Tania glanced up from her plate. She doubted the world could get any crazier.
“Good thing we’re so far away,” Natalie said.
“Cheers to that,” Tania replied. They toasted with apple juice in hard plastic cups.
Natalie grinned at her friend. “Feeling any better?”
“The healing power of having work to do,” Tania said. “Just need to keep busy.”
“Speaking of,” Natalie said, checking her watch, “we should have our pictures in soon.”
“Not long now,” Tania said. She’d set her timer as well.
“Any trouble last night?”
“None,” Tania said with a half smile. “Greg and Marcus will be annoyed I bumped them, but I’ll say it was a typo. An honest mistake. Canceling their task was easy enough.”
Natalie looked around them and dropped her voice even lower. “What do you think we’ll find?”
Tania shrugged off the question. “You know I don’t like to speculate.”
“Oh c’mon, hon, humor me.”
Tania set her fork down and folded her arms on the table in front of her. She took a long look at her friend. “I suppose you must have a theory, Nat?”
“Sure. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You first, then.”
Natalie wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin. “I think they’re sending a giant passenger ship, full of their people.”
“What?”
“Like the Mayflower or something.”
Tania stifled a laugh. Natalie’s energy never failed to lift her spirits.
“I mean it,” Natalie said. “Think about it. First they sent the Elevator, gave us a way to get up here. Then they sent SUBS, forcing us to get up here. Survival of the fittest, right?”
“Go on,” Tania said.
“They give us a chance to vacate, plus one city to survive in as a token offer. Maybe they can’t breath in an atmosphere that doesn’t have SUBS floating around.”
“Why not give us more time? Or a whole continent?”
Natalie shrugged. “Maybe they can’t make an aura that big.”
“I see one big flaw in this idea,” Tania said.
“Do tell.”
“Why give us a chance to leave? Why kill ninety-nine percent of us but stop there?”
Natalie’s grin faded. Her eyes raced back and forth. “Okay, enough of my idea, what’s yours?”
“I don’t like to speculate.”
“C’mon!”
“I’ll tell you what Neil thinks,” Tania said. “He thinks they’re coming to finish the job.”
At that Natalie grew somber. When she realized Tania would say nothing more, she went back to eating.
A few minutes later, their watches beeped in unison.
“There’s our pictures,” Tania said.
Natalie hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Tania asked.
“It’s just … I’m not sure if I want to know anymore.”
Tania took her hand. “Nonsense. We’re scientists. True discovery is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
The hallways had lost their nighttime forest feel with the arrival of dawn on the planet’s surface below. The overhead lights now simulated full sunlight. Tania preferred the way it looked at night. Now it was just a white hallway with green carpet.
Natalie swiped her badge to open the door, and Tania breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of an empty room.
They walked straight to the giant multiscreen setup in the back room the far end of the lab. Natalie went for the center console seat.
“I’ll drive,” Tania said, guiding her aside. “The data is keyed to my account.”
Her assistant took the direction in stride and moved behind the chair to let Tania sit.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” Tania said. She entered her passphrase and waited. Natalie placed a nervous hand on her shoulder.
The aging computer took several seconds to respond, and then another minute to access and display the raw images from last night’s sky survey. On the screen before them, a panoramic map of the cosmos appeared.
“I used the Japan and Hawaii data,” Tania said, “to calculate the likely vector the first Builder ship would have taken. Adjusted of course for changes in Earth’s, and our solar system’s, position.” She highlighted a section of the star chart, and hundreds of small boxes appeared along it. Each one gradually filled in with a small image. “The yellow squares are the pictures we took last night. The rest are old.”
“There’s a lot of yellow,” Natalie said.
“It gets worse,” Tania said. “For each yellow square I took a sequence of six images, so that we could detect movement.”
“This will take ages,” Natalie said. “What if we wrote a program to automatically scour these for anomalies? Greg could knock that out in his sleep.”
Tania shook her head. “We’ve got one already, rather sophisticated. But it sucks up all the compute resources, which would really set off some alarms.”
“Damn.”
“I know. Let’s save that for a last resort.”
Tania selected the first yellow box and an ocean of stars filled the three screens. Other than subtle variation in color, they all looked the same.
She closed the image and opened another.
Natalie frowned in concentration. “Can I drive for a second?”
Rolling her chair aside, Tania watched as Natalie stepped forward and leaned over the keyboard. She worked quickly, her fingers a blur. With each tap the view shifted into a new configuration.
A minute later Natalie stepped back. “Try it now.”
Tania rolled her chair back to the machine and selected the next yellow box. When it highlighted, a cluster of five adjacent boxes lit up as well. They all expanded at once, evenly spread across the giant displays.
“Tap there,” Natalie said, pointing.
Tania did, and the next images in each sequence came in. She tapped again to see the third. “Brilliant,” she said.
“Not as much detail, but we can look for movement more easily.”
“And in six places at once,” Tania said. “Great idea.”
Natalie rested both hands on Tania’s shoulders. “Thirty minutes until breakfast is over and people start poking their heads in here.”
Tania nodded. She began to work quickly, bolstered by the clever scheme Natalie had set up.
After twenty minutes, Tania could feel her eyes begin to glaze over. The images started to blur together into a random assortment of stars. She shifted in her chair and rubbed at a knot in her shoulder. Natalie brushed her hand aside and took over the task, kneading with just the right amount of pressure. It felt good, if mildly distracting. Tania did her best to ignore it and redoubled her focus on the pictures.
A dozen more sequences went by without any signs of motion.
“Wait. Go back,” Natalie said.
Tania stopped the sequence and rolled back through the images slowly.
“Stop. Focus on the second one from the left.”
Tania stared at a perfectly average picture of stars against the blank void of space. “What is it, Nat?”
“In the corner,” Natalie said, pointing.
In the bottom left, nearly off the edge of the frame, she saw a dark gray object, nearly invisible against the black background. Definitely out of place. Tania selected the image to expand it across all three screens. She adjusted the positioning to move the gray spec into the center, and rolled through the sequence.
The blurry object moved over time, unlike the background stars.
“I’ll be damned!” Natalie said.
Tania frowned. “It could be an asteroid or something.”
“Argh! You’re such a pessimist. It’s the Builders!”
Tania did think the gray blob vaguely resembled the shape of the shell ship. “We need to be sure before contacting Neil. Let’s task the telescope for a high-res shot on the next pass.”
Natalie bounced on her toes. “This is amazing! They’re back, and on some kind of schedule!”
“We’ll see,” Tania said. It took all her self-control to stave off Natalie’s infectious enthusiasm. In truth her gut had already reached the same conclusion Natalie voiced. Possibilities, and their ramifications, swarmed her mind. All paths led to the same place, though: Their world would change, again.
“We’ll see,” she repeated, for herself.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gateway Station
7.FEB.2283
Neil Platz strode through the double doors of the council chambers. He paused long enough to order his entourage to remain outside.
A large conference room served as the council’s meeting place, dominated by a long rectangular table and twenty high-backed leather chairs. A Platz Industries signature window dominated the far wall.
The rest of the council already sat at the table, engaged in quiet conversation, waiting.
The chairs at either end of the table were left empty, a custom. In the old days, Neil and his brother, Zane, would sit at either end. Now they had to sit as equals to the others. A silly change, yet one the upstart council had vehemently asked for.
In recent years, the council had taken to meeting only once every other month. The issues were always the same: how much food could we send down, how much water and air would they send up?
“Am I the last to arrive?” he asked of no one in particular.
Michael Carney, head of immigration, frowned. “Some of us have been waiting half an hour.”
“Good Lord, how did you survive? I see you didn’t resort to eating your assistants.” The other members turned at his raised voice. They had each brought one or two secretaries.
Two stone-faced guards, in plain clothes, framed Alex Warthen. “I’ve got a killer on the loose,” the security director said. “How about we dispense with the chitchat and get started, eh?”
“Agreed. Now that we’re all here, let’s begin,” Sofia Windon said in her even, cool voice.
Neil liked Sofia, to an extent. She performed the thankless job of resource management with precision and fairness. Unfortunately, her voting record on the council often proved the tiebreaker, and she showed no allegiance to any specific faction.
Sofia leaned in. “First—”
“First order of business,” Neil said, “I move that this meeting be council members only.”
Sofia glared at him. She took her task of running these meetings seriously. “Why?”
“Call it rumor control,” Neil said. “We have delicate issues to discuss, and I’d rather be candid for once.”
“That’s never been a problem for you,” Alex said.
Before Neil could reply, Sofia held up a hand. “Fine, vote. Those in favor?”
Only Alex, and manufacturing director Charlie Williams, kept their hands below the table.
“Motion passes,” she said. She looked around the room at the litany of support personnel. “If you would all please leave us …”
Some were slow in reacting to the order, looking to their bosses for confirmation. Alex glanced sidelong over his shoulder and jerked his head toward the door. His two bodyguards left without a word.
The matter settled, Sofia continued. “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss two issues. First, the security incident that occurred here on Gateway on February fourth. Second, the continued disruptions in power along the Elevator, which may be allowing the subhuman disease to take hold inside the Aura. It’s also disrupting air and water shipments from Nightcliff.”
Amanda McKnight, who ran a fledgling education department, leaned forward. “Can we also discuss the lack of terminals for the children—”
“Sure,” Neil said. “They can all tap away on them as they suffocate.”
“That’s uncalled for.”
“Air and water, Miss McKnight. A trifle higher on the priority list.”
Alex Warthen leaned back in his chair. “I’ll add a third item to the itinerary. The continued smuggling of contraband to Anchor Station, and the secret research going on there.” He paused for effect. “Dare I say, related to the ‘security incident,’ the skittish Elevator, and the erratic shipments.”
Neil felt his skin prickle. Alex stared at him with smug confidence. He knows something.
“Let’s go over the security situation first,” Sofia said. “Alex?”
He nodded. “I have obtained a useful body of information from the prisoner, one Samantha Rinn, a hired gun on the Darwin scavenger ship.”
“What of the vessel itself?”
Alex shrugged. “It de-orbited but never landed in Darwin. The stuck harness was still attached. We’re assuming it crashed, no survivors. The authorities in Nightcliff have been alerted as a precaution.”
“Authorities. That’s rich,” Neil said. He kept his face and tone steady even as his mind raced through the implications. If Skyler was dead, he had only two choices regarding the Aura: let everyone in on the Aura generator’s existence, including Blackfield, or keep his mouth shut and hope his larger plan could be initiated before the Aura failed completely.
Neil decided to keep his mouth shut.
Alex went on. “The prisoner claims their ship was not released from the climber due to an equipment malfunction on our part. Our investigation shows the control switch was deliberately sabotaged.”
“By whom?” Sofia asked.
“The investigation is ongoing,” Alex said. “We’re questioning the operators who were on duty, but my gut tells me Kelly Adelaide is responsible.”