[68792] ChaeyoungUnknownChaeyoung’s ears rang, even though she had covered them with her hands. Her body shook from adrenaline and fear. Thick fog permeated the halls as the life support systems sputtered to failure on blood mists and bone dust and metallic glitter. She gasped and choked on the smell of iron, sweat, and ozone with every breath. Metal spurs and smoking spent capacitor shells ejected from coilguns crunched under her boots. N-wave snaps from hypersonic weapons intermixed with the whippop of return fire echoed from all directions. The tug of decompressive winds pulled at her clothing and hair.Skeleton faced soldiers were already pulling Chaeyoung away from the scene of carnage, down a hall at an intersection, and away from where she had seen Vis dragged away by an armed stranger with blue hair. The group of captives and surviving soldiers rounded a corner, pushed down at least fifty meters of curved hallways, and finally shoved into what was obviously a docking umbilical. It was a long tunnel with an upward angle, made of a lattice of metal struts pulled tight against the outer AlKapThil-teal foil skin. She stumbled over the threshold. Her head spun, her stomach gurgled, and it was like her limbs were being pushed and pulled in opposite directions from changes in spin gravity as she went up the ramp. She stopped, and tried to brace herself, refused to get pushed further away from Vis—pushed into a spacecraft and off the station, where she might never see Vis again.Immediately, a hard metal boot slammed into her knee. She stumbled and someone shoved her hard in the back. She tripped forward, almost fell, but hard metal hands jammed under her armpits and jerked her up off the ground.“Keep going!” A tinny, amplified voice behind her snarled viciously and urgently.She shambled up the rest of the incline and arrived at the threshold to a docking tug. Luxuriously padded walls and ceilings, acceleration flats, and a smiling skull-faced guard awaited her. There was not enough gravity in the docking tug, otherwise she would have collapsed into the nearest faded navy-blue flat. Instead, she went limp and just floated there. A guard shouted at her unintelligibly, so she pulled herself into the flat. Around her, the flats filled up quickly. Most of the other passengers wore black and blue striped biosuit fatigues without extra equipment or armor, some were soldiers in the familiar skeleton theme, and five were captives like her in gray and white fatigues—their hands bound at the wrists in front of them and black bags pulled over their heads.Chaeyoung still couldn’t hear quite right. As adrenaline wore thin, her head bobbed like she was falling asleep in the middle of a seminar. Details of the surrounding people popped out against the background in fleeting moments of lucidity, usually as she snapped back into focus. A repeated motif, besides the colors, became apparent even as Chaeyoung teetered at the edge of consciousness. Each branded biosuit had an emblem on the left shoulder pocket. A chattering skull with laser eyes over a blue and black sunrise. Some versions had the skull biting down on a red star, others were biting down on numbers, and one or two were biting down on blood-red letters that said, simply, Grayson Services Group.Her thoughts slipped past her attention like air streams through her fingertips in the vacuum of space. She could not focus. Her breathing was quick and ragged. Shouts, snaps, pops of gunfire and exploded deck plate rang through the opening of the docking tunnel to her right. Klaxons warning of hull breaches screamed. But it all flitted past her. She tasted copper. She was having trouble breathing.It was only then that she noticed she had blood all over her. Not her blood. Her heartbeat became faster, her breathing got harder. Garcia braced himself above her. “Oiya, Chaeyoung. Breathe.”Chaeyoung looked up at him as he continued to urge her to calm down and breathe slower, but she could not.Someone flew into the docking tug in a hardsuit like Ninya Blanca’s, only it was masculine and not feminine. Guards around the docking tug moved to lock themselves into position and snap smart salutes. Garcia stopped speaking and straightened his back nervously.“At ease,” the masculine demon said. “Garcia? Why aren’t you already on the Delightful Death?”Garcia froze, turned to snap a salute with a trembling hand, and then stammered an explanation. “I…I thought we should secure our assets for the Tritonis project.”“Fine,” the demon said dismissively. “We have to cut the fat, though,” the demon pointed at three of the black-bagged captives. “Take care of it, and then we’re gone! Go go go!”Guards pulled the identified hostages out of their flats. The guards responded to protests and terrified screams with punches and kicks until they brought the identified hostages to the edge of the docking umbilical. The soldiers that followed prodded and pushed them until they were all out of Chaeyoung’s sight and ejected back down into the station.“Warning. Docking airlock is not closed. Manual override of the standard docking procedure will lead to explosive decompression,” an autonomous voice warned.The masculine demon took a few steps toward Chaeyoung with a click click, then pointed at her with an obsidian demon finger. “She’s having a panic attack, Garcia. Drug her.”“Aye aye, Commander.”There was a pinch at her neck. Immediately, her breathing relaxed. Her heart slowed. Her panic ebbed enough that she could focus. She took a few more deep breaths and was immediately light-headed.Pop pop pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. There was a sucking hiss followed by depressurization warning sirens. Clunk. Thud. Bang. Heavy weight dropped out of the far end of the umbilical where there was more spin gravity. Chaeyoung shivered. Grayson soldiers returned into the docking tug.“Get us going! Come on! Go go, fucking go!” The masculine demon growled to the skeleton soldiers until they closed the airlock hatch leading to the docking tunnel. Warning alarms silenced as Chaeyoung’s eyes closed.***She woke up to an almost entirely empty docking tug. Mimo, with his Martian shawl draped across his shoulders, and Ali were onboard with her. She tilted her head, wondering when they got there. Weight pressed her body down from spin, or gravity. She got out of her acceleration flat straps cautiously as she examined her surroundings. There was a fuzz in her head, but it was slowly lifting.The tug was more like the public transit systems on Celosia than a mere propcan. It had large bins above the flats on the left and right sides of the tug for personal stowage. She carefully checked the stowage bins and found they were empty.“Look who’s awake,” Ali announced.Mimo frowned at her as she searched the stowage bins. “What are you doing?”“Seeing what they left us.” But the bins were empty. Even those that should have held emergency supplies were stripped down to the bolts. There was nothing left behind. There was not a single first aid kit or fire extinguisher to find on the entire passenger compartment of the docking tug, only three biosuit kits. Enough for Mimo, Ali, and herself.“They left us biosuits,” she announced to the others.Then she noticed the smell. Grease, blood, sweat and burnt matches. She tugged at the collar of her stiff fatigues. Her fatigues, now dried, were stiff and stuck to her skin after soaking in someone else’s blood. She was itchy and desperate to get out of the red-brown stained clothing. She made a murmuring whimper.“Hey!” Ali exclaimed as he bounced over to Chaeyoung. “You oke?”“Fine,” she said as she scratched herself, found the latch to her fatigues, and began pulling them off. “Fine, I will be fine.”Mimo joined the pair, put a comforting hand on Chaeyoung’s shoulder. She began sobbing. She began frantically pulling at her fatigues to get them off her body, instead tangling herself up in the gray and white material stained dark ruddy brown. “Anchuan shiyong,”[88][Di Lingua]: It’s safely handled. ↑ Mimo said in a hushed and soothing tone.Chaeyoung shook his hand off her shoulder.Mimo put his hands up like someone placating an angry drunk. “Oke, Chaeyoung. Oke.”She sat down on the floor, finally pulled off the blood-stained fatigues, saw there were brown flakes of blood still stuck to her skin. She scrubbed as much of the dried blood off her skin as she could. Mimo walked away, leaned on a flat on the other side of the docking tug. Ali did not look at her directly, but offered her a biosuit kit when she finally calmed down. He stood above her, her naked body red from rubbing her skin raw to free herself from the dried blood. His eyes turned away, a hand over his abdomen, and a slight bow at his waist. She accepted the biosuit, stood up to put it on, and did her best to ignore what was still stuck to her skin in many places. “Thanks.”Once the biosuit tightened, she slumped against the wall and her body relaxed. Her thoughts were still spinning around like they had before she woke up.“How long was I out?”“Not sure,” Ali said as he sat down next to her. “Less than a day I think.”“Are we docked somewhere?”“Don’t think so. Think this is natural gravity.”Chaeyoung lifted her arm, then let it fall. It was lighter than she had expected and fell slowly. It was sub-Lunar gravity, at least.“How can you tell it’s natural?” Chaeyoung asked.Ali shrugged with his hands. “Can’t be sure, of course, but when we landed, it was more like touching down than matching spin and clamping to a spin dock.”The main airlock door in the middle of the tug swung open. Two skull-faced guards stormed into the tug. Their motion was smooth but agitated in a way that was impossible to misread as anything but malevolent intent. Each had thick armor plates, sloppy white paint smeared over the equipment pouches to look like bones, skulls on their faceplates, and rifles held in place by retracted slings. They held their positions around the open door, then each extended bright yellow ceramic electromagnetic stun sticks with a schick. They held the sticks out, ready to swing at a moment’s notice. Chaeyoung and Ali put their hands up. Mimo flinched behind the nearest acceleration flat with a string of mumbled curses. Then the masculine obsidian demon walked in, arms wide, hands low, and palms outstretched like a holy figure coming to ask for—or bring—forgiveness.“I think it’s time I introduce myself,” the demon said. “You might have noticed some of us wear different equipment than the others. That is because we are in positions of power, and leaders are always distinguished from their loyal foot soldiers.”“What…what do you want?” Chaeyoung croaked.The demon bent down in front of Chaeyoung, the demonic faceplate with its sharp Oni teeth just millimeters away from her cheek. “All I want, Dr. No, is for Earth to survive, to thrive, and to dominate,” the demon laughed cruelly in the face of her confusion. “Haha! You really thought I was going to explain my plans to you?” the demon stood up and walked back to the docking tug’s airlock. “I will tell you what I fight for, but never why or how or to what, immediate, ends. Now, Dr. No, Dr. Jakande, Dr. Peyton. You can call me Sato.” He waved his hand palm down to introduce himself. Mimo nervously picked at his shawl. Ali clasped his hands together and looked blankly at his hands. Chaeyoung glared at the back of Sato’s helmet like she was trying to bore a hole through his head with a laser powered by her anger.“All you need to know is that I am the ultimate authority here. I am in charge. I am the absolute leader of this cell, so anyone you have met so far also answers to me,” Sato turned so the grimacing visage of his faceplate pointed at each of the three victims. “Do what my soldiers tell you. Accomplish all the tasks Garcia assigns. Do it all without complaint or struggle. If you can do that, then you have my word,” Sato put a clawed hand on his chest and bowed his helmet. “I will let you live.”Chaeyoung knew there was no way Sato was offering them freedom and a normal life. They had all seen too much—been told too much—to simply walk away from this. They might live, but it would be in a prison cell. No, she realized with a sinking stomach, Sato probably had not lied. He would let them live. Ninya Blanca or another soldier would not. She stifled a laugh at the absurdity of the realization. It was a demonic bargain, true to the letter, but not true to the spirit of what “I will let you live” implied.Sato left the trio to finish changing into biosuits, but the skull-faced guards remained on watch. Mimo and Ali pulled off simple fatigues and got into the loose biosuits. All three of them put on their air, water, and power packs, attached gloves, and helmets, then snugged the counter-pressure straps of their biosuit tightly against their bodies with the press of a button.It was cheap equipment, barely better than the cheapest kind used in an emergency, but only just. The ancient helmet had seams and distortion because of the hasty fusion of ceramic plates with the spinel faceplate. The material was bulky and unevenly colored, going from a beige white to a rusty red.In the airlock, the Grayson soldiers waved at some unseen EAR interface, activating air, water, and power for the trio. She smelled burning plastic from a stale air tank as it activated. At least, it was a relief to be away from the ever-present blood-stench of her old, crispy fatigues.Sato and his two escorts crowded the three captives into a simple, temporary airlock space. Air pumped out of the airlock. An outer hatch swung open, and a skeleton soldier pushed aside a large thermal blanket draped over the hatch.Sato’s voice crackled into her helmet over the radio. “After you, doctors.”Across the threshold into unprotected vacuum, a tiny bright dot blinded Chaeyoung. It was hanging high above a dim and icy planet-scape in the pitch-black sky. Whatever the light source, it hurt her eyes. She shielded herself with her forearm, hoping her faceplate would eventually polarize. This bright light could have been from the radiators of a spacecraft, though it was more likely it was the distant star that this ice planet orbited.Chaeyoung scanned the icy horizon that surrounded her. It was a short horizon. She almost saw the curvature of the world, the horizon’s edge perilously close. That was consistent with the sub-Lunar gravity—she was on a small, mostly ice world far from its parent star.Ahead was a clear path flanked by sporadic light poles. It led from the minimal landing pad where the docking tug was over to a raised platform that connected the entryways of multiple inflatable habs lifted on stilts, keeping them off the ice. Along the path, there were two more skull-faced Grayson soldiers, already in position and waiting for captives to cross the threshold and exit the docking tug. “Follow them, Dr. No,” Sato coaxed. “They will take you to your new work environment. Remember: be nice, follow the rules, do as you’re told, and everything will be alright.”Without further protests, they followed the Grayson soldiers to the habs. Chaeyoung kept her attention on her surroundings. Maybe there was something she could see, that she could observe, and that would give her some advantage, some way of escaping her situation.From a distance the folds of ice and snow, or clathrates more likely, looked soft like smooth-as-silk dunes of white sand. But up close, the terrain of this unfamiliar icy planetoid was surprisingly rugged and rough, like pumice. Each footfall kicked up dust clouds of ice crystals that revealed a fascinating rock surface beneath. Brilliant greens, blues, and reds glistened in the dim starlight.Chaeyoung suspected this resulted from gravity and active geology. Over the lifetime of the dwarf planet, gravity and active geology must have heaved mineral or metal deposits to the surface. This was a rare geological process for a small planetoid, but not unknown in the explored cosmos. Active geology meant there was a heat source in the core, whereas the expectation for anything this small and cold was to be frozen solid. Tidal flexing from moons, a strangely elliptical orbit, or unusual core compositions might prevent this, namely significant radioactive elements near its core. Any of the options were rare enough to be notable in a planetoid with sub-Lunar gravity and no obvious gas giant around.Chaeyoung wished she had paid more attention to her exogeology courses. The number of known planetoids with these features was in the handful, and she probably knew all their names and parent stars at one time, and she could have known where they were. If she had remembered.Her body trembled, but she continued toward the structures a few hundred meters away. It was mundane—like a tiny propellant depot in the trans-Neptunian Solar system. She realized the grating walkway that connected hab airlocks entirely defined the ring, then saw that an ice ridge had concealed some structures. The crescent-shaped ridge had a large radio telescope on the far side, partially hidden from view when she had initially exited the docking tug.She followed the two soldiers at the front up a ramp onto the walkway around the ring, to a linear connector that led to a dome resting on a large pillar in the middle of the ring of habs. It was an access shaft of some strange and makeshift construction, and the soldiers ushered her and the other scientists to the entrance of the geodesic structure into an awaiting elevator.One skull-faced soldier and Sato accompanied Chaeyoung, Mimo, and Ali into the elevator. It left with a lurch, sending Chaeyoung floating, and her stomach bouncing around in free-fall. It was not a quick elevator ride. She estimated they traveled up to several kilometers during their journey, but she wasn’t certain.When it was finally over, they entered a long-abandoned mining tunnel filled with stacks of decrepit mining equipment covered in frost. Not worth the delta-vee to remove or the effort to recycle, apparently. Off their main path there were many other tunnels covered in thick layers of ice with ruddy streaks from complex organics, each labeled with verbose signage that was unreadable beneath thick layers of streaky frost.After several minutes of walking, they reached a massive industrial airlock. There was enough space for an entire rover or even the propcan elevator to fit through. Leading the way, the Grayson soldier took them inside through a smaller hatch. It was not a full-cycle airlock, but rather a double membrane airlock. They ducked through the outer flap. Air pumped into the space with a growing chathwonk chathwonk as the atmosphere thickened, then a Grayson soldier pulled apart the front flap leading to the interior. As the gecko grip section pulled back, it emitted a satisfying zip sound, and a Grayson soldier guided them into a large, pressurized cavern. Carved into a large, solid-appearing rock formation, the cavern was massive. Not the strange minerals Chaeyoung had seen on the surface, but solid, thick rock. Chaeyoung tilted an eyebrow as she looked at the unusual cavern. It seemed unlikely this was part of the planet’s rocky core. They were not that far from the surface.Whatever had made this cavern, the excavation was puck shaped. It bulged near its central axis, with a taller ceiling and flatter floor, in the center there was a large cylindrical structure and platform. Along the perimeter there were more industrial airlock hatches, obviously welded shut, and a semi-circle of portable habitat pods with dimly illuminated entrances. People in black and blue fatigues milled about the cavern. Some were resting on crates, or eating from doshirak, others were holding a conversation at makeshift tables. Among the people in black and blue fatigues milling about the cavern, there were a few skull-faced armored soldiers like the one escorting Chaeyoung and the others.“Go wait inside that hab,” Sato ordered as he pointed to a particular hab furthest from the double membrane airlock. “Take off your biosuits, put on your fatigues. Get situated. This is your new home until we’re done here.”Chaeyoung nearly gagged when she pulled off her helmet. Damp, musty rock and the sickly smell of volatile organics out-gassing from its surface was a shock to her senses. She stumbled ahead and eagerly entered the small, simple hab to get away from the smell. Three pod beds, a simple water closet, a work desk, and three stowage lockers for biosuits. She got out of her biosuit, put on the gray and white fatigues, and sat down.They sat in silence until there was a knock at the door, then the hatch opened. “Dr. No. Garcia wants to see you,” the guard beckoned.“Just her?” Ali asked.“Just her.”Hands trembling, she got up and followed the soldier back into the stinky cavern.“Go on,” the guard shoved Chaeyoung toward the large cylindrical structure in the center of the cavern. “Get going.”“Where are you taking me?”“Core lab. Garcia wants to talk to you.”Her heart rate climbed. Her hands shook. She took several deep breaths, calming herself as best she could, and followed her guides to the cylinder at the center of the cavern. As she got closer, it was clear the large cylinder was just a particular type of specialized airlock for environmental suits.Each hatch opened into the back of the suits, allowing users to get in and out while maintaining complete airlock isolation across the inner and outer surfaces. It was a tried-and-true design, dating back to the earliest days of Luna, Mars, and Titan where regolith, dust, and toxic fluids were a serious issue, but getting into and out of your spacesuit quickly was also a priority. An environmental suit gave you the ease of access and the separation from inner surface and outer surface that was ideal for those circumstances. Scientists commonly used these types of systems in any situation where contamination was a serious concern—like astrobiology research sites.The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She had spoken to Garcia about contamination in exobiology, and here she was being brought to a familiar sight for dealing with those human contamination of exobiology sites. Whatever this core lab was, it had a risk of contamination—and it was possible that risk ran from human ecology to whatever was on the other side of the airlock. Three of the hatches were open, signaling their suits were unoccupied.“Get into that suit,” the guard gestured at one of the environmental airlock hatches. “Then follow the path to the dome hab. Do not touch anything once you’re down the ladder. Do not stray from the path. Do not dawdle. Understood?”She nodded, though did not feel very confident. “Ye. I understand.”Bittersweet anxiety. An environmental suit was a very safe space to be. Designed for people to live in as portable tents for days, sometimes even weeks, the environmental suit had a thick, but soft, aerogel packed body, an adjustable hard frame structure around the chest and back. Chaeyoung would have her own air, water, power, and even food in an enclosed space. She would have an environment she controlled for the first time since her abduction from Mu Herculis.Eagerly, she pulled herself into the interior of the suit, adjusting until the metal frame sat on her shoulders. The frame formed a large ring around her neck, like an O-ring of a biosuit, only it was adjustable and provided structure and stability for the top half of the suit. Currently, the O-ring was in an oval configuration that extended far wider than necessary. Chaeyoung peered down into the torso pocket tent of the suit, designed for living in the methane-rain-soaked surfaces of Titan for weeks at a time—but it was also hard vacuum worthy.This metal neck ring was expandable until it was large enough to pull her body into the torso and sleep, eat, or clean herself. It might also cinch down tight to maximize mobility in the suit. Click. She slid the two latches above her left and right shoulders and pulled the O-ring tight in around her neck. Thick aerogel, AlKapThil, and weaved boron filaments in the skin of the environmental suit tugged in with the O-ring until it tightly sealed over her body. Wiggling her chin up and down, she had the space to touch her sternum, but now instead of half an arm’s length, there was only a centimeter of leeway between the O-ring and her nose. She wiggled her body around until the pressure from the helmet stabilizer resting on her shoulders in the sub-Lunar gravity was comfortable. The guard explained from over her shoulder. “You can empty sanitary canisters in the facilities on the other side.”Chaeyoung felt around, found the sanitary garment system near her crotch, then she moved the garment, connected to tubes of the sanitation system so it was not in her way, felt its bulk settle in under her breasts as she moved her arms and legs into the sleeves of the environmental suit.The light behind her dimmed. The back hatch of the suit sealed with a click, causing a slight wind and a creak. With a gentle crackle and a light hiss, the audio system on the environmental system powered up. She let out a deep sigh of relief to be in her own space with her own air and water. She was self-sufficient, no longer dependent on her captors for the basics of life—at least for a few days.Whatever threshold the environmental suit airlock was protecting, she had now crossed to the other side with the close of the hatch of her environmental suit. There was nothing to see on the other side. Her polarizer was still over her visor, and set so it was a pitch-black sheet. She scanned with her eyes, looking for EAR displays, found nothing, then moved her jaw and chin to see if there were any manual controls. A heads-up display flickered on with a click as her chin bumped into a switch. Air, power, and water statuses appeared on the faceplate—she noted on the other side of the airlock the atmosphere was thick with carbon dioxide. She prodded and poked around with her jaw, but couldn’t find any controls for the polarizer plate, so she reached out with her gloves, found a latch to the polarizer layer on the exterior of her helmet, and lifted it. With a click that she felt rather than heard, she pushed the polarized layer up away from the visor, into the forehead of her environmental suit.And now she beheld what was on the other side of the airlock. Any calm she had derived from a sense of control over her environment in this suit was gone. She was too stunned to even let out a proper gasp, or any exclamation, instead it came out like a broken, sputtering. “Ah!”For a moment, she wondered if she was back in Mu Herculis—that everything that had happened was a result of her concussion during the excavations—because the alien hatchway that had led into the ice tunnels of the derelict spacecraft was here, in front of her. It was only a handful of meters ahead, embedded in rock and stone. In contrast to the hatch in Mu Herculis, this hatch displayed heavy weathering and had a large bore hole cut through its center. It was also a different material, with a texture and color of Martian basalt. It was nearly double the size of the alien hatchway Liam and she had found.Yet, there were obvious similarities. Covered in an undulating fractal curlicue, the spiraling pattern was still disturbingly trypophobia-inducing. Chaeyoung nervously shivered. She had a dead certainty she was being watched, and not just by Grayson goons. There was an unpleasant tickle in her stomach.Tinny voices squeaked over the speakers in her suit helmet as people chattered on the radio. It was an autonomous system instructing Chaeyoung to follow a ladder through the hatch, to look in certain places to ease any ill-feeling from the sight. She could barely focus, but she complied because she was curious. Despite the strange effect this alien domot had on her physiology—and it appeared to have some strange physiological effect just by seeing it—what it represented was hard to believe. Her curiosity alone propelled her forward, through the domot.When she reached the ladder, bolted into the rock of the alien hatchway, her stomach settled. As she climbed down the first few rungs through the hole, dread and fear dissipated, too. She took a deep breath, her body shook in a frisson, and she descended.At the foot of the ladder, she found herself in a cave-like funnel, opening away from the alien hatchway, which was covered in fronds of gently luminescent glow grass. It was abundant enough to provide dim ambient lighting. The cave was narrow near the base of the ladder, sloped downward, and expanded dramatically a few meters away. A large cave system was in front of her, pocked with briny pools surrounded by slushy ices as vapors hovered above in a chaotic syzygy of eddies. Between the pools and grasses was a winding path made of aerogel blankets and metal grating, curling out of view down and to the right. Instead of guardrails along this trail, there were only sporadic spotlights.She understood why she was told to stick to the path, as the glow grass was thick and waving back and forth. There was phantom pain in her hand from her last run-in with glow grass. When she got to the mat at the bottom of the ladder, she turned and gaped in awe. She had never imagined something this extensive, this alive, even in the derelict of Mu Herculis. She glanced at her heads-up display, saw the air outside her suit was relatively warm, thick with carbon dioxide, a little bit of oxygen, and other traces of gases. It was not human breathable air. Was this their native atmosphere? Her mind churned over the possibilities.She followed the path, peered at the various brine pools to her left and right as she went. She spotted flotsam and other structures that might be small creatures, caught in the murky depths of the pools. Her mind whirled at the idea that she was looking at some non-human greenhouse. Perhaps this was all intentional. These pools, these mats of glow grass. Like nyams on the Jiuhe. Her cheeks ached from the smile that spread across her face. She was shocked to realize she was giggling excitedly.As she followed the path through a turn to the right, the cave got even larger. Above her, the roof expanded rapidly. This ceiling was entirely free from glow grass, showing a dark steely surface that looked like roughly brushed threads of cobalt. Instead of a smooth polish, it had a texture like a weave of thick fibers—reminiscent of a traditional Martian shawl, except covered with regmaglypts. Shallow depressions in the meteoritic material shaped like thumbprints formed by the friction of atmospheric re-entry.Chaeyoung stumbled ahead, pushed forward by wondering what else she would see. The ceiling gave her a sense of motion, almost like the entire cavern was alveoli of some cosmic, metallic, lung that breathed gently in sleep. As she continued, she saw tunnels branching off from the main cave, twisting and turning and implying a much larger alien complex. Some were below the glow grass line, some above, some nearer to the ceiling. The topmost tunnels produced a continuous drip of water which sprinkled down on her environmental suit, creating a pitter patter of artificial rain.Chaeyoung’s emotions were a mix of bewilderment, ecstasy, and sudden fury. How long had people known about this place? She had to work for Acheron to travel out into uninhabited space to find something truly spectacular, yet that derelict was a fraction of the truly impactful scientific finding this place was. It was an apparently living, active, exo-ecology. Compared to this place, Mu Herculis was like studying human culture by only looking at the contents of an uncrewed propcan. This cavern, which represented a foundational discovery in exobiology, was a kept secret. Worse, it had even been de-prioritized by the few who even knew it existed. Now, Ninya Blanca pursued the cavern as an after-thought, after her project priorities failed to deliver.With a muttered curse, she followed the winding path among glow grasses, past another notch in the cavern. She paused in her tracks as the cave got even larger, this time dipping down into a massive open space. This portion of the cave had the same basic features of the rest of the space, like the ragged blue edge formed by the glow grass growing part-way up the metallic walls, large structures above dripping water, and briny pools surrounded by slushy ice, but there were four huge tunnels on the far side where the cave walls met the floor. Frozen rubble seemed to block one tunnel, the ice dimly glowing blue from glow grass. Below her, down a winding pass through leafy fronds, was a massive flat plateau dominated by a geodesic dome.Immediate disappointment met Chaeyoung as she realized the geodesic dome was, in fact, just a large inflatable hab—it was all too human. Dome walls made of an opaque bio-plastic sheeting held taut between geometric support struts, protruding from the sheeting like a geometric vasculature, nearly ten meters high, nearly double that in diameter. A small, pathetic human bubble in the larger alien grotto.There was no one else in sight save the fuzzy shadows of environmental suits on the other side of the dome. Ahead, the path led to an airlock. She walked down the gently sloping hill, deeper into the alien cave network, reached the dome, and opened the airlock. There was a gust of wind from behind her, sucking air into the negative pressure dome. She hurried in. Sprays of fluid blasted her, soaked down her environmental suit, and flowed away through massive drainage grates in the center of the airlock. The airlock depressurized. Air replaced with what her heads-up display claimed was oxygen rich—and at reduced pressure. On the other side, two armed environmental suits with skull-sequel faceplates flanking Garcia were there waiting. From the exterior, an environmental suit looked strange. Material around the legs and arms tightly folded against the wearer as much as they could, but were still puffy from extensive thermal insulation. With enormous, rotund chests with strange bulbous folds of material along the shoulders and the hips from the frame’s O-rings pulling the interior closer to the wearer. The skeleton faced environmental suits were unique, with equipment pouches on the front, extra armored plates inserted into the puffy fabric, and white bones painted along the arms, legs, and chest.“Welcome to the core lab, doctor,” Garcia said politely with a slight tilt of his head visible through the faceplate and he pressed an arm against the puffy material over his abdomen to imitate a more proper stellah steh bow. “We have a lot to talk about. Follow me.”Around the edge of the dome there were cylindrical inflatable habs, workbenches, and scientific equipment. At the center, there was a much smaller geodesic dome like the outer dome. Garcia waved the two guards away, and she followed as they walked toward the center of the dome. All around the dome there was a fine, sticky mush that oozed a purple black fluid between eviscerated orange tan leafy material from flattened glow grass. People in environmental suits trampled over any remaining glow grass carelessly as they walked between makeshift scientific stations, or between the various secondary structures inside the dome—tents and inflatable habs, and equipment bins turned into tables covered with scientific equipment.“You made no efforts to protect the glow grass?” Chaeyoung asked, making the indictment clear in her tone.“Hmm? Well, you know it’s quite dangerous, and we needed to study what’s in there,” Gracia gestured toward a second, smaller dome inside the larger structure.She clicked her tongue. “It’s poor practice.”“Maybe,” Garcia said wanly. “Please, doctor, you will want to see what’s inside.”The smaller dome was perhaps three meters tall at the center, six meters in diameter.“After you, doctor,” Garcia opened a hatch with a tilt of his head.Chaeyoung grumbled but went inside first. Inside, was a room filled with fleshy mottled bodies, rich in purples and greens and reds like bacterial cultures raised on a petri dish, desiccated and sunken leathery skin in some stage of decay. Bone-like blue spears poked through the flesh. They were alien corpses, similar in structure to the mummified remains in Mu Herculis, and like the images Garcia had shown her so long ago.The bodies had a shape similar to two lungfish attached end-to-end with asymmetrical tentacular appendages, and their beaks resembled a mixture of starfish, squid, and beetle. These alien corpses—not mummified like the body in Mu Herculis—were large, nearly two meters long, and piled on top of each other in heaps. In some places, the piles reached up to her shoulders, but at the outer edge, the decayed alien flesh only reached her shin.She gasped, held her breath, and reached out to touch the nearest body. There, her hand froze. Dread and fear filled her thoughts, and she pulled back. The glow grass had taught her that not everything was what it seemed. She walked along the perimeter of the dome, where there was a clear path free of alien corpses.A hint of a burgeoning pattern emerged from the bodies she saw. There was symmetry to the disturbing scene. Like two opposing sine waves of corpses had collided, then canceled out like two wave fronts. The bodies intertwined and broke at the interface of the two waves, with the bone-like structures protruding from desiccated flesh.In the very center, just barely poking above the thickest piles of the alien bodies, was an egg-like artifact. The skin of this artifact was so black it looked more like a hole in the fabric of reality. There was no depth, no reflected light to give a sense of shape, just vantablack surfaces. There was a path winding through the bodies on the opposite side of the door where she would get a better view of the whole artifact, so she followed the path. The artifact’s shape resembled that of a pinecone or perhaps a giant egg, but its cone petals were thick and almost vantablack. Across these petals Chaeyoung had a fleeting and subtle hint of complex geometric shapes, like a closed-eye visualization or a passing shadow. Around the artifact there was a panoply of scientific instruments and probes and microscopes—all human. It was like some elaborate nano-scale machinery industrial complex studying the artifact.“What happened here? What…what is that thing? That…xenolith thing?” “The structure at the center? We had no clue for a long time,” Garcia said as he walked along the outer edge of the alien shapes. “But then our mutual friends gave us a hint at what it could be. A very strong, very good, hint.”Chaeyoung scowled. “What are you talking about?”Garcia gestured to the vantablack egg. “Dr. Silva, Dr. Jakande, and Dr. Peyton paved the way to our understanding of the physical principles behind that…xenolith, as you call it. We believe it is a very dense, very complicated, very advanced example of a closed time-like curve computer.”“Why did you have them building that other prototype? This seems far more…,” Chaeyoung guiltily bit her tongue. For a moment, scientific curiosity enthralled her. Her question was born from an urge to criticize methodology, rather than a vehicle for expressing the bubbling moral and personal outrage she felt toward Grayson Services Group for all the lives they had destroyed and would continue to destroy if they continued to be unopposed.“It wasn’t my first choice,” Garcia said bitterly. “And practical, immediate, application has its powerful appeal, for some,” Garcia sighed. “But ultimately, it has been slow, and very dangerous. Simply, we did not have access to the correct mixture of experts…until now.”