08: Desolation
This is chapter eight (Part 2: Exhaustive Search), in which Elena arrives on Verdant to find a mostly empty city.
If it’s your first time here, check out the Table of Contents. You’ll probably want to start with the Prologue.
08: Desolation
Travel to Verdant is uneventful. Elena spends some time with the crew, spends most of her time alone in her quarters. With the crew, she volunteers her cover story – looking for businesses to acquire for Obsidian Holdings.
She learns that Jaxon Barabe is ex-military, like her, though she doesn’t tell him about her past serving. He was honorably discharged a while back, before bootstrapping his independent logistics business. In her mind, she puts air-quotes around “independent logistics.”
Doctor Terek Nassar used to work big corporate, hated it, is glad to be out of it. The older man has a haunted look about him; she can’t begin to guess what he has seen during his corporate days.
Rynn, “Ghost,” doesn’t volunteer a last name. Doesn’t volunteer much at all, preferring to spend his time at the helm, watching the monitors, even though FTL requires no steering.
Kaela – last name Tama, she learns – is the opposite. Excited to have a passenger (“we usually just do cargo”), she is always up for a chat. Elena learns from her that Rynn used to run with some very bad people, until things went south for some unspecified reason.
Kaela explains the strange exchange she and Rynn had when leaving the Gateway Ring. She used to have a cousin, who was living on Echo Point, when the Taurans hit it with their strange weapon.
“Joking about Taurans not being real, after what happened, is simply offensive,” she tells Elena.
Kaela also elucidates the mystery of their expedite departure.
“The reason we got clearance so fast is that we have an Abyssal Mining C-suite shuttle transponder. I installed it myself!”
What a motormouth, thinks Elena, but she can’t help feeling affection for the young woman wearing her heart on her sleeve.
“Shit!” Kaela adds, “don’t tell Jaxon I told you that!”
“I won’t,” Elena smiles.
Kaela continues, embarrassed: “I told you, we usually just do cargo…”
Not very good opsec for a hacker, Elena observes. She must be better around machines than around people.
Elena is careful not to divulge anything compromising. She sticks to her cover story. She tells them about her tabby cat, about her favorite foods, about what she saw on the ring. They all comment on the strangeness of the Tauran war and latest developments in the sector. Unlike her, they’ve been here during the whole thing.
“Since you’ve all been in-sector during thick of it,” Elena asks them one time when they’re all together sharing a meal, “what do you know about Taurans?”
“Not much” replies Terek, “haven’t seen one. I think nobody has.”
This tracks – pretty much what her brief said and what the popular consensus seems to be. Humanity fought them but never laid eyes on one.
“I heard they’re among us, wearing human skins” adds Kaela in a low voice.
“That’s nonsense” says Terek.
“Maybe you’re a Tauran, Doc” jokes Jaxon, accusing Terek. The older man doesn’t appreciate the joke. Jaxon turns his gaze towards Elena.
She smiles. “I’m not a Tauran. But I guess that’s exactly what a Tauran wearing my skin would say.”
“Kidding aside,” says Jaxon, “all I can say is they’ve been great for business. A lot more things need transport nowadays.”
Seeing Jaxon around Charon, looking so much like Darius, still stirs memories and feelings inside her. Alone in her quarters, she thinks about the implications of the two following her, and what that means for her mission. There isn’t much she can do on the Charon while in transit, but she’ll most definitely be watching her six once they make planetfall.
The trip is a lot of waiting around, but she’s accustomed to it. Being in the military is mostly waiting around. Even at superluminal speeds, it takes a few days to get from the center of the sector to Verdant. Jump gates use different physics – instantaneous point-to-point travel, translating through higher dimensions. But the technology is still too expensive to commoditize, so jump gates are limited to connecting the small network of sectors. Elena suspects the massive construction projects are also earning so much money for OmniCore Solutions and Dominion Nexus that they’d rather not have a cheaper alternative available.
The monotony finally comes to an end as the Charon decelerates next to a large, gorgeous green planet. The ship slows down further as it approaches the Gaia world and adjusts course for landing. Elena is on the bridge with the rest of the crew. She watches Verdant, its immense size, its streaks of clouds. It looks somewhat like Aurelia, her homeworld, but the color tones are off and Verdant is larger.
“I might need a ride to Nova Prime today or tomorrow. Can you stick around?” Elena doesn’t want to spend more time in Sector 36 than strictly needed. Pick up the asset, get to Nova Prime, get out.
“Very sorry but we can’t.” Jaxon sounds genuinely regretful. He might be sorry to disappoint or, more likely, to miss on some extra credits from her seemingly deep pockets. “That cargo we’re carrying needs to get to its destination ASAP. We’re on a contract and already went out of the way with this stop. If you want, we can swing back in a couple of weeks.”
She understands. And she suspects she’ll have trouble finding transport, but she needs to try. If nothing is available, she’ll have to wait for them.
They work out a deal as Charon enters the atmosphere, dives into the clouds. She pays an advance for them to come back and pick her and the asset up if needed. She’ll let them know if she finds an alternative way out. They say their goodbyes.
“Take care” says Jaxon as she steps through the airlock, into a breezy evening.
“You too” she answers, raising a hand as she walks away.
By the time she makes her way out of the docks, it’s almost nighttime. An inky sky covers Sylvan Prime. The capital city’s tall buildings stand dark and quiet. Traffic is minimal, at most a lonely car speeding by on the deserted streets every once in a while. Almost no pedestrians to speak of. Mass transit doesn’t run at night, and she missed the last ride of the day. She gets online, tries to find transport outside the city, but comes up empty-handed. Cabs are offline, rental businesses are closed until further notice. Verdant is just as empty and quiet in the digital. Little news, little activity. She gets offline, sighs. Just when I feel I’m finally making some progress.
It’s getting chilly and she realizes she needs to find lodging for the night, catch a hover rail in the morning. She gets back online to look for a room. Unlike the ring, the options are limitless here. She takes her pick – a roomy suite with a view, very reasonably priced and nearby. She’ll spend the night, head out into farmland tomorrow. She walks the silent streets at a brisk pace, mostly to keep herself warm. She could swear she can smell fresh cut grass, but that’s impossible from the middle of the city. Farmland is miles away. Must be wishful thinking. She misses home.
She reaches her hotel in no time. It’s an imposing, 50 story glass building. The lobby is empty, lights turning on automatically only after she steps through the door. She checks in at a kiosk, nobody to greet her. She takes the elevator up to the 47th floor. The spacious suite looks luxurious: a bedroom with a king size bed, a living room with a couch, an arm chair, and a large table, a bathroom with a tub. The furniture is, for once, more than utilitarian. Someone put some serious thought into designing the interior, she notices. Everything is color-matched, in shades of pine green, sage, and orange. There’s a classic, 2D painting hung on one of the walls, a Verdant landscape. She realizes this suite must’ve gone for some crazy-high rates back in the day. She got it for peanuts, dynamic pricing algorithms defeated by the mass exodus.
She pulls aside the curtains and walks in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, takes a look at the cityscape. The view outside is of mostly blackness, peppered by a handful of lit windows across the street and further away, and the under glow of the streetlamps. It’s like everyone left, she thinks. She remembers the people camping out in the streets on the ring. What if Jake, the guy she shared a drink with at the Cosmic Drift, was right? What if the asset is on the ring? This city is not fully deserted, not quite yet, but is dangerously close to it.
It’s too quiet and it’s making her anxious. She needs to do a little digging, maybe get some reassurance. It will help her sleep better. She gets online, spends a few minutes checking out several random farms. In case someone is snooping on her network traffic, she doesn’t want to give any leads. And she is almost certain someone is. She feels anticipation building but knows she needs to be patient. As VP of Acquisitions, she is preparing for a long day of conducting business tomorrow.
She pretends to read through several property records, sometimes following “for sale” details and second opinions from third parties. She’s not really paying too much attention, but is nevertheless shocked by the low price tags. She’s not a real estate expert, but even she can see how good of a cover story Spark put together for her. If a company was really going to swoop in and buy all this property, they would indeed make a killing. Unless the Taurans returned. Wisdom of the ages Elena, don’t try to time the market. She shudders.
She takes a deep breath. It’s time. She zeroes in on BioFields. The asset should be there. BioFields is not up for sale, but it is temporarily closed. That’s strange, though it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She asks for details, like she did for the other properties. The data stream splits into topics – topography, ecology, stats, history, public business records, customer reviews. This time, she pays attention, tries to sift out some useful intel.
She can’t spend disproportionately more time on BioFields than she did on the rest of the farms. If she’s being watched, this will stand out to any simple anomaly detection algorithm, never mind an Omega AI.
The farm was operating in the black. She knows just as much about the farming business as she does about real estate, but knows farming is low-margin so being in the black even a little means business is good. Overwhelmingly positive customer reviews, except the latest, which is a low score from someone with the alias “Spark.” What a funny coincidence, she thinks. Historical records show single ownership by the Ardens, ever since the colony was established. Family business. The farm hasn’t been closed for long, they were open just a few weeks ago.
She pauses. That was after they heard from the asset. How long did it take him to get from Eureka Base to Verdant? Another, darker thought: What if he didn’t? The situation on the ground is orders of magnitude worse than anyone back at HQ expected. People are crammed on the ring, stuck. Verdant is desolate. Eureka Base is heavily guarded by military. In-sector travel is next to impossible on some routes. A plausible scenario has Dr. Linton stuck at the research base, with the Ardens waiting for him at BioFields until they decide it’s not worth the risk and pack it in. They’re probably on the ring, leaving the farm empty. Shit.
It’s time to move on from BioFields. She switches to a different farm, thinks about what it would take her to get to Eureka Base. Her cover won’t work as well there. She would have to come up with a different story as to why Obsidian Holdings is interested in the lab. The security is tighter there too, so her cover might not hold at all. At the very best, it will mean walking a tightrope to retrieve the asset.
After pretending to read through a couple more data streams, she gets offline.
This little bit of research did nothing to ease her mind, quite the opposite. That said, Doctor Linton might yet be hiding at BioFields. She’ll go check out the place in person tomorrow.
She should really reach out to Ingram again at some point too. Her briefing was adamant about this, part of staying in character. But she dreads it. Not tonight, she tells herself.
It takes her a while to fall asleep. The new possibility of the asset never having left Eureka Base bothers her. The other alternative, more plausible in light of the farm being closed, is he followed the Ardens to the ring. Needle, haystacks. I really hope you’re here, Doctor.
She sleeps, wakes up to the first rays of a golden sunrise. A real day-night cycle for a change, with real, fusion-produced light. She was dreaming. Darius was there. The plot of the dream is already lost but, for once, she knows it wasn’t a nightmare. She feels a pang of loss. She showers, takes one final look out the window of her 47th floor room at the meager trickle of morning commute, and heads out.