Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  The kit would be heavy, but that didn’t bother Gan much. He didn’t have to carry it far and he would disengage the main portion of the kit once he was past the initial deceleration.

  Then Gan had to deal with all the contacts. The kit had to have a few specific interface ports so it could pair with his suit. One for power, one for air supply, and one for controls.

  Gan had never been much of an engineer. He had designed the stasis box for the artifact, but that was pretty standard. The workstation software and the nanofacs and assemblers did most of the work, he just had to find a way to make it all fit together.

  The big pieces were the easy part, it was all the hoses and cables that made the project into a nightmare. The door slid open again and, based upon the footsteps, he knew it was Nat before she spoke.

  “Hey sweetie,” she said. “I heard you had a little project and thought you might need some help.”

  Gan turned to her. “Yes,” he said, letting himself sigh, “this is not my strong suit.”

  He moved to stand so she could sit down, but she laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Oh no, don’t move.”

  For a minute she didn’t say anything. She moved the design around, expanded it out and looked at the pieces, making curious noises with her throat.

  “I have no idea what this is supposed to be,” she said.

  “I’m trying to create the Shaumri version of a personal re-entry kit,” Gan said. “There are a few main components. Air supply is one. A deployable glider is another. I need a lot of energy storage. And I need a deployable parachute so I can disengage the kit and deploy the wingsuit while dropping the bulk of the weight once I’m in atmosphere.

  “Hmm,” Nat said. “What’s all the energy cells for?”

  Gan turned to face her, lifting his hands as a display. “A Shaumri smartskin has the energy shield functionality in it that one would need to re-enter at speed. But the energy requirements demand an external power source to use it.”

  “Ah,” Nat said. Gan could see the chemical equivalent of data spooling in her head. “So, you jump out of a ship in low orbit with this baby on your back. Once things start to get spicy you activate the energy shields using the power in the kit. Once you’ve dropped enough speed that you’re not getting crispy, you drop the kit, deploy the wingsuit and fly to glory.”

  Gan chuckled. “In a matter of speaking, yes.”

  “One question before we get started then,” she said holding up her forefinger.

  “Sure,” Gan said.

  “Exactly which ship are you jumping out of that will be in low orbit over a contested planet?”

  Gan nodded. “Fair question. The answer is, I don’t know yet. Maybe the Lunar Seed.”

  “Maybe you’ve made a deal with the Captain behind our backs.” Her smile remained just as sweet, but her gaze held weight and heat.

  “I did attempt to purchase passage back to the Antarus System.”

  “And?”

  “And we haven’t come to an agreement yet.”

  Nat’s eyes narrowed, and her hands went to her hips.

  “I give you my word,” Gan said.

  Nat glared at him another second, then her suspicious expression disappeared like it had never been there in the first place.

  “Well alrighty then,” she said. She gave Gan a wink, took the stylus from his hand and started working over his shoulder. “We have to balance air supply vs energy consumption,” she continued. “Those are your major factors. So let’s consider a steep descent from a stable orbit of say two hundred kilometers above the surface.”

  “Okay,” Gan said.

  Nat lifted her left wrist and thumbed on her link. She started typing and swiping. “Eltar’s Karman line is right about a hundred kilometers from sea level,” she said. Then she narrowed her eyes and squeezed her brow down. “You’re going to need some EVA equipment unless you’re planning on losing altitude over the course of a week.”

  “My smartskin has the functionality. And all I need to do is slow my orbit. Gravity will do the rest.”

  Nat smiled.

  They sat together for an hour. Nat was brilliant. What was more, she had the knowledge and the ability to properly plan out Gan’s reentry to such a degree it made Gan’s original plan look like complete improvisation. X amount of minutes to the Karman Line, Y amount of minutes of heavy deceleration at an angle of Z degrees. She even took into account his smartskin’s capacity, which Gan didn’t know. He ended up having to tell his suit what information he needed and then read the numbers off his HUD while Nat did the calculations for how many power cells he would need.

  At the end of the hour Gan was ready to begin fabrication and he had a kit that was much more likely to get him to the surface of Eltar alive.

  “Thanks so much for your help, Nat,” Gan said. “I feel much better about my chances.”

  Nat smiled and patted Gan on the back again. “Any time, sweetie!”

  She waved and left the room and Gan got down to fabrication. On one corner of the worktable his borrowed tablet was still running the translation software on Remnant’s artifact. Gan wondered how long it would take to translate the whole thing with only the pieces Remnant could read. Months? Weeks? Days? The program was brilliant, and it had already developed a basis for things like sentence structure and grammar. It just couldn’t work out the words.

  Soon, Gan thought. Soon.

  Green lights flashed around the room twice. Gan grabbed his prototype shell for the entry kit and waited for the gentle rumble of N-space collapse to end. Captain Kol had a fine ship. Gan had been on more than a few rust-buckets whose N-space drives were so poorly out of maintenance that he expected the ship to come flying apart every time it executed a maneuver. Gan figured a person a little less jumpy than he could even sleep through the transition on the Jessamine.

  Gan waited a moment, expecting another alarm and flare of lights and when it didn’t happen he returned to work. Smugglers, Gan figured, were used to going directly from a jump to a slip. It made the ship tougher to spot. And even though Kol had promised that this was a friendly harbor they were heading to, he had still made a direct transition. Maybe it was good practice for his bridge crew.

  Gan got up, dropped his prototype shell into the recycler and watched through the little window as it melted back down into ingots. Then he sent the new design to the nanofac and let it start running. Once the new shell was finished, he started the nanofac on the power strips, connection fittings and, of course, the control module. He let the assembler put that all together then set the finished shell on the work table. He started on the energy cells next.

  It printed the pieces out of metal or plastic, or even out of the solid electrolyte for the energy cells, then pushed them to the assembler to put it all together. As each cell was finished he mounted them to the shell and plugged them into the power strips. The machines were slower than he was, but Gan didn’t blame them. He was putting blocks into a box and inserting a plug. The machines were doing the real work.

  One by one Gan pulled the finished energy cells from the assembler, inserted them into the kit, and plugged them in. Next came the O2 tank and carbon filtering rebreather. Once they came out of the assembler he mounted them in, locked them into place and then plugged them into the hose connectors.

  Then came the parachute in the center of the kit. That would keep the kit from smashing through a building once Gan had disengaged from it. That was the last part, well, last except for the glider which he still needed the material for.

  He sat down, sipped at cool coffee and watched the assembler stitch, fold and press the long strips of material coming out of the nanofac. The strips floated in the assembler’s own g-buffer zone as robotic arms moved in quick, precise motions to stitch them together and cut out the grommets. The nanofac spit out the pieces needed to build the rest of the chute’s subassembly. Gan took the whole thing out, socketed it into the kit and plugged it in. Gan was sealing the top onto the
kit when another set of green lights flashed. He didn’t sit down this time. Instead he held onto the kit and engaged his foot mags. Gan felt another brief, gentle rumble. Anticipating a soon-coming re-entry, Gan finished sealing the lid on the kit and then set it into one of the big locking drawers under the worktable. Then he sat down.

  As he expected, the lights flared blue, the alarms rang and once again, the ship shuddered as it rushed into the atmosphere of their destination.

  Once the shuddering died back down Gan finished the job. He mounted a series of magnetic feet onto the edges of the kit, so he could wear it on his back. Then he tried it on. It was heavy, forty kilos and more than double the weight of the Shaumri version, but it would do. All he had to do was carry it to the airlock, and by the time he landed, he would never see it again.

  It took a minute for his smartskin to find and pair up with the connectors on the kit. As the process continued his HUD displayed new information. It showed the increased power and O2 reserves and displayed them both as empty, which was expected. He could charge up the cells and fill the oxygen tank later. He also saw and sensed the controls coming on line. Word prompts for the different commands that would activate the kit’s various functions lit up on his HUD. Gan controlled everything through thought prompts picked up by the neural lace in his smartskin. Old technology for the Shaumri but new for the Alliance. It meant he didn’t have to speak commands or, worse, use his eyes to give the suit commands. He thought, and it happened, slightly more complex than the decision to move an arm or leg.

  He walked around with it on and felt the weight pulling him down and backwards. It would be heavier once the glider was incorporated and 02 cannister filled. Gan considered the tests he would have liked to do but wouldn’t get a chance to, which meant he would be flying into enemy airspace with untested equipment. Gan sighed, but remembered Remnant’s words. Do what you can, trust to the Master what you can’t. That adage was about to be put to the test.

  Chapter Forty-Four:

  Strangers and Exiles

  Since the Jessamine executed her N-space jump, every second brought Ashla farther from home than she’d ever been. She’d visited every planet and major station in her own system as part of being the system’s sweetheart—a title she still wasn’t comfortable with—but she’d never left Antarus. And now she was sitting in the ship’s forward airlock getting ready to disembark onto an alien planet.

  Her guilt and fear for Cel and Lita stained her excitement for the chance to step out onto the surface of an alien world. Ashla wanted to be heartbroken for her friends and bodyguards who were suffering for her freedom. She wanted to seclude herself in her cabin, avoiding food and sleep, and not give a second thought to the adventure waiting just outside the airlock. It was Dothin that turned her around.

  “They’re in prison so you didn’t have to be,” he said. “They would want you to enjoy your freedom. They did what they did so you wouldn’t have to spend anymore sleepless nights fearing for your safety. Besides, the ship has to sit in dock for repairs anyway. It’s not like you can speed up our return trip by torturing yourself.”

  She knew Dothin was right. What’s more, she didn’t have the emotional energy to sit and be sad. Promising herself she would make it up to Cel and Lita, Ashla agreed to go on a sightseeing tour.

  Ashla’s link had given her the basics of Gazi Sho, also known as Gazi Prime or Gazi Two. The second planet of the Gazi system, Gazi Sho revolved around her Class 3 red giant sun at a distance of seven AU. It was a harsh, hot world with a thin atmosphere habitable only to the Baragazi. Ashla’s link told her the Baragazi had a unique respiratory system wherein they could store air in times of rest and use it for quick bouts of exertion.

  Nix and Dothin sat across from her, equally excited to step out onto an alien planet. They all had helmets and air tanks stowed and ready for landing. Dothin was giving Nix some instructions.

  “Just keep your eyes pointed at the ground at first,” he said. “Slowly lift your gaze to the horizon, and never look straight up.”

  “Okay, Okay,” Nix said. “I got it. Don’t worry.”

  Ashla had to remember that Nix had never left Lodebar Station. That wasn’t so odd. Lots of people never left their home planet or station. Lodebar was big and it had some huge spaces in it. It wasn’t like some deep-space mining stations that were little more than a few rooms and lots of tight corridors dug into the rock of a planetoid. But the idea that Nix had never seen a real sky baffled Ashla. Nix was like a rat that had lived his whole life in a maze. Ashla didn’t like thinking of Nix that way though.

  “Do you know anything about where on the planet we’re landing?” Ashla asked.

  Dothin shrugged. “Not much. The Captain says most of the Baragazi cities that cater to outsiders are underground, so probably someplace with a lot of open space, or so I hope.”

  “Me too,” Ashla said.

  “Where’s Gan?” Dothin asked. “I thought he’d be here to disembark with us.”

  “He’s still busy working on his re-entry kit,” Nix said.

  “His what?” Ashla said. She didn’t want to talk about the Shaumri, but anything was better than the waiting.

  “His re-entry kit,” Nix repeated. “He’s planning to jump out of a ship in orbit and fall to the surface of Eltar to save her.”

  No one needed clarification for who “her” was.

  “How?” Ashla asked. “As far as I know that’s a risky process, noisy too. The Alliance would probably shoot him out of the sky before his parachute deployed.”

  “Not the way he plans it,” Nix said. “He said his kit can keep him cool, fast and stealthy.”

  Ashla opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the landing alarms. Ashla could feel subtle shifts as the Jessamine slowed and angled herself towards her berth. The landing gear lowered with a series of deep whines and then the ship set down .

  “All I’m saying,” Vance Gosen said as he entered the compartment, “is we could have—” He stopped upon casting his eyes on Ashla and the others.

  “Could have what?” Dothin asked. Since Ashla had gotten the chance to know Dothin, she could notice the touch of steel in his eyes as he looked up at Captain Kol’s protégé. Dothin had taken...not exactly a dislike to Vance, but a reservation concerning him. Ashla would have loved to sit back and enjoy watching Vance come to a boil under Dothin’s gaze, but Jac Lanjer stepped in behind him.

  “Hi, Jac!” Ashla said, waving.

  “Ms. Vares,” Jac said back. He blinked with those black nictitating membranes. “Come to see the wilds of Gazi Sho for yourself?”

  Ashla nodded. “I have. I have never been to an alien planet before...” She gave a stunted gasp. “I mean, um.”

  Jac waived her embarrassment away. “No offense taken. I’ve been gone so long and been to so many other planets that Gazi Sho is almost alien to me too.”

  “Nothing,” Vance said over top of him, involved in his own conversation with Dothin. “And definitely not your—”

  “But you grew up here, right?” Ashla asked.

  Captain Kol stepped into the now tight confines of the forward airlock and halted all conversations. “Alright,” he said, cutting through the chatter. He grabbed himself a helmet and air supply and strapped it on. “Put your cans on or leave the lock.”

  Ashla grabbed her own helmet and air supply and strapped it on. The others followed suit as well, all but Jac. He simply took a deep breath. Ashla kept waiting for him to blow it out like she would have and then she remembered what her link had said about Jac’s kind.

  “Everybody buttoned up?” the Captain said.

  Ashla attached her link to her wrist and set it to track both her oxygen supply and external information. She accepted a communications channel from the Captain and could hear everyone in the room breathing like she couldn’t have before.

  “Remember what I told you,” Dothin said. He was looking at Nix, but the conversation was as private as an o
pen radio broadcast.

  Nix’s face went red. His eyes flicked around at everyone. Ashla tried to look away before he looked at her. She didn’t want to increase his embarrassment. “I know,” he said.

  Everyone else signaled that they were ready and Captain Kol tapped the button to cycle the airlock. Ashla watched the airlock control console as it ran through its decontamination phase.

  Ashla, closest to the door, other than Dothin, took the descending ladder first, stepping onto it even before its magnetic feet hit the ground. She kept her eyes on the steps as she descended, partially to keep from falling but mostly to give her the chance to take the vista in with one big look. The hot air slapped her in the gut and she started sweating almost immediately. She was thankful that at least her air supply was blowing cool oxygen into her face. The ground below the ladder wasn’t ground, it was metal decking blown over with sand caught in every seam. She took a few steps off the ladder and looked.

  To her disappointment the Jessamine had landed in some kind of bay tunneled into a wide canyon. Across the canyon she saw several other landing pads dug into the stony walls with ships of varying descriptions in several of them. People, mostly Baragazi, walked along landings and windowed corridors between the bays. In one spot a cylindrical building protruded from the rock, maybe a hotel.

  Ashla’s shoulders slumped. All she could see from where she stood was the thinnest sliver of a yellow sky. A thin hand spidered onto her shoulder. She looked. Jac stood beside her.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll show you how to get to the surface.”

  Ashla smiled up at him, hope restored. She turned and found the Captain and Vance coming down and behind them, Dothin and Nix. Dothin took one look around and said, “Well, I think you’re okay, we’re in a covered bay.”

  Ashla couldn’t help but love Dothin. As different as he was to her own father he had the same simple patience with Nix that her father often displayed with her. Nix would get frustrated, embarrassed, flippant, but Dothin always responded with calm, even responses.