Humanity's Fight

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Wilder reached armpits deep into the guts of a pulse emitter and slipped a wrench over a nut. She’d lost count of the times she’d serviced the Cerberus emitter and those at the other depots, but Cherry had asked her to carry out yet more maintenance checks on top of those carried out by the regular crew.

Wilder understood Cherry’s concern but the work bored her. It irked her too. Humans had lived on Concordia for a hundred and twelve Concordian years. They had spread across the planet’s surface to both of its continents. They had built roads and railway lines, schools and hospitals, factories and offices. They had built a new civilization. If that didn’t give them the right to call Concordia their home, she didn’t know what did. It seemed unfair that they were forced to go to this effort to defend themselves.

There were so many more interesting things she could be doing than servicing pulse emitters, like—

“Hey, Wilder,” said a voice behind her.

Startled, Wilder dropped her wrench. The tool clattered into the depths of the machine. “Damn!” Straightening up, she turned and saw Kes.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you heard me come in.”

“No, I didn’t, but it’s okay,” said Wilder. “I was lost in thought.” She squatted down next to her tool box and riffled through its contents, pulling out a magnetic gripper and placing it on the emitter’s shell. “I didn’t expect to see you in here. Things getting boring over at the Aliens Office?”

“You mean the Department for Extra-Planetary Affairs?”

“Exactly. The Aliens Office.” Wilder ducked down again and picked up a rag to wipe her hands, hiding the smile that was creeping over her lips. She loved to tease Kes, whose love of his job bordered on obsession.

“Well, I guess you’re half right,” he replied. “I have been learning a lot about other members of the Galactic Assembly. But my job entails...” Kes paused. He laughed and punched Wilder on the shoulder.

She grinned. “Seriously, though. What brings you here? It isn’t like you to venture out during daylight on a work day. Is a big disaster brewing? Have the Fila decided to emigrate?”

Kes’ eyebrows rose in alarm. “The Fila leave us? Don’t even talk about it. What a disaster that would be. No, it isn’t anything as serious as that. It’s probably nothing, in fact. I would have comm’d you about it, but you turned off your button. I thought I might find you here.”

“Whoops.” Wilder turned on her ear comm. “Sorry. I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m working.”

“No problem. I do that too sometimes. So, someone brought part of an object they found into the office today and I was wondering if you might be able to help us identify it. They found the thing way out beyond the mountains a couple of weeks ago.”

“What does it look like? Did you bring it with you?”

“It’s metallic, and it appears to have been burned, but that’s as much as I can tell you. It doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t bring it with me unfortunately. I’m not allowed to take it out of the building. The director is worried it’s something dangerous. Would you mind coming over to take a look at it?”

“Sure. Any excuse to get out of servicing these emitters. Give me a few minutes.” Wilder reached into the emitter with the magnetic grip. The wrench hadn’t fallen far. It was caught between two parts of machinery. But bumping the tool could send it clattering into the depths of the machine, which might entail days of taking the emitter apart in order to reach it. She opened the jaws of the gripper and delicately closed them around the wrench. She felt a satisfying clunk as the magnetism took hold.

As she pulled out the gripper, Wilder said, “Do you have any pictures of this thing you want me to look at?”

“I do. The person who brought it in also took pictures of the whole object they found. I’ve already sent them to you.”

She found the files. “Got them. I’ll take a look at them on the way over. I’m nearly done. I just need to close this thing up.”

After Wilder had returned the emitter to a working state, they took the autocar Kes had arrived in to go to the government buildings where he worked. Concordia was governed from its capital, Annwn, which lay between Cerberus and the original farming district. Annwn was a small place. Mostly only government workers lived there. The Leader at the time had chosen it as an administrative center in order to discourage larger cities from vying for control of the planet later on in the colony’s development.

Despite its small size, the capital was Wilder’s source of groceries and other supplies. Not long after returning from the Galactic Assembly, she had built herself another tree house in the small patch of forest that remained after the construction of Cerberus. Many of the trees had been cleared or had died due to the fitting of the military depot’s underground dome. She loved the quiet and seclusion of her little forest home, though living there sometimes made her nostalgic about the days when Tycho, Stephie, and other friends had shared the dream of building an entire settlement beneath the canopy.

Now, Tycho and Stephie were married and had grandchildren. They lived out at Oceanside and Wilder rarely saw them. Their differences in age and experience had created a gulf their former friendship couldn’t cross. And the tree settlement Wilder had dreamed of had been built and then later abandoned while she was flying at near light speed between the stars.

“Are you going to look at the pictures I sent?” Kes asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Wilder replied, remembering what she was supposed to be doing. Wondering why she seemed to be becoming more absent-minded, she took out her interface and opened the files. The first pictures were of the large object that had been found beyond the mountains.

The thing was an irregular lump of buckled, twisted, scorched metal. The dimension measurements overlay the image and informed Wilder the object was two point eight-seven meters in width at its widest point, one point eight meters deep, and one point five meters tall. Lush vegetation surrounded it.

“The person who found it suspected it might be alien in origin,” said Kes. “That was why she came to my department. What do you think?”

“I guess it’s strange that something we made could get burned up way over on the other side of the mountains,” Wilder said. “Unless it’s a crashed aircraft? But we would have heard about it on the news.”

“That’s what I thought too,” said Kes.

Wilder’s gaze shifted from the unidentified object to the greenery encircling it. She touched the image and widened it with her fingertips, revealing greater detail. “Look at that.” She pointed at an area next to the mysterious artifact.

“What am I looking at?” asked Kes.

“The surrounding area was burned by the heat and flames from the object. You can see the scorched soil. But new shoots are growing. Judging by the dimensions of the object, they were about ten centimeters tall when the picture was taken. We’re in the warm season now and everything’s growing fast. I would guess the area was burned about three weeks ago, though it’s hard to be exact without knowing the plant species.”

Kes smiled. “I knew I’d come to the right person.”

“You said the finder of this object waited two weeks before they brought it in to you?”

“That’s right. She’s a miner and she only recently had enough free time to bring it to Annwn.”

“That makes it five weeks ago that thing was on fire. I’ll check the news reports.”

There was no mention of any aircraft crashes, fires, or any other unusual occurrences in the region of wilderness beyond the mountains around the time Wilder estimated, or within two weeks before or afterward.

They had arrived at Kes’ place of work. After leaving the autocar in the lot they walked in through the wide doors of the government building. Kes took Wilder into his department on the first floor. It was an open plan office. Wilder drew some curious glances as Kes led her through the desks.

The object sat on an empty table. Wilder picked up the piece of metal. It was clearly bent out of shape, but even mentally unbending it and imagining the original form gave her no clues as to what it had been. A sharp edge indicated it had been sheared off, probably prior to the major burning of the larger object it came from. The edge hadn’t slightly melted and then cooled and solidified again, which is what appeared to have happened to the rest of the object. But even the edge was somewhat scorched like the rest of the thing. Wilder wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Kes’ colleagues had come over and gathered around her as she examined the object. Two were peering over her shoulders.

“I thought perhaps it was Scythian,” said one of them, a young, balding man. “Remains of some of the spiders, melted together. We’ve certainly found plenty of those over the years.”

“None of them were burned, though,” said the other person next to Wilder, an older woman.

“Perhaps a container burst in the upper atmosphere and the spiders heated up as they came down,” said the young man.

Wilder felt the object’s weight. “It isn’t part of a spider.” She’d handled enough of the search-and-destroy devices to know how much the thing should weigh. It was too heavy. “I think it’s a metal alloy, though.”

“The chief engineer from Civil Works volunteered to test it and find out its exact composition,” said the woman.

“That’s great,” Wilder said. “Knowing what it’s made from will narrow down the field of possibilities.” She turned over the object in her hands a few more times before returning it to the table top. “Are you busy with work at the moment?” she asked Kes.

“I’m always busy. There’s always something to do, but why are you asking?”

“Do you fancy coming on a heli ride?”

“You want to go out there?”

“I do. This mystery is going to bug me until I’ve figured it out.”

“Sure,” said Kes. “I can make time for that. We can take a government heli.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Kes smiled. “Okay, let’s go tomorrow.”

Unable to glean any more information from the object that had been brought in, Wilder decided to call it a day and go home. Kes accompanied her to the outer door of the building. Before leaving, she halted and said, “What I don’t understand is, how did it get there? It’s in the middle of nowhere. It couldn’t have been taken there by truck because there are no roads. We’ve ruled out the possibility of it being a downed aircraft. The only other vehicle capable of reaching that location is a flitter, but they’re all locked away, even the ones with remaining power.” A sudden thought struck her and she sucked in a breath.

“What?” asked Kes. “Have you figured out what it is?”

“Uh, no,” Wilder replied. “I was thinking about something else.”

Kes turned to look at her inquiringly. When Wilder ignored him, he said, “Something entirely unrelated to this object that made you gasp?”

“Look, it’s personal, okay?” It wasn’t personal, but Wilder couldn’t think up a better excuse for not telling Kes the truth at short notice.

“Personal,” Kes said. “Right.” He folded his arms and leaned on the door, gazing at the view. Several awkward minutes passed in silence. Kes glanced behind them into the empty lobby before saying, “You know, if you’re doing something under the radar, so to speak, you can tell me. Just because I work for the government it doesn’t mean I would turn you in.”

“Oh, I know you wouldn’t,” said Wilder, touching the older man’s arm. “It isn’t that. It’s something I can’t talk about yet, to anyone, that’s all. And I don’t think it’s related to this burned up thing the miner found, okay?”

“Hmm, if you’re sure. You know I’m only trying to look out for you.”

“I’m sure, and I appreciate your concern.” Wilder was moved. Kes had always been there for her, ever since that day he’d brought her sluglimpet repellent to spray on the trees in her settlement. He was the closest thing to family she had. She hugged him before leaving.

On her way home, she thought more about the connection she’d made between the mysterious burned object and her little project, until she was convinced there was none. Her initial thought had been that perhaps the object was a failed experiment along the lines of the ones she’d been attempting, but who else in Concordia would be trying to build an a-grav system?