.:.:: FEY AYAN ::.:.

  It was a beautiful morning. Caliban's Star a bright spot just above the horizon, and Mosogon a fading periwinkle dome on the opposite side. The whirr of the engines calmed as the strataglider touched down on the flattest part of the pinnacle. Hub Chief Ayan made sure the craft was firmly balanced on the small, uneven surface. She didn’t want a repeat of last month, and the dampeners had been sluggish on the way over.

  She stepped out onto the pale grey karst rock and looked around, breathing in the rich organic mustiness — a nice change from the Hub’s sharp mineral scent. The pinnacles of Kabus, made of silicate materials, were its only known solid parts among the odd, rubbery ground that underlay the jungle. No one, not the geological teams, not the experts from the Institute of Frontier Sciences, not even Ootu, knew exactly what they were or how they had formed.

  The canopy extended around her like an ocean, a layer of mist rippling with the morning breeze. From this height, she could hear the distant creaking of vegetation, the soft hiss of spore-release, and the occasional pop of bursting gas pockets. She had been on quite a few worlds, and Kabus was the quietest without being actually silent.

  In the distance, she could just make out the tiny speck of the Hub, and beyond it, the path the Torchers would likely be taking through the Southern Valley. She shook her head, pushing the thought aside. Focus on the task at hand.

  It was a perfect day for painting, and a few other things.

  As she moved to the strataglider's storage compartment, she noticed a small dark spot beneath the left stabilizer. Kneeling down to examine it, she ran her finger over the surface, finding it dry. Just a stain from last time, she thought, making a mental note to have maintenance check the dampener system when she returned. After retrieving her pack, she set up her easel, angling it towards Mosogon’s curve. Then she attached the AutoCanvas bot, setting it to capture the scene twenty minutes hence.

  "Make it a good one," she said, patting the little device with a weary familiarity. "I’ll see you later."

  The bot gave a cheerful beep, its tiny servos already positioning it on the canvas as it began laying down the first broad strokes that would eventually capture the violet gas giant. Another landscape to add to the collection decorating her office.

  Then she retrieved her pack. It was black, and it never left her strataglider. She unfolded a worn datapad and laid it on the ground, calling up the terrain scan of this quadrant. She tapped the new pinnacle, designating it S-C0-8 and assigning it a yellow marker. The map was already covered in grey markers, each a pinnacle she'd already explored and catalogued.

  Two years of these excursions, and still nothing substantial to report.

  "Perhaps today," she murmured, her hand moving to touch the pocket on the breast of her flight suit.

  She took a climbing harness from her pack and moved to the edge of the pinnacle. The drop was considerable, but nothing she hadn't managed before. She anchored her line and tested it with a firm tug, then abseiled down the side of the pinnacle, carefully edging past the canopy and dropping down to its base. The pinnacles were hollow, and here in their lower sections, their walls were riddled with holes. Some no larger than a fingertip, others wide enough to admit a human body.

  After stepping out of the harness, she secured a Q-mask firmly over her face before entering. The spores produced by the webber that inhabited these chambers could colonize her respiratory system within minutes. The mask’s filter would give her an hour if she was careful with her breathing.

  Turning her back on the jungle, she found a hole and squeezed through.

  The inside of the pinnacle was lit by the gaps in the walls and a soft glow from the thread-like material clinging to the walls. The chamber was large, expanding upwards as a vertical shaft filled with outcrops and ledges. The air was cool and moist, with floating particles dancing in the shafts of light. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out the delicate traceries of the webber spanning the chamber with its silvery filaments.

  It looked exactly like all the other pinnacles now marked grey on her map.

  She sighed, then checked her watch. Forty minutes, then head back up to watch the AutoCanvas do its thing. Unless she requisitioned proper respiration equipment, forty minutes was all she had. She had been doing this for the past two years, and she wouldn’t stop searching until she ran out of pinnacles or they threw her off the moon.

  The uneven floor of the pinnacle's base required careful steps. The beam from her handheld light swept through the cavern, illuminating walls covered with malformed karst rock and webber masses. Shapes loomed at her like monsters, raising the hairs on the back of her neck as a primitive part of her went on high alert.

  "Calm down," she told herself. "Nothing but shadows here."

  An unusually interesting bump had just appeared in her light beam when her comm-unit chimed. She tapped her wrist to accept the call.

  "Ayan here."

  "Chief, it's Marlo." His voice was unpleasantly loud in the chamber. "Just checking in on your painting expedition."

  "I am so glad you asked." Ayan smiled beneath her mask. "I’m currently stuck at a finicky part of the sky. These clouds keep changing, and I can’t get the tone right. Any tips?"

  "Me? No, I’m a terrible artist. Why do you sound so muffled? Bad connection? How far out are you?"

  "I’m just down the road," she said as she approached the bump. "I'm wearing a Q-mask. There’s…something on the wind today. I’m having a mild reaction."

  "You should have mentioned that before leaving. I could have given you one of the new filters."

  "It's fine." The bump had a cavity behind it. "Did you want to tell me something specific?"

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  "Actually, yes. Tidal Dynamics just called. They say that the tidal event tomorrow is going to be less intense than projected. Only about twelve percent above normal, not the twenty-eight we calculated."

  "Huh." There was something unusual behind the bump. A shape with rounded curves and splayed rods. She moved closer, focusing her beam directly on it. "That’s strange…"

  "What?"

  "Oh, I mean Tidal Dynamics is rarely wrong." She looked closely. There was something unnatural embedded in the webber mass. "What do they say?"

  "An error in their calculations, apparently. I think our anchors should be able to take twelve percent. What do you think, should I tell the Hub Foundation Team to scale back?"

  "Best not." Ayan stood back from the bump and looked up into the pinnacle's heights. "They could use the exercise."

  "Understood. Sorry for bothering you on your day off."

  "No, it's okay. You did the right thing. I'll be in touch soon." She ended the call, then leaned forward to examine the unnatural shape, her pulse thudding in her ears.

  It was a hand.

  She drew a small toolkit from her pocket, selected a probe, and nudged the thumb. It gave, releasing a cloud of spores, but beneath the fibrous mat was dark woven fabric, still intact.

  Ah, not a hand. A glove that had been overgrown by the webber. Selecting a scalpel, she carefully cut away the clinging fibres and extracted the glove, placing it on a ledge. Under her torch, it glistened with life bending away from her light.

  She took a deep breath, then leaned back into the cavity. There was another glove, this one buried deep in webber tissue. She levered it out, laid it beside the first one, then settled back to stare at them, as if trying to imprint their reality in her mind.

  These weren't just any gloves. Expedition-grade, but old. Standard issue for survey teams thirty years ago.

  The kind Gyllon would have been wearing.

  "Wow," she whispered, a lump forming in her throat.

  Leaving the gloves, Ayan stood and carefully searched the rest of the floor of the chamber, shining her light into every crevice, examining every shape and texture of the webber's surface. After twenty minutes, she had to admit there was nothing else to find. Not without a respirator and climbing gear.

  She wrapped the gloves carefully in preservation film and tucked them into her pack. The webber would have eaten through anything organic long ago, but perhaps, just perhaps, Gyllon's beacon was intact somewhere in these pinnacles.

  She checked her watch again. Her forty minutes were up. Time to return to the surface.

  As she squeezed back through the hole, careful not to damage the structure, she felt lighter than she had in years. The first real evidence. The first confirmation that she wasn't chasing shadows.

  Back up top, the AutoCanvas wasn’t quite finished, so she took a moment to sit on an outcrop and stare at the vista. Mosogon had set, but Caliban’s Star was high in the sky, and its bright, white glow was coaxing wisps of mist to rise from the jungle. As she stared, she felt something stir in her chest, like a tiny bird. It fluttered and pushed until wetness began gathering on her eyes. She blinked it away and focused on her map. Pinnacle S-CO-8 now had a bright pale blue marker. The only one amidst a sea of grey disappointments.

  "I hope you like the scenery," she told the AutoCanvas. "We’ll be coming here a lot."

  Taking a deep breath, she reached for the breast pocket of her flight suit and pulled out a picture. She didn't keep many images on any device, let alone in physical form, but this screenshot of a hand-held printout was one she treasured. It had captured them mid-chaos: her at the center, triumphant and laughing, having just won whatever game they'd invented that day, a stolen cap perched sideways on her head.

  Ayan allowed herself a wistful smile.

  There were five others in the picture with her. All but one were wards of the system like her, scrappy and underfed but fiercely alive. Frozen mid-protest, gap-toothed mouth open to argue the rules, lunging to reclaim small treasures from each other, tangled in an endless wrestling match, all knobby knees and sharp elbows pushing through cast-off clothes too big and worn thin. Station urchins. Children who'd learned to navigate the edges of institutional care.

  And there, caught entering the frame, Gyllon in his crisp security contractor uniform, its corporate insignia prominent on his sleeve. He'd been mid-stride when the image captured him, one hand extended as if to restore order, the other holding what might have been their rations. Stern-faced because he never let anyone see his smiles. Etched with the lines of long shifts and longer worries, shoulders slightly stooped under invisible weight. Yet there was a softness about him, the look of a man who had stumbled into a role he never trained for, raising five half-wild children on the margins of his security duties.

  His hair was still dark and strong then, and he was still whole. This was before the blame. Before the frontier took him.

  "Your art is now complete!" chirped the AutoCanvas, folding back into its housing.

  Ayan secured her gear and scanned her surroundings one final time before approaching the strataglider. Today had been a good day, but now it was time to return to the Hub, oversee the tidal event, and start making plans for a proper excavation of S-CO-8.

  Come back with the right gear. Comb the inside of the pinnacle. If the beacon was indeed there, it could wait another month. It had waited thirty years.

  But her good cheer evaporated when she saw the small patch of glistening blue-green fluid beneath the left stabilizer.

  "No, no, no," she muttered, kneeling to examine the tiny puddle. "Just get me back. Then you can leak all you want."

  She climbed into the cockpit and settled into the pilot's seat. The control panel lit up at her touch, diagnostics scrolling across the display. A small yellow warning light was already blinking in the corner. She tapped the ignition sequence, and the engines hummed to life, their familiar vibration more pronounced than usual. The strataglider shuddered slightly as it idled.

  The yellow warning light turned red. Then another joined it.

  "Override," she said. The system accepted the override with a sullen beep. She'd flown with warnings before. The dampeners were auxiliary systems anyway, technically optional for short flights in calm conditions.

  Ayan eased the throttle forward, preparing for a gentle lift-off. The strataglider lurched violently to one side, nearly tipping over the edge of the pinnacle. She slammed the throttle back to idle, heart pounding.

  "Steady now," she whispered, trying again with even gentler pressure, adjusting the trim settings to compensate for the failing dampener.

  This time, the craft rose a half-meter before pitching forward sharply. The engines whined in protest as the craft shuddered and twisted, completely unbalanced, like flying with one wing. The entire frame vibrated, setting her teeth buzzing. A slew of warning lights flashed across the console as the onboard computer fought to stabilize the craft.

  Ayan cut power immediately. The strataglider dropped back onto the pinnacle with a bone-jarring thud, bouncing once before settling. She sat frozen, hands gripping the controls, breathing hard.

  "Critical failure," said the strataglider’s smooth system voice. "Your flight is deemed unsafe. Please report to maintenance."

  Ayan killed the power and sat back, staring at the canopy stretching to the horizon. She wanted to laugh...three years designing redundant safety protocols for the Hub, preparing for every imaginable disaster, and now she was stranded because she'd ignored the warning signs.

  She called Marlo.

  "Yes, boss?"

  "How are things at the Hub?"

  "Ship-shape. The Hub Foundation Team is ready and waiting, and all scouts and sectors have called in. Except the Torchers, but then we aren’t expecting any news from them. Ootu will be in touch at nightfall."

  "Good. Now, about tomorrow. I’m going to need you to take care of things for me."

  "Me? Why? What’s up?" There was a pause. "Has something happened?"

  "My strataglider’s sprung a leak. I'm not going anywhere today."

  "What? No!"

  "Yes. So, you are going to take care of the tidal event tomorrow. When that is done, send over the follow-me-hover with parts and tools."

  "I’ll send them right now."

  "No, you won’t. You are busy getting ready for the tidal event and need all hands on deck. I am fine here. The pinnacles are the steadiest thing on this moon, and I have enough survival gear for an entire month." She forced a grin into her voice. "And anyway, I’ve always wanted to spend a long-glow night in the wild."