Page 18 of Stellar Drift (Central Galactic Concordance)
“We did. We lost some armor and sensors, but we’re still spaceworthy.
” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I was still delusional from cryosleep restoration at the time, so Elkano found a cave big enough to hide us.” The corner of her mouth twitched with humor.
“The jungle plants kept invading, so I made a naturalized garden with them to disguise the entrance.”
“I think I remember seeing that.”
“Probably. Your fever was going supernova, and you kept trying to get up to fix the ship’s hydroponics nutrient flow. I had to put you in the autodoc to get you to settle down.”
“Yeah, I think I remember that, too. I dreamed I was an all-white emergency escape capsule, floating in transit space.” Fever fluctuations would explain his bizarre trips to the arctic, too.
“I’ve seen spheres like these.” She patted her vest pocket. “My ship has a hold full of them, but they’re just solid incalloy. No exterior circuits. As far as I knew, they were supplies for the hull repair-bots. Now I’m just confused.”
He snorted. “Welcome to the club.”
She twitched, then pointed to her left ear. “Elkano.” She sidestepped away from the vault door, putting her close to the still beeping, still lit-up access control panel.
To give her some privacy, he pulled out a large sample bag and tweezers to collect wuzzy bug carcasses.
He chose a variety of sizes and what he hoped might be stages of development.
He’d always been secretly grateful not to have an affinity talent for insects, but now he wished he’d at least studied them a little more.
Since he was there, he took the opportunity to expand his talent to get a feel for the plant life in the vault and above it.
The roots came from a wider variety of trees than he would have guessed.
But the vault itself was a hotbed of millions of tiny sparks, the kind he associated with seedlings.
That made sense if enough of the frozen contents survived the thaw—
Sairy’s words broke his focus. “Houyen, meet Elkano.” She tapped the percomp on her wrist. “Elkano, repeat what you just told me so Houyen can hear.”
“Hello, Ranger Albasrey. As I told Sairy, a previously undetected instruction set in our systems has been triggered by a comm from your location. We are on a countdown to liftoff, and I am unable to stop it.”
Sairy pointed toward the blinking access panel.
“I think when I spoke the character string out loud, opened the vault door, and triggered a coded message to my ship. I think it used my comms implant without me knowing. Which tanks, because who knows what other little secret bypasses are in my experimental systems. Elkano, tell him the rest,” said Sairy.
“Please confirm disclosure of confidential information.” Elkano’s pleasant mid-range voice sounded suddenly formal and by-the-book.
“Confirmed, code AF24PNSM. He deserves to know what’s happening.”
“Our previously incomplete mission instructions now have five new entries. We have already completed the tasks of exiting transit in the Qal Corona system and landing as close as possible to specific coordinates within the south continent’s nature reserve.
We also completed the task that directed ship pilot Subcommander Sahira Sarvand Madoz to go to the cryogenex vivo-vault with a specific serial number on the unit and open it.
Her next task is to secure a one-meter by half-meter crate marked with the same serial number and the Drift project logo.
She must bring it to the ship within two hours and place it in a specific cold-storage box in the laboratory.
The ship will leave the planet surface in eleven hours and forty minutes.
We are then to orbit the planet and wait for further instructions. ”
Kyala, who had been sitting and watching Sairy closely, rose to her feet and crowded against Sairy’s thigh with a low whine.
Sairy petted her with a little humming sound. “Sorry, darling, didn’t mean to broadcast my feelings. I would never leave you.”
Elkano continued. “There is also a new section that appears to have overwritten the original content. The author is tagged as Adastra Fel 14. It is encrypted and will require time to process.”
Houyen didn’t know why Elkano’s voice sounded so familiar until he remembered that he’d first heard it when he was delirious on the ship.
Sairy’s life partner, he reminded himself.
He wished he had a face to go along with the voice.
It would help him stop wishing for a relationship he couldn’t have.
Sairy squinted in concentration. “What happens if I don’t bring the crate within the two-hour countdown? Or it’s the wrong crate? And how long are we supposed to hang around in orbit waiting for further instructions?”
“The ship must launch.” Elkano sounded very certain.
“However, the ship has nine hours to achieve orbit, with no other instructions for that time period. I believe we can land and pick you up. There is no countdown or time limit for the orbit period. We can leave immediately if we have a destination. However, the encrypted section has other restrictions.”
Sairy made a face. “Landing would definitely be a challenge. Elkano, leave that encrypted section alone for now. I’ll keep a channel open for you while I talk to Houyen.”
She turned to him and waved a hand apologetically. “Sorry. Not what you signed up for, I’ll bet.”
“To be honest, no, I didn’t. I like reading adventure serials, but I never wanted to be in one.”
A rude noise erupted from her. “Black box project managers are all warped to the max. The more convoluted the plans, the better. To them, people are just pieces in an n -dimensional chess game.”
“Who is Adastra whats-it?” A creeping sense of claustrophobia nibbled at him. Probably his brain’s way of telling him to run away, but he couldn’t abandon Sairy and Kyala now. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault you’re even here.”
“Ratshit,” she replied vehemently. “This stage was set years ago. You’re just unlucky enough to see behind the curtain.
Adastra FEL-14 was the experimental mothership for thirty-five experimental exploration ships, including mine.
We were all being trained for an undisclosed mission.
The CPS made sure we couldn’t talk about it by having telepaths regularly erase inconvenient memories, like family and friends, or twisting our memories about dates and events.
” She made a disgusted sound. “My memory has so many holes, I can’t even tell you how long I was on the project, or when we launched.
It could have been five or even ten years. Elkano’s is no better.”
She looked like she wanted to pace. He knew the feeling.
“Anyway, one day, our mothership ordered me into the cryopod in my ship with Elkano. I thought it was just another test, but instead, she ejected all her ships for no reason we could determine. But our records are a fragmented mess. I suspect that happened when the project leaders tried but failed to gain control of us. The mothership ordered us to jump into transit space on a random vector, with an imperative to hide, then complete some unknown task. We don’t know how long we spent in transit, but we ended up on Qal Corona.
” She waved a hand in frustration. “Elkano and I have been through our records a thousand times, but we still missed this.”
Houyen’s intuition sparked. “If this were an adventure serial, your ship would have a secret self-destruct sequence if you or Elkano do something that exposes the project.”
Rather than scoffing, she seemed to take him seriously. “Good point. Elkano, look for unlabeled hooks in all primary systems. Let’s not make it easy for the assholes to terminate us.”
“Will do,” replied Elkano.
He dredged his memory for what the vivo-vault interior should look like.
“About that crate. On the assumption that it was added to the vault after the fact, they would’ve had to improvise a place for it.
The vault was optimized to save space, kind of like an extreme version of a starship hydroponics section.
I wouldn’t think a million spheres would be the most efficient use of space, but I’m not an engineer. ”
Sairy rocked back and forth on her heels. “I don’t trust that vault not to lock us in or give my ship more secret instructions. I’d just as soon fry this whole cave with incendiaries and pretend the volcano blew its top. Plus, I bet it would stop the infinity fever outbreaks.”
“Maybe.” The thought of that amount of habitat destruction pained him. The damage to the cloud forest alone would take decades to heal. “Having that crate might give you options, though. If we see it from the doorway, we could—”
His gauntlet vibrated and sounded a pattern he’d hoped not to hear. He let his chin drop to his chest. “That’s Matsurgan, my boss. I can dodge him, but not for long. He only calls me directly if he’s mad, so I’m guessing he’s about to recall me.”
Sairy threw up her hands with an exasperated look. “May as well answer now. This day is already cursed by the gods of chaos.”
Houyen squared his shoulders as he opened the comm, leaving it on speaker for Sairy to hear. “Albasrey.”
“I know where you are and what you’re doing, you self-righteous piece of horseshit.
You disobeyed a direct order not to investigate an imaginary disease.
Garamont tried to lie, but he couldn’t fool me.
Your career is finished. Do you hear me?
Finished!” Thumping in the background sounded like a fist pounding on a desk.
“If you aren’t back at the Ryaksha base by eighteen hundred today, I will charge you with theft of CPS property and any other violations I can scrounge up. You can kiss your pension goodbye.”
Houyen fought to hang onto his temper. “Respectfully, sir, the charges won’t stand, and you have no authority over my pension.”