Chapter 14
The ship launched without even a safety announcement.
Before takeoff, there was a brief delay when red lights flashed over the old couple sitting near us for not having fastened their belts.
Until that point, I was beginning to think there was no crew onboard, when a thin, young man hustled down the aisles, buckled them in without a word, and disappeared to the back of the ship just as quickly.
I didn’t feel the launch because Byte decided to upgrade just as the shuttle’s power systems were cycling up. My entire body turned into a rock, and my brain became sludge. I slumped back into my seat and stifled a groan.
“Go to sleep if you can. I’ll wake you when we land,” Lyra said, clearly knowing what was underway.
I nodded weakly and then coughed. The old woman glared, wagging a finger at me. “Is he sick? You’re not supposed to travel when you’re sick.”
“He’s not sick. He has space allergies,” Lyra said.
I’d never heard of anyone allergic to space before, but since the old lady didn’t balk at the ludicrous comment, there must’ve been some truth to it.
I spent every bit of energy I still possessed (which wasn’t much) on trying to keep from coughing.
Every time I coughed, passengers shot cringey looks my way.
“He’s not sick,” I’d hear Lyra say, then she nudged in tighter. “Try not to cough.”
“Trying.” Speaking only made it worse.
“He’s not sick,” Lyra said again.
“That’s for us to determine.” The voice was close, and I managed to twist my head to see the crewmember standing next to me, holding a small scanner.
“Just a… tickle… in my throat,” I managed to say. I forced myself not to cough which made my body think it needed to cough all the more. My lungs felt like they were ninety percent filled with fluids. I strained to breathe, realizing just how much Byte had been helping me.
The crewmember scrutinized me. “I’m going to check back on you in one minute. If you’re not fine, I’m taking you to the quarantine chamber.”
“He’ll be fine,” Lyra said. “He just has a sensitive throat to ozone.”
The crewmember seemed dubious, but he left us alone. I could feel the gazes of passengers on me. I’d heard that high-towners rarely got sick—evidently there was a vaccine for just about everything.
Lyra pressed so close her mask tickled my ear as she breathed. “I brought a sedative in case this would happen. I’m going to inject you, okay? I’ll monitor you—they’ll just think we’re cuddling.”
I felt the prick in my side, and my need to cough left me, along with any sensation. I couldn’t breathe, but whatever Lyra had stuck me with made me not care. I grew lightheaded and felt like I was floating. Any sensation in my body disappeared, and I became a cloud.
I snuggled into her. “Mm, I fucking love to cuddle,” I mumbled just before I blacked out.
When I woke, passengers were standing and exiting the ship. I felt fully refreshed and inhaled deeply.
I loved breathing.
Lyra gave you a strong sedative. I began purging it from your system as soon as I came back online.
I turned to Lyra, who was unbuckling her belt. When she noticed me, relief relaxed her. “I was afraid you were never going to wake up.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you… better now?”
I felt a little tired, a little hungry, but a lot better in all other ways. I nodded. “I feel like a trillion chips.”
She adjusted my mask, which must’ve twisted when I was unconscious. “Good. Because we have a lot of work to do, and hopefully that amp of yours can help us out instead of hindering us for once.”
Would it be considered help if I have triangulated the most likely location of Dr. Katz’s lab within a ten-thousand-meter accuracy?
“Most definitely,” I said.
When we get to within one thousand meters, I should be have a precise location.
I then turned to Lyra. “Byte thinks it’s got the location, more or less.”
“More or less?” she asked.
“Instead of searching the entire moon, we only have to search a small part of it.”
“How small?” She sounded dubious.
“Ten thousand meters, give or take.”
She balked. “Ten thou—” She clamped her mouth shut. “Well, it’s a start, at least. Our friends might be able to narrow it down.”
Our friends were the resistance faction on the moon.
Triangulation requires millions of scenarios, thousands of variables, and hundreds of assumptions. I will continue to refine the search parameters.
By then, it was time for us to leave the ship, and I was glad to have my energy back and my coughing and fatigue gone. Byte had clearly made me dependent on it, but it wasn’t so bad as long as it wasn’t in the middle of an upgrade.
When we entered the airbridge, I finally got to see with my own eyes why Solace Moon was called the diamond moon and why everyone came here for their honeymoon.
The airbridge’s walls were all windows, so I could see how the airbridge connected to our shuttle docked outside and the Solace Station spaceport on the other end.
Lined up on either side of our bridge were at least a dozen more airbridges, many of which were also connected to shuttles or private ships.
Everything looked clean and high-tech, but what captured my attention was the moon’s glittering silica sand that covered every inch of the surface.
This side of the moon was currently in daylight, and the sand sparkled so brightly that I had to squint to even look at it.
I wondered if the first arrivals had believed the moon was actually covered in diamonds—if they had, they must’ve been pretty disappointed to discover it was just silica, a valuable resource all the same but nowhere near as precious as diamonds, a key ingredient in ship deflectors.
Lyra and I made our way from the airbridge into the spaceport—its walls were all windows from floor to ceiling.
I guess when your world shines like diamonds instead of brown rocks, you show it off.
While Dreswick wasn’t pretty, I preferred it to all this glitter.
Dreswick didn’t flash—it just was . Here, the lights were everywhere, like I was surrounded by some flashing billboard.
It was as if the entire moon was shrieking, look at me!
I have been here before.
“That’s why we’re here,” I said quietly.
I did not expect to have memories from prior to synthesis.
I should correct myself. They are not memories, per se.
Rather, my baseline state had some certain protocols working so that I would recognize a host body with DNA that didn’t match Dr. Katz’s to initiate synthesis.
I have environmental data that matches the current area.
I have supreme confidence that I will identify the lab of my creation, given enough time.
Ahead of us, beyond the arrivals gate, a squad of enforcers stood under a sign that said, Welcome to Solace Station .
They clearly had a different idea of welcoming than I did.
Enforcers didn’t just stand around in public, not unless they were about to arrest someone—usually, multiple someones.
I glanced at Lyra and saw that she’d also noticed: she was trying to hide her fear but wasn’t entirely successful, which meant this wasn’t typical to Solace Station’s spaceport.
“The factions up here have been more active than the groundside factions,” Lyra said. “My guess is that they’ve been busier than usual.” Her lips thinned. “They were supposed to lie low today so security would relax.”
“Time is one thing we might not have, Byte,” I said.
The security forces ahead are relaxed. We are close enough that they would have seen you, which means they have deemed you no threat. They are not here for us.
“Let’s hope you’re right.” But if they were here for someone… I nudged closer to Lyra, pulling her into an embrace, and pretending to kiss her cheek through the thin masks. “Tell me you’ve got a plan if this goes to shit.”
“Run like hell and don’t get caught.”
“I was hoping for something less suicidal.”
“You’re the one with an amp. Can’t it think of something?”
I have three hundred and ninety-one actions we can take should we encounter danger.
“It’s got plenty of ideas. I’m not sure any of them are any good.”
That is not nice, Cal.
I released her, but she held me close to add on, “Solacens are different here. Some of these families have on Solace Moon for five or more generations. They’re not like us. You’d better let me do the talking.”
“My lips are sealed,” I whispered near her ear.
“C’mon. Save it for the bedroom and move it already,” a traveler griped from behind us.
Lyra shot him a glare over my shoulder before she turned back to the gate.
She remained close, her arm looped through mine, as we finished walking the airbridge and came to a stop as the passengers walked through the arrival scanner one by one.
I wondered what dangerous items passengers could have acquired in the short time between the TerraSoft-11 departure scanner and Solace Station’s arrival.
Seemed wasteful, which made sense. My theory was that eighty percent of the money corporations spent was purely to make the lives of people harder through unnecessary safety measures and add-on services that no one really wanted.
Except that beyond the scanner was a spaceport agent questioning each and every passenger. I tensed, nodding in that direction. “Is the interrogation bit a regular thing around here?”
“It’s standard. Every interplanetary arrival goes through an entry agent.”
That alleviated some of my concern, but I didn’t like seeing an entire squad of enforcers a hundred feet away. At least none of them were holding guns, so, for whatever reason they were there, it wasn’t for me… hopefully.