Chapter Text
The first thing to really hit her, upon opening the stylised brass door with the watch Barrett gave her, was the smell. It smelled of books, leather, some sweet tropical plant, and wood, with maybe a hint of motor oil. It almost felt sacred and ancient, compared to the usual hyper-cleanliness and scentlessness of buildings in New Atlantis. And it was very different from a mining outpost with its acrid planetoid dust, lubricants, solvents, and that humid biological smell of too many underwashed bodies crammed into a habitation module.
She smiled, trying to push down that hope that maybe, just maybe, she had found the home she had always dreamed of.
The lobby felt more like a lounge, with stylish old fashioned chairs and a couch to her left and a wooden stairway sweeping up to the second floor to her right. Portraits - actual oil paintings - of a windswept man and a woman holding a biology text hung from the wood panelled wall above the couch. And there were books - actual real books - on glass covered shelves. A large glass and bronze window in the shape of a compass occupied the wall above a double door ahead of her, and more portraits, one of whom was clearly an old Earth astronaut in his suit, decorated the wall along the stairs. A hallway was tucked under the stairs, presumably leading to the basement, and Lore wondered what treasures might be down there.
“This is incredible,” Lore breathed.
“Captain, everyone will be in the library. Just inside,” directed Vasco in his electronic voice.
Lore nodded, looking up at the chandeliers and over to the statue of an early space vehicle and up at the alien insect displays as she crossed the plush rug that protected the hardwood floor from travellers’ shoes. And probably from Vasco’s hard, metal, Model A robot feet. He was a repurposed, ancient industrial robot, which were not traditionally invited into living spaces. Especially not ones as resplendent as these.
As she swung the library doors open, she gasped as it revealed the bright two story space inside. There were more books, on wooden shelves, with rolling ladders to reach the topmost ones. An older man in a suit and a baby faced young man wearing religious clothing were speaking to one side. A blonde woman leaned against a circular railing that separated a display podium from the rest of the room as she watched that interaction with her arms crossed tightly. Another woman stood in front of some closed, glass fronted shelves, beside a desk. Her brown leather jacket-clad back was to Lore’s entrance, but her short locs hung down over her face as she clearly tapped something out on a tablet, as she was not actually perusing the titles.
“If Barrett were here, he’d probably tell you that you’re a part of something bigger now. And he hopes you’ll make this place your home,” Vasco intoned helpfully as the doors fully swung open.
Just that sentiment alone spiked directly into Lore’s heart, and she shook her head to not get ahead of herself. She wasn’t going to put her battered heart out for another disappointment, no matter how well meaning the sentiment. She moved into the library and heard Vasco stop moving shortly after entering the room. She called on her academic training to comport herself with poise and authority. She hadn’t changed out of her Argos mining uniform, but she had used the shower on the ship to clean up, so she smelled a lot better.
“We appear to have a visitor,” smiled the man with the religious garb.
The blonde woman pushed off of the railing and addressed Lore, without a smile.
“Welcome to Constellation. We have a lot to talk about,” she said in a husky, British voice, recrossing her arms and furrowing her brow, “Would you care to tell us what happened to our friend? Why you’re here and he isn’t?”
Lore was slightly taken aback. The underlying hostility was not what she expected based on Barrett’s assurances and Vasco’s sentiment as they entered the building. She took a breath, trying not to take it personally. She knew she sometimes came off as brusque and direct, and she hoped that this woman was just the kind to not beat around the bush with fake niceties.
Lore could do direct.
“Pirates attacked. Barrett asked me to deliver the artifact.”
“I see…” the woman replied, unsatisfied.
“Vasco, verify,” she ordered, flicking her eyes to the robot behind Lore.
“All statements made have been factual,” Vasco replied.
Lore took a deep breath. All statements had been factual, she had just omitted the part where she had to hunt down and kill the pirates that were after Barrett and the whole reason why their… her mining camp was attacked. Also some malarkey about secret treasure in that banged up old ship she’d flown in.
The older man scoffed from his comfortable seat against the wall, between two doors that seemingly led to a solarium filled with plants. That was clearly the origin of the sweet tropical plant smell she had noted earlier. She hoped she would have time to peruse the plants before she left.
“Oh, this is just typical. Barrett hands over our ship and our robot to some random employee of that discount mining outfit he uses,” he said, waving his hand in annoyance.
“Walter…” the blonde woman chided before turning back to Lore, whose left eyebrow was raised in response.
“And if we hadn’t insisted on installing those emergency protocols, I guarantee you this rock breaker would be halfway to Neon by now!”
Now Lore was beginning to be offended, and her frown began to form. She hadn’t even had an opportunity to introduce herself before they began to insult her. She didn’t take kindly to people making assumptions, or treating people shabbily because of their work in life. Just because someone was a miner didn’t mean they are lesser than some suit working in a high rise in New Atlantis, like this tosser.
“But that didn’t happen,” interjected the man in the religious garb, “She’s here. With the artifact.”
“Thank you, Matteo,” the blonde woman grasped onto his interruption to continue, “Now let’s focus on what’s in front of us, shall we?”
She turned back to Lore, whose arms were crossed across her chest, her lips were pursed in annoyance, and her head cocked in an expectant manner. The blonde woman seemed to understand that their welcome had been sub-par and she opted to refocus on the item Lore was supposed to deliver.
“What happened when it was extracted? Did anyone see anything? Hear anything?”
“I extracted it. It was bright lights and music,” Lore answered crisply, trying to maintain some professionalism, but clearly indicating she was annoyed.
The blonde woman frowned, “Interesting. Similar to Barrett’s description of the experience. With less embellishment…”
She turned to walk through the central well of the display, towards her colleagues who were now gathered around the railing. With her movement, Lore caught sight of two other artifacts that looked very similar to the one in her pack, lying on the display podium.
“There. Are you hearing this? Do you all believe me now?” asked Matteo, exasperated.
“Whether it happened or not wasn’t in doubt. But honestly, Khatri, if you expect us to believe in fairy tales…” grumbled Walter.
“If this is the greatest mystery in the universe, why couldn’t it be part of the ultimate mystery?” Matteo insisted.
Lore refrained from rolling her eyes at the mysticism, and moved into the central well to look at the pieces on the display.
With an ease borne of practice, the blonde woman looked at both of her colleagues, interrupting again, “Gentlemen, can we please focus?”
She turned to look at the other woman, who had so far been silent during the back and forth, “Noel, I think it’s time we tested your theory.”
“Right,” she replied, tapping something on her tablet, “Let’s see…”
She moved to the side of the display podium, and began addressing Lore, “We know the artifacts react to each other. The pieces we already have move when they’re in close contact. Now if we add this new one to the two we already have…”
“The artifact…” the blonde woman said to Lore, a little more gently this time, while pointing at the display podium, “If you could place it on the table here?”
Lore breathed out through her nose, bracing herself for whatever light show she might experience as she reached into her pack. But thankfully no lights or music happened this time when she touched it with her bare hand. It was baffling to her that she had that experience while heavily protected by her mining suit, not even in direct physical contact with it. She carefully placed it on the more open third of the podium, hearing an echoing harmonic reverberation as the metal came into proximity to the other two pieces.
“That’s it! Just like the others,” Walter said, eyes focused on the pieces.
“And to imagine, we only thought there were two of them at first!” smiled Matteo excitedly.
Still hearing a hum, Lore backed up a step as the pieces began moving of their own accord.
“Oh my god, that’s it! They’re reacting! Look at how it’s coming together!” Noel’s eyes lit up with excitement.
Trails of sparkling light or energy started forming around the pieces as they began to levitate into the air above the display. Everyone in the room was spellbound by what was happening. And Lore realised that this… this must be new. A thrill shot through her that she was sharing in a discovery.
“That energy that’s arcing between them? No manufactured material in the Settled Systems can do that! None of them! This proves that…” Noel continued breathlessly.
“Easy, girl. Breathe. You’ll have a heart attack,” cautioned the blonde woman.
Lore finally concluded that she must be Sarah Morgan, the head of Constellation, given Barrett’s quick rundown of their membership. No wonder she was protective, business-like, and terse. That slightly improved Lore’s impression of her. She would need to be the voice of reason, the dissenting voice, to allow the others to fully dream. And she wondered at that caution to Noel - was she ill?
Lore looked back to the floating pieces and was even more surprised to find that the three pieces had split into nine pieces that were now orbiting each other.
“She’s not the only one,” quipped Walter, “If they’re coming together, that means there’s a set.”
“Built by an intelligence outside of the Settled Systems,” said Matteo with awe.
Walter smirked, “Still two thousand credits for our little wager, Khatri?”
“You’re on, Walter,” Matteo replied good-naturedly.
Lore watched as the pieces seemed to settle into a pattern. She wasn’t sure what to make of this little crowd of people. Noel was entranced, Walter and Matteo seemed to have a rivalry going, and Sarah was trying to hold it all together? She could imagine, given what little she understood of Barrett and his personality, that he could be a thorn in Sarah’s side with his loosey goosey approach.
“Well, if we had all the answers, it wouldn’t be exciting now, would it?” Sarah smirked at Walter and Matteo.
As if Walter had just realized that she hadn’t been dismissed, Lore was suddenly in the spotlight again.
“Not to take away from the moment, but, what are we going to do about our new friend here?” he asked bluntly, as if any of them could dispose of her at will.
Her hackles rose and her nostrils flared. It’s a good thing she had a job to get back to. Asshole.
Sarah chuckled, smiling genuinely at her, “So, are you ready to get to work? See if exploration is the life you want to lead in this little universe of ours?”
Lore was getting whiplash from all this. First, she’s an untrustworthy stranger likely to steal their things, then disposable, and now they’re offering her a spot in their organization? A few choice words passed through her brain, but luckily didn’t tumble out onto her tongue immediately.
“You want me in Constellation? What does that mean? What’s expected?” Lore arched her eyebrow.
“We’re all here because we’re committed to exploring space. Humanity may have settled the stars, but that doesn’t mean we should stop diving into the unknown,” Sarah replied, a sparkle of respect in her eye for the direct question, “Beyond that, you’ll be expected to use your own judgement. Just like the rest of us.”
Lore hummed, absorbing the response, before asking, “How much do you know about the artifacts? What are they?”
“Individually, they’re just odd hunks of metal. Another oddity from the uncharted reaches of space,” Sarah looked up at the orbiting pieces, adding softly, “As to what they are? What they’re building? Well, you’ll be a part of solving that puzzle now.”
Lore took a moment, pacing and cupping her chin. The mining gig was good for paying bills, and as much as rocks were fascinating, it wasn’t what she had trained for. Unfortunately, the job market was kind of bad for her right now, as no universities were interested in hiring a freshly graduated researcher, without first putting them through the impecunious hell of several post-doctoral slave-wage projects while forcing them to teach the worst classes for barely any compensation. No big corporations were looking for professional field xenobiologists to evaluate new planets for them at the moment. It turned out that that was spotty contract work, most often for the League of Independent Settlers, and hardly stable. She had hoped that she would be able to do a bit on the side with the mining company, but her contracts had mainly been for jobs on freezing rocks with no atmosphere, which was generally hostile to biology, although not always, as the xenogrubs proved. And she didn’t want to work in a corporate or government lab. She’d learned all about the unethical xenowarfare lab experiments in the now mandatory ethics classes all levels of xenobiology students had to take. Or, at least, the sanitized morality tales that were government approved for universities to teach. They probably hadn’t told them all of the gory details. She would have to do military service to become a United Colonies citizen to be able to work for UC MAST, or “Military, Administration, and Science Triumvirate”, which she simply was not interested in. Plus, she could already tell that the government bureaucracy would make her want to eject herself, naked, out of an airlock within a week.
She looked around at the library, steeped in history, and at the people standing there with awe in their eyes as something extraordinary and unexplained happened right in front of them. She had had to deal with awkward and caustic personalities in the past, but she had managed to befriend many of them. If they were offering her an opportunity to go out and explore, and maybe study alien biology, while looking for these artifacts, she wasn’t sure she would get a better deal.
“All right. I’m in. Tell me what happens next,” Lore said decisively.
Sarah smiled up at her, “You should take some time to get settled in. Introduce yourself to everyone. Some of our members aren’t here, but you’ll meet them soon.”
Lore reached her hand out to Sarah, “I’m Lore… well, Dr. Lore. PhD in xenobiology.”
Sarah took her hand in a firm but not crushing grip, “Welcome to Constellation, Dr. Lore.”
Lore flushed, “You can just call me Lore. I just wanted to be clear about my credentials. You know, being thought of as a lowly, party animal, thieving rock breaker isn’t insulting, per se, but I have much more to offer than mining experience.”
“Fair enough,” Sarah shot a stern look at Walter, who lifted his hands in surrender and apology.
“And here. I think you’ve earned something for bringing the artifact to us,” Sarah said, pulling a credstick from her coat pocket, making Lore do a double take at the readout amount on the digital display. Eight thousand credits? Unreal…
As Lore turned to pocket the credstick, Sarah noticed her pack was simply a mining bag, meant for the smaller, delicate finds when mining, as opposed to the bins where they would stow the larger pieces. How the artifact had ended up in her bag was a mystery, because apparently no one else dared touch it after her experience. Maybe someone had scooped it up in her pack when they picked her up off the ground, unconscious from the light and music display that had taken over her senses.
“In addition to credits, why don't we set you up with a pack with some boost capability? You'll need it out in the field, anyway. Just mind your head.”
“S-sure,” Lore smiled, unused to the generosity. She wondered if there was a contract she had to sign or something.
“Well, good. Get settled in, and we’ll speak more later,” Sarah nodded at her, and turned to address Walter.
“Curious feeling, knowing that you’ve seen something that no one else has, that you know something no one else does,” Lore heard Walter muse to Sarah.
Lore walked over to Noel to introduce herself, still tamping down that yearning in her chest for belonging.