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The shuttle was very small, Kell thought.
It would have been comfortable for a human, with soft things as they enjoyed, and metals smoothed until they reflected the light.
The pilot seemed to have little reaction to him; but then, he had shuttled Shoggoths before. His presence was altered in that way.
“Welcome aboard, Ambassador. We will be launching shortly, and once we’re through the dashgate it will be seventeen hours until we arrive.”
Kell gave him a nod, and sat in the seat.
“If you get hungry, there is a drone ready to serve you. And if you’d like music or entertainment-“
“I would prefer silence,” Kell said, weary of the human game of politeness.
The man did not reply, but merely nodded, and turned to his work.
Kell studied him absently with part of his attention but let the rest drift. Now was not really a time that was safe, but few were in a period of great change. Nevertheless, he felt no apprehension. Anything that might happen to him was entirely beyond his control, and the humans truly seemed to wish for his safety.
An odd but useful trait.
The shuttle launched, and he said nothing. As far as the pilot could tell, he simply stared forward, never blinking, and never moving. For the entire trip.
As the shuttle turned around and began its counter-burn to arrest its momentum, Pirra felt anxious.
Squirming in her seat, she felt annoyed with herself. She didn’t feel this antsy even during a mission where there were serious consequences.
Alexander noticed her fidgeting, but said nothing, just putting his hand over hers.
She appreciated the gesture, but it didn’t help.
“Do you think Iago will be released from his quarantine in time to come see my folks?” Alexander asked.
Her commander was a long-time family friend of the Shaws, but him bringing it up – something he was probably doing to distract her from her nervousness – did not help.
Alexander did not know what Iago had gone through. The mission, everything about it, was top secret. And liable to remain that way.
She’d taken the time to check with some friends of hers. She couldn’t actually find out what they had done about the monitoring station, but she knew what class of ships would be best at destroying it, as she had recommended. As far as she could tell, no ship had been diverted.
It was possible they were being quiet about it, but she had a feeling that they were not going to destroy that place.
She still awoke each day, afraid she’d still be there. After seeing the people there – or perhaps merely shades of people? – she had thought that maybe she, too, would open her eyes to find she had never escaped . . .
It was the worst thing about some of this shit. You did not know if you were truly free of it.
“Pirra?” Alexander asked.
She blinked. “Sorry, honey. I . . . I wouldn’t bet on it. I think Iago will be fine, but I don’t think he’s going to be out of isolation for a while.”
Her husband nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. It would be nice to be able to tell him what had happened to his closest friend. But she couldn’t say anything. It was beyond just about keeping security – as Iago had learned, on some things, just the knowing itself could be dangerous.
The docking went smoothly, and she felt more relaxed. No more sitting and waiting.
As they left the shuttle, she’d already identified their best path to catch their connecting flight. They had two more stops and connections to make, and so far they were fortunately on time.
“This way,” she said. Thankfully, Plucharon station was set up to take on the numbers the Craton was bringing. Ten thousand people was really nothing; she’d counted at least seven hundred ships out there, and that had only been from a cursory scan. Each of them could easily be unloading ten or twenty thousand people. Mostly tourists – humans come on a pilgrimage to their homeworld. Sometimes aliens, though – because humans were, she thought, pretty interesting.
She supposed she was pretty lucky. She’d been born on the larger moon of her world, but her parents had moved back to the planet when she was young. She knew the world her species had evolved upon well. The vast majority of Dessei were not so lucky, and their population was almost triple that of humankind.
They arrived at their shuttle early, but boarding was already being allowed.
The inter-system shuttle was larger, too large to actually land in a shuttle bay, instead using a long umbilical with a carrier car in it.
Going aboard, they floated down the main hall. Without gravity, any way could be up, and there were doors on walls and floors both. While she preferred to be in gravity most of the time, at least the zero-g made the bags easier to carry, she thought.
Finding their compartment and floating in, she took her seat. There were six, though no one else had arrived yet.
“Can you stow these?” she asked, pushing her bag towards Alexander.
“All right. You okay?”
“Yeah, I just want to find the head,” she said, floating back out of the room.
It was not so much that as her own need to get a feel for the ship. She was very antsy, and she could not strictly chalk it up to anything in particular beyond the fact that she, nor anyone she knew, was in command of this ship.
But there was almost no chance of an issue occurring in a heavily-populated system, she reminded herself for the thousandth time.
Almost.
Floating back to the compartment, she slid the door open and paused.
“Honey, it looks like we’re sharing the compartment with Dr. Logus,” Alexander said.
He seemed genuinely happy. She was not so sure how she felt.
“Oh, hello Doctor,” she trilled.
“Lieutenant,” he replied politely. The man looked rather distracted or bothered, himself.
She moved in to sit down next to Alexander. “Do you have family in the system, sir?”
“Ah, you don’t need to call me sir. I do have family in the system, it’s true. But I’m not going to see them, I’m afraid. This is . . . well, not work-related. But it’s certainly no personal trip.”
Pirra wondered what that meant.
“What about you two?” Logus asked.
“We’re going to visit my family,” Alexander said. “They’re Phobosans.”
“Ah, interesting. I thought that moon had been abandoned,” Logus replied.
“It was, but my family and a few others decided to move into the place to form a kind of science commune,” Alexander replied. “Fixed up the facilities with a grant from the Research Council and – well, that’s where I was born.”
“That’s quite interesting,” Logus said. “I do recall reading about it, now that you mention it. It would be interesting to meet your family some time. You said the Research Council? What is it that they’re researching?”
Alexander had seemed proud until that moment. But now, he looked away, his face flushing ever so slightly. “My father is interested in . . . applied plasma weaponry.”
“Weapons? Oh, I see,” Logus said, hiding his surprise. He noticed that Pirra was staring at him unblinking. She was trying to keep her crest down, but it was bristling all the same.
If Logus had been so ill-mannered as to make a rude comment about such odd work, he could tell she’d launch into his defense.
She was a bit touchy, he decided. Interesting.
“I can see why they would want to do such work on Phobos. I had no idea, though, that plasma had real weaponizing potential. Wasn’t most such research abandoned a century ago?”
“Yeah,” Alexander said. He elaborated no further.
Logus let the topic drop.
“Well, if you two don’t mind, I think I’ll take a rest,” Logus said, smiling politely to them both.
He slid his privacy screen down around him, and closed his eyes.
Pirra and Alexander were silent. The privacy screen would block most noises, but neither felt much like talking.
She knew Alexander hated talking about his father’s work. However important it was to remain on the advanced edge of weapons technology in case of conflict, it was work that made most uncomfortable. War and conflict were, after all, rarely good for anyone.
No one else joined their compartment. An hour later, a voice came over their systems;
“Please prepare for dash entry. ETA at Titan Station is 30 hours.”
Thirty hours to Titan Station in Saturn orbit, a two hour layover, six hours from there to Ceres with another hour layover, then just two more to Mars.
Then just getting their rental shuttle and seven more hours flying at sublight to reach Phobos.
Not short, but not bad for getting to a place as out-of-the-way as that moon.
She shifted in her seat. She’d be happy once they were on that last leg of their journey. Then, if anything went wrong, it’d at least be a proper emergency, instead of something as inane as a bureaucratic error . . .
Other Terrestrial 