Iapetus Shift

Chapter 10

Back on The Nile, they crowded around Adya as he worked on decoding the drive. They'd taken another belt off one of the people in the tangle of bodies before leaving The Basilisk. Raasad had it zipped up in a duffel bag hanging from his shoulder.

Olan began composing a text to Estha, then grimaced at the red X indicating he had no connection to the network this far from home. Instead he pulled her out into the hall, away from the others. "You get anything out of him?"

Before they'd left, she told him she was going to try to talk to Adya alone, without Greten around to dissuade any conversation.

"Yeah," she said, grinning and leaning close. "Apparently that food was made in some unregulated way, using some kind of energy-to-matter conversion."

"What? What does that mean?"

"Just that. SedTec has some way to turn energy directly into those food packages you saw. It hasn't been approved by the government for human consumption, which is why SedTec is selling it for cheap and smuggling it."

"But that's impossible," said Olan, shaking his head. "Nobody has this kind of technology."

"Well, no one has teleporting belts," said Estha. "Or that forcefield thing they locked you in either, for that matter. SedTec is somehow making great leaps technologically."

Olan glanced back at the group; Resa leaned over Adya, pointing at the screen as he worked. He waved her away, but she only kept jabbing her finger at different parts of the screen, her big eyes intense. Half of him just wanted to be rid of her so he could be out from under the gaze of SedTec, but another part of him worried about the massive corporation's plans for her.

"I got it," said Adya, and Olan and Estha hurried back to see what he'd found.

"Here we go," he continued. "A list of the crew. I'll find the addresses of the families so you can draft a message to them, Cap."

"Good," Raasad said, nodding.

"And I've unlocked the security recordings," continued Adya. "Let's see what happened."

Everyone leaned in.

Adya selected the mess-hall camera, and they watched as two figures moved about, preparing something at the countertop. Both were wearing the strange belts.

Without warning, fire sprung up on the counter. The two figures beat at the flames, but they spread too fast, leaping from the counter to the furniture and surrounding them. Backed into a corner with the fire licking at their faces, the two figures reached for their belts and vanished.

Olan gasped, even though a part of him knew that must have been what happened.

Adya changed to the sleeping-quarters camera and skipped backward, then pressed play.

They watched a woman and a man wearing the same jumpsuit uniforms talking to each other. The woman seemed agitated and jabbed her finger at the man. Then, a man in a belt just appeared, popping into existence between—and inside—them. They tumbled to the ground in a heap.

Raasad cringed and readjusted the strap of the duffel bag. "I think we can imagine what happened on the bridge," he said.

"I've got something else here, too," said Adya, typing furiously. "It looks like a file that wasn't properly deleted. I'm decrypting it now."

Raasad's interest seemed to return. "What is it?"

"Looks like a video," said Adya. "The file name is 'Instructions.' Oh—here, I got it." Adya pressed one more key, and the screen filled with the overhead view of a cluster of squat buildings. A familiar voice sounded.