Date Point: June 11y6m3w AV
Nicholas Patrick Memorial Hospital, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Martina Kovač
Martina was a Tech, and that meant she didn’t have to hang with the HEAT, physically… but fuck that. She went as hard as Adam could push her as a matter of principle, and her weekly PT sessions with him had always been a mix of business and the pleasure of his company before. Even more so now that they were together.
She was never going to be anywhere near as fast as him though, especially not at a dead run. She couldn’t hit the same top speed, nor sustain her top speed for as long. So after the phone call he’d taken in the middle of their session, she’d been left feeling briefly and absurdly like the coyote after the road runner had vanished over the horizon.
Adam’s dad had been airlifted to hospital.
For Adam’s sake, she’d pushed the pace. Crossed the river via the Francis Crick bridge then hammered the soles off her sneakers cutting through an alleyway off Riverside Drive and then through the wake of stunned people that Adam had carved through the crowd in New World Plaza.
The direct routes and shortcuts available on foot ended up being a much faster way to get to the hospital than calling a cab would have been anyway.
She arrived in the ER—or the A&E department, as the signs called it—only a minute or two behind Adam, and leaned against the wall to recover for three deep breaths.
Adam was unmeaningly terrorizing a nurse with his urgent questions, and Marty rescued the poor woman by simply laying her hand on his upper arm—his skin was actually hot to the touch. He gave her a desperate look, hugged her, then stumbled off into the corner to slump against the wall and sit down on the floor.
“…wouldn’t he, er, prefer the, er, the chair?” the nurse asked.
“He breaks them,” Marty said distractedly. “Look, please, we’re here for Gabriel Arés. He-”
“Yes, er…” The nurse cleared her throat and cleared her head. “Sorry, what’s your relationship with him?”
Marty aimed her thumb at Adam. “His son.”
“Ah, right. Yes. Erm… He’s in surgery right now. I’m afraid that’s all I know, but I’ll find out.”
“Thanks.”
Marty wiped the sweat off her face as the nurse made herself scarce, and turned as she heard the door opened.
She hadn’t actually seen Ava since Halloween, and right now Ava was looking just as miserable as Adam, to the obvious distress of the silky-haired pale brown border collie that was orbiting her knees and whining up at her.
She saw Adam in the corner and gave Marty an anguished look. “What’s-? How is-?”
Marty put an arm round her shoulders and helped her sit down. Hannah immediately poured herself into Ava’s lap and tried to lick her face. “He’s in surgery. That’s all we know.”
Ava swallowed, nodded, and hugged the dog tight. Hannah for her part gave Marty a patient look that said, in the weirdly expressive way of dogs everywhere, ’I’d say hello but I’m busy right now’, and let herself be hugged.
“Good dog,” Marty muttered and scratched Hannah behind the ears. She gave Ava a comforting rub on the upper back and went to sit next to Adam.
Gabe’s fiance Jessica was the last to arrive, in a cab with dark smears under her eyes where she’d wiped away diluted makeup.
One quick explanation later, they had nothing to do but sit and wait.
“I keep telling him!” Jess groaned. The way she kept running her hands through her hair was quickly pulling apart her schoolmarm bun.
“Like he was gonna listen,” Adam rumbled and looked up to somehow drag a brave joke out of somewhere. “He’s my dad after all. Where d’you think I get it from?”
“Oh, *Adam*…” Jess sighed. She looked sideways and gave Ava a hug. “The three of you will be the death of me…”
A slightly more comfortable silence settled in place, and Marty contented herself with being useful and supportive. She fetched vending machine coffee, called Rebar and explained what was going on, took Hannah for a quick walkies (and explained to a concerned porter that the dog was a support animal) and tried to ignore the way that fitful lumps of time were choking and gurgling past unevenly and arbitrarily.
Check the clock, twenty seconds since the last time. Check the clock again, twelve minutes. Check it a third time half an hour later, only to find that half hour was i n fact barely six minutes.
The tension was humming like a stressed cable when a tall Indian man in scrubs got their attention and invited them to come with him, to a cramped little office that they quickly decided couldn’t hold all of them. Fortunately, the corridor was quiet.
He introduced himself as Mister Gupta, a neurosurgeon.
“So. Mr. Arés suffered quite a nasty fall which left him with a fractured skull, a broken arm and some broken ribs,” he said. “He also suffered what we call a *’Coup-contrecoup injury’*”
Adam nodded and his face shifted unhappily. “I’m familiar with the term.”
“You’re a colleague?” Mister Gupta asked.
“Medic.”
“I see. Well, your father’s undergone a decompressive craniectomy to help with the cerebral edema. But he’s a very tough man considering, and the surgery went well. We’re going to keep him under for a few days just to give him time for the swelling on his brain to go down.”
“Prognosis?” Adam asked, quietly.
Gupta pursed his lips. “It’s always difficult to tell at this stage,” he said. “Frankly until we wake him up and I can assess him I won’t be sure, but I do confidently expect to be able to do that in a few days.”
“But nothing really alarming?” Adam asked. “No herniation?”
“Nothing too alarming,” Gupta promised. “He will need a few more operations once the swelling has gone down and he will almost certainly require therapy and rehab which might take months or even years for him to fully recover, but…”
Adam hung his head and nodded.
“It’s good news overall,” Gupta reassured him. “Your father is a tough man.”
He was unaware of what Marty suspected was probably going through his head right now; namely the supply of Cruezzir-Derivative sitting less than half a mile away, safe in the lockers of HMNB Folctha.
As Adam himself had demonstrated after his brush with nervejam, one big jab of that and injuries even more catastrophic than those Gabriel had suffered would be mended pretty much overnight. Nobody outside of the SOR even knew that he’d brushed so close to death and that was how it would stay.
To have that power and not use it… well, Marty had failed that particular test once. It had ended with a comparatively minor and acceptable punishment, but the Letter of Counselling in her permanent record was in no way tolerant of the notion of any future acts of charity involving classified medical resources.
Adam nodded, and shook Gupta’s hand. “Thank you,” he said.
The hospital had rooms available for close family to stay in overnight, and Jess was quickly persuaded (not that she resisted) to make use of one. Ava committed to fetching whatever she needed and Marty found herself tailing Adam outside, clearly at a loose end.
That had kinda been her day, really: Feeling slightly useless. She knew the value of just being there, but it didn’t feel like enough.
She took his hand. “Hey-”
“You know what sucks most?” Adam asked.
“What?”
“I’ve got some Crude on me right now,” Adam admitted. Of course, he was authorized to requisition it for training purposes.
“But you can’t give it to him,” Marty nodded. “The civvies would notice.”
“It ain’t even that.” Adam sighed and scrubbed at his nose. “…Dad always says things have to be done by the rules. Due process, you know? That was something he drilled into me hard. He’d be furious with me if I broke the rules for him.”
He sighed and turned to face her. “I hate feeling useless.”
Marty kissed him. “At least you’ve still got him. It coulda gone worse.”
“Yeah. But… yeah. You’re right. I just… Yeah.”
Marty knew that jumble of vague agreement. It meant he needed to get his thoughts straight.
Okay. Fine. There was a sure-fire way to achieve that.
“Fine. Look, Rebar got us the rest of the day to deal with this, so why don’t we hike up to Sellers Lake?” she asked. “Give you a chance to think.”
He gave her the shaky half-smile of a grateful man in love and nodded. “That sounds like exactly what I need.”
Date Point: June 11y6m3w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Admiral Sir Patrick Knight
Knight only rarely had occasion to entertain his superiors in his own domain. Said domain was wondrous and vital but regrettably difficult to access, which made it awkward for a friendly jaunt down country for an evening of cards and conversation.
He did try to keep the pleasantries on-hand though. He was consciously a little bit old-fashioned when it came to entertaining and offered Tremblay a cigar, which was warmly declined. They sat in Knight’s modest but well-appointed study and caught up on old friendships, cricket and hockey, but like any meeting between flag officers things eventually turned to business.
“Give me your honest impression, Patrick. Can we trust them with DEEP RELIC?” Tremblay swirled the excellent whiskey in its cut crystal tumbler and nosed its intoxicating bouquet.
“Oh yes. Without hesitation. Assuming we can persuade them to remove the implants of course, but…I suspect they suspect they will need to anyway.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?”
“They’re getting quite adept at English. That’s saying something, because the language is physically difficult for them to speak. I’ve encouraged them by practicing my Gaori.”
“Mm. I tried the primer,” mused Tremblay. “I can’t wrap my mouth around those growl-click sounds.”
“Indeed. I spent an hour practicing the other day, and by the time I finally got it my jaw felt as if Master Sergeant Firth had punched me.”
“Wouldn’t you be dead?”
Knight chuckled. “Please, allow me a little hyperbole old friend.”
“Yes yes,” Tremblay grinned into the last of his whiskey. “Okay. I’ll draft the orders and set things into motion. How much authority will you need?”
Knight set down his whiskey and steepled his fingers. “May I be blunt?”
“Always.”
“This will do us no good if Whitecrest cannot bring others in.”
“…That’s a very tall order.”
“Quite.”
Tremblay finished his drink, stared ruefully into the tumbler then sighed, put it down and stood. “Then I’d better get to work.”
Knight let him out, then tidied up. He had work to do, as well.
Date Point: July 11y7m1w AV
HMS Sharman (HMNB Folctha), Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Lieutenant Kieran Mears
Letter for notes,
RE: TSgt Scott Blaczynski
Sergeant Blaczynski is a perennially entertaining case whom I saw today for his annual assessment, which he eagerly broke the ice on by showing me his new electronic tattoo. One marvels that he was able to find room.
Blaczynski hails from a problematic family background, and believes that if not for his military career he would undoubtedly have been incarcerated or killed years ago. He recounts that Sergeant Firth recently talked him out of attempting to recontact his father, an exercise he has attempted several times over the years only for it to “always depress the shit outta [him].”
Given that Mr. Blaczynski Sr. is serving a life sentence for first degree murder, I consider Sergeant Firth’s intervention to have been a wise one.
Sergeant Blaczynski denies engaging in self-destructive behaviour, though he does acknowledge that he is most frequently implicated in “shenanigans” leading to minor corrections and “motivation” by the NCOIC. He has not, however, been formally disciplined to any exceptional degree and seems to be acutely aware of “how much is too much.” For a man like him serving in a special operations role to have avoided any criminal record at all is genuinely admirable.
He laments that his sense of what is appropriate does not apparently extend to conversation, and jokes that “the back of [his] skull must be getting thicker from where the guys give [him] a slap whenever [he says] something stupid”.
Overall, my impression continues to be of a young man whose natural inclination would be towards a wild and dangerous lifestyle but who is instead thriving on the discipline and camaraderie of his career in a very positive way. He speaks admiringly of Sergeant Firth and expressed the wish “to control [himself] better, like Righteous does”. The relationship between those two is interesting; Blaczynski very much regards himself as the junior partner, and Firth seems comfortably resigned to the role of mentor. Regardless the affection between the two is deep and profound. I have yet to learn what bonds Blaczynski so deeply to Firth, or vice versa.
No intervention seems necessary at this point. I have advised him to continue practicing the impulse control exercises we discussed last time but overall I feel that his penchant for entertainment is harmless.
One wonders what he will do when he’s finally tattooed every inch of skin that regulations permit.
I shall see him in a year.
-Lt. K Mears Counsellor, HMS Sharman
Date Point: 11y7m3w AV
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Planet Lucent, Near 3Kpc Arm
Allison Buehler
The name list had gone out the window again. There was a lot of good stuff on it, but none of the options they’d agreed on before seemed to quite fit. How did you name a planet that was absolutely dominated by insectoid life that in extreme cases could get as big as ponies?
Well, Xiù had named it in a silly voice like the narrator of a trashy B-movie trailer. ”The Planet Of The Giant Bugs!!!” had an enticingly unserious quality but the real name, the one that just felt perfect, came to them on the night that Allison and Julian had first seen the shimmerbugs.
Xiù could be descriptive and eloquent when she wanted, but she really had fallen way short of conveying the experience. They were nearly a week into their two month exploration before the phenomenon repeated itself, and when it did-!
Allison had never seen the Aurora Borealis, but she’d seen pictures, and when the shimmerbugs migrated above the nail trees it was like… like watching those pictures step out of the page to hover above the canopy. Light coiled and drifted like smoke over the treetops, and the three of them had just sat, and watched, and said nothing until the twilight dance had ended and the spell broke.
They had immediately opened the thesaurus app, looked up synonyms for the word “light”, and settled on “Lucent”.
Leaving that part of the planet to survey a site on a different continent had been tough, but Lucent had been kind to them and let them watch the shimmerbugs on the night they left.
That was the survey pattern: two weeks here, two weeks there, two weeks there, until they had thoroughly surveyed eight different sites on the planet’s surface. Hence their relocation to volcanic grassland in the tropics.
Plenty of solid rock, that was the key. In theory, Misfit couldn’t get stuck—even if her feet were absolutely wedged tight in fissures or whatever, she could still jump back to Cimbrean—but Xiù much preferred to land on solid rock if she could, and preferably on high ground with a little shelter. She could be frustratingly picky about her landing sites, actually, but Julian didn’t seem to mind and Allison knew better than to argue. Her own eagerness to be down and exploring didn’t need to get in the way.
“There’s another one of those huge termite mound things…” Julian said during a low sweep while the high-detail ground radar looked for an appropriate spot. Allison called up what he was seeing on one of her side monitors.
The “termite mounds” were unholy big. They weren’t mounds at all, they were termite buildings, termite cathedrals. Their chimneys were always in clusters of five or seven, or nine, or some other odd number, like alien hands clawing at the sky wherever they thrust out of the landscape.
Julian had emphatically counselled staying the hell away from them on the grounds that “do you really wanna run into a swarm of soldier termites as big as rottweilers?” and their presence alone was tipping Lucent’s classification up towards an eleven.
But that was all speculation, and the fact was that somebody was gonna have to evaluate those things at some point. If they were really that dangerous then it needed documenting.
”There’s a good landing site about a kilometer from that one,” Xiù called. ”Think that’s far enough for the ship to be safe?”
“If I’ve got a swarm of flesh-eating megabugs after me,” Allison said with forced cheer, “I might just manage that in two minutes.”
”I…wouldn’t recommend that as a training regime, Shǎguā.”
“Hey, at least you’re motivated to succeed!”
”Well, we’ve got to check it out. I don’t want some colonists to get swarmed in their beds or whatever.” Julian sounded tense.
”Set ‘er down?”
”Yeah.”
”Okay…”
Allison let Misfit do her own power-balancing for once, unhooked her seatbelt and ducked through the engineering pressure door into the ship’s staging area.
One of the more difficult conversations they’d had, months ago before even boarding Misfit, had been the question of who would go and who would stay if they needed to survey something hazardous. Somebody had to stay behind, Jump the ship back to Cimbrean and report if…
Well. If.
And since Allison was the best shot and knew which way up to hold a first aid kit, and Julian was Mister Sneaky Woodcraft, and neither she nor Julian were anywhere near as good at flying Misfit as Xiù was, the duty fell to Xiù. She hadn’t been happy about that. She didn’t sound happy about it now. Allison didn’t blame her either.
But they’d sorted that argument out long ago.
Their customized C&M Systems excursion suits were designed for exactly this sort of situation, though. They weren’t a full-blown suit of armor, but they’d sure as hell stop most threats. She stripped off her shipboard clothing and wriggled into the tighter, seamless suit underwear.
Julian joined her in the suiting-up area just as Xiù set them down, and wordlessly opened his locker to start getting into his own gear. They didn’t speak, but shared a single tense moment of eye contact that said everything they needed to.
She’d just finished forcing her legs down the suit’s pants and into the boots when Xiù emerged from the pilot blister. She leaned against the door and watched them, then double-checked their seals once the helmets were on.
The weapons locker was easier. Two GR-1Ds, a couple of Black Ogre Munitions GSA-2 pistols, two flare guns, a couple of knives, and Julian’s good tomahawk, the one the girls had banded together and got him for his birthday.
And the cloaks. After Mars, Julian had pressed for having the suits re-skinned with something more suited to sneaking through the woods on an alien planet but C&M hadn’t been able to deliver on time. So, cloaks had made an odd comeback. It was kinda… strange to pair something so medieval as a long, dark greenish-grey cloak with an advanced exoplanet excursion suit, but they worked well enough. And honestly looked kinda badass.
Some olive drab MOLLE rigs and hunting chaps did the rest, in a ghetto, jerry-built kinda way. There were still odd flashes of the suit’s white skin here and there but according to Julian they were about as camouflaged as they were gonna get, and Allison trusted his judgement on matters of sneaking around.
“Ready?” she asked.
Julian finished strapping on his knives and grabbed the second rifle. “Ready.”
“Save us a kiss, babe,” Allison told Xiù, who managed a nervous little smile.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good girl.”
Their boots kissed down onto a hard surface of off-white cracked clay a minute later after the airlock had cycled. It was a strange patch of baldness in an otherwise lush green forest.
“What is this?” Allison asked. “Is it natural?”
“Seasonal lake bed,” Julian said.
They briskly jogged the fifty meters or so to the shoreline with its dense foliage, and picked a clear-ish route up. Julian marked the tree next to it with a dab of bright orange spraypaint and then… did his disappearing act.
Allison had learned a few of his tricks, but he was still damn near impossible to follow. She knew where he was, or at least thought she knew where he was, but even looking right at the path she thought he’d taken, she saw hardly anything. Even the sway of the bushes might only be due to the breeze.
She hung back for a few seconds to give him a headstart, then followed. It was a system that played to their strengths—he scouted ahead and stopped her from blundering into trouble, and if he got in trouble she was in a position to cover him as he fell back. They’d rehearsed it a lot with Jason Hammond on his obstacle course back in Omaha.
Somehow, when she’d envisioned using it, Allison had imaged a forest crawling with Hunters, or Hierarchy biodrones.
A giant termite mound hadn’t been on the list, but somehow it was way more daunting than either of those other prospects. Those were threats she knew of, even if she’d never seen a Hunter in the flesh.
But they had no idea what was waiting for them in Lucent’s insect cathedrals.
Date Point: July 11y7m3w AV
Nicholas Patrick Memorial Hospital, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
“Uh… I am going home today, right? Or was it tomorrow?”
Ava tried to find humor in the question, but it was difficult. Gabe’s short-term retention was completely shot, and he was a long, long way short of being his usual incisive, perceptive self. Right now he looked fragile, small and much older than he really was.
“No, Dad,” she replied and tried to keep the weariness out of her voice. This was the third time she’d explained this. “Mister Gupta’s going to look at you and decide if you can go home today.”
“…Me cago en la leche, right. Yeah. You said that already.” Gabriel massaged his forehead gingerly past the bandage. “I think.”
The hospital had generously been persuaded to let Ava bring Hannah in with her during visits, and she was doing incredible work brightening up the ward. With Folctha’s population being predominantly young and fit, the hospital’s patients were almost all the victims of assorted accidents, and none of them liked being where they were.
Emotional support was Hannah’s job however, and she loved to work. Which meant that everyone who looked even slightly down was getting a panting, wagging but respectful visit from the most qualified morale officer on the planet. She never jumped up or barked or licked without permission, but instead would lay her head on the patient’s knee and look soulfully up at them, or just make it clear that she was happy to see them. She’d get scratches and fuss and baby-speak and then (God bless her) she’d trot back to check that Ava and Gabe were okay.
Right now she had rested her head in Gabe’s lap and was staying there. He needed her the most.
Gabe’s hand rocked absently back and forth through the thick ruff of silky fur around Hannah’s neck as he let his frustration dissipate.
“…So hard to think,” he complained. “It’s all… furry…”
Hannah shifted her feet and whined slightly, which managed to draw a laugh out of him and he massaged behind her ears.
“Yes, you’re furry too,” he told the dog. “But in a good way.”
Mister Gupta picked that moment to stroll onto the ward at the head of an entourage of his junior doctors and his registrar.
“Feeling better, Mr. Arés?” he asked.
“Wondering when I get to go home,” Gabe groused good-naturedly.
“And deprive us of your daughter’s dog?” Gupta asked, and smiled when Ava raised a hand to cover her smile. “Of course, the cleaners will be happy…”
“Hannah’s clean!” Ava protested. “I wash her every day!”
Gupta chuckled and produced a tablet computer, which he consulted. He nodded at whatever it was he saw.
“Well, I think you’ve been here long enough,” he told Gabe. “You’ll heal just as well at home.”
“When do I get to go back to work?” Gabe asked. Gupta ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought, then waved away the juniors and registrar before drawing up a chair to sit in front of Gabriel with a somber look on his face. He drew the curtain for privacy. “Candidly, Mr. Arés, your injury is likely to impair you for months at the very least. Your memory may never be what it once was. I wouldn’t recommend returning to work just yet.”
Gabe struggled to sit up. “Define ’ just yet’,” he demanded. “My work is important!”
Gupta shook his head. “Every brain injury is unique,” he advised. “But the balance of probability is that you will struggle with short-term retention for months, may find it difficult to control your emotions, and may find your cognitive faculties impaired as well. Unfortunately there is no miracle drug that can fix all of that,” he intoned, unaware that he was completely wrong, “but I do know that your recovery will be impaired by stress and long hours. If you desire the speediest recovery possible, then you are going to need to take some time off. Months, probably.”
Gabriel was as far forward in his chair as he could get without actually standing. “I *can’t!*” he said. “I don’t mean I don’t want to, I mean that the role just can’t be vacant for that long. You’re telling me I have to retire!”
Gupta’s face was full of sympathy. “If that’s so then… I’m sorry, but your health is more important,” he said.
“*¡Vete al carajo!*”
“*Dad!*” Shocked, Ava laid her hand on his, and Hannah whined. Gabe looked shocked at himself too. Slowly, he settled back and put his free hand on Ava’s.
“I… I’m sorry, Mister Gupta,” he said at last. “That… I guess that just proved your point, huh?”
“It’s quite alright,” Gupta promised. “I’d feel the same way in your position.”
Gabe hung his head. “I…” For the first time ever, Ava saw a tear trickle down his nose. He wiped it off with his thumb. “I wanna go home now,” he said at last.
“I agree, that’s probably best,” Gupta stood up. “I’ll discharge you as soon as I’m finished with my ward round, and I’ll see you back here for a follow-up chat in a month. You’ll need to see your practice nurse every day to get your dressings changed-” he indicated the bandages swaddling Gabe’s damaged, dismantled and reconstructed skull, “-and to have your stitches out in ten days.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Ava promised. Gupta nodded, shook their hands, and left them alone.
As soon as he was gone, Gabe slumped miserably in his chair. “…That’s it, then. I’m out of the fight,” he said mournfully. “However the Big Hotel war goes, it goes without me.”
Ava gave him the biggest daughterly hug she could considering the state of his ribs and arm. “You did a lot,” she said.
“Not enough.”
That actually made Ava laugh. She kissed him on the forehead. “You are so much like Adam,” she said.
Gabe chuckled too, and wiped off his eyes. “So you’re telling me I should quit before I really hurt myself.”
“If you don’t, you’ll end up being nursed by Adam. Have you ever been under his care?”
“…’Care’?”
Ava giggled a little, then sobered. “I, uh… I already lost one dad,” she said quietly. “Maybe this is selfish but… I’d kinda like to keep this one.”
“Ava-”
“And Jess wants you for a long time too.”
Gabe bowed his head in a happier form of defeat. “…Okay. I don’t know what I’ll do, but…I’ll find something.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, Mija.”
Date Point: 11y7m3w AV
BGEV-11 ’Misfit’, Planet Lucent, Near 3Kpc Arm
Xiù Chang
The worst part for Xiù was the watching helplessly. Allison stopped at the bottom of the ladder and let Julian climb first. She turned, kneeled, her rifle snapped up. GR-1ds didn’t slam loud and painful like a conventional rifle, instead they cracked like a bullwhip.
Rounds tore into the goat-sized insect that had just scrambled down the bank in pursuit of them, punching fist-sized holes in its carapace. It staggered and collapsed leaking horrible yellowish juices. Three more bursts, three more dead bugs and then…
They retreated, which was just confusing. A half-mile pursuit by hundreds of angry alien giant termites ended the moment Allison fired her weapon? That… didn’t make any sense at all.
But the Lucent Termites had definitely backed off. Julian unslung his rifle and aimed it, covering Allison as she climbed the ladder, and the two of them ducked into the airlock.
Xiù took off as soon as the lock’s outer two doors were firmly closed and the seals were confirmed.
She got them on the climb to orbit and then asked the burning question she’d wanted to ask every since the shit had hit the fan. “Are you okay?”
“Grody,” Allison complained, “…but fine. I think we’re gonna have to burn the cloaks and all the rest of this gear though.”
“After I take samples,” Julian said firmly. Like Allison, he was drenched head to toe in some kind of horrible watery brown juice that had soaked into every piece of fabric he was wearing.
“Sure, sure…”
Xiù watched via the camera as the two of them carefully removed all the soaked fabric into a single sodden stinking pile, and Julian retrieved the Hazardous Substance Sampling Kit from its storage in the airlock’s ceiling. He swabbed the brown goop off their suits, squeezed a few ropey mucus drools of it out into some sample vials, then immersed those vials in the bottles full of safety solution, sealed the box and then fed it into the sterilizer.
The guns, knives and tomahawk were laid out on the floor, and the fouled equipment was carefully bagged, then bagged again, then a third time before being dropped down the incinerator chute.
Only once they were down to the bare essentials of the excursion suits and their metal tools did they go through the double safety-check procedure of starting up the airlock’s red decontamination cycle, the version designed with the excursion suits in mind.
The whole airlock became a high-pressure, high-temperature shower that hosed them and everything they had with them down with hot acid. They both turned and raised their limbs to make sure they were completely covered.
Then there was an explosive puff and they were covered in alkaline powder that fizzed and hissed as it neutralized the acid.
There was a rinse of scalding hot water that would have seriously harmed them without the suits, an antibacterial soap cycle, another rinse, a double sweep with the Corti decontamination beams on full power, and then (thank goodness for their polarized protective glass in their helmets) five minutes under intense UV light.
By the end of it all the suits were steaming and would need repairs by C&M technicians… but the only way to have more thoroughly sterilized them would have been a fatal dose of gamma radiation.
By the time it was all finished, Misfit was in orbit and Xiù was able to dismount from the cockpit and hover in the staging room waiting for them.
The eye-burning stink of swimming pool and chemistry class swept over her as the inner doors opened. Thank God they’d been in the suits: Red decon without the suits involved a full body shave and quarantine.
“Well that was fucking disturbing,” Allison commented with brittle calm, as soon as they were safely through. She placed the guns on the armory table with a rueful sigh “And a waste of good gear.”
“You’re okay, though, right?” Xiù asked, wrestling her anxiety. Julian twisted his helmet to unseal it and ducked to pull it off. His hair was soaked with sweat.
“We’re… fine?” he checked with Allison, who nodded. “We’re fine.”
Allison coughed as she took her helmet off and got a strong hit of diffuse, diluted Chlorine. “Julian?”
“Yes, Al?”
“Next time you say we gotta explore an alien termite mound?”
“I know, I know…”
They kissed, then spared some reassuring attention for Xiù.
“Guess we’re recalling to Cimbrean then, huh?” Xiù asked.
“We’re inside the resupply window, just,” Julian said, removing his gloves. “Bit early, but…”
“But the suits need repairs and probably the weapons too,” Allison said. “Besides, we can make Lucent somebody else’s problem. Let them deal with the giant angry snot-bugs.”
“Recall it is,” Xiù said. She sat back down in her seat and was slid back into place behind the ship’s controls. She called up the routine recall jump checklist and worked through it.
First, launch a beacon satellite. That made perfect sense, since they didn’t want to spend a couple of months flying all the way back out here after resupply. The little launch tube was in the back of engineering, and made a ringing sound as it drove the minisatellite out into space on a puff of compressed air, injecting it onto an orbit slightly tangential to *Misfit*’s own escape orbit. She double-checked its course, saw that it would drift out of the system in about ten years’ time, and moved on to the actual recall.
Next, charge the jump engine. That was already done—Allison kept it permanently charged. Then select the desired beacon from the list. Again, easy: They had only launched one so far. Hit “recall”, hit “Confirm”…
The stars outside changed. That was it, that was the whole event. Several thousand lightyears in less than a second and the only visible consequence at first was a thousand different constellations. If she hadn’t been able to see those stars, she never would have noticed the difference.
Well… the radio traffic was different too.
”Unidentified starship this is Cimbrean Border Security control, we have you jumping in. Please identify.”
Oh yeah. She had to talk to people, that was part of the job too. “Hello Cimbrean control, this is Bravo Golf Echo Victor One-One Heavy ’Misfit’. Holding orbit.”
“Hello Misfit! Welcome back, we weren’t expecting you for a while yet. Things have changed since you were last here.”
Xiù saw that much instantly. When they had left, the anchorage above Cimbrean-5 had been just an assigned orbit. Now, parked proud and huge in that reserved space, was a full-sized Dominion free trade station. Dog’s convoy must have succeeded.
“I can see that! Any change to customs procedure?”
”Affirmative Misfit. Customs is now conducted aboard Allied Trade Station One ‘Armstrong’. Tune to wake comms channel three for their traffic control. And, uh…welcome back. Border Security out.”
Xiù took a moment to shake her head and let the reality of how quickly things could change sink in. She’d gone from watching her lovers get covered in alien bug slime, to shaking hands with a space station that hadn’t even existed six months ago, all in less than an hour.
Crazy.
She boosted onto an approach, and called the station.
Date Point: July 11y7m4w AV
Moses Byron Group Headquarters, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Kevin Jenkins
“Halfway through the mission, a half-million repair bill, and all they have to show for it is one planet full of lousy giant bugs?! Ugh!!”
Kevin was in Naysmith mode while everybody else waited for him to work. It was a powerful and important job, puncturing his billionaire boss’ worst excesses and trying to keep him grounded. Heck it was easily the most rewarding one he’d ever had.
It was also the most difficult he’d ever had. “Y’know, they’ve already volunteered for a second mission, and maybe even more,” he pointed out. “*Misfit*’s gonna fly for years to come.”
“And if all they’re bringin’ me is giant insects-!” Moses began.
Kevin interrupted him. He was the only one at the table with that power, and he was duty-bound to use it by leaning forward and pitching his voice at that careful line between lifting it and raising it. “Boss! We went over this, remember? Travel times, the distances involved, survey times, the need to resupply, degauss. Now, it looks like they’ve eliminated the false positives problem, which means the second half’a this mission is gonna be crazy efficient, and they’ve signed on for more, which saves us costs in the long run. I know it ain’t the home run you wanted, but we’re a long, long way from having a disaster on our hands here.”
Byron glowered at him, then regained his self-control and his intellect, applied them both, and chilled out.
“…You’re right, I was hoping for more,” he said at last. He sat back and rubbed his eyes wearily. “We invested more into the BGEV program than was necessarily wise, Kevin. I’m eager for results.”
Kevin settled back as well, and turned to Doctor Ericson. “Doc?”
The program’s senior scientist gave him a moment’s nonverbal gratitude then stood up to address the whole table.
“Insects on Earth have already provided us with resources like you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “Not just honey but, uh, shellac, beeswax, silk, kermes dye, Carmine dye… Sure, people are generally squeamish about insects but goodness knows what we might find on that planet when the long-term research team heads on over there aboard Creature Of Habit.”
“Way back when, the Chinese had a monopoly on silk production,” Mr. Williams pointed out. “And it made them incredibly wealthy.”
“Now imagine if the insects on this planet can make silk,” Clara Brown injected. “And maybe they can make five times as much, and maybe their silk is naturally full of interesting hues and colors.”
“Or maybe their silk turns out to be full of antibiotics,” Ericson agreed.
“Or they feed their larvae with the cure for cancer.”
“Or a serum that can double a human lifespan.”
“Or maybe we find a species of really pretty critter we can sell as pets!” somebody suggested.
Moses raised his hands theatrically. “Fine! Fine! Point made! Maybe the Planet of the Giant Bugs will be valuable for us after all!”
“It’s a whole planet, Boss,” Kevin pointed out. “And right now it belongs exclusively to the Group. The resources of a whole planet just as big as Earth. You gonna tell me that’s a failure?”
Moses lowered his hands and nodded. “Okay, your point’s made. I’m being unreasonable.” He grumbled a little, but Kevin knew perfectly well that Moses was tough as an old boot in reality. Come the morning, once his ego had taken some time for its ears to stop ringing, he’d almost certainly start sending out small tokens of his esteem. He was like that.
“So… we’re re-launching Creature Of Habit?” Clara asked, enthusiastically.
Moses sat back and stroked his chin thoughtfully for a minute or two, then nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Make that ship make money again.”
They were only too happy to oblige.