by Joshua Guess
“Move forward,” the voice intoned. “Last warning.”
When Dex didn’t move, the floor beneath his feet began to warm. The voice filled the room once more. “In ten seconds, that grate will electrify. It probably won’t kill you, but I don’t know for sure. No one has tried it out yet.”
Dex moved.
The pack was large, the sort you took on a long camping trip, or so the networks told him. It would have been incredibly heavy for a normal person, but his engineered muscles handled it well enough. Not comfortable, sure, but he could move with the thing on his back.
When the door opened, he didn’t hesitate. His brain conjured a plethora of potential horrors, but giving him a pack full of what he assumed were supplies said something bizarre enough to fall outside the spectrum of his expectations might be going on.
The sun shone on the ground outside, and the door sealed shut behind him. These were the things Dex noticed:
The quality of light here was brighter than Earth normal, which was the standard for all ships and interiors of buildings across the Planetary Alliance. Sure, there was variation, but much like room temperature, most people were hard wired to feel comfortable within a certain range of luminosity. The ground in front of him was a mixture of sandy soil and broken stone, with tufts of blue-green vegetation sticking out in clumps. There were no fences—a surprise, since he was clearly a prisoner of some kind—and upon inspection of the building behind him, Dex thought whatever sort of prison this was, it had no guards. The cylindrical building was a prefabricated type, the sort of transit station you dropped in on a large cargo container. The ones he’d read about were autonomous. The voice probably belonged to an operator working remotely from a ship in orbit.
“What do I do now?” Dex said. There was no response. Apparently his instructions ended at the threshold to the outside world.
He sighed and muttered to himself. “Okay, then.”
Walking on a planet other than his own was still strangely exciting. The uneven ground rose and fell by as much as a meter in unpredictable waves, with many of the peaks topped with shelves of weathered stone. It was as if the bedrock here had rippled and frozen in place, then eroded over time to create the loose soil in the valleys between.
He noted that the building where his captured pod rested butted up against water. A few minutes of exploration allowed an outline to form. He was either on a very large island or at the edge of a continent. It was possible the vast expanse of water was an inland sea. He really had no way to know.
A few minutes of standing around trying to figure out the ideal direction to travel were wasted. There were no points of reference, no context to draw on. This place could be anywhere, and any given direction could lead to certain doom. Lacking information, Dex did what countless generations of scientists before him had, and just tried his luck.
Dex went north, or what he thought might be north, following the beach. Staying close to a source of water was ideal, even if it meant having to figure out a way to distill it into something potable. He tried to catalog and observe as he went, but this place was frustratingly bland. The rise and fall of the ground remained fairly constant, the green-gray ocean gave up no hint of sea life or even a change in the size of its waves. No new plants appeared.
The thought struck him after half an hour of walking that the homogeneous nature of this place might be the point. If you were planning to abduct people and tuck them away, putting them somewhere nondescript seemed like a good plan. There were more habitable worlds yet to be settled than the Alliance had people ready to settle them. He had to believe most of them were more enticing than this drab place.
He stopped when the sun began to dip toward the horizon and moved inland a few dozen meters. Dex nestled down into a wind-carved hollow beside a taller than average shelf of rock and took a careful inventory of what was in his bag. Clothing was on top, and this made him pause. The material was familiar to anyone who lived on a ship, a thick black fabric woven with expensive metamaterials and circuitry threads to regulate temperature. Dex had to slip into a similar outfit any time he needed to do work on the exterior of the ship—it was the lining of an EVA suit.
Beneath that he found a great deal of food in the form of dense nutrient cubes, the sort used as emergency rations for escape pods. Three liters of water sat beneath the cubes in sturdy metal tubes. Instructions were printed on each; apparently they had built-in filters to turn waste water into something he could drink.
And that was it. Food, water, and clothing. No tools, nothing he could make a shelter with. Not even rope. Everything but his own clothing and boots had been taken from him, so he didn’t even have the old-fashioned multi-function pocket knife Iona made for him in the machine shop.
The loss of the item plucked a chord in him, sending a note through his thoughts that resonated. He felt as if he might rattle apart as the emotions he had so carefully kept in check boiled and swirled.
He raised his head to the dusky sky and screamed. The sound was feral, furious. It tore at his throat and he didn’t care in the least. Who was he going to talk to, after all? Maybe the noise would attract trouble, maybe it wouldn’t. At least that would be interesting.
Once his fit of rage began to dwindle, Dex couldn’t help finding dark humor in his situation. Stranded and alone, at least for now, he was out of options. He, whose experimental genetic modifications gave him a mind like none before it in human history, who had escaped his home world through use of that gift, was stuck on a shitty beach with a bag of supplies and no good choices in front of him.
It was rare for Dex to find himself in a situation he couldn’t think his way out of, and he decided he didn’t like it at all.
A little while later he decided he might not actually be all that smart, because the distant scrabble of something large approaching his position whispered across the frozen dunes. But hey, at least yelling made him feel a bit better before he died.
5
Thanks to the information gathered by Iona through the sim network before they left, Grant didn’t meet prospective crew members entirely blind. Because of the secret nature of the Ghost Fleet, data about operatives was necessarily vague, but he didn’t need names or gender to make those first few initial decisions. The fleet used a numbers-based rating system for all agents, giving him length of service, a skills summary, and an effectiveness rating based around a handful of broad mission categories. If an agent had a high score in ship-to-ship operations but a low one in ground combat, that was enough to give Grant a starting point.
Which was why he found himself utterly floored by his very first meeting. He hoped to make the trip a short one by scheduling it first, as the applicant led a group of nine experienced and seasoned agents whose only sin was the bad luck of having their ship shot out from under them by a Threnody-backed pirate crew. While he had no preconceived notions, not caring if the agent was male, female, neither, other, or even elderly, he did not expect to find himself sitting across from an alien.
“I’m sorry, what did you say? I kind of zoned out,” Grant apologized.
The alien, leader of a group of trusted Alliance operatives, rasped out a good approximation of a human laugh. “It’s okay, sir. I know you’re not used to seeing any Gitk in Alliance space. Your reaction is a common one.”
Grant blushed, and could feel the disapproval radiate from Crash, who sat right next to him. “Again, Lieutenant Fen, I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to be rude. I’m just surprised. The few species we have dealings with generally keep to the edges of Alliance space no matter how hard we try to be inviting.”
Fen raised hands covered in tiny, almost invisible scales. Each was individually colored, ranging from pale yellow to light red, the shifting hues beautiful even in the harsh light of the rented conference room. “It’s really not, Captain. And it’s only lieutenant if you hire me and decide to give me the rank. The command structure of my old ship no longer applies. As for any questions you have ab
out how I ended up where I am, well, I’ll be happy to answer them. The short version is you’re not wrong. My parents settled on one of the fringe stations with some other Gitk. It’s Alliance territory, which made me a citizen.”
Fen slid a hand terminal across the table, a dossier loaded on the screen. The creature’s full name—Alfendranduszinforcal—stretched across the top. Grant glanced at the dossier but looked back up. “There’s no gender listing here. What pronouns should I use?”
Fen smiled, a very human expression. “I am female.”
Grant nodded, studying the alien woman for a few seconds. She was tall and bulky, though part of that could be the combat armor. Her features weren’t far off from human; same basic bone structure, with a lack of ears and a smaller, flatter nose. Her eyes were like a cat’s, with diamond-shaped pupils running vertically and deep blue irises.
The dossier was a throwaway copy, decrypted from a safe drive and one-use only. Grant didn’t think he’d need much convincing since the service record and personnel reports on it were exemplary.
He was halfway through the document and at the point where questions would be more enlightening than data alone when the buzz of an emergency communication lit up his terminal. No, not just his—Crash’s activated as well.
“Excuse me,” Grant said, snatching his terminal and opening the connection.
A sim appeared on the screen. He only knew this because the male in the rendered image included a data tag at the bottom of the screen identifying himself and his ship. It was risky, but the best way to be seen as a trusted source.
“Captain Stone, I have a message from Iona,” the sim said without hesitation or greeting. “Your crewman, Dex, has been abducted and taken out of the system by parties unknown. Your immediate return is requested.”
“What the fuck?” Grant said, shooting to his feet.
The sim flinched at the shout. “I’m attaching Iona’s text communication as well. I don’t know its contents, I was only asked to pass it along with the news about your friend.” The sim hesitated, frowning. “I’m sorry, sir. If there is anything I or my ship can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“We have to go,” Crash said. “The others will be stranded until we get the ship back to Rome. We can’t let the trail go cold.”
Grant knew it was desperate hope driving the words rather than her usual logic, because if the ship with Dex on it had left through the Cascade, there wasn’t much of a trail to follow.
He met Fen’s eyes. “Normally I’d go through all the hoops, but I’m probably going to need all the muscle I can get. You have ten seconds to decide if you want the job.”
Fen stood, tapped a wrist terminal, and reached out a hand. “I do, sir. But I won’t take advantage of these circumstances. We’ll help you get your friend back, standard rates, and at the end if you like the work we do, we’ll make it permanent. If not, we part with no hard feelings.”
Grant shook the hand. “Fen, I like you already. Get your people moving for the dock. We need to be gone ten minutes ago.”
“Already signaled them, sir,” Fen said. “We’ve been itching for a good hunt.”
*
There are a lot of good ways to introduce new members of the crew to their ship, and a long jaunt through a turbulent stretch of the Cascade wasn’t in the same universe as any of them. Fen’s people strapped down in the main bay and stayed clear during the hours of transition. Grant was happy for it, though the especially difficult journey made him wish there had been time to hire more than just guns.
The lack of a new engineering crewman didn’t become an issue, thankfully. They popped into real space again no worse for the wear. Grant immediately sent messages to his people on the surface of Rome, hoping to arrange a pickup to get everyone back on the ship.
This turned out to be unnecessary; Iona had gathered them all up and moved everyone to the orbital dock while the Seraphim made the jump from Rome.
All told, they only docked for an hour. Long enough for the crew to come aboard and to top off every tank in the ship. Grant hated to waste the time, but who knew when they’d be back in port again?
As soon as they were able, Krieger moved them far enough into the edges of the system to allow for a quick jump into the Cascade. Grant had everyone meet in the main bay, the only place large enough for the expanded crew.
“What do we have from the local government?” he asked the assembled group. “Anything that can help us track these fuckers down?”
Iona shook her head. “No. The freighter was registered under false ID, and it had some kind of engine upgrade or something I’ve never seen before.”
Batta grunted. “It maneuvered too quickly. Like its mass wasn’t a problem.”
“Isn’t that a thread we can pull on, then?” Grant asked with a frown. “That sounds like a gravity drive variation. New technology?”
Batta ran a hand over his beard. “Maybe. I’ll ask around. If anyone knows anything about tech that can negate mass, we’ll find ’em.”
Crash, leaning against the wall, put up a finger. “But the fact that you haven’t heard about it matters. You spend half your day in tech manuals or reading the newest papers on manifold physics.”
“Sure,” Batta said with a shrug. “But some of that is me trying to keep up with Dex, who ain’t here. It’s a big Alliance, Crash. Probably a hundred pieces of bleeding edge science out there I just haven’t come across yet.”
Lieutenant Fen, standing comfortably with arms behind her back, cleared her throat in a sandy rasp. “Can we speculate as to why he was taken? Does he have enemies we should take into account?”
The bridge crew shared a complicated set of glances. Grant, of course, had to take the lead on this one.
“Dex is from Threnody,” he said, eliciting precisely the level of surprise he expected. “I helped him escape more than a year ago. It’s possible his abduction was ordered by the ruling council there. They don’t like letting any of their experiments run free across the galaxy.”
Fen’s eyes narrowed. “My understanding was that everyone on that planet is genetically modified. Aren’t they all experiments?”
Grant raised his hands as if to say, yes, you see my point.
“Doesn’t seem like their style, though,” Grant said. “Threnody snatches people back once in a while, but they never cause a scene. They like their schemes quiet. Remember the weird piracy going on just as the Children showed up? That was them. Paid for a distraction through about twenty intermediaries just so they could start building a fleet of their own without anyone noticing. I think if they wanted Dex, they’d pay people in any of a hundred ports he might stop at and take him while he was out shopping. Not leave a witness behind.”
“There is one thing,” Iona said. “But I need to speak to the captain about it privately.”
Desperate for any help, Grant didn’t even question it. He stood and motioned for Iona to follow him. “We’ll be right back.”
They went into a storage room just off the main bay, a box with barely enough free space for them to stand. “What is it?” Grant asked.
“I tagged Dex with nanites,” she said. “It’s close to the top of the list of things sims aren’t supposed to do. No dissemination of our technology into other life forms. If the Navy finds out, I’m in deep shit.”
Grant let out a breath. “Okay, but how does that help us? We can’t track weak radio signals like that from a kilometer away, much less across half the sky.”
“No, we can’t,” Iona said. “But they’ll be busy. Those nanites will replicate and eventually construct a transmitter inside his body. Something that will wait passively for a handshake signal before turning on. When it’s ready, we’ll be able to catch it from anywhere inside whatever system they’re hiding him in.”
“It’s not much, but it’s more than we had five minutes ago,” Grant said. “Don’t worry. I’m not inclined to turn you in. We’ll still need to figure out some kind of starting poin
t, though. Otherwise we’d spend decades just hopping around looking at random.”
She nodded. “I think looking into the freighter is our best bet. I can sift through a tremendous volume of data looking for anything with a similar configuration. With Batta searching for anyone who might have given it a new sort of drive, we might find a point of intersection that will help us.”
Grant nodded and led them back out into the bay. He turned to the rest of the crew, trying to sound confident in ways he didn’t feel at that second.
“We’ll need to get Iona access to data feeds,” he told them. “Step one is a deep search for this ship, and that means looking through the kind of records only the main fleet can tap. Much as I wish we could tear off after Dex right now, we can’t. Not without some clue where he went. We’ll be heading for Athena station, and while we’re there I want Batta to interview new engineering crew. Fen, you and your people will be paid as agreed, but please give me warning if you decide the boredom is getting to be too much for you. I need reliable guns right now, but we need information first.”
“That won’t be an issue, sir,” Fen said.
“Good,” Grant said. “Because we’re going to find Dex and bring him home. If there are other captives with him, we’ll grab them, too. And I plan on making sure the people who took him never get a chance to do it again.”
6
Dex’s fight or flight response went into overdrive and struggled against his reason. This ended up freezing him in place as he hesitated not from fear, but from too many possible actions. He was like a machine given infinite options but no data to go on. Did he grab a chunk of rock and pop up to attack the approaching thing? Did he run? Maybe hunker down and hope it passed by.
Inaction won out, if not by conscious will.
The thing lumbered between two stony dunes a dozen meters away. It was about the size of a horse, covered in large, thick scales almost identical in color to the stone and sand. Its eight legs were stout with flat bottoms, trunk round and long but tapering into a long and supple tail. Its blunt head crowned into a ridge of scarred, thick bone or horn, creating a deep shelf for black eyes above its wide mouth.