Ravana's Shadow (18) (Patreon)

The rover took them far from the Institute, along the compacted ice-road that served as Mara’s chief artery of industry.

Usually when Kit went that way, she found the route mostly deserted, with perhaps a single ice-hauler slowly rolling its way down from mountain quarries. Most of her trips to the Aether’s final resting place were spent in total isolation, with nothing but the rover around her as evidence that there was civilization elsewhere.

That had changed now. Every few minutes they encountered another slow-moving rover, rolling up the road with heavy chunks of metal strapped to its back. Some she even recognized, since they still had the shapes of her beloved ship. That was a chunk of the bridge, while another block had once been one of its docking ports.

“Did you feel like this when they took the Acheron apart?” Kit asked, one hand on the glass. “Watching something important cut to pieces for scrap.”

Morgan’s ears jerked upright. She looked around the empty ship before answering, words short and clipped. “Careful where you say these things, Director. If others realize I am upstairs, your authority will be undermined.”

Kit wrapped her tail around her seat, turning away from the window. “Who’s gonna hear me ask out here? Maddie already knows.”

Morgan sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “Part of me was sad to see it go. But Acheron wasn’t suited for war anymore. My friends and comrades had died on her decks. I knew if they were still with me, they would cheer. We fought to give humanity another chance. Better to build something beautiful than drift derelict in the void, mummified in vacuum.”

“We did a lot of it ourselves,” Maddie said, her voice very small. “Forerunner wasn’t very big at first. Didn’t have a lot of drones—so we did the work. Cutting, refining, hauling… building. Shell of the first dome was us, even if the inside has been ripped out and redone a dozen times. Got… exploded once.” She fell silent again, ears folding flat.

There was silence for a long time. Kit watched the opposite window, as another transport rolled by. That had to be at least a dozen of them in just a few hours. “Forerunner, I didn’t know we had so many rovers.”

“We did not,” he said. “Did you not understand the cost the Ravana project would exact? Much of the Aether will be consumed before our rocket reaches that asteroid. Some may be recycled in time—but much will be lost.”

“Why I refused,” Morgan whispered. “Even with thousands of rockets in Forerunner’s database, modular parts for everything you could want, and infinite automation—this mission is too dangerous. An accident on launch, a miscalculation in navigation…” 

She stood, pacing back and forth near the front of the rover. Morgan maintained perfect balance as she walked, even as the rover rattled over bumps and cracks in the ice road. “Rocketry is a mature science. With more material, we could produce far more advanced equipment. With more material, we could launch many test flights, perfecting our vehicles as the ancients once did. We cannot afford either option, so we gamble our lives on the files stored in Forerunner’s database, and whatever critical tests we can perform on the ground.”

“And if we succeed,” Kit said, lowering her tail again. Holding it just didn’t feel the same through a suit anyway. “We’re not a struggling colony anymore. Mara can grow into a civilization.”

Maddie made a quiet, frustrated sound. “There’s always risk, Morgan. But when we launch, we’ll have run the mission a thousand times in simulation. Every part of the rocket will be tested, inspected, tested again. We’ll have backups for our backups of our backups. And if we get into orbit and realize something went wrong, we can always scrub the whole thing and wait a few thousand years. Recycle the rocket, maybe reduce the standard template to save more resources…”

Morgan stopped beside her seat, patting the fox on the forehead. “You don’t need to convince me. Forerunner already agreed. After all my service as Director, I wonder if this might be why he replaced me. I love you all too much to let you put yourselves in danger like this.”

Kit made no angry reply, because the rover jerked to a halt at exactly that moment, pulling tight on her seatbelt. Morgan slid sideways, catching a strut to keep herself standing. 

“We have arrived at bulk fabrication. Operations are now suspended until your tour is complete.”

Forerunner’s subtle way of telling them to get moving. Kit hurried over to Maddie, holding out the fox’s helmet. “You know how to put this on? Let me see how you do.”

Maddie accepted the helmet, then settled it into place. It took her far longer than Kit, with her gloves now visibly shaking and her ears folded so far back she pinched them in the glass the first time.

“Not so hard. The magnets will get it into place, just slide it along…”

Eventually, she heard the click, and the hiss of air as the suit pressurized. Maddie’s HUD appeared as a reflection in the glass, one visible enough for Kit to read without peeking around to the other side. 

“All good!” Maddie sat up—or tried. Her seatbelt was still on, and she jerked right back down with a grunt. “Oh.” 

“Almost.” Kit pressed the release, then folded her arms. “Not done yet. What do you have to do first?”

Maddie demonstrated on both gloves, then her boots, and finally her tail. Each tug left the “integrity” lights a warm green, and no sound of hissing from the suit. “Can we go out yet? I’m ready!”

They could—as soon as Kit and Morgan had their helmets secure. Kit had been outside so many times by then that she could go over the whole checklist in a matter of seconds, before stopping Maddie at the airlock doors. “What’s the mission plan?” she asked, holding her hand in front of the door controls. Not that they needed them—Maddie could signal the rover with her implant if she wanted to.

Kit had all the same hardware—but not the lifetime of discipline to know how to use it.

“Always wanted to look over the powder deposition fabricator for myself,” Maddie said. “This one is so much bigger than anything in the Institute—has to be big enough to make the largest parts. Then I’ll check the pressure seal on the dome, make sure it isn’t melting. Fifteen minutes?”

“Okay. Keep your radio open the whole time. Even if there’s no sunrise to worry about, we still have to listen for Forerunner’s instructions. If there’s an earthquake…”

“I know,” Maddie said. She pushed herself off the ground, resting one foot on the nearby bench. That let her touch the top of Kit’s helmet. “Kit, I’ve lived here a really long time. I promise I’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure. But I’m still gonna watch every step, just in case.”

The doors opened, almost blinding them with a sudden barrage of bright white light. It took a few seconds for the helmet to polarize, diffusing the huge spotlights overhead to a more manageable glow. 

Kit hopped the distance to the surface. The ground beyond was no gravel ice road—instead, she found a fresh coating of white polymer, lined and marked with spots for several trucks. And beyond it—a dome, rising from the wasteland of Mara’s surface far higher than all but Mara’s signaling towers.

“No more excavation—even the buildings can be printed on site from ice. We could cover the planet with them if we wanted.”

Maddie trailed just behind Kit, following her gaze. Until she broke into a jog, hurrying past Kit to the dome’s entrance.

Of course, Mara’s reduced gravity meant they could only move so fast without tripping. But Maddie moved with surprising coordination for her apparent age, even with the new suit and tail. She had worn EVA suits before.

The dome had a wide door at its entrance, the only place where metal struts surrounded the ice, giving it the strength to stand well over their heads. Many thick cables surrounded the building, along with several domes of lesser size, connected with more pale roadway. 

“This is bigger than the Institute,” Kit whispered, mostly to herself.

The radio was still on, and still transmitting. Maddie stopped in place, spinning around to face her. Even through the polarized helmet, she was obviously amused. “If you put the rocket at the bottom of Remedial, it would poke up through the tallest dome in the Institute. Course we gotta build big.”

They toured the compound from one dome to the next, past fabricators as large as whole floors and composite digesters that belched and churned with the tholin soup that dusted Mara’s surface. Drones attended to all, among the oldest and most damaged specimens Kit had ever seen. Maybe this was where Forerunner sent them to die, working in dangerous conditions until they ended up in the recyclers for processing.

With every step, Maddie grew more satisfied, until by the end her tail swayed energetically behind her, and she could barely stand still. “Everything looks good!” she finally proclaimed, about an hour after arriving. Not fifteen minutes—but there was so much for them to see! “Good that we’re investing all these resources now. When we bring the asteroid back with us, we’ll be ready to build more rockets right away!”

She rested her arm on Kit’s shoulder, turning her head so she looked up. Past the edge of the domes to where faint starlight shone down from vast heights above. “Imagine a ring around the planet. Imagine dozens of asteroids above our heads, a constellation all waiting to be turned into ships and stations and new cities. We’re basically there already!”

Morgan chuckled over the radio, prying Maddie’s arm from her shoulder. “That’s enough, Sunshine. Too much of that optimism and you’ll blind her. Our Director has to keep both feet on the ground.”

Maddie shook her head firmly. “That’s not the Director’s job at all! She’s here to take us to the stars. We’re not doing pessimism anymore.” Maddie tugged on Kit’s wrist, leading her past the slowly churning fuel refinery. Several tanks of different sizes bubbled and boiled, still moving even with the drones frozen in their work.

They left the last processing equipment behind, with half-full canisters covered in yellow and black biohazard warnings. Kit had a feeling she wanted nothing to do with whatever was inside.

Their rover waited right by the door, but Maddie ignored it, scampering along towards a rise a few meters past it. “Surya should just be coming up!” she called, glancing back. “Let’s watch it! My drone got broken in that rover crash last time, so I didn’t get to see.”

Kit sped up to match Maddie’s pace. Maybe the fox had been on a lot of EVAs in her old life, but Kit had done them far more recently. She kept up easily, so she was ahead when they finally came to the bluff.

“Slow down,” she called over the radio, looking back. “That’s a long way to the bottom.”

Maddie slowed. Whether or not she was fast enough, Kit didn’t wait to find out. She extended one arm, holding it firmly in front of her friend. She caught Maddie, shoving her backward instead of forward. She stumbled onto her butt, sliding back a short distance.

“What did I tell you?”

“I didn’t wanna miss it.” The engineer shook herself off, apparently unmoved by the fall. Her 70% template didn’t have as far to go. 

“You were doing so good with your EVA rules until now,” Morgan said. “Then you had to go and do this, fox. You know she’s going to have to fail you.”

Maddie crawled the short distance to the edge, then settled down there. “Eh, whatever. I’m not scared of another F. Worse things have happened.”

Kit sat down next to her. Not just to catch her if she slipped, though partly that was her reason. A fall to the crater below would probably not be enough to break any of their suits. But even if it did, death out here to exposure wouldn’t be permanent. They might wake up again the same day, depending on how long it took Forerunner to get a rescue drone out here.

She wrapped one arm through Maddie’s, and held on, just in case.

“Makes me wonder what we could do if we were adults,” Kit said, conversationally. “We did all this with these bodies. What if we were regular people?”

Maddie’s face turned sour inside her helmet. She tugged free of Kit’s arm, both hands on her hips “Being taller doesn’t mean anything, squirrel. Take it from someone who’s a lot, lot older than you are. I’ve been every age you can think of, over and over and over again. Before we had synthetic bodies that didn’t age, and all.”

She looked away, back out over the edge. The horizon beyond was pale blue, reflecting the occasional strobe of red from atop the domes. The ice here was smoother from their direction, where heat from the factory radiated over Mara’s surface. The further Kit looked, the more uneven the moon became. Like the crust of a brownie, broken in irregular ridges and canyons dusted with tan.

“You can’t tell me we couldn’t do more as adults,” Kit said. “I remember… working longer shifts. I could hike across Isidis Planitia on my own with only the gear on my back. I didn’t need help to stay emotionally stable.”

“That’s not an advantage,” Maddie declared. She too had gone back to watching the sunrise. But she wasn’t looking into the sun so much as past it. She waved, and Kit felt something else—an incoming connection request?

Kit could reject it of course, but didn’t. What was Maddie trying to send?

Mara vanished from around her. Kit gasped, and she was somewhere else. Bright green trees, blue sky, and fluffy white clouds. The air was hot and oppressive, clinging to her with the humidity of a real planet.

“I grew up once. Long time ago,” said a voice. Kit looked and found someone sitting beside her. A woman, not a girl. No more tail, no ears atop her hair. Her chest wasn’t flat. Her skin was so pale, almost yellowish. She wore thick glasses on her brow and reached towards Kit with one shaking hand. Huge fingers closed around her wrist.

“Everyone grows up, squirrel. But not everyone gets to do it right.” She shifted her weight in the wheelchair, stretching. Through the thin dress, Kit saw a few bandages peeking through, wrapped tight around her abdomen. A pair of clear tubes ran from a machine under the chair to her wrist, humming with quiet machinery. 

Maddie was too good at this. Her vision had Kit in a little white sundress, the same one she sometimes wore when visiting the habitat dome on the surface. Those trees looked so inviting, like she could dash up to one and climb. 

“The universe is cruel, Kit, and rarely fair. There’s a reason we build so many machines. Forerunner doesn’t need us hauling rock or moving boxes—that’s what he’s good at. We’re here to live.” 

She released Kit’s wrist, and the memory faded. Maddie was still looking right at her—but now the girl was the same size again, with healthy skin and bright blue eyes. “The first generation blames me for making the whole Institute play my games. Acheron hates me for making us… like this.” She held out one arm, squeezing the little articulated fingers in her gloves.

“But we tried the other way, Kit. Everyone was big and independent and brave and smart and all the rest of it. You know what happened to them?”

She glanced back at Morgan, who was standing just behind her. Kit hadn’t noticed, but the ermine rested one hand protectively on Maddie’s other shoulder. Not just to keep her from slipping off the edge. “You remember.”

“Boom,” she whispered. “All at once. Wanted to go out on their own terms instead of waiting to starve or freeze. Tried to take us with them, though, that wasn’t fair.”

Morgan’s grip tightened, and her other hand squeezed into a fist. “Cowards.”

Maddie looked up, and relaxed. Far ahead, Surya had risen fully over the horizon. It was little more than a dim red light overhead, only visible thanks to the superhuman quality of their vision. An ordinary person wouldn’t see anything more than blackness up there.

“I don’t blame you for wanting to go back to the way things were, Kit. But here on Mara, our way works. The ones who wanted to be tall gave up and hid from the world. You won’t be able to bring them up here.”

Kit sighed, pulling her tail gently into her lap. “You don’t think I can convince them? Our future isn’t hopeless anymore!”

“It would’ve been,” Maddie said, her voice very, very small. “If we just curled up then. We wouldn’t have an Institute now. We wouldn’t have invented some of the technologies we need to make this mission work. We wouldn’t have the crew to build it.”

Kit winced, looking between them. Even Morgan was glaring now, though she was better at hiding it. With her smaller tail hidden inside her suit, many of the easier tells of emotion were obscured. “I didn’t mean it like that. You did the right thing fighting how you did—both of you. I don’t know if I would be as strong as you.”

Especially Wren, who knew exactly how grim their outlook really was, and kept the colonists going anyway. At least Maddie got to pretend with everyone else.

“Maybe you could convince some of them,” Morgan said. “But I doubt it. They’re—”

“Insane,” Maddie supplied. “They use their admin authority to keep from getting filtered while they’re down in Remedial. They’re not getting therapy, really. It’s just a prison where the old team waits for us all to die.”

Kit stood up, then offered her hand to Maddie. “When we get back here with Ravana's mass, you can be with me when we tell them they’re not going to die. Maybe then they’ll be willing to grow up and come upstairs.”

“You weren’t listening.” Maddie took her hand anyway, and stood with her help. “They can’t. They haven’t been treated, not once since the Institute was founded. Keeping them in daycare down there is like… mental life support.”

“I could’ve pulled the plug a long time ago,” Morgan said, her voice low. “Decades, even. But I didn’t. Not because they’re useful—they haven’t been studying anything in all these years. They’re not much smarter than you are. They’re serving their sentence. It only ends when they admit they’re wrong and apologize to Maddie for murdering her. None of them ever did.”

They walked back to the rover in silence.

Kit switched off her radio and spoke directly to Forerunner. There was no danger of being overheard, not without an atmosphere. “Could I… help them?”

“The first generation?” Forerunner replied. “Yes. The first generation exists on the verge of catastrophic ego collapse. Their minds are filtered to the same degree as the average citizen of the Institute—80%. Lift that restriction, and none will survive more than a few hours. Their resources could be recycled, and the dead could be reinstanced from branch termination.”

“They don’t want me to do that,” she whispered. There was no chance of being overheard, but still she kept as quiet as she could, just in case. 

“If they were here, they would beg you for it.” 

And you want new colonists, Kit thought. They’re sitting down there for thousands of years, wasting resources and doing nothing. “Not them. Maddie.”

“They were friends once,” Forerunner said. “The head of Engineering has much experience and many talents. But despite her lifetimes, Maddie has never developed a rigorous understanding of human nature. Those colonists will never forgive her. They will die bitter and resentful to the last.”