(eng) Patrick S. Tomlinson - Children of a Dead Earth 03 by Children of the Divide

Author:Children of the Divide [Divide, Children of the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

The command module entered its seventh hour of lockdown, and not even the high-efficiency particulate filters inside the conference room Jian, his father, and half the department heads were sequestered in could keep up with the creeping funk of sweat and anxiety. Everyone had left their seats long ago to float around the compartment and establish their own little temporary territories while the search for Jian’s missing pet continued. Nerves were beginning to fray.

“For God’s sake, Kania,” Chao Feng said. “Stop drinking juice.”

“I’m starving, I need calories and there’s nothing to eat.”

“There’s also nowhere to piss. We’re in zero gee. Where are you going to go, in the corner?”

Kania was about to object when the hologram at the center of the room flickered into existence with a blinking green connection request icon.

“Accept,” Chao said, rubbing a temple.

The connection went through and an image of the inside of the lab with the optimistically named “containment chamber” appeared, guards and technicians swarming throughout the room. Someone whose shoulder stripes marked them as a specialist second class, but whose face marked them as barely out of the crew academy. Jian suspected they’d picked the short straw and had been given the unenvious job of delivering bad news to the old man.

“Yes?” Chao said. “What’s the situation? Have you recaptured the drone?”

“Ah… hello, captain. Sir,” the youth floundered. Jian felt a pang of sympathy for him.

Chao apparently didn’t. “Dammit son, we’ve been cooped up in here for seven hours. Did you retrieve the drone or not? Out with it!”

The specialist swallowed hard and started to blush under the lashing. Jian nudged his father with an elbow. <Dad, dial it back a notch. The kid’s terrified.>

<Ugh,> was the only response. “I’m sorry, specialist…”

“Jurich,” he answered.

“Jurich,” Chao repeated back to him. “We’re all just a little tense in here. Please, proceed with your report.”

“Yes, sir. Unfortunately, we have not been able to recapture the alien drone, or even determine what direction it took after leaving the containment unit and exiting the lab.”

“I’m still a little fuzzy on exactly how it escaped your impenetrable, foolproof prison,” Chao said, shooting a pointed look at Kania.

“We may have an answer for that, actually.” The specialist’s eyes flicked as he dug through a plant menu in his augmented reality display. A moment later they saw a blown-up image of the outside of the clear ballistic polymer that made up Polly’s cage. Jian stared intently at it, trying to figure out what they were supposed to be looking at when he spotted it. It was a small circular distortion in the material about two or three centimeters across, barely a ripple, but Jian could see the slight bending it made in what should have been straight lines and angles in the shelves and cabinets behind it. A red circle appeared around the ripple to mark it for anyone without a pilot’s eagle eyes and attention to detail.

“As you can see, there’s a small but significant blemish in the polymer of the cage.

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