Chapter 13: Stranger

David had returned to the learning portal and was once again reading about the system’s planets, the virtual assistant helping to direct him. He picked up where he had left off the previous night, and the next planet in the lineup was the one that he was currently standing on. For the first time, he learned the name that the Brokers had given 1e.

Reef. Presumably, it referred to their ideal environment, and where they had first evolved. From what little he knew about their prehistory, they had lived in shallow reefs and lagoons, venturing onto the beach to hunt for prey in rock pools. Maybe some nuance had been lost in translation, but it made sense to him.

He had already seen many of the planet’s biomes – the verdant islands and the shallows on his way to the city, the coastal depths of the research facility, and the polar region during the opera. What he had not yet seen was the desert region that perpetually faced the sun. The ocean eventually gave way to desert that was dotted with scruffy, squat plants and trees with wide branches, reminding him of the coast of Namibia. They were denser near the water, but grew steadily more sparse the further inland one went, until the blasted terrain was hard to distinguish from the surface of Mars outside the domes.

There was civilization here – pressurized settlements clustered not too far from the shore, linked to the ocean and to each other by highways that looked like oil pipelines. Much like the transparent tube system that carried Brokers around the city, it transported the aliens back and forth while keeping them moist and protecting them from the sun. If they could afford to venture outside without an exosuit, it certainly wouldn’t be for long. The squat, water-filled buildings were covered in layers of what looked like reflective scales, but he soon realized that they were photovoltaic cells. It must be very easy to harvest solar energy when the sun never moved from its position in the sky.

In a lot of ways, it was more like colonizing a hostile planet than trying to subsist in an unfavorable environment. Still, this must represent hundreds of years of buildup, and the Brokers had clearly conquered this region of their planet. Deeper inland were vast mines that reminded him of the scenes of Wind that he had seen the day prior, with giant, tiered pits that extended deep into the ground. Autonomous trucks with massive, fat tires ferried the resources across the desert, forming great chains as they navigated the dunes.

The same seemed to be true for the far polar region, where there was an inhospitable ice sheet that existed in perpetuity. The Brokers had colonized it using pressurized, heated settlements – mostly research stations, from what he was reading. The majority of the cities existed closer to the Terminator line, though there were some that bordered the desert and polar zones. The Brokers liked space, and they’d go to some lengths to get more of it.

1f was next in line – Storm, the character who had seduced Snow in the opera.

“Storm is an oceanic planet at the limits of our star’s habitable zone,” the assistant began, showing a view of the planet from space. It almost looked like an eyeball – a layer of white ice gradually giving way to blue ocean on the sun-facing side, thick clouds swirling through its atmosphere. “Just like our home, it is a tidally-locked planet, but its dense atmosphere helps to trap and distribute heat. This results in viable temperatures extending well beyond the terminator line. While the prospect of an ocean world may sound attractive, the seas of Storm are so deep that even our most advanced probes cannot reach the ocean floor. The crushing pressures and the presence of hostile megafauna mean that the planet’s inhabitants are confined to their floating arcologies.”

The view shifted to show what looked like a chain of islands nestled in an endless expanse of blue water. As he looked more closely, he realized that they were bobbing on the waves, and they were artificial. Each island in the archipelago was a floating platform with a series of glass domes that were filled with coral gardens, giving them an organic look, perhaps serving as the shallows for the colony’s inhabitants. They were linked by flexible walkways and cables that allowed them to move with the ocean. Below the water, inverted towers extended deep into the murky depths, like a cityscape flipped upside-down. That ocean must be hundreds of kilometers deep, if not more. It might not even have a bottom, just varying states of exotic matter created by the crushing pressure, more akin to the core of a gas giant than a terrestrial planet. What might hostile megafauna look like in such an incomprehensibly vast environment?

He noted that none of these major colonies had an orbital ring like Reef’s. It might be because they both had lower gravity – Harvest’s was half of Reef’s – but it might also give some insight into the timeline of colonization. Perhaps that kind of orbital infrastructure had no longer been necessary by the time it was happening on a large scale.

Snow – the next planet in the lineup – was remarkably similar to the previous one. It was an ocean planet with a terrifyingly deep, world-spanning sea. Unlike its balmy counterpart, it had a dense, soupy atmosphere with crushing pressures that rendered it unappealing even to the inventive Brokers. If they could swim freely as deep as the city, but they would be crushed like soda cans merely setting foot on Snow, it must be an extreme environment.

Finally, there was Mountain. He had seen the planet in person upon his arrival to the system, and he remembered a vast ice sheet with towering geysers. It turned out that his observations had been correct. The planet was similar to some of the Jovian moons, with a thick covering of ice that concealed a deep subsurface ocean. Tidal heating from its gravitational interactions with the star produced incredible cryovolcanoes that spewed seawater high into the planet’s thin atmosphere. The Brokers had a limited presence there that was mostly confined to research outposts and listening stations, as it could not support life.

One question that still remained unanswered was the fate of the Broker colonies. They must have had an empire that stretched to other star systems, because there was no way they could have fought a war of attrition against the Bugs for hundreds of years in Trappist alone. He’d been told that the Brokers had lost several colonies and had later recaptured them with the help of the Krell, so where were they? To his knowledge, no UN survey vessels had come across any abandoned Broker worlds, and their civilization seemed to be confined to one system.

It was a question that he would have to answer another time. It was late, and there was much to do next phase. He entered what he had learned into a database that he was building for Vos while it was still fresh in his mind, then shut down his laptop, still wondering whether the servers at the facility had pulled any data from his computer. The Administrator seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t sit on that kind of information for very long, so maybe he had been mistaken. He would find out soon enough.

As he lay back in his strange bed, he tried not to glance directly at where he knew the cameras to be. He had grown closer to Selkie over the last few days, and as much as he was starting to enjoy her company, he had to remind himself that she was still lying to him. The camera feeds were accessible from her computer, and she was certainly sending the recordings to the Administrator. They took their contracts very seriously, so perhaps it wasn’t her choice? Maybe someone was twisting her proverbial arm, and she was bound to remain silent.

Either way, it didn’t feel good to be deceived.

“I have brought you breakfast.”

David looked up as he was pulling on his suit, seeing Selkie scuttle in through the force field with her tentacled gait.

“Oh, morning,” he replied as she set the little container down on the desk.

“I have taken note of which items you have shown a preference for,” she added, opening the box and starting to lay out the various packages on the table.

“That’s kind of you,” David added, pulling up the awkward patio chair and zipping up his collar. “I thought you were annoyed by how often I have to eat?”

“I have come to enjoy feeding you,” she said, her colors a happy pastel as she helped him open one of the packets. “It is a little like feeding Flower,” she added with a giggle. “You are so helpless.”

“You sleep alright?” he asked, popping a piece of sushi wrapped in crunchy seaweed into his mouth. “About last night...”

“I was merely surprised,” she said with a nervous laugh, some bright bands of color crossing her mantle again. “You need not dwell on it. Humans can be a lot more ... forthcoming than what I am accustomed to.”

“Alright,” he said, feeling somewhat relieved. He’d half been expecting her to wake up angry. “Not all humans, though. Even among my own people, I can be a little direct.”

“It has served you well,” she continued, watching his hands with her usual curiosity as he lifted another morsel of food. “I have never seen anyone talk to the Administrator the way you do. It is disrespectful, certainly, but sometimes...”

“Sometimes you feel like he needs a kick in the pants,” he said.

“Assuming that you do not mean a literal kick, yes,” she replied with a smile. “He has become very complacent in his position.”

“And he’s been abusing that position to punish you, even after his complaint got tossed out of the Disciplinary Board hearing.”

“Also true,” Selkie said, her coloration dimming.

“I think his plan has backfired, though,” David added as he selected another cut of fish. “He thought that having me here would humiliate you, but we’re getting along alright, aren’t we? I’d even go so far as to say we’re becoming ... friends?”

“I haven’t had an in-person friend since I left the nursery,” she added with a chuckle, as though the concept amused her. “Needless to say, social visits are not common. But, yes, I believe that we qualify as friends.”

“I’m not so bad once you get to know me,” he said, tossing another piece of sushi into his mouth.

“Jeff, my main man,” David said as he bounded into the booth. He gave the hapless alien finger guns, making the Broker’s papillae rise in a shiver. “How goes it in the land of monitor watching?”

“No change, if that is what you mean,” Jeff replied as he turned back to his displays. “The unit has exhibited no unexpected behavior.”

“Selkie – get us jacked into the terminal,” David continued as he set his laptop down in its usual place. “I have a good feeling about today.”

Almost as soon as his computer had booted, he saw it transferring data from its drive again, his brow furrowing. Maybe he had been wrong, and it was just some kind of security handshake that the Brokers had installed on it as part of their software package?

“Weaver greets us,” Selkie said as she tapped at her touch display.

“And so begins another day of friendly conversation,” David said with a clap of his hands. “I’ll get connected to the servers and check out that probe feed.”

He pulled up some of the logs, whistling into his helmet as he worked, Selkie and Jeff giving him confused glances as though they thought his radio was broken. Maybe he’d just uttered some terrible curse word in Broker.

As he scrolled through the entries, he was distracted by something – a little text box appearing in the bottom corner of his monitor.

<I know a secret.>

His heart froze in his chest, and he glanced at the message again, then at Selkie. She seemed none the wiser, just working at her terminal as usual. Where the hell had the message come from? It must be coming from inside the research facility, because he wasn’t connected to any other networks, but who might be sending it? What secret? Had someone figured out that he was spying for the Admiral?

He brought his gloved hands to the keyboard, typing a reply in the text field beneath it.

<Who is this?>

<Who I am is not important. What’s important is what I know.>

Whoever it was, they were typing in English. That wasn’t too great of a feat – Selkie had many different kinds of translators, and it wasn’t as though the software was classified.

<What do you want?>

<Your suit has an ad-hoc connection. Link it to your computer so that we can talk without being disturbed.>

David faltered, wondering if he should give this stranger access to his onboard systems. If they could do this, then maybe they could turn off his oxygen supply or decompress his suit. It didn’t seem like he had much of a choice, reaching down to tap at the display on his wrist.

“Is everything alright?” Selkie asked, glancing over at him.

“Yeah, just turning up the heating element,” he replied with an exaggerated chuckle. “Getting a little chilly.”

He connected to his laptop’s wireless network, and the text box disappeared from the monitor, appearing in the bottom left of his HUD instead.

<Now we can speak in private. The Administrator, the Board – even the girl you call Selkie are hiding secrets from you. Whisper your reply discreetly – the helmet’s mic will pick it up.>

“Who the hell is this?” David hissed, trying not to move his lips too much.

<Merely a concerned party who has grown tired of the subterfuge.>

“How did you get access to my computer?”

<Over the facility’s network, of course. You didn’t think that they would neglect to include backdoors in the software they installed?>

“You’ll forgive me if I sound a little perturbed by this,” David added, pretending to work as his eyes darted between Selkie and Jeff nervously. “Are you a Broker working for the Administrator? Someone on the Council?”

<Let’s just say that your presence in the system presents a unique opportunity for me. I know that they’ll do everything in their power to prevent you from leaving Trappist with any actionable intel, but they can’t wipe your brain the same way they can format a drive. There are things that you and the rest of your species need to know – things that may be hard to accept.>