The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  The river’s tumbling babble gets louder as I walk. I must be coming to the edge of the grove. Ahead, I catch a glimpse of something unexpected through the leaves. A dull, artificial whiteness that doesn’t belong here.

  That can’t be what I think it is.

  I walk a few more meters. The orchid trees are getting farther apart. Clumps of knee-high, stiff grass are starting to catch at my jeans. And I can definitely see the gray-white domes of standard-issue ISA cabins up ahead.

  I must be mistaken. The only ISA cabins on Tau are behind me, at our base camp.

  I push my way through the underbrush anyway. When I emerge from the orchid grove, goose bumps prickle up the back of my neck. A tiny settlement is tucked between the grove and a wide bend in the river. Eight squat geodesic domes constructed of octagonal panels of flex-screen canvas, clustered around a four-meter-square plot of weeds that probably used to be a garden. They’re just like our cabins will be, but old—halfway to being ruins. And so is the compact spaceship that stands over them.

  The ship’s long-nosed body and arched glider wings make it look like a robotic crane hovering over the surface of a lake. I’m still too far away to read the words stamped on its side in red, but that silhouette is unmistakable. It’s an ISA scout ship. There are only six of them, and the only one with red markings is the Vulcan. It belongs to the ISA Ranger team that discovered Tau Ceti e.

  It should have left with them five years ago.

  My heart gives a single bone-rattling thud before shooting ahead into an all-out race. For a moment, I’m afraid my pacers were damaged in the trip after all. But my heart is pounding in perfect, adrenaline-fueled rhythm. This is just fear, not an equipment malfunction.

  When they submitted their survey report on Tau, the ISA Rangers also filed a continuing mission plan. I read it. Back then, I read everything that came in from all of the Ranger teams.

  The Vulcan’s team was planning to stay on Tau five more weeks and finish up in-depth studies of a few particularly interesting plant and animal species. Then they moved on, or at least they were supposed to. Their mission plan said they were going to the Wolf 1061 system next to survey Wolf c and Wolf d, both of which are potentially habitable. Wolf 1061 is almost fourteen light-years from Earth and seven light-years from here. They should still be there. But they aren’t. They’re here.

  That makes no sense at all.

  Why would the Rangers have stayed on Tau for five years? Did the Vulcan suffer some malfunction they couldn’t repair? No. If that were true, we’d have known they were stuck here. They’d have been waiting for us when we landed.

  Unless they’re dead.

  I seriously consider turning back for about twelve seconds. Then I keep walking.

  The sun is sinking into the Diamond Range, deepening the shadows and filling the blue dusk with fragmented light that shifts and dances around me as I cross the abandoned settlement. A thick layer of silver-gray dust coats everything. The same vines that grew at the feet of the orchid trees drape clusters of shiny green leaves over the domed roofs of the cabins and weave through the seams in their walls. The solar pavement that runs between the cabins crackles under my feet. That popping crumble should sound familiar. Solar paving is everywhere in the metros back home, and a lot of it is worse for wear like this. But Tau is all moist soil and rustling leaves. Here, the synthetic crunch is jarring. Alien.

  I reach the far end of the settlement and wade through tall grass to where the Vulcan is perched. One of her struts is starting to buckle, making the ship look like it’s not steady on its feet. As I get closer, I can see why. Her skin looks like it’s rusting. That should be impossible. Carbon composite doesn’t rust. But the green-blue crust that’s crawling up the landing struts and over the Vulcan’s hull is unmistakably decay. Tau Ceti e is eating the Vulcan alive.

  I circle the ship to its rear airlock. The hatch doesn’t respond when I try to swipe up the lock screen, but it looks like it isn’t sealed. I dig my fingers into the seam between the hatch and the ship and pull. After a few seconds, the hatch swings open, exhaling a blast of stale air.

  The landing ramp doesn’t extend, so I have to pull myself up and crawl into the ship. It’s dark inside. As I switch my flex to flashlight mode, my arm brushes the corridor wall. To my surprise, the wall screens on either side of me power up. The white-and-gray ISA logo screen appears on both walls. Interesting. The ship’s solar collectors must still be working.

  “Computer,” I say, experimentally. “Log in to primary server, please.”

  The Vulcan’s computer crackles like it’s clearing its throat before replying, “I’m sorry, the requested function is password protected.”

  The ship’s server is password protected? That’s weird.

  Whatever. I’m sure Mom will be able to unlock it with her command codes. I should text her and tell her what I’ve found. But if I do that, she and Dad are going to send me back to camp and I’ll never find out what happened here.

  Taking five more minutes to look around won’t hurt. The Vulcan isn’t going anywhere. It hasn’t gone anywhere in a long time.

  I wander the quiet corridors. The silver-gray Tau dust has snuck in here through the cracks in the unsealed airlock hatch. It gives the pale glow of the wall screens a dull sparkle, like the whole ship is coated in opalescent glitter. Other than the dust, the ship is empty. There are no personal items anywhere. That makes me feel a little better. Whatever happened that made the ISA Rangers abandon this ship, it wasn’t a surprise. They packed their things and stowed everything away before they went.

  I find the command office. The plaque on the door reads DR. LUCILLE BROWN, COLONEL.

  Dr. Brown is a legend. Before she took command of the Vulcan, she wrote the book on extraterrestrial pioneering. Well, books—plural—actually. She wrote half of my textbooks at the academy.

  Her office is empty, just like the rest of the ship. There’s nothing on the shelves and nothing on her workstation. I run my hands through the film of dust on the wall by the door, expecting the locked-out ISA logo screen to appear. Instead, the whole office erupts in pictures. A photo collage layered with images of the same four people—two men and two women. This must be the Ranger team.

  Most of these pictures were taken here on Tau Ceti e. The images are casual but vivid. Working. Playing baseball. Swimming. Rock climbing. It makes me feel like I know these people even though I only recognize one of them. I’ve seen Dr. Brown’s picture before in her books. She’s a sturdy, middle-aged white woman with long, gray-blond hair that always seems to be in a braid. She grins at me from the largest picture in the collage. In the photo, she’s wading in a lake that shimmers spring green. Her arms are wrapped around a handsome man with short black hair and olive skin.

  They look happy. I really hope they aren’t dead.

  “Joanna?” Beth’s voice pops the bubble of silence so abruptly that my heart slams into overdrive again. What is she doing out here? Of all the people who might have noticed that I was gone, Beth seems the most unlikely.

  I take a deep breath, letting my pounding heart settle again before I call back: “In here!”

  I unwrap my flex and press it against the wall screen to download Dr. Brown’s pictures as a tangle of voices and footsteps bounces through the empty ship toward me. Beth obviously isn’t alone.

  “Fancy running into you here,” Private Lim says, flashing his usual entertained-by-life grin as he precedes my sister into the office. What the hell? Beth and Private Lim have never exchanged a single word, as far as I know. Why would she bring him with her?

  “Private Lim saw you leaving camp,” Beth announces before I get the chance to ask. “He suggested that I should find you before the particle shield comes online, so that you wouldn’t get stuck outside.”

  “The shield pylons aren’t even scheduled for construction until next week,” I say. “There are no large predators on this continent, remember? Nothing to shield against.”

&
nbsp; “The commander tweaked the schedule,” Private Lim says. “Surprise!”

  Unease prickles over my scalp. Getting the shield online in a single day must have taken most of our construction crew. Why would Mom suddenly decide to prioritize the particle shield over building cabins to sleep in tonight?

  “You could have just texted,” I say, trying to sound un-freaked out as I pull my flex off the wall and fold it around my wrist again.

  “No, I couldn’t,” Beth says. “The cell tower isn’t up yet, remember? Nor is the camp’s hot spot.”

  Embarrassment churns with horror in the pit of my stomach. I can’t believe I did something so stupid. I was too busy being emotional about our first day on a new world to remember that it’s our first day on a new world. That means no cell towers. No wireless networks. With the particle shield up, I would have been stranded out here.

  The particle shield looks kind of like an enormous soap bubble blown around the camp, but nothing bigger than an oxygen molecule can get through it. I would have been screwed if Beth and Lim hadn’t come after me.

  Just when I think I can’t get more embarrassed, Chris throws himself through the open office door and startles me so badly that I shriek. Lim finds this deeply amusing, of course. Chris doesn’t notice that he nearly gave me a heart attack.

  “Guess what?” he says, talking at light speed. “Their 3D printers are all gone, and so are the recyclers. So is all the stuff in the cabins. They didn’t leave anything behind.” He takes a breath and notices the pictures layered across the wall screens. His eyes get even wider. “Except this, I guess. Weird.”

  “Did you bring the whole camp?” I snap at Beth, my heart still pounding.

  “No,” she says, dryly ignoring the rhetorical nature of the question, “only Chris and Private Lim.”

  “Nice to see you too, Joey,” Chris says. I can hear the hurt feelings under his fake casual tone. Chris has always been sensitive about being left out, since he’s younger than the rest of us. Why does it seem like words just charge out of my mouth these days without checking with my brain?

  “Not to be the voice of reason,” Lim says, interrupting my internal guilt trip. “But as much as I enjoy a good ghost town, it might be time to head back to base.”

  “That’s what I was planning to do,” I say. “Before the crowd showed up.” I was trying for haughty, but I’m pretty sure that came out defensive and whiny instead. I need to stop talking, before I embarrass myself even more.

  I push past Lim and Beth and head back into the corridor. The others follow me out of the Vulcan. As Lim drags the unresponsive airlock hatch closed again behind us, Beth looks around thoughtfully. “How odd that we weren’t notified that Dr. Brown and her team perished on the planet.”

  “You think the ISA knows?” I say. “The last time I checked the fleet’s in-service map, the Vulcan was listed as scouting in the Wolf 1061 system.”

  “That has to be a cover,” Lim says, leading the way back through the abandoned camp. “You really think the ISA just misplaced a ship by half a dozen light-years?”

  “I guess you’re right,” I say. I don’t want to believe it, but it’s the only logical conclusion. “At the very least, the ISA would have noticed that the Vulcan’s crew hasn’t made contact in years.”

  “Five years and roughly seven months,” Beth supplies. “The survey report was received in December of 2112.”

  “No way,” Chris insists. “If the ISA knew the Vulcan was here, the commander would have told us. She always says that everyone on the team deserves to know why and how she makes her decisions.”

  “Theoretically,” Beth says. “But that doesn’t mean we’re always going to get what we deserve. I agree with Private Lim. It’s unlikely that the ISA is simply mistaken about the location of the Vulcan and her crew. And even if that is the case, Mom is aware of this installation. If she didn’t know before we arrived, our satellites would have alerted her upon their first scan of the continent.”

  “Why keep it secret then?” Chris says.

  The question balloons through the deep-blue evening air as we cross into the orchid grove. Nobody offers an answer. I don’t know about Private Lim or Beth, but I keep my mouth shut because all the answers I can think of are terrifying. Especially after Mom went out of her way to get the particle shield up.

  Mom doesn’t think we’re safe here, even though the survey report says there’s nothing dangerous on this continent. That means we can’t trust the survey report. Or the ISA. It might even mean that we can’t trust my mom. Something really bad happened here, and she’s keeping it secret even though she’s afraid that it’s going to happen to us.

  The massive, delicate cups of the giant orchids are dyed black with shadows in the last of the daylight. They loom over us, turning the soothing oasis of the grove forbidding and strange.

  I hear something. The sound is so quiet that I can’t describe it. But it’s not the wind. Something is moving out there, in the trees. Something big.

  Fear skitters over my skin with clammy feet.

  I stop and look behind us.

  “Hello?” I call into the shadows.

  The whisper of movement evaporates at the sound of my voice.

  “You see something?” Lim asks.

  I hold a not now hand up.

  “Dr. Brown?” I call out again. But the quiet doesn’t respond.

  “We have twelve minutes to get back to base,” Beth calls over her shoulder. She’s a few meters ahead with Chris. “Then we’ll be stuck outside the shield until someone realizes we’re gone.”

  She’s right. But I can’t shake the feeling that the dense shadows behind us are alive. We aren’t alone out here. I’m sure of it.

  “Even if she’s out there, there’s no use hanging around if she doesn’t want to chat, Hotshot,” Lim says, quietly.

  I nod again and start walking. I can still feel the unseen eyes on the back of my neck. Is it Dr. Brown? Or is it the thing that happened to Dr. Brown?

  Three

  “Why didn’t you tell us what happened to the Rangers?” I thrust the question ahead of myself as I storm into the tent Mom is using as an office.

  “Because I don’t know what happened to them,” Mom says without looking up from the cluster of apps she has open on the touch screen canvas wall. She has the whole tent set to exterior cameras, so it looks like we’re still outside and her apps are hovering in midair. She drops a note of don’t push your luck into her voice as she adds, “I also don’t know why my seventeen-year-old daughter would wander off without telling anyone she was leaving camp.”

  “What, are you tracking my flex now?”

  “No,” Mom says, offering me an elaborately disappointed look. “I made an educated guess based on your question, which you could not possibly have known to ask unless you took an unauthorized bush walk and stumbled on the Vulcan. We’re on an uninhabited planet with no cell towers or satellite hot spots. I have no way of keeping track of you. Nor should I have to, since you’ve been training for this mission your whole life and you know better.”

  Embarrassment cracks my outrage. I also should have known better than to pick a fight with my mom. She always finds a way to be right.

  “I forgot about the comms,” I admit.

  Mom’s jaw actually drops, like I’ve stunned her with the depths of my stupidity. “You need to read the survey report again,” she says, “at least twice. If you’re not going to stay on base, then you need to know what’s out there.”

  The sticky heat of humiliation evaporates in an electric prickle of excitement. If you’re not going to stay on base. She said that like I can just choose to come and go whenever I want. Does she really mean that? I’m tempted to ask, but I decide to keep my mouth shut and not give her the chance to change her mind. I was planning to read the survey report again anyway. It’d be dumb to wander around on this planet knowing I’m not prepared.

  A fresh question dumps cold water on my exciteme
nt. “Will reading the survey report actually prepare me for Tau? Or are there a bunch of other secrets that the ISA is keeping from us?”

  The question takes Mom by surprise. She studies me for what feels like a long time. Then she says, “As far as I know, the report is accurate. However, it is not complete.”

  “What do you mean, not complete?” I ask. The words feel slippery in my mouth. I couldn’t hold on to them if I wanted to. “What’s missing? Is something wrong with this planet? Are we going to have to abort the mission and go home? Was this all for nothing?”

  Mom smiles gingerly, like the expression kind of hurts. “You mean, did Teddy die for nothing?”

  I don’t trust myself to speak without crying, so I just nod.

  “I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you this. Whatever happens here, our . . .” She trails off, like she can’t bear to say the words out loud. Then she braces herself and starts again. “Whatever happens here, Teddy’s death wasn’t in vain. In fact, it means more than you could ever guess.”

  Her voice is shaking, just a little bit. Unshed tears shine in her eyes. I see pride there. And pain. I understand how she feels. That’s a startling thought. I haven’t felt like Mom and I understood each other for a long time.

  Mom huffs a sigh, exhaling the emotional moment so she can move on. “I wish I could explain everything to you, Jo.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “It’s classified,” Mom says. “Most Secret. Technically, I am not even allowed to acknowledge that the report is incomplete, but you asked me a direct question, and I don’t lie to my people.” She looks me in the eye. “I also don’t lie to my children. I never have, and I don’t plan to start.”

  “But I’m going to have to lie, aren’t I?” I say, my stomach twisting into a knot as I realize what classified means in this situation. “The abandoned base must be part of the classified stuff.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mom says. She doesn’t make any excuses, or try to make me feel better about this. “You’re not a cadet anymore, so I can’t order you to keep this secret. But there will be consequences for me, and for this team, if you decide to share what you’ve learned. I hope you’ll take that into account as you decide what to do next.”