Ravana's Shadow (5) (Patreon)

Mara’s modified human templates did not need to eat very much. Their biology was artificial, with simplified tissues sustained mostly through inductive charging. What little biology still happened required even less to sustain, since they were child-sized and never grew.

Most of what they ate was out of habit, or to provide an excuse for a friendly social engagement. 

Since becoming Director, Kit used that need to provide the pretext for their most important regular meeting of the week. Other than the senior staff sleepover, of course.

She smelled Emma’s cooking before she got close, attracting a small crowd of other citizens to linger in the surrounding halls. Emma always made more than they needed, to be shared with whoever happened to be interested. They would have to wait outside until the meeting was over.

She smiled at them, taking every step with deliberate confidence and poise—or as much as a squirrel could manage. By now, about half the full templates had accepted a voluntary downclass to 80%, so she didn’t have to peer over so many heads as before. There were a few positive side-effects to Maddie’s resource-saving scheme.

“There you are.” Jay joined her from the crowd, as though he’d been hiding there and watching for her arrival. He probably had been, but she could forgive a little loyalty. “Can you feel the anticipation? Like they know something’s gonna happen.”

She shook her head once. “My senses aren’t as good as yours.” Hard to beat the advantages that came from lifetimes with better-than-human perception. Every citizen in Mara was stronger and smarter and faster than she was. She’d be useless as their Director, if it wasn’t for one thing they’d come to lack. 

Live long enough, and they were too afraid to take risks. Kit had climbed into the pilot’s chair of an experimental spacecraft, knowing full well it might kill her.

“No word yet,” said Sam, trailing a few steps behind. He had to scamper along to keep up, at least until Kit slowed for him. That made Jay turn, looking between them. He checked the tablet in his fingers, then looked back to her. “Is there something I should be aware of?”

Kit nodded, wishing again that Jay had an implant. It would be so much easier if she could speak to him directly. “I’ll tell you in a sec. Everyone’s gonna be there for it.”

They’d picked the largest private dining room for the regular meeting. After all, Kit didn’t just invite the heads of departments to attend. Some had an outsized influence, like Engineering, so she allowed them to send whoever they wanted. Others, like those producing entertainment for the colony, needed to send only one or two kids. 

There were still barely enough seats, with almost twenty kids crowding as close to the table as they could. Despite her position as head of Medical, Emma didn’t take a seat for herself, instead pushing a serving tray along the table and depositing steaming plates.

Each was a little different, tailored to the preferences of the guests. Kit’s plate had a little cup of ketchup for her eggs, while Jay had only a large pitcher of juice and a single, plain pancake with butter.

“Unexpected guest,” she told her, nodding back at Sam. “Can you make up a spot for him?”

The bunny smiled, though her ears folded backward in annoyance she couldn’t quite hide. “Sure. Always keep a little space open. That’s… no problem.”

Mara might be running out of resources, but their sacrifices weren’t for nothing. Staying small and keeping their population fixed meant they could stretch the resources they had and enjoy the occasional hot meal. Kit did her best to forget about the discovery looming overhead and enjoy it, chatting with her friends about whatever was interesting to them.

Given the Institute’s scientific focus, most conversation went along those lines, describing their latest theories, some exciting experiment they were working on, or a prototype they’d been building. Outside the Institute’s walls, almost nothing ever changed. No one had reason to gossip over Forerunner’s latest mining trip to the icefields, and the harvest it brought back.

But then Jay nudged her shoulder, turning his tablet in her direction. 

It was a message from Sam, meant for her. Her secretary had access to most of her mail, and often responded on her behalf. But some questions weren’t so easy for the mouse to answer.

“We have a message:

Ravana Colony responding. Colony in desperate need of evacuation. Same terms hold. If you are willing, will wake the Colonial Governor to discuss. Once he is revived, he cannot return to stasis. Will only act if you intend to commit to rescue.

What do I say?”

Kit settled the tablet in her lap, drawing across its surface in her crude handwriting. Fortunately for Sam, Forerunner translated it into text before he had to read it. “Colonial Governor Kit Red Squirrel commits that we will rescue your surviving colonists and allow them to join our population as citizens of the Mara colony, in exchange for the mass of your asteroid. If those terms remain in force, we agree. Send it.”

She handed the tablet back, then watched Sam from several seats down. The fox’s ears folded flat to his head, his eyes huge. He jerked into a sitting position, shocked.

Kit met his eyes and nodded. Yes, she was sure. Do it.

He tapped a few buttons on his computer, then dropped the tablet to his lap, rocking back and forth in his seat. 

The dining room fell silent about then, with all eyes fixed on Kit and the fox. Mostly on her. “That seems exciting!” Sadie said, from her other side. Half was feline curiosity, the other half concern. The cat girl wasn’t just their logistical coordinator, but also their head of Security. Kit would need her in both roles for what came next. “Should we skip the usual order to let our visitor go first?”

“No,” Kit said. She tapped the chair, prompting it to lift her a little higher. The Institute’s automatic chairs were usually meant to make citizens of all templates sit at eye level—but as the Director, she could ask for a little extra height. So long as no one looked at her dangling feet, she could seem tall and confident.

“If Sam goes first, everyone else’s reports will be lost. Maddie, you had something?” 

Her head of Engineering nodded eagerly, stretching as tall as she could. The yellow-haired fox was easily the smallest citizen at their meeting, the only 70% template on her senior staff. “We’ve had a breakthrough with experimental materials—I think we’ve got a way to build structures using 98% native ice.” 

She tapped her computer, and the walls on either end of the room filled with the same image—a cross section of a huge dome, the same size as Mara’s three habitation domes. Only this one had far less internal space, with an inner and outer section and thin layers on both sides of the ice. “Composite coating keeps the inner face from melting and grants extra rigidity. Built like this, we should be able to get spaces… a hundred times larger than the excavated blocks along the ring.”

Abel cleared his throat. “That’s a little optimistic. This strength comes from melting and freezing our own N2. It’s not excavated but cast.” He gestured, and the slide changed, showing the domes and spindly bowls, with far thicker sections stretching like curved pillars, and far thinner ice connecting them. “We need a huge, dedicated machine, and a thermal siphon as large as the one life support uses on each dome.”

“I was gonna say so,” Maddie protested. “First one isn’t cheap to make. But if we can build one, we can do a thousand.”

“So, we wouldn’t have to shrink?” Emma asked. She hadn’t taken a seat but leaned against the wall beside her heated serving cart, munching from a plate in front of her. “If saving space isn’t an issue, I can stay full.”

Loud muttering spread through the room, with several other citizens who shared Emma’s extra few years of height expressing their agreement. 

“No!” Maddie protested, smacking her fist on the table in front of her. “Space isn’t why we want to downclass—it’s about standardization, freeing up resources. Besides, do you really wanna live in a dome made of ice? They’re for industry and storage. Maybe in the far future we can put people in them, after we’ve tested them for a few centuries.”

“It’s great work,” Kit said. “We’ll talk to Forerunner about implementing it. Maybe we can start with some scaled models? If they hold pressure and heat well, we can do the real thing.” She pointed at the next kid in line. “Sawyer, how’s Mara’s mental health coming?”

The deer laughed, too loud and forced. “There’s an old debate in philosophy—whether it’s better to live under a beautiful lie, or a harsh truth. I think the lie might be coming out victorious. I’m booked solid every workday for the next six months. Even with you picking up the slack, Director…” 

He shook his head once, dark hair tangling with oversized antlers. Sawyer was still their only colonist with a deer template, and Kit could see why. “It’s bad. Kids come to me feeling hopeless, and I don’t know what to tell them. Their families aren’t outside, there’s no one sending supplies. Nothing but frozen wasteland past our walls. Frankly, we’re about to save more space losing colonists into Remedial than we will by giving up twenty percent from our templates. Something must change.”

“It will,” Kit said. “Today.”

“Hope so. We’ll be under a hundred by end of the decade. Unless Maddie thinks Remedial is about to start publishing new papers…”

The fox stuck her tongue out at him. “Come down with me and we’ll see.”

“Thank you, Sawyer,” Kit said, interrupting them. They continued around the circle, hearing reports from each other department. Some had exciting new discoveries, others only bleak news like Sawyer. They stood naked before the truth of their circumstances, and it sucked the joy out of Kit’s meeting like an atmosphere leak.

Finally, they reached Sam. Kit let him explain, considering he’d sat through the whole meeting until then. She watched the faces of her colonists, as grim resolve transformed into excitement, fear, anticipation. Anything was better than the inevitable decay into frozen death.

Finally, it was her turn. “I know we have a lot to talk about. Before anyone says anything, let me save some time. We aren’t debating our response. I already told them yes. Mara needs what they have, and they’re asking almost nothing in return.” She pointed behind her at the asteroid map, along with the detailed breakdown of its elemental composition. “We aren’t here to talk about all the reasons why we can’t. The Institute of Perpetual Luminescence is saving those people and bringing back the asteroid. You get to figure out how.”

Kit could imagine smaller explosions caused by the intentional detonation of a nuclear device. Sound shook the room, a dozen different kids shouting at once. Some bubbled with excitement and hope, others furious at her and Sam and anyone else they thought might be connected.

A few even slid their chairs down, hiding with visible fear. 

Kit faced them all, waiting for the yelling to settle into something manageable. It didn’t take long. Without instructions from her, those from unrelated fields eventually fell silent, leaving only the relevant few to speak.

“You agreed to do this,” Maddie said, the first Kit could understand. “It sounds… crazy! Insane! Maybe just what we need. But did you think about what it would take? You know what you’re promising?”

She nodded. “We’d have to build a ship. Fill it with enough machinery to build more when we got to the asteroid. Put enough colonists aboard to run it all. Then burn a good fraction of the asteroid’s water ice just to get it back here.”

Abel stood up, rabbit ears now fully vertical atop his head. He was upset. But most of the colony was by then, so not exactly surprising. “And many other things. Infrastructure. Launch equipment. Training, protection for the crew, supplies to live and work for however long that takes.”

“If you succeed,” Emma whispered. “Mara doesn’t have spaceships. We don’t know how to build rockets! What if you don’t make it? What if you miss? Everyone on the ships dies.”

“Forerunner knows,” Maddie said, almost conversationally. “We’re not starting from scratch. Just adapting existing designs, repurposing over time, iterating, testing…”

“And instead of a wealth of new material, we lose many tons of metal and silicon we can’t replace,” Rich said. The Engineering leopard had remained silent through most of the shouting. Now he was scribbling on his tablet, streaming rapidly through data. “Tonnage is… I don’t like these numbers. If you fail, Mara dies a lot faster. Forerunner, do you know how much faster?”

Kit winced but kept silent. Ordering the computer not to tell them would only make her colonists more curious. “Between the loss of critical domain experts likely to be aboard, and the material of the vessel, and a master fabricator, I believe the failure of this mission would restore Mara to the timeline prior to the arrival of the Aether. I predict total failure within five thousand years, if not fewer.”

A frightened mutter rippled through the table. What sounded like an impossibly long life to Kit was to these colonists a terrifying prophecy of doom. If she let it, those words might steal their willingness to help.

“But if we succeed,” Kit said, a little louder. “What does that do?”

Forerunner answered swiftly, as though it had been waiting eagerly for the question. “With those materials, a limited population could survive indefinitely. Further spacecraft could be constructed, mining or trading ships, or perhaps even space stations for Mara itself. With that wealth, your future is secure.”

There was no quiet muttering that time. Just silence, as the most important colonists on Mara all watched each other, judging their expressions.

Kit stood up from her chair, backing away towards the screen. “Everyone—I know how scary this is. It’s the craziest thing the Institute has ever done. But this is exactly what we need. Not just the metal—Mara needs purpose. This is where we find it. Everyone from every department, all united on the same mission. And when we succeed, no one is afraid of the cold ever again.”

Long silence stretched in the little dining room—until Maddie started clapping. Not loudly, more the way Kit would’ve expected a vanilla human her size to act. Like she’d been overflowing with excitement so long she had to show it or explode. “We’re building a rocket!”

A few others joined in, however reluctantly. Some, like Sawyer, cheered. “We won’t lie to find hope, we’ll make our own!”

“I don’t like it,” Sadie said. “Too dangerous—risks are too high. But if the Director says we’re doing it, then we’re doing it.”

Jay spun in his chair, turning the tablet towards her again. 

Block letters filled the display, clear even from across the room. “Incoming transmission from Ravana.”

Kit stepped forward, putting one hand on the cat’s shoulder. “Sadie, can you organize the departments here to give me a mission proposal by…” She looked at Maddie for help. “Can you do two weeks?”

The fox nodded. “For the proposal. Doesn’t mean we’ll be able to start building right after.”

“Two weeks,” Kit repeated. “Sadie, walk them through it, make assignments. I have to talk to someone.”

“Who?” Abel asked, eyebrow raised. “What could be more important than this?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “The asteroid is calling.”