by Mark Wandrey
Minu’s biggest problem was monotony. Get up, have breakfast, meet her team, lessons, afternoon meeting, lessons, dinner, lessons, and finally bed. Not what she’d hoped for as a Chosen. That first exciting mission into the frontier, while catastrophic in ways, had given her a taste of what it could be like. She found herself proposing field research missions to Bjorn with increasingly outrageous goals. While Bjorn might have been more than slightly crazy, he was a damn good coordinator.
“Are you that desperate to get out of the lab?” Minu looked up from her coffee to see Bjorn standing in the doorway of her office, his white hair as wild as always. He didn’t appear to have any malfunctioning anti-gravity devices with him.
“Sir,” she said and stood. He held a data chip in his hand, and she knew it was her most recent proposal for a field mission. “Desperate? I don’t understand.”
“You don’t, eh? Nine mission proposals, one per week, each one more extravagent than the last. I know you’ve been taking classes and have earned one degree with plans for another. I’m encouraged that you’re taking your position seriously, but aren’t your classes and your duties keeping you occupied?”
“Occupied, yes. Challenged, no.”
“Hmm,” he said, and she waited for him to chew her out. “Okay, I can understand that. Even though I was never a scout, I can recognize cabin fever.” He held up the chip in his aged fingers. “As amusing as this last proposal is on the surface, it has some teeth to it.” Minu tried to quickly recall her most recent request. She must have looked confused, because he laughed and shook his head. “I thought I was the absent-minded one around here. You wanted to go back to GBX49881 on a follow up mission and check out the species called Squeen.”
“Oh, right, sorry. I’d love to lead that mission.”
“You’d love to lead any mission,” he mumbled as he dug in a pocket. Minu did her best not to grin, the excitement already building in the pit of her stomach. “You have a go, scheduled for next Monday, and approved by Dram.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No problem. I want to know more about that species, which shouldn’t be there. See what you can dig up.”
* * *
Julast 9th, 516 AE
Squeen Archeological Dig, GBX49881, Galactic Frontier
Minu found being back on GBX49881 more than a little surreal. The world was unchanged, a sand-filled blast furnace bereft of almost all water, and home to the ruins of what might once have been a regal city. This time she had twenty scouts, a logistics person (Cherise), her own science team, and a five-man team of archaeologists. This was a full-blown field operation, and she was in charge!
The archaeologists didn’t try to disguise their unhappiness at being uprooted from a ‘very important and historically significant dig’ on Bellatrix and rudely taken into the field. Minu began to understand that her assignment to Science was a sort of punishment. I wonder who wants me out of the way, and if it has anything to do with my name being out of order on the monument wall?
Still, once the new Science group was on the frontier and fully briefed on what they might find, the leader of the archaeologists, a middle-aged five-star named Sam Cordova, realized there was a potential discovery in the offing. That hope melted like an ice cube in the afternoon sun on GBX49881, when they discovered the Squeen encampment was gone.
“Are you sure this is the right location?” Cordova asked as they walked through the scant remains of what had clearly been a modest-sized camp, and not the tiny town Minu and her team remembered seeing.
“Without a doubt,” Pip confirmed. Cordova might have asked Minu, but Pip was a fellow scientist. He nodded his head.
“See what you can find, anyway,” Minu ordered, so they set up and began working it like any potential find.
Unlike the previous mission, they had equipped for the climate. Cherise and several scouts set up a series of solar screens to shield the camp and provide extra power. A medium-sized EPC was readied, and in no time, they had power, water, and cool air. If they didn’t overuse the cooling units, the solar shields kept the EPC charged and absorbed the worst of the solar radiation. Minu helped as much as possible, but they finished the grunt work quickly, and the scientists got down to business. The scouts set a defensive perimeter. As commander, she had the least to do. As usual, she made a nuisance of herself, until Pip quietly asked her to stay out of the way.
With a sense of disappointment, she retreated to her sleeping area under the sun shields and started going over her coursework. Every so often someone would stop by with information or a detail that needed her attention; other than that, she had plenty of time to study. It was a comfortable place to spend the days, as outside the screens, the temp was toping fifty-five by mid-day, which was even warmer than the last trip. Minu suspected their previous trip was during the cold season.
Nights were a different matter, as the temperature plummeted to less than ten degrees. One very clear night it was five. Luckily, a few wispy clouds helped retain some of the planet’s daytime heat. Pip and a pair of scientists improvised a thermal battery, using banks of rocks baked in the sun during the day, to provide heat in the tents at night. It worked well to conserve precious power for instruments, instead of using the heaters.
While the scientists set up their operation in what was once the squatter’s camp, Minu took a team of scouts and gave the town a thorough going over. Her team had scoured the town months ago, so she didn’t expect to find anything new. However, the Rasa had come here for a reason, and she wanted to know what it was. It was only a matter of time before she ended up at the remains of the Rasa camp next to the portal. They found no evidence that other Rasa had investigated later. A pair of scouts moved methodically around the square as she squatted next to the final resting place of the six beings she’d helped kill. Charred bones were all that remained. After the search, she set the scouts loose and went back to her studies.
On the third day, a cold front came through and the temperature only got up to thirty. Minu took the opportunity to escape the tent with its air conditioning and sun screens. The walk back to the town square was refreshing. She crossed the square, ignoring the piled bones, and approached the portal. The portal dais always felt slightly cool, and the crumbling town’s walls gave ample shade. It was a nice place to sit, with reduced flow from the blast furnace blowing through her blazing red hair. She found it hard to concentrate; after the heat, the weather was quite enjoyable. Her attention wandered to the portal behind her, glowing and active because she sat on the dais. She’d never stared into the swirling milky-white force fields of a portal on standby. The image was strangely compelling.
Minu put her computer tablet down and stood up, turned around, and approached the edge. Unlike the dais, the portal itself wasn’t real; the archway was a holographic image to allow users to see the perimeter and avoid striking an edge. There was nothing to touch in standby. If she reached out, her hand would just go through the image. Still, she leaned closer to examine the ever-changing patterns. A deep feeling of calm spread through her, like she hadn’t felt in many months.
Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder, and she turned with a jerk. One of the scouts was looking at her, a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she replied, “why?”
“You’ve been standing there staring at the portal for half an hour.”
It had felt like moments, and that confused her. Aside from a few times while cramming for tests during training, Minu had never ‘lost track of time.’ She was normally very aware of how long she’d been at a task. It was disconcerting. “It’s mesmerizing,” she said lamely, “don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the scout said and turned to leave. Minu avoided looking back at the portal, not wanting to space out again. Instead, she picked up her tablet and returned to the tent.
“I guess I’m just working too hard,” she muttered out loud to herself. “Great, now I’m t
alking to myself!”
On the morning of the fifth day Minu awoke to excited conversation among the scientists. She slipped on her boots and unzipped the tent. There was no need to dress; it was too cold at night to undress. “What’s going on?” she asked the first scientist she came to.
“We’ve found some archaeological evidence,” he explained. She looked at him expectantly, and he started on about a fossil record or some such, and her eyes started to glaze over.
“Where’s Pip?” The scientist looked annoyed that his explanation wasn’t sufficient and gestured toward the dig site. She thanked him and left the cover of the solar shields. Under the glaring direct light of the local sun, she reached into a pocket and slipped on her hood. The thermal reflective material covering her head and eyes might make her look like a skier, but at least she could see again and wouldn’t burn like a piece of toast. Being a redhead had its downsides.
The dig was a few hundred meters from camp, which was standard procedure according to the archaeologists. Minu would have rather had it within the camp and the solar screens. As she got close, she was amazed at how far the dig had progressed. A couple of days ago, it was just a shallow trench. Now there was a pit three meters on a side and more than five meters deep. She stopped by the edge next to a ladder and looked down. A laser grid projected by a device on the pit rim covered the floor. The scientists, gathered by a single grid square, were having an animated conversation, while Pip knelt and dusted something off with a tiny brush. Minu climbed down to join them. “What do we have?” she asked.
Pip straightened up and shook his head. “I’m not sure if this is convincing or not,” he said.
“I might have a better idea if you let me in on whatever it is you’ve found.”
“Cordova is the archaeologist.” The older man stood and walked over with a basket holding several artifacts covered in dirt.
“The Squeen weren’t squatters,” he explained and showed her what they’d found. First, there were several bones. Most looked too common to prove anything, except one was obviously a rodent-like skull with a very large cranial capacity. Another scientist showed Minu how they’d scanned and reconstructed the skull with muscle and skin. The being before her was unmistakably a Squeen.
“Why is that significant?” Minu asked. “Couldn’t they just be long-term squatters?”
“Squatting for more than a million years?” Cordova asked. “The camp has been used repeatedly in the last few thousand years. The Squeen’s presence here dates back to their origin as an intelligent species.” He showed her several other artifacts, including handmade tools and fragments of pottery. “These items speak of a period in this world’s past when this was an arboreal forest. We also found fish bones and remnants of basketwork made from deciduous tree bark.”
“So they were a primitive species a million years ago?”
“Probably less,” he said and pointed to another hole a few feet away. Minu leaned over and looked down. The hole went down about six meters, and she could see some wetness at the bottom. “That’s the level at which we found these primitive examples of the Squeen. We found these at this level.” Pointing at the level they were currently standing in, he handed her another basket full of decayed Concordian technology, including a computer chip and an EPC. “The EPC still holds a partial charge, and the chip likely holds data.”
“What’s on it?”
“We can’t be sure; the interface contacts are corroded. We can fix that back on Bellatrix.”
“Put this all together for me.” Minu asked. “I’m a little confused, and I’m a few dozen degrees short of keeping up.”
Pip took over. “The Squeen are native to this world. Half a million years ago they lived in this place hunting, fishing, and making baskets, during what looks like their stone-age period.” He glanced at Cordova who nodded. “Sometime between then and about twenty thousand years ago, they joined the Concordia and became a technological society.” He went over to the dig’s wall and pointed at layers of deposited sediment. “About a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, this planet was rendered uninhabitable.”
“Rendered? You mean, purposely destroyed? How?”
“No idea.” All the other scientists who were listening shrugged or shook their heads. “All we know is it was violent and complete. Possibly some sort of space-based weapons. This world was so radioactive, not even cockroaches could survive. In the time since, it’s been slowly recovering. The radiation on the surface is gone.”
“But the water table is still hot,” Minu said and Pip nodded in agreement. “So, someone killed this planet to get the Squeen, or killed the Squeen and got the planet. Or it was all some celestial accident…”
“Who knows?”
“Some of them survived,” she said, “we saw them. Could it have been a primitive tribe that’s nomadic and wandering the planet?
“Not a chance,” Cordova said, “there’s probably a living sea or two, somewhere, but not near here. And it’s unlikely there’s much more than single celled organisms and plankton living there. If the Squeen were living in the way you saw them, they’d never survive long enough to get to that sea on foot. This planet is a death trap.”
“That’s what doesn’t add up.” Minu said, feeling exasperated. “They looked primitive, so they’re not from off-world. But they must have been advanced, or they couldn’t live here.”
“Like Pip said, it’s an enigma,” Cordova agreed.
“So,” Minu said to Pip, “if those Squeen we saw aren’t from here, where are they from?”
“We don’t know, but they can’t be considered squatters if they evolved on this world.” His answer was straightforward and logical. “The only exception to the leasehold rule is if you evolved on the planet, and that doesn’t happen very often.”
“Why not?”
Pip looked around at the other scientists, none of which had anything more to offer. He scratched his chin as he answered. “The universe is a dangerous place.”
“Big help, thanks.” Again, none of them had anything else to offer. “The city back there?”
“It was the center of their population. Probably not destroyed because of the portal. It wouldn’t matter anyway; the ecosphere was crushed. The residents likely died slow and painful deaths.”
“Great, we have a few answers and twice as many new questions.” Pip and Cordova mirrored each other’s nods.
Minu supervised as they cleaned up the site, carefully filled in the excavation, and packed the gear. While they worked, she finished her report and helped them carry the equipment to the portal. In the end, all they had to show for a week’s work was a container full of crusty old artifacts, some bones, contradictory evidence, and one computer chip with very old data, possibly recipes or shipping records. Minu used her portal control rod to move them to FAX544; she was grateful she’d at least gotten off-world for a week.
* * * * *
Chapter 12
Julast 31st, 516 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
Minu stepped behind the old-fashioned polymer shield and thumbed the Concordian-made force field to life before nodding to the technician. A few meters away, instruments hummed and recorded the results as the technician carefully aimed the sensors.
“Ready?” Gregg asked. He’d volunteered to test this new weapon even before he’d seen it. He shouldered the contraption, which resembled a huge mess of pipes and wires connected by power cables. A rubber pad on one end acted as a butt stock, and a protruding handle acted as a pistol grip. With some concern, he leveled the ‘gun’ at a distant target and tried to aim. Since the contraption lacked any sort of sight, or even an obvious barrel, it was no easy task. “Tell me again why I don’t get to stand behind a force field?” he asked.
“You don’t do this sort of stuff all day long,” Minu explained patiently, “we’re sure it won’t explode, but there’s some small radiation splash.”
“Oh, that’s okay then!” Gr
egg said and eyed the weapon dubiously one more time. He finally settled for aiming it as best he could and pulled the trigger. There was a hum as power flowed, a little pop of light, and that was it. “Did it fire?”
“No energy spike,” the technician said. Gregg mumbled something disparaging and tried to fire again. This time the tech shook his head. Same results.
“Damn it,” Minu snarled and yelled into a microphone. “Pip, what the fuck?”
“I’m running the data trying to figure it out!” he yelled back. Even though the project was his brainchild, he’d opted to collate the data from the safety of their labs on the third floor. He said he needed more direct access to the main computers. Gregg muttered an uncomplimentary suggestion about what he should do with his computers.
“Tell me again,” Gregg said from where he cradled the non-functioning weapon in both hands, “why did Pip decide to test a power interface by building a hybrid monster gun?”
Minu couldn’t help laughing. “I think he was trying to kill two Kloth with one stone.”
“Can we avoid using the term kill?”
“Sorry. The interface project was Alijah’s pet. He figured out a way to adapt Mok-Tok EPC interfaces to our systems. The first model has a high-power transfer rate, and lab tests weren’t giving us the level of results we wanted. When I said we needed to up the power on the tests, Pip conveniently suggested this little toy he’d been working on in his spare time.”