ESFV Salaminia - Observation deck

  The observation deck was quieter than it had any right to be.

  That was Seren's first thought when she entered after her break, with a couple of fresh mugs of something hot that the dispenser had optimistically labelled *coffee*.

  Yeah, coffee was ground beans, perfect water temperature, and an espresso machine; not whatever the replicator spat out.

  The deck was never truly silent when the Salaminia was in active survey; consoles cycled, ventilation hummed, the ship's passive sensor array beeped through its rotations like a sonar. It was mostly to keep everybody knowing it was working rather than being functional.

  Ellian was already at the geological analysis bench, her back to the room, shoulders set in that particular way that meant she had found something she didn't like. Seren had learned to read Ellian the way she read pressure gradients.

  Kit hadn't made a single joke in eleven minutes.

  Ellian pointed that out to Seren as Seren offered Ellian the second mug. Ellian thanked her for the hot drink.

  The reason for the silence was clearly the creature on the screen, laid out under full-spectrum lighting. Its membrane wings were pinned flat by magnetic clamps, its jaw slightly open. Three entry wounds marked its torso and skull, clean and deliberate.

  The purple blood had dried to a deep copper around the edges of each wound, staining the scaled hide in a way that looked almost like decoration.

  It was, Seren had to admit, remarkable.

  A meter and a half, snout to tail. Four-winged. Dense musculature. The jaw was wide enough to be scary, and the teeth — fine, needle-like, recurved — were clearly designed to grab and hold rather than tear.

  So it likely swallowed prey whole. It had died trying to lift a geological probe off the inspection zone.

  "Specimen stable. Containment integrity: one hundred percent." the Salaminia said. "Atmosphere within the analysis enclosure remains isolated from ship systems."

  -Thank you, Sal.- Kit said, without looking up.

  "You're welcome, Lieutenant Junior Grade Vega."

  There was something almost gentle in the way the AI said it. Kit had that effect on ship systems, somehow.

  Seren took a sip of her not-coffee and crossed the deck toward him.

  -So what are we looking at?-

  -It's a he.- Kit said. -Probably. The reproductive morphology is ambiguous, but I'm leaning male based on the secondary crest development here.- He indicated a ridge of compressed scale running from the creature's crown toward the shoulders. -Secondary sexual characteristic, most likely. Display structure. Wouldn't make evolutionary sense in a pure predator unless mate selection was involved.-

  Seren looked at the ridgeline data still rotating in a slow model above the central table. The plateau landing site was marked in amber. The engagement zone was in red.

  -Did the probes really trigger them?-

  -Oz was right on the money as always. Electroreception.- Kit confirmed. -Which is deeply annoying, because he wasn't even there for the good part.- A pause. -I mean the science. Obviously.- He said, pointing at the dissection table displayed on the screen.

  -Obviously.- said Seren.

  Kit picked up his stylus and turned it end over end, once, twice, then set it back down with a conflicted expression they all knew too well by now.

  -He's fine, Kit.- tried Ellian.

  -I know he's fine. I have eyes on the quarantine feed; he was still limping around like a man who lost a fight with gravity, which, technically, he did.- He waved a hand. -I'm just…-

  -So the probes looked like prey.- Seren intervened, stopping Kit from going on a rant.

  -Or a threat. Or a rival. Hard to say without behavioral data.- Kit tapped a notation into his pad, focusing back on the subject. -I'm going to need live observation for that, and I doubt Liam is going to be enthusiastic about shark-diving with flying targets.-

  -No.- agreed Seren. -He definitely won't.-

  Things settled as the analysis progressed, and the on-duty team started dissecting the sample.

  Science was mostly like this: the long, unglamorous middle between the question and the answer.

  The tedious analysis, data references, and comparison.

  What could be repeated? What was a one-off? What hypothesis failed under scrutiny?

  Across the deck, Ellian made a sound. Not a word. Just the particular exhale of someone who had been hoping the numbers would change if she looked at them long enough.

  Seren turned.

  -What did you find?-

  -What I found, with Bianca's help.- Ellian said, still facing her console -Is that the mountain is doing something I cannot account for.-

  She pulled the geological survey data into the shared display above the central table. Cross-sections of the plateau were stacked in translucent layers.

  -Standard basalt and granite composition at the surface- Ellian continued. -Volcanic in origin, long dormant. Internal heat consistent with a geologically active planet of this size. All within expected parameters.-

  -That sounds like a good result…- Kit said carefully.

  -It is. Down to about four hundred meters.- She highlighted a band in the model, a zone that glowed faintly amber against the grey strata. -Here, the thermal signature becomes irregular. In a specific way. As if it were re-heated and stratified again. Today.-

  Seren and Kit straightened.

  -What!?- they said almost in unison.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  -Yeah. I cannot match this to any geological process I know.- Ellian finally turned from her console, and her expression was the one she wore when she had already argued with herself about something and lost. -It is consistent across all probes in the last batch. Different locations on the plateau. Same depth range.-

  -Could it be the deep fauna Oz tagged?- Kit suggested. -Large subsurface organism generating heat to move.-

  -That was my first hypothesis.- Ellian cut him off, not unkindly. -The issue is the timing. If it were heat, there's no way we'd have had a cold sample. Doubly so because the probes crossed into space. Yet, we do.-

  A quiet settled over the three of them. Outside the viewports, the planet turned in its unhurried way, blue-red and patient.

  -Oz flagged that subsurface mass reading both times- Seren said. -Wetlands and now the mountain.-

  -I know.- Ellian's tone was even. -I read the mission log.-

  -Same signature?- asked Kit.

  -I cannot confirm correlation without more data.- She paused. -So far? I'm about twenty-five percent certain. I cannot rule it out completely.-

  Kit tapped a few keys, and the recorded thermal ghost of the creatures was overlaid in pale orange on the analysis display.

  -It does look like a worm… not quite like the ones documented on Gliese. The general profile matches the creature's morphology. Yeah, I'd say the same kind of beast at least, in both places... If it were like those Gliesan bastards, it should behave more like a digger.-

  -Except there's no sign of disturbance in the samples to back the idea that something like that ever moved.- Ellian commented.

  Nobody had an answer to that. They returned to working on data that made more sense.

  Seren moved to her own station and pulled up the climate model she had been building since the first landing. It now covered more than seventy-two hours of atmospheric data, surface pressure readings, ocean current estimates from satellite passes, and the tidal models she had been refining since Ellian's lunar density analysis came back.

  The flash flood sat in the middle of it like a knot she couldn't untangle.

  She had run the resonance model four times. Each time, the numbers were almost sufficient. Not quite. There was a gap between what the lunar alignment could account for and what the water had actually done.

  It was small enough to argue away on sensor tolerance, large enough that she hadn't yet.

  -I want to share something- she said.

  The other two looked at her.

  She put the flood model in the shared display.

  -The flood was larger than the models supported by a margin of approximately five percent.- she said. -I have been attributing this to uncharacterized subsurface hydrology. Hidden springs. Unmapped aquifer connectivity. Sensor tolerance. The kind of variable that disappears with more data…-

  -Reasonable.- said Ellian.

  -Yes.- Seren agreed. -It is reasonable. The issue is this.- She tapped away and brought the core sample data collected by probes near the aquifer.

  Ellian looked at the two datasets side by side.

  -You are not saying what I think you are saying?- Ellian said.

  -I am not saying anything yet- Seren replied. -I am showing you two anomalies in two different domains, with a similar structural property: they are both slightly larger than they should be. Both are without a confirmed source.-

  The silence this time was a different kind. Longer.

  -That is not conclusive.- Ellian said, finally.

  -No- Seren agreed. -It is a pattern. Conclusions require more data.-

  -I hate it when you two do this.- Kit said, without any particular heat.

  -Do what?- They asked

  -Argue about what's NOT there.- He emphasized. -Come on, why don't we take a break, go enjoy a drink together, and talk about hobbies?-

  -Kit, for the last time: I. Like. Girls.- Seren said carefully, almost spelling each word.

  -I won't judge.- he grinned.

  -I am a scientist, Kit.- replied Ellian.

  -So am I, let's be scientists together!- he grinned even further, making them groan in disapproval.

  He looked at them for a long moment, then back at the two datasets hovering above the table.

  -Ok, ok, your loss. I'm going to go check on the electroreceptor density mapping.- he said. -Because that is something I can measure and quantify and put a number on, and I find that very soothing right now.-

  He retreated to the specimen analysis without waiting for a response.

  Ellian watched him go. Then she turned back to Seren, voice low.

  -Do you actually think the two anomalies are connected?-

  Seren considered the planet below them, slow and blue-red, turning without urgency.

  -I think that this world has been here for a very long time. And I think we have been here for four standard days.-

  Seren picked up her mug.

  -I am not ready to conclude anything. But I would like us to be paying attention.-

  Ellian held her gaze for a moment, then nodded once. They both knew each other enough to know this wasn't over, but at the same time, it was enough for now.

  The Salaminia continued her orbit, patient and quiet, her sensors turning steadily in the dark.

  Osbert

  I had commandeered a corner of the living space with my pad, a pillow wedged behind my back against the bulkhead, my bad leg stretched out in front of me, trying to look to be set at the angle Damien had demonstrated twice and I had already abandoned thrice.

  Mainly, because I couldn't use the pad.

  The medscan unit blinked steadily on the small table beside me, tracking things I hadn't asked it to track.

  Kit had forwarded the preliminary dissection data twenty minutes ago with a message that read: "You're welcome."

  I was annotating a note on my findings when Damien appeared from the medical bay, two sealed cups in hand. He set one on the table beside the medscan without being asked and lowered himself into the chair across from me with the economy of movement he applied to everything.

  He looked at my leg.

  -You moved it. Again.- he said.

  -It's more comfortable this way.-

  -I didn't ask if it was comfortable. I asked you to keep it elevated. And still.-

  -You didn't ask, you told me to.-

  -Should I order you to take care?- He picked up the medscan results and reviewed them without particular urgency. -Inflammation is down. You're healing at a normal rate, which means don't do anything that changes that.-

  I picked up the cup. Whatever was in it was hot and tasted vaguely of tea.

  -Do you have any medical opinion on the sample?- I asked.

  -I'm in quarantine with you, Oz. I'm a doctor here for the living, not the dead...-

  -That's not a no.-

  He set the medscan down. -What do you want me to say, Oz? You want me to say it's remarkable? I'll say it's remarkable.- His tone was even. -It's a remarkable specimen. Here. Are you happy?-

  -Professionally, yes.-

  -And unprofessionally?-

  I looked back at the pad. The dissection imagery was clean, methodical.

  -Wish I were there cutting.-

  The work was getting done, without me.

  Damien didn't respond immediately. He drank his cup and looked at the medscan with the expression of someone who had heard this particular sentence in many different voices across many different missions.

  -Your knee has a ligament issue.- he said finally. -You know that. You're barely functional as it is. The gravity on the surface remains a strain. You push it while standing even here, and I've got to report to Liam you're a liability on the next landing.-

  -I know.-

  -Then what you actually mean…- he said -is that you hate watching others do your job.-

  I didn't answer.

  -You need to learn to delegate. Other people are good at their job, Oz. You're a commanding officer now.- Damien added. Not unkindly.

  -I know. That's not the point.-

  -What is the point?-

  I set the pad down on my knee, which immediately reminded me it was there.

  -There's something in that body that I can't name yet, and I'm reading it through a screen in a corner instead of being in the room where someone might say the wrong thing out loud and accidentally miss it.-

  Damien looked at me for a moment.

  -That is the most conceited you've ever sounded.- he said. -Come on, forward your notes to the team performing the dissection.-

  -That isn't the same!- I protested as he set my leg back to the awkward angle.

  -No.- he agreed. -It isn't.- He picked up the medscan unit and tucked it under his arm. -Leg elevated at the current angle, Lieutenant Hughes. That's an order. I'll check again in two hours.-

  He moved back toward the medical bay without waiting for my response, which was his way of indicating the conversation was complete.

  I looked at the dissection data for another moment.

  Then I sent the notes before I could think about how much I wished I were in the room analyzing the creature.

  Willing or not, I had earned some hours of rest; I'd better use them wisely.