The F. Sygnata, a SF exerpt

I

All things speak to us. Who among us does not know what a n'ghera thorn means when it pricks our thumb? –– Idris-Sarran proverb, Betan-English translation.

Kira rushed up the lighted gangway and entered the rotunda at the other end while the galaxy and its billions of constellations shimmered around her. She stood on the gallery floor of the inner sanctum and raised her eyes to the upper platform, where, framed by a guardrail, stood the Transdimensional Coordinator, a black onyx console with a holographic control board on top. A large hypersphere descended from a rotating glass dome above and cast beams of blue light throughout the room. The light danced in prismatic squares along the curved walls of the sanctum, where more portals, glowing faintly, opened into white voids. Her first experience with the nRoom, a bubble in the spacetime continuum that opened portals to anywhere and anywhen in the galaxy, left her frightened, impressed, awe-inspired even, but its effect soon lost its power to stupefy her. Indeed, she barely noticed it. She focused instead on the man standing in front of the machine with his back turned to her.

She ascended the stairway of glowing columns to the upper platform, thinking how only a few minutes passed since she had gotten his summons on her communicator. She had been on The Cloud, the space station orbiting Beta-1 (where she and fifteen million other third-generation humans currently lived), and was waiting to debrief her supervisor from the Interplanetary Peace Alliance when she received his call. Without informing the executive assistant where she was going or when she'd be back, she rushed out of the waiting lounge and found the glowing red door nearby––the portal into the nRoom. Her comings and goings could be as rudely unexpected as Mister's summons.

Mister opened windows over the console's holographic interface with a swipe of his hand, looking like a conductor in front of his orchestra before a grand performance. And in some ways, he was. The Transdimensional Coordinator––or TC as they called it—was an advanced probability and calculating machine and their sole means of research and travel. Through the machine, Mister orchestrated not only their comings and goings, but calculated events of the future, of the past, and their own pockets of reality within. Kira leaned against it, felt it vibrate gently against her belly, then lowered her eyes to the several windows opened on the console. One window was a star chart mapping the four quadrants. Blue pixels shimmered in different vectors on the grid.

"So what's up?" she asked, eyes glimmering in the blue glow.

"Volume 51," he replied, then pointed at a pixel on the chart.

Kira leaned closer to study it. Each pixel represented a location somewhere in the four quadrants where the TC traced a volume of the Book of Dreams, a massive compendium, five-hundred volumes in all, written by Mister's ancestors on the advanced scientific knowledge they studied throughout the universe. (When the Ro Kan Empire occupied his planet, thieves and racketeers plundered the libraries where they were stored and traded them off-planet. As a n'dhia, Mister's job was to recover all the stolen artifacts and return them to their rightful place. As a cultural diplomat from IPPA, the organization which was formed during the war with the Ro Kannan and now monitored peace in the four quadrants, Kira was to make sure he didn't break any regulations and generally ensure his safety. In the time they worked together, they came to respect their responsibilities and learned how not to get in each other's way.) She noted how some of the pixels were clotted so thickly together they resembled the unintentional splatter of paint on canvas. It was as true a testament to how many treasures were looted from Idris-Sarra as any. The pixel Mister referenced was alone, hovering inexplicably in outer space, a million miles between Tau Vestra and Beta-3, the fourth and third planets in the Beta star system.

"That's a little too close to home," she said with a puzzled frown. "I'm assuming it's not actually stuck in deep space."

"In a sense, it is." She gave him a funny look. He smiled gently. "Don't worry. The TC traced the volume onboard a starship in the region. The Excelsior, to be exact."

"The Excelsior," she said with a gasp.

"You've heard of it?"

"A little. It was part of a fleet of ships owned by the Thomas O. Selden Cruise Liner Company, one of a few privately controlled companies in the Beta system. But, from what I recall, it suffered damage a while back during a massive solar storm. It was all over the news feeds."

"That's what my scanners indicate. Though I can't imagine why your people wouldn't have added more adequate defenses in your primitive modes of transportation. Even the most basic calculations in probability should have offered more predictive models for interferences in natural phenomena like solar storms."

Kira planted her hands on her hips and smirked. Occasionally the Z'Dhia's arrogance got on her last nerves. Not everybody was as highly advanced as the Idris-Sarran. "Maybe if your people shared a little of your advanced technology, we wouldn't need such primitive modes of transportation anyway." She gestured her arms widely to cover the scope of the magnificence that was the nRoom.

Mister's smooth, dark face was hard in the glow from the console. His eyes, with their small black pupils surrounded by silver-colored irises, were the most striking she had ever seen. She always got a little catch in her throat whenever he fixed them on her. Externally, he was humanoid––short, springy hair streaked with henna, a long pointy goatee also hennaed, the usual facial features in a solemn, intelligent face, five fingers and toes, etc.––but he was an Idris-Sarran, a proud member of his race. She was reminded of that whenever she gazed into those penetrating eyes.

"My people would be more confident in sharing our knowledge," he said, "if we knew it would be used in the same spirit of scholarship and wisdom in which it was shared."

Kira pressed her lips tightly, then nodded. In her travels with him, she had seen what people would do with even a sliver of information the volumes contained. Destruction could be as much a handmaiden to knowledge as progress. A fact the Idris-Sarran knew all too well. During her years in the academy while studying Idris-Sarran culture, she had frequently heard the jokes: how could a people as advanced as the Idris-Sarran become so easily colonized by the Ro Kannan? She knew that their advancement as a species wasn't simply a matter of having technology that was unlike anything anyone in the galaxy could ever dream or imagine. Their pursuit of knowledge was so consuming that they had come out of the other end of an ouroboros where the mouth of naïveté opened wide. They may have known what kind of people the Ro Kannan were and their capabilities with brutality, but their cultural beliefs left them unprepared for world views so unlike their own. They had no defenses, because a people for whom intellectual curiosity was the very foundation of their culture, for whom the very idea of violence against their own was inconceivable, would have no need for armies. The consumptive nature of their intelligence left them ironically vulnerable. Their experiences under the occupation also left them bruised, scarred, and thoroughly untrusting.

Kira offered him a sympathetic look, then returned to the subject at hand.

"From what I recall, the Selden Cruise Lines were under investigation for code violations. The captain of the Excelsior was charged with gross negligence and dereliction of duty. You see, our primitive modes of transportation do have protections against massive solar storms, but it seems the captain apparently hadn't activated the deflector shields fast enough. I'm not sure why, but I wouldn't be surprised if alcohol was involved." She sighed. "At any rate, patrol vessels from the IPSF rescued its passengers and crew, and the ship was abandoned."

"Understandably it was all done in haste, but they left a few things behind."

"The volume." He nodded. She frowned at the chart. "I still don't get it. How did one of the volumes turn up in the Beta system?"

As his lips pulled slowly into a smile, the other side of him, a playful, mischievous side, started to emerge. "I have no idea either," he said. "Why don't we find out?" Then, just as quickly, his smile faded and he became unusually grim. "There is something else you should know."

"Ooh, I don't like the sound of that." Every time he added a caveat, she knew it meant there was a potential for danger up ahead. The fun missions, the missions that were a breeze, were rare treats.

"You should know that the TC has been detecting lifeforms onboard the ship."

She creased her brow. "What kind of lifeforms?"

"Carbon-based." He stared down at the control boards. "They appear to be microbial, but the numbers are fairly limited, in the triple digits."

"Is that unusual?"

"Microbial organisms can number in the trillions––this seems a fairly sparse population."

"I'd rather a sparse population than one in the trillions."

He shot her a warning look. "Until we have a better sense of what is on that ship, then I think we should exercise extreme caution."

"Oh, absolutely. I agree." The worried look in his eyes troubled her. Mister was rarely worried.

The hypersphere above the console collapsed in on itself, its many dimensions, four-, five-, and six-folds turning into its center and mushrooming out again. The TC was preparing to travel to the destination Mister had entered into its system. He nodded toward the portal she had entered and suggested she put on a spacesuit since there was every indication that the Starship Excelsior was not in its usual hospitable conditions.

The portal entered a small, storage room. Several spacesuits, large and bulky and covered with silver lining, hung from a rack. Helmets neatly occupied the ledge above them.

Kira removed her communicator and started to call her boss. She'd have to let him know that their debriefing was now delayed.

•  •  •

Though Kira had grown used to traveling in the nRoom, it was still a rather extraordinary experience. The constellations, gas clouds, and galaxies around them started to blur. Every atom and molecule in her body blurred as well. It was an unsettling feeling, as though she were being atomized and reconstructed right before her eyes, but thrilling nonetheless.

The portal opened onto the starship Excelsior. The ship had one of those bombastic names that usually christened leisure vessels in the Beta system. Excelsior, Farragut, Europa, Leda, Titania. As Kira and Mister stepped out of the portal and onto the ship, she realized that in its present state, the name had taken on an entirely different meaning than she initially thought, something much more gothic and haunting.

It was dark. The flashlights affixed to their helmets cut through the pitch-blackness like a knife. As they swung their heads, the harsh illumination trailed across the enormous space. A phosphorescent sheen glimmered back at them from the walls and windows. Ice. It looked as though they had entered a huge ice cavern. Stalagmites dangled from the rafters and ice-fringed railings and columns. Rime covered the walls and floor. The space had a sunken area, with an upper level lining it, and below what appeared to be tables set up in front of what looked like a stage.

"It's the ballroom," she gasped.

Kira took a few steps toward the rail. Though the ship was in zero-g, their spacesuits were equipped with gravity boots. Their heavy clunkiness made her feet feel as if they were being constantly pulled downward by powerful magnets, but the slick, unstable floor also introduced a troubling slipperiness to her step as well. She feared that even the g-boots couldn't save her with just one wrong move. Despite the thickness and heavy padding of her suit, the cold somehow still penetrated her bones.

She swung her head toward the stage, shining an arc of light across it. She imagined musicians and other entertainment acts performing there to a large crowd of otherwise distracted passengers.

Mister took out The Key, a small, round object made of onyx and was, for all practical purposes, his mobile TC––search engine, scientific instrument, and opener of portals back into the nRoom. He scrolled his thumb across it for information only he could see. To her, its shiny, black surface was an enigmatic blank, blocked, she imagined, as a fail-proof against anyone accidentally getting a hold of The Key and attempting to hack into its data or, far worse, opening a portal into the nRoom. Not something she likely thought was possible since the Z'Dhia was incredibly zealous of the little instrument.

He scrolled through the data, then looked up and frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"The Key is picking up several Betan DNA strands." He furrowed his brow and glanced at the instrument again.

"What's so unusual about that? There were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people passing through here during its commission. I'd be surprised if there weren't any latent residue."

"No, this is more recent."

She frowned and rested her hand on her sidearm. As advanced as his scientific knowledge and instruments were, there were always small blindspots that she needed to watch out for. She always brought her weapon with her on all their missions, though she herself was not a terribly good shooter. She was a cultural diplomat, not a soldier. But she wasn't reluctant to use force even if she preferred not to.

Mister puckered his expression. Neither had access to the other's thoughts, not unless they reached out to the other psionically, the connection they had established from the nRoom. Listening impermissibly to the other's thoughts was impossible. Yet there were times when Kira assumed he could listen in on her like he was listening in on the distant, latent radio waves from another galaxy. That look––he could have heard exactly what she thought and didn't like it one bit. The Z'Dhia didn't approve of violence. He preferred to use his wits and intelligence to get in and out of situations (not to mention using The Key, which had proven quite convenient during their travels). Despite the pacifistic nature of his people, the Idris-Sarran were known for their fierceness in battle and their unrelenting thirst for vanquishing their enemies during the war. They were enigmatic and contradictory people.

"Come on," she said, breaking the silence, "talk to me. What's going on?"

"I don't know."

"I don't like it when you don't know."

"Nor do I," he remarked with an upraised brow.

Silently they scanned the cold, barren room with their flashlights. Kira's vision adjusted to the darkness, and she began to make out more shapes.

The entire place felt eerie. Weird knocking sounds and the cracking and fissuring of ice echoed in the distance. Kira did not believe in ghosts, though when she and her brother Bomani were young, they loved to frighten each other with ghost stories during camps outside their compound. Despite her lack of belief, she found herself searching through the darkness for signs of spectral creatures emerging out of the shadows. She had met many odd creatures during her travels with the Z'Dhia; ghosts would have been the least of them.

Mister went down into the sunken ballroom. As he climbed down the steps, she grasped his arm and told him to stay close. He started to run, as he explained, a frequency scan, though for what reason he didn't divulge. The Key ticked monotonously as he swept the room. That steady, familiar tick comforted her. Surrounded by the strange environment, she knew that no matter what, all Mister had to do was open a portal and they'd both be safe inside the nRoom.

He reached one end of the room and was about to sweep around again when he trained The Key in one area and frowned. Kira looked in the same direction. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at. They both stared in the far corner of the room, where the darkness was deeper and more resolute. Even the flashlights failed to penetrate. Then, her eyes adjusting even further, she noticed a lighter gradation from the pitch blackness surrounding it. There was an irregularly shaped silhouette, moving in and out as though it were…breathing.

"Mister…"

"It's okay."

"You sure?"

He moved toward it as though approaching a trapped animal. Kira called him again, but before he had a chance to respond, something hurled at them out of the darkness.

She expected a crash and a heavy thud. Instead, there were only the soft scratchings of something moving across the ice. A dark silhouette metastasized, a pair of glowing eyes, and nothing else.

Kira grabbed Mister's arm and together they ran back up the steps toward the portal that was no longer a portal but an entrance into a hallway. Behind them, chairs crashed. Something heavy scrambled over the railings.

Mister started to scrape his thumb across the surface of The Key, when suddenly the doors to the exit glided open, flooding the room with light. Kira waved her arm over the glass shield of her helmet and squinted at the two silhouettes emerging out of the glare.

One of the figures leveled an automatic weapon at them.

Instinctively, Kira dragged Mister down to the floor as a barrage of plasma blasts echoed in the vacuum. The blasts were intermittent, two-, three-seconds in between, but brief. Kira and Mister raised their heads from the icy floor, but before they had the chance to figure out what was happening, hands seized and dragged them on the floor toward the exit.

More shots were fired. The shattering of ice filled in the echo.

Before Kira could get her bearings, the door slid shut and she and Mister were manhandled to their feet.

They were in a narrow passageway filled with harsh light. The two gunners who had rescued them were in space suits but without their helmets. One was a burly man with a lazy eye and a mouth too small for his large head. The other was a woman with a silver mohawk and black tattoos along the side of her neck. She clutched her automatic weapon tightly to her chest and started yelling.

"Move, move," she shouted, and she and her companion shoved Kira and Mister up the hall.

Kira lingered, disoriented. As her eyes started to adjust yet again to the light, she stared at the two gunners as though they had slipped out of a dream.

They jabbed the barrels of their automatics and ordered them to keep running.

Something loud and heavy banged against the ballroom door. Kira grabbed Mister's arm and dragged him toward a lift.

The lights cut off.

"Damn it!" the female gunner yelled. Then: "Keep going, keep going!"

The lights from their helmets bounced as they advanced up the hall, disorienting Kira's sense of direction. After adjusting to the sudden presence of light, she had to readjust to the darkness again. As she ran blindingly up the passageway, she had no sense of what she was seeing or…hearing.

The same cracking of ice resounded behind them, just beneath the thudding of boots and the heavy, sweaty breaths of four tired and frightened people. She thought her ears were tricking her, that they were training on any and every sound that cracked and creaked and thudded. She swore there were other footsteps, ones not in time or rhythm to their own.

"Behind you!" the hulking gunner shouted.

The two spun on their heels and fired blindly into the darkness. The whiff of plasma and the sharp, white glow of their weapons filled the hall. Ice cracked and shattered.

Kira and Mister kept running, looking back over their shoulders only once when the gunner yelled out.

––The nRoom! she screamed at him psionically.

Mister didn't respond. She didn't trust his silence.

When they reached the end of the hall, they ran right into a lift, whose doors were propped open by a large block. Kira started to climb over it, but Mister grabbed her arm and jerked his head up the passageway.––There's no power.

As he spoke, shapes materialized and lunged toward them.

The shapes had mass, that Kira was certain, but she realized, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness again, that she could see right through them! As if they were invisible! They looked as if they were made purely of…stalactites! Moving stalactites!

A frightened gasp escaped her lips as both gunners approached the end of the passageway and fired around the corner. While the barrage lit up the passageway, Kira glimpsed what was charging toward them. They were strange-looking creatures with ice-like skin that resembled porcupines from Earth. She had never seen anything like it. Her heart raced.

The gunners continued firing, shattering the ice creatures, until, suddenly, the lights trembled to life again.

Now, in the light, the creatures scattered and vanished back into the shadows, lingering long enough for Kira to get a glimpse of them. She was wrong. They weren't invisible, but they were translucent enough that she could see their interior organs and the corridor beyond.

She shook her head and stared down the hall as though waiting for the creatures to return.

The gunners shoved them into the lift while Kira's eyes still focused on the empty, ice-fringed passageway.

•  •  •

"I'm asking for the last time: Who the devil are you and how did you get on this ship!" blurted the burly, bearded man.

Kira and Mister were on the bridge of the starship, seated at the control panels which wound around the cabin and were brightly flashing with intermittent lights. LED generator tubings were the only other sources of light. In the center of the bridge stood a navigational station with a large wheel that was more pretense than purpose, a direct homage to seafaring days on ancestral Earth. Under better conditions and circumstances, the entire cabin would have been charming with its rustic, inlaid wood paneling and navigational equipment that could have been lifted from an ancient eighteenth-century schooner. Kira could almost imagine an old sea dog in his long frock and tricorne cap helming his wheel and nodding orders to his sea mates. It was charming, but it also heralded, much to Kira's dismay, the type of cargo such a ship would be ferrying across high seas. The thought of it left her unsettled. Despite the future the Beta settlements held within their grasp, far too many pointed their eyes insensibly toward the past.

There were no sea dogs or mates on this ship. Only the gunners, who stood in the background fondling the barrels of their automatics which hung from straps around their shoulders; a tall, burly man with a thick beard and an even surlier manner; another man, older, thin, and bespectacled with silver hair and a gentle, soft-spoken demeanor; and standing beside him a young woman with short pink hair and a perpetually confused, frightened look on her light-skinned face. Only the bearded man, the one Kira assumed was in charge, stood in front of them. He held his face close to theirs so that there was no mistaking the stench of stale coffee and mints on his breath. He squeezed one eye shut and demanded answers.

"Step aside, Jeth," said the other burly gunner. "I'll get 'em talking."

"You'll do no such thing," said the silver-haired man. "Do you know what this thing is?" He widened his eyes and shook his long, white finger at the Z'Dhia.

Mister cocked his head toward him. "I am not a thing."

Silence fell among the crew as they exchanged surprised and amused looks. The one called Jeth grinned sarcastically, nodding. "So he can talk."

"Of course, he can talk," Kira said, unamused.

Jeth leaned in close again, causing Kira to turn her nose away from him. "So why don't you answer a few questions then? Who are you and how did you get on this ship?"

Kira reached for her badge on her utility belt. The two gunners trained their weapons on her, while the two civilians gasped and clapped their hands to their mouths. Jeth scowled at the two gunners, ordering them silently with his eyes to stand down. Reluctantly, after exchanging looks, they lowered their weapons. Kira jerked the badge from the clip and held it above her head. Jeth snatched it from her and examined it. After a few moments of perusing its information, he wrinkled his brow and looked at her again.

"So you're from IPPA."

"IPPA!" cried the silver-haired man. He snatched the badge from Jeth and examined it himself.

Kira recited her name and badge number, then introduced the Z'Dhia. She informed them that they were on a mission to recover a volume stolen from his people. They had authorization to be on the ship. For good measure, she recited all the IPPA regulations they were violating, most importantly unlawfully apprehending and interfering with the duties of an authorized agent in the field. Jeth scratched his beard, while his crew flashed apprehensive looks. Only the soft-spoken, silver-haired man scrutinized them skeptically.

"How could an artifact from Idris-Sarra be onboard this ship?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Mister replied.

"This is the Beta system," he said, stepping forward. "This is quite outside your domain."

"No domain is outside my domain."

"You still haven't answered my question," Jeth said, still scratching his beard. "How'd you get onboard this ship?"

"That's irrelevant," Kira said, snatching her badge back from the silver-haired man. "What I want to know is: Who are you?"

Jeth smiled ironically, then introduced himself. "I'm Captain Jethro Braecker, owner of the Braecker Repo and Salvage Co." He nodded to his employees. "Vin Cutler, systems engineer." The burly man nodded. "And Mollie Ramirez, the pilot." He glanced at the silver-haired man. "And that's my client Mr. Thomas O. Selden, and company."

"Ms. Willis," the pink-haired woman sniffled. "My name is Ms. Lavetta Willis."

Kira locked eyes with Thomas O. Selden. "You own this ship."

"I hired the Braecker Repo & Salvage Co. to salvage it," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with stiff formality. "I invested quite heavily in this liner, and I'm not about to give it up. My assistant, Ms. Willis, Mr. Lukaçz, my engineer, and I accompanied them on this job so we could inspect the damages and see whether it was worth salvaging. We boarded the shuttle from their hauling vessel and came onboard. That was when we were attacked."

"By those things," she said, glancing at Capt. Jeth Braecker. "Out there?" Braecker nodded solemnly. "Okay, I want to know everything that happened."

Kira sat down again as they launched into a full account of what happened. Before they boarded the shuttle, their ship's sensors detected lifeforms on the Excelsior, which was impossible since every passenger on the liner had been rescued by IPSF after it was damaged by the solar storm. "At first, we thought there were pirates onboard," said Braecker. Though piracy wasn't common in the Beta system, the problem was rearing its head here and there. Only the year before, pirates hijacked one of Selden's liners. They took off with a very pretty loot, he said. His face scrunched up sourly as he added: "Of course, IPPA continues to dawdle on its hind legs about it."

Insulted by his accusation, Kira drew in her breath, then told Braecker to continue.

While his ship's sensors picked up lifeforms onboard, their communication lines were getting, in his words, "screwy." It detected weird signals that the computer's data couldn't translate.

"They were high-pitched signals," Ramirez cut in. "We thought it might have been some kind of interstellar interference, but they were coming from the ship."

"Signals?" Mister looked at Kira.

"That's what I thought," Braecker said. "Probably encrypted messages from pirates. That's when I decided to board the vessel and see what the hell was going on."

"And you decided to join them?" Kira addressed Mr. Selden and Miss Willis.

"I needed a status report on the ship's condition. I couldn't very well trust that to these…gentlemen." Mr. Selden glanced at the three crew mates. "No offense."

"None taken," Ramirez snarled, then rolled her eyes.

The entire crew and passengers boarded the shuttle and traveled an hour's length before they reached the Excelsior. The shuttle docked at a trapdoor beneath the vessel near the forward bow. It was also easier to reach the engine room and the bridge from that sector and, besides, given that, with the ship's operating systems down, there was no gravity onboard for their ship to dock in the cargo bay anyway. Once inside, they took an access ladder up to the top deck, but when they reached the passageway outside the bridge, the strange ice creatures attacked them. That was when Lukaçz, Selden's engineer, was killed.

None of the survivors knew exactly how it happened, except that Lukaçz got curious and tried to find out what the ice creatures were when they attacked him.

"It happened so fast," Ramirez said with a shrug. "He was dead within seconds."

"But that's not what happened," Ms. Willis whimpered, glancing at one and then another of the crew mates.

Mr. Selden squeezed his eyes at her. "Ms. Willis…we discussed this."

"That's not what happened. You can't make me pretend, sir."

Kira furrowed her brow. "Pretend what?"

"Look," said Braecker, "it happened in a flash. Nobody––"

Kira raised her hand to silence the captain, then gestured for Ms. Willis to continue. She faced Kira and Mister, her eyes huge and red. "When we were in the passageway and came on these…things, they just stood there…watching us. We couldn't see them clearly because it was dark, but we knew they were there. Our sensors were picking them up. Henry––that's Mr. Lukaçz––he thought…they might have been some sort of ice formation. They stood so still. He started to reach out and touch it––"

"Then they attacked him," Kira finished gently.

"No, they didn't attack him," she blurted out. "They seemed curious, like they were wondering who we were and how we got there. Then Ramirez yelled at him to stop…and that was when…the things…they moved toward Henry. He turned to look back at us and…they moved and that was when…when they opened fire." She looked at Braecker and his crew. "Lukaçz wasn't dead when they started shooting."

"Are you accusing us of something?" Ramirez shouted. "You saying we murdered Lukaçz?" She started toward Ms. Willis, but Braecker put an arm out and prevented her from moving any closer. "You wanna blame somebody, blame your boss. He was the one who kept shouting at us to shoot. He was the one who started it!"

"Now, just wait a minute here," Mr. Selden interjected.

"Nobody's being accused of nothing," Braecker said. "Those things were gonna attack. We opened fire, and that's that. We were defending ourselves."

"Is that what happened, Mr. Selden?" Kira asked.

"How the hell should I know? It was dark. It was like they said––it happened so fast." Ms. Willis shot him a look. "Look, Lukuçz was a good man, a very good engineer. It's a terrible shame what happened, but we are alive and the only thing we can do now is to save this ship from…those things…whatever they are."

"Save this ship," Ramirez spat. "Is that all you can think about?"

"You have something else that's worthy of thought?" said Mister. He still sat at the control panels, legs crossed. 


Ramirez wheeled on him. "Yeah, like figuring out how to get off this ship and get back home!"

"How?" Kira asked.

"I don't know," she cried. "Blow it to kingdom come. I don't care. I just wanna get back home."

"Now, wait a minute," said Mr. Selden. "Let's not get hasty. If these things are made of ice, then surely there must be a less drastic way to get rid of them."

"I already told you," said Ramirez, "they're not made of ice, they just look like ice."

"Nobody's blowing up anything until I'm promised my percentages," Braecker interrupted, eying Ramirez and Mr. Selden. "Got it."

Ramirez shook her head. "You're just as crazy as he is."

The survivors of the crew fell into an argument, one Kira was certain hadn't been the first since they boarded the Excelsior. She rejoined Mister at the control panel and sat down. After a few seconds, she reached out to him psionically. She was absolutely certain that Lukaçz was not killed by these creatures, but was a victim of friendly fire. Ms. Willis' account was too heartfelt, too certain to be a matter of confusion in the line of battle. As an IPPA agent, she was duty-bound to investigate further and write it up in her report.

––It looks like we may have stumbled into an investigation. She looked at Mister and smiled halfheartedly.

The teams' varied responses didn't surprise her. Though she had never been to Beta-3, she had heard reports of the conditions there and how they were changing the culture of the settlements. Beta-3 was an industrial planet. Its rich minerals were mined and processed to send back to Beta-1 and -2. An entire economic culture was built around it. Selden's cruise lines were only one of many enterprises that had built up around the economy. The local government was rather lax when it came to the type of licenses given to public and private corporations, more so than the governments on Beta-1 and Beta-2. How and why an industrial planet needed a line of leisure cruises was possibly one of the few questions that weren't considered in approving the license.

Debates over the irrevocable harm industrialization was having on the planet's ecosystem had raged over the past few decades. Legislators wrote and even passed laws to protect it, but industrialists, who had begun setting up shops on the planet to give them more leeway to build and strengthen the Beta system's economy, pushed back. These were the old ways, the ways of her ancestral planet, but not the Beta system, and yet they seemed to be headed on a crash course back to once-discarded old habits. The salvage crew was, on a microcosm, a window seat onto those old ways.

Mister breathed deeply.––My only concern right now is getting Volume 51.

Kira looked at him. As always, his single-mindedness was extraordinary. No distractions allowed.

"Enough! Shut up!" Braecker's raspy voice cut through the babble. The bridge fell into an abrupt silence, and all eyes turned to him. "Look," he said, "there's no point in arguing. We need to pull together and figure out how to get back to the shuttle."

That, as Cutler pointed out, was easier said than done. The ship's engineering systems had been severely damaged by the solar storm and years of corrosion. The crew patched through to its generator systems from the bridge, but only on a rolling basis. A sector here, a sector there. That didn't give them much of a chance to get back to the shuttle without running into those creatures.

"You notice they favor the dark," Braecker said to Kira. "That's what we're dealing with."

The salvage crew tried to figure out what kind of creatures they were dealing with, but their own data wasn't very useful. They'd never seen anything like them before. Creatures that appeared to be made of ice, but weren't, lurked in the darkness and feared the light. There were too many of them to fight on their own with the few weapons they had. The only real weapon was light, but the ship was stubbornly withholding that from them. They were lucky to have continuous lighting in the bridge, but they didn't know how long the localized generator system would last. They needed to get back to the Cygnus, Braecker's hauling ship.

"Our best bet is generating the lighting grid from the engineering room."

"So why don't you do that?" Kira asked, eyeing them each.

"That whole sector's blocked off," Cutler chuffed. "We're better off just shooting our way back to the shuttle."

"And run out of ammunition along the way," Ramirez added, darting her eyes nervously. "I'm not about to get killed on a mission to save a piece of junk."

"Then you shouldn't use your ammunition at all," Mister interjected. "Clearly, these creatures are intelligent."

"Intelligent!" Cutler blurted. "Those things?"

"Yes, those things." He emphasized the word with a deep snarl, reminding everyone when he had been referred to as such. He stood and moved toward the navigational station. "You said earlier that the signals you received from the Excelsior might be encrypted. Did you consider that these signals might be from these creatures instead?"

Everyone exchanged looks. It had never occurred to anyone, least of all Kira, that that might be the case.

"Impossible," Selden stated. Braecker shook his head, while Ramirez rolled her eyes.

"Are you saying those things were talking to us?" said Cutler.

"Those things," he said, "were as interested in you as you were in them."

"Those things killed my engineer," Selden shouted. It was the first time he raised his voice. He didn't seem like the sort that needed to raise his voice, but the Z'Dhia was clearly testing his patience.

Mister looked at his assistant. "According to Ms. Willis, they were. Is that not correct?"

Ms. Willis glanced at her boss, then nodded.

Cutler chortled. "Well, why don't we leave her in charge, since she's got all the answers?"

"The only person in charge here is me," Braecker stated, jabbing his chest with his thumb.

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Kira asked.

Flustered, the captain fell silent.

Mister removed The Key from the clip of his utility belt and scrolled across it. Kira asked what he was doing.

"Searching for a line of frequency," he replied, eyes cast down on the instrument. "The creatures, whoever they are, communicated at high-frequency levels. If I can open a line of communication, I might be able to find out who they are, what they want, and whether they can be reasoned with."

"Reasoned with?" Selden said and pointed to the Z'Dhia. "He's certifiably insane."

"What's so insane about wanting to communicate?" Kira threw back at him. "Maybe if you all considered that in the first place you wouldn't be in the situation you're in now."

"Whoa, hold on there," said Braecker. "How were we supposed to know they were trying to communicate with us? We still don't know. All we've got is this guy's speculations. We did the best we could under the circumstances."

"And yet Henry is dead," Ms. Willis said with quiet conviction.

"You'll be dead if you don't zip it," said Cutler.

She shook her head. "I'm not afraid of you."

"Oh, you will be––"

"Stop it," Kira shouted. "All of you."

Silence fell again on the bridge. After a few moments, Kira asked Mister if he honestly thought they could communicate with the creatures.

He trained her with a penetrating stare.––I could sense them reaching out to me when we were in the ballroom. They wanted to communicate, but they were afraid we'd do them harm. I don't think this, Valestria, I know.

Kira breathed in deeply. Valestria was her middle name. It was the name he chose to call her, the name she chose to accept from him, just as he accepted the name she chose for him: Mister. It was the custom of Idris-Sarran people to call each other by the names they had chosen, the names which bonded them together. They had no one name because all names were their names. Only names spoken out of hate and anger were unnatural, illogical, and therefore unacknowledged. As he whispered her name in her head, she sensed the confidence and conviction in his voice.

She trusted his convictions.

"If communicating with them will save lives," she said, "then I see no reason why we shouldn't. At least we should find out who or what we're dealing with here."

Braecker scowled. "Sounds like you're the one in charge."

Kira removed her badge again. "Yeah," she said. "I am."

This is an excerpt from the exciting new adventures in The Book of Dreams series. Check out the rest of the story for free from Kobo.com and Barnes&Noble. The origin story, The Book of Dreams, is also available at Kobo.com and Amazon.com.