Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Even in our desperate situation, we’d be fools to go wandering Minerva at night, so Father and I plant ourselves where we are, wrapped in each other’s arms. Technically against the cold, but we’re also desperate for comfort. Even with the fear of Yarrow and the wonder about the blinking red light, we doze a little. Well, I doze. Father probably doesn’t.

Little Sister is the first sun up today, casting her dim rays over the muckland, the phosphorescent soil glimmering its return greeting. I roll out from under Father’s arm and fall into a crouch, warming my legs by easing my weight from side to side. All my attention is focused in the direction of the settlement.

Dad. One gunshot, then two, red splashing his tunic from the inside. I try to shove the sounds of the bullets striking his flesh to the edges of my mind. Mostly, I succeed.

There’s something out there. Off on the plains. I can hear it, but not see it. A short barking sound.

A baby malevor.

I leave Father resting, and head toward it.

Over a rise, and then I see the creature. Huddled as small as she can be, gray-black hair matted where she’s been licking it. She looks up at me, eyes wide and ears back. Submissive.

I kneel. “What’s happened to you, little one?”

There are traces of blood along the back of her head and neck, the places where she can’t lick. As I creep closer, I can’t see any open wounds.

“Look at that,” comes Father’s deep voice behind me.

“She followed us,” I say. At least I think this is a she. I can’t see too much of the malevor’s anatomy with her body curled so tightly against the cold.

“She did. They were domesticated animals on Earth. Maybe this one has more of that genetic memory living inside it. That reliance on humans, even here on the other side of the galaxy.”

“But her parents?” I say.

Father kneads my shoulders. “There was a lot of gunfire from the fence, farther out than the perimeter guns usually go. I guess it was in all directions, including south.”

“Oh,” I say, looking down at this little creature, probably an orphan. All the seething emotions from the day before slam into center focus. I drop into a deep squat, head in my hands. Ready to act, but helpless to know what to do.

Father’s warm presence is around me. My breathing slows to match his. I don’t know how long it takes, but I become a sort of human again, thanks to Father.

There’s something slick on my knee. I smell the musty scent of the animal even before I open my eyes. When I do, she’s there, the baby malevor on her tottery legs, licking my knee.

“Oh, hi,” I say through tears. I cautiously reach out and stroke her head. She startles, then accepts my touch. Leans into it. Butts my side, probably hoping for milk. “What do we do with her?” I ask.

“We can’t delay on her account,” Father replies. “But if she keeps up with us, I guess we have ourselves a malevor.”

“We can’t delay what ?” I ask. Then the memory of that flashing red beacon comes back. “We’re going to see the beacon, right?”

“That can’t be more than half an hour farther, so yes. Then we go back to the settlement. We hope Rover has already retaken the zone. If not, we infiltrate. We get Dad back.”

“And we hope that Yarrow is back to being himself,” I sniff.

“Maybe,” Father says mournfully.

I lose myself in stroking the malevor’s fur.

“It’s going to be okay,” Father says.

I get that he’s trying to make me feel better, but that’s a stupid thing to say. How can he promise that? I stand and brush my tunic free of a night’s accumulation of dirt. “Let’s go.”

Slotting my spear into its loop against my back, I go about cleaning up the bits of our camp. Before we’d settled in to rest, I’d placed some rocks in a row, an arrow facing in the direction of the beacon. I hadn’t been sure whether daylight from the Sisters would make it invisible, but I needn’t have worried—now that we know where to look, we can make out the beacon’s blinking even in daylight.

I’d have expected Father to be the one to spring us into action, but it’s me who leads us off toward the beacon. After a hundred paces, steeling myself against spiraling thoughts of Dad and Yarrow, I let myself look back. No sign of Yarrow coming after us, but there’s Father, my father, and the malevor a few paces behind him, making its pathetic little bark sounds. Even in the utter chaos and loss of yesterday, there’s something left.

Even though prioritizing the beacon makes sense, it feels like I’m pulling apart my own muscle fibers not to sprint back toward Dad now that it’s daytime. My feet drag, even as my wonder about what we’ll find pulls me forward.

We approach a massive depression in the planet’s surface. In the center of it is a narrow trench created by the object’s impact. I stand at the edge of the crater and stare in, momentarily dazzled when the light strobes. I’ll have to close my eyes every few seconds if I don’t want to be blinded.

It looks a little like an Earth squid down there. Glassy tendrils spray out, like some tentacled creature has come to land. Then I realize: it’s not a squid. That’s actual glass I’m seeing. The beacon’s impact was hot enough to melt sand and soil.

“I’ll go,” Father says behind me.

“I’ve got this. I’ve been clambering up and down a lot of pits lately.” Without waiting to hear Father’s inevitable no, I work my way down into the crater, using my spear like I learned to do at the ethylamine pond, counting to six and pausing with my eyes closed whenever the beacon strobes. Even with my eyelids shut, I soon learn to turn my head away so the bright light doesn’t faze me through my lids.

Deeper I go. The soil is churned, and the rocky solids tinkle and crackle, their glassy streaks shattering under my feet.

Once I’m at the bottom of the melted ravine, I gingerly test the soil with my fingers, to make sure it’s not still hot. It’s been weeks since the beacon streaked through the sky, but it had been going very fast indeed to generate this much impact heat.

Luckily, the beacon was also very small. I had been imagining something the size of Rover, but it’s more the size of an eyeball. The sphere gleams, smooth and black. It’s close to the color of the surrounding soil, which doesn’t phosphoresce anymore—all the microorganisms in the area were probably killed by the high heat.

I hover my hand over the beacon, turning my head just in time to avoid blinding myself when the red light blinks on.

The beacon isn’t hot anymore.

I pick it up.

This thing is from another world.

It might be from Earth.

I hold it aloft, and look up to see Father and the baby malevor peering down at me.

Father glances toward the settlement. “Come back, we’ve got to get a move on.”

I take a good look at the beacon. There is no writing on it, no signs of its journey, no markers or defects. Just this perfect black marble. I scramble up the side of the depression.

How do we interact with it? What if it’s some alien tech? Though the fact that it projected words in Fédération as it streaked across the night sky makes me think it’s probably from Earth.

From Earth!

I give a little prayer to the beacon. I hope you can help us.

After the device nearly blinds us again by strobing red, I put it in my pocket. I start toward the settlement, assuming Father will follow.

“Are you okay to head back already?” he calls after me.

I nod without breaking my stride. I’m not going to further delay getting to Dad and Yarrow.

“Owl, wait,” Father says.

I whirl on him. “I’m fine. Really!”

Then I see: he’s pointing at my pocket.

It’s glowing. I realize I’m also hearing muffled voices. Coming from my pocket .

Cautiously, I pull the beacon out. Its proximity to my body must have triggered something. The moment it’s out into the air, the projection stops being blocked by my tunic and instead produces life-sized figures beside us, continuing along mid-speech.

They’re Dad and Father.