The shuttle was very small, Kell thought.

It would have been comfortable for a human, with soft things as they enjoyed, and metals smoothed until they reflected the light.

The pilot seemed to have little reaction to him; but then, he had shuttled Shoggoths before. His presence was altered in that way.

"Welcome aboard, Ambassador. We will be launching shortly, and once we're through the dashgate it will be seventeen hours until we arrive."

Kell gave him a nod, and sat in the seat.

"If you get hungry, there is a drone ready to serve you. And if you'd like music or entertainment-"

"I would prefer silence," Kell said, weary of the human game of politeness.

The man did not reply, but merely nodded, and turned to his work.

Kell studied him absently with part of his attention but let the rest drift. Now was not really a time that was safe, but few were in a period of great change. Nevertheless, he felt no apprehension. Anything that might happen to him was entirely beyond his control, and the humans truly seemed to wish for his safety.

An odd but useful trait.

The shuttle launched, and he said nothing. As far as the pilot could tell, he simply stared forward, never blinking, and never moving. For the entire trip.

*******

As the shuttle turned around and began its counter-burn to arrest its momentum, Pirra felt anxious.

Squirming in her seat, she felt annoyed with herself. She didn't feel this antsy even during a mission where there were serious consequences.

Alexander noticed her fidgeting, but said nothing, just putting his hand over hers.

She appreciated the gesture, but it didn't help.

"Do you think Iago will be released from his quarantine in time to come see my folks?" Alexander asked.

Her commander was a long-time family friend of the Shaws, but him bringing it up - something he was probably doing to distract her from her nervousness - did not help.

Alexander did not know what Iago had gone through. The mission, everything about it, was top secret. And liable to remain that way.

She'd taken the time to check with some friends of hers. She couldn't actually find out what they had done about the monitoring station, but she knew what class of ships would be best at destroying it, as she had recommended. As far as she could tell, no ship had been diverted.

It was possible they were being quiet about it, but she had a feeling that they were not going to destroy that place.

She still awoke each day, afraid she'd still be there. After seeing the people there - or perhaps merely shades of people? - she had thought that maybe she, too, would open her eyes to find she had never escaped . . .

It was the worst thing about some of this shit. You did not know if you were truly free of it.

"Pirra?" Alexander asked.

She blinked. "Sorry, honey. I . . . I wouldn't bet on it. I think Iago will be fine, but I don't think he's going to be out of isolation for a while."

Her husband nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. It would be nice to be able to tell him what had happened to his closest friend. But she couldn't say anything. It was beyond just about keeping security - as Iago had learned, on some things, just the knowing itself could be dangerous.

The docking went smoothly, and she felt more relaxed. No more sitting and waiting.

As they left the shuttle, she'd already identified their best path to catch their connecting flight. They had two more stops and connections to make, and so far they were fortunately on time.

"This way," she said. Thankfully, Plucharon station was set up to take on the numbers the Craton was bringing. Ten thousand people was really nothing; she'd counted at least seven hundred ships out there, and that had only been from a cursory scan. Each of them could easily be unloading ten or twenty thousand people. Mostly tourists - humans come on a pilgrimage to their homeworld. Sometimes aliens, though - because humans were, she thought, pretty interesting.

She supposed she was pretty lucky. She'd been born on the larger moon of her world, but her parents had moved back to the planet when she was young. She knew the world her species had evolved upon well. The vast majority of Dessei were not so lucky, and their population was almost triple that of humankind.

They arrived at their shuttle early, but boarding was already being allowed.

The inter-system shuttle was larger, too large to actually land in a shuttle bay, instead using a long umbilical with a carrier car in it.

Going aboard, they floated down the main hall. Without gravity, any way could be up, and there were doors on walls and floors both. While she preferred to be in gravity most of the time, at least the zero-g made the bags easier to carry, she thought.

Finding their compartment and floating in, she took her seat. There were six, though no one else had arrived yet.

"Can you stow these?" she asked, pushing her bag towards Alexander.

"All right. You okay?"

"Yeah, I just want to find the head," she said, floating back out of the room.

It was not so much that as her own need to get a feel for the ship. She was very antsy, and she could not strictly chalk it up to anything in particular beyond the fact that she, nor anyone she knew, was in command of this ship.

But there was almost no chance of an issue occurring in a heavily-populated system, she reminded herself for the thousandth time.

Almost.

Floating back to the compartment, she slid the door open and paused.

"Honey, it looks like we're sharing the compartment with Dr. Logus," Alexander said.

He seemed genuinely happy. She was not so sure how she felt.

"Oh, hello Doctor," she trilled.

"Lieutenant," he replied politely. The man looked rather distracted or bothered, himself.

She moved in to sit down next to Alexander. "Do you have family in the system, sir?"

"Ah, you don't need to call me sir. I do have family in the system, it's true. But I'm not going to see them, I'm afraid. This is . . . well, not work-related. But it's certainly no personal trip."

Pirra wondered what that meant.

"What about you two?" Logus asked.

"We're going to visit my family," Alexander said. "They're Phobosans."

"Ah, interesting. I thought that moon had been abandoned," Logus replied.

"It was, but my family and a few others decided to move into the place to form a kind of science commune," Alexander replied. "Fixed up the facilities with a grant from the Research Council and - well, that's where I was born."

"That's quite interesting," Logus said. "I do recall reading about it, now that you mention it. It would be interesting to meet your family some time. You said the Research Council? What is it that they're researching?"

Alexander had seemed proud until that moment. But now, he looked away, his face flushing ever so slightly. "My father is interested in . . . applied plasma weaponry."

"Weapons? Oh, I see," Logus said, hiding his surprise. He noticed that Pirra was staring at him unblinking. She was trying to keep her crest down, but it was bristling all the same.

If Logus had been so ill-mannered as to make a rude comment about such odd work, he could tell she'd launch into his defense.

She was a bit touchy, he decided. Interesting.

"I can see why they would want to do such work on Phobos. I had no idea, though, that plasma had real weaponizing potential. Wasn't most such research abandoned a century ago?"

"Yeah," Alexander said. He elaborated no further.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Logus let the topic drop.

"Well, if you two don't mind, I think I'll take a rest," Logus said, smiling politely to them both.

He slid his privacy screen down around him, and closed his eyes.

Pirra and Alexander were silent. The privacy screen would block most noises, but neither felt much like talking.

She knew Alexander hated talking about his father's work. However important it was to remain on the advanced edge of weapons technology in case of conflict, it was work that made most uncomfortable. War and conflict were, after all, rarely good for anyone.

No one else joined their compartment. An hour later, a voice came over their systems;

"Please prepare for dash entry. ETA at Titan Station is 30 hours."

Thirty hours to Titan Station in Saturn orbit, a two hour layover, six hours from there to Ceres with another hour layover, then just two more to Mars.

Then just getting their rental shuttle and seven more hours flying at sublight to reach Phobos.

Not short, but not bad for getting to a place as out-of-the-way as that moon.

She shifted in her seat. She'd be happy once they were on that last leg of their journey. Then, if anything went wrong, it'd at least be a proper emergency, instead of something as inane as a bureaucratic error . . .

*******

"Prepare for dash entry," the pilot called over the comm. "ETA to Luna is 38 hours."

"I hate these," Apollonia said. "The rattling makes me queasy after awhile."

"The dashgates in Sol are very well maintained," Brooks assured her. "It won't be bad."

They entered the gate, and Apollonia found herself holding her breath. The entry and exit had usually been the worst, that feeling of falling with rattling and shaking . . . when it came to pain she felt she was rather brave. But she'd rather get poked with a needle in the eye than have that plummeting feeling.

But Brooks was right; the sensation was markedly lesser than any dash she'd ever taken (which, granted, had not been many).

Letting out her breath, she relaxed as they began to cruise.

"Okay, you were right . . . Ian." She hesitated using his name, it still seemed odd to her.

He seemed lost in thought, and she glanced over to him. His eyes were glazed, staring into space tiredly.

"So you're from Earth, huh? Antarctica?"

"Yes," he replied.

"What's it like?"

"Cold, but the glaciers and permafrost are gone, have been since the 22nd century. At least where I was." He paused. "It was nice."

"Was? Has it changed much since your childhood?"

He smiled sadly. "You could say that." But he did not elaborate.

They both grew silent, lost in thought.

She realized she did not know anything about Brooks; he was an absolute enigma. Besides the fact that he was captain of the Craton - which he technically even wasn't, right now.

"How long have you been a Captain?" she asked him.

"Nine years, all told," Brooks replied. "Three of them in the Trade Fleet, prior to joining the Voidfleet, and six after joining."

A lot of that surprised her. "You're from Earth, but you didn't go straight into the Voidfleet? I thought only people on the fringes joined the Trade Fleet."

"It's not a rule," Brooks replied. "Though it might generally be true. But yes, I spent time on the fringes of human-controlled space, worked my way through the merchant fleet, then later joined the Voidfleet Academy."

"So how long did it take you to go from captain of a Trade Fleet ship to Captain of an SU ship?"

He smiled. "Do you hope to become a captain, Apollonia? I could see you attaining that."

"Maybe," she replied, smiling a little, feeling somewhat pleased at the compliment. "Got to keep my career prospects open, right?"

"Indeed," Brooks replied. "But to answer your question - I served 18 years in the Voidfleet before becoming Captain of my first ship."

The surprised showed on her face, and he smiled lightly again and said laconically; "Sometimes things don't come to us as quickly as we hope."

She nodded, and looked away, wondering if she had just been rude. Eighteen years, though! She'd always heard it took just ten years to become a captain. It had been the dream of every child to become the Captain of a starship, when she'd been growing up. So why had it taken Brooks so long? It didn't seem to add up.

"I'm going to take a rest," Brooks said, reclining his seat back into a full bed. The lights in the cabin dimmed automatically, and she reclined as well, though not fully prone.

Brooks fell asleep quickly, and while she did wish to rest, she did not mean to fall asleep. But then she found herself suddenly groping her way back to consciousness.

"Hello?" she murmured, sensing more than seeing the presence above her.

Opening her eyes and blinking against the lights that were still dimmed but seemed horribly bright, her heart jumped as she realized that nothing stood above her.

Yet she felt the presence. She felt the malevolence. She felt the will.

Her voice turned hard, almost not her own.

"You don't belong here," she said, a quiet power in her voice. It was like some other force spoke through her. Part of her but also not.

The presence observed, regarding her in a way she might regard a disgusting parasite.

"Leave," she ordered.

Her eyes were dragged over to the side, to Brooks. The man was sleeping, but fitfully, moving as if in a nightmare.

There was a connection there. Something important, something vast and terrible and great and entirely beyond her understanding, she knew she had to warn him, but then-

She was being shaken awake.

"Apollonia, are you all right?"

It was Brooks.

She blinked, pushing his hand away from her shoulder absently.

The dim lights were not blinding now. She looked about, but saw no one, felt no presence, besides Brooks next to her.

"Where are we?" she mumbled.

"Still en route to Earth," he told her. "Are you all right? You seemed disturbed in your sleep. Your heart was racing almost dangerously."

She looked around, but the dream, the feelings, had faded to the point she was already forgetting them. Her heart was pounding in her chest, but it was calming rapidly, and with it she began to feel calmer.

"I'm fine," she said, yawning. A sense of foreboding filled her, still, but she did not know why.

"I'm sorry to have woken you. You just seemed very upset."

"Yeah, just a weird dream," she said. A slinking thread of memory found its way into her consciousness. "What about you? Any weird dreams?"

"No," he replied. "I don't remember dreaming anything."

A drone brought them some fruit drinks, a yellowish-orange drink that she'd never had before.

Orange juice, it told her. So this was the juice of an orange? She'd had candies that claimed that flavor. They'd tasted nothing like the actual juice.

"So when we get to Earth, what do we do?" she asked.

"We don't go directly to Earth," Brooks told her. "The hearing will be on Korolev Station, in orbit around Luna. That is the capital of the Sol System, and most of humanity."

Her sadness showed, because he smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, it's literally fifteen minutes to Earth by dashgate."

"Oh, good. For a moment I thought I'd miss my chance . . ." She stretched, and flopped back in her seat. "I've always wanted to see the homeworld. I honestly never thought I'd get the chance."

His brow furrowed as he looked at her. "Do you know anything about Earth's recent history?" he asked seriously.

"Well . . . no," she admitted. "I didn't watch our crappy local news, it was pretty much constant lies about how great things were. And I didn't chat with many people or have a system . . ." She perked up. "But I did watch a lot of documentaries when I was younger. Ones about the forests and the oceans and the animals and plants in them. I always wanted to see one of those giant flowers, the ones that smell like rotting meat?"

She stopped and took a deep breath and grinned.

Brooks was silent, looking at her with concern, and her smile started to fade.

"What is it? Don't tell me that those shows were lies," she asked.

"No, that's not it. Those things all exist - rafflesia flowers, forests and oceans full of life. They're maybe just not how you think they might be."

Her heart felt like it was fluttering.

"Why?" she asked.

"Forty-five years ago, the orbital infrastructure around Earth collapsed," Brooks said. "In the most literal sense. The Orbital Ring, the Space Elevators - all of them broke apart and crashed to the surface."

He could see the alarm on Apollonia's face, but also the confusion. Brooks gestured to her tablet, and sent her an image of the Orbital Ring that encircled the Earth.

"This ring was around the Earth's equator. Elevators from the surface reached up to it, that were used to ferry people and supplies up or down. But something happened, we- We still don't know what, or how. But all of it came crashing down."

He paused, letting her look over the images on-screen. None showed the carnage, only the extent of infrastructure that had been placed in orbit. It was extensive; millions of people had moved through the system daily. To go from one side of the planet to another, there was literally no way easier or faster than to go up an elevator into orbit and then take a hypervelocity train.

But when it had broken up, all of it had become simply . . . debris.

"Billions died," Brooks said soberly. "And billions more were trapped. The debris that didn't fall remained in orbit or moved outward, creating a runaway kessler syndrome that we called the musk field - a scrapfield so dense in space that ships could not safely move through it."

He took a deep breath. "And the ecosystem - in many parts of the world it simply collapsed. After the shocks of the climate catastrophe from centuries ago, there was one of the largest mass extinctions in the world's history.

"But this was a second shock, only a few hundred years later. The dust from all of the debris drowned out the sun. Forest fires added to it. The world's average temperature dropped by nearly ten degrees."

"So . . ." Apollonia finally said. "It all died."

"Most of it, yes," Brooks said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," she replied.

She willed herself to hold back the tears. To keep her face calm.

Brooks looked away, and she did not know if she wished he hadn't, or if she appreciated him letting her save some face.

Because she was struggling to keep it under control.

All these years, she'd had one wish. And now she had just learned she'd been a fool to want it. That it was all . . . dead and gone.

A thought shot through her, and she looked up.

"You said you're from Earth," she said. "Were you . . . there when it happened?"

Brooks looked over at her. For just a moment she saw the same struggle she was going through playing over his face. Hiding pain, and refusing to show it.

"Yes," he replied. "I lived through it."