Today, they would arrive at Sedna. Not that days mattered so much, in the confines of the Harbinger. They slept as they pleased, ate when they were hungry, and time itself seemed to not matter. But what did matter, was that this was it. They were here.

  Shishone, sitting in the pilot’s seat, had already flipped the ship and was firing the thrusters in the direction of Sedna to slow them down. Already on the radar, the planetoid’s signature was pinging back to them, just barely, but it was there. They would be in its orbit soon.

  Beside him, Yu sat in the copilot’s chair, updating coordinate and trajectory data, while Yarns sat in the gunner’s seat, ready, just in case. Allister was in the back, and, having ensured that everything was buckled down, had strapped herself in and mentally prepared for the approach. Together, they neared the mysterious, darkened Sedna, its signature growing closer and closer on the radar.

  “Are you ready?” Shishone asked Yu.

  She looked to him from the side of her eye. “Ready as I can be,” she said. “Ready as any of us can be.”

  “What about you Yarns?”

  He nodded, seemingly fixated on the weapons screen before him. There were no hostile signatures on it – actually, there were no signatures at all – but still, he focused deeply on the screen and the radar readings, just in case. The kid was scared, Shishone could tell.

  Then, he called over the shortwave to Allister. “Allister, you okay back there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m as okay as can be in this situation, at least.”

  “Suited up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’ll be landing soon.”

  They were all in their armor, helmets on, seals locked and pressurized. Shishone wasn’t sure where exactly they’d be putting down so that the ship itself wouldn’t lose pressure, but that was an issue for when they landed. First, they had to actually get there.

  He cranked the throttle more, pushing the engines to their limits as Sedna’s signature grew behind them. The fuel gauges were pushing into the red, unnerving him, but he kept his focus and continued to slow the Harbinger. Sedna slowed its approach on radar as well, and soon, the two of them were locked at the same speed in an etheric, deathly dance.

  “Alright, we’ve got a speed lock,” he said. “Spinning her around now.”

  The ship gracefully began to flip in the vacuum of space, nose tipping up, and up, and over, until finally, the cockpit was staring directly at the small planet.

  It was dark.

  Too dark. They couldn’t see much save the shadowy outline of an orb.

  “Flipping on the floodlights for approach.”

  Shishone reached down and flipped the front floodlights on, blasting luminous beams of light toward the planetoid. They were still just too far out to see much besides a vague circular silhouette in the night, but as they approached, the light began to skim across Sedna’s surface. What they saw left them speechless.

  Sedna was a mass of thick red tendrils made of the same material as the vines on MK2. Only here, they were massive, like a huge squid had wrapped the planet in its stringy, sinewy tentacles. Where there were gaps, there was the red dust of tholins, caked down on the surface like packed snow. Just barely could Shishone make out manmade structures, such as buildings and ships, buried beneath the dendritic tendrils. What he could make out didn’t seem promising. Holes, gaps in the structures, as though the vines had pushed their way through the metal to infect the innards of the base. There were ships that had landed upon layers of vine, sunken into them, and he assumed these belonged to the recon team. They’d been here so long that tendrils were starting to grow on top of them.

  It was a nightmare to behold. Maddening, even.

  Shishone turned to Yu, who was staring blankly at the planet. Yarns was doing the same. It seemed that nobody could come up with the right words to speak, nor any kind of reassurances for the others about what they were seeing. Not even Shishone himself could make heads or tails of it.

  “What the fuck…” he muttered.

  The door behind them hissed open, and Allister stepped through in her white spacesuit. She came up behind Yarns, saying, “We’re here?”

  But when she looked out at Sedna, her heart dropped, and her knees felt weak. Sedna was overrun. The hope left her lungs, and she had to catch herself on Yarns’ chair to stabilize.

  Shishone looked back at her, then to the others, and then finally, back at Sedna.

  “Where do we put down?” Yu eventually said.

  He shook his head. “I… don’t know. Next to the recon ships, I guess.”

  “But how do we get out of the ship?” Allister asked. “It’ll depressurize.”

  Shishone thought for a moment. “The Harbinger is old. But it might still have a pressure lock underneath it. Getting out will be tricky, but it’ll preserve the air in here, as stale as it is.”

  Yarns groaned. “So we’re going to go home with the same air we came here with?”

  “Be glad we have air at all. The oxygen scrubbers and Co2 filters on here are ancient. Let’s just be glad they work in the first place,” Shishone said, flipping some overhead switches. “I’m going to start my approach, we’ll set down next to the ships.”

  The recon team ships were large, he noticed as he brought the Harbinger closer. They appeared to be Eclipse-Class RPT battle cruisers, both of them. They were like massive tiered towers laying on their sides. On the side of one, he could barely make out the name, covered in red dust and vine though it was. It was the Starfall, apparently.

  Allister, noticing this upon approach, felt her heart skip a beat. “That’s the ship my husband was on,” she said, pointing at it. “The Starfall, there.”

  They all looked down upon the large, rectangular, blocky ships. “I’m going to try and hail one,” said Shishone. “Probably won’t get an answer, but I’ll try.”

  The Harbinger continued to creep toward the planet as Shishone tried the radio.

  “Sedna,” he said, “this is Corporal Joshua Shishone aboard the TGGS Harbinger, does anyone copy, over?”

  They all listened intently as nothing but silence was returned.

  “Sedna, this is the Harbinger. Is there anyone alive down there? Starfall, do you copy?”

  Stillness. Silence. The void.

  He looked at the others. “I don’t think there’s anyone down there.”

  “Are we still going to land?” Yarns asked, tense, frowning.

  “We are.”

  He pushed up on the throttle a bit, and the ship started toward the planetoid’s surface at a slow crawl. Soon, the Harbinger’s nose lifted, and Shishone activated its VTOL thrusters, lowering the ship to the planet’s surface gently. It set down beside the Starfall, planting its feet onto the unstable, uneven mass of tendrils beneath it, sinking down into the crumbly, sinewy vines with a crunch and a plume of red dust. They were here. They’d arrived on Sedna.

  Shishone parked the ship, braking it, and turning the thrusters off. It was settled then. They would depart into the unknown. He stood, and so did Yarns and Yu, a tension cast between them all that was as exciting as it was horrifying. Yes, they would discover answers here. But this may also be their tomb, and they were all aware of it.

  “I’m not sure,” said Shishone, “but this class of gunship should have a hatch in the floor near the back that acts as a small airlock. We’ll need to go through one at a time.”

  They headed to the back, where Shishone and Yarns took two rifles from the wall, and Allister and Yu took two pistols. There were grenades here as well, a boon given to them by the foreman on MK2. One of Yu’s favors, no doubt. Shishone thought about taking them for a moment, but decided to leave them be for now, just in case. Then, suited up and armed, the four of them made their way to the back of the ship, where, sure enough, there was a small hatch in the floor with a button on the wall that would cycle the airlock. It was just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

  “I’ll go first, then Yarns,” said Shishone. “Yu, you’re next, and Allister, you’re last. Yarns and I will do a sweep of the area and make sure there’s nothing crawling around out there. We’ll radio when it’s clear for you two to follow. Heard?”

  “Heard,” was the chorus response.

  “Good. This button here cycles the airlock,” he said, pointing to the wall. “There should be one under the ship as well. I’ll get us through when I’m on the other side. Yarns, you’re on the button for now.”

  Yarns nodded, and took up a position by the back left wall. Shishone then popped the hatch on the floor, slid into the small underbelly compartment, and turned the wheel on it to seal it behind him. The compartment was cramped, just big enough for him in his armor and his rifle to squeeze into laying down. Once the upper hatch was sealed, he heard the hiss of the air being sucked from the chamber, and then, the bottom hatch near his feet opened, and he slid through.

  Feet first, he slipped out of the airlock and onto the sinewy, mysterious ground of Sedna.

  His boots sunk into the vine a bit, much like crunchy snow, only it stuck to him, and he had to shake it off with every step. He crouched and made his way out from the underside of the ship, calling over his shortwave, “Alright, I’m out. Yarns, you’re up.”

  Yarns then did the same, and soon, the two of them were out on Sedna’s ground, casting their lights this way and that, ensuring the landing zone was clear. Their lights spilled out into the eerie night, shining upon the red tissue, but seeing no movement, Shishone then said over the radio, “Alright, Yu, Allister, you’re clear.”

  Within moments, they were all standing out on Sedna’s surface, lights shining in four directions, an unnerving, uncanny silence amongst them. The tendrils were like waves, folding in over each other, rising and falling. As best Shishone could tell, they were standing on top of a building, covered in red. He looked back to the Harbinger and the Starfall, and noticed something odd: there were wires running from the Starfall down through the red sinew, most likely attached to the building. He pondered it for a second, but ultimately didn’t give it too much thought; he was here for a reason, after all.

  “We need to find an entrance,” he said, looking around. “There’s enough holes in the structure that we should be able to find a way in pretty close to where we landed. Everyone start looking.”

  They began to scour the landing zone, kicking and crunching the tissue in an attempt to find a hole. Clearing the vine revealed the shining titanium of the structure below. Soon enough, Yarns had found, on the angled ledge of the structure, a large gap through which the tendons poured. “Over here!” he called.

  They all bounced their way over deftly, all having been in the low gravity before, and peered inside. It appeared that the hole led into a sort of dayroom, with cracked TV’s on the wall, tholin covered sofas and billiard tables, and a small kitchenette that was barely discernable in the dark.

  “Good job Yarns,” Shishone said. “Alright, I’ll go in first, stay here.”

  He slung his rifle over his back and scooted down to the ledge on his rear. Then, he swung his legs into the hole, flipping to hold onto the ledge, and thrust himself in. In the low gravity, everything was slower, more graceful at times, less so at others. Usually, the artificial gravity, created by the mass-plates set into the foundation, would’ve allowed them to walk as though they were on Earth, but with the power seemingly completely severed, the mass plates were as good as useless. They’d be bouncing from here.

  He landed and checked his surroundings. Satisfied that in the darkness, there was nothing creeping around, he radioed for the others to follow him, and they did, slinging themselves into the dayroom with his help. As they now stood in the dayroom, Yarns spoke over the shortwave.

  “So, what exactly are we hoping to find here?”

  “Anything that can help us with our Xiao problem,” Shishone said.

  Allister pitched in, “And anything that can explain what’s been going on with the tholins. There’s a tholin research lab on Sedna, and I’d like to explore it. Supposing we have the opportunity."

  “Maybe,” Yu said, “if we can find more fuel and supplies first. That should be our top priority.”

  Shishone shook his head. “I think our top priority is making it to the command center and getting some answers, first of all. Then food and fuel, then exploration. Is what I’d recommend, at least.”

  They all agreed with him.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s move this way. We don’t have a map of the place, so we’ll need to find a directory or something.”

  They made their way toward a door on the wall. It was closed, but thankfully, with a little prying from Shishone and Yarns, it came loose and split open. The group slipped into the halls of Sedna now, and were soon making their way through a tholin dusted maze of corridors, rooms, labs, and offices. The dust was everywhere, along the metal walls, coating the internal windows into the laboratories, settling along the floor, where occasionally, thick vines would weave in and out of rooms and along the long halls with colored lines on their walls. They appeared to be in a lab and admin space within the base, passing by dark, tholin filled labs of broken and dusty beakers, burners, tubes, and microscopes, along with desks that were overturned, papers strewn about the floors, mugs shattered, and terminals busted in offices.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  As they passed by one of the rooms, they noticed that the window bridging the hall and the lab had two bullet holes in it, spider webbing out on the glass. Shishone stopped here and looked into the lab itself, but saw nothing save for more dust and vine. He wiped his hand against the glass to clear some of the dust and get a better look, but, unsatisfied with what he had – or hadn’t – found, he continued on with the rest of them.

  “What do you think happened?” Yarns asked as they passed another set of offices, this one seemingly burnt up. There were black char marks on the wall, the metal desks had burn marks, there were cindered papers on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” said Yu, “but I think it’s pretty obvious whatever it was, it was really bad.”

  Eventually, they came upon a junction in the hall, apparently a rather large one. The room was circular, broad, and had pots for plants long dead and gone, a large orb light hanging from the ceiling draped in vine, and pictures of Earth and Mars along the curving walls. Here there were things painted on the walls. Allister reached up and brushed the dust and vine away, revealing what the colored lines on the walls meant. There were signposts painted onto the wall here. One read Labs and Admin, and it was red. Another, blue, read Reactor and Engineering. A green on read Hydroponics, and a pink on read Command.

  “Found something!” she said into the radio.

  The others rushed up to her.

  “Command,” Shishone read. “This way.”

  He took point, heading down a long hall and into a room that lead to a set of large, ornate stairs, all climbing up to a set of double doors on a platform ahead of them. There was clearly room for security here, and from the looks of it, there once was a presence. Empty rifles on the floor, overturned guard chairs, a broken door leading into the security room, and bullet holes absolutely riddling the walls, as though someone had played a massive, deadly game of othello.

  In the darkness, near the doors to the command room, something shifted.

  Shishone and Yarns raised their weapons, aiming it at the noise. Their lights flashed on the metal doors, and flicked around. There, by the doors, just off to the right, was… a person. They trained their lights on it, and everyone froze.

  This… wasn’t a person.

  It was person-like, but it was not a person.

  Standing on two thin, bony legs, having two spindly arms, and a sideways head, the decaying creature seemed to be made of bone and the same sinewy tissue that covered all of Sedna, only here it looked like raw muscle, folding, overlapping in thick strands, covering parts of it that weren’t simply exposed calcium. It’s face was humanoid, with part of a skull exposed, and out of the right eye socket, a small vine hung down like a lazy tongue and in the left, there was a bloodshot eye that stared down at them with no sense of humanity or life behind it. Tatters of white clung to its body, clothes once, maybe a lab suit or administration jumpsuit, it was impossible to tell now. It stared down at them as though it were curious.

  Shishone felt that terror again, that horror that froze him up and threatened to transport him on an unwilling trip to the past. He fought it, but the voice then whispered, It sees you. It sees your sins.

  “Yarns!” he called. “Shoot that thing!”

  Yarns stared up at it, and it stared back, and still nobody moved, not even Shishone. Shaking, he cursed, panicking in his mind. It was as though he couldn’t move. Petrified in fear, he simply stood there, staring.

  Then, he shook himself, and raised his weapon. The thing had not moved, simply watching instead. But just as Shishone went to pull the trigger, a new voice came over their shortwave.

  “Don’t.”

  He froze. He didn’t recognize this voice. It was thick, burly, and grave. He looked to Yarns, who looked back, just as confused. Yu’s eyes flicked across the room, searching for signs of its origin. Allister, however, did something else. She was fidgeting, looking around frantically.

  “Allister?” he called. “You alright?”

  She looked at him, and then said over the radio, “Where are you?”

  Shishone was about to speak, but the new voice spoke first. “I’m inside the control room. Don’t. Shoot. The things. They’re not aggressive, and I’d rather keep it that way. It’ll scurry off soon.”

  And sure enough, just about as he was finishing saying that, the thing shifted and took off on all fours in leaps and bounds, darting past them and out into the hallway from which they’d come. They watched it go, their hearts racing, thumping, threatening to burst. Shishone shook.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The voice came back: “I’ll introduce myself soon. Let me cycle the doors out there. That’s a sealed compartment that acts as an airlock in case of emergency, so sit tight.”

  Behind them, a blast door rose from the ground like a tombstone and sealed them in the room. In a moment, the hissing of air could be heard as it rushed to fill the space. There was pressure, now, and they could take off their helmets. Theoretically, at least – none of them did.

  Except, after a moment, for Allister.

  She took off her helmet and let her red hair out, taking a deep breath of the air. It was stale, but less so than she had expected, meaning it had been circulated a few times. She smiled. Carefully, she took the lead, heading up the steps and toward the door.

  As she did so, the doors slid open slowly, revealing a figure bathed in light from behind, a silhouette in the darkness. They – he, actually, it looked like – stood there, watching Allister approach. From here, Shishone was starting to make out his features. Burly, just like his voice, with a beard that had been roughly shaven down. Stocky features, big shoulders, strong jaw, thick eyebrows. The man wore black special operation’s armor, just like Yarns, and which had a set of wings on it, denoting that he was a pilot. Long brown hair that seemed like it was possibly once, long ago, a military cut. His stature bred intimidation, clearly strong, and if he survived this long, then he was just as capable too.

  Allister approached him carefully, wordlessly. In the pale glow of the light, she gently put her hands on his face.

  “Thomas,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “Thomas, it’s you.”

  “Allister,” Thomas replied, looking into her eyes as the light washed over them both. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” she said, breathless. “Oh, how I’ve missed you. You’re still alive… after all this time.”

  The man smiled at her, a more delicate and gentle smile than Shishone would’ve expected from such a large, scarred figure. “I never gave up on seeing you again. It kept me going.”

  Tears began to flow freely down Allister’s cheeks as she suddenly leaned into the man, embracing him in a tight hug. He returned the embrace, holding her as her knees grew weaker, her body limper, her sobs heavier. They echoed out into the room, ghostly and mournful, with clear pain in their somber notes.

  Thomas held her, sinking with her until they were both on their knees. He gently placed his hand behind her head and encouraged her into his shoulder, where she continued to bawl.

  “Thomas, I thought you were dead,” she cried.

  He shook his head and shushed her gently. “No, darling. I’m right here.”

  Her tears began to stream down his armor, dripping to the floor. Shishone, Yarns, and Yu all watched in quiet respect for the moment. Allister clung tightly onto him, digging her fingers into the back of his armor. For a moment, she felt at home.

  She backed up a bit, and they locked eyes, lovingly, longingly, lonely. Then, she leaned in, and so did he, and their lips graced each others’ with their presence, a delicate kiss, a spark, a flicker of the flame of longing and passion. As they pushed into each other, fiercely, freely, the kiss grew deeper, more intense. There it was, Allister thought, savoring the moment like a desert wanderer might in an oasis. There was her hope. It was back. He was back.

  As they broke the kiss, Thomas wiped the tears from her eyes for her with a finger, and said, “You and your friends must be in some deep shit if you’re out here.”

  She laughed lightly, sniffling, and said, “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Well, come in. I have food, water – it’s recycled, but it’ll work – and you all can rest for a bit.”

  Shishone looked to Yu, then Yarns, and motioned them up the stairs. He took the rear, and together behind the reunited couple, they all entered the command center for Sedna.

  It was shockingly intact. The monitors on the long, oval wall, the desks, the terminals, it was all still together, some of it even operational. The lights were on, shining bright white luminescence down upon them. Papers stacked neatly. Mugs on the desks. In the corner of the room was a stockpile of provisions, and there was even a bathroom door set into the wall. It was oddly clean.

  Shishone’s eyes wandered from piece to piece, taking it all in.

  Allister and Thomas excused themselves for a moment of privacy and stepped off toward the back of the room to talk. He could see, from occasional glances, that he was holding her as they talked, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. Shishone smiled. In a sea of misery, such peace made for a comforting sight.

  Yarns had excused himself to see if the restroom worked, and Yu was messing with a terminal. Shishone, feeling out of place, wandered over to her and leaned in to see what she was doing. Data flashed on screen, nearly unreadable to him as Yu poured over line after line at breakneck speed.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  She looked at him, then returned her gaze to the terminal. “Security data. I want to figure out what happened here.”

  “Are you finding anything?”

  Her eyes scanned the data, line by line as it whizzed by on screen. “I’m scanning personnel logs,” she said. “Looking for when they start to show discrepancies.”

  “What will that tell you?” he asked.

  She huffed. “It’ll tell me when about things started going wrong here. It’s hard, these are all from six, seven years ago. But… right, here. Aha!”

  Pointing at a line of data on the halted screen, she turned to Shishone and said, intrigue in her eyes, “This right here. This log from, let’s see… Doctor Brunster, says that one of the labs experienced a power outage. And here! From the telescopic center. The whole center goes dark right here.”

  Shihsone read for a minute, but still, the data made no sense to him and he had no idea how she was reading it. “What does that mean?”

  “That means,” she said, staring at the screen, “something went wrong with the telescopic center first, and then, there were rolling power outages, as can be seen here, and here, and here.”

  Shishone tried to make sense of what she was pointing at, but quickly gave up. “So we should head to the telescope?”

  “I’d start there for answers,” she said with a shrug. “Or with him.”

  They both looked to Allister and Thomas, who were smiling and laughing with each other now. Yu nodded at them, and said, “He probably knows a good deal about what went on here, considering how long he’s been here.”

  “Should we go talk to him?”

  Yu hummed in thought. “Probably.”

  “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Together, they approached the couple, who looked up at them. Thomas’s face fell as they approached, sensing the urgency in their body language. He planted a small kiss on Allister’s cheek, and then stood, walking up to them to meet them in the middle.

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Thomas McCullinay. Allister’s wife. She told me a bit about you both. You must be Shishone, and you must be Yu.”

  They shook his hand, and he stood straight and said, “You probably have a lot of questions. I have some answers, so I’ll help as best I can.”

  “We do,” Yu said, “and thank you.”

  “What happened here?” Shishone asked, off beat but urgently.

  Thomas nodded softly and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I’ll start with my arrival. Our ship, the Starfall, and its sister ship, the Comet Tail, arrived to find the base in disarray. The sinorganic tissue wasn’t spread like this when we arrived. It’s gotten worse over the years.”

  “You’ve been here so long…” Yu said.

  He shrugged. “Yes, I have been. Two years, abouts. It’ll do a lot to a person, but I had company for a while.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Well,” he started, taking a seat at a nearby desk and leaning his elbows on his knees, “when we landed, there were twenty of us, all spec ops. We did a sweep of Sedna, and found what you just saw out there. Those creatures, as far as we could surmise, are the scientists and engineers that used to live here.”

  Shishone blinked, his eyes widening. Yu simply stared, quietly asking for more.

  Picking up on this, Thomas continued, “We made our way to the reactor, to see if we could get it online, but it was busted. It almost looked as though some kind of struggle or battle had taken place throughout the base.”

  “We noticed that too,” Shishone said.

  He nodded. “Well, as we went through, our team started getting picked off, one by one. Vanishing if they stepped into the darkness. Falling behind, never to be found. Their transmitters would go dark, so we couldn’t even find them on our systems. When we tried to make our way back to the ship, there were only ten of us left. Half of our unit was just gone.”

  Watching them carefully, Thomas scanned their faces for their reactions. Yu seemed appalled, but Shishone seemed traumatized, with glossy, empty eyes staring down at him, and an expressionless face.

  Thomas, watching him for a second, then said, “When we got back to the ships, they were empty. The pilots, command, all of them gone. I know how to fly a gunship, but I don’t know how to pilot an Eclipse-Class. So we were stranded. We decided to hole up in the command center, and our last corps engineer hooked up the fusion reactor on the Starfall to power nodes on the base, giving us power, at least here and in the O2 rooms. Before he was gone too.

  “Over the years, it dwindled down to just me. I’ve never had a problem with the things out there, for some reason. They watch me, and I suspect it’s not them who made my squad disappear. Or at the very least, they left me alone for… some reason. And it seems like they feel the same about you all.”

  Shishone chewed on his lip. “Why do you think that is?”

  Thomas looked up at him with loss on his face, and shrugged. “I’m not sure, honestly.”

  They all took a moment of silence between them to absorb it all. Then, Yu said, “We need to get to the telescope.”

  “Why?” Thomas asked, looking at her as though she’d just asked to move the sun itself. “That’s one place I’d stay away from if I were you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because that’s what started this whole thing,” he said. “I was looking through the logs. The telescope folks found something.”

  Shishone’s eyebrow rose. “What do you mean?”

  He turned to him, lips pressed tightly together and an intense gleam in his eye. “They were searching for evidence of a ninth planet. And they found it.”

  Yu’s jaw dropped agape. “They found it?”

  “There’s a ninth planet?” Shishone asked, looking at them both, confused.

  Yu nodded. “There is,” she said, locking eyes with him. “Apparently, at least. It was a theory for a long time, based on how some of the Kuiper Belt Objects had erratic orbits, such as, well, Sedna. It was theorized that a Neptune-sized planet could’ve pulled Sedna into its irregular orbit, along with several other objects this far out from Sol. But you’re telling me they found it?”

  “That’s what the logs say,” Thomas said. “Thing is, whatever they saw on it did something to them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll say this: the only reason the reports about this planet exist in the systems here is because one person, who didn’t look through the telescope, managed to escape the lab. I don’t really understand what went on in there, but it doesn’t sound pretty.”

  Shishone ran a hand through his hair. “Did your team go there?”

  “Tried to,” Thomas said. “But the door is welded shut from the outside. They really, really didn’t want people getting in there. My suggestion, if you’re trying to make it that way, is to go in from the top. I think there’s a hatch up top that leads to a busted airlock. If you can pry that open, you can probably get in. But just be careful. I have no idea what’s in there, nor have I really cared to find out.”

  “We need answers,” Yu said.

  Thomas gave her a sympathetic look. “I know. Allister told me about Xiao. You need answers, and I do too. I’m with you.”

  A wave of relief washed over her face. “That’s such good news, Mr. McCullinay.”

  “Please, it’s Thomas.”

  She nodded to him. “Thomas. We need to find out exactly what happened here. If we can, we might be able to alert TerraGov.”

  “TerraGov isn’t coming,” Thomas said. “I learned one more thing in my years of pouring through the data here. Do you know what the ‘Kuiper Protocol’ is?”

  They shook their heads.

  “I don’t either, not really,” he said. “But it seems like some kind of contingency plan for Earth. Some last resort method of quelling a rebellion, maybe. Or, more likely, for… this. For everything you see here and for everything you’ve been through. I don’t like those odds.”

  “Well then what do we do?” Shishone asked.

  Yu seemed lost in thought. “We find out what happened here,” she said, beginning to pace back and forth. “We gather information and answers. Then we go back to Dysnomia. It’ll be tricky, and I’m not sure we can pull it off, but if we can get into the radio center in the Admin Tower, we can broadcast what happened here throughout the Belt. If we cause that big of a stir, TerraGov will have no choice but to respond.”

  Thomas frowned. “Did you hear me? TerraGov isn’t coming.”

  “Then maybe we can convince those loyal to Xiao to become turncoats,” she said. “It’s all we’ve got.”

  Shishone hummed in thought and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “It’s a good plan – if we can make it to Dysnomia in the first place. Xiao definitely knows we’re here. He’s going to be waiting for us.”

  Chewing on her nail, Yu said, “That’s a good point. But we need to cross that bridge when we get to it. One thing at a time.”

  “So,” said Allister, “how do you propose we go about finding these answers?”

  Yu looked over them, each individually, then as a group, and thought for a moment. There was strength in numbers, but they probably didn’t have too much time. Flipping her hair and blowing it out from her eyes, she said, “We split up. Shishone, you and Yarns will escort me to the telescope. I’ll see what I can do there.”

  Thomas spoke up. “You know what you’re doing?”

  She half-shrugged. “Astronomy is a little side hobby of mine.”

  Understanding passed over his face, and he sat back in his chair. She continued: “Thomas, you and Allister go to the tholins lab. Seems fitting that we have a premier biochemist with us, and someone who knows their way around Sedna, with skills to back it up. I think you two will be fine.”

  “So we’re splitting,” Shishone said, cocking his head. “Sounds risky.”

  She held out her hands, as if balancing things. “On the one hand, it is risky. We’ll be leaving each other in a dark base, with strange things crawling all over it. But on the other,” she said, looking to her other hand and tilting it down. “If Xiao gets here before we’re gone, we’re dead. So it’s not like we can just muck around.”

  Shishone held up his hand briefly. “How long would it take for an RPT to get here, do you think?”

  “A week,” she said. “So we need to move.”

  She looked them over, a strange sort of pride welling up in her as they all seemed to be in agreement. It was settled, then.

  “Alright, we should gear up and go soon.”

  Just then, Yarns stepped out of the bathroom, fixing one of his bracers. He looked up at them, and they all locked eyes on him. He froze under their stares. “Hey guys,” he said, starting to blush. “What did I miss?”