Tales from the Inbox: An Alien Aurora

2947-02-05 - Tales from the Inbox: An Alien Aurora

I'll be more or less incommunicado for several weeks; this post was prepared in late January for publication. By now you all have probably read the reason for my unannounced disappearance so shortly after the holidays. The next time I dispatch Tales from the Inbox the day of publication, it will be from our new studio at Håkøya!

Ozias A. shares this account of an odd organism that has colonized the polar regions of Maribel. I have found some low-quality imagery of similar "floaters" drifting high in the planet's atmosphere, but his account - which comes with no supporting imagery except for a picture of a pebbly lake-shore covered in broken ice - is unique in the parts of the Datasphere searchable from Centauri. I don't have any reason to doubt him, but his failure to produce coordinates (citing good reasons such as poachers and tourists destroying the organisms' habitat) does make it impossible to verify the story.

The creatures involved seem to be largely flora, rather than fauna, and though they are occasionally spotted drifting as far north as the 45th parallel, one has never been seen on or near ground level before this account. If it's true, it makes them particularly curious specimens, and if their eruptions of this form can be predicted, they will quickly become an event that attracts tourist attention.

By the time Ozias felt that he was far enough from the frontier settlement to think, his arms were burning from the unfamiliar effort of rowing his little boat. There were only a few places on Maribel where true solitude could be achieved, and despite the colony’s youth, peace and quiet was becoming difficult to find. Even the southern polar sea’s confused jumble of broken ice and tiny, barren islands was an occasional tourist destination, but this inhospitable climate was still Ozias’s best chance for a few days of genuine peace and quiet.

Of course, he hadn’t planned to do any rowing. The tiny boat he’d brought along had come with an electric motor, but it had failed almost immediately. If it were not for the relatively short distance to his intended camp-sight and a favorable current, the retired spacer might well have turned back and riske pitching his thermo-tent on the picturesque but tourist-overrun clifftop at Cape Vingano.

As was true for polar summers on almost any world, Maribel’s orange solar primary refused to set, toying sullenly with the horizon. Ozias, at the direction of his navigation wrist-piece, steered directly toward it. The electronic guidance system informed him that the Gray Isle was near before he threaded through a narrow chasm between two great ice floes and first caught sight of it. The island’s flat, barren bulk might have been a dismal sight to some, but to Ozias, seeking as he did a few days of complete solitude, it was as welcome as the feeling of a warm shower after a year in space, forced to cope with a faulty shipboard acoustic cleanser.

Soon, the little boat’s prow scraped the pebbly beach, and Ozias, unafraid of the icy water because of his heated, waterproof attire, hopped out and pulled it onto shore. Because of the surrounding ice, the island’s beaches were totally becalmed, with only the slightest waves breaking the almost total silence. Sometimes the isle’s low hills were lashed by fierce polar winds, but it seemed perfectly calm – calm enough that Ozias could hear the crash of surf breaking against the great ice walls protecting the isle from the sea, four kilometers away.

After deploying the boat’s overland skids, Ozias towed it into the island’s interior, following the course of a small river of ice so clear he could count the bright pebbles over which it crawled. A kilometer from the shore, he found a patch of flat, dry ground sufficient for his thermo-tent, and began setting up camp. The place was everything he had hoped for – quiet in the extreme, both desolate and picturesque. Ozias had no intention of taking pictures, lest others befoul his hard-won refuge from society, but he knew he wouldn’t grow tired of the scenery in the week he had allotted to the expedition.

As soon as the domed tent was unpacked and staked into place, Ozias climbed the hill behind the campsite. To his surprise, on the other side, he found a small lake, its surface a sheet of ice so perfectly smooth he was certain that a stone kicked across its surface would slide all the way to the other side. After appreciating the view, Ozias returned to his campsite to prepare a meal, ravenously hungry from the exertion of rowing the last leg of the journey.

The sun dipped halfway past the horizon, bathing the Gray Isle in false twilight just dark enough for Maribel’s brightest stars to appear. It was a false twilight, Ozias knew, because it was also dawn – the solar disk would rise again shortly, without having completely set. The half-darkness would last, he estimated, less than an hour.

Just as Ozias had finished warming up a meal of re-hydrated wilderness rations, a chiming, splintering sound tore the isle’s blissful silence and startled him severely enough to drop his meal to the ground. Cursing and suspecting that his solitude had been broken by another human tourist, Ozias hurried up the hill to have a look around, expecting to see the lights of another camp glowing not far away.

He saw light, but it was coming from beneath the little lake, whose pristine ice was now shattered and shoved on-shore by mad waves far larger than such a small body of water should be able to produce. The light, too, was odd – it was electric blue, fitfully waxing and waning in a pattern reminiscent of an erratic heartbeat. Ozias was immediately certain that it came from no object of human origin, though the source was still hidden below the lashing waves.

The source was not content to remain submerged, though. Rising to the surface, a great phosphorescent bubble reached the surface, its pulsing radiance bright enough to cast shadows behind every rock and hill. The bubble didn’t stop rising at the waves, though – it kept rising, drifting weightlessly into the air. In its center, a mass of pinkish tissue throbbed and twitched along with the light, and below this vast orb, several greenish roots or tendrils hung limply.

Ozias, suddenly aware of his exposed position, dove to the ground, seeking cover from the hillside though the thing had no obvious eyes to see him. The creature – for there was no doubt it was alive, not a machine – continued to float upward, buoyant on the frigid air, and soon dozens of smaller specimens broke free of the water and followed it up. The variable light from each creature joined together to produce a chaotic strobing difficult to look at, but also impossible to look away from. Ozias watched, motionless, as the flock of airborne drifters rose above the hills, until they finally caught the cross-winds roaring above the sheltered place, and were quickly ushered away over the horizon.

Not certain what he had seen, Ozias hurried down to the swiftly calming lake’s shore to peer into the dark water. Splinters of ice crunched under his feet, and by the time he had reached the water’s edge, it had already becalmed itself enough to begin freezing once more, leaving no trace of the grand light-show which it had disgorged.

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Tales From the Inbox: Arson for the Archives

2947-01-29 - Tales From the Inbox: Arson for the Archives

The loss of the Vatican Archives during the occupation of Earth is one of the greatest tragedies of human knowledge, perhaps even rivaling the burning of the fabled Library of Alexandria. The ambiguous nature of this loss has led many to believe that the archive, like many other things lost during the Terran-Rattanai War, might one day be re-discovered, just as the twin Dawnglider battleships were. Many of the ancient documents in the Archive were supposedly never committed to digital form.

This belief has in turn spawned a large number of efforts to find the lost archives, based on the belief that the Holy See spirited them away to safety as the Rattanai battle-fleet closed in on Earth. The archive is certainly valuable; even if the Church paid half the commonly-dispensed thirty-five billion credits figure for the return of its long-lost archives, its finder would be rich beyond all measure.

I personally suspect that if the archives were hidden, they were hidden on Earth; expeditions to remote areas of the former Terran Sphere to search for the lost Vatican Archives inevitably return empty-handed, for good reason.

Kieron T. does not agree with my assertion, and his belief in the correct way to find the Archives - if they still exist - resulted not in a large payment from the Church, but in a massive debt to it. While he does not provide any information about how he is paying the Holy See back for his sins (spiritually or temporally), I can only imagine that what he sent in is not the end of the story. He ensured me that when events have run their course, he will submit more of his story for this audience's enjoyment.

Kieron looked around the old monastery’s library one more time before setting the timer on his incendiary bomb. The documents he needed were already tucked under one of his arms, and while it was a shame to destroy so many priceless books – many of them antiques brought to Villar all the way from Earth – it was the only way to hide the importance of what he had taken.

As soon as the timer was ticking down, he keyed in the remote that would summon his ship. Somewhere in the handful of books he’d collected, there was a clue – a clue to the whereabouts of one of the most famous undiscovered treasure hoards. When Earth had been invaded by the Rattanai, the Holy See had moved its archives and its most priceless relics off the planet, but in the chaos of that revolutionary era, the few who knew where the treasure had been had perished without revealing their secret. Three thousand years of Vatican archives and wealth had vanished, and even the successor pontiffs of the great old church had not possessed the knowledge to recover it. 

Kieron didn’t wish any particular ill on the Villarian Monastery or its greater church, but the value of what the Church had lost was incalculable. It would be enough to pay off all Kieron’s debts and let him retire to an estate on the Frontier, and more. If he was right, notes written by hand into one of the old books would shed light on the hiding-place for the legendary treasure. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if he was wrong.

Just as Kieron was approaching the library door, footsteps outside brought him to a halt. Pressed to the wall and trying not to think about the incendiary bomb slowly ticking toward ignition, surrounded by stacks of synthetic parchment and even antique paper, he waited for the patrolling monk beyond to walk past the door before gently inching it open.

At that moment, the bomb went off. Knocked through the door and onto the floor, with ,bits and pieces of flaming books raining down on his back, Kieron scrambled back to his feet immediately, shielding his prize with his body. The courtyard wasn’t far away, and his ship could pick him up there. The burns on his back and shoulders would need medical attention, but they could wait until he was in orbit.

Shoving past two monks rushing toward the blaze, Kieron burst out into the courtyard in time to see his little ship appear over the crest of the hills, the thunderous rumble of its drive causing almost as much alarm from the monks as the explosive fire in the library. With the remote, he instructed it to fly low and let out the cable-winch he’d installed specifically for the task.

As the ship swung low to drop the cable into the courtyard, however, a mirage shimmer appeared in the air above Kieron’s head. Too late, he tried to order the ship to climb away, even as the cable fell into the chaotic spatial shear of a protective screening field. The ship’s drive reversed, but too late; its momentum carried it into the shear zone, and Kieron was forced to watch as his ship, the last thing his debtholders had not taken from him as collateral, was torn into small, glowing pieces above his head.

“This is a fine way to repay our hospitality.”

Kieron whirled to see the abbot, flanked by two monks holding antique rifles, approaching. There was no point trying to bluff his way out – he was still clutching priceless antique books.

“I’ll admit you had me fooled, Kieron Nazaretian. Is that is truly your name?” With a dismissive gesture, the abbott sent his armed subordinates forward to separate Kieron from the books which had meant everything. One of them kept a weapon trained on Kieran, while the other returned the books to the venerable priest, who patiently examined each, ignoring the chaos within the building as the other monks tried in vain to extinguish the blaze.

“I didn’t have a choice.” Kieran knew even as he said it that it was a lie. He’d had plenty of choices; all of the choices he’d made had led him to where he was. By the time it came to searching for the lost treasure of the Holy See, he’d made a lot of wrong ones.

The abbot finished examining the documents, a frown on his weathered face. “Son, you aren’t the first to come here chasing what was lost in the war.” He had evidently guessed the purpose of Kieran’s vandalism. “But I suppose you will be the last.” The reason for this was evident; the inferno that had been the library would surely dissuade the next would-be treasure-hunter.

“I am sorry.” Kieran realized that he was. It was just business, but business was no excuse to the monks whose priceless books, works of many periods of the ancient church’s history, had been destroyed.

“Perhaps you are.” The abbot clutched the books to his body, the last remnant of his once-grand library. “Take him inside. Let us see what he really knows of the See’s lost archive.” 

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Tales From the Inbox: Reckoning of the Reckless

2947-01-23 - Tales From the Inbox: Reckoning of the Reckless

Apologies for the lateness of this feed item. Perhaps you have already heard of the wide-scale datasphere collapse we experienced here on Planet at Centauri in the last 36 hours - this alone would not have interrupted the ingestion of Tales from the Inbox (though it may have affected distribution), but I was not at our headquarters yesterday to manually send off the final text. Things are returning to normal now, and Cosmic Background property is largely unaffected, though there was some minor unrest and property damage in Yaxkin City.

In this Tales from the Inbox, we have a story sent in not from a spacer, but from a Frontier colonist who has dealt with many spacers visiting his home, and who wishes to demonstrate the price which carelessness exacts. Javor O. lives on Margaux, a picturesque but often dangerous world which attracts a steady stream of visitors from the interstellar community, and which claims the lives of too many of these visitors.

Javor's story comes with a simple message - when on a strange world, do not conflate beauty of your surroundings with safety.

As Javor entered the motor pool, the mechanic was just bolting the access panels back on his quadclimber. The dodgy machine was generally too delicate for use on a remote outpost, but Margaux’s habitable regions were so craggy and trackless that all the mechanical trouble in the world still couldn’t negate the advantage its ease scaling sheer cliffs gave him.

“How is she?”

“Good for at least fifty klicks. If that forward right gripper gives you any trouble, put it in diagnostic mode and give the actuator another ten percent.” The mechanic flicked off his goggles as soon as he had finished bolting on the final plate. “I think I’ve got the gyro problem sorted.”

“Good work.” Javor clapped the man on the shoulder. The colony’s mechanics were not formally trained, but they did work which would seem a miracle in the motor pool of any military base, with far less access to fabricated spare parts. “They’re sending me out after a visitor named Arbore. Did he take a vehicle out?” 

The mechanic frowned. “Arbore. Hmm.” There had been nothing in the computer access records, but the colonial outpost’s computer systems were not perfect, and fidelity to vehicle access procedure among the harried colonists was even more flawed. “I don’t think so. When did he take off?” 

“Last night, second watch. His shipmate said they need to dust off in six hours.”

“When I got here, the dodgy Whitting lighter was the only thing not in its dock, but I thought they hauled it off for maintenance.”

Grumbling, Javor pulled up the position tracking system to look up the Whitting. It was an old machine, its battered airframe a hand-me-down from a colonial outpost which could afford better. Even at slow speeds and at low altitude, it was a handful. Sure enough, its blip was several klicks away from the outpost, parked on the ground – or more likely, half-buried in a crater of its own making. “Of course it was the Whitting.”

“Sorry, boss. I’ll ask around and see who gave it to him.”

Javor climbed up onto the quadclimber and got its reactor purring. As soon as everything was reasonably warmed up, he keyed in the destination, and the machine lurched into motion, automatically calculating a reasonable route through the crags and canyons. Rather than use the motor pool courtyard’s gate, the machine, as usual, clambered over the wall and down the other side – Javor had long since stopped bothering to correct this glitch.

The dry, windswept hilltop surrounding the compound soon gave way to thick, lush undergrowth in the first valley bottom. The region’s verdant lowlands and dry uplands were picturesque, but they were far from safe, despite the assumptions of every damn-fool offworlder who came hoping for a relaxing hike – sixteen species of local plants excreted deadly toxins, and all of the apex predators were large enough and stupid enough to tangle with human vehicles, if they got the chance.

Fortunately, the quadwalker’s speed over uneven ground and ability to climb the sheer cliff walls made it an unlikely victim for such beasts, and Javor encountered no trouble on the journey to the Whitting lighter’s beacon. He was surprised to find the battered aircraft parked securely in a clearing in one of the valley bottoms, not far from a clear, quaint little stream. Its cockpit was empty, however; the spacer who’d borrowed it was nowhere in sight.

After radioing back his finding so a follow-up crew could recover the lighter, Javor circled the area, hoping to find the missing man. The scene was quiet, even deceptively peaceful – it was easy to guess that the hapless offworlder had got out for a walk and perhaps to take a few still-shots for his crewmates.

It wasn’t long before Javor found the inevitable outcome of such foolishness. Sprawled as if for a nap in a tangle of greenery, the spacer Arbore still clutched a battered paper notebook and a pen, as if he had come merely to poetically immortalize a savage alien landscape. Of course, he had chosen to take his ease on a stand of Sheenleaf, a plant which covered itself in an oily arsenic compound for protection.

“Ops, it’s Javor. I found him.” The grave tone in his voice was enough to tell the person in the compound command center what the missing person’s condition was. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Maribel Torus

2947-01-14 - Tales from the Inbox: The Maribel Torus

This is a story that was submitted late last year at the height of the New Rheims Committee hearings, but which Naval Intelligence requested I not publish until a certain announcement had been made. That announcement was today's big news.

The conversion of the forward naval base at Håkøya into a dedicated Survey Auxiliary installation has been planned since before the New Rheims mess and the Great Purge, but the pundits are still talking about how this is part of the fallout from that incident and the ensuing military-political disputes. To be clear, this effort has been planned in senior Navy circles since at least late August - I heard about it in October, but on condition of not revealing it or this story to the audience until the Navy had made its announcement.

All in all, I think this is a good step. The Navy is open about its intention to expand Survey's reach across the Sagittarius Gap - they plan to have a fairly sizable presence at or neighboring Sagittarius Gate within six months in order to support Survey's exploration of that under-explored region. Given that the travel time across the Gap, even for swift Navy cruisers, is the better part of two months, that's a tight timeline, but it's one I think will be met. The Navy needs a public relations win very badly right now, and the merits of this pre-existing project are self-evident. Don't be surprised if we see the Navy's presence on the other side of the Gap get an unprecedented degree of media coverage. If I had to guess, they'll send their newest ships, as well as their youngest and most photogenic captains.

Today's story was submitted by a Hegemony spacer named Hayyim A., who asked questions about one of the stranger orbital construction projects at Maribel six months ago, and stumbled onto this story. The object in question has since been completed, and it is my understanding that four more like it are nearing completion.

“What about the ring?” Hayyim pressed. It seemed impossible that residents of the station wouldn’t know about the huge construction project – it was visible without magnification outside the habitat’s viewports.

“The ring, yes. Quite the marvel, isn’t it?” As information sources went, the woman across the table from Hayyim seemed an unlikely one, but one he had good reason to trust. Dressed in a riot of color and draped in various polished bangles in gaudy Frontier style, she didn’t even bother to look up from the knitting which occupied her hands. With smart-cloth available nearly for free, knitting was a practically pointless exercise in most places, but in a place like Maribel, which had such a high demand for hand-made heirlooms and keepsakes driven by to the constant flow of colonists heading for the outer Frontier, many had learned the financial advantages of a few hours devoted to such archaic trades. “The rumors about it are quite interesting.”

“Chalice, you know what it is.” If she hadn’t, she would have postponed the meeting. After all, she wouldn’t be paid until Hayyim was satisfied with her answers.

“Hayyim, sometimes what people whisper is more important than the nature of the thing.” Chalice lifted the silver-grey yarnwork from her lap to set it on the table. At a snap of her fingers, a squirrel-sized pet animal hopped out of a concealed pouch in her attire and onto the table, its disturbingly hand-like paws helping her switch to another strand of yarn. “But if the cold, dull facts are all you desire, I will spare you the rumors.”

Hayyim scowled at the tiny critter. He didn’t recognize its species, but it didn’t matter what it was as much as how distasteful its presence in a station dining compartment was. The locals nearby didn’t give the unhygienic little monster a second look – to them, there was no problem. In the Core Worlds, its presence in a place where food was also present would have caused an uproar. “Let’s start with the facts.”

“The ring is a new model of HyperComm relay with increased range.” Chalice shrugged, thanking her pet for its assistance by dropping a few morsels of its food onto the table. It scampered about, collecting each one before eating. It could, apparently, sense Hayyim’s distaste – it kepy one eye warily on him as it devoured its treat. “It’s a Navy project, and it’s not a well-kept secret. Half the shipwrights in Maribel have been hired to build it, and Maribelans have very bad datasphere discipline.”

“Odd that I couldn’t find anything when I searched for it, then.”

“Hayyim, you wouldn’t have asked for my help if you were any good at this game yourself.” Chalice smiled, looking up for the first time. She could be charming when she wasn’t being so damnably enigmatic. “Is the dull truth enough?”

Hayyim pulled the credit-chit he’d stamped with her payment from his coat pocket and set it on the table. Chalice made no attempt to reach for it; he hoped she wouldn’t have her unhygienic pet snatch the money. Even as he moved to pay her, the tantalizing hint Chalice had offered forced him to ask for more. “How much will it cost me to hear about the rumors?”

“No charge. I’m an honest broker, Hayyim. It wouldn’t be right to charge more for what you need, when it’s different than what you asked for.”

“Fine, then. Out with it.”

Chalice smiled, but her attention seemed to be once again on her knitting. “The range of a standard HyperComm relay has been almost constant for two hundred years, you know. Why re-invent such a successful device?”

“It would speed up interstellar data requests.” Hayyim knew that was the wrong answer even as he said it; the Frontier certainly wasn’t clamoring for faster datasphere connections. Even the Core Worlds didn’t think the speed data traveled across explored space was insufficient.

“And why the Navy involvement?”

“They would benefit from faster connections between the Frontier and the Hegemony border.” A threat at one end of sprawling Confederated space might take days to trickle across the HyperComm net tot the other end; the Navy was as dependent on this communication structure as anyone.

“Hayyim…” Chalice laughed quietly. “For a spacer, you don’t think big enough. Where would the range of relays matter most?

All at once, he realized what the informant was getting at. “The Sagittarius Gap.”

Chalice’s pet darted forward and grabbed the credit-chit without any obvious instruction, and Hayyim jumped back as though stung, looking about for a place to wash off any contaminants the critter had left. “That’s the rumor, yes. The Navy is making a move to close the Gap.”

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