SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

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.