Chapter 1
HE WOKE FROM AN 85-YEAR SLEEP. The cobwebs fell away, but the bad-dream feeling lingered.
Every person he had ever known was dead or would be before he returned.
But that wasn’t it.
He lay in the sleep pod while the G-gel foamed away to a citrus aroma. He was supposed to get up now, start his new life, find glory and riches. Instead, he lay there like the dead, aching in every joint. Aching everywhere. His balls felt like he’d been kneed.
Must have pulled high G’s during system entry. Should have bought better nav system.
He tried to move his arm, to waggle an ankle. Everything still hurt.
It wasn’t this bad before …
A cup of warm broth, brimming with nutrients and medicine, steamed just out of reach. Probiotics to jump-start his intestines. Antibiotics to kill unwelcome trespassers. Electrolytes. Adrenergic agonist, to get everything jumping in a hurry. Tissue repair aminos. Not his grandmother’s chicken soup.
His prior jumps had been 12 years each. Seven times longer felt ten times worse. Much more might have killed him.
Great … I get to be my own guinea pig.
At the time of his departure, nobody had yet returned from a trip this long. What else was he going to learn the hard way?
“Open those eyes, myiliy. I’ve got some fkoosnee soop. You’ll feel all better.”
Delicious soup. The high sweet voice was calming, the light Russian accent inviting, playful, sexy. Shura, the sensualist among his cognitive augments, was the right one to coax him to life. Everything would be okay. That conditioning was working perfectly. But his muscles were not so easily awakened. It felt so much better to do nothing. After eight decades, what could a few more minutes matter? And there was something else—something he didn’t want to face.
“Move your flaccid butt, balovnik! There’s work to do. Now!” The accent made her angry tone more menacing, and the pivot from “sweetie” to “brat boy” threw a calculated psychological punch. He forced his eyes open. Blue light stabbed into them. Tears welled up, washing away the last of the gel. He groaned, propped himself up on his elbows, and reached for the mug. It smelled like chicken gumbo. It tasted like sour grass. It felt like curling 20 kilos with his left arm.
His senses were out of whack, maybe. His tastebuds had been pickled in moisture-preserving goo. Einstein-sleep was a marvel of technology. The dermal sloughing afterwards was not. He itched everywhere, about to peel like a human pupa. He shuddered.
At least he traveled alone.
“Trnnofffdhedamlihss … ”
Slurred nonsense. The ship’s triune AI cluster ignored him. He focused and shaped the words again.
“Turn … off … th’ … damn … lights!”
The brightness dimmed imperceptibly.
A flaccid hand—his own—jerked up to shade his eyes.
Where is that light coming from?
“You’re probably wondering about the illumination, Ragnar,” said Lev, the commander among the augments. Maddeningly composed, and clinical.
Lev had once had an accent too. Ragnar asked him to drop it. Something about the augments felt off, but he couldn’t say what.
“This really sucks,” muttered Edwin, the sentry, his baritone flat and grim. “You’re not going to like this. Whole trip might be a bust. Maybe we can sell your medical logs. If anyone still cares by the time we get back. If we get back.”
Trust Edwin to cast a shadow over the unknown. Pessimistic. Morbid. But brilliant, given time and data.
Apparently, he hadn’t had enough of either.
Lev continued smoothly, ignoring Ed.
“The star’s insolation at this location is 30 percent above the Earth standard. Effective surface temperature is 9,400 Kelvin. We’re approaching the candidate planet from the day side. A precaution. There are others but this one is the best. The viewports are letting a lot of UV through, so it might be wise to adopt a habit of shade.”
Adopt a habit of shade? Where had he learned to talk like that?
Ragnar had bought the prospecting van cheap. It came from the outer Solar System where the sun is barely bright enough to read by. No filters. Lots of viewports. 9,400 Kelvin? At least he’d arrived at the right star. Spectral type A1. Three times as massive as the Sun, and burning its nuclear candle 25 times as swiftly.
And there it was, the thing he had to face.
He closed his eyes again, gave up on trying to identify the conundrum relating to his augments, and tried to catch this other memory. The idiot risk. He might be doomed already, just not dead yet.
“Prrcaution?” Sloppy, but the ship understood.
Brom answered—his inner jester. Cowboy, devil-may-care affect. His role in the soma, the collected augments, was to keep the spirit of fun alive. It was often unclear if he was being serious.
“Sure, in case the aliens have itchy trigger-fingers. Dayside gives us cover. Just in case, y’know.”
The galaxy had been spinning for 13 billion years. The chance of finding hostile intelligent life in this place, at this moment, was nil. But it never hurt to be cautious. Brom wasn’t one for beating around the bush.
“How long have we got? And somebody get me sunblock.”
A condensation-beaded glass with the drug slid from the dispenser. Ragnar’s arm was a creaky assemblage of slack pulleys and dead weight. He willed it to move.
Lev said, “Nine hours to survey hold. If it looks good, we descend to the transfer orbit. Otherwise, we wait.”
The liquid was cold. Delicious. He stared at his glass in amazement.
Shura had said he had work to do. Not really. Not yet. He couldn’t help picking up the thread of that puzzle. Brat boy!?
Augments were artificial personifications of the core modules of a human mind, and his had been with him, revealing his inner state in ways he would otherwise have been tone-deaf to, since he was about 18. They’d never been so independent as to insult and manipulate him.
He had decided to run his augments on the ship instead of on his wearables. But he didn’t see how that would make any difference …
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