They were back on the ship and out in orbit around the planet. Vas and Reyer had been scanned and double-checked before they changed into clean, dry clothes. They did all this without commenting on what they’d found.
Ciro was certain that they had found something. One look at their faces had not only convinced him of that, but had also cured him of the residual jealousy he’d felt over having been left with the ship. Lynx was now scanning the entire vessel on Vas’s orders. When the bot was done, he reported his lack of any significant findings to the captain.
Vas turned to Reyer. “We’re going to want to re-dress the cuts on your back. They need to be sterilized. I know I’m probably being paranoid, considering how hygienic your average swamp is, but…still.”
“The captain is being sarcastic,” Lynx said. “It’s probable he’s concerned that your wounds might become infected.”
“Yes, thank you, Lynx. I caught that,” Reyer said.
“Do you want me to do it, or Lynx?” Vas asked.
Reyer pulled herself up from where she had been lying. “It doesn’t matter. He’s no human, but his hands are pretty gentle for a bot.”
Vas nodded to Lynx, who pulled down the first-aid kit. Over in the copilot’s seat, Ciro grinned. Reyer saw it.
“You’re pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Vas?” she said.
“With good reason! It took almost a year to get the hardware and software to work together right.”
Reyer pulled the back of her shirts over her head to give Lynx access to the injured area while still maintaining modesty. The bot worked in silence as Vas paced at the front of the ship.
“Well!” Ciro burst out. He turned in the seat so his legs were dangling over the side.
“Well, what?” Vas asked.
“Well, you sounded pretty panicked when we got the call to pick you up, and I’ve never seen you jump on ship so fast—and that’s saying something, by the way—so are you going to tell me what happened down there, or do I have to go look for myself?”
Adan turned to his brother. “That isn’t funny, Ciro.”
Ciro paused. “Okay. That’s not funny. Sorry, Adan. But can you tell me, please? Curiosity can kill, you know.”
“I was not aware that curiosity was considered a medical hazard,” Lynx said. “Under what conditions—”
“Shut up, Lynx,” the Vas brothers said simultaneously.
Adan looked at Ciro. “I think we found xenos.”
Ciro’s face twisted up as he tried to figure out if Adan was joking or not. His brother still looked serious. “Is that possible?” Ciro hopped out of the chair and sat on the steps leading down to the main cabin. “There was no sign of the Supremacy on the planet.”
Vas shook his head. After a while, he said, “What do we really know about xenos?”
“We know that the Supremacy created them to—”
“That is incorrect, Master Ciro,” Lynx said.
Ciro looked down at his creation. It was applying new bandages to Reyer’s back.
“Explain.” Ciro said.
“We do not know that. Much of the data regarding the entities known as xenos is a collection of speculation and assumptions based on a few known, reliable facts. It’s not proper to say that we know the Supremacy created them.”
“The bot’s right,” Reyer said. “All we really know is that they can copy someone’s form and they seem to have some of their memories.”
“We know that they only seem to bother the Rising,” Ciro said. “The Supremacy doesn’t even”—when he saw Lynx look up, he amended— “to the best of our knowledge, the Supremacy doesn’t look for them in any of their security checks or worry about them.”
“We know that when a xeno transforms, it leaves behind two bodies,” Vas said.
“You’ve seen one transform?” Reyer asked.
“Not before today,” he grumbled. Vas took a breath and spoke louder. “I was once sent on a special mission to hunt one down. A man and a woman were found dead under mysterious circumstances. While they were puzzling over the corpses, trying to figure out how they died, the man was also seen walking around and asking questions.”
“Did you find it?” Reyer asked.
“Yes. Sniped it from a building away.” He made a gun with his fingers and pulled it back to imitate recoil. “One less xeno to plague us.”
Lynx had finished his task. Ciro and Adan turned away while Reyer finished putting her shirts back in order.
“So you think you found xenos down on that planet?” Ciro asked.
Vas hesitated, then nodded. “Ciro, please download a copy of the information and video the scanner picked up. Put it on Lynx and at least one other tablet. I don’t want to lose it. If what we found are xenos, we might have doubled what we know about them.”
“You should have picked one up!” Ciro called out as he grabbed two tablets and a selection of wires.
When he turned around his brother was staring at him.
“No,” Adan said.
“No?”
“Why don’t you go ahead and watch the video while you’re downloading it. Then tell me if you think I should have picked one up.”
Vas went and sat down by Reyer as Ciro took Lynx and began processing the feed they got from the scanner.
“You look thoughtful,” Reyer observed.
Vas rubbed his jaw, then said, “What if the xenos weren’t created by the Supremacy?”
Reyer sighed. “I don’t know, Vas. If that’s true, then what’s going on makes even less sense than it did before.”
“You don’t think those were xenos?”
“No, I have to admit, that’s exactly what I thought when I saw it. But I really, really don’t want it to be true.”
Vas smirked. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Reyer interlaced her fingers, put her elbows on her thighs, and leaned over her legs. “Why would the Supremacy be looking for something they should already know the location of? They may not have created the xenos, but does that mean they aren’t using them? Was it only a coincidence that the man who talked to me was a xeno?” She groaned. “What does any of this mean?”
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“That’s a lot of questions.”
“I can think of a hundred more.”
Vas nodded.
“What are you thinking?” Alix asked.
“I think that we probably need more answers than we do questions.”
“All right, Captain, but that means that we’re going to have to find someone who knows more about xenos than we do.” She smiled when she noticed his expression darken. “I don’t even have to ask what you’re thinking now.”
“Oh?” he said.
She pointed to him. “That’s the face you make when you know you’re caught. You don’t want to take me back to a Supremacy planet, but you realize that no one with the Rising knows anything about xenos.”
“I’d tell you you’re wrong, but you’d probably be able to tell I was lying.”
“I hope you don’t play poker with that face, Captain.”
“No. I use my other one.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Probably get talked into something I shouldn’t even consider.” He turned his head to look at her. They were closer than he’d realized, and she was already facing him. It took him a moment to remember what he’d been about to say. “What do you want to do, Miss Reyer?”
“I want to help,” she said. “I don’t want to sit back and do nothing.”
“All right. As soon as Ciro is done, we’ll have him try to track down someone who might know something.”
“Thank you, Adan,” Reyer murmured. “I know you could drop me off on some godless hunk of rock somewhere now that you know what they want—”
“I couldn’t. You should know that. My mission is to protect you. Do I have to tattoo it on your arm or something?”
She laughed quietly. “I guess I’m more used to being useful than I’m used to being protected.”
Vas didn’t know how to answer that. He wanted to. He knew he wanted to say something, but his brain didn’t seem to be having any meaningful exchange with the mess of emotions that had seized his guts. Instead, he laid the groundwork for his escape while mentally cursing himself for being a coward. “I’m going to get the ship into velox. We’ll need to be inside the boundary if we want any kind of signal.”
A while later, Ciro came up behind the pilot’s chair. “I have finished watching the video,” he announced.
“Do you still think I should have picked one up?” Adan asked.
“Probably not with your bare hands.”
“I always said you were a genius. Are you and Lynx up for some hide and seek?”
“Oh, games! I love games.”
Vas pointed to the emptiness of velox. “Somewhere out there is someone in the Supremacy who must know something about xenos. I want you to find them and find out what they know.”
Ciro rubbed his hands together. “Yes, sir, Captain. Bring us out of velox within a couple of light-years of any Supremacy controlled planet, then find a cozy bit of space to float around in. This could take a while.”
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Many hours later, Ciro was still buried back on the main deck, deep in his nest of wires and screens. Reyer brought him another can of coffee to join the five empty cans he’d unconsciously collected by his left side. He took it from her without looking up and while continuing to type with his other hand.
“We’re going to have to go planetside soon, or you’ll run out of that stuff,” Reyer said.
“I can live without it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ciro glanced at her. “Miss Reyer, have you ever heard of Google?”
“Isn’t that a really big number? Or a distance?”
From the other side of the ship, Vas groaned. “Are you going on about that again?”
Ciro said, “Don’t listen to that heretic, Miss Reyer. Google was a giant search engine back on Old Earth.”
“Are you talking about some kind of really big computer?” she asked.
“Not exactly. This is ancient stuff, but from what we know, it was a system of computers that connected everything. All the ideas, all the information, everything that was written—it was brought together by a program so it could be searched. Try to imagine all that digital information gathered up by this amazing system and made available to anyone. As long as you had signal, you could look up whatever you wanted. All of mankind’s knowledge and experience was granted to the world and available to anyone who was willing to ask a question.”
Reyer looked at Vas.
“No, he’s serious,” Adan assured her.
She turned back. “Ciro, that’s a horrible security risk.”
Ciro clicked his tongue several times and shook his head. “I see the Supremacy has gotten to you too, Miss Reyer. You’re thinking about it the wrong way. We have to control our information because we’re in a war. The Supremacy claims they’re controlling the signal for security reasons, but who are they protecting us from? And you can’t say the Uprising, because they were locking down information long before we were around.”
Reyer put one hand up in a shrug.
“See?” Ciro said. “They don’t allow people to share information unless it’s through their approved channels. We can’t share our knowledge or our work without their permission, or we’re criminals. They aren’t protecting us. They’re protecting themselves because they know how powerful people could be if they were allowed to work together. Freedom of information doesn’t make us vulnerable—it makes us unstoppable.” He looked up from his screens. “And someday, when we win this war, I’m going to spend the rest of my life building another Google.” He went back to typing.
Vas had to admire how beautiful some of Reyer’s smiles could be.
“That’s a lovely dream, Ciro,” she said, “but why are you bringing it up?”
“Do you have any idea how much easier this would be if I had a search engine?” He cracked the top of his coffee and downed it without taking a breath. “But! I think I may finally have a lead.”
Vas and Reyer started toward him.
He held out his hands. “No need to crowd, people. No need to crowd. It’s not like you’d understand what you’d see on my screens anyway.” He lowered his hands. “I had Lynx plug into some of our preferred inlets.”
“What?” Alix asked.
Vas explained: “The Supremacy has certain sanctioned information paths that are supposed to be secured, but…aren’t.”
“Not from me, at any rate.” Ciro grinned. “We can only scan the information that’s using that path, but over the years, I’ve found a lot of inlets, and sometimes we get lucky. Most of the stuff I found regarding the xenos was junk, but about twenty minutes ago, I got a hit. It looked more serious.”
His fingers flicked over the tablet’s screen before he held it out for Vas to take. “I followed it back to the work of a distinguished biologist named Bonumomnes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Try saying that three times fast.”
“Maybe when I’m bored,” Vas said. “Tell me about the biologist. Does he work with xenos?”
“What? Can’t you tell?”
Vas and Reyer looked at the tablet again.
“It’s nothing but a jumble of files, Ciro,” Reyer said.
“I can’t tell a damn thing from this,” Adan said. “Are you trying to show off?”
“Not this time.” Ciro took back the tablet. “I can’t tell anything from it either. That’s what got my attention.”
“Yeah, he’s just showing off,” Alix said.
Ciro ignored her. “He made it looks this way on purpose. I think he’s hiding something.”
“So is he working with the xenos, or is he a xeno?” Reyer asked.
Adan crossed his arms. “I doubt a xeno would put anything on a computer that might give it away. It’d be in their best interest to remain completely unknown.”
Lynx, who was sitting on the middle bench, plugged into the nest of wires, said, “I’m afraid that assumption has no logical merit, Captain. It presumes too much about who or what the xenos are and what their interests may be. You have no evidence.”
“Yes, thank you, Lynx.”
Ciro said, “Hopefully we’ll know more when I’m done breaking in.”
“You’ll be able to do that?” Reyer asked.
Ciro cracked his knuckles. “Now I’m going to be showing off.”
Adan and Reyer left him to his work. Hours passed before their attention was drawn back to Ciro by his yelling.
“No! No-no-no-no! What—? Gah!” Ciro raised his head. “Lynx! What’s he doing?”
“The doctor appears to be re-encrypting the files and burying them, sir.”
“Is this real time?” Ciro stood up.
“No, sir. We appear to have triggered a backup program.”
“He can’t do that to me! It took me forever to get into those files!”
“Ciro!” Vas called.
Ciro wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Uh, well, we have a problem.”
“I think we figured that out,” Reyer said.
“Did you find anything out before you lost the information?” Vas asked.
“Yeah. Some. He’s definitely working with xenos. I found those files. They were hidden pretty deep. I think trying to get them out was what triggered the defense.”
“Did you learn anything useful?”
“Yes. Never underestimate biologists.”
“About the xenos?”
Ciro shook his head. “There was too much to uncover. This guy’s been working on the project for years.”
“What do we do now?” Reyer asked.
“Don’t worry!” Ciro said. “I can get it all back. It’s going to take a lot more time, but—”
Lynx interrupted him: “I’m sorry, Master Ciro, but that statement is inaccurate.”
“What?”
“While you were talking, all the files were deleted from the network.” Lynx’s head moved to look up at Ciro. “We have lost all access unless we find the physical computer the files were migrated to.”
Ciro looked like he wanted to yell a few choice swear words but was holding back. After he growled some less offensive replacement expletives, Reyer said, “Okay, now what do we do?”
Neither Vas nor Ciro seemed to have an answer.
“Excuse me, Miss Reyer,” Lynx said. “Do you mean that you wish to still have access to the knowledge this person possesses?”
“Yes, Lynx.”
“While Master Ciro was working on decrypting the deeper folders, I was able to access and read some general information regarding Dr. Bonumomnes. Specifically, I know where she lives.”
“She? They’ve been calling him a he.”
“Jane Bonumomnes is a female. She lives only a few star systems away from our current position.”
Reyer said to Vas, “That could be useful information. Especially if we want the rest.”
“Is the planet Supremacy controlled?” Vas asked Lynx.
“It is a Supremacy member and under Supremacy control, but it is not currently occupied and the security is minimal, Captain.”
Reyer could see Vas hesitating.
“Hey,” she said, “we wanted to find someone who knew more about xenos than we did. Let’s go find her!”