Hibour

      Her sleep cycle wasn’t the most productive. The bed was warm and soft, but had a unique smell, comprising years of cleaning materials and laundry detergents. She could barely make out the scent of previous occupants. The faint smell of perfumes and fragrance could never be fully cleaned out of the furniture. Throughout the building, she could hear the faint sounds of passion, the rush of water in the bathing room and the occasional flush of pipes in the walls. All the while, the metal bones of the structure ticked and popped with thermal insulation, the only barrier between comfort and the harsh arctic conditions beyond.
      It didn’t help that she had recently come out of stasis. When her NIF woke her up, she found herself semi-rested. Her body had only partially recalled how to sleep without a stasis cocktail, and she felt it in her heart, muscles and brain. Still, she managed to rise and get to the bathing room and finally wash away the grime of spaceflight. “Oh gatz and chros… ” she moaned to herself as the hot water cascaded down the back of her head and neck. Immediate relief overcame her skin and muscles. She gently scrubbed the hood of her nose, easing the sensitive flesh and opening her sinuses. The granulated soap between her prehensile toes was a welcomed sensation, and she scrubbed them for minutes at a time. It was easy to see why miss Braiva didn’t want people soaking. It would be easy to spend hours relaxing here.
      Minutes later, she found herself in the lobby where a collection of scones and high calorie breakfast cakes were waiting for her. Carvi was there with a hiking pack and a bag with some additional clothing. He provided her with a slew of electronic permissions, including certification for training on her visa. Additionally, she received a brightly colored cold weather coat with detachable sleeves and semi-active heating, a set of thicker gloves, a beanie cap and a pair of ear-covers.
      “A necessity for us tapered types” he chuckled, demonstrating how to wear the ear covers. “Frostbite is the quickest way to shorten your ears.” He then showed her how to run the heating element in her coat, the shoulders and arms of which had photovoltaic fibers to glean energy from the sunlamp outside.
      “So, we couldn't find any bat gear-“ he continued, pulling out some unique looking footwear. “But the crafts shop managed to mold you some boots. It’s not pretty, but it should work in the wilderness and they’ll have better gear by the time we get back.”
      With all her cold-weather protections ready, she grabbed a scone and prepared to leave. Braiva appeared from the stairs in a warm looking gown. She crossed her arms as she leaned against the wall. “Haaviq Aqui Lab, Misk?”
      “That’s right,” he replied, putting his own gloves on. “Should be two days. Just gotta get her introduced is all, figure out what her routine is going to look like. Then we’ll be back.”
      “Be nice to this one, Carvi” said the dolle, giving him a look that was hard to read through her mirror-black eyes. “This grant money is good income to us, don’t go scaring her off.”
      Carvi chuckled again as he slapped Eppli on the shoulder. She casually moved further away. “This one’s different,” he stated. “I got a feeling she’s up for it. She came here on a UOSR warship. A little arctic travel should be no problem!”
      Eppli didn’t quite agree with his optimism, but she also didn’t like being talked about second hand. She put a scone in her mouth and stood, preparing her headwear. Minutes later they were back in the cold. The morning light of the sunlamp revealed much of what had been hidden. Now the landscape before her very clearly curved upward and away, rolling all the way up until it was kilometers overhead, then out of sight behind the building. Aelvissik was situated near the northernmost cap of the great tubeworld. When she looked south, she could see snowy escarpments stretching to a blackish sea that encircled the interior, descending into the mists and out of sight. The south endcap couldn’t be seen. Even now, she could barely make out the thin sunlamp stretching the core of the cylindrical world, though the thick support spokes were more obvious, each radiating out from the central structure, rigidifying the world and providing a root from which giant icebergs were forming in the sea.
      “No sense staring at it… you’ll be sick of the sights after the first crossing” Carvi chortled as he prepared a small vehicle. Eppli wrinkled her flared nose as she stepped forward. The vehicle reeked of oil, lubricants and other chemicals. The synthetic cushions of the seats smelled like sweat. The three person snow tractor had two trailers in tow, already loaded with supplies. “Are you a delivery man too?” She asked.
      “Hm? Oh no, there’s just no point making the trip all the way out there without bringing some cargo… all gotta chip in, you see.”
      Eppli accepted his help onto the tractor and bundled up. The machine hummed as the electric motors engaged and they started off down the slush-rutted path, skirting the edge of town. The grizzled, insulated structures that made up Aelvissik didn’t look any better in the daylight. Rust was more obvious now, as were the discolorations caused by leaks and heating systems. Yet despite the town and the continuous clouds of industrial smells, Eppli’s attention was turned outwards towards the snowy fields and hills. What just minutes ago she had thought to be distant boulders now appeared to be moving and congregating on the horizon. They were four legged with thick, matted coats and a sturdy build. Tall crests rose over their necks and they had horn-like growths on their faces.
      “Are those… Ceratopsids?”
      “Wooly-topsids” Carvi shouted over the wind and the jostling of the vehicle. “That’s the bachelor herd- 34 heads when we surveyed last week.”
      Eppli watched as the creatures tussled about in the distance. She got the sense that they were larger than they looked from here, but really she was just astonished to see a congregation of such large creatures in this ecosystem. She clutched her hood as she leaned forward to speak again. “How- what in Sol’s fancy feeds a herd like that?”
      “The snow-hold grasses in the foothills, seeds from the forest patches… we let them graze on the lichen farms too. Gotta understand miss Eppli, just like everything else you’re going to see out here… the wooly’s are designed to live on very little.”
      “That’s what I understood coming in” she responded, “but I wasn’t expecting to see grazing dinosaurs in the arctic. Would it be to-“
      She nearly lost her grip on her seat as they hit a large rut in the snow. Carvi laughed as the vehicle bucked and jostled to catch the road ditch, then continued on. “Sorry there-“ he chuckled, revving the engine. “Road is only going to get worse from here…. while we still have a road.”
      Eppli adjusted her goggles, then looked back over her shoulder. The herd was growing fainter, now vanishing over rolling hills of white and gray. Her gaze shifted northward, scanning up the curving landscape as it vanished into mist and fog. No other herds were apparent against the snowy frontier, but that did little to curb her eagerness. She pulled out the small optical instrument on the side of her pack, but then put it back when she realized she’d never get a good look at anything while in the vehicle.
      “Came out here for the wildlife… thought you might have known about the wooly herds” Carvi shouted.
      “Almost all of my preparation concerned the marine biome, mister Misk.” 
      “All one ecosystem…” he replied. “Between them and all the avians, their shit sustains the nutrients in the waters!” Eppli’s nose twitched. She was studied in the biomes of many conservations. By extension, she had a limited knowledge of old Earth biomes, now extinct for nearly 200 years, though many would argue they were extinct long before that. She knew that this place could only ever be an approximation of Earth. It was an ecosystem in appearance, but fully dependent on the gigantic human systems that sustained it, no matter how wild it might appear on the inside.
      “Well, there’s plenty more critters in the water” Carvi shouted over his shoulder. Ahead, the arctic terrain sloped downwards towards the edge of the sea. The marine biome stretched outward and upwards within the titanic cylinder. It was obscured overhead, the far side of the sea lost beyond the clouds. Visibility down the tube was no better. Beyond a kilometer or two it was all mist.
      It was a spectacle, she had to admit. Ecological preserves like this were not frequently visited. Out of the billions of people living throughout the solar system, relatively few have ever visited these artificial ecosystems. Those who did were either tasked with maintaining them or merely visited the preserve for a very specific purpose. Eppli eyed the back of Carvi’s head, wondering if he had any suspicions regarding her visit.
      As they rode the slope to the seashore, a break in the glacial cliffs revealed a rocky beachhead. A new sound carried over the rumbling motor. It was an incoherent din of cackling calls, chirps and low bellows. As Carvi took them down a series of switchbacks, the noise grew louder until she recognized the source.
      The misty shoreline was absolutely covered in animal life. Eppli almost stood on the saddleback seat as a blubbery sea of marine mammals, both contemporary and paleo, huddled in massive crowds along the shore. Between, amongst and even on top of them were thousands of pterosaurs, representing at least a half-dozen species. Two or three azhdarchids loomed along the outskirts of the colony, meandering like lonely sentries. Amongst all of them were more contemporary birds. Even insects were buzzing in the air, swarming around the steaming colony of life. It was an incredible sight and Eppli began imagining her vision to hard storage as Carvi slowed and carefully navigated a few clumps of sea life that obstructed the roads. “We’re not allowed to clear them away,” he said over the reduced engine. “But they like the generators at the docks.”
      Sure enough, as they rounded the far end of the colony, they came upon a few buildings. These structures resembled the ramshackle buildings of Aelvissik. The facilities were practically overrun with life. Seals and sea lions both modern and ancient crowded the space around the buildings. The noise of the mammals now boomed louder than the vehicle. Carvi turned them aside and rolled into a penned off area for equipment. 
      Strangely, the animals only parted now that they were on foot. As they hauled their equipment and stepped through the small settlement, the creatures parted earnestly. They honked and barked and bellowed, more towards each other than towards these strange humans. Their lumbering, awkward bodies tumbled about and slinked out of the way.
      The smell would have been bad for an ordinary human olfactory. Eppli, forever blessed with the powerful nose of her kin, found it almost unbearable. It was hard to breath amidst the retching stink, even with her dampening software. She kept on Carvi’s heels, daring not to dwell here a moment longer than was needed.
      “You get used to the smell” Carvi chuckled, meandering his way through corrugated metal walkways. Eppli’s finger-boots clattered on the slick surface as she tried to keep up.
      “I doubt that very much, mister Misk” she huffed. Unable to take it any longer, she cupped her glove over her nose until she could only smell polyfibers and her own hand.
      “I mean it, after a couple trips through this you’ll get used to it. In fact, I expect you might be spending some time on this beach… didn’t you say you were here for marine life?”
      “Yes… but I need to keep my priorities,” Eppli stated. She glanced at the nearest pile of mammals. The tusked creatures were barking at each other, even as their nearest companions dozed. True, they were fascinating, unlike anything she had ever seen in person, but they weren’t why she was here. If she could ever get over the stench, she could categorize these species and try to figure out how far they had deviated from their Terran ancestors. Were they holding up here? What kind of relationships did they have with other species on this beach? Was this population even sustainable? Dozens of such questions filled her mind before her train of thought was interrupted.
      Carvi had brought them around the last shack. They now stood at a dock that bobbed gently in the surf, protected by shallows that were partially choked by ice. The interior sea stretched out before them, dotted by small icebergs. So few humans would ever know a sight like this.
      Of course, all that was well and good, but Eppli’s new concern was the five person dingy bobbing beside the dock.
      “W-were getting in that!?” She exclaimed.
      Carvi grinned and tossed her a life jacket. “Only the finest accommodations! You’ll take the front bench here and I’ll drive the first leg.” He started tossing their luggage into the watercraft, then transferred equipment from docks. A set of oars, a sort of transmitter, coil, rope, a few boxes of questionable smells and…
      Eppli squinted quizzically as he handed her a compound bow. “Here, take this one” Carvi said casually. “Ever handle one of these?”
      “A-a bow?” She asked in disbelief. Beyond some of her exposures in the mindscape, she had no experience with archery. She tested the function of the weapon by drawing it. The compound device appeared to fold under tension, changing shape as bowstring acted upon levers and pulleys. “What in the eight spheres do we need a bow for?”
      Misk smiled again. Eppli was beginning to hate that toothy grin of his. It was hard to tell if he was genuine or constantly being condescending. “The bow? Why, I thought you were here to study the marine biosphere?”
      Eppli narrowed her eyes. Misk turned his back to her and continued loading some cooling cases. Was he snickering? She looked towards the seals and sea lions littering the shoreline behind them, then to pterosaurs and birds soaring overhead. “Misk… I’m not a hunter. I shouldn’t need to kill anything.”
      Misk sat up and turned back to face her. He held a clutch of orange tipped arrows. “Oh you might not be a hunter…” he pulled one of the arrows out of the bunch and held the tip up for her. “But there are plenty of things out there that are. Some of them are so big, so fast and so thick skinned…” He clicked a pinch toggle with his fingers and the tip of the arrow opened. Inside was a small cluster of cybernetics-grade computational matter. “Regular darts and tracking devices just don’t cut it” he smiled.
      “These are for tagging?” she asked incredulously, taking the arrow from him.
      “Yep! Tethered arrows. If you hit something successfully, the tip should deploy and the rest of the arrow can be recovered via the tether. They’re pretty expensive though so we try to use them sparingly.”
      A thought occurred to Eppli as she cautiously stepped into the boat. “Does that mean you already have tagged individuals out there? Sample groups I might be able to use?”
      Carvi Misk stepped into the boat behind her. Their combined weight caused the watercraft to sit a little lower in the water. It rocked from side to side and Carvi quickly went about securing some of the items with straps and strategic weight distribution. “Oh yes. Haaviq Aqui maintains an extensive and diverse network of subjects throughout the habitat,” he answered. “What exactly are you looking for?”
      That was the question.
      It was going to come up eventually, she knew. Time and time again she had reviewed the answers she might offer. There were a million reasons why an outer solar system ecologist might visit a conservation orbital over Saturn. Her hosts had been rather forthcoming with their hospitality thus far. As caretakers and residents of this land, it was an honest question.
      She wasn’t here on honest circumstances. “Under the conditions of my research grant, I’m here to survey the biosphere. I may need data of many species, mister Misk. I will likely need to observe their movements, their interactions with other species, their diets and feeding patterns. My agency is concerned mostly with the sustainability of this ecosystem. Can it be replicated under similar conditions? What level of human intervention is required to both contain and cultivate it?”
      Misk smirked as he leaned against the motor case at the back of the boat. “If I didn’t know any better, Lamont Si, I would venture to guess that you don’t know what you’re looking for.”
      Eppli went cold. Nerves pinged down her spine. Her NIF warned her of a sudden increase in heart rate. “What do you mean?”
      Misk chuckled. “There’s not much to take away from here. Most of the time, visitors come looking for something to exploit… like there’s a magic answer in this place. As if there must be something useful here after all these years, but they’re not sure what.” He started the electric engine. The boat hummed to life and rocked some more as he cast off their lines. The dock began to recede. “They think of this place as an industrial experiment” he continued, pleasantly resigned. “They come looking for a return on investment. Earth was a bounty of resources, why can’t this place be the same?” He licked his lips as he throttled up the motor and navigated out of the small bay, heading for open water. “When in reality” he called over the sound of surf. “We lost control of this place a century ago and it’s nothing like Earth.”
      They hit the first real swell of the ocean. The boat tipped, then crashed forward with a spray of briny sea. Eppli squealed and clung to her seat as Misk cackled. “You ask if this place is sustaining itself…” he said as he charged the boat forward, meeting the next swell at a more suitable angle. “This orbital would have died out decades ago if that weren’t the case, miss.”
      Eppli was hardly listening now. She had a white-knuckle grip on her seat as the boat pitched and bobbed in the waves. Dread filled her mind again as she recalled her motion sickness from the shuttle.
      “Keep your center of gravity low” called Misk from the back of the boat. “If you fall overboard it’s only going to slow us down!”
      Eppli snarled and held her arm up against the spray. Luckily, as they put more distance between them and the shoreline, the swells diminished and became wider. Ragged chop turned into lumbering, smooth, wide waves that the boat rode more easily. Eppli was able to sit up more and take in her surroundings.
      Oceans on orbitals weren’t uncommon, but most were interior seas with surrounding landforms. Now that she was hundreds of meters offshore, as best she could tell, these black waters encircled the entire orbital, rising up either side of the cylinder and forward down the tube. Icebergs were looming closer. Most were small, only a few times larger than the boat. But in the distance she could make out the shapes of house-sized ice mountains. Further out, she could see flat, snowy islands and rugged, rocky outcrops. It was a sea larger than any she had seen, and the environment was all the more different for it.
      The wind whipped the boat, carrying spray off the crests of every swell. Salt, brine and the smell of sea foam assaulted her nose now. Underlying that, there were faint whiffs of stink from the beach, the soft scent of oils in the electric engine, the smell of decaying sea life and the stench of mildew in the boat itself. Though Carvi had declined to show or offer them, Eppli could smell the packaged food in the containers he had loaded into the boat.
      “Alright. But you accuse me of trying to take something from here. I’m only here to observe and record. I’m a scientist, mister Misk. I work for a Kuiper Alliance transnational organization.”
Carvi said nothing in reply, but turned his attention to port. “Hey- you could try your luck observing those fellas.” He gestured towards the waves, where something shiny sliced through the troughs, parallel to the boat. Eppli jumped a little. Whatever the creature was, it was at least as big as the boat. The bluish-gray shapes could be seen beneath the waves and Eppli sat up and squinted in an effort to identify the creatures.
      “Ichthyosaurs?” She called over the engine.
      “Oh yeah. Big ones. Stenos… by the dorsal fin.” He used his free hand to offer her the collection of bright red arrows. “If you’re going to do some real data collection… you should take a few training shots, miss Eppli.”
      Eppli’s implants diagnosed the arrowtips. Trackers, blood content and nervous system monitoring, electromagnetic sensors, accelerometers, there was no shortage of applications within the discrete arrowhead. She observed a small barb that would deploy upon use, securing itself inside the subject. Taking up the bow again, she quickly tested the draw, but Carvi interrupted.
      “Now, not that I have any doubt in your aim, but make sure you secure the tether to the boat… If you lose an arrow the workshop is going to be furious.”
      Eppli turned the arrow around, found the hair-fine tether, and carefully clipped it to a small rung on the edge of the boat. The line provided almost no tension at all. She strung it out, notched the arrow to the bow, then raised the weapon. Her NIF provided some rudimentary archery displays, but the bow itself couldn’t interface with cybernetics, so the display was fairly limited. Eppli drew the bow to the suggested amount, aimed until she was aligned with the recommended range arc, then waited. The porpoising ichthyosaurs dove in and out of the swells, still paralleling the boat. It was a difficult shot to judge, especially as the boat pitched.
      “No rush or anything” said Misk.
      Eppli frowned a little, then let fly. The bow snapped cleanly. Much to her surprise, the arrow soared. With a delightful whistle, it sung over the water, gleaming sharply. The bright red streak flew high, then descended smoothly towards the pod… then landed short, splashing into the crest of a wave. Her NIF gave her a negative ping, indicating a failure to deploy the arrowhead.
      “Excellent. Keep at it and I’m sure you’ll land one eventually.” He relaxed against the back of the boat, maintaining their course on the motor. Eppli said nothing as she reeled the arrow back in. The bolt popped out of the water and clacked against the railing on the edge of the boat. She retrieved it, notched it a second time, raised it and followed through a second time.
      Her shot landed rearward of the pod. She tried again. Overshot. She tried again. Rearward.
      Eppli snarled. The pod was moving on. One of the beasts pitched above the swell, revealing a long, tapered snout full of spiny teeth. A large eye peered over the waves, as if spying upon the boat, trying to figure out who was lobbing red arrows into the sea. The creature’s face vanished into the water just as quickly as it had appeared. Eppli stood there for a moment, stabilizing herself in the hull. Taking a knee, she notched the arrow once more and raised the bow, stabilizing herself with a lower center of gravity.
      “That’s one way to go about it,” Misk chuckled. Eppli ignored him as she drew again and tracked the pod, waiting for the right moment. If she could land a tracking device with this archaic device, she’d earn enough credibility to shut him up. The boat dipped, then rose, then dipped once more and… She let loose another arrow. The bolt whispered through the wind, soaring towards the pod. On track, it landed right in the midst of the beasts, cleanly piercing the water.
      Her NIF pinged negatively. “Cotsi mav” she cursed in Neo-Botsi. Carvi was still smirking, but offered no condescending remarks this time. He turned the boat slightly as the pod moved out of sight. “Maybe you can take a few shots with this thing? Show me how it’s done?”
      “Ah- not likely. It’s fun to talk a big game miss Lamont Si, but I’ve never actually used that thing. We’re not so backwards that we spend all our time arrowing the wildlife for sport. Like I said before, we try to use these sparingly.”
      Eppli looked back in the direction of the Icthysaur pod. The creatures were long gone now, faded into the ever-shifting sea. The glacial shoreline was very far away. She could no longer make out the dock or the shoreline they had departed. Looking forward, she could make out only the frozen forms of icebergs, more swells, more sheets of ice and…
      “Is that.. a boat?” She asked, squinting into the mist. The shape that emerged over swells, bearing up against one of the enormous central struts, was that of an old Earth ocean ship.
      “You might call it a ship” Carvi said. “Haaviq Aqui has to be mobile, Miss Lamont Si. It would be hard to monitor the seas if we couldn’t move the base around, wouldn't it?”
      Within minutes, Carvi was bringing the boat alongside the vessel. Upon closer inspection, it was clear to see that Haaviq Aqui was just as old as the orbital infrastructure around it. The seagoing vessel was all metals and specialized polymers, all worn with years of rust and discoloration. Chemical stains from anti-corrosion treatments left long, pale stripes up her hull. As she dipped and rose on the sea, the hull below the waves was occasionally exposed, revealing coats of mollusks and various types of algae. She could see schools of fish picking at the small ecology that had made its home on the underside of this ship.
      Unfortunately, there would be no reprieve from the nauseating motions of the sea. The small craft sloshed and bobbed as Carvi caught lines from the anchored vessel. Forward momentum and wind had helped Eppli stave off the nausea before, but now she struggled as the two boats rocked independently against each other. “Haul up these nets here,” said Carvi, pulling cargo nets into their boat. Eppli did what she could, but her focus was divided with the churning in her gut. Soon they had all the equipment and supplies in the netting and they were hauled up and onto the ship.
      Next came the tricky part. The deck crane lowered some different cables with powerful clasps and fasteners. Carvi went to work securing them on some of the gunnels around the boat. It quickly became apparent to Eppli that these were intended to lift their smaller craft out of the water.
      “They’re going to hoist us up?” She asked without total confidence.
      Carvi grunted as he struggled on the final loop. “Yep- Seas are calm enough… we can ride it up. Just keep your center of gravity stable in the middle, miss Eppli.”
The seas did not seem anywhere near calm enough to Eppli. She tightly clutched the seat and the nearest gunwale as the boat was suddenly lifted from the water, swinging slightly on the breeze, now at the whim of the larger, rocking vessel.
Minutes later, she finally stepped off the small launch boat and onto the more solid decking of Haaviq Aqui. The polymer planking was grated and grippy beneath her boots. There was more space up here. On the air, she could smell meat cooking, laundry soaps, sterilizing alcohol and the ever-present stench of salt and mold. Obviously, Carvi couldn’t, as he stood up and inhaled deeply of the ocean air.
      “Ah! What do you think!? Did I undersell it or what?” He thrust his hands up as if in awe. “Haaviq Aqui, the most luxurious vessel to sail the Ichthara seas! The seat of oceanic accommodations!”
      Eppli felt something gurgle in her stomach as the world swayed around her. Carvi put an arm around her shoulder, hand still outstretched to the horizon. “This is our home away from home… the floating research and monitoring station, miss Eppli. With that work visa, you’ll have access to the entire facility to do… whatever you’re here to do. There’s even bunks here for overnighting… miss Lamont Si?”
      Eppli’s eyes searched for a horizon. She needed something stationary to mark her vestibular orientation. A notification in her vision warned her that her vestibular senses were falling out of alignment and she should sit down. Another warned of possible nausea if she didn’t find more certain footing. Unfortunately, upon the cylindrical shaped ocean with poor visibility, there was no reprieve. Even the nearby pieces of ice were bobbing in the swells, and there was no land in sight.
      “Gatz… oh gatz” she cursed, waddling to the edge of the ship.
      “Hey, uh” Carvi started. He took a step closer, but stopped when Eppli retched on the railings. Many nearby crewmembers paused to watch, then quickly moved on, hiding their pity.
      Eppli coughed up the meager breakfast she had eaten at the inn, then leaned on the railing for a moment while her cybernetics put her through a regiment of nausea treatments that didn’t seem to help at all. “Met’na lue” she cursed miserably.
      “Guess you’ll be needing lunch then, eh?” Carvi snickered from behind her. Eppli seethed, her eyes still fixated on the waves. This was humiliating. It was further proof that she belonged in a Kuiper Alliance lab, off on a respectable orbital, not floating around in this wild world. For years, her work had been research, then administrative. Field jobs like this were for younger, adventurous scientists.
      “I’m fine” she wheezed, before an unpleasant belch escaped her. She could smell the vileness on her own breath. “I need to sit down… have some water.”

—

      As the minutes wore on, she started feeling more acclimated. The conditions didn’t get any better, but she found that the more she worked on her sea legs, the less she had to focus on the moving of the ship. This came naturally as Carvi showed her around.
      “So… sampling the local critters and such? You’ll be spending a lot of time in here” he mused as they walked through the onboard laboratory. The chamber was not as used as she had expected it to be. It was cleaner than the rest of the ship. Much scientific equipment was there, but many pieces were wrapped up in paper or plastic. One closet was packed with shelves and shelves of samples and specimens. Her NIF happily interfaced with the large somnoptic projector that pulled data on hardwires that ran to all the instruments on the bottom of the ship. About two thirds of those instruments were non-functional, but it was still a useful system. All in all, she suspected the lab would be helpful in her search.
      Carvi fumbled through a drawer full of keys, searching for something in particular. “So what’s got the Kuiper Alliance so interested in the sustainability of a coldworld conservation like this? I mean… not to pry, miss Lamont Si, but we’ve been here for the better part of 150 years and we don’t get many visitors from the high orbits.”
      Eppli tried to focus on the laminated maps she was inventorying. Truthfully, she didn’t know the full extent of her task either, but neither Carvi, nor anyone else in this orbital, was privy to any part of it. She pretended to check the publish dates on her maps as she thought of something to say.
      “Carvi, not to press the matter… but Si is the honorfic. You don’t need to keep calling me miss.”
      A pause followed, during which Eppli could feel the melkine watching her. “Oh, yeah. Apologies Lamont Si. The Continental blends with the Bosti out here. A real melting pot of language and culture, you know.” Eppli glanced up to see him grinning across the lab, he turned back and to the keys. “It’s none of my business, Lamont Si, it’s just the questions you’re going to get a lot out here. Visitors are rare enough, but when they come calling they’re almost always scientists or exotic sightseers. Like I said in the boat, there’s really not a lot of reason for anyone to come here. Most assume you’re looking to take something.”
      Eppli had paused her inventory. She couldn’t help it. The subject of conversation needed to change and she didn’t know how to do it. Under no circumstances could she come off as an enemy to these people, but her true purpose here was entirely clandestine. “A lot of suspicion,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “I won’t say I expected sympathy… but I’m not here to do anything invasive, Carvi. My job here is to catalogue and observe the ecosystem on behalf of my agency and evaluate sustainability.” She began stacking the maps and stowing them one by one in their respective drawers. “I spent three months in space to get here, which isn’t something I’d do voluntarily, mind you. What my agency plans to do with an updated survey and catalogue, I have no idea. But as I understand it, this is good for the creatures here, it’s good for your orbital and it’s not doing anyone here any harm, is it?”
      Carvi puzzled near the counter, now holding a key. For the first time in recent memory, he wasn’t grinning like a fool. “Aye, yeah. You’re right, you’re right, Miss- Er, Lamont Si. I’m just relaying the murmurs of town.” He stepped towards her and handed her the plain-looking key. “I could probably do better to quell the suspicion then, eh? You don’t come off as the megacorp type… just keep your nose clean and I doubt there will be any trouble at all.” He smiled reassuringly, then pointed at the key. “That’s your key to the aquadeck. Gotta keep it locked for safety reasons, but I'm guessing you’ll need to get in there from time to time. That’s the easiest place to access the water. Otherwise everything you should need is in here… galley is open all day, restrooms down the hall. I’ll be heading back to shore about two hours before night cycle tomorrow, so just meet me on deck.”
      “Thank you Carvi” she sighed, happy to be moving on with a new topic of conversation. “What are you going to do in the meantime? Do you work here?”
      The older melkine smirked as he whipped out a pen. “Believe it or not, I’m one of the administrators on board… I’ll be in the back offices, working on some accounting for this quarter. If I have time later… maybe some fishing before we head back tomorrow.” He shrugged, looking amiable. “It’s a slow life out here. You should come grab a line if you get the chance.”
      She thought to say something, perhaps even take him up on his offer, just to get out of the lab later. However, in that moment, the strange software, buried deep in her NIF, gave her the faintest chime for attention. She froze, unaccustomed to the invasive signal, then played it off. “Perhaps I will. Let me put together more inventory and maybe… build a survey plan. Then I’ll come find you.”
      Carvi left shortly thereafter. Eppli cautiously, quietly, set the lock on the lab door and moved to a corner of the room that had the least sensor coverage. With the whole ship networked together, inside a much larger orbital network, there really wasn’t anywhere to hide here. The electronic functions of her cybernetics were open to the world, easily discerned by anyone who wanted to look. Even her own vision could be discerned by anyone with access to the deeper functions of her NIF.
      She had been assured that none of that would be a problem with this software. Just as she had the night before, she picked a false fingernail and removed it. Unlike the previous night, she chose one of the impromptu fingers, reserved for unexpected communications. The fingernail disintegrated on the lab table, forming the same dust like material. Her NIF recycled and her vision flashed as the clandestine software took control. The dust formed new words, much more than the acknowledgement of the previous night.

Scope has narrowed. We have detected a new incident. Hunch was correct, the new incident did not occur at either endcap or any known Icthara settlement. Suspected to have occurred within the Icthara ocean region. Continue probing. Use extreme caution. Third party agents suspected on orbital.

The text of dust burned itself out after just a few moments. The clandestine software in her NIF prevented her from taking images or hard-writing the information. She could only remember it, savoring the words in her meat brain, replaying that which most concerned her.

Third party agents suspected on orbital.