Outcasts of Gideon

The Uki Gakuto : Part 2

When they arrived at the dock, they found preparations for departure well underway. The six crew members were moving about so quickly, Kishan would have guessed there were closer to ten.

While the Captain called it modest, the Uki Gakuto was the largest ship docked. From their position, Kishan could see it had several decks. The ship also had a pair of centrifugal pods to generate artificial gravity during time on the float. They were on opposite sides of the vessel, hanging down as the ship waited at the dock.

He guessed they had better than an hour's wait remaining. It could not come soon enough for him. They had already been here too long. Surely someone had tracked them to Dione by now. That would have been true even without their brief encounter with Eghard Fürchtegott. Every minute they remained increased that risk.

As they waited, the Captain and Doctor Daris arrived. Quinton rose and ambled past Kishan. He reached his hand out to Doctor Daris. "Do you have a few minutes? I was hoping to hear more about the accident that brought you here."

The Captain continued walking as the Doctor turned to Quinton and Kishan. "It was probably just a mistake. We were returning home from a failed expedition. We got to this side of the bubble, then headed for the system McAfee near Titan."

"But you never got to Titan."

"We received a message from here."

"A message?"

"I suppose the issue started much earlier than that. It started with our trip to Schedar."

"The failed expedition?"0

"The whole thing was a hoax. That makes your alien object all the more miraculous."

"A hoax?"

"Someone uncovered evidence of an alien civilization. At least we thought it was evidence. As you can imagine, we've had many false claims like that."

"But this one was different."

"We had reason to believe that this one wasn't a hoax. Some images appeared on the server of a government agency. They showed an advanced canal system on a planet in Schedar. These canals appeared to serve massive structures. We had the images authenticated. They appeared to be legitimate. Dated about half a century ago."

"The images just appeared?"

"Popped up on someone's screen."

"Canals and large structures?"

"Taken from high altitude, but they did appear to be structures. The images must have been there for decades. They bore timestamps from 2232. Metadata indicated they came from Schedar. A planet called Robinia."

The name Robinia startled Kishan. He often used that as an alias. It was something he took from his father. Now he knew where his father likely first heard it.

"Was the surface a red dust color?" asked Quinton.

"Yes, it was." Her forehead furrowed. "How would you know that?"

"Lucky guess?" asked Kishan. He hoped it was.

"Not exactly." Quinton shook his head and smiled. "Maybe it was a guess, but based on a memory. I think I know who created that hoax." He looked at Kishan. "Your father did."

"My father has been dead for ten years."

"Indeed. But he never meant to die here." Quinton looked again to the Doctor. "When Kishan's father and I came to this moon, Kishan was just a boy. For a long time, it was the three of us. Then Kishan left. Went to make his way. Abhishek and I had each other. That, and our work."

"Your work?"

"Abhishek was an idealist. He spent his time operating a radio beacon. He was trying to keep alive a passion of his. I took up working with him.

"We spent day and night together. We talked. We laughed. We dreamed.

"One day, we decided that neither of us wanted to die here. That was when he started working on this plan of his. He showed it to me once. He'd manipulated images of a dusty red planet. I'd forgotten which one it was. For all I knew, it was Mars. He had a great scheme to plant them somewhere. It was elaborate, as I recall, but I never thought he'd go through with it."

"You're saying these were planted on an Earth server by this man's father?"

"I don't imagine someone else had a similar plan. He knew he had to do something about natural skepticism. We'd both seen our share of alien hoaxes as well. Me through science. He'd been a bureaucrat for the system government. That's how he knew how to access servers. He had to imply authenticity. A Dominium server. Old images. If it worked, whatever ship went to investigate would come back through the Terminus."

"So he also sent the message drawing us here?"

"I don't know for sure. He might have planned that. If he were still alive, maybe he would have sought you out. He never filled me in on the details."

"What was the message?" asked Kishan.

"It was automated. It told us that the person who created the images expected us to return this way. The message claimed that an actual alien artifact would arrive on this moon in the next few days."

"Captain Peduli doesn't seem the type to be fooled twice."

"No, she's not. I was willing to wait for a few days. I had to convince her. I have some political clout. It was enough, but we were preparing to move on when you arrived. So this plan was to lure a ship here to convince its crew to take the two of you where?"

"Earth, Mars, Luna, anywhere but here."

"But how did he know there would be an actual alien artifact here? That's the only way this could have worked."

"I didn't say it was a good plan." Quinton smiled.

"Good or not, you got what you wanted."

"How could my father have known that we'd be carrying an alien artifact? That's not possible. Not ten years earlier."

"And yet here we are," said Quinton.

Kishen reached out, grabbing Quinton by his shoulder. "You may have me believing in magic before long, my old friend."