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Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

After almost a week of waiting to hear if Lloyd Carter would turn up or not it was a strange feeling to suddenly find him sitting in an office, drumming his fingers on a desk as he watched text scroll by on a computer screen. Twice as strange to realize that she’d never bothered to learn what he looked like. The beacon laying contract had been formalized via the Wayfinder’s Guild and the project assigned without her input. The news Carter was missing was delivered via a short databurst sent vial etheric. The business implications of having a burgeoning trade route undercut by a rival had seemed a lot more pressing then the details of who, exactly, had disappeared while expanding it. In short, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

The man was handsome. Good looking to the point of distraction, so much so that she got caught up in the angle of his jaw line and almost forgot to shake his hand. It was a strong, reassuring hand and she let go of it as fast as was humanly possible. Prolonged contact with this man was going to be dangerous. “Hello, Mr. Carter,” she said, speaking softly in an attempt to keep her voice from turning breathy. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Wen.” There was a rough, gravelly edge to his voice that was very pleasing. He offered her a chair then returned to where he’d been sitting before, straightening his heavy, leather jacket across his broad frame before taking his seat.

“I hear you’ve had a rough week. Unfortunately our efforts to help you didn’t pan out but I’m glad you managed to get back home one way or another.”

“That’s what we do, Miss Wen,” he said with a wry grin. “Being a Wayfinder is about finding your way, after all, and we don’t expect our employers to handle it for us. I appreciate the thought, though.”

She found herself nodding foolishly and forced herself to stop. She had no business feeling giddy because a handsome man said a few words of gratitude. “I regret that you’ve gotten caught up in some layer of subterfuge involving our company. Mr. Hammer told me about the people he found in your apartment when you met and I suspect they were working for one of our rivals. I assure you, we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re not in danger that way again.” She gestured to Malaki, eager to turn the conversation over to him and retreat to a safe distance. “This is Malaki Skorkowski, one of the best problem solvers I know. He had some questions he was hoping you could answer with an eye toward working out why they were there and whether you’re in any further danger.”

“I’m happy to answer but…” He hesitated, clearly uncertain of something, then made up his mind and said, “Well, go ahead and ask away. I don’t think I can help you much, though.”

“Not to worry,” Malaki said, slipping into the seat across from him. “The galaxy is full of people who thought they weren’t helping me when they were actually arranging for my greatest successes. Granted their intent was typically malicious. I’ll hope yours is not. However, regardless of your animating spirit, as long as you answer truthfully I am sure I can learn something.”

Carter gave him a skeptical look for a second then shrugged and said, “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the basics. Why didn’t you make your daily check-in six days ago, when you initially went missing?”

“A giant tower came out of the Helium Seas and chased my partner and I around. We had to lay low.”

“A what?”

“A tower. At least, that’s the best way I can think of to describe it, Devours Clouds says the Jellies call them Liquid Teeth but I didn’t get close enough to see if it was liquid or not.” Carter made a face asking what he could do. “It was roundish and relatively straight so it wasn’t a ferrovine or anything plus it was moving under its own power.”

After three years working with the man Lin’yi had seen Malaki Skorkowski learn a lot of strange and bizarre things. The Hutchinson obsession with genetics was just one thread he’d worked to unravel for BTL. He’d accidentally discovered a Rasen Galactic plot to hijack an entire laboratory ship en route to Goeglien University while trying to figure out why shipments of spectroscopic measuring tools were going missing. When Bai’lung Wen was murdered he’d proven the man’s wife ground up the body and fed it to pigs. Then there was the time he discovered a strain of sentient fungus on Veilis Vei. It took something truly unexpected to throw him for a loop but when it happened he had a nasty tendency to freeze as he backtracked to the last thing he understood. He was doing it now.

She decided to intervene to buy him some time. “This Devours Clouds is one of the local lifeforms, correct?”

“Yes. They’re big things with five major limbs and no skeletal structure.” Carter contorted his hand and fingers into a bell shape with the fingers all loosely dangling downward. “We call them the Great Jellies although they think of themselves as drifters on the helium seas. That’s where we get the name. For the Helium Seas, not the creatures, of course.”

“Why do you call him your partner?”

“Because it is. We’re obligated to take at least one of them along with us on expeditions that cross into Jelly territory, not that I’d want to go there without one. They have a borderline supernatural understanding of the atmo. When I head down into the Seas Cloudie’s the one they send with me. I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been along for the expedition, it was the first one to realize something was wrong. I don’t suppose the big lug’s checked in with the Guild yet?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

Malaki held up a hand, forestalling her saying anything more. “I think we need to go a little further back. Did your Jelly friend say what causes these Liquid Teeth to appear?”

“I think he said something about their cropping up when they dived too deep? I never thought to ask for details. We had other, more pressing things to think about at the time and eventually we wound up going different ways.”

“Naturally, I can see how something the size of a ferrovine chasing you could forestall questions.” He leaned forward, his earlier confusion giving way to an eager light in his eyes. “Mr. Carter, think carefully. You describe what you saw as a tower and as similar to a ferrovine but that’s contradictory, don’t you think? Towers are quite straight, following simple but serviceable rules of architecture. Ferrovines, for all their metal content, are basically organic and grow in very organic fashion. However, did this liquid tooth grow straight? Did it weave back and forth on the winding path of a vine? Or was it more of a curved trajectory?”

Carter fidgeted for a moment. “Well, now that you mention it, there was kind of an arch to it. I never found out for sure if that was an effect of the way it was moving, some kind of optical distortion caused by how dense the atmosphere is down there or something. So I can’t say for sure it curved but… maybe.”

Malaki reached into an inner jacket pocket and was in the process of pulling out a piece of flexi, probably the same ones he’d been working with on the Skybreak, when the office door chimed. He hesitated and Lin’yi pulled her attention away long enough to check the camera. Lavanya was waiting there. Lin’yi got to her feet and let her in, saying “This is my preferred courier and Malaki’s current partner. Do you mind if she joins us?”

Carter gave a helpless shrug. “If you don’t have a problem with it then I don’t, although I think five people is a little cramped for this place.”

It wasn’t a big office but it had certain things going for it. “A fair point. However this is the most secure office in terms of preventing eavesdropping and hacking. We can stand to be warm for a little while.”

Lavanya swept in, crossed the room and shook Carter’s hand as he stood to greet her. “You must be Mr. Carter. I’m Lavanya Brahman, always a pleasure to meet another member of the brotherhood of navigators.”

Carter favored her with a grin that, yes, caused Lin’yi a pang of irrational jealousy. “Charmed, Miss Brahman. Wayfinder work is almost entirely in what you’d consider planetary atmosphere so I’m sure your flight record is much more impressive than mine. That said, Wireburn’s atmo isn’t like any other settled world’s.”

“I’ve landed here a couple of times before this and I can agree with that.” The two of them straightened the front of their jackets with an eerily similar motion then sat down. There was no official organization called the brotherhood of navigators but you’d have to be blind not to notice there was some kind of shared bearing and attitude between the two. And that was before taking the tough brown flight leathers they wore into account. Lin’yi wondered if it was the similarity of their professions or if had more to do with shared personality traits as she resealed the door and returned to her own seat.

Carter glanced around at the assembled group and pulled something out of his pocket. “Miss Wen, I don’t mean to be rude, given how you brought in all these people to help look for me at your own expense. I’m grateful for it, really. But is this everyone you’ve got dedicated to this project or are we expecting anyone else?”

Caught a bit off guard, Lin’yi adjusted herself on her seat as she tried to figure out why he would suddenly ask that question and whether she should answer directly or not. However the fact was she couldn’t see a reason not to. “Honestly, Mr. Carter, there are more people here than I had originally intended to dedicate to the task but it is how many people wound up here when it was all said and done. Why? I hope you don’t feel like you have to offer us a reward or something. That’s my job.”

He turned sheepish. “No, ma’am. I just… I think it’s best if what I’m about to say doesn’t go too far, you see? I learned some strange things, down in the Helium Seas. I get that you and Mr. Skorkowski are going to try and work out something based on it but you know what they say about secrets and big groups of people. They don’t work well together.”

She nodded. “If you’re asking whether I trust these people to keep a lid on whatever you say here then yes. I’ve worked with Malaki and Lavanya for years now. Mr. Hammer is a recent addition to the operation but he’s been professional and proficient.” Hammer nodded his appreciation at that endorsement. “But if you’d rather speak to just a few of us I’ll understand.”

“No, that’s not necessary. If you trust them I’m willing to do the same.” He offered her a grin meant to reassure her but that did more to leave her breathless. “Is it okay if we turn sidereal here? I know a lot of highly secure buildings have countermeasures for that kind of thing built in but if we can it will make explaining easier.”

“We can.” Short sentences. That was the key to surviving this conversation.

“Good. I’ll need the four of you to let me make the pivot.” As she suspected the thing from his pocket was the strange etheric device Hammer had mentioned before they’d come down to talk to Carter. The Wayfinder held it by the center, clenched in his right hand. He held it out over the center of the desk.

After a moment’s hesitation Lin’yi reached out and rested her own hand on top of his. The other three exchanged glances with her then also put their hands there, beginning with Lavanya, who gave a shrug and a smile, and ending with a very suspicious looking Hammer.

There was the familiar spinning sensation as Carter turned them away from the terrestrial world. The walls of the office weren’t replaced with the distant starlight they normally would be. Nor did the tall planes of translucent light that marked the BTL office’s etheric systems and privacy measures come into view. Instead a globe of light, much like an etheric beacon, appeared just behind Carter. All around them were delicate threads that rose out of the top of the light, curved around them and entered back into the globe at the base. The threads themselves pulsed with faint light.

The mass of threads was so dense they couldn’t see anything else.

Hammer immediately moved one hand to the handle of his etheric lash. Lavanya tensed and Malaki… he tipped his head back to trace the threads up, around, down and back to the globe. He was smiling. Carter cleared his throat as he tucked the etheric device back into his pocket. With his other hand he gestured to the globe behind him. “Miss Wen, Miss Brahman, Mr. Hammer, Mr. Skorkowski, let me introduce L-93, an etheric manufacturing Artificial Intelligence and a node in the LARK network.”

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