As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Kira saw long blue-black lines cut into the walls and ceiling. The lines jagged at oblique angles, forming patterns similar to those of a primitive circuit board, although farther apart.
Art? Language? Technology? Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference. Was the place a tomb? Of course, the aliens might not bury their dead. There was no way of knowing.
“Thermals up,” Kira murmured.
Her vision flipped, showing a muddy impression of the room, highlighted by the warmer patch of ground where the sunlight struck. No lasers, no artificial heat signatures of any sort.
“Thermals down.”
The room could be studded with passive sensors, but if so, her presence hadn’t triggered a noticeable response. Still, she had to assume she was being watched.
A thought occurred to Kira, and she switched off the scanner on her belt. For all she knew, the signals from the device might seem threatening to an alien.
She scrolled through the last set of readings from the scanner: background radiation was higher than normal due to an accumulation of radon gas, while the walls, ceiling, and floor contained the same mixture of minerals and elements she’d recorded on the surface.
Kira glanced at the blotch of sky again. Neghar wouldn’t take long to reach the formation. Just a few minutes in the shuttle—a few minutes for Kira to examine the most important find of her life. Because once she was pulled out of the hole, Kira knew she wouldn’t be allowed back in. By law, any evidence of alien intelligence had to be reported to the proper authorities in the League of Allied Worlds. They would quarantine the island (and probably a good portion of the continent) and send in their own team of experts to deal with the site.
That didn’t mean she was about to break protocol. As much as she wanted to walk around, look at things closer, Kira knew she had a moral obligation not to disturb the chamber any further. Preserving its current condition was more important than any personal ambition.
So she held her ground, despite her almost unbearable frustration. If she could just touch the walls …
Looking back at the pedestal, Kira noticed the structure was level with her waist. Did that mean the aliens were about the same size as humans?
She shifted her stance, uncomfortable. The bruises on her legs were throbbing, despite the Norodon. A shiver ran through her, and she turned on the heater in her suit. It wasn’t that cold in the room, but her hands and feet were freezing now that the adrenaline rush from the fall was subsiding.
Across the room, a knot of lines, no bigger than her palm, caught her attention. Unlike elsewhere on the curving walls, the lines—
Crack!
Kira glanced toward the sound just in time to see a melon-sized rock dropping toward her from the opening in the ceiling.
She yelped and stumbled forward awkwardly. Her legs tangled, and she fell onto her chest, hard.
The rock slammed into the floor behind her, sending up a hazy billow of dust.
It took Kira a second to catch her breath. Her pulse was hammering again, and at any moment, she expected alarms to sound and some hideously effective countermeasure to dispose of her.
But nothing happened. No alarms blared. No lights flashed. No trapdoors opened up beneath her. No lasers poked her full of tiny holes.
She pushed herself back onto her feet, ignoring the pain. The dust was soft beneath her boots, and it dampened the noise so the only sound she heard was her feathered breathing.
The pedestal was right in front of her.
Dammit, Kira thought. She should have been more careful. Her instructors back in school would have ripped her a new one for falling, even if it was a mistake.
She returned her attention to the pedestal. The depression in the top reminded her of a water basin. Beneath the pooled dust were more lines, scribed across the inner curve of the hollow. And … as she looked closer, there seemed to be a faint blue glow emanating from them, soft and diffuse beneath the pollen-like particles.
Her curiosity surged. Bioluminescence? Or was it powered by an artificial source?
From outside the structure, she heard the rising roar of the shuttle’s engines. She didn’t have long. No more than a minute or two.
Kira sucked on her lip. If only she could see more of the basin. She knew what she was about to do was wrong, but she couldn’t help it. She had to learn something about this amazing artifact.
She wasn’t so stupid as to touch the dust. That was the sort of rookie mistake that got people eaten or infected or dissolved by acid. Instead, she took the small canister of compressed air off her belt and used it to gently blow the dust away from the edge of the basin.
The dust flew up in swirled plumes, exposing the lines beneath. They were glowing, with an eerie hue that reminded her of an electrical discharge.
Kira shivered again, but not from cold. It felt as if she were intruding on forbidden ground.
Enough. She’d tempted fate far more than was wise. Time to make a strategic retreat.
She turned to leave the pedestal.
A jolt ran up her leg as her right foot remained stuck to the floor. She yelped, surprised, and fell to one knee. As she did, the Achilles tendon in her frozen ankle wrenched and tore, and she uttered a howl.
Blinking back tears, Kira looked down at her foot.
Dust.
A pile of black dust covered her foot. Moving, seething dust. It was pouring out of the basin, down the pedestal, and onto her foot. Even as she watched, it started to creep up her leg, following the contours of her muscles.
Kira yelled and tried to yank her leg free, but the dust held her in place as securely as a mag-lock. She tore off her belt, doubled it over, and used it to slap at the featureless mass. The blows failed to knock any of the dust loose.
“Neghar!” she shouted. “Help!”
Her heart pounding so loudly she could hear nothing else, Kira stretched the belt flat between her hands and tried to use it like a scraper on her thigh. The edge of the belt left a shallow impression in the dust but otherwise had no effect.
The swarm of particles had already reached the crease of her hip. She could feel them pressing in around her leg, like a series of tight, ever-shifting bands.
Kira didn’t want to, but she had no other choice; with her right hand, she tried to grab the dust and pull it away.
Her fingers sank into the swarm of particles as easily as foam. There was nothing to grab hold of, and when she drew her hand back, the dust came with it, wrapping around her fingers with ropy tendrils.
“Agh!” She scrubbed her hand against the floor, but to no avail.
Fear spiked through her as she felt something tickle her wrist, and she knew that the dust had found its way through the seams of her gloves.
“Emergency override! Seal all cuffs.” Kira had difficulty saying the words. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue seemed twice its normal size.
Her suit responded instantly, tightening around each of her joints, including her neck, and forming airtight seals with her skin. It wasn’t enough to stop the dust. Kira felt the cold tickle progress up her arm to her elbow, and then past.
“Mayday! Mayday!” she shouted. “Mayday! Neghar! Geiger! Mayday! Can anyone hear me?! Help!”
Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness. Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest.
Unreasoning terror gripped Kira. Terror and abhorrence. She jerked on her leg with all her strength. Something snapped in her ankle, but her foot remained anchored to the floor.
She screamed and clawed at her visor, trying to clear it off.
The dust oozed across her cheek and toward the front of her face. She screamed again and then clamped her mouth shut, closed off her throat, and held her breath.
Her heart felt as if it were going to explode.
Neghar!
The dust crept over her eyes, like the feet of a thousa
nd tiny insects. A moment later, it covered her mouth. And when it came, the dry, squirming touch within her nostrils was no less horrible than she had imagined.
… stupid … shouldn’t have … Alan!
Kira saw his face in front of her, and along with her fear, she felt an overwhelming sense of unfairness. This wasn’t supposed to be how things ended! Then the weight in her throat became too great and she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her.
And all went blank.
CHAPTER III
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
1.
To start with, there was the awareness of awareness.
Then an awareness of pressure, soft and comforting.
Later still, an awareness of sounds: a faint chirp that repeated, a distant rumble, the whir of recycled air.
Last of all came an awareness of self, rising from within the depths of blackness. It was a slow process; the murk was thick and heavy, like a blanket of silt, and it stifled her thoughts, weighing them down and burying them in the deepness. The natural buoyancy of her consciousness prevailed, though, and in time, she woke.
2.
Kira opened her eyes.
She was lying on an exam table in sickbay, at HQ. Above her, a pair of lightstrips striped the bracketed ceiling, blue-white and harsh. The air was cool and dry and smelled of familiar solvents.
I’m alive.
Why was that surprising? And how had she ended up in sickbay? Weren’t they supposed to be leaving for the Fidanza?
She swallowed, and the foul taste of hibernation fluids caused her to gag. Her stomach turned as she recognized the taste. Cryo? She’d been in fucking cryo? Why? For how long?
What the hell had happened?!
Panic spiked her pulse, and Kira bolted upright, clawing at the blanket that covered her. “Gaaah!” She was wearing a thin medical gown, tied at the sides.
The walls swam around her with cryo-induced vertigo. She pitched forward and fell off the table onto the white decking, heaving as her body tried to expel the poison inside of her. Nothing came up except drool and bile.
“Kira!”
She felt hands turning her over, and then Alan appeared above her, cradling her with gentle arms. “Kira,” he said again, his face pinched with concern. “Shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you now. Everything’s okay.”
He looked nearly as bad as Kira felt. His cheeks were hollow, and there were lines around his eyes she didn’t remember from that morning. Morning? “How long?” she croaked.
Alan winced. “Almost four weeks.”
“No.” Dread sank into her. “Four weeks?” Unable to believe it, Kira checked her overlays: 1402 GST, Monday, August 16, 2257.
Stunned, she read the date twice more. Alan was right. The last day she recalled, the day they’d been supposed to depart Adra, was the twenty-first of July. Four weeks!
Feeling lost, she searched Alan’s face, hoping for answers. “Why?”
He stroked her hair. “What do you remember?”
Kira struggled to answer. “I—” Mendoza had told her to check on the downed drone, and then … and then … falling, pain, glowing lines, and darkness, darkness all around.
“Ahhh!” She scrabbled backwards and clutched at her neck, heart pounding. It felt as if something were blocking her throat, suffocating her.
“Relax,” said Alan, keeping a hand on her shoulder. “Relax. You’re safe now. Breathe.”
A clutch of agonized seconds, and then her throat loosened and she sucked in a breath, desperate for air. Kira shuddered and grabbed Alan and held him as tight as she could. She’d never been prone to panic attacks, not even during finals for her IPD, but the feeling of being suffocated had been so real.…
His voice muffled by her hair, Alan said, “It’s my fault. I should never have asked you to check out those rocks. I’m so sorry, babe.”
“No, don’t apologize,” she said, pulling back enough to look at his face. “Someone had to do it. Besides, I found alien ruins. How amazing is that?”
“Pretty amazing,” he admitted with a reluctant smile.
“See? Now, what—”
Footsteps sounded outside sickbay, and Fizel walked in. He was slim and dark and kept a short, faded haircut that never seemed to grow out. Today he was wearing his clinician’s jacket, and his cuffs were rolled back, as if he’d been giving an exam.
On seeing Kira, he leaned back out the doorway and shouted, “She’s up!” Then he sauntered past the three patient beds set along the wall, picked up a chip-lab off the small counter, squatted next to Kira, and grabbed her wrist. “Open. Say ah.”
“Ah.”
In quick succession, he looked in her mouth and ears, checked her pulse and blood pressure, and felt under her jaw, saying, “Does this hurt?”
“No.”
He nodded, a sharp gesture. “You’ll be fine. Make sure to drink lots of water. You’ll need it after being in cryo.”
“I have been frozen before,” said Kira, as Alan helped her back onto the exam table.
Fizel’s mouth twisted. “Just doing my job, Navárez.”
“Uh-huh.” Kira scratched her forearm. As much as she hated to admit it, the doctor was right. She was dehydrated, and her skin was dry and itchy.
“Here,” said Alan, and handed her a water pouch.
As Kira took a sip, Marie-Élise, Jenan, and Seppo rushed into sickbay.
“Kira!”
“There you are!”
“Welcome back, sleepyhead!”
Behind them, Ivanova appeared, arms crossed, no-nonsense. “Well it’s about time, Navárez!”
Then Yugo, Neghar, and Mendoza joined them as well, and the entire survey team crowded into sickbay, packing in so close that Kira felt the heat from their bodies and the touch of their breath. It was a welcome cocoon of life.
And yet, despite the nearness of her friends, Kira still felt odd and unsettled, as if the universe were out of joint, like a tilted mirror. Partly because of the weeks she had lost. Partly, she thought, because of whatever drugs Fizel had pumped into her. And partly because, if she allowed herself to sink into the depths of her mind, she could still feel something lurking there, waiting for her … a horrible, choking, suffocating presence, like wet clay being pressed into her nose and mouth—
She dug the nails of her right hand into her left forearm and inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. No one but Alan seemed to notice; he gave her a worried glance and his arm tightened around her waist.
Kira shook herself in an attempt to dislodge her thoughts and, looking around at them all, said, “So who’s going to fill me in?”
Mendoza grunted. “Give us your report first, and then we’ll bring you up to speed.”
It took Kira a moment to realize that the team hadn’t come just to greet her. There was an anxious look to them, and as she studied their faces, she saw the same signs of stress as on Alan. Whatever they had been dealing with for the past four weeks, it hadn’t been easy.
“Uh, is this going to be on the record, boss?” she asked.
Mendoza’s face remained hard and fixed, unreadable. “On the record, Navárez, and it won’t just be the company seeing it, either.”
Shit. She swallowed, still tasting the hibernation fluids on the back of her tongue. “Could we do this in an hour or two? I’m pretty out of it.”
“No can do, Navárez.” He hesitated, and then added, “It’s better talking to us rather than…”
“Someone else,” said Ivanova.
“Exactly.”
Kira’s confusion deepened. Her worry too. She glanced at Alan, and he nodded and gave her a comforting squeeze. Okay. If he thought this was the right thing to do, then she’d trust him.
She took a breath. “The last thing I remember is heading out to check on the organic material the drone tagged before crashing. Neghar Esfahani was piloting. We landed on island number—”
It didn’t take Kira long to summarize what had
followed, ending with her fall into the strange rock formation and the room deep within. She did her best to describe the room, but at that point, her memory became so disjointed as to be unusable. (Had the lines on the pedestal really been glowing, or was that an artifact of her imagination?)
“And that’s all you saw?” said Mendoza.
Kira scratched at her arm. “It’s all I remember. I think I tried to stand up and then…” She shook her head. “Everything after that is blank.”
The expedition boss scowled and stuffed his hands in his overall pockets.
Alan kissed her on the temple. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Did you touch anything?” Mendoza said.
Kira thought. “Just where I fell.”
“Are you sure? When Neghar pulled you out, there were marks in the dust on and around the pillar in the center of the room.”
“As I said, the last thing I remember is trying to stand up.” She cocked her head. “Why don’t you check the recording from my suit?”
Mendoza surprised her by grimacing. “The fall damaged your suit’s sensors. The telemetry is useless. Your implants weren’t much help either. They stopped recording forty-three seconds after you entered the room. Fizel says that’s not uncommon with traumatic head injuries.”
“Were my implants damaged?” Kira asked, suddenly concerned. Her overlays seemed normal.
“Your implants,” said Fizel, “are in perfect working order.” His lip curled. “More than can be said for the rest of you.”
She stiffened, unwilling to let him see how frightened that made her. “Just how badly was I hurt?”
Alan started to answer, but the doctor overrode him. “Hairline fractures in two ribs, chipped cartilage in your right elbow, along with a strained tendon. Fractured ankle, ruptured Achilles, multiple bruises and lacerations, and a moderate to severe concussion accompanied by cerebral swelling.” Fizel ticked off each injury on his fingers as he spoke. “I repaired most of the damage; the rest will heal in a few weeks. In the meantime, you may experience some soreness.”
At that, Kira nearly laughed. Sometimes humor was the only rational response.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Page 4