Chapter Thirty-Nine

DAYS TURNED TO weeks, and weeks to months. The weather grew colder, and we grew more accustomed to our new home. Even the professor and I started to come to terms with our lives.

Most of us still resided in Gat’s great home. Lee had moved in with Olga, the woman who had caught his fancy early on. We saw him less frequently these days, though even that was still too much for the professor.

In time, we learned something else: we hadn’t been the only ones to keep secrets. Gat had his share of them too.

Specifically, he’d concealed several of the journals of his ancestor, Captain Sanders. He’d let us read most of them, but the few detailing some of the later explorations of the planet he withheld until he was sure of us.

It didn’t take long now that he’d started working with Caspersen to build that trust and respect. So he handed them over, saying he felt it right she know the full story. “You are a warrior and a leader of your people. This is your story, almost more than it is mine, for you were a part of this crew. Read it and share it with your crew.”

The journals provided fascinating insights into everything from the early skirmishes between settlers and cannibals to the topography of this particular area of the planet. But one set of passages in particular captured our imagination when we read them. They were written later in Sanders’s life, roughly a decade or so before his death.

Davidson is back with big news. And guests. He found a missing part of the ship. Still had occupants—human occupants—in it! Thirty-eight men and women from the original voyage.

My God, it’s strange to see them—so young and healthy, still coming to terms with all of this, while we’re all so old, so used to this place. I guess it’s worse for them. To them, we just set out, and now we’re old, and they’re not. We know how to survive here—and survive the rest of the crew—and they don’t.

But it’s not just the people. Davidson found the missing part of the west wing—the reserve server rooms, the flight deck, all of it.

The kicker? It’s deep in the mountains, almost directly behind the lava flow. Somehow, Alcorn’s people have missed it. Davidson says it’s hard to get to and impossible to see. He more or less stumbled on it by accident but had a hell of a time getting the crew out without getting detected.

We’re heading back tomorrow. I’m going with him, taking a few men and guns. The plan is to avoid detection, but we’re not taking chances.

The next entry had been dated some days later and read:

 

What a hike. Davidson was barely able to find his way back. And no wonder. The ship is on the far side of the range, in a deep ravine behind the active volcano. I’m not sure what prompted him to even come this way, but I’m glad he did.

This section of the ship is in remarkable condition. Storerooms untouched, supplies plentiful.

But more importantly, the server room looks like it’s fully intact. We might finally be able to find out what happened to the Genesis.

The next day’s entry was less optimistic.

 

Well, we’ve hit a snag. The secondary data center was sealed with a passcode known only to the flight officers.

And they’re all dead or sitting in some other corner of this world, undiscovered. It’s a ten- digit number/letter combo, so the possibilities are, for all practical purposes, endless. The lock was supposed to protect the data from sabotage or meddling; so far, it’s protected it from everything else too.

I’m trying every significant combo I can think of, but my fear is that it was a random string of characters. If that’s the case, we’re locked out for good.

The flight deck is accessible, and the fuel reserves are plentiful. But here, too, we’ve been flummoxed—this time, by gravity. Due to the angle of the ship, most of the hangers have shifted. A lot of damage to the craft, but nothing that can’t be fixed. The real problem is that we can’t get them out—not without a lot of manpower. And a lot of noise. Even if we did that, and none of Alcorn’s crew found us, we’re still in a ravine.

Without equipment or, at least, the freedom to lift them, they’re no good to us.

A few short entries followed, detailing the crew’s attempts to enter the server room and access the bounty they found in the storage rooms. Eventually, though, Sanders had no choice but to admit defeat.

 

We’re back today. We could not crack the server room code, nor could we find alternate access. The room is a fortress, and the design is flawless. Too flawless.

With the ship being as close as it is to Alcorn, I decided to lock off the flight deck. With the fuel and firepower there, he could flatten the forest. And his men would have the freedom to retrieve the ships that we do not.

I could not take that risk. So the flight deck is sealed.

Code: X83LQ02KP5

Perhaps in time, we may be able to return. At least we may rest easy that, even if they find the ship, they will not be able to get through.

Along with the code, Sanders included a rough map of the path to the missing part of the ship. The revelation of this journal ignited our imaginations like a wildfire. But the missing access code presented the same challenge to us that it had to Sanders: we hadn’t found the flight captains’ either, so their codes were obviously lost to us.

The professor scoffed when we said this. “The flight captains? They weren’t the only ones with the password.”

“Who else had it?” Caspersen asked.

“Only the guy who designed the damned room. Moi.”

“Wait.” Kayleigh was so excited she grabbed his arm. “You mean, you have the passcode to the server room?”

Shaking his arm free, he declared through an upturned nose, “Of course. Not the password they had. But the backdoor code.”

“What?”

He snorted again. “You always build a backdoor. You don’t put the keys to the kingdom in the hands of amateurs without leaving yourself a backdoor.”

“You mean…a second password?” Caspersen asked.

“An override code, technically. But, yes.”

“Would anyone else have known about it?”

The professor turned a cold gaze to Kayleigh. “You know what a secret isn’t when you tell someone? Secret. You don’t have a secret backup plan and tell people.”

“Especially when it’s illegal,” Caspersen noted dryly. She was right. Building in a secret override to government systems would have violated half a dozen laws, not to mention ethical considerations as well.

“You’re saying you’d prefer we didn’t have a code? Okay, fine. I was just joking. Of course I didn’t break the rules. Of course I didn’t build in a backup plan. I put all my eggs in a single basket. Only now, someone’s tripped, and there’s a mess everywhere.

“If only—if only—I had anticipated disaster and thought to build in some sort of safety override. But that would have been illegal. Darn.”

It took some coaxing and groveling to convince the professor to admit that the code existed, and he flatly refused to share it with us.

“It’s my code,” he maintained. “My servers. No one enters that server room without me.”

*

MATT SUGGESTED—JOKINGLY, I assume—that we beat the code out of the professor. And though Caspersen called it a tempting choice, we included the professor in our plans. Because, of course, we made plans. There was a whole fleet out there and all of our data waiting to be retrieved.

Caspersen declared she would go, of course, and Matt insisted on tagging along. And even though Matt and the professor made up two-thirds of our team so far, I volunteered too. Kayleigh declared she would not stay home. Not with the medical databases out there waiting to be found.

Caspersen assigned Granges, Russell, and Cohen to stay with the rest of the civilians and asked Connor to come with us.

I was full of eager expectation and purpose, both at the prospect of leaving the trees and being of use. For the first time in some months, I’d be able to do more than gather pine nuts or repair roads. Not even the potential of running into cannibals did much to dampen my enthusiasm.

Gat, on the other hand, felt considerably less enthused about our campaign. He seemed convinced we’d assigned ourselves a suicide mission. I couldn’t shake the incongruity between how openly our hosts admired our bravery in confronting the cannibals, yet how alien it seemed to them. Even coming to our rescue had been an aberration. “Your courage,” Gat had told us, “left us no choice.” But in general, as near as I could tell, their entire way of life revolved around avoiding the cannibals. Even the mention of the surface caused visible distress as it did now, when he thought we would surely die if we pursued these explorations.

But his objections held little sway over us. We understood the risks, but the lure of knowing what had happened to the Genesis was too great. The idea that we might retrieve usable tech to aid us against the cannibals only sweetened the deal. We were going, with or without Gat’s approval.

And, in the end, it was with his approval, though with many forebodings. He had faith enough in Caspersen to believe we stood some chance, and the prospect of what the professor’s override might unlock fired up even Gat’s imagination. He told us he wished us well and hoped he hadn’t caused our deaths by revealing the hidden journals. And then he sent one of the Nation’s scouts, a young man called Bak, with us.

Bak was of a moderate height and had a thin, wiry frame, with a wedge-shaped face and piercing gaze. In combination with his sandy hair, he reminded me rather of a juvenile red-tailed hawk—gangly, and maybe a little predatory.

We learned he’d actually volunteered for the assignment. And though he’d never personally visited the ship, he knew the general location. More importantly, he knew his way around the mountains, which areas the cannibals frequented, and which they ignored.

I got the impression scouting fell to those Nation members for whom sticking to the trees proved a challenge. It gave the young and adventurous the liberty to take whatever risks they felt compelled to take. If they survived, they would bring back valuable intel. And if they didn’t…well, they’d serve as a grim reminder to their peers of the perils in the vast world below.

With the party formed and well-wishes from the Nation and the rest of our crew, we set out. Bak led us through a long maze of wooded byways, from the solid, sturdy roads we’d grown familiar with to poorly maintained and ancient paths that trembled as we crossed.

He grinned at our discomfort—a great, toothy, angular grin—and made a show of emphasizing the ease with which he passed these points. More than once, the professor reminded him that if he died, the override code died with him.

This was not entirely true though. Not even the professor had been mad enough to venture into cannibal territory without confiding the code to someone else. And though he’d been quite dismissive when she’d asked, he picked Kayleigh for the dubious honor of sharing a secret with him. First, he’d sworn her to thirteen different levels of secrecy on the soul of every relative within the past ten generations of her family. She was only—only—to use the code in the eventuality of his death. Even this concession came with lectures on how to operate the servers she would encounter.

She didn’t violate his trust, although—truth be told—I encouraged her to do so. She kept the code to herself throughout the trip. “I gave my word, Nikkole” was all she’d say.

Bak, though, seemed to enjoy rattling his cage. And not only the professor’s. We were all targets, at one point or another. He wasn’t cruel, exactly, but he had a singular sense of humor. Our discomfort with heights amused him to no end. The better I got to know the young man, the more convinced I grew that in choosing a solitary career for himself, he’d chosen well.

And he knew his way around every corner of the forest, where every rain basin was, and where to find every traveler’s cabin. He even had a sixth sense about finding the vine grown fruit that crept up the trees here and there.

We journeyed through the forest for days. Once we’d left the City, we relied on the occasional way-stops built along the byways. A few had been extremely aged and decrepit, but most remained in good condition. The humble cabins were furnished sparsely if at all, but they offered a space to sleep out of the elements, and that was all we really needed.

Our path followed the far edge of the forest, swinging as close to the mountains as the Nation’s infrastructure allowed. We got close enough to behold those great green masses of stone again, towering tall on the horizon.

Now and again, Bak would scale down one of the trees, survey the area, and then return to us. He required no ladders or climbing gear to get where he wanted. “Not yet,” he’d say. “A little longer.”

On the twelfth day, we descended to the forest floor.

“Quiet now,” Bak cautioned us. “Sometimes the Lava Dwellers pass this way.” He remained in the trees, unfastening the ropes he’d used to let us down. Then, coiling them around himself for the return trip, he followed.