We all feared death during those first few weeks. What diseases waited for us on our beautiful gem of a sanctuary? Many of us cowered inside the Roanoke’s steel embrace, but others ventured outward, finding and welcoming the hospitality of our wilderness. We all coped with not knowing what would happen next. The instant tribalism forming amongst our ranks? Who can blame us? Though I fear what it means for our future. I’m still unsure why everyone fears death, though. We already died once. We’ve been given a second chance at life. We must take it. — “A Fragment on Death,” Paris Casius
RAITH
“You gonna make a move or not?” Raith stared across the board.
Leaning over the virtual pieces in their cramped cabin, Carter squinted. He brushed a hand through his salty-brown hair. He looked like he was about to move a piece, then leaned back, crossing his arms.
“I don’t like this game,” he said. “I really don’t like this game.”
“You wanted to play a classic,” Raith said. “Checkers is a classic.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think you’d pick a bad classic. This game . . . Do SIs ever play any fun games?”
Raith stared at the human, reveling in his exasperation. He loved seeing Carter frustrated and confused as he lost yet another game. Slouching forward, Raith placed one of his synthetic fingers over a black piece in the center of the board. “You can forfeit, my friend. Easy to say, easy to do.”
“But that would mean letting you win.”
“What’s wrong with that? Not like that’s anything new for you.”
With that comment, Carter grinned, his eyes glancing away from the board and toward Raith. “Who says I’m not letting you win?”
“Ever since the 500, we both know who—” An alarm cut into Raith’s sentence. “Oh, here we go, something interesting at last!”
Forgetting the game, they both crawled through the cramped space of the Bloodhound into the operations chairs in its tiny front-facing compartment. Digital view screens supplemented by AR displays communicated hundreds of useless data points a second. Raith ignored most of them, settling into his place behind Carter. As the seat enveloped and recognized him, his synthetic neural framework automatically pulled sensor data from outside the ship. He embraced the stellar viewpoint surrounding them. For the past day, the pair had been coasting in orbit above a massive gas giant, collecting data on the hundred-year-old hurricane blasting apart half its atmosphere. An easy job, but a boring one. The storm was beautiful, though, and Raith took a moment to stare into its blurry crimson oranges, a furious inferno unlike any storm on a livable planet.
The alarm, however, had nothing to do with the hurricane thousands of kilometers away.
“It’s a distress signal,” Carter said, a second before Raith was going to voice the same words. “Looks like—well that’s strange. It’s coming from a system four light-years away. Carus-10b. On regular electromagnetic frequencies. That means it’s been—”
“It’s been broadcasting for almost half a decade,” Raith said. “Whatever its origin, it’s probably gone by now.”
Carter clicked his tongue. He always made the annoying noise when he was deep in thought, though Raith didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. “Or it’s legal salvage.”
Raith swiveled in his chair to find Carter already facing him. “Or it’s legal salvage,” Raith repeated. “How much more data do we need to collect on this damned storm?”
Carter threw a chart into the air between them. “Hm . . . the university wanted a week of data, but they didn’t say it needed to be a week straight. I’m bored.”
“You’re reading my mind.”
“So I don’t need to even ask the question?”
Raith smiled. “Let’s go get ourselves some salvage.”
* * *
Cruising at 600, well under the Bloodhound’s top JD, they skipped across the light-years separating them from the distress call in a little more than two days. Exiting inside the orbital of the fifth-most distant planet from the star, the ship immediately began categorizing all the data streaming through its sensors about the system.
“Interesting,” Carter muttered. “Very interesting.”
Raith parsed through all the feeds, noticing the orbitals and planetary masses. Right where they should be, based on their latest ICH-official star charts, except for one anomaly. “Interesting is one way to put it,” Raith said.
“Carus-10b, what are you hiding?”
Their records listed the system as having six planets, all of little consequence or market value. Their sensors, on the other hand, detected seven. ICH data, even when based on older ISA data, was never wrong.
Yet here they were, staring at a mystery planet sitting within the system’s goldilocks zone.
“Well what a fun discovery,” Raith said. “Imagine the prize we’ll receive for finding an inhabitable planet. Well, potentially inhabitable. Preliminary data detects water, though. Decent atmospheric composition, too.”
Carter didn’t answer Raith’s comment.
“Now, what about the distress signal? We pinpointed its origin yet?”
No words from the human.
“Carter?”
“The distress signal’s coming from the planet,” he said. “Something—or someone—has been to this planet, knows it exists, and it’s not on any charts.”
Raith excised all extraneous data and focused on the previously-undiscovered celestial object. One hundred million kilometers from its star, the planet’s features rapidly focused as the Bloodhound’s sensors collected more and more data. Three continents. Oceans. Plenty of plant-life. For all intents and purposes, it was an idyllic Earth-like orb.
The ICH prioritized the discovery of all colonizable planetoids, even those with significant environmental risks. For surveys to miss a planet with high-quality metrics, like the third planet orbiting Carus-10b, a conspiracy must exist, magnitudes greater than what laymen could contemplate. Raith assumed the ICH hid a few truths, but this seemed much greater. The ICH received a significant chunk of funding by selling charters to planets. Why hide one? Unless . . .
“Do you think the ICH knows this planet exists?” Carter asked.
“You read my mind,” Raith replied. “I don’t think they do. What’s more likely? Someone deleted and falsified the data once, years ago, or members of the ICH continually hide the planet without word of it being leaked once?”
“Okay Ockham, it’s not the time to philosophize.” Though the words made him sound annoyed, Carter softly chuckled. “So, we’re here now. Shall we investigate? Salvage still might be possible.”
“Yeah, I think we should.” Raith paused, considering whether to say more. A memory triggered in his mind, recalling a moment years ago when a woman tried to convince him to join her secret cause. He shook his head. The odds his past connected to this strange anomaly were astronomical. Impossible. In a universe incomprehensibly large, his life as a rogue and scoundrel under the thumb of corporate conglomerates meant little. Over one hundred billion people lived throughout the systems controlled by the Interplanetary Congress of Humanity. To think his past linked with their new discovery? Arrogance of the highest order.
Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that all of it linked together.
“Raith?” Carter said. “You all right?”
“Yeah, just remembering things I’d like to forget.” Raith plotted an orbital course through the system toward the habitable planet. Their target. “You remember, during the race, when we encountered that leviathan, that behemoth object, out in space?”
“Of course.”
“I’m just saying, we tend to run into things we don’t understand. I’m still amazed we were the only ones who witnessed it. Nobody else survived. And here we are again, discovering something we probably shouldn’t. The simplest explanation might be the most likely—but what are the implications of that simple explanation?”
Carter reached over his shoulder and patted the top of Raith’s head. “Only one way to find out.”
Through AR, Raith watched his partner accept the proposed trajectory. A few seconds later, the Bloodhound zipped across the system at low-Jump, the drive disengaging as they approached the mystery planet. Using the external sensors, Raith reveled in the view. A blue-green orb floated in space, two beige moons in distant orbit. Even after two centuries of life, Raith never tired of exploring new worlds and new systems. Though, the past few years beside Carter were especially vibrant and enjoyable.
“It’s a beautiful planet, that’s for sure,” Carter said. “Let’s see . . . not detecting any significant—wait. High concentrations of carbon dioxide emissions on one of the continents. And, we’ve got a few objects in orbit with us.”
Raith cycled through the data streams until he found the information Carter had noticed. “Three larger objects. Computer is still parsing whether there’s anything else. Satellites? Other ships? I’m impressed you detected them before I did.”
“I have my uses,” Carter retorted.
“Indeed you do. All right, let’s broadcast a—”
The satellites fired thrusters, darting straight for the Bloodhound.
“Now that doesn’t look friendly,” Carter said. He gunned the throttle, darting away from the planet and out of orbit. “Permission to Jump outward and reassess the situation?”
“I think that’d be wise.” Raith brought up their basic defense systems. Nothing fancy, just a few kinetic batteries and deflector shields. “When can we Jump?”
“Two seconds, plotting a trajectory.”
The satellites targeted them with a laser of some sort, locking onto their position. It wouldn’t matter. Any shot they could take wouldn’t hit across a thousand kilometers before they left orbit at hundreds of times the speed of light, relatively speaking. Jump was an incredibly useful escape tool.
“All right, we’re clear,” Carter said. Raith watched him toggle the Jump throttle.
Nothing happened.
“What the—”
Raith cycled through all the data, looking for previously undetected gravitational fluctuations—anything capable of counter-warping space so they couldn’t warp it themselves. They were far enough out from the planet, so its gravitational pull couldn’t be the issue. There. From one of the satellites.
“I don’t know how they’re doing it,” Raith said, “but they’ve got some sort of tractor beam locking us in place. Sounds straight out of science fiction, I know.”
Carter chuckled. “Even in moments of danger, you throw in a quip. All right, let’s take them out.”
The Bloodhound jerked forward, diving into loops and zigzags to distract the satellites. The bogeys themselves followed suit. A moment later, two high-velocity projectiles left from each of the three enemies.
“Missiles, in-bound,” Raith said aloud. “I’ll deal with them, playing point-defense.”
While Carter guided their ship through its evasive maneuvers, Raith focused his synthetic neural systems solely on the kinetic defenses and their foes. Three satellites, all attempting to transform them into a meteor shower blasted across the atmosphere of the planet below. The surrounding conspiracy thickened.
The pathways of their enemies were erratic, but not completely chaotic. A pattern revealed itself, albeit slowly. Raith fired tiny sprays of kinetic fire, noticing the strategies of the satellites as they danced with the Bloodhound. As the missiles attempted to reach them, Raith similarly tested their evasive capabilities. What could they do? Quite a bit, it seemed. But they weren’t invincible. He noticed how they flitted when he fired a hundred microscopic high-velocity rounds in one direction. So he merely needed to target their counter-move simultaneously. Almost. Almost . . .
An alarm blared.
“Heat signature on the moon,” Carter yelled. “We’ve got more—”
Raith detected it only for a moment. A powerful blinding blast lanced from the moon, striking their ship’s engine. Emergency procedures kicked into gear.
“Carter, get yourself into a vac-suit, I’ll finish the fight!”
“I’m the better—”
“Just do it, you bastard!”
Without another word, the man leapt from his seat and dove down the cramped cabin, zero-g allowing him to float quickly away.
“This is going to be a fun landing,” Raith muttered. Inexorably, the ship was losing power, its trajectory leading them into free fall. He focused everything on leveling the path while taking out the missiles. Curiously, as the ship plummeted, the satellites backed off, returning to high orbit. Raith waited and waited for a second shot from the stationary weapon on the moon’s surface, but nothing arrived.
They hit atmosphere. The jolt shook his SI frame to the core. A minute later, Carter returned to the command module, wearing the vac suit.
Raith checked the oxygen levels of the ship—almost depleted. “All good?” he asked.
“Almost lost my breath,” said Carter, “but all good.”
“You ready for a crash landing?”
No words from Carter.
“I know the ship’s your baby, but we’re going to survive this.”
“I know,” the human replied. “I might not be more important than the ship, but you’re more important than the ship.”
Raith tilted his head. “You’re too kind. All right, hold on tight, this is going to be a bumpy ride.”
Raith’s mind overtook the Bloodhound’s controls completely. Not like his time flying solo, but it came close, especially after Carter installed the neural framework chair. He’d miss this ship.
“Outside hull temperature’s burning,” Raith said. “I want to bring it in for a slide, but we may need to eject the safety capsule.”
“Whatever we need to do,” Carter said.
A few kilometers separated them from the planet’s surface. Their whole world shook, like an earthquake cracking a building to its core. He’d managed to target a giant lake in the center of the same continent where Carter’d detected industrial activity. If he could land it smoothly, they’d survive. Maybe.
But Carter would survive, more likely, if they activated the safety pod. Doing so essentially ensured the Bloodhound wouldn’t survive, and that would kill Carter’s heart, but like the man had said, their lives were more important. Well, he’d said Raith’s life was more important, and he was inclined to agree, but Raith also valued his partner’s life over the ship.
“Initializing the safety pod at one kilometer,” he shouted. And one kilometer arrived. He punched in the command, and the Bloodhound snapped at its seams, the tiny module surrounded in a cushioned ball of plastic.