Passage

Four heavy duty vehicles pulled out of Demon’s Pit early before dawn. I was still dead tired from practicing with Nai the night before, but we had a few hundred miles of road to cover. We wouldn’t reach Cordani province until tomorrow afternoon or evening depending on where we stopped and for how long.

Letrin—one of my newer Casti acquaintances, Nai, and I were all in one vehicle with a Casti I didn’t recognize driving. They were listening to a bulky radio headset, so they didn’t say much.

“I’ve heard about this place,” Letrin said. “I’ve never been though. What exactly are we in for?”

“Is there something that wasn’t in the briefing?” Nai asked.

The Casti soldier nodded, “I’m still unclear on the facility itself and how we’re going to be searching it. It sounds like it’s too massive for even a group our size to search. You’ve seen how big it is.”

“Caleb?” Nai prompted.

“More than four thousand regular personnel, a third of whom live on site,” I quoted. “Almost a million square feet and supposedly some of the tightest security in the star system.”

“You speak as if that last part isn’t true,” Letrin noted.

“That’s because I’m fairly confident it isn’t,” I told him. “Have you looked at the schematics? Every camera in the Complex is static, and there’s no automatic alarm system. Too much of it depends on the human element.”

“Or the Casti element, that is,” I amended.

“There were more than three hundred schematic documents,” Letrin said, astonished. “How…?”

“Nai?” I prompted back.

“He memorized them all,” she said dryly.

Letrin shot me a disbelieving look.

“All four-hundred and six pages,” I told him, materializing one of the floorplan documents to prove my point. “Look here, there’s thirty-one levels listed in these documents, but there are sublevels that aren’t displayed.”

“How do you know?”

“Ase Serral said so,” I told him plainly, and he scoffed. “But I think I can see some of it here. Look at how the ventilation and plumbing are marked in these lower levels compared to where it cuts off here on the higher ones.”

At the upper levels, the pipes were all connected to some form of outflow. A sink or drain, something that could or did lead back into one of the two industrial purifiers. But the pipes toward the bottom didn’t always do the same. It wasn’t that they seemed to go nowhere, only to pop back into existence someplace else. But the pipes did make some odd loops where it seemed like unused water was being circulated back into the purifiers.

It didn’t confirm anything, but it was an indication of how the Organic Authority operated. They might not be a military, but they were still willing to keep their secrets.

“I understand our plan to get inside, but once that happens, how are we going to search for this data drive? Nemuleki didn’t mention anything specific when she tapped us.” Letrin pondered.

I was a bit curious about that myself, although I knew my time was going to be monopolized elsewhere.

“It’s going to be a flexible effort, so be ready to adapt to new information. But we need to be ready for someone to make contact. Rahi Pen had help both getting the drive inside, and getting the data drive out, so they’ll be a good place to start.”

“The message said he died,” I recalled. “If you can investigate how that happened, it could lead to where he hid the data drive.”

“Truth be told,” Nai said, “I’m more concerned about what happens when the Vorak find out we’re there.”

“You don’t think finding the Korbanok data will be that hard?”

She shook her head. “Whoever helped Rahi Pen inside will either know exactly where it is, or be able to point us in the right direction. But even that will take at least a day, maybe even two.”

“And that’s more than enough time for some Rak to learn about us and come make life difficult,” Letrin noted.

It wasn’t a question of if. Only when.

“How ready do you feel, Caleb?” Nai asked.

“I wish I had more sparring practice, but I survived the last time Vorak came knocking. And I’ve grown since then.”

“You actually might have more experience fighting Vorak than I do,” Letrin mused. “I didn’t enlist that long ago, and we haven’t seen nearly any combat since that assault after you arrived.”

“I remember you fought a different Adept, Nai. It looked like they made shockwaves of some kind. What happened with that?”

“They got away from me,” she said simply. “That whole attack was never going to succeed in taking the base. Not enough Rak bodies and not enough Adepts to hold it afterwards.”

“If they didn’t want to take the base…” I said.

“They were there for you and only you,” she confirmed.

I’d more or less known that then, but it was still a bit odd to hear someone else say it. Even now, I didn’t feel that important. Certainly not the ‘dignitary’ that Serral sometimes thought I should be.

“Where would an Adept like that rank?” I asked. “Aptitude wise, I mean.”

“L2 for magnitude,” Nai said. “Hard to say about the rest.”

“Those shockwaves travelled pretty far,” I recalled, “what’s the exact threshold between L1 and L2 for range?”

“About ten meters,” she told me, “but they still could have been an L1 for range, because the category doesn’t refer to how far your creations can travel from you, it’s strictly in reference to how far away they can be materialized.”

“So if I make a ball and throw it, it doesn’t count for higher range?”

“No. That Adept probably did something similar to your kinetic bomb, actually. Only they focused it toward a certain direction and constructed it to blow through a wider area.”

“How much Adept theory have you heard before, Letrin?” I asked.

“Virtually none,” he said amicably. “But it’s interesting to hear, if slightly terrifying.”

I could sympathize with him there. The more I learned about Adept powers, the more I realized how lucky I’d gotten squaring off with Stalker and the rest of Sendin Marfek’s troops. I was heading toward moments like those again.

“Well, good hunting to you,” I said. “I’m going to be very busy getting poked and prodded for a week.”

“We’ll be lucky if it only takes that long,” Nai admitted. “It’s a little dubious, but we might try to stretch out your testing if we can’t find the data quickly enough.”

“Any guesses yet?” I asked.

“What?” both of the soldiers replied in unison.

“Guesses on where the data was hidden?”

“Caleb, we don’t have the first idea…”

“Aw, sure we don’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t think about it.”

“Do you?” Letrin asked.

“Absolutely not, but let’s take another look…” I dematerialized the sheet of paper with the schematics and opted to focus on the copy in my head. It was easier to analyze and compare.

Broadly speaking, there were three entrances to Cordani Organic Science Complex: the front door, the roof, and the industrial side entrance nestled deep into a canyon that cut into the same rock the facility was sunken into.

“Alright, pretend I’m Pen Rak-Mae-Vo. I’m in possession of one very hot [potato], but I can’t just leave it anywhere…there’s lots of angry Vorak after me and I know that any hiding place that’s hard for me to get into will be just as hard for them to get into…”

At the same time though, there was little point in hiding if someone saw you hide and thus knew where you were. The impressive part wasn’t that Pen had gotten inside the Green Complex; it was that he’d done so without alerting the Vorak.

“Therefore, I don’t go in the front door, or even the roof. The freight entrance is the winner. It’s a pain to get through, but once I’m in I don’t have to worry about getting from the public areas into the labs…”

More than two-thirds of the Complex was actually subterranean, and the facilities immediately accessible to the public were confined to the surface levels. All the fun lab sections were below ground and more or less isolated from each other.

In fact…

“Some of these labs are a little bit like miniature quarantines,” I noted. “One of them has a chamber that’s been completely sealed for more than nine months. If I wanted to hide myself or a computer drive where no one would be likely to find, even for months on end, what better place than a section that no one sets foot in?”

“How would he get himself or the drive inside if it was sealed before he got there?”

“He was Adept,” I snorted. “There’s a way.”

Nai considered that, and if I read her expression correctly, she was looking at her own copies of the schematics in her head. She hadn’t been receptive to the idea of so many documents floating around her head. She still hadn’t cracked how to make new ones either, but she had asked me to at least share psionic copies of the mission documents and the basic floor plans of the Complex.

It was a neat little piece of deniability for the Coalition, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

There was no written record that our group was present for anything other than allowing me to undergo more comprehensive medical testing.

The records for the Coalition’s goals were in Nai’s head, and because someone had to share them with her, also mine.

She was in command of the entire mission, unexpectedly after the Casti who should have been co-commanding it with her had fallen seasonally ill. Nemuleki was nominally the replacement co-commander, but she’d outright told me that she’d be relying on and deferring to Nai whenever possible.

The day before the mission, Tasser and Nemuleki had both been presented with formal promotions to Rahi. There had been something attached to the title—first or second grade, perhaps. I didn’t understand the Coalition rankings yet, but I knew that for their work on Korbanok, and Tasser’s work with me especially, they’d been given a huge step up.

Nai had been too. But it had been very reluctant on Serral’s part. He’d outright stated the only reason Nai was also promoted to Rahi was because both the would-be-co-commander had fallen ill, and I had explained the psionic mirror to him.

It really had been a colossal screw-up both of Nai’s making and my own. But some of the things I’d learned in the wake of it…they would prove awesome if I could perfect the ideas.

“Are we still in radio range of Demon’s Pit?” I asked.

“No, but we could tap a landline once we get closer to civilization,” Letrin said. “What are you thinking?”

“Well I pretty much only packed clothes for this trip, so I left all my Earth stuff with Dyn. I’m wishing I’d given him more specific requests about the phones.”

Letrin glanced nervously at Nai for clarification, and I tried to hide my smirk behind my air mask. He had no clue what I was talking about. There were a lot of rumors floating around the base about me, but there were just as many about the human technology I supposedly knew about.

“What did you tell him?” Nai asked.

“Just the summary of what we did the first time we tried to charge one. When we get back from this, I have some better ideas on how to get it right this time.”

“I haven’t followed all of this conversation,” Letrin said, “but aren’t you being a little too optimistic saying ‘when’ we get back?”

It was my turn to react identically to Nai and we both glanced at him oddly before noticing the other’s reaction. My sense of Nai was that she was a pessimist. But it also seemed likely that losing your home planet would make anyone see the glass as half-empty.

But that didn’t mean she went into every fight expecting to lose.

“I hate Caleb’s positivity more than most,” Nai said, “so remember this coming from me. Don’t get into fights you think you can’t win.”

“That makes it sound a bit like you’re saying we shouldn’t be trying this…” Letrin said slowly.

For an instant, frustration flickered across Nai’s face. Letrin missed it, but she didn’t take well to being misunderstood.

“What she’s saying…” I interjected, “is that having realistic expectations is fine, but if you start thinking of everything as a suicide mission, sooner or later you’re going to prove yourself right.”

“I understand,” Letrin said. “But we have superstitions about misfortune. Nothing invites it like wishing it would stay far away.”

Nai snorted and I thought to myself, see, that one doesn’t surprise me at all.

·····

We stopped about an hour before dusk, more than five hundred miles North from Sassik Province and Demon’s Pit.

We’d been rotating drivers, but Nemuleki and Nai had wanted to make sure everyone stretched their legs before we arrived in Cordani. We’d come far enough north that the air was actually pretty warm here, even going into the evening.

The place I’d landed on Yawhere resembled a savanna in my memories, but I hadn’t really seen it long enough to get an appreciation for it.

We were far northeast of that province. This area more closely resembled canyonlands in the southwest back home. It was odd, though: the rock here wasn’t a vibrant orange, but more of a warm yellowish-green instead.

The biggest difference between here and Demon’s Pit was the flora.

There weren’t staggering amounts of regular snow to hide any of the local life forms. For all the entries I had under ‘dissonant similarities’ in my journal, the plants didn’t make it.

Every single one of them was truly fantastic. Even if they were identifiable as ‘shrubs’ or ‘cacti,’ they all took on shapes and colors that didn’t leave any doubt in my mind they’d come from another planet.

In a strange way, the most exotic things I’d found so far were the most reassuring. They lived up to my expectations.

Tiny odd hexagonal flowers were just barely growing now that winter was ending, sickly yellow moss creeping over a boulder, trees were few and far between, but the one I could see had splits in its trunk and branches at all the wrong places—the wrong ratios present. I could have sat for hours just looking at every little thing trying to commit it to memory.

2-D images were a piece of cake to copy into the journal, but copying images of full-bodied three-dimensional objects was still stuck in the testing stages. But I could still remember what I saw here the old-fashioned way.

“This life isn’t native to the planet, right? This whole place is a Casti colony; did your people introduce an entire ecosystem?”

Tasser sat pensively on the hood of one of the vehicles while I looked closely at the ground trying to spy a small animal or bug.

“The ecosystem was introduced, I know that much,” he said. “I don’t know much past that. I was actually going to ask someone when we got to the Green Complex.”

“You’ve been a good friend, and the Coalition has done so much for me—I have no complaints,” I started.

Someone else might have been confused by my train of thought. Instead, Tasser looked at me knowingly. “…But?”

“…But I’m eager to begin talking to more people, groups besides just the Coalition. I need to start seeing the bigger and bigger picture.”

“We’re here to investigate what happened to our Adept, but you’re investigating the bigger thing, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

My conversation with Laranta had reframed some of my priorities. I was a victim and detective in my own abduction, and if I wanted to ever make it back to Earth, I needed to know how that ship had gotten to the Solar System in the first place.

That wasn’t the only thing I’d need to know, but the ship was a start. And the Red Sails had it.

“I made a deal with Nai and I’m trying to take it seriously,” I told him. “So I organized my goals into short, medium, and long term.”

“Is there anything under ‘long-term’ besides finding Earth and getting back home?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But something will probably come up. We were actually talking about things going wrong earlier.”

“They always do,” Tasser agreed. “But I’ll count myself lucky that you and Nai are on speaking terms.”

“I suppose her and I being hostile would qualify as things going wrong.”

“It was difficult,” he mused. “I truly had no idea what to say to either of you.”

“That’s a little interesting,” I confessed. “My impression of you doesn’t really include you being at a loss for words. At least not often.”

“That’s because you’re overexposed,” he said easily. “You and I have spent so much time around each other while failing to communicate that I’m not sure the phenomenon even registers anymore.”

“I think I’m getting that way with situations where I’m in mortal peril.”

“Oh come on,” Tasser said. “It’s been months since anyone has really tried to kill you. You can’t be that desensitized to it.”

“Well here I am,” I said. “Out in the open, waiting for some Vorak to come for me.”

“Are you scared?”

Once upon a time, I might have been a little insulted, patronized by the question.

“Yes,” I said honestly. “But I’ve long since had to cope with that. The first month I was at Demon’s Pit, every night I fell asleep terrified that I was going to wake up impaled through the floor or something.”

Tasser gave a thoughtful hum.

We sat in easy silence on the side of an alien road watching the sun dip below the horizon. But eventually our little convoy needed to move again. Cordani province and the Organic Authority awaited.

·····

Or not, as it turned out.

We pulled up to the gatehouse situated at the entrance to the narrow canyon leading to the Complex’s freight entrance.

It was visibly empty, and the gate itself was raised.

The hair on the back of my neck rose and Nai immediately barked for the convoy to peel away from the gate.

Half an hour later, we were parked atop a cliffside road overlooking both the Green Complex and borough it loomed over. We still hadn’t seen any Vorak.

So the two mission commanders decided to try and talk with the Green Complex to see why there had been no one manning the entrance.

“Come in Green Complex, come in, this is—”

“Desist immediately, this is not a public channel!” a voice on the radio said.

“Then it’s a good thing this isn’t a public broadcast,” Nai snarled. “This is Coalition commander Nai Cal-Yan-Ti, we were supposed to be admitting a First Contact for biological examination—”

“Denied,” a new voice said.

What?

“Denied?” Nai said in disbelief.

“Coalition personnel are not admitted into the facility, pending the—”

The transmission cut off momentarily before repeating itself.

“The Complex is not admitting any Coalition personnel currently. Tell your Ase the Organic Authority will be publicizing these events.”

Shock played across Nai’s face. There was something we were missing here. Had to be.

“We came here to fulfil First Contact obligations,” Nai tried, “the Organic Authority’s charter—”

The voice cut her off again.

“I’m looking at you right now, Adept,” the voice said. “Four Coalition vehicles, more than sixteen armed soldiers, and the Torabin herself. I am not admitting a small army into my facility. Not now. If Ase Serralinitus wants to play this off as a misunderstanding or coincidence, then he can be assured that I will do everything in my power to ruin him and anyone else who tried to implicate us in your diraksi war.”

“I don’t think they believe us,” Nemuleki said.

“We’re missing something,” Nai said, bewildered. “That must have been the facility director. If he’s refusing us entry…”

“He doesn’t think we’re here for First Contact,” Nemuleki said. “I don’t think it really matters what he thinks we’re here for if we can demonstrate otherwise.”

She jutted her head toward me, indicating for Nai.

Nai gave both me and Nemuleki curious glances before handing the radio to me.

“Uh, hello,” I said.

“Clear this channel, Coalition, you’re wasting breath and time,” the voice replied.

“I’m the alien,” I said.

There was no quick response. I had to hope that was because they’d heard something unexpected and not because they were just ignoring me.

So I continued. “I’m the First Contact. My...well, I guess my name doesn’t matter that much. But you can hear my voice. What kind of accent am I speaking with? Does it sound Casti, or Farnata? Please don’t tell me I sound like a Vorak—”

The radio made a crackle, like someone had picked up on the other end, only to stay silent for now.

“Take a look,” I said, peering down the cliffside toward the Complex on the other side of the valley. “I’m the freak climbing out of the third car. Am I on camera? Tell me how good I look in these clothes.”

“We…see you,” the voice replied carefully.

“I’ve come a long way,” I replied. “And I just spent the last six months taking the language class from [hell] so I could be fluent enough to give informed consent for medical tests to make sure I’m not going to kill anyone if I leave this planet or vice versa. So—”

“Put Commander Nai back on,” the voice said briskly.

I handed the radio back to Nai. We were both grinning behind our air masks.

“We can admit him immediately,” the voice said warily. Nai gave a hand signal to the rest of our convoy, and we got rolling again, Nai still talking with the Green Complex.

“You want to explain what just happened?” Nai asked.

“No, in fact, I—actually, put the alien back on.”

She handed me the radio again.

“Tell me your name.”

“Caleb Hane,” I said. “Not that it means much to you.”

“Quite,” they said. “Tell me, Caleb Hane, these Coalition soldiers you came with, have they told you of any ulterior motives?”

“Well, if they had told me,” I said, “would they still count as ‘ulterior?’”

There was a tense moment before the voice returned, gravely serious. “What would you say if I told you there was an investigation of a Coalition agent infiltrating this facility to develop a germ weapon?”

I looked at Nai and Nemuleki. In fact the Coalition had told me its ulterior motives. But had it told me all of them?

I took my thumb off the button.

“Hey Nai, the Coaliton wouldn’t use bioweapons would they?”

“No,” she said firmly. And I believed her. “And even if the Admiralty Board tried, soldiers would desert in droves. Myself included. It would kill the movement itself.”

Yeah, that tracked. She’d lost her home to likely the largest occurrence of mass death in the history of…well, I wasn’t sure what history. But I knew planets didn’t die every day.

She wouldn’t brook their use. That was good enough for me.

“You also didn’t stop broadcasting,” Nai said. “The button is the other one.”

Oh. Oops.

“I think the words Coalition and biohazard have been tossed around enough that they’ve lost all meaning in the last few months,” I said into the radio. “I think someone heard I was coming, put two and two together and made five.”

“…That remains to be seen,” the voice said. “The gate is open; your vehicles will stop outside cargo receiving. I want to talk in person.”

“We’ll be just a couple minutes,” Nai said.