Death, Stars, and Potatoes

The blue star beat down on Jaimie’s back. A slow trickle of sweat drew across her neck as she plodded through sprouting potato plants, stooping occasionally to pull out a weed. Jaimie's dark and bushy eyebrows were furrowed in examination, framing eyes that darted back and forth with an intense focus. This was the first time they’d managed to keep a crop field growing out here, and she’d spent countless hours under the sun, obsessing over every single plant. A few neat rows of vibrant green leaves had finally sprung from the dry, gray-brown soil, and they rustled slightly as Jaimie's hands brushed through them. The ache in her back was getting worse, adding to the dull but ever-present hammering of the star overhead. She could really use a break, some shade, and some water. 'Not so different from a plant sometimes' she thought to herself.

Just like Jaimie and the 3 other survivors, these plants were only barely scraping by. Farming out here was much harder than the survival manuals suggested. There was so much to learn, and the guides couldn’t account for all the planets its unlucky reader might be stranded on. All the environments and unique challenges they’d face. ‘Like this damned heat’, thought Jaimie as she drew a hand across her sweat-slicked brow, stretched out her stiff back, and walked towards the shade of the mountain. Before crossing the edge of the field, she stopped and picked a single potato out of the ground, removing its stem and leaves. It could go a bit longer and grow even bigger, but she felt a sudden urge to show off her work to the other colonists. ‘We could use the morale boost’ she thought to herself.

The conditions on this planet were livable enough for human civilization, but only barely. A slow rotation - 10 hours slower than earth standard - meant wildly fluctuating temperatures. It made for hard farming, and Jaimie wouldn’t have chosen to be here. She hadn’t chosen in fact, as the sun-bleached remains of the escape pod on the mountain ahead evidenced. She and three other survivors had crash-landed on this world over a year ago, on this barely populated, pre-industrial forgotten world, out on the far edge of settled human space. No mineral deposits, no communications network, no proper colonies… ‘At least there’s farmable soil’, thought Jaimie, as the taste of dry survival rations and sticky nutrient-paste came to mind. But to draw food from that soil had taken most of her time. Countless days and nights spent testing different combinations of genetic splices, seed distributions, and fertilizers. In the end, all it took was the humble, hardy potato, crossed with parts of a water-retaining strain of bulgur wheat. The harvest would probably be her proudest moment in decades, but for now Jaimie was just grateful to slip into the cool shade of the large mountain above, sighing with relief.

She creaked opened a rickety wooden door in the towering rock face, and stepped inside to the rough-hewn base that they called home. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, her shoulders relaxed, and a soft, cool breeze brushed past her eager face.

“Potatoes still there? Haven’t flown away have they?”

Jaimie ignored the questions, focusing instead on the sheer pleasure of room temperature. Her eyes were closed, and her face tilted slowly to catch the ceiling fan blowing across her head and neck, but the bliss was broken by further questions.

“How long were you out there this time? And when are you gonna help Vanya and me secure the perimeter?”

The questions came from Omisha of course. Jaimie’s face stayed as neutral as the stone walls around her, as she walked up to the table Omisha sat at. Rolling out of her hand was the small potato, flecks of earthen dirt trailing its path across the table.

“They’re still there, and they’re doing great,” Jaimie said, breathing deeply to suppress frustration. “It’ll be a few more weeks, and then I can help you with the perimeter. There’s no point protecting us if we’re going to die of hunger right?”

Omisha picked up the potato, brushing off some more of the dirt and sniffing it. He looked tired, stretched thin. Lines had developed on his face, deeper than even a few months ago, and gray hairs were winning their battle against the native black strands on his head. Jaimie knew it had been a hard year, harder than any of them had signed up for. Still, the shell Omisha had built around himself cracked sometimes, including now, as he held the potato up to the light above them and mumbled softly to himself.

“Well goddamn, you did it Jaimie. Well done.”

Vanya came around the corner and deposited herself onto a chair, her eyes lighting up with curiosity as she stared at the potato in Omisha’s hand.

“What is that?!” she asked before poking the potato softly. 

Jaimie smiled and answered simply, “a potato”, wondering if Vanya knew what that meant. Vanya was the youngest member of the group at 19 years old. Young enough to still be considered a juvenile on some of the more advanced inner planets. She was Omisha’s daughter, and had spent the last 10 years with him on a merchant moon in the middle systems, living a thoroughly middle-class life. The kind of life that didn’t require knowing what a “potato” was. A life that didn’t prepare you well for a castaway life on a rim-world. And yet, Vanya had adjusted surprisingly well to the change of circumstances. Better than her father anyway, who still held on to his dreams of the cushy bureaucratic position in their original destination's colony.

“This, Vanya, is our future” Omisha said theatrically, lifting the potato even higher in the air. 

Vanya snickered, and readied more questions to feed her perpetual curiosity. She was interrupted by a crackle from the radio on Omisha’s hip. A voice, roughened from years of tobacco use as well as the radio’s tiny speaker, sounded through the room:

“Is anyone there? Respond please, please respond.”

Omisha thumbed the radio off his belt and into his palm.

“Omisha here, what’s up?”

The reply sounded tense, even through the small speaker. 

“I just found something… You’re gonna want to come down here, you and anyone else listening in, come down here quick. This is… yeah just come down.”

#

They found her sitting on the ground inside the mine entrance, right where the packed dirt gave way to cold stone. Her back rested against the rough-hewn walls, head slightly turned away from the cave opening they were ducking in through. A pickaxe lay next to her, her left hand rhythmically rubbing against the hilt.

“What’s going on?” Omisha asked as he lowered his head and stepped through the entrance, “Taylor are you alright?”

Taylor turned towards them, then pointed ahead.

“Over there, around the corner from where we’ve been digging, I found something… different.”

Omisha squinted ahead and walked to the other side of the cave, followed by his daughter. Jaimie squatted down next to Taylor and placed a hand her shoulder.

“Hey, Taylor, can you look at me for a sec?”

With Taylor now looking right at her, Jaimie plucked a flashlight from her belt and shone it in her eyes. Taylor blinked and looked away. But not before Jaimie saw her pupils constricting at a normal rate. ‘Temperature seems ok too’, Jaimie thought as she placed a hand on Taylor’s forehead.

“No I’m fine,” Taylor said while gently pulling Jaimie’s hand away, “really I’m fine. It’s not me, it’s what I found, it’s -”

“What the fuck is that Taylor?”

The question echoed from Omisha further down the cave, his question tinged more with concern than anger. Footsteps followed the question, and soon Omisha stood over Taylor, looking at her with quiet concern in his face.

“I don’t know, how should I know!” she threw back defensively.

Jaimie stood up and demanded an explanation. Omisha drew a deep breath, seeming to steady himself somewhat, and answered:

“We’re sure there’s no advanced tribes or remnants of civilization still on this planet right? We’re the most technologically capable people here right? Well… we might need to revise that theory.” 

Omisha shifted his weight to the other foot and grabbed a handful of his hair, a nervous tick he’d developed since the crash-landing.

“It looks like Taylor just found a wall, a tomb, or a building of some kind, made from a smooth synthetic material I’ve never seen before. It’s gotta be old pre-war tech, but there’s not a scratch on it. There’s some kind of buttons and knobs and things on it, so maybe it’s a machine of some kind.”

“I think it’s a door,” said Vanya, now appearing at her father’s side, “but I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to open it…”

“What makes you think it’s a door?” asked Jaimie

“There’s a few seams that look like they could open up. Plus I saw some text in a few different languages. The only one I can read says ‘Lock 3a: opens inwards’”

“Yes that sure sounds like a door… why not open it?”

“Well, the only thing that looks out of place is a bunch of leather straps, which are tied around the knob that I assume would open it”

Taylor laughed slightly then, a dry and nervous sound that came out forced and unnatural. She looked up at Vanya and asked:

“So you haven’t touched it yet have you? Have any of you? No? Well go ahead, then you’ll see why we should let it be, and get this whole fucking cave entrance closed as soon as possible.”

Vanya volunteered to try, with only some nervousness. After her shocked scream and sudden tears, Omisha and Jaimie felt no desire to do the same.

#

It took another half hour before Vanya and Taylor recovered from the psychic shock the door had left on them. They sat around the dinner table while questions, plans, and more questions passed between them, but the only thing they could agree on was that the local tribe must know more. The leather straps were a few years old, a few decades at most, and the psychic imprint the door had left on them was not easy to forget. Taylor insisted they close the cave entrance immediately, but Omisha argued that something worth protecting with such a strong psychic pulse generator would also be worth investigating.

Jaimie agreed, given what she knew about the use of that kind of technology in the high-tech inner worlds. Even there it was rare to find a generator that could produce such a strong emotional response. Maybe there was other powerful technology hidden away in there too? Perhaps even a way off of this planet, or an interstellar comms device, or at least something to explain how they’d gotten so far off course and crashed here at all… absolutely worth investigating.

A trader from the tribe was due to pass through their camp later that day, and the colonists agreed to wait and ask them their questions. Several fretful hours later, the sounds of pack-donkeys echoed through the valley, signaling the arrival of the trade caravan. Jaimie rushed out to see the local tribe’s shaman cresting the hill with a few other tribe members and pack animals, before settling down in the shade of a nearby line of bushes. ‘Just who I wanted to see’ thought Jaimie as she strolled over to him.

“They are coming along nicely serah” said the shaman to Jaimie, nodding approvingly at the potato plants sprouting from the dusty ground ahead of him.

“Thanks, I think we’re gonna be ok for food this season. Finally.”

The shaman snorted approvingly, and kept staring at the field.

“You know, this is the first time I see so much food growing in one place. Even the other tribes over the mountain have nothing like this. You bring miracles with you from the stars serah.”

“Not a miracle, just potatoes. If it works out, we can trade some with you next season. I’ll show you how to plant them too, they’re easy to grow at this point. The hard part’s done, they’ll practically plant themselves now.”

The shaman didn’t look away from the potato field as he nodded slowly. Jaimie had never seen him stare at anything with such intent, but it wasn’t surprising. He knew first-hand how difficult food production was out here. His tribe had struggled with hunger for generations, long before the colonists had crash-landed here. The desire she saw in his eyes was more than simple hunger. It was a desire for deliverance. One she hoped to satiate soon enough.

Jaimie had known the shaman for most of the year now. He was one of the first from the local tribe to come out to meet them. He cut a striking figure in his dusty leather and cloth wraps, adorned with the antlers and bone trinkets of various local fauna. Probably pushing 60, and a head shorter than Jaimie, like most of the humans they’d seen here. His features were gaunt, and his sun-dried skin stretched tight over bone and sinew, but his joy was undeniable. Jaimie liked him, and he evidently enjoyed spending time with the colonists. “You all are a crack in the window of heaven,” he’d confided to Jaimie once over a shared smokeleaf pipe, “and if heaven’s driftwood can live among us, why not we among them some day?”

Jaimie shook her head to clear that pleasant memory, and looked up to see the shaman smiling warmly at her from his portable stool.

“You do not look well serah. Your body does well, but the mind drifts. Very unlike you. Is there something you need to discuss? Yes, you want to talk, I see it.” He turned to one of the tribe-members staking a donkey’s leash to the ground and said:

“They do not need any trade today. Good we did not bring the extra goods yes?”

He looked back at Jaimie with a twinkle in his eye and asked:

"Unless you want to share some of these... 'potatoes' with us?"

She smiled and shook her head.

"Next season, once we've fed ourselves, promise!"

Jaimie sat down on the floor next to him, the bush’s shade only providing a slight relief for her already sweat-sprung back.

“You're right, there is something I need to ask you about. You know we’ve been mining out stone right, to build some barriers along the perimeter?”

The shaman gestured circularly with his hand, a local signal Jaimie understood as something like ‘yes I know’. She continued:

“We kept going, into that cave over there, and we found something… weird.”

The shaman was silent, his foot suddenly tapping at the floor for a few seconds before he clapped his knees and sucked a sharp breath in through his teeth.

“Serah I confess. We know what you found, and we knew you would find it.”

Jaimie looked up at his face, shocked to feel so tricked and betrayed.

“Please serah let me explain. This thing you found… it is not from here. Just like you. So we thought it best you meet it alone, without confusion from us.”

Jaimie had nothing to say to that. The logic was consistent with what she knew about the shaman and his tribe. Their deference to any and all off-planet tech had made for some great bartering opportunities in the past year. Still, this was the first time that this deference had left her feeling so alone, as she was suddenly reminded of the wide gulf between their worlds.

He saw Jaimie's emotions clearly, plastered all across her face, and he offered a few more words with regret:

“I am sorry that we did this serah. We did not know you well then, and I would choose differently today… I will choose differently today. I will help you.” He turned abruptly to his left and whistled a three note melody at the other tribe members, huddled in the shade of a different bush. One of them stood and shuffled slowly over to Jaimie, then sat down opposite her.

“This is Iartu,” said the shaman, “he will help you. He opened the door and looked in the darkness inside, before closing it and wrapping it closed with strong hide-rope.”

“He opened the door?” Jaimie said with a start, looking at the boy in front of her in surprise.

“Yes serah, others tried but felt fear and coldness. He does not feel the cold, and can touch the door without any pain.”

“What did you find inside?” Jaimie asked the boy, but he didn’t answer her, looking instead at the shaman with a quiet expression.

“He cannot speak,” said the shaman, “but he understands. It’s a curse he was gifted with since birth.”

The young boy in front of her nodded before looking down at the ground.

“But serah there was very little for him to see. It was dark inside, so he closed it again, and locked it with hides when we asked. What he saw, he cannot tell us. But maybe he can help you, if you want to see what is inside.”

#

The shaman and his tribe members, minus one, all left for home as the sun fell towards the horizon. The boy sat next to the potato field for a while watching them inch away over the hills at the end of the valley.

“I think he’s psychically dull,” said Omisha while staring at the boy from the other side of the field. “I’ll bet he can’t feel any psychic generators, negative or positive. Maybe it’s the same thing that makes him unable to speak.” Jaimie stood next to him and shifted her weight uncomfortably.

“Yeah I agree, about the psychically dull part anyway. I don’t want to speculate about the other thing… but you know that does give me an idea: this tribe always carries a little smokeleaf on them right?”

“Yep. Explains a lot about their behavior I think.”

Ignoring his comment, Jaimie continued:

“If we take it in a small dose, mixed with some neutroamine from our medical kits, I’m pretty sure it’d block our psychic receptors, same as his. We could take some and explore what’s behind the door without dealing with that generator's psychic bullshit.”

“I don’t know how that works, but if it works, I’m in.” Omisha frowned at the boy and said, “I don’t like having to rely on the locals so much though. They give me the creeps.”

Jaimie rolled her eyes at him, wondering how he’d ever passed the personality evaluations for colony fitness.

“You go roundup the others then” Jaimie said, “while I prep the smokeleaf. It’ll only take me a few minutes.”

“Right now? You want to do this now?”

“Why not? We should get this over with. Taylor’s getting jumpy, and keeping the boy here with us while we waste time seems unfair. He’s clearly missing his home already.”

Omisha pursed his lips in disapproval but said nothing as he moved inside to find Taylor and Vanya.

Jaimie meanwhile made her way over to the boy Iartu, and after some back and forth (words from Jaimie, hand signals from the boy), she finally cajoled him out of a little smokeleaf. The prep work was done quickly using some of their medkit’s supply of neutroamine, and soon everyone stood at the cave entrance, ready to face whatever was inside. Taylor silently handed out the weapons that had come with their escape pod: a revolver for Jaimie, rifle for Omisha, and knife for Taylor. Vanya and the boy stood empty handed, with Vanya seeming unfazed, and the boy staring in fascination at each weapon in their hands. His tribe had definitely seen guns before, perhaps even handled some, but it was unlikely that the boy himself had ever been this close to one.

Taylor signaled for each of them to check their weapons, her own nervous tick of wrist-scratching now on full display.

“Hey, it’ll be alright. We’re not gonna feel anything this time. Or not as much anyway” Jaimie assured Taylor.

“Sure,” mumbled Taylor in reply, “that’s not what I’m fucking worried about but sure.”

Omisha clicked his magazine back into the rifle, a bit harder than necessary, most likely to underscore the moment.

“Let’s go” he said and immediately turned and ducked into the cave entrance.

The cave looked just as it always did, thought Jaimie, though it had never felt so different. Uneven juts of rock cast sharp and unexpected shadows across the room, absorbing the light from the sunset outside and the single bright LED spotlight in the corner of the cave. Knowing what was at the end of the cave now gave every shadow a very different character. Even with the numbing sensation of her smokeleaf concoction, the ominous psychic waves emanating from the door were tugging at the edge of her mind.

Or were they?

Maybe that’s just residual smokeleaf anxiety?

Or maybe they didn’t take enough.

What if she prepared it wrong?

“OK.” Omisha said, breaking Jaimie’s ruminations. He stood next to the door, meeting each of their eyes with his, and deliberately adopted a relaxed posture.

“For all we know, there’s a birthday surprise party waiting for us at the other side of this door. We got this.”

“I’m gonna be sick” Taylor said in reply, suppressing a dry heave while the others got in line behind Omisha. “I can’t do this. I’m not going in there,” she added.

The pleading edge in her voice echoed down the cave with her words, and mixed with Omisha’s frustrated sigh.

“We’re not stopping here Taylor, we have to do this now, while we still have that smokeleaf stuff working on us.”

Taylor turned away from them, a hand covering her mouth again.

“That’s ok, we should leave someone out here anyway, just in case” Jaimie interjected. The boy looked up at her then and pointed at himself, which prompted Omisha to quickly reply:

“Fine, that makes sense. Taylor you stay out here, keep an eye on the outside here… and on the kid” he added, glancing awkwardly at the boy who’s expression hadn’t changed in a disconcertingly long time.

“Here give me the knife” Vanya said while loosening it from Taylors grip. Her fingers grasped the knife gently at first, then tightened playfully around the hilt. Looking around and seeing the others losing momentum, Vanya suddenly turned to the door, and cut the leather straps on the handle in two quick swipes. Grinning, she looked at the knife with a new respect, while her father needed a few seconds to compose the shock off of his face. He nodded then and made for the door. Each of them aimed their weapons as Omisha slowly, painstakingly, touched, then turned the handle one way, and the other.

A small hiss escaped from the door, causing everyone to flinch. It fell silent again. Nothing happened for just long enough that Jaimie wondered if this was the tribe’s first prank on them. Then a sudden crescendo of sound: slow metal clanks and mechanical whirs brought the door to life. It moved in and smoothly shifted right, revealing a dark entryway, with the hint of a corridor further inside.

Holding the revolver steady in her right hand, Jaimie’s left hand found the flashlight on her belt and shone it across the entryway in an arc. The shadows melted away into a long hallway. Jaimie’s light moved over smooth clean walls, dotted with more doorways, until it settled on a sign just inside to the left, stuck on top of a gray metal plate. Again, text in several languages, including one they all recognized: ‘Airlock 1b’

“Oh fuck…” Omisha whispered, looking up and around the open door. “It’s a goddamn ship.”

#

“Got something down here!”

Jaimie turned towards Vanya’s excited words down the hallway. They’d started off whispering and moving achingly slowly, but got louder and more emboldened as they cleared more and more rooms. Especially once they’d found the light controls and returned the ship to its intended bright interior. Soft white-blue light now flowed down each smooth wall from recessed strips in the ceiling. The long hallway cut down from the door they’d come in (a docking airlock, Omisha suggested), and through the spine of the whole ship. Staggered on both sides were the rooms they were steadily exploring. The finds so far included empty sleeping pods, tubs with the withered fossilized remains of various plants, a possible algae tub, and one room with opened plastic crates marked “rations”, all emptied out. Other than the dead plants and empty crates of rations, the ship looked like new. Like it could have been built yesterday, by one of the ruinously rich inner-world corporations. Jaimie marveled at each room despite the lack of noteworthy finds. Their previous fears had faded almost completely, and Vanya’s excited shouting filled the ship with renewed life.

“This one isn’t empty! Come on, get down here!”

Jaimie jogged down the corridor with Omisha close behind, both barreling into another smooth white room where Vanya stood triumphantly pointing at an opened metal lid on the wall.

“It was still closed when I got here! I pried it open with the knife” she said through a wide smile. Opening the lid further, she pulled out a squat red box with one large white “X” painted on each side.

“Wow wait, give that to me” Jaimie exclaimed, and turned the box over a few times.

“This is incredible, a pre-war medpack!”

“And?” asked Omisha with some confusion.

“And, it’s several times better than anything I’ve handled before. Even in the best inner-world hospitals this would be a rare find… One of these could practically grow an arm back, or cure a congenital heart defect without a single incision on your skin.”

Omisha whistled in admiration, and quickly looked around for more of the metal lids, then turned to his daughter.

“Well done Vanya, I was beginning to think this was just one big let down... I think that kid out there did more than just poke his head in. Several crates of rations don’t just empty themselves, a haul like that would take us years to eat through.”

Vanya nodded and added: “Also, those empty racks in the first room? That’s where I’d store weapons if I had to. If the local tribe got hold of those… it explains why all the other tribes stay on the other side of the mountain.”

Jaimie hated to hear this kind of talk about the tribe, their allies! Though it was starting to make sense… The ship was clean, immaculate even. No signs of fire, decompression or other ill fate. But at the same time, it was picked clean of all obviously useful supplies. Jaimie filed her thoughts away for later, when she’d confront the boy over it, and if necessary the shaman too. There was still more they needed to share about this place.

The next notable finds were a few technical manuals stuffed in a footlocker, a solar charger pack, and a stack of entertainment data chips (not so useful without an accompanying screen to play them with). The ship had one final secret to share in the very last room of the hallway, just past the staircase that was blocked by a few heavy crates they’d clear later. 

The final room in the hallway appeared to be the ship’s bridge, and here they found the first signs of damage to the ship. The front of the room, formerly a rounded cone of some kind, had flattened out completely into itself, presumably during its impact into and then through the mountain. A few consoles and other now unrecognizable tech were mangled in the crash, but the first section of the room closest to the hallway was still intact. And the entire ship was intact! What kind of engineering could build a ship that survives head-on collisions into mountains with just a broken nose? Jaimie couldn’t wrap her head around it. It neared the realm of miracle, but still the ship was clearly made by and for humans. They’d found a human sized bed, with a drained entertainment reader embedded in the wall. The toilets took a while to figure out, but were still clearly designed for human use, as were the hip-height sinks and tables. And the one surviving console screen in this room, not engulfed by the pancake of broken metal and wiring up front, had a soft seat in front of it that automatically adjusted its height as Jaimie sat in it. 

The blank console was as wide as one outstretched arm, and clean white except for one rust colored stain in the top right corner. Jaimie tapped at the screen and yelped shortly in surprise as a dim glow emanated from it, drawing the attention of the others. Omisha and Vanya hurried over, with Vanya almost crowding Jaimie out of her seat in excitement.

“Hey it works! How do we connect with it?!” Vanya said as she started tapping the screen in different places.

“Ah it’s responding!! And here I think I can change the language right… here!”

Jaimie moved over a bit to give Vanya’s wandering arms more room to maneuver across the wide screen.

“This looks interesting” Vanya mumbled almost to herself, before tapping something labeled “beacon log”.

The next screen took them a few minutes to decipher, but finally Omisha recognized the meaning of the different letters, numbers and lines all converging on a central point.

“It’s gotta be a ship beacon log. Each of those lines is another ship in local space that got picked up by this console. The numbers must be transponder codes… See if you can find our ship beacon, it’ll start with something like ‘CMD-’ and then a bunch of numbers.”

Vanya found a filter and typed it in. 5 different lines were now highlighted, each with a transponder code starting with ‘CMD-’.

Omisha’s face hardened in sudden realization.

“Those are all colonist ships, and they all crash-landed here in the last 20 years.”

His hand went for his head, absently pulling at his hair, as he continued.

“There’s no way that’s an accident. Even two ships crash-landing on a random backwater planet isn’t a coincidence. We must have been pulled in by something mid-transit... An old emergency protocol on this ship maybe? Shit!”

Jaimie could see in her trembling fingers that Vanya was getting upset, either by her father’s emotional outburst or by the same realization. She calmly asked Vanya to tap on something else they’d passed earlier, the ‘CC logs’. Finding it after a few taps, Vanya pulled up a much more easily understandable screen.

“Closed Circuit logs I’m guessing”, said Jaimie softly. “Here, how about the ‘Video’ one, let’s find out for sure who’s been taking stuff out of this ship. And now try ‘Highlights only - Motion activated’”

A few more taps and suddenly a familiar sight came on screen: a crash-landed colonist, but not any of them. He was still in his Colony-issued transport gear, and walked through the same hallway they’d just come through themselves. Deep breathing from Vanya now, and even Omisha stopped his pacing to stare at the screen.

The colonist on the screen stepped into the same room, the bridge, and after some looking around sat at the exact same console they were in now.

“Fucking freaky” Vanya said, and Jaimie wondered if that was the first time she’d heard the woman curse.

The colonist on the screen tapped around for a few minutes, and Jaimie was about to close the screen out to check other parts of the system, when a shadow lengthened onto the bridge on the video feed. The colonist looked suddenly at the door, said something inaudible and raised his hands. The shadow moved forward, a small figure in the large doorway. Jaimie leaned in, squinting. Could it be the kid Iartu?

They heard a soft ‘pop’ from the video, and the colonist slumped over, a red stain appearing on his version of the console.

For just a moment, complete silence, until Vanya looked up at the corner of their own console, saw the faded rust colored stain in the same place, and howled.

#

By the time they’d caught up to her, with Omisha emitting a steady stream of curses, Vanya was already halfway up the corridor back to the entrance. She was running faster now, and Jaimie grabbed a radio, yelling into it:

“Taylor! We found something bad, people died in here, we’re coming out. Keep your eyes open. And watch the kid!”

Another scream from Vanya, around the corner ahead, tinged with a deep fear she’d never heard from the young woman before.

“Taylor! Taylor please!”, pounding sounds then, hands hammering at a wall.

“Taylor pleeease open up… please, please Taylor, answer me!!”

Rounding the corner finally, Jaimie saw Omisha holding his daughter, slumped in front of a closed door, the same door they’d first entered. Jaimie raised the radio to her lips again and said clearly:

“Taylor. Do you hear me? Please respond. We need this door open, now.”

Over the soft sobs of Vanya in front of her, Jaimie could hear a faint echo of her radio message on the other side of the door, until it was cut short by a few quick smashing sounds: plastic casing being broken against a rock, then several voices conversing with each other in the local tribal language she’d never gotten to grips with.

Jaimie’s arms dropped to her side. The radio dropped out of her hand, and a deep pain overcame her mind. It clawed its way through her thoughts and choices, and plucked a single strange memory out of the depths: a strange thing the shaman had said to her once over a fireplace, chuckling at his own words and at the copious amounts of drugs in their systems.

“Ah serah, you look up always, with your eyes and with your mind. But the things that hurt us come from below! You forget that. You and your kind are star-born, but just like us all, we are buried in the dirt. So as long as you promise to bury me, I promise to bury you, in the ground, not in the stars. Safely in the ground, underneath us all.”