Starmind Chapter 29 (Patreon)

“Star! Report, please,” Temeri said. “Time to the mana signature, and locations of the ships searching for us.”

“We’ll arrive in approximately three hours, ten minutes,” I reported. “The nearest ship is twenty-two thousand, five hundred miles away and increasing; the next closest thirty-one thousand, two hundred miles with a closest projected approach of twenty-nine thousand, seven hundred miles. No other ships are projected to approach closer than that on their current trajectories. Wow! I barely had to think to tell you all of that!”

“That’s great, Star. Any sign at all that they may suspect where we are?”

“None that I can see. Harvin?”

At Temeri’s nod, Harvin said, “I haven’t picked up anything indicating that they know where to look for us. They’re doing active scans at the moment, but at the ranges we’re dealing with, and the way Star’s hull scatters most active sensors, they don’t stand a realistic chance.”

“And how are you holding up, Star?” Temeri asked. “All the fields stable and such?”

“Yep!” I told her proudly. “Everything’s running just fine! Heat, gravity, air recycling, lights — obviously — even the nutrient paste dispenser! Using about point-five mana per minute right now, though I needed almost the full two per minute when the thrusters were burning.”

“Alright!” Temeri said, and broke into an actual, full on smile! “Let’s not call it a success just yet, because Fate loves to slap down those who take her for granted, but I’d say we can relax enough to have dinner at least! How about it, crew?”

“Right on time, too, Cap!” Simeon said.

“Let’s break out some of the perishables, too,” Varlanda suggested. “Really hammer it home that we’re not taking the future for granted.”

“Good idea, Vee,” Temeri said. “If anyone hadn’t guessed, off-duty rules are in effect. Eat, relax, and rest up a bit. We all need to be at the top of our game in a little over three hours.”

Three hours. Three hours of excitement and tension. Of wondering and fearing what we might find. After dinner they all did their best to nap for a while, trusting me to let them know if anything changed, and then it was only an hour left, and I knew exactly what we were heading for. We were only a couple thousand miles out, and our target was clear enough on both my visual and mana sensors.

It was an asteroid. A fairly standard one, as asteroids went, long and rounded, a bit like a potato. It wasn’t too big, only about fifty miles long and thirty miles, and it rotated slowly around its longest axis, and only that axis. No wobble at all. So far, so basic.

But it wasn’t just an asteroid. On one of the short ends, perfectly centered around the rotational axis, a perfectly round tunnel, five hundred feet wide, led into the rock’s depths. Here and there on its surface sensors and other obviously artificial things stuck out and in one place, most obviously, was what could only be an observation deck of some kind, covered by a transparent dome.

It wasn’t just an asteroid. It was a space station.

And yet it was silent. No transmissions went out that I could pick up. It was dark, in the sense that it wasn’t radiating any heat or visible light; I could only see it in the dim reflected light of Kyra, the star around which we all revolved. But to my mana sensors, it was brighter than any station around Mundus; if not for how stable the mana signature was, I would have thought it was a major industrial reactor in melt-down. That was the closest reference I could find in my archives.

It worried me. It also made me more curious. Deep inside, I felt that I had to know what was going on, as though it was written in my bones to search for the cause of anything I didn’t understand. And in a way, perhaps it was. My Core, the Crystal Mind that was the center of who and what I was, had been custom made for surveying and research before my body was repurposed to test the Long-Range Teleportation Matrix. I’d had a mystery in front of me ever since I reactivated my sensors, and now I was, at long last, on a final approach to find just what it was.

I couldn’t wait.

*

“Alder! Still nothing?”

“Nothing, Captain. No mental activity that I can detect, and I don’t see any way that they could shroud something that big. Unless there’s only a handful of people on that rock, and they’re all in one shrouded location, I say that it’s deserted.”

“And still no response to our hails, automatic or otherwise?”

“None, Captain,” I replied, choosing to stay formal. Temeri was very tense, after all, and this was serious business.

“Artificer Bekeri, what’s your opinion on the installation, regarding integrity or anything else?”

“From what we can see, its structural integrity is nothing to be concerned about. Millions of tons of rock makes for a pretty solid structure. Nothing indicates any leaks, of atmosphere, radiation, or otherwise. Of course, that could also be because there’s nothing to leak; I’ll remind you that the lights are quite literally off. The reactor is obviously on, and the mana is being consumed by something, but I have no confidence that the installation is habitable as it is. I concur with Diviner Alder’s assessment: the rock is most likely uninhabited.”

“Thank you. That’s fine. That’s what the voidsuits are for, after all,” Temeri said, unconcerned.

The other Crew shared some looks at that. Simeon was the first to speak. “Excuse me, Captain,” he said, “do you mean to say that you intend to board the rock?”

Temeri looked at him, scrunching up her forehead in a way that I was pretty sure usually indicated confusion. “Well, yes,” she said. “I can see no way of concealing ourselves more effective than hiding inside an asteroid with the brightest mana signature we’ve ever seen outside of the Nova Prime Shipyards. We’ll have full concealment in visual, thermal, and mana sense. With Enchantress Tell and Diviner Alder’s enchantment, we’re shrouded as well. And with any luck there will be supplies and other resources to salvage. Yes, Healer Tell. I fully intend to at least attempt to board that rock.”

*

Our braking and docking maneuver was the point where we were most likely to be spotted. We weren’t going monstrously fast compared to the rock, but we needed about a minute of deceleration at three G’s. Not only would we be visible on thermals, but we’d be clearly visible on any mana sense that happened to be looking in the right direction, too. There was nothing for it, though; either we took the risk, or we kept going until the next time our orbits intersected. Which, I helpfully told Temeri when she asked, would be in one hundred and seventeen years, nine months, sixteen days, four hours, thirty-one minutes, and just over twenty-two seconds. Our orbits weren’t exactly well matched. I may have also been excessively exact with the time to drive home how much I wanted to stop at the rock.

Once we were within a few dozen miles of the rock we should be pretty much invisible to any mana sensors, but that didn’t mean that we were safe. Temeri wanted to take it nice and slow entering the shaft that led into the asteroid’s interior; she was concerned about automated defense systems that might decide that we were up to no good and try to shoot us. Which was fair! I didn’t want to get shot, and I definitely didn’t want my Crew to be put in danger! Therefore, we wouldn’t be powering up the reactor. Instead we’d be descending into that shaft with every scanner, active and passive, at full power, while maintaining full readiness “bug out,” as the Crew put it. If we had to run, we’d use the rock’s blinding mana signature as cover to burn as hard as my mana supply would allow, for as long as we dared. Then we’d cut thrust entirely and coast until we decided what to do.

It was a workable plan. A disappointing one, but infinitely preferable to getting a hole punched in me and all our precious air ventilated into the void. I wasn’t sure how fast I could patch up hull breaches and replenish lost air if I went all out, but I doubted it was as fast as a battery of guns could undo my hard work.

“Star! Ready for braking maneuver?” Temeri asked, reclining in her couch.

“Ready!” I confirmed, letting my excitement bubble through my voice.

“All crew ready?”

“Ready!” the other Crew called, one by one.

“Diviner Alder, anything from the nearest bogies?”

“Boredom and frustration, Captain,” Harvin reported.

“Excellent. Inform immediately if you pick up anything suspicious. Star, eyes on the enemy ships, please. If they maneuver suddenly, let me know and we’ll decide whether to abort. For now, at your discretion, proceed as planned.”

“Aye, Captain!”

Fifty miles out from the rock, I fired my maneuvering thrusters, flipping me around so all main thrusters were facing its direction. At a little over thirty miles out, I began burning at three G’s; hard enough to bring us to a stop relative the rock in a short time, but not so bright as to make us too obvious on visible or thermal sensors. As we went I adjusted our course bit by bit, bringing us, finally, to a relative stop above the shaft that vanished into the pitch-black depths.

I really couldn’t see anything with passive sensors. It was spooky. At that distance the mana signature was so bright that it saturated my sensors; at the same time, there was no heat radiating at all, and no lights. Once I switched on my active sensors I should be able to see a lot more; until then, it was creepy.

Creepy in a good way. I was very excited.

“We’re in position,” I announced.

“Star, why are you whispering?” Temeri asked.

“It’s really dark and quiet!”

“Right. Well… Alder, any reaction from our friends?”

“None, Captain.”

“Star? Have the other ships done anything suspicious?”

“Nope! They’re all continuing on their previous trajectories, and no active sensors have been turned in our direction.”

“In that case, Star, do you mind if I take navigational control?”

I was a little bit uncomfortable with that part, to be honest. I hadn’t liked Temeri flying me before, and I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat experience. But I also knew that while no one could maneuver me as perfectly as I could from a technical standpoint, she had instincts and kind of indefinable feeling for piloting that I simply lacked. If we needed to “bug out,” she was going to be able to get us out of there a split second faster than I was, and she was going to be able to evade any incoming shots much better than I was, and either or both of those might make all the difference. At least that was what the Crew told me, and if I couldn’t trust them, who could I trust?

Not that there were any other candidates out there with us, or that I knew anyone else. The point is, they were all part of me, and I trusted them implicitly.

Aaand I’d taken a very long time to respond again.

“I don’t have to pilot,” Temeri said. “I know that you can fly us down there straight as anything. But if I do take over, you can take back control at any time, alright? I can only control you as long as you allow it.”

“No, I know,” I said quickly. The drawn-out silence thing had the Crew looking at each other, and I felt a little awkward about the whole thing. And then I realized that I still hadn’t given Temeri a proper answer. “Um, it’s alright. Go ahead. I’ll just…”

Before I could second guess myself, I permitted navigational control from Temeri’s pilot’s seat. “There, go ahead,” I told her.

“Thank you, Star.” Temeri relaxed back into her seat. “Sensors on the slates, please. Visual, thermal, vibrations, all overlaid with the mana dialed way down. Active sensors, too.”

I did as she asked, and the slates covering the ceiling lit up with what I could pick up. Passive sensors hadn’t changed from a few minutes earlier; there wasn’t much to see. But with spotlights and coherent light projectors up…!

“Not much to see, is there?” Temeri murmured as she pushed the throttle just the tiniest bit. Just enough that it should get us moving at a few feet per second to start with. And she was right. The spotlights pushed back the darkness and let us see a mile or so of the shaft, but another mile of smooth rock didn't tell us much. The most interesting thing was that there was a very slight vibration, but it was everywhere, like the whole rock was shaking at the same frequency. Which, sure, it was a lot of mass to shake, which was very interesting, but it didn’t help us in the moment.

“Maybe boring is good?” I suggested. “At least there aren’t any guns!”

“There is that. Say, Star, are we moving? Did you route navigation to my controls?”

“Hmm?” I checked. We were, in fact, not moving. The thrusters hadn’t fired. So I double checked, and yep, I had indeed given her navigational control. “That’s odd,” I told her. “Try again.”

She pushed the throttle, and… ah. I saw the problem. And as I fixed it, I was absolutely mortified.

“Right, yep, okay, that should do it. Try again.”

This time, when Temeri fired the thrusters, she actually fired the thrusters, and I started moving.

“There we go,” Temeri said, blowing out a relieved breath. “What was the hangup, Star?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing important. No need to worry about it, won’t happen again,” I babbled.

“Alright,” she said. She didn’t like it. I knew for sure that she didn’t, because she had that tone in her voice. But she didn’t press, which I was deeply grateful for, because I was already embarrassed and I did not want to admit that I’d been countermanding her inputs the moment she made them.

The fix had been to cut my own navigational control entirely. I really should have done that from the start, like I had the first time I let her pilot me, but it was just so uncomfortable! I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like it then, and I didn’t like it now, and I could feel myself trying to fire the little braking thrusters on my front to stop myself moving because I hadn’t been the one to start. I must have unconsciously kept my control channels open this time, which clearly hadn’t been a good idea. Of course, I could just open those channels again whenever I wanted, but now there was an extra step between me being uncomfortable and me unintentionally sabotaging Temeri’s efforts at flying us in safely.

It was really uncomfortable, though.

After getting me moving at about half a mile a minute, Temeri adjusted my trajectory to be almost perfectly straight down the shaft — she really was a very skilled pilot. Then she flipped me over, and we drifted along in silence. Temeri was fully focused on what little was visible, ready to burn hard and get us out at a moment's notice. The walls were smooth and featureless. Nothing happened.

Until it did. Until I received a hail.

At first I thought we were being attacked. I almost panicked, and was about to both take back navigational control and inform the Crew when I realized that the coherent light beam playing over my surface was, in fact, so low powered that it couldn't even heat my Hull by more than a few degrees. Then I saw that it was frequency modulated in a way that perfectly matched a standard tight-beam communication protocol and that it was, in fact, a message requesting confirmation of receipt and that I agree to establish two-way communication.

All that took only a few fractions of a second, so I didn't have time to embarrass myself before telling the Crew, “Somebody wants to talk to us!”

Temeri didn't move at all from her position as she said, “Alder! Still no sign of any minds?”

“No, Captain!” Harvin confirmed. “Could be automated?”

“Must be,” Temeri agreed. “Star, you say whatever this is wants to talk? Not just a message, then?”

“It’s requesting— well, more like demanding two-way communication,” I confirmed.

“Enchantress Tell, how long could a Comms Matrix, complex enough to handle autonomous communication, last without maintenance?”

“With a very limited set of responses to specific circumstances, months at best. Beyond that it goes down quickly.”

“Right,” Temeri said thoughtfully. That left us with very few possibilities. Either the place was recently abandoned, or someone was maintaining it. “Well, let’s see how complex this system is. Star, open a channel, please.”

I did as she asked, sending a beam of light down the shaft, moving it around a bit until whoever was contacting us noticed it and guided me to their receiver. Then I did the same, and just like that we had a communications channel going!

“Welcome, unidentified vessel,” said a voice. It was warm, smooth, and welcoming, and completely void of age or gender. “Power down all weapons and continue at your current velocity. Any attempt at hostile action or escape will be met with immediate and lethal force. Thank you.”

Then, faster than any of us could react, the shaft above us sealed itself. One moment I could see stars far above, the next a wide band of rock, a mile above us, flared with heat and flowed closed.