Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The Kasant Objective

Originally published in The Galaxy Chronicles (Windrift Books, 2015), edited by Jeff Seymour and part of The Future Chronicles anthology series, created by Samuel Peralta

“Are you sure this is it?”

The question hung in the room like one of the three-dimensional displays projected helpfully from its curved walls. It might have been Zio’s attempt at decorating the otherwise-empty space, or perhaps their ship’s invisible and ever-patient Ambient Intelligence felt that the crew was in need of visual stimulation. Half of the room displayed a glorious one-hundred-and-eighty-degree floor-to-ceiling view of their galaxy’s broad swath of light, but apparently a little clutter was just what was needed here.

Jase walked through a three-dimensional representation of a nearby solar system and then past a schematic of their little ship. It was upside down, as was the holo of what seemed to be a dancer. Zio liked to make sure the crew remained entertained during long voyages. Perhaps the information it had to combat psychological issues during deep-space travel didn’t include concepts like “up” or “down.” A long line of number symbols scrolled through the air, undoubtedly reporting on something.

He stopped before the manual control interface near the door. After a moment, Ocia shifted away from it to allow him access. Her expression suggested that his question was—at this point—pretty much rhetorical, although she refrained from rolling her jewel eyes.

Jase loaded another holo tracing their journey from the Kiza System to here, each leap marked and the connecting routes clearly charted, and frowned as if trying to remember the exact route home before they jumped off the edge of the map.

“Not scared, are you?” Ocia said with a slow smile that told him that confiding his misgivings to her would just end in derisive gossip around the dinner table.

He sent an overlay to the forward screen to reveal the exact coordinates of the rupture, outlined in white and red symbols. They glowed reassuringly, beckoning the approaching fleet of explorers.

Treasure hunters, Jase thought, letting his eyes shift to Ocia. She stood with her arms crossed and her head cocked before the panoramic viewscreen, a buccaneer in search of fame and riches, surveying the shores of some distant land.

Except, of course, that they still had to cross the distance to get there. “Zio?”

“Yes, Jase.”

Jase looked up, although the toneless voice, male today, emanated from the wall behind him. The dancer, an Outlander tetrapod, cavorted up there in triplicate now, twirling to some music that perhaps only the ship heard. “Let’s get ready for the leap,” he said, watching as the control interface began the thousands of tasks that would ensure that this little expedition remained alive during the voyage. “And clean this up,” he added, waving at the solar system now orbiting Ocia.

Zio Four, the ship’s invisible and ever-patient Ambient Intelligence, dutifully removed the holograms. The round, unfurnished space seemed larger now, although Jase was rarely bothered by small ships. Small ships made for smaller crews and a lot less trouble, he thought, although this crew made up for it with their own peculiarities.

He returned to the bulging wall to gaze out into space. Black sky pricked by distant stars, denser toward the center of their galaxy, stretched out into forever. The four ships accompanying them cruised in a wide sprawl and now, at Zio’s signal, began to converge on this location. The silence up here, and out there, was bothersome today. Looking out at the approaching ships, he could almost see the silence.

“Music, Zio,” he said, barely audible. A soft rhythm from his favorite collection filled the room, and he breathed deeply.

“You’re tense, pilot,” Ocia said. When he looked up, the smirk was still on her lovely face. “It’ll check out, you’ll see. We’ll be back in the sector before breakfast.”

“You hope.”

Both of them turned when the door slid aside, allowing light from the hall to seep into this dim space. Jase smiled when he saw Ranael enter the bridge followed by their guest. The overbearingly large Chidean bustled past her and rushed to look outside, perhaps unaware that the curved panorama was simply a collage of display screens in the windowless chamber. He looked a little paler today, and Jase wondered if the conditions aboard this vessel suited the creature. Ranael had done her best to learn about his people and make him comfortable but, to Jase, the man looked ill.

Their lone, delightfully wealthy passenger placed his blunt fingers on the screen and drawled something in that odd cadence that none of them had been able to master. When Ranael shrugged, Zio translated.

“Mister Tenzo would like to go right now.”

Jase tipped his chin toward the approaching escort ships. “When we’re together. We’re doing this just once.”

“Mister Tenzo asks if your ships are perhaps inadequate.”

Jase threw an accusing look at Ocia. Her idea, all of this. He had wanted nothing to do with the project from the moment she presented it to the boss. No real research opportunity, only a questionable return on their investment, and a fair chance of ending up smashed into bits when trying to jump through what was pretty much an unknown breach. He relished the rare thrill of dipping into another layer of this onion they called a universe. But not when the landing site was little more than rumor, legend, and the word of this foreigner nearly bouncing up and down with excitement.

But Ocia’s daddy owned the company, owned the ships, and pretty much owned any future mission Jase could hope to command. He reflected mournfully upon the loss of his own vessel, the Calume, before putting that memory aside again. This was now, and he was a hired hand who no longer had the luxury of picking and choosing his assignments. So when she dug up Mister Tenzo and his treasure map, he was at the mercy of her ability to manipulate the boss.

“Ask Mister Tenzo to return to his cabin below so that we can get ready.”

“Mister Tenzo wishes to stay up here.”

“Of course he does,” Jase muttered. He caught a gentle smile playing at the corners of Ranael’s lips. Her eyes gleamed with good humor, as always, and he reminded himself that some parts of this dreary trip had, so far, been downright pleasurable. He returned her smile, noting how beautifully the elegant swoop of her cheekbone was taken up by the design of the pretty exocortex shell cradling her skull.

He shook himself out of this mood and gestured to Zio’s ever-present eyes to open the ship’s com system, even though the AI would by now have alerted the entire crew of their imminent jump into what, for many, was another universe. “Jase here,” he said to the crew, a talented assortment of pilots, ex-military members, adventurers, and mercenaries. “Let’s do this. We’ll take an inverse formation—who knows what’s on the other side.”

“You’re not probing?” came Naka’s voice from one of the other ships, sounding a little incredulous.

“I’m not sure we maintain the field long enough to get any meaningful return. Not with five ships. And we’ll probably run into considerable dilation.” The last comment was meant for Ocia, whose eyes narrowed.

They had argued this for weeks now. Time dilation rarely affected brief jumps. On the remote chance that anything of significance was encountered, who really cared what time it was for anyone? This, though, was a different matter entirely.

Aga Tenzo had brought to them the coordinates of what was thought to be the last known location of the Kasant expedition, lost nearly sixty stat years ago. It had taken that long for their distress beacon to reach anyone able to interpret it and then to find its way into Ocia’s eager hands. No one knew how much time had passed for them, or if any of them were still alive.

But they had embarked on this three-month journey mostly for Tenzo’s promised fee, traversing the distance in a fraction of the time it would have taken Tenzo’s people to arrive at this unknown breach at the edge of what could only vaguely be called explored space. When the Kasant expedition had lost its fuel, its only choice had been to drift here in wait of rescue that might not come for centuries or go into the breach in hope of finding some safe haven. Given what little they knew of the commander, the choice would have been clear.

“Let’s do this,” Jase said. “They’re either there or they’re not. Alive or not. We’ll soon find out. They can’t have drifted too far, right, Zio?”

“Are you looking for an exact projection, Jase?”

“No, Zio.” Jase had to smile. Like many mission commanders, he had an aversion to sentient AIs and preferred them to resemble the computers they were meant to be and communicate with words rather than thoughts. No mechanical bodies, no sense of humor, no second-guessing their living masters. It made it far easier to wrap his mind around the incredible power harbored by the intelligence stored in these circuits. His civilian crew, so very different from the military ranks he had come to value, strained his people-management skills enough. “I think we’re pretty sure they’re nearby, if anything is left of them.”

He placed his hand on one of the interface panels and began to guide the ship toward the coordinates still illuminated on the screen before them. The other ships, more streamlined and most definitely more heavily armed than this one, came into formation, tight enough to slip through the gap and into whatever lay on the other side.

Jase felt the apprehension now permeating the room like a whiff of ozone. Even Ocia was not immune to the instinctive terror of the unknown. What they were doing was frowned upon in politer circles and officially forbidden by most governments. It also made companies like theirs ridiculously wealthy and formed the very foundation of deep-space exploration. While they had never come across any living matter in any of their dips into another ’verse, they had twice sold maps and sensor readings to mining companies at spectacular profit margins.

“Zio, let’s have us a nice, tight bubble.” Jase smiled reassuringly at Ranael. She, part of their crew as their ambassador and cultural expert, had made only a few of these leaps so far. But she just took a deep breath now and kept her eyes on the displays.

Now encased and ready to be gripped, the small fleet made contact with the breach to be sucked into its conduit like some tasty morsel into an unfathomable creature floating in these reaches. For all of his reluctance to indulge Ocia’s treasure hunt out here, Jase exulted in the utter thrill of entering a universe none of their peers had ever seen. They could end up in endlessly empty space, or perhaps buried in some piece of debris, or even just disintegrate into components when hitting some unknown anomaly on the other side. Until someone, an expedition just like theirs, returned with charts and maps and sensor readings, any leap into these breaches was considered a suicide mission. It made being alive all the more enjoyable.

The crash couches and safety restraints used for entering an atmosphere remained below the smooth floor panels—a transit like this had no physical impact on their well-shielded ships. The screens flickered as the sensors tried to make sense of what was happening outside and then just gave up and showed a swirling pattern of nonsense until Zio brought them into alignment again. Ranael sighed quietly and Aga Tenzo shook his shaggy head when they all felt the odd shift of their physical senses accepting a new reality. Their little bubble of null energy was all that protected them now from the massive burst of radiation emitting from the rift, sure to puzzle some distant world millennia from now.

“Zio? Report!”

One by one, the screens before them came back online, showing mostly space. But here, in front of the backdrop of stars, looming large and rather healthy-looking, a colorful planet took up a considerable part of the display.

Ocia, behind him, clapped her hands and whooped gleefully. They were alive, and a planet was already much better than a whole lot of nothing.

“All ships have made a successful transit,” Zio reported.

“Let’s get busy,” Jase said. “Full scan of that planet and see if there’s any sign of Mister Tenzo’s people.”

They, like the crewmembers aboard the other ships, took up their stations to sift Zio’s reports—already accumulating at a terrific speed—for anything interesting or unusual. The planet’s mineral composition and other resources, living organisms, the nearby star, and any hint of technology had to be examined for clues to the value of this breach. And, of course, the region would be scanned for signs of the missing Kasant expedition.

Zio interrupted before they had even settled into their task. Jase looked up when the main screen’s output zoomed more tightly onto the planet. “We are being scanned,” Zio said.

“What?” Ocia snapped.

“From the ground. Extensive populations on all major continents. Marginally industrialized communities, primitive. They are using electromagnetic frequencies to scan the skies in this direction.”

“Gods, go dark!” Jase shifted the com system to include the other ships. “Going dark. Stealth protocol. Zio, get us out of here.”

“We can’t jump back yet,” Ocia protested. “Still calibrating.”

“Mister Tenzo indicates that there is a moon,” Zio said. “I have located it.”

“He’s right,” Ranael said, pointing to her screen where one of the probes now showed the satellite. “Synchronous orbit, eccentric.” How did she always manage to seem so utterly tranquil?

“Head for that,” Jase said, frowning at Tenzo, who was now hovering over Ranael to study her displays. He addressed the fleet. “Stay farside until Zio finds a place to land.”

It took only moments for the ships to return to a tight formation and swoop toward the moon on the other side of the planet. Zio displayed an overlay of the broad sweeps of the planetary detection system. Jase exhaled sharply when the indicators showed their own defensive system scattering the beams around their shielded hulls and out into space.

“Nice work,” he breathed. “Echo? Feedback? Did anything make it back?”

“Unknown,” Zio replied. “I am still probing their communications systems. Deciphering them will take time.”

Jase nodded to Ranael to work directly with Zio. There was nothing she could do more quickly than the AI, but she would add the sentient intuition Zio lacked to catch nuances and patterns in speech and symbolism.

“Look,” Ocia said, at almost the same time as ex-soldier and now-pilot Naka aboard one of the other ships. She switched the main screen to focus on the moon’s surface. “Structures.”

“Scan that,” Jase said.

“No life there of any size,” Zio said, not distracted by the question while working with Ranael. “Microbial, at best, but air quality is marginal for such growth now.”

Tenzo turned to Jase and began to speak, perhaps forgetting that none of them understood his language.

“Translate, Zio,” Jase said, wishing he had insisted that their passenger stay below until they had secured their arrival in this space.

“Mister Tenzo says that those structures belong to his people. He recognizes the Chidean markings on the exteriors.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. And that ribbed hull design is unique to Chidea.”

“Guess we’ve found the Kasant mission.” Ocia grinned. “I say we check it out.”

Jase signaled the others to circle the shallow crater, where the tangle of structures revealed itself to be the remnants of several black sky exploration ships parked close together and joined in several places. “Touch down over by that escarpment.” He directed the ship to cozy up next to Naka’s cruiser. “What’s the weather like, Zio?”

“You want to go out there?” Ranael said, looking up from her data.

“Of course he does,” Ocia said. “Finally something to do on this jaunt.”

“Atmospheric conditions are acceptable,” Zio said. “Point five gravity. I recommend the haz shield suits until we’ve scanned the interior more thoroughly.”

“Hear that, Naka?” Jase said. “Suit up and let’s go take a look. Meet us by that round portal. Looks like it might be the way in.”

Aga Tenzo gestured wildly while Zio translated his demand to accompany them to the station.

“We can probably use him to make sense of the place,” Ocia said. “I’m not that up on their tech.”

“Three-hundred-year-old tech. I doubt he is, either.” Jase motioned their passenger to follow them into the narrow hallway outside the bridge and then down into the lower level of the ship. “Zio, anything off-planet?”

“Nothing outside the atmosphere,” Zio replied. “And nothing on the long-range scanners. No other ships or satellites.”

“Send a few drones to the surface, speed up your findings. Stay dark. I want to know why the Kasant group decided to land up here.”

“Probably hostiles on the planet,” Ocia decided.

“I’m guessing pathogens,” Jase said. “Or some other environmentals.” He nodded to Tenzo. “They seem a little chunky with all that blubber they’re carrying. Could be air pressure or gravity, too.” He winced when he heard Zio chatter in Tenzo’s rapid language. “You don’t have to translate everything I say, Zio.”

“Understood, Jase.”

The trio stepped into the airlock to slip into loose-fitting suits—simple layers of protection relying on an envelope of shielding generated by a series of patches front and back. “Is that necessary?” Jase said when Ocia added a projector to her exocortex assembly, giving her mental control of the weapons embedded in it and at various points of her suit.

“Zio’s been confused before, if you recall.”

“Not by a simple life-sign scan,” he countered, but he said nothing more. After all, their welfare was her job and she did it best fully armed. He had to admit she looked rather heroic with the two slim barrels at her temples.

The ship’s lock opened, and they stepped outside and onto the arid surface of the moon. Not sure if Aga Tenzo was quite familiar with gravity variations, Ocia kept her hand on a strap dangling from his belt.

Naka, his face obscured by the visor of his suit, awaited them near the metal door of the Kasant structure. “Not locked.” He turned to operate a switch by the gate. “Solar generation still working, except for a wing over at the far side. I’ve got Senda’s crew checking out the debris field. Probably just garbage.”

The door slid halfway aside and then stopped with a shudder. They slipped into the airlock beyond and waited for Tenzo to squeeze his bulk through the narrow opening.

Jase tapped a com panel where a corridor branched off from this space. It came to life, but he recognized little of what was displayed there. “Zio?” he said, making sure the camera at his collarbone recorded the interface. He touched a sensor to it and waited while Zio browsed through the system.

“The Kasant AI is not available,” Zio reported. This was expected. Without an authorized, living sentient mind to give meaning to its operation, their AI would have shut down, a mechanism designed into these systems after the first of them went rogue. “The database is heavily fragmented. You were correct—they built this installation by converting their transports into a habitat. There should be six ships here, but I can only account for five. I’ve indicated labs and control stations on your device.”

Jase glanced at the map now hovering in front of him. “This way,” he said to the others.

Ocia walked beside him, peering suspiciously into every dimly lit corner as they passed. Behind them came Tenzo, nearly filling the corridor, which must have been uncomfortably tight for the Chidean crew. How long had they lived up here, Jase wondered. Why had they left? Naka followed a few steps behind, his eyes on the scanner feeding information to Zio for analysis.

“So where is everybody?” Ocia said. “I was half-expecting to see dead bodies everywhere.”

“Me, too. They had no way back home. But if they’re on the surface, why leave the ships up here?” Jase stepped through what had once been a pressure door into another vessel. The seal no longer held, but the transition from one to the next was little more than a step up. The passage opened into what looked to be some sort of lab space. “See if you can fix that database, Zio. Maybe we can access their logs.”

“What’s all this?” Naka looked around the high-ceilinged space. “Looks medical.” He pressed a tab on a foam-metal box, but the lid didn’t budge. He jumped aside when Tenzo reached over his head to tug a panel from the wall above. All watched in silent amazement when Tenzo activated an input window and then breathed on a sensor, perhaps to identify himself to the system.

“He’s downloading something,” Jase said. “Zio, can you tell what is?”

“No, Jase. This is new to me.”

“Try to get at it anyway,” Ocia said. “Whatever it is, our guest seems to know exactly what to do with it.”

Naka had wandered around the central counter that dominated the room to inspect a row of cylinders along the wall. “Want to bet there are body parts in here?” he joked. “Or dinner, maybe.”

“Can you identify those, Zio?” Jase directed his camera toward the bins.

“Embryos in stasis. Zygotes.”

Naka cursed. “What were they doing with those?”

“Dinner, maybe,” Ocia said, ignoring his grimace. She peered at the equipment suspended above a long work table, no doubt already adding up salvage profits. Their share of whatever Tenzo hoped to find here was generous. “What do you think that is?”

“A gene gun,” Zio said after conferring with Mister Tenzo, who answered the question somewhat absentmindedly, still busy with his file transfer.

Jase tried to see into the eyepiece, but his visor got in the way. The device was inactive, anyway. He studied the cabinets lining the room and the equipment neatly tucked into shelves. “This mission was—mostly—scientific. They’d have engineers, physicists, biologists. Zio, identify the embryos in those tubs. Are they Chidean?”

Some lights blinked briefly on a strip of indicators above them. “Yes.”

“Are you still scanning the planet?”

“Yes, do you want a report? It is not complete.”

Jase grinned. A complete report of any planet with as rich a biosphere as this one could take a lifetime to scan, even with the help of their implants. “No, Zio. Scan for Chidean life signs down there.”

“You think they’ve gone to the surface, then?” Ranael, still aboard their ship, was heard through their earpieces. “The environment is not suitable. I’ve already accounted for a half dozen airborne particles that would harm them.”

“What about us?”

“We’re going down there?” she exclaimed.

“Not all of us.”

There was a brief pause during which, he imagined, she might have been silently voicing her worry for him. “Radiation,” she said finally. “Ultraviolet is far too high, for one. Also some radiation produced by them. Communication, I guess. Will interfere with our exocortices.”

“So nothing deadly.”

“Not immediately,” she said, somewhat primly. “What are you hoping to find down there? You know better than to try to walk into a place that hasn’t had a first-contact experience.”

“I think they have,” Jase said. “With slightly customized Chideans. Zio, what was the complement of the Kasant mission?”

“Two hundred and twenty-six.”

“Do you have a visual of the locals on the planet?”

A hologram appeared before them, stuck halfway in the lab counter until Jase stepped away from it. Naka, beside him, muttered an oath. “They sure look at lot like Chidis,” he said.

Jase let the image spin slowly before them. Bipedal, like all of them, upright, multijointed. Much of the male’s body was covered in hair, like Tenzo’s visible bits. And like Tenzo, it either had no exocortex or its species had not yet invented them. It seemed heftier than and not as smooth-featured as the Chideans, and there were remnants of claws on its short fingers. Creating a disguise by tweaking a few genes would not have been a difficult achievement for the Chideans. “Furry thing, isn’t it?” he said, watching the excitement on Tenzo’s face as he prattled with Zio. “What’s he saying, Zio?”

Zio abridged what was surely a longer conversation: “He wants to meet them.”

“No doubt! Not so sure the rest of us will fit right in, though.”

“Jase,” Ranael said. “I’ve found nothing to indicate that there has ever been any first contact. We haven’t got through the languages yet but, so far, this species seems to consider itself to be unique and superior on this planet. As is usually the case in places like these. If there are Chideans down there, they’ve not announced their presence.”

Jase nodded, mostly to himself. First contact was not in their contract. Dangerous, messy, and entirely too far out of their realm of expertise. “Zio, have you found Chidean DNA?”

“Yes, Jase.”

“Where? How many survived?”

“Unknown. I’ve located nearly eight thousand individuals so far, but we have scanned only one-fifth of the planet.”

“Eight thousand!” Naka snickered. “Looks like your people have been doing a bit of breeding, Mister Tenzo.”

“Would you like me to translate that?”

“No.”

“These are not just Chidean,” Zio continued. “They are technically hybrids.”

“What are you saying?” Naka looked at the stasis chambers as if with new eyes. “They bred with the locals?”

Jase tapped the gene gun. The suspicion that had wormed its way into the back of his mind didn’t seem so far-fetched now. “Nothing so mechanical, I think.” He turned to Aga Tenzo. “Translate directly, Zio,” he said before addressing their sponsor. “The Kasant expedition wasn’t just exploring the rifts, were they? This is no coincidence. They knew this planet had evolved a compatible species.”

Tenzo glanced from him to Ocia and back again. “Yes.”

“They didn’t run out of fuel. There was no distress call. They meant to come here.” Jase gazed at the mute containers of frozen life, perhaps no longer entirely Chidean, waiting for someone to wake it. “This was some attempt at colonization.”

“A successful one,” Naka murmured.

“And you’re here to find that out, Tenzo,” Jase added when Tenzo said nothing. “To see if they were able to survive down there. Even if it meant altering themselves to blend in. Isn’t that right?”

“Why would they do that?” Ocia said.

Tenzo finally raised his hands in a sweeping gesture. “Chidea U Bann is a dying world. We will bring our people here. Kasant was to prepare the way for us and to develop the gene therapies we need to undertake before landing. They served as a vanguard to seed the planet with our people, to learn how to live here.” He looked away from Ocia’s furious expression to appeal to Ranael, who just looked curious. “We feel that we belong here. This planet has produced our mirror selves. Look at them! We’re not here to create hybrids. We will make them better. Think of this as of a…a metamorphosis.”

“And what of the people down there?” Ranael said. “The ones who belonged there first? Kasant’s presence will have changed everything. Changed their evolution.”

Tenzo shrugged again, angrily this time. “Out of necessity. The Kasant group did not share our technology with them. They built the lab up here to keep it safe. But those who went to the surface would have had knowledge far beyond that of the locals. It was to help them develop more quickly. We will need landing sites and power sources that don’t exist now. And leaders among them who will ease our arrival. That, too, is evolution.”

Jase crossed his arms. “Then we’ll let them evolve without us,” he said, angry at having the entire company dragged into this. “We are not going down there. We’ve done some questionable things for fun and profit, but I’m not making this crew part of some planetary takeover. That belongs to ancient history.” He signaled Ocia to keep a careful eye on the Chidean. “Zio, delete whatever Mister Tenzo just downloaded from the system.”

“That research belongs to us!” Tenzo exclaimed. “I have to report back to my people.”

“Then hire someone else. This isn’t what I signed up for. We’ll return your fee.” Jase saw an objection on Ocia’s face. “Minus the transport expenses.”

“My people will not stand for this!”

Jase didn’t need Ranael’s intuition to recognize the desperation on the man’s face. He smiled grimly. “Your people don’t know, do they? Why hire a private prospecting outfit? Explorers do, even scientists do. But not governments trying to keep their species alive. You have a fine fleet.” He raised his arms to encompass the lab. “This experiment is still a secret. You think the end result will justify the means of achieving it.”

“How we operate—”

“I have located the last of the ships, Jase,” Zio interrupted, startling all of them.

“What?”

“On the surface. Not operational. The Kasant AI is there as well.”

“Active?” Ocia gasped. “On the planet?”

“Only the transponder is active. I’ve compared its output to the signature provided by Mister Tenzo.”

“Good God,” Ranael whispered.

“Back to the ships,” Jase said, heading for the exit. “Zio, pinpoint the exact location of the ship and the AI.”

The others hurried after him, past the startled Chidean who was only now receiving the news from Zio.

Jase didn’t bother to listen to any reply he might have to the revelation that the brain of the entire Kasant mission was possibly in the hands of an alien species. “Naka, you and Senda ready your ships for takeoff—we’ll join you once we’re geared up. The nav-ship will stay up here. I don’t want another AI getting lost. “Ranael, are you there?”

“Where would I be, if not here?”

They slipped through the half-open exterior door and hurried to their ships. “We need you with us on this. Zio, see if you can find out who the AI is tied to, if anyone.”

“That model is fairly autonomous,” Zio replied. “As long as it detects Chidean brain waves, it’ll operate.”

“Can it detect any of these eight thousand you’ve found so far?”

“No. They would have to be in close proximity.”

“I’m guessing it is where the ship is. Maybe when they were done up here they took the last ship down, and the AI with it.” Jase nodded to Ranael when they entered the bridge and then looked up at the ceiling. “When you said that the AI wasn’t available, you could have said it was gone. That’s not the same thing, you know.”

“Noted, Jase,” Zio said.

Jase studied the display wall, which showed the dizzying viewpoints of several probes searching the planet. They seemed to be honing in on a flat, arid region devoid of populations. At least, wherever the Kasant crew had decided to land their ship, they had done so away from the locals. He reflected briefly that landing in a deep body of water would have been a wiser choice, given this planet’s primitive technology.

“If they abandoned the moon base, their studies must be complete,” Aga Tenzo said behind him through Zio, reminding them of his presence. “They will have joined the indigenous species to await our arrival. They were to leave the AI up here and destroy the ship.”

Jase did not turn to look at him. “Obviously, they did not.”

“There is no intention to harm the locals. Only to prepare them.”

“That AI has a self-contained power supply to last thousands of years. If someone down there manages to open it, it will poison the entire population. Pray to your gods that there are some of your people down there who still understand who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

When Jase did not reply, Ranael spoke. “They may have left a…a gatekeeper of sorts. Guides. People who know how to keep the AI safe. Perhaps to be used later, when they are ready for such a tool.”

“For such a weapon,” Jase amended. “They have barely left their own surface. Imagine what they’d do with the AI’s computing power, even without a database to give it meaning.”

“This was not our intention!”

“So it would seem,” Ranael said. “So far, I’ve not found any indication that the natives are aware of the Chidean presence, or at least it’s not common knowledge. But there are rumors of others.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“I’m not sure. There is so much information. This planet holds many species and some are distrustful of others. Fearful. Like on many worlds, they compete for space and other resources. So there is much disagreement. But they have started to look to the skies in fear.”

Ocia shrugged. “Ancient gods, probably.”

“Perhaps.” Ranael smiled. “Very likely, actually. There are references that make more sense now. I’ll have Zio pull them together, but my guess is that the Chideans have been here more than once. Perhaps over hundreds of years.”

“Scouting,” Jase said. “Checking up on their creation.” He kept his eyes on a screen showing little more than desert, afraid he might get the urge to strangle Tenzo. Or Ocia, for that matter. None of this had seemed right from the start. “We will inform others of what you have done here, Tenzo. They won’t let you bring your people here. They will send guards to that gate stop you.”

“Why do you care!” the Chidean raged. “This has nothing to do with you. People migrate, people colonize. Such is life.”

Jase looked over to Ranael, who regarded him calmly, her gentle smile telling of her approval and agreement. He doubted Ocia was currently smiling. She’d be the one to explain the lack of full payment to the boss. “That planet already has a colony. We have learned from our past.”

“What about our future? How dare you interfere?” When Jase didn’t bother to answer, Tenzo turned to Ranael, but she simply returned to her work on the incoming data. At last, the Chidean stormed from the bridge.

“We are interfering,” Ranael said to the silence that followed. “If we stop the Chideans, those who are left down there could suffer. Someday, the people will discover DNA. Or find the moon base. And they’ll track down the hybrids among them. That may not go well for anyone.”

Ocia made a scoffing sound. “They’d better start breeding like mad, then.”

“Zio,” Jase said, unwilling to ponder Ranael’s suggestion. “Please monitor Mister Tenzo from here on. Let me know if he goes anywhere but his cabin. He’s not to communicate with anyone once we get back into home space. We’ll take him to the Powers.”

“Understood, Jase.”

“There’s an easier way,” Ocia said.

Jase furrowed his brow. She had a thoughtful look that he didn’t like. “What way?”

“Leave him here. Get rid of him. Let them think his mission failed. That the Kasant mission failed.”

He heard Ranael’s small gasp. “They’ll just send someone else.”

“It’ll buy time. There will be war over this,” Ocia said. “If his people are desperate, they won’t be stopped from coming here. This planet has no defenses. We’ll end up having to guard these people until they can defend themselves or someone gets tired of it.”

She was right. Probably. Their history was filled with bitter wars, and sometimes entire planets were lost to the conquerors. Some prospered. Many didn’t. He glanced at Ranael. She stood in wide-eyed silence, shocked by Ocia’s suggestion, but as always unwilling to insert herself into the endless push and pull of their contentious relationship.

A long, silent moment ticked by before he shook his head. “We’re explorers for hire. Prospectors. Maybe we’re also smugglers at times, but we are not murderers. I left the military for a reason and so did you, Ocia. We’re going to try to grab the AI and then we’re getting back home before breakfast, like you promised, to make our report. Let the Powers figure this out among themselves.”

Ocia’s icy glare was well practiced but had long ago ceased to have any effect on him. She backed down. “So are we keeping the AI, at least? If we can get it wiped and sold on Duoro, it’ll pay for this trip.”

“Damn right we’re keeping it.”

“That’s it down there.”

Jase checked their coordinates once again and then looked up at the screen. Naka, sitting at the helm beside him, eased the ship down toward the sprawl of buildings surrounded by scrublands. They had come in silently, two ships in the dark, their shielding too slippery for any of the planet-bound scanning and tracking systems. He supposed that someone out here, looking up into the sky, might have noticed their vague shadows hovering in the night. Or watched them seemingly disappear again, their movement too fast to track with the eye.

“Why am I not surprised to find the AI so heavily guarded?” Ocia said, scanning the perimeter of what looked like the sort of bunkers they had seen in other places. “There is a warren of tunnels beneath all that. Fortified.”

“We can get through that?” Jase said.

She waved a long-fingered hand as if nothing they saw here was of any consequence.

“Can you do this without shooting anybody?” Ranael, still strapped into her seat behind them, asked.

Ocia glanced at the woman with a hint of a sneer. “As long as no one gets in my way, sure.”

Jase turned as well. “We have little choice, Ran. I don’t think they’ll have any way to stop us. There is nothing down there that can harm us without causing a whole lot of damage to their own people. There’s no reason to hurt anyone.” Ocia pretended not to notice that his words were directed at her as well.

Ranael glanced at Ocia. “Let’s hope so,” she mumbled.

The drones had done their job. The Kasant AI was located here, below ground, transmitting little more than a thread of a signal. Zio—their own, more advanced system—stayed safely on the moon, its signal amplified by a nearby drone and picked up by their exocortices. The interference that was currently frustrating the ground-based scanners affected them too, but they had covered their heads with protective hoods that matched their tight grey body suits.

Minute filters inserted into their nasal passages sufficed down here, and none of them carried visible weapons. It made all of them feel absurdly naked, but Ranael hoped to present them as unthreateningly as possible. The locals would likely not comprehend the firepower of their ships, and it would take only a thought to enable their individual shields if the need arose.

“Here we go, friends,” Naka said.

Before they had even touched down, a surge of people emerged from the buildings, some of them clearly armed. Judging by the raised voices and arm-waving, Jase guessed that no one here had been prepared for the visitors dropping from the sky into their yard.

“Look at them all,” Ocia said, amused. “They really do look an awful lot like Chideans.”

As they had planned, Jase, Ranael, Ocia, and two of Senda’s crew emerged from their ships without fanfare, closing the gates before anyone thought to even take a look inside the airlock.

Jase had no intention of indulging in proper first-contact ceremonies with these people. He led the others toward the building Zio had recommended, not surprised when some of the tall natives stalked toward them, as lumbering and stiff as Aga Tenzo, who was still sulking in his cabin on the moon.

“Are you detecting any of those Chidean hybrids here, Zio?” Jase transmitted to the AI as he raised his hand in what they believed to be a greeting. A small patch on his palm sampled the air.

“Yes, Jase. Three at least. There may be more below ground but I cannot probe that deeply. The stout male without hair on his head to your left. Also the one beside him in the blue clothing.”

By now they were surrounded by people dressed alike in colors as drab as the desert, guns aimed at the visitors. Ranael stepped forward. “Please let us pass,” she said after signaling Zio to translate via a speaker embedded in her exocortex.

There was an astonished silence, and then one of the people before them spoke, saying something in a harsh voice that made clear his objection to her request. Zio had to fill in a few patches and omit some phrases, but the language it had learned was sufficient.

Ranael looked up at the tall native. She hid her fear well, Jase thought, but then it wasn’t likely that this person would interpret her expression anyway. She turned to the broad-shouldered male Zio had pointed out. “We know who you are. You have something that doesn’t belong here. We have come for it.”

The hybrid glanced at the other, looking nervous and perhaps a little angry, if their experience with Tenzo’s people allowed them the comparison. After a moment, Zio translated his words. “We can’t let you.”

“You have no choice,” Ocia said, already impatient with this palaver.

“Who are you?” the hybrid said, his voice thin. “Why are you doing this?”

“That doesn’t matter. But we are watching you. You—”

“Zio, cease translation,” Ranael snapped.

“Understood.”

“Tell them nothing!” Ranael said to Ocia. “They don’t need to know. Let’s be gone and let others handle this.”

“Agreed,” Jase said. He activated his shield and took a step forward. “Stay together, just keep walking.”

One of the men aimed at his chest when he moved to walk between them. Someone else shouted something. A man reached out to grasp Ranael’s arm, which slipped out of his grasp as if oiled. More shouting.

It did not take long before someone fired a projectile weapon. The bullet glanced off Ocia’s shield and struck the ground beside someone’s foot. Jase’s small group moved steadily forward, untouched by the attempts to stop them. Uncaring of the live fire. Unstoppable by hands and fists. When another bullet deflected from Jase into a man’s leg, someone apparently gave the order to cease fire.

Now three hulking males blocked their way into the broad entrance door of the building.

“Ocia,” Jase said. “Just demonstrate. Nothing more.”

She bit back a grin and touched the emitter at the tip of her finger, briefly unshielded, to a man’s leg. He screeched, surprised by the sudden pain, and collapsed on the ground, twitching. More shouting erupted when the others jumped aside. When Ocia turned toward the small crowd behind them, the Chidean hybrid among them made himself heard above the din.

“Translate, Zio,” Jase said.

They listened to a somewhat-garbled interpretation, but the meaning was clear. The man, perhaps some sort of leader, urged the others to stand down. Grudgingly, the men backed off, but guns remained fixed on the newcomers. Jase almost expected Ocia to buzz one of them just to make her point, but she kept her fingers to herself.

“Tell them to stay out of our way,” he said to the man. “You know they can’t stop us. It is not our intent to hurt anyone.”

The Chidean regarded him warily, then looked back at the two ships crouching in the gloom behind them like some mythical menace come to life. “You’ve come for the ship?” he said, his voice barely audible.

“Just a part of it,” Jase replied. Aided by Zio, he managed the door’s locking mechanism, and they stepped into the building. The hybrid and two others followed after motioning their people to back away. The ship’s parts would be useless without the AI. Before any of these people learned enough from the design to replicate a useful power source, the Chideans would be standing at their gate, ready to take their world from them.

“Zio, monitor their movements and make sure they don’t find a way to barricade us in here,” Jase said after they had traversed harshly lit corridors and several stairways. Zio’s signal suffered from the layers of rock and metal that made up the underground installation, and each step down seemed like a descent into a tomb. They met no one along the way; perhaps the people who staffed this place had been ordered away.

Ocia snickered. “With what? There is no security here to speak of. No cohesive network, not even electronics. Brawn, bricks, guns is all they have.”

“It’s in here,” Jase said finally, pointing at a door.

The hybrid, silent during their descent, moved to open it for them. Jase wondered if his earlier manipulation of the locks had broken something.

They entered a storage room, or perhaps a workshop. Jase peered into the dim, cavernous space. No one waited here for them. Equipment and pieces that seemed to belong to planes and other airships cluttered massive shelves and had been collected in piles everywhere, leaving space between them for people to get around. Zio’s interpretation of their hidden scanners led them to a heap of twisted metal.

Ranael gasped. “They crashed?”

The hybrid nodded. “On their last trip here from…from up there. We believe it was done on purpose. The fire consumed much of it.”

“Did they survive?”

“We found no…no bodies. If they lived, they did not stay with the wreck.”

Jase prodded a shred of a tail section with his foot. This, then, confirmed it. These hybrids were experiments, never meant to leave this place again, serving only to support Chidean theories. For how many generations had the mission experts visited to inspect their progeny, perhaps to cut one or two of them up to see how their bodies fared in this environment? And did this person know? How much did any of them know? He ached to ask them; this man seemed to be one of the gatekeepers Ranael had assumed would be here. But this was beyond his skills and experience. He said nothing.

“What did you come for?” the hybrid said to Ocia, who was inspecting a jumble of parts on a long counter.

After a little rummaging, she held up a diamond-shaped object, rounded on one end and somewhat spongy to the touch. “This.”

“What…what is it?” he said. “We’ve not been able to identify it.”

“Piece of art,” Ocia said and marched past him back to the door.

Brigadier General Malcolm Groves barely waited until the jeep delivering him from the airfield came to a halt before the administrative bunker of the base. Leaping from the vehicle, he ignored the salutes of the personnel who got in his way and strode past the startled secretary sitting outside Colonel Farrow’s office.

“Farrow!” he barked when he entered without knocking.

The sight that met him was not what he had expected. With a quick look over his shoulder, he slammed the door to the hall.

Glenn Farrow sat behind his desk, uniform jacket carelessly unbuttoned, a cigarette smoldering in the brimming ashtray before him. His slack-jawed stare was on a calendar across the room. The corner of the June page moved listlessly in the current of a desktop fan, revealing and hiding Marilyn’s glorious legs as it oscillated.

“Glenn?” Groves said. He noticed a half-empty bottle of booze on the cabinet behind the officer. “Dammit, what’s gotten into you? Report.”

Farrow turned his head. “Damage control’s under way. We’ve moved personnel. Sanitized the landing area. Destroyed all recordings. This didn’t happen.”

The general frowned. “What about the men?”

“Do you want to know?”

Groves started to say something and then just exhaled sharply. He shook his head. “Do you think they found the Luna site?”

Farrow’s pale eyes traveled to his. “We didn’t even see them coming. Of course they saw it. For all we know they’re living up there right now.” His listless fingers spun a piece of paper on his desk. “They are watching. So they said.”

“Did they say how many there were? What they wanted, other than that rubber thing?”

“They said nothing. But they know who we are. And don’t seem happy about it.”

Groves sighed. “We need to regroup. We can deal with this. I’m flying on to Langley to report. Did you get any photos of them?”

The colonel looked down and then pushed the piece of paper toward the general, turning it as he did so. “This is their leader. At least we can pick them out of a lineup if they come back.” He thought about this. “When they come back.”

Groves whistled under his breath as he studied the drawing of the aliens that had come to visit. Thin and grey, with arms reaching nearly to their knees, their slight bodies looked as if they would have a hard time supporting their massive, hairless heads. It was the eyes, even in this crude sketch, which caught his attention. Dark and flat, they seemed to mock him, taunt him, with a promise.