Chapter Twenty-four

[68833] Chaeyoung

Tritonis Prime

Chaeyoung sat in the shower, looking at her bruised and battered body. There was plentiful water on Tritonis Prime, but not enough gravity—and it was showing on her body. She was gaunt, bruised, swollen, but at least she was warm. She turned off the water, stood up, and looked at herself in the mirror.

“And what do the events of Tritonis Prime tell us about our place in the universe?” she said to herself in a mocking, scientific tone. “Now that we have found not just a truly exobiological system—astrobiology without a terrestrial or even solar origin—but also an unambiguously terrifying techno signature?” she emphasized the question like it was something truly exciting. “Well, Dr. No. I’d say we’re truly fucked.”

She laughed, but it was a forced laugh that did little but sour her mood. “Pol tsow zloy-zloy.”^{[152][Di Lingua]: Shit fucking madness. ↑}

While muttering to herself, she picked up an ostentatious cloth towel from Earth that she had salvaged from the hab stowage to dry herself off, and then she put on a biosuit borrowed from Murphy. Carefully pulling it over her body, she made sure not to let the thick metal vee shapes behind and in front of the neck O-ring hit her. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she tightened the counter-pressure straps and wriggled her fingers and toes until the gloves and boots were comfortable.

She looked down at the black, blue, and Titan haze triangular pattern of the fatigue-style outer layer. It was practical, and she didn’t look so bad in a uniform, she thought as she pulled her hair into a messy chignon. But the real reason she kept wearing it was the spinel ceramic helmet that could telescope out at a moment’s notice—it gave her a sense of control over her environment.

Chaeyoung had made the most of her improved treatment over the last few days, but it hardly made a difference. Because she was alone in her hab, nightmares and sorrows constantly haunted her. Because of her complete access to EAR interfaces, she discovered the grim fact that no one she knew was within twenty light years, and that she wouldn’t have been able to send them a message even if they were in Sipapu, as she lacked a seal. She had full freedom of movement, but there wasn’t anywhere to go to on Tritonis Prime, except the implosion craters left behind from the destroyed mines and alien structures beneath the ice.

She thought of herself, and all the others who played a vital role in destroying the horrors in the core lab, as prisoners. They left all of them on the ice moon surface under quarantine protocols. Did it matter much that they only had a few days left before the newly arrived diplomatic spacecraft would pick them up and take her to Ya Ke? Chaeyoung couldn’t get herself to really believe in a tomorrow. No, she was absolutely a prisoner.

She rubbed her left wrist, trying to remember what it was even like wearing a seal bracelet every day. There was still a lot she could access without a seal, but she always returned to the same routine instead. She pulled open the recording of the strange broadcast from the xenolith, out to who knows where, and opened a bottle of soja she had scavenged from one of the Grayson stowage lockers.

She fished out the comically large bottle of Titanian soja from the bottom drawer. Yesterday, she had thrown it in there and declared, “I am done with you.” With a shake of the soja bottle and a flick of her hand, she sat on the floor of the small kitchen area and listened to the recording of the alien throat singing on the overhead speakers on a loop.

Warbling, distorted, human voices filled the hab. She took a swig of soja, letting the burning flavors wash around her mouth before she swallowed and let out a satisfied sigh. She looked at the bottle, considered taking another swig, but put it on the counter above her instead.

Without shutting off the recording of the alien transmission, she opened an EAR window and watched a day-old stream discussing an ongoing investigation into Grayson Services Group activities in the Old Towne Autonomous Zone on Olentsi. The authorities shuttered Grayson’s local Olentsi headquarters and there had been, allegedly, several firefights. It was not a new story, almost a full year old, but more scandalous details were coming out every day, like the fact it had been a joint operation between Cooperative Defense and the United Planets. Chaeyoung was pretty sure she knew some of the people that had been involved in the fighting and even suspected she was now living as a prisoner among some of them.

“Chaeyoung! Little Bird!? Open up.”

Murphy’s shouts startled her.

“Comot, Little Bird! Palli-palli!”^{[153][Di Lingua]: Quickly quickly. ↑} Murphy said impatiently over the airlock intercom.

Chaeyoung stumbled over, wobbly from soja on an empty stomach and exhaustion. With a heavy press of her fist against the physical comms button, she leaned her face against the cool metal hatchway, her face bursting with warmth.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s Anya. She’s in trouble.”

“I’m not a medical doctor. What do you think I can do?”

“Already got her stabilized, but we need an expert opinion.”

“Oke,” Chaeyoung gulped. “I’ll be out as soon as the airlock cycles.”

“Just override it. Button up and open the hatch.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, this is serious, Little Bird. No time to waste.”

Chaeyoung checked the seals on her gloves and boots, made sure the counter-pressure straps were snug, and unfolded her helmet. With a wave of her hand, the telescoping spinel ceramic plates slid out from the two vee-shaped metal emplacements behind her head and in front of her chin. The helmet covered her head like some animal snapping its jaws shut. She ran diagnostics quickly, turned down the oxygen levels, but increased the pressure, and braced her boots against the deck with gecko grip. Click click.

“I’m ready.”

“Oke, stand back.”

Murphy initiated a manual override of the airlock, opening the outer and inner hatches simultaneously. There was a tremendous gust of wind. The towel she had just used, piles of ink displays, her soja bottle, and an assortment of abandoned Grayson gear jolted toward the airlock. About half of the junk flew all the way out into the void, some going in long parabolic arcs as they achieved significant velocities. Whoosh.

Chaeyoung’s biosuit beeped at her, angry at the sudden change in pressure, warning her of an elevated heart rate and a rapid change in blood gases. She was a little lightheaded, but otherwise fine.

“This better be important,” she said.

She knew better than to say that, but she was just irritated. Murphy, in her Shade armor—the name for the vantablack lizard suit or its wearer, as Chaeyoung had learned—was already moving along the metal grating deck that connected the occupied Grayson habs. She followed, uncertain on her feet, and tried not to look at the depression in the center of the ring of the habs.

She looked anyway.

Where the propcan-turned-elevator had once brought her down into the old mines, there was now a cracked depression. The destruction of the core lab, along with the alien complex and most of the surrounding mine tunnels, caused the ground to sink down like land pulled into a sinkhole.

Everything down there was now buried or destroyed. Even the elevator shaft had fallen in on itself, completely cutting off any future access to the tunnels. The resulting quake had even knocked over the large radio dish, which had fallen along the ridge. Part of the ring of Grayson’s habs had collapsed as well.

“Comot, Little Bird, speed it up!” Murphy urged Chaeyoung.

“Oke oke.”

Anya and the other Shades occupied the three habs next to Chaeyoung, five Shades to each. Anya was in the middle one. Someone, probably Murphy, had popped open the airlock of Anya’s hab, just like Chaeyoung’s hab. She avoided the piles of debris outside the exit, followed Murphy closely, and entered.

It was the same layout as hers, which was the same as almost any inflatable hab, only in vacuum the walls and ceiling drooped down. A large double membrane emergency airlock blocked off the back quarter of the hab, draping between the wall of the water closet and the edge of one of the far bunks.

“We’ll do a rapid repress,” Murphy explained as she zipped open a flap, pressed the inner membrane forward, and made room for Chaeyoung to get in after her.

It was snug. An emergency membrane like this was essentially an empty pocket sandwiched between the outer layer and the inner pressurized envelope. It was not all that dissimilar to the emergency vacuum bubble on the SSV Jiuhe, or the one down in the mines, but it had thicker, semi-flexible surfaces that could create a second air pocket between them.

Murphy was pressing on the large air balloon of the pressurized inner surface to make room for the two of them in the interstitial, depressurized pocket. Chaeyoung was so much shorter than the stellah steh, she barely had to lean over and could fit easily in the space formed under Murphy’s armpit and her outstretched arm. Chaeyoung zipped the outer membrane closed, sealed the gecko grip flap on the interior, and let Murphy know they were ready.

“Oke. Brace yourself.”

Chaeyoung nodded, clicked her feet to the bottom of the membrane with gecko grip. Click click. “Am gah hahdah.”^{[154][Di Lingua]: Do it. ↑}

Whoosh. Murphy refilled the empty pocket with air from the interior. More warnings flashed across Chaeyoung’s EAR from her biosuit, but no serious signs of danger, so she ignored them. Murphy zipped the inner membrane all the way open, and they stepped inside what was just the corner of a hab’s room.

One bed space, one stowage locker, one portable life-support box from an emergency habitat system, and just about enough room for Murphy, Chaeyoung, and Kim—who was tending to Anya—to crowd around a medical flat.

Kim was in his Shade, helmet off, but was wearing a dedicated exocortex-style headset, leaning over Anya, moving controls on an ink display. Anya was in the flat, swaddled in a human shaped semi-translucent bag filled with a slurry of ice and blue fluids and connected to an external pump with a large fan and radiator fins. Rapidly emptying bags of transparent liquid sat above her head, pumping their contents through a line that was embedded directly into her carotid artery. Crab-like autos, about half the size of Chaeyoung’s palm, crawled over the bag, moving various instruments and electrodes.

“What’s the situation?” Chaeyoung asked.

“I just stabilized her, but she’s unconscious,” Kim said. “Auto-doc showed increasing body temperature, crashing blood glucose. We’re lucky Grayson’s med bay had a temperature control bivvy sack and some medical autos—not sure she would have survived her fever otherwise.”

“And the xenoma?” Chaeyoung asked, wondering about the strange growths that had developed on Anya’s shoulder over the last several days.
“As far as I can tell, reviewing our streams of what we saw down there, it’s nothing like what happened to them,” Kim said tersely. “But look yourself.”

Kim handed Chaeyoung an ink display without turning his head. Notes and images of Anya’s skin condition—the xenoma—taken with various instruments in various wavelengths.

“Nawa oh!”^{[155][Di Lingua]: Woah! ↑} Chaeyoung gasped at the extent of the xenoma and comparison images.

Yesterday, it had looked like a strange purple growth. It resembled more of a bruise or a scab rather than something alien, which was not surprising considering a xenolith tendril had pierced through her Shade into her shoulder. That should leave a bruise.

Today, the growth had expanded more than exponentially, following the negative space of Anya’s stellah steh tattoos, avoiding inked skin but entirely circumscribed by it. As a result, the xenoma extended down to her ankles, up to her neck, across her arms, across her back, almost like someone had covered up the bare skin between the black ink lines of her tattoos with a dark purple metallic glitter. Chaeyoung also noticed a lone tendril of the alien affliction had traced a trail up into Anya’s left ear, like a bloom of purple-black fractal work spreading out from a thick trail along her left jawline.

Murphy pointed at the image. “She has a hearing aid implanted there.”

“A hearing aid?”

“Ye. To correct hearing loss from an operation gone bad on Ahtash.”

Under infrared light, it was clear the growths were producing massive amounts of heat, and when viewed with micro-optics at high zoom, the growths looked like a filigree of glittering mildewy tendrils. The unsettling image worked its way down Chaeyoung’s spine like a drop of liquid nitrogen rolling off her neck. Kim was correct in that it did not look like what happened to Mimo, but it was too strange and too similar for her to find any comfort in the dissimilarities.

“Pol tsow.”^{[156][Di Lingua]: Shit fuck. ↑}

She cursed, and wondered if she had made a profound, irreversible, mistake when she had pushed Anya into the changed xenolith. It had been a gamble. It was unlikely, but it was possible that the modifications made to the xenolith turned it into a substance that could neutralize the self-replicating ferrofluid materials found in the unmodified xenoliths. She was furious at herself thinking anything good could have come from a xenolith.

“What? What is it?” Murphy asked.

Chaeyoung shook her head, took a step away from Anya’s flat. “I don’t know what this is—I can’t help.”

Murphy crossed her arms. “Juan juye.^{[157][Di Lingua]: Bullshit. ↑} Try anyway.”

Chaeyoung muttered her disagreement but looked back at the ink display, anyway. “Can you tell me the composition of the new growths?”

“Preliminary results are the same as the initial xenoma growth,” Kim answered without looking away from whatever it was he saw on his headset. “Dead skin cells, metallic composition nearly identical to dust from the hab—aluminum, manganese, boron filaments, a little bit of steel and gold, trace amounts of graphite. More like xenobots made from skin cells and junk than any infection I ever heard about.”

“And that’s all we have?”

“Anything worthy of the task was down in the core lab. Everything we have here is medical, so ye, that’s all I can see with what we got. For the record, it all looks very different from what we found down there—it’s all very different organometallic chemistry.”

“How close of a look did you get in the core lab?” Chaeyoung asked, an edge of bitterness creeping into her tone as she wondered if the Shades had already broken their promises.

“No need for skepticism,” Kim said calmly. “Our Shades have extensive optics systems, which were supplemented by my autos. There wasn’t time to get a very close look, and we didn’t have the magnetic resonance imaging the auto-doc does, but we streamed extensive spectral data almost as comprehensive as these little workers,” Kim gestured to one of the crab autos. “Nothing that would count as a true study.”

“We should have taken some samples,” Murphy grumbled.

“No. I stand by that decision,” Chaeyoung said, irritated.

“Look,” Kim said as he turned around to face Murphy and Chaeyoung. “What’s done is done. We’re at the limits of the auto-doc’s abilities and my cross-training as a medic.”

“Why am I here then?”

“You might not agree, but I think you’ve made the correct calls when it mattered,” Kim shrugged with his hands. “Either way, USV Neva Palava has a far more comprehensive medical bay, and extensive resources to fab almost anything they don’t have. I think we should request a medical evac from that joint diplomatic team up there and figure out what’s happening to her, using their facilities.”

“No!” Chaeyoung asserted. “You can’t risk taking her anywhere else—not in this condition! It’s too risky. We should request they bring that equipment down here.”

“We can request that, but can’t guarantee they’ll agree,” Kim said. “Also, they have the authority to issue us orders.”

“You don’t need to obey them.”

“Anchuan shiyong,”^{[158][Di Lingua]: Handle safely. ↑} Murphy said in a coldly cautioning tone.

“Technically,” Kim said with an exasperated sigh. “But I don’t think you’ll find a single one of us Shades down here who wouldn’t risk an outbreak if it means we save her.”

“Fine,” Chaeyoung said through gritted teeth. “We should at least keep her isolated, in her Shade.”

“Can we keep her stabilized like that?” Murphy asked Kim.

“Ye. Shade’s cooling garment should be enough now that she’s stable. We should continue to administer glucose through her medical ports, however.”

“Then it’s settled,” Murphy declared. “We’ll take her to Neva Palava.”

***

“Ugh. How long was I out?” Anya groaned after they got her into the Shade and depressurized the emergency air bubble entirely.

Chaeyoung almost threw herself out of her seat from the edge of the flat when Anya spoke.

“Only a few hours,” Kim said.

“Felt like longer,” Anya replied weakly. “What happened?”

Chaeyoung made a fist with her right hand, gently tapped Anya’s shoulder plate. “We’re not sure—yet—but we’re taking you somewhere we can figure it out, oke?”

There was no reply.

“Think she passed out again,” Kim said.

“Shuttle is on its final approach,” Murphy said as she returned through the opened airlock hatches. “Can she walk?”

“She was just awake,” Chaeyoung said as she grabbed both of Anya’s shoulders. “Oiya!^{[159][Spanning Worlds]: Hey! ↑} Copper Wing! Get up!”

Anya roused and mumbled groggily.

“Can you walk?” Chaeyoung asked.

“I think so,” she teetered onto her feet.

“Nawa oh!”^{[160][Di Lingua]: Woah! ↑} Chaeyoung said as Kim and her simultaneously reached up to stabilize Anya. “Let us help you, anchuan shiyong, ye?”^{[161][Di Lingua]: Safe handling, yeah? ↑}

Anya agreed, and Kim and Chaeyoung helped her out of the hab. They had to help hold her up in her Shade as Murphy led the way to the makeshift landing pad. It was the same path she had walked with Sato, Mimo, and Ali on the way to the hell that was the core lab. Chaeyoung felt a bewildering mix of emotions as she and Kim helped Anya walk along the path carved into the ice. Guilt, shame, triumph, fear, anxiety, hope—it all washed over her.

In the night sky of Tritonis Prime, USV Neva Palava was visible. It was a bright, artificial star. Closer to the horizon, its shuttle—a Titan flyer—flickered and tumbled on its approach to the landing pad.

Shaped a bit like a squeezed asymmetric four-point star that was flattened in the third dimension, the angular Titan flyer craft seemed out of place in space. It was a bidirectional flying wing craft, covered in a dark gray tantalum hafnium skin laid over aerogel insulation—a dense and sturdy re-entry heat shield—along with toggleable air breathing rocket engines and an overall dense, compact, and exceedingly aerodynamic design.

None of these features were necessary in vacuum. Users operated Titan Flyers like any propcan. The vehicle served as a single-stage-to-orbit shuttle for low-gravity worlds, but its designers built it to live up to its name: flying in Titan’s thick atmosphere.

Chaeyoung had seen them before, but never been inside one. She realized she had known people from SSV Jiuhe, now surely deceased, who would have loved to be in Chaeyoung’s position now—about to ride on a Titan flyer.

By the time the evacuating group had reached the landing pad, the flattened shuriken-like spacecraft had landed horizontally, its ramp extended. Excited United Planets marines in armored biosuits pointed their coilguns out in a defensive posture. Murphy put her hands up, uttered the correct military protocols over the radio. The marines in armored biosuits lowered their guns, and Murphy waved Kim and Chaeyoung onboard.

“Where are we going?” Anya weakly groaned as they helped her strap into one of the vertical acceleration flats.

“We’re going somewhere they can take better care of you,” Chaeyoung explained. “USV Neva Palava.”

***

Chaeyoung had been on Tritonis Prime for too long. The low gravity had caused Chaeyoung’s muscles to atrophy, decreased her bone density, and exposed her to a sizable amount of galactic cosmic radiation. All of this had become apparent almost immediately upon lift-off on the Titan flyer. She passed out, woke up strapped to a medical flat, covered in instruments and with several drugs being administered.

“What…what’s happening?”

“Don’t worry, Dr. No, we’ll take care of you,” an unfamiliar voice reassured her before she faded out of consciousness.

What followed was not at all what she had expected. She experienced her days filled with medical treatments, discussions about her recovery, and what they called “debriefs.” They forced her to go over every detail of everything that had happened to her, from reaching Mu Herculis to waking up onboard USV Neva Palava.

She met both United Planets and Spanning Worlds officials, soldiers, diplomats, and doctors. She thought she was repeating herself over and over, giving them no new information, but her body was recovering well and she was glad for that. It was grueling, and she had not heard from Murphy, Kim, or Anya. Though she repeatedly asked after them, she was always told “you’ll see them soon.” But she never did.

The thirteenth day onboard Neva Palava was no different, though she was nearing the end of her physical therapy. The radiation exposure treatments had been a wild success, and her mood had significantly improved after days of intense psychotherapy. Chaeyoung was flexing her right arm, feeling the tube in her veins, feeling stronger than yesterday, when she heard someone enter the med bay with a gentle click click click.

“Hao fa, Dr. No?”^{[162][Di Lingua]: Hello. ↑}

“Enter.”

The privacy curtain around her medical flat opened, and one of the United Planets diplomats, Zhang-Zidane Gazala, entered, gave a polite bow, and smiled brightly at Chaeyoung.

“I was not expecting you. Are there any other special surprises on the agenda for your interrogation today?” Chaeyoung asked teasingly, though she knew she could not hide the very real resentment that lingered behind her sarcastic mask.

“I would like to talk to you about what happens after your recovery is over,” Gazala answered with a sly smile.

Chaeyoung blushed. Gazala had full lips. A dim orange pattern of stars that glimmered in the golden highlights of her cosmetics. Lavender streaks accentuated the cool purple undertones of her skin—and matched the yellow-orange of her EAR mod that was always glowing. She was tall and confident. Effortlessly striking and graceful like every stellah steh.

“It’s been fifty-eight days,” Chaeyoung said, looking down at her palms. “In tau,” she turned her glare back to the beautiful diplomat standing next to her medical flat. “Fifty-eight Solar days since I last saw Vis. I hope you’re here to tell me I get to see her again before that number reaches sixty.”

Gazala bowed her head with a slight tilt, her smile briefly dimmed into a somber frown. “Chu’eh son, Dr. No.^{[163][Di Lingua]: Sorry, Dr. No. ↑} Unfortunately, that is not what I am here to discuss—not entirely.”

“Then I am not interested,” Chaeyoung said as she closed her eyes and leaned back into the medical flat.

“Byanjeng bin dey,”^{[164][Di Lingua]: Of course. ↑} Gazala sighed. “Let me drop the cut, then. We will bring a joint case against Grayson Services Group forward to the ICJ—the United Planets and the Spanning Worlds—and we’re willing to support you if you testify in our case.”

“And what would that involve?”

“We would travel to Ya Ke, you would receive a new seal, you would stay on Celosia in protective custody until the court convenes, you would provide your testimony, and then you’re free to go.”

“And Vis?”

“We would offer her a similar deal, yes.”

“Similar?”

Gazala gave Chaeyoung a sad smile. “As you know, she’s from the United Planets. As part of the Jiuhe contract her stay in the Spanning Worlds was authorized for years on IBIS, but since you both have broken that contract, she is no longer in good standing with the Spanning Worlds and would have to return to United Planets space after the trial.”

“Broke the contract?!” Chaeyoung asked. “We were fucking kidnapped!”

Gazala shrugged with her hands. “I know, but IBIS rules are what they are—neither of us can change that.”

“Jaw hey juan juye dey.”^{[165][Di Lingua]: That’s bullshit. ↑}

“Yes,” she nodded while looking concerned. “It’s a terrible system. But I can’t change that now.”

“And if I refuse to testify?”

“Unfortunately, my Spanning World counterpart has made it clear that if that were to happen, they would not issue you a Spanning Worlds seal.”

“What? They can do that?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s their government, Dr. No, and your situation with Acheron Private Capital Group is very complicated and delicate. However, if that were the case, I would be happy to sponsor a petition to become a United Planets citizen.”

“Ugh,” she gritted her teeth and flexed her hands. “Are there no other options?”

“There’s one more option. You know as well as anyone that whatever happened to Commander Chen—Anya—requires further study.”

“Here we go,” she mumbled as she crossed her arms. “What are you proposing?”

“Right now the cooperation between the United Planets and Spanning Worlds is a fragile continuation of the cooperation necessary to resolve this Grayson Services Group situation, but we are in talks to extend this into an official joint operation to deal with, how shall I put this? Emerging threats.”

“Ah. And what would my role be in this joint operation?”

“I hope you can appreciate, Dr. No, that most of the details are only going to be shared on a need-to-know basis—and it would be improper to share such details with a private citizen—but, I can tell you that you would be at the forefront of the scientific investigation of these exobioforms.”

“Is that what you’re calling them? The aliens?”

“Prastitey?”^{[166][Di Lingua]: Excuse me? ↑}

Chaeyoung shook her head. “Doesn’t matter—suppose I take part in this joint operation, what do I get out of it?”

“You would be our lead exobiologist, Dr. No.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, we plan to have scientific centers in Ya Ke, Sipapu, and Sol. You would need seals for travel and for work. And, as you know, Dr. Silva would be a valuable asset in this joint operation—we’d be very keen if you could discuss the matter with her in Ya Ke. That would be very difficult to do if you were in protective custody, of course, but if you were part of the joint operation…well, then recruitment of other valuable scientific assets would be one of your duties as scientific lead.”

“Is Vis still in Ya Ke then?”

“She should have arrived at the safe house a few days ago, proper time of course.”

“Let me guess, with my security clearance in the joint operation, I could speak to her, even when she is in protective custody? But if I testify, and that’s it, then they will keep us in separate custody?”

“That is correct.”

Chaeyoung clenched her jaw. “How long do I have to decide?”

“We will gidizip to Ya Ke tomorrow. Once we arrive, you’ll have half a day to decide if you’re part of the joint operation or testifying. If you decide to refuse both options, we’ll shuttle you to the K-station—it will be the only place you can go without a seal.”

Chaeyoung feigned a yawn. “I need rest. I’ll give you my decision when we get to Ya Ke.”

Gazala nodded. “Very well. Ahdioseu, Dr. No.”^{[167][Di Lingua]: Goodbye, Dr. No. ↑}

She exited with a polite and deep bow.

Chaeyoung cursed under her breath when she heard the hatch close. Resentment at the bind she was in boiled up, but before she could ruminate too much, more guests entered the med bay. The hatch creaked, someone exchanged words with the doctor on duty, and Chaeyoung noticed a fuzzy shape crossing the med bay and leaving through the hatch. Two more figures entered, and her curtains parted with a zip.

She relaxed when she saw her new guests. “I am glad to see you two.”

Kim smiled at Chaeyoung, but Murphy looked grim. She had only seen them once outside of their Shade armor, and it was a bit of an adjustment, but they were friendly faces. Each wore an identical biosuit with working coveralls in a blue, black, and Titan haze triangular pattern, seal patches, name patches, and metallic vees where the telescoping helmet could fold out.

Murphy was tall and muscular, though lanky as a stellah steh, with pale red hair, gray-green eyes, a criss-cross scar on her left cheek, and pale skin that almost seemed to glow bright red whenever she got emotional—which was often. Kim was short and muscular. He reminded Chaeyoung of her own father. Angular face, sharp jawline, clearly muscular but with plump cheeks. He had dark brown eyes, was more tan than Chaeyoung, and had a military style haircut that was on the longer side of the spectrum.

“We need to talk.”

“Good to see you too, Murphy.”

“I am glad you’re doing better, Little Bird. Really, I am. Part of why we cajoled you into the medical evac.”

“Really?”

Murphy nodded. “Yes, really, getting Anya here was not our main objective…but talking about that is not why we’re here.”

“Why are you here?”

“We know what they’re offering you, Little Bird,” Murphy sat in the chair next to Chaeyoung’s medical flat, pulled up close, clasped her hands, leaned in and whispered. “We’re here to give you some more options.”

“Why? What options?” Chaeyoung scowled at Murphy, then at Kim.

“Do you know what they’re going to do to Copper Wing?” Murphy sounded worried.

“I assume, help her recover?”

“No,” Murphy was glaring sternly at Chaeyoung. “They’re going to take her to Sol, and they’re going to dissect her—they’re going to pull her apart.”

“Nawa oh, no way,” Chaeyoung scoffed. “They’re pol hookoochoh, but there’s no way they’d do that to one of their own.”

“That’s just it,” Murphy sighed. “There’s a lot of dark matter in the universe, Little Bird, and it makes the stars move. You’ve only seen a fraction of it—we live in it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This was the last meter of a fight we’ve had with Grayson Services Group for more than a year.”

“Who’s we?”

“Our unit,” Kim said from the doorway, acting as a look-out.

“Yes. The Shades who follow Copper Wing have been the spearhead of this fight, but we’ve earned a lot of powerful political enemies. This diplomatic team? Do you think it just showed up at the exact right moment to pick us up and take us to Ya Ke?”

“No, I guess that doesn’t make sense.”

“USV Neva Palava and its diplomats were stationed in Gamov. Proper time to gidizip from Gamov to Sipapu is seventy-six days, so they had to leave before you even were on the ice of Tritonis Prime.”

“Look,” Chaeyoung made no effort to hide the irritation in her voice. “I know how gidizip works, so what’s your point?”

“They came here because of all the pipes we hit before we even got your distress call. Shades,” Murphy gestured to herself and Kim. “We operate in the gray. We have official positions in the United Planets Navy, but we’re attached to cut-out civilian entities registered on IBIS—which means if we get caught in a big enough way, we’re entirely on our own and expendable.”

“And that implies what?” Chaeyoung shook her head. “That they’ll just kill one of their own? Because she’s expendable and has a lot of enemies?”

“Yes,” Murphy said. “They came here to court martial her. It doesn’t matter how many lives she saved, how many Grayson operations we stopped, all that matters is that diplomats had to be called out to smooth over the fallout from a Naval unit that shouldn’t exist, and they need someone to pin the blame on. But, because of what went down on Tritonis Prime, they’re going to take her to some secret Naval research facility—probably Sedna—and they’re going to study her like she’s some kind of artifact. They’ll keep her there for the rest of her life, short or long.”

There was a lump in Chaeyoung’s throat. She gulped.

“Why did we bring her here, then?” she asked.

“We took a risk to save her and your life.”

“I wasn’t that bad off.”

“Little Bird, you were,” Murphy sighed and shook her head. “Bottom-line is this: we’re going to get out of here, take her with us, and go off grid.”

“Fuck me,” Chaeyoung’s eyes went wide. “You’ll really risk everything to do that for her?”

“Yes,” Murphy said with no hesitation. “And we’d do it for you, too.”

Kim joined them and gave her a resolute nod. “Without a doubt. We’d do the same for either of you.”

“What’s my role in this…why tell me all this?”

Murphy leaned back. “Look, Little Bird. We know where they were taking Vis. It was one of our safe houses. We have our Shades working there. They know and trust, Copper Wing. You should come with us. We can get you back to Vis, and you don’t have to take any of their deals.”

Chaeyoung ran a finger along her old scar, felt the apprehension of the decision in her jaw and muscles. “That’s… a lot to process.”

Murphy closed her fist, tapped it gently on her shoulder. “You don’t need to decide now. We have a plan, and we’re going to see it through with or without you. We thought you deserved to know before we do anything. Little Bird, you’ve more than earned that choice.”

***

Chaeyoung knew she was running out of time as she walked the halls of Neva Palava freely. She still felt heavy and slow in the gentle three-quarters standard gravity of the spin deck, but she could walk unaided, finally, and could roam freely during the gidizip to Ya Ke. Now that Neva Palava had arrived in Ya Ke, the deadline to decide loomed over her like a dark cloud. She had hours left before Neva Palava would burn away their interstellar delta-vee, and she had to decide her future.

Neva Palava’s spin deck was long, with a gently sloping horizon that produced a strange visual effect like she was perpetually walking up a hill. Though the hall was, apparently, simply an interstitial space between large celarium suites and the smaller crew quarters where she now had a bunk.

A scent of fresh flowers wafted from the large green spaces of the celarium hatches. Then she noticed the occasional crushed flower petal or dirty boot print—left before an autonomous system could clean up the mess.

Cooperative Defense of the Spanning Worlds and United Planets Marines stationed guards outside the celarium suites. This discouraged her from entering any of the suites, even though large portions of the green space were public space on Neva Palava.

Each time the bottom of armored boots appeared on the long horizon, up atop the curved hill she was circling, she would tense up. She would stuff her hands into pockets in the outer layer of her biosuit, remember the ticking deadline, hurry her walking pace as she inspected the elaborate Titanian trellis sprawled throughout the halls, on the hatchways, on the chairs, the floors, and the ceiling. The unsaturated colors of the etchings along the wall brought to mind the dark hues of Titan’s haze.

After a few circuits through the spin deck, Chaeyoung’s face was warm and her forehead was sweaty, so she ducked into one of the few unguarded recreational areas. This rec room was maybe half the size of the voluminous celarium suite, and was a mixture of exercise space, lounge, mess, and bar. The bar and lounge area were lit in low orange and blue lights, while the vibrational isolation platforms with exercise equipment were in a harsh, but bright, white. The walls had dark blue grays with flecks of Titanian hues painted on them.

Compared to the hallway, the bar and lounge area was moody. Most importantly, it was completely empty at present, save the service autos. She went directly to the bar, sat down, and waved over an autonomous tender.

A simple ceramic cylinder on a track whirred over, a light blinked, and the fluctuating voice asked her. “What can I get for you, ohlowyeh?”

“Soja.”

“We have many types of soja—perhaps there is a type you are fond of, ohlowyeh?”

“Nocha soja?”

“Ah, of course, ohlowyeh. We have several nocha soja flavors. Coleta de Dados 2348, Tombaugh deul ten chalk nyan, Di Sousa Key Sa, Di Sousa ten chalk deul nyan—”

“I’ll take a shot of each of those four.”

“Of course, ohlowyeh.”

Arms appeared, and the auto-tender poured soja into large glasses. Her overindulgence was served. She pulled herself onto a stool, worked her elbows into the tabletop, and quickly downed a glass of nocha soja. Fermented ginsenosides created a sensation very similar to carbonation, but not identical. She smiled as the astringent tingle in her mouth—the rich, aged flavors—stirred pleasant memories.

There was a gentle click as the hatch nearest the bar opened. There was a lump in her throat, and she took a long pull on the nocha soja. Click click click, boots gently approached her.

“Little Bird, we need to talk,” Murphy said.

“I still haven’t made my decision.”

“Does this mean anything to you?”

A vantablack lizard glove slid an ink display over the bar top. Chaeyoung threw her head back, finishing the rest of the soja in her cup, and set it next to the ink display. She reached for another glass but froze. On the ink display it said, simply. “Remember Di Polyeznaya, eheen?”

“Where did you get this?”

Two vantablack lizard Shades caught Chaeyoung by surprise when she turned around. Fully equipped with foil over their coilguns, gray mottled covers over their backs, and large rucksacks. The pair looked ready for combat. She gulped.

“We checked one of the safe house dead drops. Found this along with a link to a public message system,” Murphy explained, her voice only lightly distorted through the speaker systems on the exterior of her Shade.

“It’s from Vis.”

“You’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“Are you with us, Little Bird?”

Chaeyoung grabbed another cup of soja, took a swig. “Ah! Ye…I’m with you. What now?”

“Are you certain? There’s no turning back from this decision.”

She took a deep breath. Her lips quivered.

“Ye. I’m in. All the way.”

“Hold still,” Murphy said. “Going to send your picture, hash it, and drop it on the public message system. Let them know we’re coming—if your eheen is with who I think she is we’ll get a code-word response.”

Chaeyoung rested her arm on the bar stool, her body getting rigid and posing for a photo out of instinct.

“Oke and sent.”

“What now?”

“Light lag means we have at least fourteen minutes before we hear back but,” Murphy handed Chaeyoung a familiar AlKapThil-like poncho. “We go dark, we get Anya out of the brig, we get to the nearest Titan flyer, we get our yansh out of here.”

Chaeyoung began pulling the poncho over her biosuit, strapping the power block to her wrist. “Fen dan, I hope this works.”

“Button up,” Murphy said as she stood back.

Chaeyoung hallucinated as the Shades became flickering gray and black shapes. She thought she saw an axolotl-type bipedal auto, then a flock of gray birds, and finally crumpling ink displays before Murphy and Kim entirely disappeared from her sight.

A vague impression of a shimmer was all that remained. Something connected to her EAR, and orange translucent silhouettes of Murphy and Kim appeared. She looked down at her own metaflage poncho, snapped closed her telescoping spinel ceramic helmet, pulled the hood over her faceplate, and became a ghost herself.

“Stick to my back, Little Bird,” Murphy said. “Keep your faceplate behind me. Radio silent until we’re off Neva Palava.”

“Got it.”

Chaeyoung grabbed onto one of Murphy’s shoulders, hunched over, and followed the pair of Shades out into the hallway. It took half a minute to walk along the spin deck and get to the elevators. They walked silently, invisibly, past guards at the celarium suites, service autos checking various systems in the ceiling, and guards posted at the elevator to the non-spin sections.

She bit down on her lip, swallowed the questions she had. The group entered an elevator, rode it to the microgravity sections of Neva Palava, and then floated through into a cargo bay where a Titan flyer was waiting.

She was light-headed, nauseated, and drunk by the time they arrived. She wanted to talk but had to keep reminding herself not to—keep quiet, keep low, follow Murphy. The ramp to the Titan flyer’s passenger compartment opened. Murphy went ahead, pulling Chaeyoung in her wake.

“Oke, Little Bird. Settle into a flat and wait for us. Pull that hood down over your faceplate. We’ll be back soon.”

She strapped herself into one of the vertical flats, pulled the hood over her faceplate, and settled in. Her stomach was burbling, part from nerves part from skipping spin acclimation exercises on the ride from the spin decks.

She was closing her eyes when her EAR flickered. It was bright enough to keep her awake, and then strange enough to snap her brain to attention. She had no seal. How had that seal code resolved itself and connected her to a chat stream?

[Vis]: Yes, this is really happening, eheen.

The words appeared at the center of her field of view. She started to respond when a second message came through.

[Vis]: Light lag is about fifteen minutes.

A gah Chaeyoung ill luv dey.^{[168][Di Lingua]: I love you, Chaeyoung. ↑}

“I love you too, Vis,” she said to herself, smiling and giddy.

[Vis]: Elevating your friend’s seals right now.

They’ll be back soon.

And you’ll be on orbit before I see any replies you send.

I’ll see you soon, eheen!

[Chaeyoung]: A gah Vis ill luv dey.^{[169][Di Lingua]: I love you, Vis. ↑}