Chapter Ten

[68557] Chaeyoung

Mu Herculis

Pain radiated through Chaeyoung’s body. She couldn’t move. Her thoughts were foggy. Her nose pressed against the bottom of the emergency hab tent. She gasped for breath like a fish out of water.

Someone was above her. Someone with thick, blood-covered metal boots grabbed her by the hair and lifted her face off the floor, then proceeded to pull a slick material over her head. Enveloped in total darkness, she heard a crackling sizzle like food cooking in a hot pan. Acrid melting plastic caused her eyes to tear up and smoke tendrils tickled her nose.

Chaeyoung tried to wriggle free, tried to move, but every muscle in her body was loose, smooth, and useless. All that effort and all she managed was smacking her forehead into the ground. The hood that blinded her was plasticky and cool against her skin, but it was rough as her cheek pressed against it, like a membrane of an emergency biosuit. Her breathing pulled it closer to her mouth, and it clung to her face.

She panicked, and her rapid breathing caused the film to cling to her face faster. As the film pulled into her mouth she choked. They forcefully flipped her over. Something pulled and tugged at her biosuit as the hood pulled further into her mouth. There was a loud whoosh, and the film pushed away from her face as her ears popped.

Her panic ebbed and she could breathe again. They could have left her to asphyxiate in this dark hood, but whoever had incapacitated her apparently wanted her alive—for now. She yawned until her ears popped and sound came rushing back to her world.

There was a tug at her left arm, where her seal bracelet was, then the characteristic prick as the seal performed a biometric verification. Someone pulled her right hand onto her left, guiding her limp fingers, and pressed them into her bracelet’s release to pop the seal out. It was a profound violation. Something far less violent than being shocked and blinded, yet it made Chaeyoung recoil in a kind of terror physical violence had not. If her body wasn’t limp from shock, she would have lost all remaining resistance against her captors as they forcefully took her digital identity against her will.

She could feel, and hear, the boots shuffle around her. Her muscles regained strength over the next few minutes, and then someone pulled her to her feet, and pushed her out through the airlock membrane flaps. Up and down changed as they dragged her along. She went through microgravity.

As someone pushed her into an acceleration flat or chair, she felt her body spin up, and gravity reached near-standard weight. Eventually, her muscles recovered, and they forced her to walk, giving her muffled commands she could barely hear through her blindfold biosuit hood.

Pressed down into a chair, Chaeyoung’s hands and legs were restrained against its hard frame. Then, with a hiss, her blindfold ripped free from her biosuit’s O-ring. The light in the room was painful, and she flinched and gasped as the click click of boots on bulkhead receded and a hatchway swung shut. With a clunk and a thunk, it was closed.

As Chaeyoung’s eyes adjusted to the light, a cold, spartan room came into view. She saw a scratched metal table and an empty chair positioned across from her. Deep shadows draped the room behind that chair, making it impossible for her to see what was beyond, while a high beam of actinic light illuminated her from above.

“What is your full name, birth system, and system of primary residence?”

Chaeyoung peered through the blinding light, just seeing a silhouette of a figure—the source of the voice—next to the chair on the far side of the table. It was a soft, masculine voice. A gloved hand appeared from the shadow and rested on the worn surface of the table.

“Didn’t you get all of that from my seal you took?” Chaeyoung growled as her earlier shock at the violation turned into a simmering rage.

“I apologize for that,” the voice said. “It would not be my first choice, had we found ourselves in different circumstances.”

“What the fuck do you mean?”

“We’re out here, light-years away from any other people, and we find a spacecraft in distress. It’s been badly damaged, and a faint distress signal is being sent out. You have a duty to do something, but you don’t know what to expect, so you violate some norms to thread that needle between safety for yourself and compassion for those in distress. Regrettable, but surely that’s better than letting you die in that wreck?”

“Juan juyey!”^{[73][Di Lingua]: Bullshit! ↑} She cursed. It was a moderately compelling story, but she didn’t buy it. “You’re the only people around—and you just happen to show up within hours of Jiuhe being damaged to shit? No way you weren’t involved. I don’t know how, or why, but you are responsible.”

“Indulge me,” the hand waved in a placating gesture. “We noticed some of your colleagues were on an iced-over derelict—don’t worry we rescued them too. Do you think there was a reason that wreck was left in that condition? That there was something that damaged it?”

“Like a kind of cosmic booby-trap?”

“Why did you think a company like Acheron Private Capital Group was interested in funding your expedition in the first place?”

She was stunned. Of course, she had already had her own fears and doubts, but the expedition with SSV Jiuhe had largely dispelled these—until now. Acheron might have had some furtive goal, or some prior knowledge of an alien wreck, but accomplishing basic science tasks while surveying new systems for habitation had seemed more likely. The expedition accomplished three things, all in Acheron’s own interests. It provided good public relations to be interested in basic science, it enabled them to build legitimate IBIS claims on uninhabited spaces, and if pressed, maybe they were also afraid of the Great Filter and they had truly believed her arguments.

Moreover, the alien derelict was not new. It had to have been there for at least decades, probably longer. She judged it was far more likely the only other humans in the area had been responsible for the destruction of Jiuhe. And now, this same group was trying to get her off balance by implying something akin to an alien ghost story.

“Possible,” she conceded and attempted to gesture with her arms, but then she realized that metal cuffs tightly restrained her to the chair. “But, unlikely. You seem to know what brought us here, and who paid for it…and I’m chained? Ye, I am not buying it,” she leaned back as casually as she could while restrained in an uncomfortable metal chair.

The hands tapped against the metal desk, then the voice sighed. “I understand your suspicions. Perhaps we can alleviate these fears?”

“How’s that?”

“Well,” her interrogator moved their hand on the table palm up in a stella steh indicator of gender. “You can call me Garcia.”

Garcia waved his hand at an unseen EAR interface and the light that blinded Chaeyoung dimmed, just enough to observe details in the room, and see Garcia. He wore a formal biosuit in black, blue, and gray with two breast pockets—the left pocket had an encrypted seal code for rank and the right had a smattering of badges and award ribbons in a myriad of colors of inscrutable import. It was militaristic formal, but of no military unit Chaeyoung knew.

Garcia’s suit had crisp edges, a high collar ending in a metal O-ring helmet latch. His collar had two skull pins, with blue starburst backs, and red eyes glowing with menace. The jaws of these skeletal emblems were biting down on simple Upblanda number: 1624. He dropped a pile of ink displays he was holding in his left hand and sat down in the seat across from Chaeyoung.

Chaeyoung looked at his face, which was still partially draped in shadow. He had bronze skin, lurid blue eyes that beamed out at her, a geometric undercut lining his mop of thick brown hair, and a long face with sharp features. Above the helmet latch on his biosuit, she saw a tattoo of a long-bladed scythe held in a skeletal astronaut’s bony hand. Garcia had a warm smile, but the aesthetics of his uniform and tattoo twisted the polite gesture into something uncanny.

“Now that you have a face and a name—are you willing to answer my questions?”

“What’s the point of them, though? You have my seal,” she reminded Garcia.

“As I said, we find ourselves far from other people during a confused and dangerous situation. It’s important we ensure fidelity of the screening questions.”

Chaeyoung was unmoved.

Garcia sighed. “If you cooperate, then I can reduce some of these impositions,” he gestured to her cuffs. “Trust begets trust.”

“Fine.”

“What’s your name? Where were you born? What is your current legal residence?”

“Chaeyoung, No. I was born in the Vega system. Ya Ke is my primary residence system.”

“Do you prefer to go by your surname, or Chaeyoung?”

She shrugged. “I don’t care how strangers refer to me.”

Garcia raised an eyebrow, looked down at an ink display in front of him, and slid past her comment. “You have significant training and education… what field of study is your scientific expertise in?”

“I have a PhD in AXB.”

“AXB? I am not familiar with that.”

“Astrobiology, xenobiology, and biochemistry.”

“Where did you get your advanced degree?”

“Huygens University. Titan. Sol.”

“A PhD…that involves a thesis, correct?”

“Ye, I defended a thesis project to get my degree.”

“Tell me about your thesis—what was it about?”

Chaeyoung hesitated. Garcia swept his hands outward and reclined in his chair, offering her a smile that was entirely different from the unsettling grin he had worn earlier. His eyes sparkled as his smile exuded ardor.

“I’m genuinely curious.”

Taken aback by the authenticity, Chaeyoung found her defenses disarmed.

“I focused on theory building in astrobiology. I am sure it’s not very interesting.”

“Assume that I am interested.”

She shrugged. “Oke, I focused on explaining the Ahtashian fossil records by looking at nearby stars,” she was more at ease discussing these topics and tension left her body. “We know Ahtash is an exoplanetary capture in the Vega system—Vega is too young for Ahtash to originate from its stellular nebula—but by comparing the rich lithium salts with nearby stars, we might narrow down its origin, whether it originates from a local star or somewhere further away. And my work pointed out the nearest system that could form planets and also chaotic enough to lose planets was Mu Herculis.”

“Because it’s a quadruple star system?”
“Exactly! But it also has confirmed planets. With all these gravitational perturbations, it’s easy to imagine a terrestrial sized planet getting ejected. My theory was life on Ahtash originated here and died off because of that unlucky event—and that there were likely more forms of Ahtashian lifeforms left behind in Mu Herculis because life, contrary to popular belief, should not be a rarity in this universe. The Oxygen Hypothesis is only partially correct.”

“Which is why SSV Jiuhe came here? To see if you could find something that made us re-think the idea that all that is waiting for us are fossils, microbes in ocean worlds, and sterile oxygen-rich worlds?”

“Ye, exactly,” Chaeyoung nodded excitedly at the chance to speak to someone who got it immediately. “If this was the origin of Ahtash, then maybe, like in Sol, there were other planets like Europa—complex molecular soups that aren’t quite self-replicating enough to be considered life—and we could learn more about the evolution of life more broadly.”

“What specifically did you expect to find here? In Mu Herculis?”

As Chaeyoung tried to shrug with her hands, the restraints holding her down to the chair served as a reminder that she couldn’t move freely. “Hmm, well… I had hoped we would find evidence of microbial life… or anything, really, to challenge the status quo.”

“Like that derelict you were exploring?”

“I would have never imagined something like that in my wildest dreams…but yes, that’s an obvious death blow to the idea of an oxygen sterilized universe. We are not alone, obviously.”

“And that is what you were trying to argue through your thesis?” Garcia asked as he picked up another ink display and looked at her over its edge.

“Not directly, but ultimately yes,” Chaeyoung straightened her back as much as the restraints on her hands allowed. “And I think we have enough evidence to prove I was correct.”

“Evidence from that derelict we found near the Jiuhe?”

Chaeyoung nodded.

“And you’re certain it’s extraterrestrial? Not just a long-lost offshoot of humanity getting rediscovered? Not another expedition like yours?”

“We were careful enough,” Chaeyoung frowned at Garcia. “We weren’t complete amateurs about our excavation.”

Garcia put up his hands, letting the ink display he was looking at fall back to the table. “Never said otherwise,” he then abruptly stood up, cutting Chaeyoung’s response short, and walked over to her chair, removed her constraints.

She rubbed her sore wrists, mostly out of impulse, and looked down at her knees. “Thank you.”

When she looked up, Garcia had pulled something from one of his utility pouches in his uniform. It was a long, simple cylinder. The end glowed blue, and he put his lips to one end, inhaled, and then tilted his head up to exhale a plume of smoke toward one of the air vents. A scent resembling ozone and citrus filled the air, tickling her nose. It smelled reminiscent of the smoke that would pour out of the hookah dens on Ahtash. Garcia offered her his vape.

Chaeyoung shook her head. “I don’t smoke.”

He shrugged and inhaled again, sighing as he exhaled. He stood up and walked back to the other side of the table, pocketing his vape. “Ah well, I appreciate your cooperation so far—”

“Why did they ask me if I was from Earth?” Chaeyoung impulsively blurted out even before she fully understood why she was asking.

Something shifted in Garcia’s demeanor at the interruption. He was still smiling, but it felt hallow. His eyes remained icy and unyielding.

“Thank you for answering my questions,” Garcia said. “But I believe we can take a break, for now. For your security and ours, we will keep you confined until we leave this star system,” he waved with his hand toward the back wall. “Water closet and bed pod fold out from that wall behind you. I’ve unsealed the controls. We will talk later.”

***

The ingeniously designed compact cabin confined Chaeyoung, providing both living quarters and an interview room. Undeniably compact and dominated by the interview table, the space was not entirely dissimilar to a typical spacecraft cabin. She was still in her biosuit, and she smelled the dried blood caked over its outer layers. She searched for the bed pod and water closet, found them where Garcia had claimed they were, along with a few sets of simple gray and white fatigues. These fatigues were like the outer layer of a biosuit, less the mechanical counter-support, self-cleaning, anti-microbial, or anti-odor layers of any modern spacesuit. But they did not have the blood of friends and colleagues soaking them.

She showered, changed, and noticed that there was a small doshirak tin waiting at the foot of the door to her room. She sat and ate. The small comfort of nourishment amidst the uncertainty was welcome, and, after eating a little of the doshirak, she left the metal box near the door slot where it had appeared from, and searched through the pile of ink displays Garcia had left behind—anything to occupy her mind.

Most appeared to be biographical information about herself, background data on planets like Ahtash and Celosia, and background information on Acheron Private Capital Group. She was immediately suspicious that she was being watched and recorded, which puzzled her. She could not trust what she was reading, but most of the background she had seen about herself had been accurate.

As she continued reading, she learned things about Acheron Private Capital that were unsettling. They had paid for the Jiuhe expedition, and had many other basic research programs, with many interests across multiple sectors of economic activity. Not surprising, however, some of the individual projects disturbed her. White, gray, and black-market lithium mining on Ahtash, gain of function research for the Homeworlds on Chiron, multiple wildly unethical bio projects on the icy planet Shennong in Tau Ceti, and even political interference operations in Sol.

Chaeyoung knew these might be some kind of ploy, or just invented entirely from some autonomous system to sway her opinion and gain her cooperation, but it was not so different from the things people in the Homeworlds and Spanning Worlds accused AG and other Arte steh corporate entities of doing. It played at a kind of immoral symmetry between groups that had, not so long ago, been on opposite sides of war. The Spanning Worlds used to be part of the United Planets, so it’s not surprising that the ethics of militaristic entities in each polity had a stark resemblance. Their cultural overlap was strong, even now, and that included their best, as well as their worst.

The strain of being governed by Sol, with such a large tau-proper time gap between them, played a more significant role in driving the Spanning Worlds in the war, rather than the cultural clashes that motivated the Homeworlds, but it was complex. People, like Chaeyoung’s parents, had wanted autonomy. To be free from wagerocratic norms developed by Earth, ruled through predictors that tried to emulate the future years in advance. They wanted their own systems and ideas responsive to conditions both here and now without long months of lag through a gidizip.

It was a matter of time, and locality, rather than any significant cultural clash. And so that Acheron might have been as bad as the worst in the United Planets did not surprise her. Even if partially fabricated, these ink displays wove a narrative that was closer to the truth than complete fabrications.

Yet there was a reason for leaving them, and until Chaeyoung knew that reason, she would have to compartmentalize as best she could. You did not leave behind information like this for a prisoner—ostensibly she was a captive—unless you had some agenda. She kept digging at the ink displays, trying to discern what Garcia was playing at—to uncover what his goals were—but as she dug, she found even stranger scraps of information.

There were pages and pages of information about astrobiology and speculations like her own about intelligent alien life. Ink displays filled with fantastically detailed hallucinations and speculations of alien ecologies. There was even an autonomous rendering of a winding tunnel structure. It was reminiscent of the tunnels of the alien derelict she and her team from Jiuhe had been exploring, except it was a fully realized ecology and an enormous complex. Glow-grass fronds covered the walls, and within the strange orange reeds glowing a dim blue, she observed a living creature unlike any terrestrial creature, living or extinct, she had ever seen.

The creature’s morphology was reminiscent of two lungfish attached end-to-end, with the asymmetrical tentacle-like appendages on each end around a central beak-like structure on one side. Something akin to some strange mixture of starfish, squid, and beetle. It had dark gray skin with a diffraction-like effect that reflected all the colors of the visible spectrum in the water around its body in brilliant rainbows streaked across turbulent waters. Bumps covered its exterior arms, along with small semi-translucent objects. Chaeyoung supposed those bumps on the tentacle arms were some sort of system of optical nerves—like the fibrous fraying material in the exposed alien corpse she had seen on the derelict.

“Nawa oh,”^{[74][Di Lingua]: Woah! ↑} she gasped as it dawned upon her that this was a speculative rendering could have been the living form of the alien corpse on the derelict craft.

There were shockingly speculative details that fit so well into the hard data she had from the mummified corpse it clicked in place and energized her mind like she had just gained special access to Truth. She gently brushed the ink display. “Oh, what it would be like to meet something like you?”

It startled her to discover it wasn’t a static image. With a shimmer, the ink display animated the creature. The tunnels of glow grass were gone, and now the alien was swimming in an azure blue ocean. Rear tentacles spun like a turbine as front tentacles alternated between forming a forward conical shell over the beak or flanging out like the whiskers of a cat, one set propelling it forward, the other set grasping and sensing. Liquid water in the tunnels of the alien derelict would enable it to swim incredibly agilely.

“That, certainly, would explain the source of the ice,” Chaeyoung said to herself under her breath.

She shivered in awe, fear, and wonder. Maybe they had lost propulsion, looking to Mu Herculis for similar reasons that had brought Chaeyoung and the SSV Jiuhe to this system. Searching the universe to answer that fateful question, are we alone? Something had gone wrong, and they were stuck like Chaeyoung and Vis had been. It may have been an intentional burial, or perhaps the last survivors of the disaster simply retreated to a safe nook to rest, and never stirred again.

***

“How did you come up with this?” Chaeyoung asked several days later when Garcia returned, after she had verified Vis was safe.

“You can see her in a few days,” he had explained, with the implication that this was conditional. “Help us, and we’ll help you,” is what Chaeyoung heard.

Chaeyoung held the ink display with the rendering of the alien creature in her hand and waved it accusingly at Garcia. “I know you’ve never explored Mu Herculis before.”

Garcia arched an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

“We were careful,” Chaeyoung said proudly. “Before we got inside the derelict, we followed all the best practices of astrobiology field work. Almost as strict about contamination and human impact studies as the standards they use for Jay Sea.”

“And you’re certain we’ve never been here before?”

“No. I am certain no human had set foot inside that derelict before us. You may have visited the system before,” Chaeyoung conceded. “But I am confident we ruled out any terrestrially evolved lifeforms visiting the derelict before.”

Garcia spoke in a cagey and evasive manner, giving her that eerie smile once again as he wove a tale of intrigue that involved “his” people and “we” cautiously circling around Acheron Private Capital’s research interests.

“There are many things at the edge of the Spanning Worlds that may surprise you,” he said cryptically as he explained they were attempting to gather intelligence and piece together the puzzle of what each party had discovered or deduced independently. Chaeyoung’s expertise, he revealed, had become entangled in this complex web of secrets and power plays.

“That explains why you’re here,” Chaeyoung said.

She strained her memory for the exact wording he had used earlier. She was suspicious he had outright lied to her, but unable to recall exactly what lie he had told her.

“But I sincerely doubt there would be a finding of that magnitude with no one in astrobiology knowing about it.”

“Well, I—”

The door to the room swung open, interrupting Garcia. Two guards, wearing armor identical to the skeleton-faced-goon that had captured Chaeyoung and Vis, burst into the room.

Garcia jolted out of his chair.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked. “I am not to be interrupted!”“Orders,” one of the skeletal faced armored guards said.

“What orders?”

“Document reclamation,” the other guard said snidely. “These misplaced documents are to be collected and returned to secure stowage.”

“Have a problem with that. Take it up with Ninya Blanca,” the other goon said.

Garcia turned his back to Chaeyoung, rested his arms on either side of the table, and blocked the guards from getting to the ink displays. “I don’t recall the old man giving her authority over these matters. I’m still the senior operations manager—”

Someone—neither of the two guards—made a clicking sound with their tongue. “Come on, Garcia, you know where the old man thinks our priorities should be.”

A figure strolled into Chaeyoung’s room. The guards on either side shifted to make space. Garcia’s posture changed. He was rigid, stiff, and silent as the figure entered the overhead light.

“Ninya Blanca,” he said under his breath like it was a curse word. “Of course, ohlowyeh, but you’re not—”

“She’s the Operations Director, and she’s following standing orders directly from the top, Garcia,” the guard on the left said. “Now let us do our job.”

Garcia said nothing, but moved out of the way, allowing Chaeyoung to get a good view of Ninya Blanca as the guards collected the ink displays into Faraday pouches.

Ninya Blanca took a few more steps into the room. Ninya Blanca had a striking heart-shaped face with skin that was shockingly pale, with chin-length hair colored to match and framing her face. She glared broodingly at the cowed Garcia with eyes that were burning bright, yet steel-cold gray, from an EAR modification.

“Your pet project is being terminated, Garcia,” Ninya Blanca said with a sneer. “Effective immediately. All assets are being diverted to my operations.”

Garcia mumbled something inaudible. Ninya Blanca laughed. Garcia cowered.

It was a bizarre scene. Two faceless guards in stygian and grimly themed military equipment were custodially collecting ink displays into electromagnetically secured bags as Garcia, in a formal military uniform, stood hunched in front of a woman who appeared more like a fashion model than a leader of an expedition, corporate executive, or military contractor.

Ninya Blanca wore what seemed like a standard biosuit, except that most biosuits had outer layers to cover up the clinging structure of the counter-pressure straps that conformed almost impossibly closely to the body, whereas hers was both clinging, dark black, and looked thick with angular and jagged armor.

Ninya Blanca’s steel-gray stare turned to Chaeyoung. It was an intense and intimidating gaze, so Chaeyoung looked down at her feet. She thought she heard Ninya Blanca laugh, then she heard a light metallic click, a whoosh of air brushed against her cheek, and Ninya Blanca was in front of her.

Cold gray eyes inspected Chaeyoung. Ninya Blanca squatted to bring her glowing orbs to Chaeyoung’s eye-level. Then, like a cat swiping with its paw, two black clawed hands grabbed each side of Chaeyoung’s face and tilted her head like a doctor giving her an eye exam.

She kept her eyes off the glowing gray orbs that searched her, tried to squirm underneath the clawed biosuit hands. She shivered in fear as the cold sharp edges of Ninya Blanca’s claw-like hands followed the contours of the scar on her cheek. Ninya Blanca twisted Chaeyoung’s head slowly, first to one side, then the other, before releasing her grip.

One guard chuckled then, with the other, cleared off the last of the ink displays, and left. The door closed with a clank. Chaeyoung was fuming, feeling fear and rage accumulate inside.

“Hmm,” Ninya Blanca hummed in self-satisfaction. “One thing I like about your culture is their acceptance of facial scarring.”

“My culture?”

Ninya Blanca crossed her arms and then swiped boredly in the air with one of her sharply clawed hands—thin blades like long-fingernails extended out of each finger. “Yes. Your culture. The astroplaag.”

“Ah,” Chaeyoung said angrily, and crossed her arms. “That explains some things.”

Ninya Blanca cocked an eyebrow. “I doubt that, but if you’re thinking we’re using you for our own interests, that would be correct. You’re leverage.”

Ninya Blanca laughed cruelly as Chaeyoung’s shock rolled across her face.

“Yes, leverage. Dr. Silva seems quite fond of you, and we are going to secure her cooperation. Whatever it takes,” her eyes narrowed to slits as she let the implications dawn on Chaeyoung.

“Ohlowyeh!” Garcia slammed his fists into the metal table.

Chaeyoung jumped, Ninya Blanca merely turned her gaze boredly to the direction of the interruption.

“Ohlowyeh,” Garcia said with a calmer and professional tone. “You’re cancelling my project. Fine, leave me in charge of resource management.”

Ninya Blanca rolled her eyes, got up, and paused at the room’s threshold. “Acceptable,” she glared at Chaeyoung. “But remember, you have a choice here, doctor. You play nice with Garcia, or you become my problem,” Ninya Blanca gave Chaeyoung an unnerving toothy smile that dripped with glee and the promise of violence before she left the room.

“How—why am I leverage?” Chaeyoung sputtered.

Garcia backed away from Chaeyoung, mumbled a mewling non-answer, and retreated through the hatch after Ninya Blanca, leaving Chaeyoung bewildered and furious and isolated.