So that was a hell of a day.

Let me start at the beginning.

Ethros is as barren as Terra’s moon aside from a single dome colony on its equator. There’s really nothing there except for a Republic outpost and the little village surrounding it. It’s essentially a company town—everyone living there either works for the Republic or does work needed by the people who work for the Republic. Security is high there, naturally, but the nice thing about dome colonies is that they have to send a lot of things in and out. It’s a modern-day mercantile system: the colonies are usually built by a sponsor of some sort who wants to take advantage of some natural resource the planet has, usually valuable ores and minerals. The colony then has to ship those materials back to its sponsor. The sponsors also get to sell the colony everything it needs. Water, oxygen, manufactured goods, you name it. Anything they can’t get from the colony itself comes to them through the sponsor.

Ethros is a tiny bit different because they’re not exporting anything. There’s little to nothing of value there. It’s just a strategic location for the Republic of Free Planets to have a base—lets their ships refuel and their people rest planetside in what is otherwise the middle of scenic nowhere, things like that. But because the planet has so few resources, they need to bring in a lot of goods from the outside. Enough that they can’t possibly be vigilant about every single shipment that comes in.

Flora was able to call in a favor with the guy who ships water converters to the colony. Ethros has no liquid water to call its own, but it does have hydrogen and oxygen, and at the end of the day that’s all you need. Since water is heavy, shipping in machines to turn those ingredients into water is a hell of a lot cheaper than shipping in water itself. The great thing about these converters is that they have empty tanks inside them where the water is stored once it’s made. And they’re huge; like, water tower huge. And they’ve got ladder bars on the inside in case someone slips in while doing maintenance or inspections.

In other words, there’s plenty of space for four adult humans to strap themselves in. And the converter itself is so massive that the weight of four stowaways is easily overlooked, especially if you happen to know a guy who can make sure it gets overlooked.

But it is not a comfortable journey, let me tell you.

When I say we strapped ourselves in, I mean that literally. We had a bunch of strong fabric straps, like seatbelts, that we normally use for cargo, and we used those to lash ourselves to the ladder bars inside the empty water tank. We were lucky in that most of the journey took place within a larger ship whose artificial gravity gave us a smooth ride. But for the very last leg, the water converters get fired down to the surface of Ethros all on their own.

Being electronic, they don’t have their own life support. We all had to wear EVA suits complete with oxygen tanks and pressure regulators. Luckily, the Adelaide has them in great supply for its theoretical crew of hundreds. Though they’ve come a long way from the Apollo days, they’re still heavy and not all that comfortable. Still, I was grateful to have mine; the padding in the helmet was the only thing that kept my skull from repeatedly ramming against the steel bars behind me as atmospheric turbulence shook the converter like a cocktail.

The turbulence, though, was nothing compared to the thunderous shock of the converter slamming into the ground for the first time.

The converter has parachutes to slow it down and airbag-like balloons that inflate on impact. It has to land softly enough not to damage the equipment, but the equipment is not nearly so delicate as the human body. I hissed in through my teeth as the impact sent ladder bars into my back and straps into the rest of me. I knew right away it would bruise and bruise ugly. But I’d survive, so long as the suit didn’t rupture.

The next bounce was almost as bad as the first. After that, the airbags and the loss of momentum worked to calm things down a bit, but the damage was done. Every bounce sent straps and bars into places that were already bruised. Finally, we rolled to a stop. For a long, uncomfortable moment, I was essentially dangling from the ceiling. Next to me, Alec and Frances dangled sideways while Flora lay on her back. Then the converter’s landing gear kicked in and righted it, so that we all had feet towards the planet’s surface.

“Everybody okay?” I asked over the EVA suits’ comm system.

“I think I broke a rib,” Alec said in a weak, panicked voice.

“Fine over here,” Frances said. I could hear the grimace in her voice. “And I’ll check Alec out the second I get myself down.”

“Okay here,” Flora said brightly.

We all began the arduous process of un-strapping ourselves and taking inventory of our bumps and bruises. We wouldn’t know the full extent of our injuries until we were out of the suits, but I could feel a hint of whiplash. We definitely should have secured our heads better.

Alec turned out not to have one broken rib, but several. The best we could do was give him something for the pain once we got into the dome colony, which wouldn’t be for a while yet. For now, we were playing a waiting game; waiting for the colony’s runners to come load up the converter and bring it into the dome.

The very lucky thing about these converters is that they do have lights in the storage tank. Should someone fall in, they don’t want them swimming around blindly, they want them to be able to see the ladders. But it is just enough to let you see the ladders. Luckily none of us planned on doing any reading. We gathered near one of the ladders, where the lighting was best, and sat on the floor. In case the runners came earlier than expected, we couldn’t make any conversation. I ran through the plan in my head again and again.

I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually we were on the move again. The tank resonated with the low rumble of the rover that carried us. From there, it was another long wait until we stopped moving again, and another wait still until we were sure we were alone and in conditions that could support life without the suits. We ditched them in the tank. We wouldn’t need them on the way back–we had a much worse, riskier plan.

We climbed the ladder to the top and popped the emergency hatch. I could hear poor Alec whimpering the whole way.

We emerged in a warehouse. Our immediate vicinity was occupied by the other water converters that had been dropped, while the farther reaches of the building contained all manner of crates and metal tanks and shelves upon shelves of boxes. Some of those boxes contained the janitorial uniforms worn in Orange Sector’s base here. You can probably see where this is going.

Once we had all dressed, the group split. Alec and Frances went to secure our getaway shuttle while Flora and I searched for Jules.

For a field biologist, Flora’s pretty good at this kind of thing. Again, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me since she’s friends with Jules. But I have to say, I was impressed by her confidence as we moved through the cold gray Orange Sector halls. She kept her cool even when we passed by various Orange Sector employees wearing suits or labcoats or shirts and ties, all of them with a steely look in their eyes.

We didn’t really see much of what was down there–it was mostly a lot of doors. Some were made of steel and bolted shut from the outside. Some were made of what I can only assume was lead. Others were made of ordinary wood fiber and would have looked at home at your typical office building. I kept my eyes peeled for a sign of where we should be going, but everything looked the same. There were signs pointing out various points of interests–forensics lab here, so-and-so’s office there–but none of the listed locations seemed like a place they would have taken Jules to.

So it’s lucky for me that Flora seemed to know where she was going. She took the lead after the first few minutes–I think she might have been humoring me to begin with. I followed along as she wove her way through the corridors. We went up and down stairs several times for reasons I don’t really understand, considering we wound up on the same floor we’d started on. Maybe she didn’t know her way all that well, or maybe she knew it very well. Who’s to say?

We stopped at one of those office-type doors after a while. It didn’t look any different from the hundreds of other doors we’d passed to me, but Flora reached out to open it.

And a hand came down on my shoulder.

“I think the two of you had better come with me,” said an unexpectedly warm voice.

I waited patiently to be sedated or tased, but that moment never came. When the tension in my muscles melted enough for me to turn around, I saw Mac’s broad face staring back at me, his mouth drawn into a frown. Not a serious government agent frown. The frown of someone who’s just caught a child with a hand in the cookie jar. For once, Ana was not with him.

Flora and I exchanged a glance. “We’d better,” I echoed.

Mac brought us to a boiler room, of all places. It was dark and cramped and hot. Flora and I were backed against a water heater while Mac stood in front of the door. I tried not to pay attention to how thoroughly trapped we were.

“So is it a good sign or a bad sign that we’re here and not in a cell somewhere?” I wondered aloud.

“This is one of only a handful of rooms here that doesn’t have surveillance,” Mac explained, which was A) not comforting, and B) not something you should tell people who are currently infiltrating your building. “You’re here because I’m giving you a chance I’m not supposed to give you.”

He left us in silence until I gestured for him to go on.

“The way I see it, you and your friends are just everyday people who got mixed up in all this somehow. You deserve one last chance to turn around and run. Get out of here and go live a normal life. So if you’ll agree to do that, I’ll make sure you get out safe.”

“Not without my captain,” I said.

Mac sighed. “I was afraid you’d say–“

Before he could finish his sentence, an alarm started screaming overhead. Red lights flashed on and off in the darkness of the boiler room. Every head in the room whipped towards the speaker on the wall.

“Leave,” Mac insisted, straining to be heard over the siren. His eyes met mine with a fevered look. “Something’s gone wrong and you don’t want to be a part of that. Leave now and everyone’ll be too distracted to stop you. Go!” And with that one last shout, he ran out of the boiler room, leaving us unattended.

“So, that was Mac,” I told Flora as we, too, dashed out of the room. Again, I wasn’t sure where we were going, but Flora sure was. She wasn’t walking or jogging, but running. I wondered faintly where Ana was and whether we had to worry about bumping into her. The flashing lights turned the halls nightmarishly disorienting; staccato bursts of red over the endless doors.

Flora stopped at a door again, but it wasn’t the same one from before. This was an overhead door. She hefted it open and inside was a small shuttle.

“We’re taking Mac’s advice, then?” I shouted over the alarm.

“No,” Flora called back from the shuttle’s open airlock.

In too much of a hurry to question it, I hopped in with her. Still in atmosphere, there was no need to wait for it to pressurize. We stumbled directly into the shuttle’s passenger area, where we were met by Alec, Frances, and Jules.

Jules looked like shit. A red-and-purple bruise covered most of one cheek. Their usual ornate wardrobe had been replaced by an orange jumpsuit, which they’d zipped down to reveal a white undershirt stained with sweat. If the bags under their eyes were any indication, they were exhausted. But they sat with their ankle crossed over their knee, chin resting on one hand, and a slight smile on their face. It looked, for the most part, exactly like their usual serene expression, but I couldn’t help but detect a hint of smugness. And their eyes had a distinct glint to them.

“Welcome aboard,” they said. “I do hope the adjustments to our plan did not cause you an excess of consternation.”

I, being excessively consternated indeed, could do nothing but sink into the nearest seat. They were good seats, properly padded to help the human body withstand the enormous force associated with launching a spacecraft through the atmosphere. With real seatbelts. Much better overall than strapping yourself to a ladder.

Jules’s brow furrowed. “Marie, I was hoping you would act as our pilot. I would do the honors myself, but I am afraid my wrist is broken.”

So I got up and moved to the pilot’s seat and everyone belted in and shockingly no one bothered to shoot us down as I flew us out of a secure government facility from which we had just somehow extracted a prisoner. Pure exasperation carried me silently out of atmosphere and into the Adelaide’s docking port. It’s not a short journey, but the time barely registered with me. Once everyone was safely aboard, I marched to Adelaide’s bridge and jettisoned the shuttle. We couldn’t afford to let the Republic track us by it.

“Welcome back, Captain,” Athena said.

“Thank you, Athena. It is, as always, a pleasure to return unscathed.”

Frances barked, “You call that unscathed?”

“Have you not seen a great number of more severe injuries?”

“Shut up and let’s get some imaging done on that wrist,” Frances said.

“As you wish.”

I followed them to the med bay. Alec and Flora, having nothing better to do, came along. “I suppose you all got an explanation while I was flying?” I asked.

Alec laughed. “Nope.”

Flora was silent.

When we’d all gathered in the med bay, Frances yelled at us to get the hell out of the x-ray room. About ten minutes later, she came out scowling over an image of Jules’s shattered wrist. And I do mean shattered.

“What the hell did they do, hit it with a hammer?” Frances demanded.

Jules followed her out of the x-ray room somewhat hesitantly. “It was caught in a closing door,” they explained.

“And what happened to your face?”

“An overzealous interrogator.”

“Of course. What else?” Frances said. She led Jules to an exam table and started fitting them with a wrist brace. “By the way, mind filling us in on what you were being interrogated for?”

“Oddly enough, they declined to tell me.”

“How ’bout a guess?”

Jules winced as Frances adjusted the brace. “With the sort of life I have lived, it could have been any number of things. Something or someone I once transported, perhaps, that was out of the ordinary. Or perhaps one of my many contacts has attracted their attention, and I am merely wanted as a witness. Or,” they said, looking directly at me, “It is a matter of the kind of person I am.”

“What kind of person is that?” I asked slowly.

“A vagrant with suspicious amounts of money. An individual who came out of nowhere within the past few years. The implantless captain of a very large ship. All things worthy of investigation.”

“They said you were a person of interest,” I said.

“They said I matched the description of such a person,” Jules corrected. “I have done many things and met many people that might be of interest to the Republic. Whether I am the person they sought, I can’t say, as they never described that person to me.”

Frances finished adjusting the brace. “All set,” she said, giving Jules a slap on the shoulder. “Don’t go sticking it in any doors.”

Jules sprang off the exam table. “Very well, then,” they said. “I believe we have narcotics to deliver. If we are fortunate, and if Flora will allow us to postpone her return to Voltaire, perhaps we can still arrive within the expected time frame.”

“But how did you get out?” Alec asked.

Jules looked over their shoulder as they left the room. “With inside assistance,” they replied. All of us–me, Alec, Frances, and Flora–chased after them. “I was able to contact someone familiar with the layout of the building,” they added when they noticed our pursuit. “So I thought I ought to meet you halfway.”

“How the hell’d you know where to meet us?” Frances demanded.

“Flora and I have been in contact.”

“How?“

Jules stopped almost in their tracks and considered it for a moment. “That is, for now, a secret,” they said at last. They yawned. “The hour grows late. We all ought to sleep.”

Frances tried to argue with them. From what I could hear from my quarters, it sounded like she followed them all the way to their quarters and spent a few minutes shouting at them from outside before giving up. As for me, exhaustion sank in the second I heard the word “sleep.” I didn’t get the answers I wanted, but the crisis was resolved and sometimes you’ve just gotta take what you can get.

And you know, if Jules says they don’t know what Orange Sector wanted with them, I believe them. I don’t think Jules lies. Even when it’s the smart thing to do. So really, there’s nothing to be gained by questioning Jules further. What are we supposed to do, press every single thing it might possibly be out of them?

So now it’s back to business as usual, I guess. We have to deliver the stardust we picked up on Thyris. Flora made a compromise and she’ll be heading back to Voltaire in one of the Adelaide’s shuttles so we can stay on schedule. We’ll pick it up from her when we get a chance–until then, we have three other shuttles we rarely use.

But something’s wrong, and that’s not going away. Whatever the Orange Sector wanted, they didn’t get it this time. They’ll be back. I wonder, will they send Ana and Mac again, or will it be someone new? Probably the former. Now they’ve caught Jules successfully once, and they probably won’t be blamed for their escape. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking? About people coming after us? Dare I ask?

You do dare, apparently, even though I asked you not to butt into my logs. But hey, I guess I’m a giant hypocrite if I don’t explain. You remember I said Ana had an institute weapon?

Yeah. So she was your classmate or something?

She’s at least a few years older than me and I don’t recognize her, so no, I don’t think so. But she might be close enough to my age that we were in the institute at the same time, and I’m hoping she might remember a few things better than I do. There are things that… that I think happened, but other times I think I must be making them up, or that I’m not remembering things in the right order. And maybe if she went through the same things, I can get some confirmation that I’m not just imagining things.

Aaaaaand you’re not going to explain what things, are you.

My memory of it is all screwed up, that’s what I’ve been saying. I don’t want to claim certain things happened when I don’t know if they did. I don’t want to make any accusations without first knowing if I’m just pulling them all out of my ass. Some of it’s far-fetched.

Memories don’t just come out of nowhere.

Well, no, but there was plenty of bad shit going on at the institute that I do remember. I think maybe looking back, my brain just adds in every bad thing I heard from rumor, or that happened to someone else, or that I read in a book once. All that gets tossed in with the stuff I don’t want to think about, and it all starts to blend together.

So where’s the line between what you know happened and what you might have made up?

I don’t know. That’s the hard part. Once I doubt one thing, I start doubting everything else. And it works the opposite way, too; once I admit that one thing happened I start thinking everything did. But there are a handful of incidents that I know were real because I remember telling people about them shortly after they happened. Or because they left visible scars. Once I got shot with live rounds during what was supposed to be a training exercise, and I know that’s real because I’ve still got the mark right there on my leg.

Uh. What kind of school was this again?

They don’t usually use live rounds like that. That was either a fuck-up or another student sneaking real ammo in specifically to hurt me. Never really found out which.

But I told you that the Hylmir Institute was partly an experimental school, right? Well, sometimes the experiments were a little more extreme than average. After all, the institute’s main purpose was to produce better soldiers. At one point, they decided they needed a way for soldiers to coordinate better on the battlefield, so they fitted a bunch of us with neural implants that formed a telepathic link to our training partners. Only there was no distinction between broadcasting and not broadcasting the way there is with the thyrins. Everything came over. Sensory information, thoughts, feelings, identity… The link obliterated the distinction between us. It was overwhelming.

And then they tried to make us fight like that, but the thing is, we could barely walk like that. Same-species partners had it a little easier, but Mnirin and I were each dealing with a sense we’d never had before, yet also dealing with memories of always having that sense, and… it was just… bad. The program was canceled and the implants removed, for obvious reasons, but it was about a week of absolute hell before that happened.

Wow. I guess that explains why you got so freaked out on Thyris.

It sure does.

You should mention that to Jules. They’d been wondering why you reacted so badly to telepathy.

I suppose you’re going to tell me that if I want Jules to explain themselves to me, I should do the same for them.

Not a bad idea, but no. Mostly you should do it because they were worried.

Not just about my well-being, I take it? But fine. I’ll talk to them soon.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get a chance to talk to Ana at some point to compare notes. See if she remembers any of the stranger things I think might have happened. If she doesn’t, I guess I’m just crazy, but at least I’ll know it for sure. If she does, I don’t know what I’d do. Bask in vindication? Report it, I guess. None of that should have happened, assuming it ever did.

So yeah. Today’s just a travel day. Gives me some time to catch up on the log. And sleep. And–

[door slams]

Was that Frances?

Yes. She’s currently running down the hallway like something’s crawling up her leg. Looks like she’s headed for Jules’s room again.

I thought she’d have given up by now.

Guess she got a second wind.

[muffled shouting]

Oh, this’ll be wonderful for my audio quality.

[shouting intensifies]

I [indistinct]

[indistict] get a word in edgewise here. [indistinct]

HEY, SHUT UP!

[Frances replies with several expletives]

[shouting resumes at slightly reduced volume]

Ooookay, I guess I have to go mediate this. Marie Ruiz, signing off.