Excerpt - The Listeners, chapter 2

(don't miss chapter one!)

In the observation room on the independent research vessel Zenith, built inside a hollowed-out boulder so it could pretend to be a comet, Fred simmered. She glared at the screens showing data streams from recorders parked on each side of her experiment. Some random space cruiser had tripped the wire, so to speak, wrecking six solid weeks of planning.


They had seen the courier vessel speeding by, on a trajectory that would take it within a klick of the experiment and then past it. Don’t say anything, her mentor said. They mustn’t know we’re here.


And so she had sat, silent, balanced carefully on an observation room seat which, like every other piece of furniture in this ship, was sized for someone with longer legs. Staring at the approach-side screens. Fingering the beads on her worry bracelet. Watching as the vessel veered slightly, at the last possible moment, toward their portal.


Not a direct approach, which would have added data. Oh no, of course not. A canted approach, which only confirmed data. Destruction. And probably, for the people in the cruiser, death.


Fred unwrapped a lemon drop and slipped it into her mouth. This time, its tart bite did not distract her. She hated mess.


“Okay, so you were right about that one,” said Georg. Her mentor waved a hand at the debacle. “But what could we have done?”


Fred held the lemon drop completely still between her upper and lower teeth, trying to focus herself so she wouldn’t roll her eyes. One of the ship’s shinier surfaces might reflect the look back to her mentor.


Well, for one thing, they could have set out one of those no-travel warning beacons they kept in storage. For exactly this reason.


“Tripwire effect, just like the drone,” said Georg.


Yes, keep the focus on the data. Much safer.


“More like a garrote,” Fred said. She crammed the candy wrapper in the pocket with the other empty wrappers. She’d gone through almost all of them already. “If we can’t widen the intake angles, what use is this portal?”


“Don’t rush. Smell the ocean breeze, little one.” Georg said. “We need merely proof of concept. Let the engineers fret over the details.”


Sometimes it sucked to have a parent for a mentor. Sure, he could put up with her “special needs,” but everybody should be able to do that. She should have gone into a different area of research. Something like spaceship ergonomics. 


A weak wobble on one of the screens caught her attention. She pinched out one of the camera views to see better. 


Great. A non-dead person. Standing on the hull of the wrong half of the ship. In the middle of freaking nowhere.

“Problem,” she said, pointing to the screen.


“Opportunity,” Georg said without even turning to look.


Fred pulled at a hidden clump of her honey-blond shoulder-length hair next to her neck, imagining it was Georg feeling the pain. “There’s a survivor.”


Georg turned to look.

He turned away.


“I don’t see anything.”

So that was how he was going to play it. Again.


“We can’t leave them to die.” She fiddled with the message receiver, widening the range of frequencies. “They’re calling for help. We must assist.”


“Never get there in time,” her father said.

“You mean, we’ll get there, but what do we do?” she said. “How do we stay beneath the scanners if we take someone who has the scanners aboard.”


“The student surpasses the master,” he said.


Was it really worth it, Fred asked herself for the eleventy billionth time. Was this research that freaking interesting?


Actually, yes. But less and less so each experiment, even as they got closer to creating a portal that actually worked.

Fred imagined they would break this puzzle apart together, publish to great acclaim, and then never talk to each other again.

Or rather, she would never talk to him again. He never stopped talking. Commenting, critiquing (criticizing), discoursing, debating himself while discounting anything she would say.


But she was not going to leave another person to die. No matter what he said.


Fred estimated the time to arrival, the Zenith’s generous oxygen supply, cloaking capabilities, and the relative sizes of the their ship and that very unlucky cruiser. Georg went back to watching the flight of the experimental drone that was actually supposed to go through the portal, a self-propelled tub of instruments wrapped in flameproof fabric.

Fred opened a screen to the Zenith’s propulsion. She altered their path, but gradually—no tell-tale lurch—then quickly closed the screen.


Georg didn’t notice.


“The person will be injured and air-dizzy,” she said. “They’ll think they are hallucinating. We drag them into the rock hold, which has air, and leave the gravity off. We head to the shipping lane the cruiser should have stayed on. Wait behind one of the big beacons. It’s a busy lane, as you know. When a likely vessel comes in sight, we push the broken one out and let it find them.”


Georg didn’t stop what he was doing. “We need to be back in position by the time the drone is ready.”


In fact, they did not. The recorders would record fine without them.

“Absolutely,” she said.

 


* * *


 

The afterlife, as seen through the veil of a violent dehydration headache, looked a lot like an empty cavern of rock. Empty but for Mondrian, most of the parts of her cruiser—welcome back, front half!—and some sweet, sweet oxygen.

The floor was a little too smooth, no dust or dirt here. Strips of dim light arced over and under her until they reached the flat floor.. A fake cave? Or a hologram. Or hallucination.


No, it had to be real. Her tether tugged at her. She banged her hands on the hull. Solid, and loud.

No gravity, though, so her arms were back up by her ears. She moved her arms and legs: everything accounted for. Still had her gloves on, but her visor was up, open to the local, dusty air.


She was pretty sure she hadn’t done that. But who knew? She couldn’t exactly remember those last minutes. Did she click the visor open, thinking oh let’s get it over with, skip the choking and struggling and panic, just go? Seemed like something she could consider. And then not go through with it.


Mon had a solid love of life, even including its last bitter dregs. So solid it had caused her pain, once.

Now, though, the pain was from a reasonable source. She checked that her local channel was still open, and pinged her servo. It could bring her a bag of water. A couple of bags.


No answer.


Mon opened all the channels she had.

“Hello?” she sent, cycling through the common comms frequencies.


A signal came back, on one of the emergency bands. Text, in Galactic!


Stay there.


Well.


Need water, she sent back. In my cruiser.


Look in your pockets.


A chill ran up her neck and around her throat. Somebody had touched her? Well, of course they had. She was here, right? And not dead, allegedly.


She patted the big front pockets over her thighs. Felt like water bulbs. She pulled one out. Looked like a water bulb, if flatter than usual. Probably not poisoned. If they wanted to kill her, they would have left her where she was. Why waste water on her, right?


She twisted the bulb open. Not even an aftertaste. Just fresh, wet goodness. So her rescuers needed water, too, or they dealt with beings who needed water. People like her, at least a bit.

Now her brain clicked into green. She looked around. This place was a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma. Starting with the question, Where?


Was this the comet that had seemed to alter its course? Was that a thing comets did in this sector of space? Because she had noticed something, in all that time for contemplation as her oxygen level went down, down down. As she grew colder, pondering the stars and the planets and the universe around her.


It was not her star cluster.


***

 

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