“That was Admiral Walt’s idea,” Rose replied. “Since we’re supposed to be separate, he wanted us to stay separate. Invisible, like ghosts. Mainly so you and yours wouldn’t pay us any mind. He didn’t want to spare a single resource for us, save the space this module occupies. Space is one thing Pioneer has in spades.”

  “Indeed. It’s not the most efficient of designs.”

  “I don’t know how familiar you are with the history of the design,” Rose said. “The generation ships were originally meant to house over one hundred thousand people. But subsequent research into the efficacy of world ships like this one suggested that a proper environment is essential to the success of the descendant colony. It isn’t as simple as throwing as many people onto a boat as you can fit. You need to keep them sane for the long journey. So the design was quickly altered to include Metro, thereby not allowing as many people on each ship. The rest is history.”

  “I don’t think we’ve come far enough for it to be history just yet,” Tyson replied. “But that does make sense. Am I correct to assume you also have your own stasis pods?”

  “We do. Sixteen scientists, sixteen pods. The other thing I want you to know. Our work is extremely urgent, and we don’t have time for many interruptions. Since you’ve somehow uncovered our existence on board, I’m open to settling any open questions this one time and satisfying your curiosity, such that we can get on with our work unimpeded.”

  “Understood,” Tyson said. “There’s no grand conspiracy or any sort of clandestine spywork going on. One of our Guardians, Alesso, said her brother is part of your team. That’s how I found out you were here.”

  “Pietro? I didn’t know he had a sibling on board.” She smiled. “Small universe.”

  “Apparently. So, what kind of work are you doing, Doctor?”

  Tyson didn’t expect Rose to tell him, but he had to put the question out there. She surprised him when she smiled. “I think it’s better if I show you.”

  He glanced at Siraj, who made a face reflecting her surprise at the openness as well.

  “This way,” Doctor Rose said, motioning them into the module.

  Tyson and Siraj entered behind her, stepping into the control center. It had the same basic setup as the bridge and the Guardian module, with workstations and a main command center near the back. The room was completely vacant, the scientists clearly occupied elsewhere in the space.

  “The control center is a formality,” Rose explained. “It comes with every module. Plug and play.” She smiled, pointing to the door in the back of the room. “That’s housing for the team. Racks, food and toilets. Nothing particularly interesting.” She pointed to the door on the left. “That’s Magic Door Number One.” She motioned to a matching door on the other side, a door the Guardian module didn’t have. “Magic Door Number Two. I’m afraid that one’s off limits to you. I don’t feel like running you through the whole decontamination process.”

  She walked them over to the first door. It opened into a long passageway that split into a t-junction halfway down. Rose stopped in the doorway, turning to block them. “Let me ask you something, Captain,” she said, a flicker of mischievous light in her eyes. “What’s the primary reason we lost the war against the trife?”

  “There are too many of them,” Tyson replied. “And they reproduce too quickly.”

  “Exactly. It’s a numbers game, isn’t it? Their numbers are always higher than ours, no matter how hard we try or how many we kill.”

  “That’s not a dial we can adjust, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “You’re a step ahead. Well done, Captain.” It didn’t come out patronizing, but rather as sincere appreciation for his quick deduction. “We believe it may be a dial we can adjust. A lever we can pull.”

  “How?” Tyson asked.

  “That’s the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it? The first step to controlling anything is understanding it.” She moved into the passageway, beckoning them to follow. She took them to the first door on the left, where a small window offered a glimpse into a small room with a pair of occupied workstations. Their displays revealed what looked to Tyson like diagrams of atomic structures. “These are computer-generated models of trife DNA. We’re running nearly a hundred simulations per day, trying different editing methods on them with two goals in mind. One, shut off the systems that allow trife to reproduce quickly. Two, find a means to duplicate those systems and transfer them to humans.”

  “You want to accelerate human reproduction?” Siraj asked.

  “Want? No. Need? Perhaps. It remains to be seen. This way.”

  She led them away from that room, bypassing a few other windowless doors and heading for the junction, turning to the adjacent passage, which ended a few meters down at a single door.

  “Doctor, I appreciate your candor with all of this,” Tyson said as they approached the door. “But maybe you can back up a few months. You’re running a genetic research program with the intent of helping Earth, but you’re on a starship that’s heading away from Earth.”

  “There isn’t much we can do about that,” Rose replied. “Earth isn’t safe, but the work still needs to continue. Even if we can’t reach back, what if we get to Avalon and the trife are already there? What if something worse is on the planet? There are still viable applications to our research with regard to our new world.”

  “I agree,” Tyson said. “I’m not questioning the work, only wondering about the origin of it.”

  “Every generation ship that leaves Earth will have a similar module with the most highly-trained scientists the Marines can still locate and bring on board. Each team has a slightly different approach to the same basic theme, and all of us are committed to discovering a means to combat the trife and sharing that information as best we can. The hope is that one of our teams will come up with a viable solution to the trife problem, with the ultimate goal of ridding the planet of the xenotrife.”

  “This is a one-way trip, Doctor.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. That’s why our work is so important right now. Every second we travel means our return signal will take that much longer to get back to Earth.”

  “You can send a transmission back to Earth?”

  “Right now, yes. A tight band laser transmission bounced off the Starlink satellite network. A tiny pulse of light in a sea of stars. We need to burst the transmission before that network goes offline, or we’ll be shouting at a crowd of deaf ears.”

  “How long does that give you?”

  “The satellites are good for twenty more years. The base stations? If they manage to remain online for five more years I’ll be impressed. That’s why the urgency.”

  “I don’t know if you’re aware, Doctor,” Siraj said. “Our comms were damaged during liftoff, and we haven’t been able to contact Command to report on the status of our launch.”

  “We’re using a separate array for our transmission. It shouldn’t be affected.”

  “Really?” Tyson said. “Since we weren’t able to transmit the status of our launch back to Command, perhaps we could—”

  “No,” Rose said bluntly.

  “But—”

  “No. I’m sorry, Captain. The transmitter is designated for UN purposes only. Besides, it wouldn’t be useful to you. You can’t reach Command through it.”

  “The UN wouldn’t pass the message along?”

  “No. It’s not important to our work. Please understand, Captain. It’s not personal. As far as the UN is concerned, and really as far as the USSF is concerned, Pioneer is gone, all hands lost. We’re on our own.”

  “Right. I was hoping to warn them.”

  “Warn them? About what?”

  “You don’t know. An unidentified object swept past Pioneer before vanishing. It delivered a payload of xenosquids.”

  “Xenosquids?” Rose replied.

  “Alien creatures. The Guardians engaged them on Pioneer’s exterior. They killed one of ours and injured another.”

  “They’re on the ship?”

  “They were. The Guardians neutralized the first wave. They’re outside now, looking for additional alien deposits, organic or otherwise.”

  Rose’s eyes were bright with the news. “That’s brilliant.”

  “No, it really isn’t,” Tyson replied. “Good people are dead, and we don’t understand the extent of the incursion. At a minimum, we need to inform Command that the rest of the launches may encounter a similar scenario. They need to be ready.”

  “That’s just not possible, I’m afraid,” Rose said. “I have something else to show you here.” She went to the door, swiping her wrist to open it. Tyson and Siraj followed her into a much larger compartment. There were computers here too, on rolling carts that allowed them to move to different stations. There was other equipment too, machines Tyson didn’t recognize or understand. A number of scientists were in the room, focused on their individual tasks. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that.

  What was out of the ordinary was the glass box in the back corner of the room. And what was in it.

  “Is that?” Tyson said, bypassing Rose and hurrying over to it. A pair of scientists tried to get in front of him. “Out of my way.”

  They looked at Rose, who nodded to allow him through. He continued to the enclosure, looking in at the tangle of trife pressed together on the floor, a whitish gel covering their skin, which they were actively transferring back and forth through an undulating motion.

  They were oblivious to his presence, focused on spreading the gel toward a small mound in the center of the enclosure, where a single tiny trife was visible inside a hardened shell. He was both fascinated and disgusted. He’d never gotten so close to a trife before, a fact he was glad for.

  “Doctor,” he said, his eyes fixed to the creatures. “What the hell are these things doing on my ship?”

  “We can’t study trife reproduction without observation,” Rose replied.

  “They’re too dangerous to be on board,” he replied angrily.

  “I’m well aware of their danger, Captain, and I understand your concern, but there’s no reason for it. They can’t get out of the enclosure if they wanted to, and even if they did, the failsafe would trigger a lockdown of this room, followed by a lockdown of the module. There’s no way they can get through three levels of security.”

  Tyson was pretty sure he’d heard those kinds of claims before, and it never seemed to end well for anybody. He pulled his eyes away from the trife, still fuming. “I don’t care how good you think your security is. Those things are a threat to the safety of everyone on board.”

  “That’s an ignorant way of thinking about them, Captain,” Rose said.

  “Ignorant?” Siraj replied. “They destroyed our planet.”

  “They’re no more responsible than an unsocialized dog would be for biting someone. It might be hard for you to understand, but they’re only following their instincts. They don’t know any better.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “I’m not. The trife are very basic creatures, driven primarily by three directives. Kill humans, reproduce, protect the queen.”

  “Kill humans, or just kill?” Siraj asked.

  “Kill humans, specifically,” Rose replied. “They were custom-made as a weapon against us.”

  “Scorched-earth theory,” Tyson said.

  “Worse than that, I’m afraid. The amount of effort needed to design a creature specifically made to kill humans is rather large. Someone really wanted us out of the way.”

  “Out of the way for what?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll ever know. But look at them again, Captain. There are too few of them to offer a threat to us, and they know it. They’re motivation now is to produce a queen to follow. To reproduce. That’s what they’re trying to do. We allow the fetus to grow for two days, and then we hit it with a high-powered laser and terminate it.”

  “That’s horrible,” Siraj said.

  “Is it? The trife don’t seem to notice. They continue mating and try again. We’ve had this group in custody for nearly four months. They’ve essentially never stopped having sex. The point being, they’re not a threat to us.”

  “How did you capture them?” Tyson asked.

  “The Vultures nabbed them for us.”

  “The Vultures? I’m not familiar with them,” Tyson said.

  “No matter. The point is, we’re making progress, Captain. We’re going to crack this nut, and we’re going to send the intel back to Earth. I would appreciate zero disturbance while we do it, but at the same time, if you’re able to get a sample of these so-called xenosquids, I would be grateful for the opportunity to add them to our research. We can determine if there’s a correlation between them and the trife, what that correlation is, and probably much more. If they are a threat to the other ships as they launch, we can provide the UN with a solution, which they can pass to USSF Command. How does that sound?”

  Tyson looked over at the trife again, still uneasy about their presence. Doctor Rose was being incredibly up front with him, which allowed him to trust her more easily. She could have kept them out of the module instead of showing them what she had back here.

  “I’m going to add this section of the ship to the Guardian’s primary post-hibernation patrols,” Tyson said. “I want to ensure your work continues and that you all remain safe down here.”

  “That isn’t necessary, Captain.”

  “I’m still in charge of the passageways outside this module, Doctor. I’ll decide what’s necessary for them. As for the aliens we encountered, if we recover any genetic material, I’ll have it brought down to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I recognize your need to stay focused on your research, but if we wind up in a situation where your expertise may be valuable, I hope you’ll respond to our intrusion. Everything you’re working on is useless if some external factor destroys Pioneer.”

  “Of course, Captain. It’s not my intention to be a hindrance to your primary directive. If we can be of assistance, please do let me know.”

  “I will. Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Of course. Pietro,” Rose said, looking at one of the scientists. A small man, overweight and nearly bald, looked up from his station. Tyson could see the resemblance between him and his sister in his olive complexion and in the shape of his nose.

  “Yes, Doctor Rose?” he said.

  “Can you please escort Captain Grant and Commander Siraj back to the passageway? I’d like to get back to my work.”

  “Of course, Doctor,” Pietro said, approaching them. “Captain. Commander. How is my sister?”

  “She’s well,” Tyson said.

  “Good to hear. It was crazy luck that we ended up on the same starship off Earth. Shall we?”

  “Thank you again, Doctor Rose,” Tyson said, before following Pietro back out of the lab. They were in the unmanned control center when both his and Siraj’s comms beeped at the same time.

  “Captain Grant, Commander Siraj, this is Lieutenant Commander Novitz. You might want to come back up to the bridge. The Guardians found something.”

  30

  Cross

  Pioneer. Exterior. 11.12.2052. 0100 hours.

  “Keep your distance,” Joseph said, warning all the other Guardians away from the alien object, except for Morales, who’d discovered the craft in the deep chasm at the base of the sensor tower. It was the deepest chasm in the hull, the alien craft tucked into one corner of it where it sat shrouded in darkness. The craft itself was an uneven, solid black mass that looked like an asteroid wedged in the divot—a piece of food trapped in Pioneer’s teeth.

  Joseph examined the object through Morales’ camera feed, blowing the view up to fill most of his field of vision. The side of the object was open, but there was no light coming from inside it. The darkness there seemed a deeper black—like space itself—resistant to illumination from Morales’ helmet.

  “Fatcat, move in,” Joseph said. “Slowly. Alpha, I want your rifles trained on that thing. Bravo, keep us covered.”

  “Copy that,” West said.

  “Moving in, Prime,” Morales replied. He took a few slow, cautious steps toward the object, his rifle at the ready. “I don’t know what the inside is made from; it’s not reflecting my light at all.”

  “I can see that,” Joseph said. “What about thermals?”

  Morales switched the filter on his helmet. The camera couldn’t do the same, leaving Joseph to wait for his reply.

  “Nothing, Prime. No IR. No motion.”

  “Keep closing. I want to get a good look inside.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Guardian Prime, this is Pioneer Actual,” Lieutenant Commander Novitz said. “Captain Grant and Commander Siraj have arrived on the bridge. Commander Siraj will take over from here.”

  “Copy that. Thank you, sir,” Joseph replied.

  A brief pause followed before Siraj returned to the comm. “Guardian Prime, this is Commander Siraj. I’ve resumed operations for this mission.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Joseph said. “Are you able to see Fatcat’s feed?”

  “We are. Captain Grant is reviewing it now.”

  “It appears to be an asteroid,” Joseph said. “Maybe like the meteors that brought the trife to Earth?”

  “Only this one is apparently able to maneuver itself,” Grant said through the comm. “Any sign of a power source? Thrusters?”

  “Not so far, sir,” Joseph said. “Whatever moves this thing, it isn’t obvious.”

  Morales continued to creep in on the open side of the object. He paused when his feet reached the edge of the hull. He needed the metal to remain anchored to the ship. His helmet lights shined into the rock, revealing only empty space as far as he could reach.

  “The creatures must have been packed tight in here, Prime,” Morales said. “Just stuffed in for the ride, ready to attack.”

  Joseph eyed the shape of the interior. The object seemed too small to carry as many aliens as they had encountered. Were the creatures able to shrink themselves down? It was possible they could flatten their bulbous central mass to make a tighter fit. How did they keep their arms from getting tangled together like a knot of hair?