Above Carthage

THE SMALL SHUTTLE drifted on a preprogrammed path, first climbing to the midpoint of the space elevator where gravity would be effectively nullified at this speed, then beginning its trek to the selected location. The cramped space quickly became uncomfortable, with each member of the group gravitating to their own place and settling in for the ride. Tania remained in what she considered the pilot’s seat, though with everything automated the true purpose of the position seemed more like that of a conductor.

Still, it allowed her to monitor the various displays aligned around her. Something of a chore considering the translation system her helmet provided. Anything she wanted to read she had to hold in the center of her vision long enough for a suitable English version to display. For simple signs inside the space station, that had been trivial, but a status screen for a spacecraft was a whole different thing. Not only was the information dense, but it changed rapidly. Because the numbers no doubt had to also be converted into something a human would appreciate, often her visor’s readout could not even finish displaying something before it had to wipe the whole mess and start again.

Trying to follow it only made the headache she already had that much worse. The vitals at least seemed in order. They had fuel, they had air, and they had a destination. Tania decided the only thing she really needed to know was if their course had been altered by an external force, or if another craft was approaching them with an intent to dock, ram, or otherwise impede their course.

So she stared out the window instead. The ship was on autopilot, but she could roll it on its axis without affecting their course, so she manipulated the angle until her window looked down at Carthage. Nobody complained, or even seemed to notice.

Sam and Vaughn had taken positions on either side of the small airlock, ready to exit the craft at a moment’s notice if a battle was imminent. Prumble similarly clung to the wall directly opposite the same door, ready to face anyone who might try to board them. That left Tania at the “nose” of the ship, and Tim all the way aft, in a small chamber that appeared to be used for storing the personal belongings of the passengers. He had his eyes closed, and drifted lazily, held in place only by one foot, which he’d looped through one of the luggage webbings. He’d lived most of his life in space, as had she, which made the materials and design of the vessel the only thing about this that felt truly alien.

Tania let out a long sigh. It fogged her visor, temporarily obscuring the view. She let it fade, slowly revealing the details of the planet below as the moisture was removed from her air by the suit. She studied the landmasses, the oceans with their odd milky coloration. A topography she’d all but memorized while aboard the Chameleon, but seeing it in person was always so different. It’s so close, she thought. To come all this way and not make it to the surface. This outcome made her feel profoundly empty inside. All that had happened, here and on Earth and in between, for nothing. To end in retreat, with the knowledge that the Builders would simply continue their galactic sorting algorithm in order to find another possible candidate to achieve this rescue.

And worse, so much worse it made her heart feel as if gripped in a vise, was the knowledge that they would leave people behind. Skyler, Vanessa, even the crew of the Wildflower. Missing, presumed dead, the report would conclude. She could see it now, and it made her want to scream. Tania did not expect the Universe to be fair, never had. She knew it for what it was; a mostly empty container of atoms that sometimes came together in interesting ways. Such a thing had no sense of fairness. It had no sense at all. But it was supposed to make sense. That, at least, she always had believed. That if you looked hard enough you could find a reason for something being the way it was.

An overwhelming sense of confinement took hold of her. She wanted, more so even than seeing Skyler alive again, to be outside. To feel the air on her face. To not be in a tiny box with nothing more than someone else’s technology to keep her from the cold vacuum of space.

She took some advice Skyler had given her, years ago. To act on instinct, rather than think everything through. Tania reached up and undid the seal on her helmet. She ignored the warnings and lifted the bulk away before anyone could stop her. Tania let it drift into a corner and shook her hair free from the ponytail she’d tied it in.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam asked.

Tania inhaled deeply. The air tasted of metal and grease and the faint traces of chemical recirculation. Like home, to her, though it was far too cold and very thin. She turned to Sam, exhaled, and said, “I couldn’t stand the staleness anymore. Besides, we knew it was breathable.”

“Only just,” Prumble observed.

Tania gave an apologetic shrug. “I only want a few minutes. Besides, one of us was going to have to test it at some point.”

She drifted between the group clustered around the airlock. A tight fit, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to move, feel wind on her face. Nothing like what she’d experienced falling toward Hawaii, of course, but it made things a little more bearable.

The burst of conversation had not woken Tim. He’d twisted in his sleep, and settled in a corner as free-floating debris in zero gravity often did. Tania had no interest in waking him. She performed a swimmer’s turn, rolling in midair so she could push off with her feet, and launch back toward the nose of the ship.

A display caught her eye. She’d left her visor behind, and so had no translation, but the imagery required no such system to be understood. It was a map. A top-down schematic of all the space stations and space elevators around the planet, as well as some markers for various installations on the surface. Something about it was wrong. It didn’t match Eve’s depiction.

Curious, Tania pushed back to the cockpit, retrieved her helmet, and put it back on as she crossed aft once again. Prumble, Sam, and Vaughn watched all this silently, heads swiveling in unison like spectators at a tennis match. Once at the screen, with Tim’s sleeping form bobbing just centimeters away, Tania scanned the display again, this time with the English translation appearing just below the alien symbols.

There were so many that it took her a moment to realize it was the quantity that had caught her attention. Of course, that made perfect sense. Eve’s data had been woefully out of date. It was only natural to expect the Scipios to have expanded in the centuries since Eve had last visited. What wasn’t new had probably been moved or removed as well.

“What is it?” Prumble asked.

“A map,” Tania replied, almost unaware of her own voice. She’d already become lost in the schematic, studying its details wherever her eyes spotted something interesting. It took a moment, but she found their own craft, indicated by a small red shape that was evidently their iconic representation of a transport or shuttle. Their path, a softly glowing yellow curve, took them halfway around the planet to another space elevator, which ascended to the farthest point and terminated at a space station marked simply DEPART. Well that’s tidy, Tania thought. Now she knew why Tim had picked it. She just hoped it meant depart as in leave the system, and not the Scipios’ version of a morgue, for nowhere did it say who was departing or what it was they were departing from.

Still, she had to agree with Tim’s choice. It made sense to have a dockyard at that outermost point, if only for the gravitation assist such a position provided.

Chewing her lower lip in concentration, Tania scanned the other stations around the planet. Their purposes were often obvious—NUTRIENT PRODUCTION—and alternately, utterly baffling—EXCITING ALLOCATE being one example she could easily envision as the type of T-shirt tourists would buy in a foreign country purely for the novelty of the poor translation. She theorized that section of connected stations to be the Scipio version of a theme park or vacation spot. Probably used a slogan like “A place to get your yearly allocation of excitement!”

On a certain level she knew her giddiness came from the air she’d breathed, but that same air also made her not care. She continued to study the map. Doing so gave her an odd sense of joy, a feeling she’d known since childhood, that very first time she’d seen a physical globe map of Earth and spun it around. “The pleasure of finding things out,” a book she’d read many times had described it. A phrase that had defined her life.

Two details caught her eye, one after the other, each so alarming she felt momentarily trapped between them, unsure which to focus on. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

That drew Prumble over. He shouldered himself into the cabin, pushing the sleeping Tim against the wall. He still did not wake. The space was now utterly cramped, made worse by the fact that all three occupants had their aura shards strapped to their backs. “Found something?”

“Two things,” Tania said, breathless.

“Be calm, be calm,” he said. “Show me.”

Sam and Vaughn came over as well, though they had to remain just outside the narrow bulkhead, unable to see the screen.

Tania pointed to an odd icon flashing erratically on the planet’s surface, near the base of one of the space elevators. The text below it translated to two phrases that it faded between rapidly: UNEXPLAINED FATALITIES, and DEORBITED OBJECT.

“That,” Prumble said, “is something indeed.”

Tania nodded. She didn’t want to voice her theory, as if putting his name out there might somehow dispel the chance. Besides, she could see in Prumble’s eyes that he thought the same thing she did. “There’s more,” she said, tracing her finger up the length of that elevator thread. This was no error or even a warning, but merely a stack of space stations along its path, perhaps a third of the way around the equator from the position of their little shuttle. On their path, in fact, a bit less than half the distance to their destination.

She pointed to one station after another along the line of the Elevator, lingering briefly on each so Prumble could digest their meaning. PRIMARY VIRAL PRODUCTION, VIRAL REALIGN, VIRAL ANALYSIS, and so on.

Sam must have seen a great change in Prumble’s expression. “What the hell is it?” she asked, loud.

Tim stirred.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Prumble replied, “but I think we might not want to leave just yet.”