Exploration

By the third day of their honeymoon, Dustin wasn’t entirely sure where Sammie ended and he began. Hours of close bonding in the weave had them both finishing the other’s sentences; Bleu ran a scanner over each of their heads after the latest jump and glanced over at Emely. “No further dual-jumps for two days. Not if we don’t want…” Dustin stood up and promptly almost fell over as he compensated for cleavage he didn’t possess. “…things like that to happen.”

The newlyweds rather ruefully had to admit that while they’d enjoyed the intense intimacy of what felt like their souls blending together, the side-effects were starting to become more and more apparent. Not having a clear boundary where one ended and the other began for a day in that surreal space would have been fine, but with the amount of jumps they’d been doing? It was just getting to be too much.

Sammie sat in the ready room nursing a cup of mocha, occasionally taking a swig before pulling a face. “This is… just wrong. Why the hell did I order it like this?” She muttered, glaring at Dustin who was currently sat picking the extra lettuce he’d ordered out of a BLT to reduce it back down to a more reasonable amount, rather than what felt to him now to be half a head with some bacon and tomato hiding in amongst the leaves like a forgotten tribe.

“Because we ordered on automatic, but our brains are still fuzzy on who’s muscle memory we’re using. It’ll pass in a few hours, Bleu said, right? Because if not I’m gonna see if I’ve got my memory or yours on what to do with my fingers.” Dustin grinned as he said it, setting the last bit of salad down and finally taking a bite of his lunch.

Sammie snorted, then chugged the last of her drink with a grimace. “Well, that’d almost make it worthwhile if you weren’t perfectly good with your hands as it is.” She quipped, before glancing at the holo display between them. “Three days of jumps and all we’ve found are naturally uninhabited systems. Not even stripped of life by the Fractals, just too young to have had life develop.”

Gesturing with his sandwich, Dustin shrugged. “That was always going to be the way. It’s why we’re gonna have to take turns to keep navigating - plus potentially even let the most promising of your junior officers take turns at flying as well. We’ve a lot of systems to sweep if we’re to hope to find…” A chime from the speakers interrupted him.

“Husband? I believe we may have found something. Please can you and your other wife come either to the nursery or the bridge? Either would be fine.” Meli’s voice was clear and full of excitement; Dustin glanced at Sammie for a moment before the pair scrambled to their feet, then promptly grabbed the table before they fell over.

“Gods damn fucking muscle memory!” The pilot groaned, carefully straightening and adjusting her top. “How you walk with something between your legs and no weight up here I’ll never know,” she added with a grin, hands cupping her chest before she somewhat hesitantly made for the door.

The nursery was a hubbub of activity when the pair arrived, only slightly out of breath from the intensity of walking when you periodically thought you had a different body. Meli and Emely were sat hunched over a tablet, talking in excited voices, while Trea’k was rocking C’harl’ette’s cradle with one hand and holding a tablet of her own in the other - a feed from her egg-room, Dustin expected.

Bleu and one of her assistants were busily fussing around the three women, performing one of the periodic checks of both mothers and babies that the doctor insisted on. And in a quiet corner, the final occupants of the room were talking softly - although one was occasionally raising her tablet to take a picture.

Nodding to Jaisyl and Aricia, Dustin crossed to where his first wife was sitting. Bending down to kiss first her and then Emely’s upturned faces, he nodded towards the tablet. “What have we got?”

Meli gestured for Emely to hand him the device. “Nothing in this system on first glance - but that’s because it’s doing a very good job of hiding. Look at the results from the fourth planet’s moon.”

Dustin ran an eye over the scans. There didn’t appear to be anything untoward… he paused and glanced back at his lovers. “Wait. There’s no way these scans could be this uniform, right?”

The two women exchanged a glance before nodding. “We think it’s some form of projection or cloaking technology. It’s practically impossible for a lunar surface to be that regular. What’s more…” Meli leaned over and tapped the tablet. “Here’s the same scan from a different angle. It’s only a clipped one - the edge of the antenna while we were scanning the third moon - but note the difference.”

To even untrained eyes like Dustin’s, the difference was obvious. The area that was perfectly regular on the first scan was a far more normal collection of rising and lowering mineral quantities, representing the various craters that had been formed and the debris that would have rained back down over the millennia since the moon’s formation. “So… something in orbit? A ship?” He asked, studying the data and looking for a clue.

Meli shook her head. “I doubt it. If it were, we’d have gotten a reflected energy signature in the second scan, from waste heat being vented if nothing else. I think it’s a probe, husband. A scouting one most likely, given the otherwise dead nature of the system.”

Dustin tapped his chin thoughtfully as he handed the tablet back. “So. A stealth probe, using tech we’ve not seen before. Have you asked Defia about it?”

Emely nodded. “First thing I did once Meli spotted the discrepancy and came up with her theory. According to Defia, Fractals don’t bother with any kind of shrouding tech, as it’s easier to just use their weave capabilities to get in and out undetected instead. So… if it’s not Fractal, that only leaves…” she trailed off, leaving the three of them staring at the tablet. If it wasn’t the Fractals, then it had to be an undiscovered alien race. Their mission might be getting results sooner than anyone had expected.

Knowing something was in orbit of the moon, with some kind of stealth technology making it near-invisible unless you happened to be the precise blend of attentive and nosy that comprised the crew of the Solar Ascent was one thing. Actually finding it was another. Sola drifted idly as Rye, Defia and Meli argued over scanner schematics while Dustin took the chance to hold his eldest.

William had strong opinions on stellar reconnaissance it seemed - or on the probe they were looking for, or possibly just on how long it had been since lunch. In any case, Dustin was immensely grateful to Rye for thinking ahead and building good ventilation into the room as he worked to ensure his son was comfortable once more, before turning back to the trio who had by this point arrived at a conclusion. “Well?”

Meli’s ears flickered into self-satisfaction as she smiled at him before replying. “The others have agreed with my plan.”

Rye frowned at that, and Defia interjected. “Statement. We agreed that your plan required the least modification of equipment and thus could be tried first while we ready the necessary adjustments that unit Rye and I believe will be required.”

The Velca shook her head. “That still counts. And in any case, my plan will work. Husband - we’ll come in on close to the angle we detected the discrepancy from and sweep upward until we find the ‘shadow’ again. Do that from a few different directions compared to the moon’s rotation and we should be able to triangulate the core of the field. That is assuming the object does not move, of course - although if it does it should make it even easier to find. I doubt even technology capable of hiding a probe to this extent could hide it while the heat-signature of any kind of propulsion is in effect… unless it used a solar sail, but the size of that would show up anyway.”

Dustin nodded, then grinned. “Why don’t we have a shuttle or two hover on the far side from our approaches? That’d double the chances of spotting it if it does move for no real extra cost.”

Meli pondered his suggestion for a moment before giving him a thumbs up and turning back to the others to discuss the fine detail of the plan. As she did so, Sammie looked up hopefully - before Bleu spotted the pilot’s movement and immediately laid down the law. “Oh no. Neither you nor Dustin is flying any shuttles until you’ve both had a few days to get used to being fully in your own bodies once more.”