Crystalline Space

by A. K. DuBoff

  He shook his head. “I used to keep to myself—as soon as I wasn’t trapped on a freighter forced to be around the same eight people all the time. Joking is your coping mechanism, trying to take everything in stride is mine.”

  There were moments when I’d thought Kaiden was maybe putting on an act, but I’d always assumed it was to show off in the way I’d seen people do in school when they were hoping to gain a measure of social notoriety. Talking with him now, however, I started to second-guess those impressions. “It’s not a bad attitude to have,” I replied after a pause. “I could have benefitted from that philosophy at other times in my life.”

  “It’s weird,” Kaiden mused. “When I woke up here, it was like a switch flipped. I’d always been the shy, nerdy guy who watched everyone else have all the fun, but I never knew how to get in on the action. I mean, have you ever known an agriculture major to be the life of a party? They called me ‘plant guy’, for stars’ sake!”

  I winced. “Not the best nickname.”

  “Other people had worse. But I was far from popular, and I was certainly never in a position to be the center of attention. To go from that to then suddenly have magical abilities and be important? I guess it went to my head. Now, though, seeing what deep shit we’re in, I mostly just want to go back to being the anonymous guy collecting plant samples.”

  “Like it or not, we’re no longer the people we used to be,” I murmured.

  “The more that sinks in, the more I’m not sure who I want to be going forward.”

  I was struck by the sincerity of Kaiden’s statement. Any façade he may have put on before was gone. This was the real him, and he was just as scared and confused as me about our uncertain future. It was more than just our mission—we’d been reborn and offered the chance to become the people we’d always aspired to be. Our new selves were there for the taking. Except, it wasn’t easy to let go of the parts of our pasts preventing us from completing that transition.

  “I’m not sure who I want to be, either,” I admitted.

  His sky-blue eyes met mine, deep with a wisdom beyond his years. “I think you do. You just need to realize there’s nothing holding you back now.”

  “Same for you.”

  Kaiden tore his gaze away. “Everything was so certain two weeks ago.”

  “Adapt and move forward, right?” I smiled.

  He smiled back after a moment. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  We continued our stroll toward the lift and called it.

  When we stepped inside, I leaned against the back wall. “I can understand why you adopted your new life philosophy. I can’t imagine what it would have been like being the first to wake up here.”

  “Yeah, it was… disorienting, to say the least.”

  “You must have thought Colren was out of his mind when he told you what happened.”

  He laughed. “I did. It wasn’t until Toran showed up that I started to think maybe there was some truth to it.”

  “Did you see the Darkness?” I asked him somberly. “In the crystal, I mean.”

  “Yes.” He looked down. “That’s the only reason I didn’t take one of the shuttles and leave right away.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Something unlike anything else we’ve seen before. My fear is that it’s as ancient as the crystals themselves, and if we don’t understand the tech we use, then how are we supposed to understand the alien tech attacking us?”

  “Well, the Master Archive might have some answers.”

  “I hope so. And I hope Toran can come up with an artifact detector, or whatever might give us some direction.”

  I caught his gaze. “Hey, we’ll figure this out.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “Elle, you are being way too calm about all of this.”

  “I may be young and inexperienced, but I’ve been through enough to know that losing my cool doesn’t improve anything. I spent a lot of time being angry at the universe, and all it did was expend energy I could have spent working toward an actual solution.”

  “What were you angry about?” Kaiden asked as the lift doors opened.

  I hadn’t intended to bring up anything about my past, but I couldn’t very well backpedal. “I used to do some reckless things with my friends,” I explained while he led me toward the Mess. “We’d hang out in the hills above our town and do flips off of boulders and stuff. We were kids, so we thought the world revolved around us. If anything went wrong, there was always a reset to make it right.

  “Then, one day, I fell and broke my arm, and I learned that the universe didn’t revolve around me. I was twelve and should have known better by then. Anyway, it didn’t heal right, so I could only raise my left arm up to here,” I demonstrated the range of motion, “and there went my dreams of being a Ranger or anything else that would keep me away from a normal desk job.”

  He gave me a sympathetic nod. “For what it’s worth, the central worlds have some pretty great medical tech these days. I bet they would have been able to fix you up.”

  “Maybe. But to a girl in a small town on an outer colony world, I didn’t feel like I had options. I spent the better part of a year afterward moping that they didn’t take the injury more seriously when it first happened, but really I was upset with myself for taking stupid risks.”

  “So, you started jumping off cliffs instead?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t say I was good at learning from my mistakes.”

  We reached the Mess entrance and Kaiden stopped outside the door. He was silent for several seconds. “I can understand how that injury on your homeworld changed a lot of things for you, but it doesn’t define your future anymore.”

  “I know, and I’m grateful for that, despite the rather large caveat that the fate of our civilization is partially in my hands.”

  “Everything has a price.”

  “But, come on!” I held up my hands to mime a scale. “Shoulder injury. Interplanetary savior. The universe might be asking for a bit much here.”

  “In all fairness, you did get more than just your shoulder fixed. I mean, the pink hair had to cost at least two planets’ worth of saving.”

  “I think I might also be a centimeter or two taller, so that’s probably another four planets right there.”

  “It adds up fast. You might have gotten the Interplanetary Savior-level upgrade package after all.”

  “Damn! I’m locked in now.” I snapped my fingers.

  “Better make the most of it.”

  “I do have new friends to keep me company. It could be a lot worse.”

  “Admittedly, things got a lot better when you showed up—” Kaiden cut himself off and looked at the rubberized floor. “We should get food so you can have that nap.”

  I placed my hand on my stomach. “Yes! I’m starving. Fighting stone lizard-things apparently works up an appetite.”

  We stepped forward and the doors to the Mess parted, revealing a rectangular room with seating for seventy people at tables of various sizes. The starboard bulkhead sported broad viewports running the length of the room, and the port side had a buffet line and bar.

  “Fancy,” I commented.

  “Don’t let it fool you. They serve military gruel at its finest.”

  We grabbed trays and browsed the buffet line. I got an assortment of items to sample, most of which were more difficult to identify than I would have liked.

  The tables were relatively empty, being an irregular hour for a meal, so we were able to get seats at a four-top by one of the viewports. Though the planet wasn’t visible, there was a picturesque view of two moons.

  I dug into my meal. After one bite, my shoulders slumped. “All right, I see what you mean.”

  “Yeah, even as an agro major, I have no idea what this green stuff is.”

  “I’m just going to pretend its arugula and call it good.”

  He nodded. “Can’t argue with that plan.”

>   We ate mostly in silence, only making the occasional comment about missing fresh produce from our respective homeworlds. It was nice to find we could be comfortable sitting together without saying anything; I’d found some people always had to keep a conversation going or they’d get nervous and weird. That was something I’d always valued in Adrianne and Jiro back home—hanging out at the cliff on a sunny afternoon quietly enjoying the view. I hoped the meal was a sign I’d be able to have a similar rapport with Kaiden as we got to know each other better.

  My eyelids were heavy by the time we finished eating. After bussing our table, Kaiden showed me the residential area one deck below, near our jump pod room and the bioprinter.

  “It’s not much,” Kaiden said as we approached, “but you do get your own room.”

  “That’s good. I’m not used to sharing.”

  “Only child?” he asked.

  “No, younger brother.” A sharp twinge struck my heart as I thought about him and the rest of my family.

  “I have two older brothers, myself. Fortunately, they took an interest in the family business so I wasn’t forced in that direction, too.”

  I released a long breath. “Being the oldest does come with a lot of expectations.”

  “Just wait until you get to tell your parents this story.”

  “They’ll flip—and that’s only based on what’s happened so far. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like by the end.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.” Kaiden gestured to one of the doors. “This one will be you.”

  I placed my hand on the panel next to the door, and the door slid open. Inside, the chamber contained a single bed, wardrobe, and wash facilities behind a partition.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “I’ll be next door if you need anything. Or, comms.” He pointed to his ear.

  I smiled. “Thanks.”

  He glanced at his own door. “All right, sleep well. See you in a few hours.”

  “See you then. I’m looking forward to seeing what Toran comes up with.”

  9

  I drummed my fingers on the tabletop, regretting my agreement to get out of bed.

  “You really think this will work?” I asked Toran.

  “It’s all guesstimated science. There’s no way to be certain,” he admitted.

  “Only one way to find out.” Kaiden removed the crystal pendant from around his neck and handed it to the other man, per the proposed plan.

  While Kaiden and I had slept for the past five hours, Toran had been hard at work with one of Central Command’s communication specialists in the same common room where I’d been introduced to my two companions, though it now contained replacement chairs and Toran’s sculpture of twisted metal had been removed.

  Toran had supposedly figured out a way to scan for the unique energy signature emitted by items with magical properties. His explanation for how the detection system worked sounded straightforward enough, but we hadn’t had a great track record of things going according to plan. The result of his efforts with the communication tech was a device the size of a dinner plate, which has a cradle to serve as the interface with Kaiden’s crystal. Based on what Toran had explained, the device would read the energy signature from the crystal and then amplify and broadcast it using the Evangiel’s communication and sensor suite.

  Though Toran had explained the science behind it, I was more interested in the results.

  “Here it goes…” Toran placed the crystal in the device on the table in front of us.

  As soon as the crystal pendant was in the cradle, a soft hum filled the air. I was drawn to the tone, though I had no direct way to interact with it. I imagined a current of energy flowing through me, and the sense of it filled my mind.

  On the table, the device emitted a soft blue glow, though the crystal itself remained unchanged.

  “Hmm, interesting,” Toran said.

  “What’s happening?” Kaiden asked. There was a hint of concern in his tone, which I attributed to his crystal being used in the experimental activity.

  “The good news is that the device is working how I hoped,” Toran explained. “The less good news is that we’re getting multiple hits on the planet.”

  I frowned. “So, we still don’t know where the artifact is?”

  “No, but this narrows it down a lot,” he said.

  Kaiden pursed his lips in apparent thought. “What might also resonate with this tone?”

  “Likely crystals.”

  “And how similar are those crystals to each other?” Kaiden asked.

  “You know—they come in all sizes,” Toran replied.

  “But what about their resonance, or whatever? Is there a unique signature?”

  Toran perked up. “I see where you’re going with this.”

  He made some entries on the touch-surface tabletop, and a list of numeric values appeared. “Okay, these are all of the hits we got on the planet. Let’s run an analysis to find their similarities and differences.” He made another entry.

  The items in the list shifted to the left and additional columns appeared—some numerals, and others showing a waveform. Segments of the waveforms and secondary lines within them were highlighted in different colors.

  Toran pointed to one. “Okay, it looks like this green line is the common thread in all of them. The waveform depicted with the purple line appears in all but four of the samples, though its amplitude changes.”

  “Maybe that has something to do with the crystals of different sizes—larger the crystal, larger the amplitude?” I suggested, somewhat amazed that anything from my physics class had stuck with me.

  “Could be,” Toran agreed.

  “Hasn’t the Hegemony studied all of this?” Kaiden asked. “You’d think there’d be documentation of the crystals’ properties.”

  “Yes, their research is why this analysis has taken seconds rather than days. I’ve cross-referenced our readings with the metadata,” replied Toran. “This is different, though—none of those researchers had access to the kind of crystal that you have. I don’t know what makes it different, exactly, but it’s throwing off some weird readings that don’t match anything on the record.”

  My brow knit. “Do any of the readings on the surface have those same weirdnesses?” Well, at least I’d been able to ask one question while sounding like I knew what I was talking about.

  Toran continued to examine the data. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It’s difficult to gauge because the sensors aren’t designed to measure this sort of thing. I think they’re missing some of the nuances.”

  Kaiden leaned on the desktop. “You mentioned that the purple line is missing in four of the samples. That may be significant.”

  “Yes, I was thinking that, too.” Toran’s eyes narrowed as he scanned over the details about those four data points. “There’s definitely something different about these. It’s possible they’re not recording crystals at all.”

  “One might be the artifact,” I said.

  Toran nodded. “Perhaps.”

  “Well, it’s only four sites, right?” Kaiden said. “That’s a whole lot less to search than an entire planet. Why don’t we just do a fly-by and check it out?”

  “Sounds good to me. They’re all on the same continent, so we don’t even have to circle the globe.”

  I smiled. “Even better.”

  Kaiden tapped behind his ear. “Commander, we have targets on the planet.” He explained what we’d found and the plan to perform a visual assessment. Within a minute, we had confirmation to proceed.

  I called down to Tami to give her a heads up about our imminent departure, and we proceeded to the hangar.

  “I can’t wait to see what the artifact is,” I said.

  “I’m not holding my breath for anything wondrous,” Toran replied.

  “It’s gotta be ancient though, right?” I said. “These things probably date back to when t
he crystalline network was created.”

  “I’m certainly intrigued. I mean, as of a day ago, I didn’t even know the crystals were created, so any items developed by those same designers must be pretty powerful.”

  “True. If nothing else, it will have unique properties—though that doesn’t mean it will be useful.”

  “Hey, as long as it gets the Archive open, it doesn’t matter what else it does or doesn’t do,” I pointed out.

  Kaiden held up his index finger. “Excellent point.”

  We arrived at the hangar and found Tami waiting for us by the shuttle with a backpack resting on the deck.

  “We have everything ready for you,” she said. “Shuttle is put back together, and I have some extra supplies for you.” She hoisted the backpack from her feet and held it outward.

  Toran took it from her like it was a feather. “Thank you.”

  “I threw in a couple of extra things I thought might come in handy—med supplies, emergency rations, fire starter, thermal blankets. You never know.”

  “I’ve got the fire starting handled,” Kaiden said with a grin, holding up his index finger with a flame on its tip.

  “But if you’re unconscious, we’re screwed,” I countered. “Thank you, Tami. We’ll try not to tear it apart again this time around.”

  She flashed a weary smile. “If you do, we’ll just put it back together again.”

  After an exchange of well wishes and reiterated thanks, we boarded the shuttle and assumed our seats on the bridge. Kaiden initiated the startup sequence, and we began taxiing toward the electrostatic shield.

  “Fingers crossed that the weather on this planet cooperates,” I said.

  Our shuttle glided out of the hangar and followed its automated course to the first location Toran had identified on the planet.

  Kaiden remained much more attentive than he had at the beginning of the previous voyage—not surprising, given what had happened last time. However, his concerns proved unwarranted as we descended through the atmosphere toward the target.

  The cloud cover was light, especially in contrast to the last planet, and I took in the view of the landscape on the approach. All the land as far as I could see in every direction was green, broken only by the occasional body of water. The terrain was predominantly rolling hills, though several mountain ranges towered in the distance. At least three-quarters of the visible land was forested. I couldn’t make out the type of trees at altitude, but the canopy was thick enough that I had no idea what secrets the forests may contain; a hidden tomb for an ancient artifact wasn’t out of the question.