The other thirty-two percent of Yulin is forests with a variety of insects, flowers, small mammals, etc… I’m sure the biologists are drooling with excitement. The natural resource list is quite small. In fact, the file itself is sparse in details.
I dig for more information and find the personnel list for Yulin. More scientists are traveling from other Warrior planets and will arrive at some future point in time, depending on where they’re traveling from. Maybe one of my friends from Wu’an became a scientist and volunteered for Yulin. A girl could hope. Of course, she’d be decades older than me, but a familiar face is always welcome.
Scanning the list of names, I jump when the door behind me hisses open.
“I found the worm,” a male voice says.
Oops. I disentangle. My pulse speeds up as I swivel around. A security officer stands in the threshold. The officer is near my parents’ age…I think. There’s gray in his bristle-short black hair. He seems familiar.
He taps on the portable he’s holding. “No back up needed. Radcliff, out.”
I flip between being insulted and being relieved over his comment. Then there’s the chagrin mixed with fear over getting caught. Guess I’m not as subtle as I’d thought. Or…the name Radcliff rings a bell. Niall! Figures. He must have ratted me out to his father or uncle or older brother or it could be his great grandfather— with the time dilation you never know.
Officer Radcliff studies me. “Do you realize what you’re doing is highly illegal?”
“I wouldn’t call it highly . I’m not meddling with any of the ship’s systems.” I try to downplay it before he yells at me for endangering lives or something equally dramatic.
His expression hardens. He is not amused. “Let me ask you another question. Do you want to be confined to your quarters for the rest of the trip?”
Ah. “No.” That would be torture.
“Then don’t worm into the Q-net again. Understand?”
“Yes.”
He waits.
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Good.” He sweeps a hand out, gesturing to the hallway. “Allow me to escort you back to your parents.”
It’s not a request. We walk in silence. When we arrive, my mother is not happy to see us (an understatement). She keeps her temper in check until Officer Radcliff leaves.
“Lyra, it’s only been seven days, you can’t be bored already .”
“It’s your fault,” I say.
“Excuse me?”
Her tone is scarier than getting caught worming. I should have kept my big mouth shut. “I was curious about Yulin.”
She softens a bit. “Well now you know what to expect. And now you can help us. That’ll keep you out of trouble.”
Oh no.
“Your father and I have a ton of things to do before we reach Yulin. Seeing as you’re so good using the Q-net, you can take over all the tedious tasks.”
At that moment, I consider doing something highly illegal. Maybe Officer Radcliff would throw me into the brig for the rest of the trip. A girl could hope.
“Lyra?”
I suppress a sigh. “What do you need me to do?”
Turns out it’s quite a bit. While the research base is the same rectangle as the others, my parents have to assign labs and decide on housing. In other words, organizing lots and lots of little details. And that is okay. The work makes the days go faster. It keeps me from counting down to the time when I lose my friends forever, and makes my soch-time an actual break where I find creative ways to annoy Niall, like having his avatar tell the zombies that eating people is illegal and they’ll be thrown into the brig with a capital B.
* * *
When we arrive at the crinkle point on 2472:016, the thrusters are shut down. An eerie silence steals through the ship. It’s creepy. Everyone is required to strap into their bunks. I lie in mine, staring at the ceiling, and say good-bye to Lan, Jarren, Belle, and Cyril. A klaxon cuts through the silence, warning us that the BP Crinkler engine is about to be engaged. A second later my world blurs and spins. I close my eyes as nausea swirls in my stomach and I clutch the straps. This repeats a dozen times or so. It’s too fast to count and all my energy is on keeping my breakfast down.
We fly fifty years into the future without a sound. Strange, right? You’d think there’d be a boom or a roar. Even a click or snap would be satisfying at least. No. There’s nothing.
That is until the Crinkler engine is turned off. As soon as the spinning stops and the walls solidify, fifty E-years’ worth of messages, news and important information flood the ship’s Q-net. My screen pings and flashes as the thrusters fire up and we sail toward Yulin. I’m reluctant to read what I missed and learn who died—Diamond Rockler is over seventy A-years by now—because once I know, I can’t unknow and it becomes real. Now I can still believe nothing has changed.
Yeah, I understand all about denial. What’s your point?
Then I realize there is one good thing about the time dilation. It’s now 2522:016. I’m fifty E-years closer to my brother. When the next Interstellar Class ship arrives at Yulin in four E-years, it’ll probably be heading back toward the other planets since this is the furthest point of populated space. I could eventually travel to the university on Rho. By then Phoenix would be on Earth and I’ll be able to actually communicate with him in real time.
My father is sitting at the terminal in our living area with my mother hovering over his shoulder. If they noticed me, they don’t show it. The screen is filled with messages, data files, and various information.
“Any new discoveries?” she asks.
“No new Warrior planets,” he says, scrolling through the reports. “But they completely reconstructed the damaged Warriors in half of the pits on Xinji.”
That’s pretty good. Even though the robotic diggers are programmed to clear the sand and dirt from around the Warriors without harming them, they’ve been buried for over two thousand E-years and, during that time, cave-ins and partial collapses of some of the pits happen.
“What about alien artifacts? Did they find more? Or translate the markings?” She’s clutching the back of his chair as if her will alone will bring good news. She could insert her own tangs, but I think she’d rather not be overwhelmed with too much information at once.
“Not that I can find. But don’t worry, Ming, there are hundreds of files here, some are encrypted.” He hums to himself. “They haven’t improved on the BP Crinkler engine yet. We need another scientific breakthrough that fixes the time dilation.”
I silently agree.
“What about that file?” Mom points to the screen. “It’s marked high importance.”
“Dated 2520:289. It might actually be relevant,” Dad says.
The desire to bolt pulses through me. Those red arrows never mean good news. But curiosity keeps me in place as my father reads the message.
“Oh no.” Dismay colors his voice.
An uneasy feeling swirls in my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Mom leans closer. “Spencer, tell me.”
“There hasn’t been any communication from Xinji in over an E-year.”
My parents exchange a horrified glance. I step toward them on unsteady legs. Did I hear that right?