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

He was talking about taking one of the pods to make first contact with an alien race. Idly, I pulled up the most recent reports from Louise’s pod on the heads-up display on my eyescreen. It detailed the damage to her pod, as well as the changes the engineering division was nearly through implementing to prevent a recurrence. “Mostly, I’ve been focusing on preparing for the Argus, ” I told him.

“Well, with your boss back, I need you to think about this now.”

“Why do I feel like I’m being pitched?”

“Because this is important. It’s not common knowledge that Elle’s—” He caught himself; it wasn’t her name, and he knew it was weird for me. “Louise’s ‘sabbatical’ hit more than technical snags. Most people don’t know she was nearly eaten by a giant, octopus kind of thing. Haley instituted a danger rating for planets. Retroactively, she rated that planet an eight. The world I’d like you to take is a nine.”

“And we’re not just going to take a pass?”

“If this were some time next year, with dozens of successful missions under our belts? Absolutely, we would. But if we can’t get someone back from a nine, soon we can’t get anyone to take an eight. Then a seven. Conceptually, I’m all for us going after the low-hanging fruit. But if we start ignoring everything else…”

“Would you take it?” I asked.

“Can’t,” he said. “Council resolution. I’m not allowed to.”

“Roles reversed, I’m your captain, asking. Knowing what you do, and knowing how important, would you take on the risk?”

He looked away and thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a lot to ask. And I’ve got things I wouldn’t want to lose. But I’d like to think so.”

“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll do it.”

His shoulders relaxed. “Just don’t take any undue risks. If things aren’t right, if anything makes you uncomfortable, walk away. It’s more important that you make it back alive than with a contract in hand.”

“How long have I got?” I asked.

“The positive of this new selection process is we get lots of data to send the most qualified candidate, making it a bit less of a lottery. The drawback is limited time. You’ve got a day. So I’d suggest not wasting another second of it talking to me.” He held out his hand and I shook it.

As I walked away, I wondered if I had just entered myself in an intergalactic pissing contest. Drew was the closest I had to a rival, not that he saw it that way. He had Sam. But he also had Louise. I saw the way she looked at him, heard the way she talked about what they had. He was what she measured me against, and I was tired of being found wanting.

I was right there on the day she got back from the seafood planet. Thinking we lost her when her shuttle malfunctioned, thinking we lost her when the natives tried to feed her to a giant squid—and then a third nightmare even after she made it back, when her life was threatened by a parasite she caught in the water. It put things into perspective, made me realize that I wanted desperately to tell her what losing her would have done to me.

I planned to tell her how I felt, just to put it out there. No more pining, just, “This is how I feel. It’s not an attempt to get you to reciprocate, I just want you to know, because maybe knowing will make you just the littlest bit happier, and that would make humiliating myself worth the while.”

I went to quarantine. Drew was already there, holding her through a wall of glass—holding her and Sam. I don’t think the bastard’s ever known how lucky he was.

Fucked up as it might sound now, I felt thankful for it. Because telling Louise how I felt, from a position of neediness and fear—that wasn’t the way to win over a warrior woman. No. I had just been given the opportunity to crack one of the galaxy’s toughest nuts, return victorious, and tell her from a place of strength.

It was hard not scooping Louise up in my arms and kissing her, letting loose everything I’d ever wanted to say. I could tell she wanted to tell me something, too; I’d interrogated enough people to know when they’re about to pop. But whatever it was, she wasn’t ready, and I wasn’t either. I was going to bring her the contract for a dangerous planet, then tell her everything .

“Just take care of yourself,” she said, finally. “There isn’t much room for error, out there on your own. Don’t take risks. I—the ship needs you back here in one piece.”

“I’ll ixnay the eyeingday.”

“Don’t be an umbassday,” she said, and smiled to herself as the pod closed around me.

Haley, the ship’s computer, started the countdown over the comms. I eyed the abort button on the console, then pulled up one of the cameras inside the bay and watched Louise. I wanted to stay with her. But I also knew she deserved the kind of man who could get this mission done and come back to her. So I tried to relax back in my seat as the electromagnets began my acceleration.

I passed out. The g forces we used for the pod launch were beyond tolerances that would leave a human being conscious, though within the safe window before the forces did permanent damage.

I woke up a few hours later. I wished I’d told Louise the truth. It wasn’t even a matter of wanting to impress her anymore, it was just knowing she was farther away from me than she’d ever been since the Nexus left Sol’s system—ignoring, I guess, the pod trip she took. But I wanted her to know. I didn’t care if she didn’t reciprocate, because that wasn’t the point.

I penned a letter, and my fingers were hovering over the send communication button. What was I doing? Maybe I did wish I had told her before I left, but taking the coward’s way out, sending her a letter when I couldn’t be farther from her, or repercussions…? No, I needed to sort myself out before I tried confessing my affection for anyone.

I started to pore over the information we had about the low-gravity ice planet. I had decided to call it Jötn, and its people the Jötnar. We learned from the Argus that most alien names can’t be spoken by humans—wildly divergent biology and all. It led them to a few diplomatic mishaps. So we adopted the custom of giving everything a human name, then letting the commboxes make the translation for us.

I had extra layers to my suit, to the point where it was practically an exoskeleton, protecting me from both the cold and potential hazards.

The sentient species we were going to make contact with was large: their smallest were about eight feet tall. And their exoskeletons were made up of semi-crystalline structures. It meant that some light could pass through their bodies, lending them a light form of camouflage, and also making them more durable.

Structurally, they looked like a cross between insects and dinosaurs, but unlike both, they were warm-blooded. They were technologically quite advanced, but so resource-poor that they couldn’t capitalize on most of their technological advances.

The planet itself was in the midst of a prolonged ice age, and the entire planetary surface was covered in glaciers, miles thick in most places. That meant all of their resources went to growing and harvesting food, which was only possible inside tunnels that ran alongside thermal vents deep beneath the surface.

The sociological report said that it was likely the species would attempt to relocate to another nearby planet with the technologies we would offer them in trade. The report seemed distressed by that idea, even including a note questioning whether it was our place to so fundamentally change the course of another species’s development. But—perhaps because I knew I was going to be standing among them—I couldn’t abstract their suffering like that. If we could help them, we should. I saw no point to letting their species die out just because they would have died out if they’d never met us.