ship.
The ship was a hauling vessel, not built for comfort, and we shared the cabin with five worker robots and ten crew members, each of whom appeared excited to be doing something different from their monotonous daily tasks aboard the starship. We sat on a bench at the side of the storage cabin, straps around our chests, and the ship shook as we moved through the planet’s atmosphere.
There were no windows, no viewer to see our location, and I closed my eyes, picturing the dark rust-colored landscape below. The land was unforgiving here: mostly rock, sand, and Rutelium, the metal alloy we were after.
We touched down twenty minutes later, and the doors sprang open. The air was musty, no plants within a hundred kilometers, but it was still clear and clean to breathe.
Magnus stepped out first, and I right after. All I could see for miles was the same hard red ground.
“Welcome to Mion,” Magnus said, hands on his hips. He was soaking it all in.
A tent was erected nearby, and I observed the land, seeing one of the lizards Loweck and Slate had warned us about. We were a couple of kilometers from the main mining site here, and robots and drones were already setting up the more permanent structures, where workers would sleep. It was a small village now, even after a single day, and the entire operation was well-planned and successful so far.
“This could change everything,” Magnus said.
“The mine?” I asked.
“Think about it. Humans are an unknown out here. We’re the people that fought the Kraski, then the Deltra, and won. But the Bhlat came and displaced us. We’re drifters now, spreading out among three worlds: Earth, New Spero, and Haven. With the Alliance of Worlds, we’re part of something larger. A group of allies, strong ones. We have our own starship, and now a revenue source. This is all the first huge step to becoming…”
New Horizon (The Survivors Book Nine) Page 19