The blip was mild, like a gnat that was slowly circling her head, buzzing louder and quieter but never flying away. Kitara grumbled and buried her head in the pillow. It wasn’t a warning klaxon and she was dreaming sweetly of the pleasure gardens on the amusement planet Cythera.
“Daebak, off!” She stuck her head under the pillow. The beeping continued.
“Daebak, I said off.”
“I’m sorry, mistress, I cannot.”
“Daebak, you bum-“
“It is an interplanetary code for distress. I cannot turn it off until the message has been heard in full.”
Kitara groaned and knuckled her sleep-swollen eyes.
“I’m going to reprogram you the second we get to a system with decent ship mechanos.”
“That will be a long wait.”
Kitara picked up a sparkball and lobbed the electrical pulse at the nearest control panel. An impressive explosion spread like a web of blue and white lightning, jumping from surface to surface, before eventually fading. It was harmless but she had made it as a way to let off steam during these long voyages. The sparks were pretty too.
“And then who would you abuse during your voyages?”
Kitara mumbled under her breath but threw the sheets off her. Ugh, was she really still hung over even after… what? She looked at the console. Three weeks of hypnosleep? She reached her arms overhead and yawned loudly, curling her toes on the nubby floor and stretching.
She squeezed into the cleaning cabinet and set it to its coldest setting. The gush of particles blasted away the sleep from her eyes and the last of her sweet Cytherean dreams. The chronometer and destination map showed that Daebak, or the signal, had woken her up before schedule. They were in the middle of nowhere. She sighed and stepped out, her skin chafed and cold.
The cabin was only dimly lit by the ambient glow of the bacterial filtration tubes lining the walls. Kitarafelt her way intuitively but couldn’t see which of the piles contained a reasonably clean sheath. She had upholstered her berth with imitation Yenti pelt and its iridescent whorls and stripes made it difficult.
Daebak helpfully blinked a light over the nearest body sheath. She stepped into it and it zipped itself over her Ierli sun-tanned pink skin. Ierli had a type 3 purple star that was famous for its effect on exposed epidermis and she had cultivated a nice shade. Well, there was no one here to appreciate it now. It would be completely faded by the time she got back to civilized space.
Kitara slid the pod shut and swung herself down the corridor to the deck using exposed girders and hand holds to complete flips and hangs to wake up her body as she crossed nearly all of Daebak’s twenty meters. Vertebrae cracked and muscles long unused in the berth complained at the sudden activity.
Daebak had a mug filled with hot broth waiting for her in the galley. She looped it to her belt and continued her acrobatics till she had landed, a little clumsily, into her captain’s chair at the head of the ship. The cockpit was the smallest area of the ship, barely more enough for the chair, held in suspension above the floor. Every surface was covered in vids. The shield was down and she had a wide, panoramic view of the space her ship, Daebak 1, was in as well as scrolling lists of information. She mostly ignored it.
“Go, Daebak,” she kicked her bare heels up onto the control panel and, opening the mug with her thumb, blew into the sudden steam.
“Mesozoia: a class C planet in an unnamed galaxy in the Tanus Supercluster. It was discovered in the reign of Artaxerxes the Bold, in the eleventh year of the Fifth Republic, otherwise known as the Disintegration. The high volume of refugees fleeing affected systems means it is not known how many successful colonies were established in this period. This one lost touch only a few solars after inception.”
“No contact for a thousand years?”
“No transmissions from this system have been filed in any of the records I have accessed. I had to cross reference several databases to find the ship log. It appears that some records have been deleted. This is not unusual for the Disintegration but it leaves the possibility for deliberate misdirection.”
“How did you become so programmed for paranoia, Daebak? You don’t get it from me.”
“I am only noting that the records could have been tampered with. I would think my Captain would be interested in my interpolations.”
“Send the ship log and crew list to my hand.”
“I’m getting to that.”
Kitara rolled her eyes but did not interrupt again.
“The permanent colonizer, a Genesis SLX-500 model, left Mars with 5,233 colonists incorporated under the name New Dawn. A mission statement I found was written by one of their number, a Dr. Chuntao Agapito, expert in the fields of astrobiology and xenomorphology. It stated a desire to leave a corrupt system of government in order to forge a new colony based on rationality and a focus on optimal use of bio-augmentation sciences. It is of interest to note that there are several news items about Dr. Agapito. She was ousted from her university on grounds of malpractice.”
“Send me every byte on the doc.”
Daebak continued with a split second pause that, for a ship’s computer, was the equivalent of a sigh. “The planet lease was purchased from the explorer company Cordyne-Yamato Industries. This company has been defunct for 564 solars. At the time, Mesozoia was one of the farthest planets human scouts had reached.”
Kitara pulled up the system map on her console and a responsive multi-dimensional galaxy hovered between her and the view outside of her ship. Like so many during the Disintegration, these colonists had intended to get as far away from the Republic as possible. Mesozoia’s system was almost completely surrounded by one of the thickest ice belts Kitara had seen. Navigation had evolved but it was still a deterrent to regular traffic. That and the fact that the space highway was built so far from it had ensured it remained a backwater. If the colonists had gotten into any trouble no one would have been listening during the Disintegration, then the civil wars, then the energy crisis. By the time the galaxy had stabilized itself (relatively) it appeared it had forgotten all about New Dawn.
“Mesozoia is one of five planetoids in the system orbiting a solar giant. In turn it is orbited by six bodies: five natural moons and the remains of the colonizer. It has one main continental mass with some negligible, uninhabitable islands. The atmosphere is erratic due to frequent volcanic eruptions, violent storms and meteor strikes from the nearby asteroid belt. The continent is dominated by a thickly vegetated equator surrounded by volcanic deserts. The planet was named by Cordyne-Yamato scouts who noted the native saurian life forms resembled the fossil remains from Earth’s Mesozoic period. There is a multitude of apex predator species. The distress signal is coming from the colonizer.
“Data for analysis is limited by the unusual storm activity and the fact that its star is releasing a large amount of electromagnetic interference. The signal would only be effective when the rotation of the ship is ideal, to be received by someone in our location, and solar disturbance is slow. Which may be a rare event for this system and another reason why no one has heard it.”
“One in a centillion chance, huh, Daebak?”
“Your figure is optimistic. I calculate a one in three hundred seventy-five-”
“Cut it out. A long shot, I get it. Is there a message with the transmission?”
“No, captain. Only the standard ICD signal.”
Kitara swung her feet off the console and downed the rest of the hot beverage. She sat forward with her thumbs on her chin. The ship intuited from her gestures that she was thinking and put on the music she prefered.
From the most merciless mercenaries to the most swinish salvagers, no one ignored an ICD. And even though some former lovers might call her the most unfeeling bitch in the known galaxies, she was no exception. She couldn’t leave the system without locating the signal and possible survivors.
“Can you contact the colonizer?”
“There is no other signal from the Genesis SLX-500 and its AI, if still functioning, cannot be reached without direct contact. However, I am detecting something from the surface of the planet to the colonizer. The encryption is strong.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Well, since you ask so nicely, I can send a probe to the ship and see if I can connect
from the outside.”
“Do it. I want to know what it knows. But stay put, I don’t want to orbit yet. And release another probe to the planet as soon as you can find a good gravity well over the settlement.”
“Probe 1 is launching. Probe 2 is already waiting in the hold and I have calculated that it can be released in 432 minutes.”
“Get Jemmen on the horn. He’s going to wonder what’s taking so long.”
Daebak held back outside the pull of Mesozoia while Kitara debated their next move. The ship was right about the solar interference and she finally gave up on reaching Jemmen. She recorded a message and had Daebak send it back to the salvager she was, nominally, working for. She would cool her heels and wait for the probe.
Jemmen was a Dross Brother. The Brethren were salvagers, wreckers sometimes. They lived on the edges, in the wastelands and off the scraps of the rest of the universe but they were as ancient as space travel and, in their way, powerful. Enough to make an effort to stay on their good side.
Jemmen had sent Kitara out into deep space to plunder defunct mining operations. She had a bit of luck by happening upon a trawler smashed to bits in an asteroid field and come away with a good haul. Then she’d spent most of it on Ierli and had to go out again empty-handed after a hedonistic month. Jemmen could stick it up his ass but anyway it had been a good time to leave Ierli, and a persistent admirer, behind.
So the ICD was a convenient source of delay. And it didn’t hurt to have someone know where she was. She hoped that it wouldn’t come to it, but something told her that she would be making a trip to the surface. She eyed the densely swirled mass. The Northern hemisphere was having a spectacular storm. The hurricane over its ocean would be sucking up and spewing an unfathomable amount of it.
The probe would tell them more. Hopefully everything. Kitara wasn’t about to risk her ship to peril, either human or natural. ICDs could be sent for anything from a simple mishap to cataclysm: joyriders drifting after their fuel reserves were gone or entire settlements turned into ghost towns. Kitara thought about the mining operation on Kaleez that had vanished without a trace, leaving a mystery that was never to be solved. Space was full of the weird and unexplainable. She’d seen enough of it to not be surprised by anything so she and Daebak would take no chances.
Daebak might be old, at least by Imperial Navy standards, but for the most part that was only its skin. Daebak was a decommissioned fighter from the civil wars and from the outside that was all it still appeared to be. One of millions of clunkers still jumping space on a wing and prayer. He looked unassuming and she prefered it that way. Every time she got the itch to repaint its exterior she let the faded and roguish blue and red stripes of its naval past stay. The fact that Daebak was built like a tank compared to the ultra light, ultra fast ships of today had also sometimes worked in their favor.
Specifically, Daebak was a Seek and Destroy. Not a short-range fighter, but an autonomous unit sent out like ancient submarines to find enemies. When she had found it in a space yard, Daebak’s deck, crew space and holds had been gutted. Kitara had spent the last decade repairing and customizing it. The S&Ds had been made for a crew of three and so it was more than comfortable for her. Her pod, two other bunk berths and a galley with bacteria and algae farms made up the living quarters. The small lab with the medical tube, the combat/flight deck and modest holds made up the rest. She’d suited it to her needs and honeycombed it with hidey holes. Smuggling was big business with the new Galactic Order and a girl had to eat.
Now its interior, and especially its heart, bore little resemblance to those tin can fighters. The old ships’ AI was about as similar as a single thread to a tapestry. Daebak’s computer was an obscure brand she had obtained from a black market dealer and in the years that they had been together she had programmed it, and it had evolved, in a way to be very much like a first mate. Some didn’t like their AIs to have too much personality but, in Kitara’s opinion, space was empty enough.
“Captain, Probe 2 launching. Touch down expected in 222 minutes.”
Kitara felt the slight stir as a bay door opened and a probe shot from the tube. It would fly over the area recording data before it set down and took surface information. There it would stay, transmitting as long as the cells remained charged. Nothing to do now but wait. Kitara went to the hold to use the down time to shake off the last of the hypnosleep.
Kitara was in the galley making a real meal when Daebak reported the first data burst from the probe.
“Any sign of survivors?” She asked first.
“Not yet. The probe had to navigate below the storm system and it was unable to find the target area.”
“Where is it?” Kitara folded herself into the small dining booth with her plate on her knees.
Daebak projected an iimage of the planet above the fold away table. A bright spot glowed where the signal to the colonizer was originating. The image zoomed in on that point near the equator of the large continent about 100 kilometers from the coast. Within the grid was the green outline of the original settlement, the green point of the signal near to it and another blue point where the probe had landed. It was about 50 kilometers off of its target.
“What happened?”
“There is an active volcano in the area.” The image was overlaid with a heat map. An angry red sore appeared. “Gusts from the crater may have overwhelmed the probe’s engine. The probe is also reporting heavy rain and flooding. It has mapped the area from the air but the thickness of the vegetation has limited data. The settlement appears to be completely overtaken by jungle. The probe is currently walking to the signal.”
“What is the ETA for the probe?”
“At its current pace it will reach the area in four days.”
Kitara let off a noise of annoyance. She thought for a minute, chewing her algae.
“Launch another probe just in case.” Kitara drummed her fingers on table. “What are the primary hazards on Mesozoia?”
Daebak changed the holo-vid to the eye of the probe. It was crawling through thick jungle. From its perspective waves of mud and silt were titanic. It scrambled up a rock and Kitara could see, briefly through curtains of thick rain, a green vastness and a smoking peak in the distance.
“From the scout report, the largest recorded life form was a reptilian plant eater the size of a Dinwabi tanker.”
“Sweet tits of Argyn,” Kitara muttered.
“There are carnivorous predators not quite as large but are also dangerous for a multitude of skills such as venom and speed. Nearly all life forms should be considered hazardous. Meteor strike and volcanic activity would also pose threats to flight.”
“What are the planet’s major resources? Why did New Dawn pick this one?”
“The charter never drew up an exports plan. It seems they always intended to be self-contained. The charter was a generous one so Cordyne-Yamato must have found negligible economic benefit. But it would appear to be unspoiled and thus resource rich.”
“So.” Kitara ticked off her pink fingers. “The colonists are still there, they have moved settlements, or they are all dead.”
“Those are the most likely options, captain. I have used the probe’s data to identify the closest location most likely for human habitation. There is an inland lake about 25 kilometers from the original settlement.”
Kitara moved her hand and the map responded by becoming a horizontal topographical plan of the area. The glowing lines traced a surface that was incredibly uneven. The jungle was pitted with craters, craggy peaks and cliffs.
“Penny for your thoughts, mistress,” Daebak said.
“You know what I’m thinking.”
“That, according to Space Law 7-1a you are within your rights to relay the transmission to the nearest ship capable of action.”
“Yes.”
“But that you owe Jemmen of the Brotherhood 500,000 credits.”
“Yes,” Kitara sighed.
Kitara went back to the flight deck and watched the only entertainment in the system: the planet's stormy surface. Not long after the second probe had reached the settlement the first probe stopped transmitting. Footage showed a flash of claw and tail before it went dead so there was little doubt about what had stopped it.
“Probe 2 shows no sign of human life at the settlement.”
“So what does the data suggest? I would like some of your famous interpolations now.”
“Most likely the colony failed. But, based on the number of colonists, the length of time and the historical data of colonies on planets with similar threat levels, the colony could be about 500,000 individuals with the median age around 22.34 years.”
“”And the society?”
“It is difficult to say, Captain. The charter stated a distrust of machine technology but not an outright refusal of it. However, any humans who survived could more properly be described as natives now. The available data indicates that the planet has been without communication from the rest of the universe for 30 to 50 generations, depending on cultural mores and reproductive health.”
“Yes,” Kitara frowned and bit her lip.
“If you are determined to explore salvage options…”
“Oh, come on Daebak, give me a little credit.”
“...I would advise enactment of the protocols for Primitive Encounter.”
“Avoidance. I concur. Alright, we might as well get this over with. Base our entry on weather patterns and a location where we won’t be seen.”
While Daebak readied for touchdown Kitara lay in her pod and studied the data on the colonists. Daebak had run some possibilities on how their language, already archaic by her standards, would have evolved. She programmed the pod to administer microinjections into the base of her skull and for 48 hours her brain would have the plasticity of a newborn. Daebak ran her through some hypothetical vocabulary, basic biology and survival and defense strategies in a jungle environment.
Kitara turned off the vid and the immersive simulations faded to blackness. She cracked the lid to the pod and stepped out.
“I’ll handle the descent, Daebak.”
“Mistress, have you been unhappy with my performance?”
“Of course not. But for the past three months I’ve either been sleeping in this damn pod or going soft on Ierli beaches. At this rate I won’t be any better than a damn milky.”
“I will ignore that for humorous hyperbole since I am well aware of your scorn for humans who have not left the natal galaxy. But I must voice my concerns. This is a highly volatile atmosphere and-”
“Even better. I need a challenge.”
“With my body.” Daebak’s voice sounded the most human when it argued. “And your life.”
“I’ll have you know I was flying naval ships before you were born.”
She slid into her captain’s seat and strapped in. The cockpit lit up as Daebak relinquished control. But not without a nagging array of warning lights and information scrawling across the vids. Not that she could blame it. She had flown Daebak through a lot of sticky situations but this was a new one.
“Recommending a thruster ratio of-”
“I see it, thank you!”
The command seat gave a jolt and vibrated in relation to the stresses in the ship’s hull as they entered Mesozoia’s orbit. She pointed them in and Daebak’s nose began to glow like the beast of the ancient terran fable. The ship punched through the atmosphere and was suddenly embroiled in a maelstrom. Visibility was zero and Kitara switched the main vid. The noise of the planet was like a roar after all that space silence and Kitara felt her ears and molars ache with the pressure. Purple and mustard colored clouds roiled as a violent wind buffeted the ship. In fact the ship was bouncing like a virgin cadet making her first landing.
Kitara, sensitive to her ship’s every movement, felt something like a micro-correction, a tiny lack of response.
“No cheating, Daebak,” she said through gritted teeth.
Suddenly they were below the cloud wall and a sea of green filled the screen. The great orange, smoking crater of the active volcano was in the east and Kitara altered her trajectory to give it a wide berth. She whistled.
“Look at that,” she swept in a flight mirroring the crater’s curve, looking down.
“Advise to keep your distance from the mouth,” Daebak said.
Almost at the same moment the board lit up and a warning klaxon sounded. Kitara barely heard Daebak but felt the rear thrusters fire in an attempt to stabilize the ship. Another titanic gust hit them and before she knew it they had dropped a thousand meters and were skimming the tree line. Kitara strained with all her strength at the chair’s controls. Vegetation and surprised tree-dwellers splattered and slid across the shield. The map told her that they were approaching a deep ravine. Fast.
Kitara wasn’t sure if she thought it first or if Daebak had deployed it but the websteel shot through the canisters at the front and caught the ship like a ball in a catcher’s mitt.
Finally, with a metallic shriek, the ship was silent and softly rocking in the sticky metal web. Kitara unclenched her fingers from the wheel and let out her breath.
“Well it might not have been my best land-“ Kitara squealed as the ship lurched and went into freefall, landing two seconds later into darkness. “Landing,” she finished. “But we’re here.”
“Look, I said I was sorry! Who knows, you might not have been able to do any better.”
In response Daebak projected a damage list. It would take a lot more to seriously hurt it but the engines had been overwhelmed by ash particulate from the volcano. It had happened too quickly and they had lost too much altitude to make a more graceful landing. Repairs needed to be made from the glass shard-like ejecta that had been sucked into the engines.
“We are 2.3 kilometers from the target landing site.”
Kitara went to the old fashioned periscope and it slid down. She put her eyes to the viewer and looked out. It was not merely aesthetic choice although because she did not want to depend solely on the computer system for information. The key to surviving in space was redundancy.
“But at least we’re in a nice spot,” she said. The ship had slid down a ravine and landed beside a creek with a twenty meter waterfall. A faint rainbow arched over it. Vines of deep blue draped the rock walls and glowed where the sunlight hit them. A light mist was rising from the water and hung about the floor of the ravine, obscuring the details of thick-leaved plants with blooms at least a meter across. “Aristos pay trillions for a vacation like this. Nice and secluded..”
She sent out her bumblebees. They were fat little drones of her own design and the mobiles that Daebak most often animated. Five flew off with a buzzing of metal wings to survey the canyon and the surrounding jungle. Two more crawled over Daebak’s hull to examine it more closely.
“I have prepared your carapace.”
“Thank you.”
Kitara went to the hold where her carapace was standing. As she approached it, it split itself to allow her to enter. She stood at the center and let it close around her like a clam closing its shell. The momentary claustrophobia and unnerving prickle as the synapses connected quickly eased and she felt the usual surge of energy. She ran a diagnostic and did a quick test of its reflexes.
She lept to the ceiling of the hold, about five meters, and the nano-hairs on her palms and knees stuck to it for a moment before disengaging. She moved each joint and flexed each muscle by kicking her knees up high and wiggling her arms. The suit responded and augmented her motions. She wanted to be able to move quickly so she did not put it in full armor mode. Finally, she lowered the visor and it hissed shut, sealing her environment. Daebak opened the bay door.
I recommend a short excursion. The bees have reported no signs of life larger than a half meter but there are spoor of quite large animals nearby. The air quality is good but keep your visor down in case of unknown contaminants.
Daebak’s voice was like a thought in her head as the computer spoke through her implants.
Roger that.