All their new radio telescope needed now was a receiver array. Which just happened to be packed into crates in Atlantis’s cargo bay.
Kirkland came floating up to Jian as he took inventory of the equipment. Again.
“How many more times are you going to double-check those crates? We’re in a sealed, pressurized tube. If they suddenly go missing, it’ll be the least of our problems.”
“I know. It’s just, I…”
“Want to make sure it’s done right,” Kirkland finished for him. He nodded. “You always obsessively checked your answers on the orbital mechanics tests, too. You wanted the rest of the class to think you were being thorough. But I knew you were scared of getting the answer wrong.”
“And you weren’t?” Jian let a little more bitterness slip into his tone than he meant to.
Kirkland shrugged, ignoring it. “I knew there was no point second-guessing myself. I always take my best shot on the first pass.”
“Guess you never made a pass at me, then.”
“Damn right I didn’t. Spoiled son of the captain? Sorry, Jian. You’re cute, but I’m not going to be someone’s ornament.”
“Obviously not. Ornaments are pretty.” Jian flinched as the punch landed solidly on his shoulder and sent them both drifting away from each other. “Ow! You just struck a superior officer!”
“So go tell daddy, and I’ll tell him what you said to earn it.”
Jian put up his hands in surrender. “Anything but that. He’s still trying to set us up.”
“Since when?”
“C’mon. Do you think the captain invites all pilot potentials over for Chinese New Year? In his penthouse?”
“Point. What year is it on that calendar anyway?”
“Hell if I know. Iguana?”
Kirkland’s face switched from playful to pensive. She nodded toward the crates. “You really think this is necessary? It’s been hundreds of years. We’re twelve lightyears away from the scene of the crime. What makes you think they’re even looking for us?”
“I hope they aren’t. I hope they haven’t given us ants a second thought in centuries. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for them. Even if it’s just to stay out from under their boot.”
“That’s reasonable, I suppose. Still, it’s a lot of resources and man hours to spend.”
Jian shrugged. “Let’s hope it’s all a big waste.”
“I’ll drink to that when we get back.”
“It’s a date,” Jian teased.
“That’s one thing it isn’t.” She pushed away, deeper into the cargo bay.
Jian returned to the flight deck and to his private sleeping alcove. It was barely larger than he was, but in micro grav it felt larger, and he didn’t have to share it with anyone. Once settled in, he turned on the screen and flipped through his messages. There were well-wishes from his friends and flight classmates, a personal message from his father that he left unopened, and…
Ah, what’s this? A vid message from Benexx. Jian opened the file and hit “Play.”
“Hey stud,” said the Atlantian in flawless, unaccented English. It was zer first language, after all. “Sorry this is just a recording. We’re going to be down by the lake when you launch and there’s no com tower there yet.” Jian glanced down at the time/date stamp in the corner. Four days ago. Ze must’ve set up a time delay on the delivery.
“Anyway,” ze continued. “Summer is wrapping up. I’ve got less than a week left before I have to go back to Shambhala and everything that comes with it. You know the score.”
He did. Ze’d been nothing but a star-struck kid when Jian was already an adolescent. Kind of a pest, really. His father was friends with zer parents, and he’d insisted Jian humor zer during their frequent contacts. But ze’d grown into a symbol of unity for both of their people, and something of a celebrity in zer own right. It wasn’t a role ze was particularly comfortable with. He could relate.
“I just wanted to say good luck on your big first mission, hot shot. I’m sure you’ll do great. And don’t be mad at your dad if he tries to get mushy. He’s proud of you, you know. This was a good summer, like the ones we used to have. Lazy days and late nights. Sakiko says hello, by the way. Get home safe, and it wouldn’t kill you to come down the beanstalk for a visit.” Benexx backed zer face away from the camera so zer whole head and torso became visible. Then ze raised an arm in a mocking salute. “Cadet Benexx, signing off.”
The video ended. Jian watched it again, then closed the screen and quickly dozed off.
* * *
The rest of the outbound leg passed uneventfully. With nothing to do but coast along their ballistic trajectory, Jian and Kirkland took turns monitoring things on the flight deck while the other exercised, slept, or otherwise occupied themselves until it was time for their final approach.
The mottled, pockmarked surface of Varr loomed large in the cockpit windows, each crater and valley jumping out in stark relief under the bright glare of Tau Ceti’s sun. Without an atmosphere, there was no air to blur the details, which were sharper than any holo. It looked almost too real, and it kept growing. It was small for a moon. But even a small moon was a gargantuan object on the scale of human beings.
Jian swallowed. “Looks a lot bigger from here.”
“Nervous, Ace?” Kirkland teased.
“Yeah, a little. I’ve never flown this close to a planetary body before.”
“You’ve been up and down the beanstalk dozens of times.”
“That’s different. The tether means nothing can go wrong. Well, almost nothing.”
Kirkland nodded. “It’s fine. We’ve been through this a hundred times in simulation. Even a few with a mangy engine.”
“Yeah…” Jian keyed up the comlink back to the Ark. “Flight, Atlantis. We’re about to begin terminal maneuvers for our approach to Varr. Priming main engines for burn.” There was a slight pause as the message covered the distance between them.
“Atlantis, Flight. Acknowledge terminal approach. Good luck.”
Jian lit the mains on minimum power just to get them warmed up. He left the number four motor in standby. Satisfied that the other five would burn when he opened the taps, Jian triggered maneuvering thrusters on the nose to flip the shuttle and get the mains pointed opposite their direction of travel. They had a lot of velocity to bleed off before they could insert into orbit around the low-mass moon.
Jian made a final adjustment to their trim, then put hands on the throttles. “Here we go, kids. Hold on tight.”
A few bruising minutes later, they’d slowed to just over a kilometer per second at an altitude of fifteen kilometers above Varr.
“We’re in. Everybody relax, but stay buckled up.”
Kirkland pointed to a discolored patch near the horizon. “There’s the Helium-3 field.”
Jian nodded and enlarged the image using the feed from the shuttle’s forward camera. Parallel rows of turned regolith hugged the uneven terrain, marking where the autonomous harvesters had already done their work. Two of the machines were still busy churning through the silt. The third, not so much. Jian reoriented the camera and zoomed in on the stricken machine, which was sitting at an odd angle, as though it had fallen halfway into a sinkhole.
Kirkland whistled and looked over her shoulder at the techs. “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, fellas.” A chorus of groans revealed their feelings of the prospect.
“Think we have time to land this boat?” Kirkland asked.
Jian shook his head. “Nah. Let’s do a flyby and survey the scene for the best LZ. We’ll catch it on the next orbit. That’ll give us a chance to check out the telescope site on the far side as well.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Their orbit carried the Atlantis closer to the field until it was directly underneath. Looking straight down on the immobilized harvester, Jian could see the hole it had fallen into. It was irregularly shaped, and about half the size of the harvester. Its front
two drive wheels dangled over open space. Lidar put the hole’s depth at more than twenty meters.
“What do you think?” Kirkland asked. “Roof collapse? We know there are some lava tubes leftover here and there.”
“Well it’s definitely not a crater.” Just then, something in the lidar return caught his eye. It was sharp-edged and hexagonal, sitting on the floor of the cave, or whatever. And it wasn’t alone. Something reflective with an edge that was a perfect ninety-degree angle jutted out from the dark next to the hexagon. Jian swiped the image from the small lidar monitor to the main screen.
“Are you seeing this?” he asked.
Kirkland traced the shapes with her fingertip. “What the hell are those?”
“Hey, Madeja,” Jian called to the back of the cabin. “Unbuckle and come up here a minute.”
The nervous tech floated into view to his left. “Yes, commander?”
Jian pointed at the mystery objects. “Any ideas? Could they be parts of the harvester that broke off in the accident?”
“Not anything that I can think of.”
“Well then what is it?”
“I’m sorry, commander, but I have no idea.”
“Survey equipment, maybe? Probe? A crashed satellite?” Jian asked even as he opened a data query to search probe landing sites or equipment lost on the surface, but there were no landing or crash sites within a hundred and fifty kilometers. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Well if we didn’t put it there,” Kirkland said. The implication of the question floated in the air between them.
Despite the zero gee, Jian’s stomach sank.
“That’s not supposed to be there.”
Two
Varr rose above the horizon as night crept over the village of G’tel. Alone in the long-abandoned signal tower, Benexx watched the small moon slowly gain altitude against the dark ocean of stars. Few came up here anymore. Not since the road network had been supplied with human-built radios. Once their proudest technological achievement, the signal tower was now little more than a tree fort for village kids.
In truth, calling G’tel a “village” was a misnomer. In the fifteen years since the humans’ appearance on the continent, the population had exploded. For the first time, houses were being built well outside of the village’s ring of protective halo trees. Where once crops had grown in the sun, rings of streets had been laid down. New three-, four-, and now even five-level buildings were being erected as fast as the mudstone could set.
As the village grew, human advisors helped plan for new issues that cropped up, such as infrastructure, aqueducts, and sanitation. All this development was necessary to keep up with the growth fueled by the twin booms in both fertility and immigration. G’tel was now the place on the road network for trade, sitting as it did next to the largest landing strip, and only sea port, on the entire continent. And with the explosive increases in crop yields owed to the humans’ desalinization plant and irrigation channels, there was finally enough food to feed all those hungry mouths. The days of culling new clutches were fading into memory.
Which was just fine with Benexx. Ze’d narrowly escaped being decapitated only moments after zer birth, along with every other member of zer clutch, save four. It was a barbaric practice, one ze’d only been spared from by the intervention of zer father, Bryan Benson. Benexx had never bothered to search out zer biological parents. Ze didn’t feel the need.
“Ah, there you are, Benexx,” a familiar voice called from below. It was Uncle Kexx, G’tel’s long-serving truth-digger. Ze was shadowed as always by zer human apprentice, Sakiko, who was in turn shadowed by Gamera, an orphaned ulik she’d adopted as a pup.
“We wondered where you’d run off to before the evening cleansing,” Kexx said.
“Just wanted to watch one more sunset over the plains,” Benexx called down.
“Well, don’t be too late. The evening cleansing is starting soon and you have an early flight tomorrow.”
“Yes, uncle.”
“Goodnight.” Kexx said something to Sakiko in Atlantian, a little too quiet and fast for Benexx to pick up, then headed back down the trail to the old village inside the ring of trees. Zer house was there, near the outskirts, as it had been since before Benexx was born. Sakiko remained behind and started up the ladder to join zer at the top, while Gamera whined softly at the base of the tower before stomping down a bed in the underbrush and lying down to wait for her return.
Sakiko sat down. “Varr’s bright tonight.”
Benexx nodded. “The Atlantis should be landing just about now.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because it’s Jian Feng’s first mission. He’s kept me updated.”
“You mean he’s been sending you love letters,” Sakiko said, then made a kissing face. She was three years older than Benexx, but because of how long it took humans to develop she still acted less mature.
“We’re just friends!” Benexx punched Sakiko in the shoulder to emphasize the point.
“Ow!” she protested. “That hurt!”
“Whatever, wuss.” Benexx wiggled zer four tentacle-like fingers. “I don’t even have hand bones.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
They made an odd pair, Benexx and Sakiko. The Atlantian raised among humans and the human raised among Atlantians. In many ways, Sakiko was more accepted among the people of G’tel than Benexx was. She knew their language because it was hers too, while Benexx still struggled with the different dialects. She’d grown up in their clothes, (with some small additions for the sake of modesty), their food, and their rituals. She was Kexx’s chosen protégée for village truth-digger, and her mother, Mei, was the respected and beloved ambassador from the human colony.
Benexx was… none of those things. Back home in Shambhala, ze was an unwilling celebrity. The adopted Atlantian child of humankind’s greatest living hero. A symbol of the Trident between all the peoples of the planet. But here, surrounded by zer people, Benexx was a curiosity. The bearer who wouldn’t bear, talked funny, and could never get zer skinglow right. The villagers weren’t openly hostile to zer, but they could be aloof, never quite sure what to do with zer.
Benexx loved it. The Varr cycle ze spent every summer in G’tel were some of the quietest, most relaxing days ze had all year. But now, break was coming to an end.
“What is he doing?” Sakiko asked.
“Hmm? Who?”
“Jian,” she pointed at Varr. “Up there.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. They’re fixing a busted helium harvester or something.”
Sakiko nodded. “Dangerous?”
“Everything in space is dangerous. But I don’t think this is particularly so.”
“Still, it’s kinda hot, right? Commanding a shuttle mission.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Benexx said.
“Oh come on,” Sakiko prodded. “That’s sexy.”
“Now whose boyfriend is he?” Benexx teased. “I don’t have any of those parts, remember? And even if I did, they wouldn’t line up with anything your people have.”
Sakiko smirked. “That’s no obstacle to the curious.”
Benexx put zer fingers over zer earholes. “Lalalalala…”
“There are even some adaptors…”
“LALALALA!”
Sakiko laughed at her friend’s discomfort. “You look ridiculous.”
Benexx sighed. “I’m going to miss this.”
“What?”
“The peace and quiet, mostly.”
“What quiet?” Sakiko asked incredulously. “It’s a madhouse around here. G’tel has quintupled in size in the last ten years.”
“Yeah, to fifteen-thousand. Shambhala is fifty thousand and counting, with transit cars and quadcopters and drones and the spaceport. Humans and Atlantians running about at all hours. The noise never stops. At least G’tel still sleeps at night.”
“So stay here,” Sakiko said. “Mom loves you. We already keep your room open when yo
u’re not here.”
“I can’t. My parents would never allow it.”
“You can. You’ll be fifteen in a few days and can make your own choices.”
“It’s not that simple, Kiko. I’m… important there.”
“Yeah, as a symbol of yadda, yadda, yadda. You hate that shit.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not important. Besides, I’ve started teaching the immigrants in the native quarter. Who else can do that as well as I can?”
“And you enjoy it?”
Benexx shrugged. “I’m starting to, yeah.”
They sat in amicable silence for a long moment. “So, your great bird leaves in the morning?” Sakiko asked, using the Atlantian phrase for “airplane”.
“Yes.”
“Last night in G’tel until next summer?”
“Yeess?”
“Want to go prank Chief Kuul’s house?”
Benexx smiled broadly. “Absolutely.”
* * *
Benexx was already on the plane ride home by the time Chief Kuul saw what they’d done to the statue commemorating the Battle of the Black Bridge in zer courtyard. Ze’d had it commissioned not long after ascending to Chief after Tuko died… er, returned. At six meters tall, it depicted the famous moment when Kuul, run through the hip by a Dweller spear, fired a borrowed rifle back into the encroaching horde while Bryan Benson carried zer across his shoulders to safety.
The sculptors had, out of deference to their new Chief, taken some generous liberties with the proportions of the statue’s figures, especially where Kuul’s muscle definition was concerned. Benexx and Sakiko had added their own artistic flourishes in the form of garishly colored flowers and ink paste strategically placed to be as unflattering to Kuul’s Chiefly sensibilities as possible. Benexx didn’t really understand the Atlantian social taboos their display was crossing, but Sakiko assured zer they were not only dead on the mark, but would be quite a chore to clean up once the ink paste set.
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