But it’s FantasyCon weekend, so I thought I’d share. To catch everyone up:
Our protagonists, an autistic human named Maria and their supervisor, Lah-Shah, who is a member of an alien species known to humans as ‘star dragons’, have been sent to investigate possible illegal actions in a newly inhabited planetary system. The organisation they work for is an intergalactic association of species deemed sentient enough, and humans are the newest, most junior members, after several hundred years of contact.
Lah-Shah has deposited Maria on the plant, pretending to be a research student interested in xenobiology, while he searches the system for the signs of an earlier team sent to do a thorough review of the planets for sentient life, who haven’t been heard from in a month.
Chapter 10 – Lah-Shah – In a crater on the smaller moon of Aurox
Lah-Shah watched Aurox rise in a distance, a faint orange dot. After dropping Maria and their luggage at the landing site, he’d flown towards the jump gate, following his posted flight plan. When he’d got far enough away, he’d detoured to the smaller moon. It was on his route and the shadow covered his change of plan. He’d found a crater and settled in for a few days to wait.
He wasn’t expecting to hear from Maria for a while; they’d need to find out what was happening on Aurox, then find somewhere safe to transmit a message. As far as he knew, IGASS didn’t have anyone else in the system. Lah-Shah scanned the horizon, munching on a bowl of dried fish, not sure what he was looking for out there.
If the IGASS team had left the planet, they must have used a shuttle to get to their ship. That might leave a trail, depending on the shuttle and if they’d been chased. If they hadn’t made it back their ship would be in a waiting orbit somewhere. He just didn’t know where they’d have parked themselves or if they’d left anyone on board.
Lah-Shah put his plate down on the control panel, wiping his paws on his chest. He stood, pushing out of his chair and crossed to the wall panel.
“Shuttle, do we have any observation drones?”
Data scrolled across the screen. Three small drones and a larger armed drone. He’d keep that in reserve.
“Shuttle, deploy observation drones, in orbits ninety degrees apart, outside the orbit of Aurox’s moons.”
He felt the shuttle shudder as the drones left under power. He tapped a few more codes into the panel, It beeped several times. The drones were speaking to the shuttle. Lah-Shah’s ear fans flushed and spread, radiating pleasure. All he had to do now was wait for a response.
What to do?
The fish smelled good. He’d eat again and nap. He was exhausted; he’d used most of his energy reserves flying to the polar station, and staying awake to get Maria to Aurox had knocked him out. His stomach growled. Yep, time to eat some more. Lah-Shah batted his belly and tapped his tail on the metal floor plate.
The persistent beeping woke Lah-Shah. From his cocoon of blankets, he looked over the screen embedded in the ceiling of his sleeping cubby. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his tail. His ear fans flexed as he processed the information the shuttle was giving him.
The drones had found something. A large metal structure on the asteroid belt, that sat far beyond the planets. It was attached to an asteroid but not one that was being mined by the auto-miners.
It was well-hidden, whatever it was. Nothing else had come up. If there was a ship in the system, his drones hadn’t found it in the seventy-two hours since he’d sent them out. A light blinking in the top left corner of the screen alerted Lah-Shah to a message waiting. It had been sent a few hours after Maria had landed on Aurox. She couldn’t have found a safe place to send him a message already.
…Officer McLintock calling in for Elder Pjang-Nich. Your agent has arrived. Couldn’t you have sent someone more experienced?…
Lah-Shah blinked and checked the metadata. It wasn’t for him; it had been sent out system from Aurox to an IGASS satellite. His IGASS registration must have confused the system and picked it up by accident. The message was sent using the inscription codes the Elder had given him for this mission.
The Elder must have someone on Aurox, someone in deep cover. And Maria had fallen in with them. That could be very good…or very bad. If an agent had worked out who Maria was so quickly, then other people would too. Eventually. They were very naïve for a human in their thirties, which was apparently adulthood for humans. It made them honest, but vulnerable to exploitation.
Lah-Shah had been worried about sending Maria on a solo mission, but it was the only way they would gain experience. The Elder could at least have warned them both that she had an asset on the planet. He blew air through his nose and clacked his teeth together. Time to get out of bed, eat, and go look at that structure in the asteroid belt. There was nothing he could do about Maria right now; the asset would have to look after them.
The shuttle flew its pre-programmed route to the asteroid belt; Lah-Shah ate another bowl of fish and watched the data streams coming in from his drones and the sensors the shuttle carried.
A model hung in the air in the centre of the control panel. It mapped the entire system, highlighting the routes used by the humans between the planets, moons, and asteroid belt. Aurox turned in space, a dot on the largest continent showing Maria’s expected position, now that he knew where they were staying.
Rocky Horror, further out, turned more slowly, and orbited the star in an elliptical orbit. That would cause problems for the humans at some point, if they continued their operations on the planet.
The jump gate sat between the planets and the asteroid belt, looking like a string of beads around the border of the system. Another dot highlighted the site of the metallic structure the drones had found. It would take about fifty hours to travel to the asteroid.
Space travel involved a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, even if you used the jump gates. Without much else to do, Lah-Shah went back to his cocoon, setting alarms for food every ten hours.