“I think this is a really bad idea,” Lavim Tamm said, almost wispering his concern from the shade of the large rhododendrons that grew around his seat. Ten days after the battle at Rockhome 3 they were back on Coriolis, and had decided to spend an afternoon together in the Spire, the luxurious upper levels where the station’s central Shard reached its crowning dome. A complicated series of tube trips and elevators had brought them to the 14th floor of the Spire, where they discovered that rising higher would require special permits and bookings. After wandering through opulent, spacious plazas where shopkeepers frowned at them and passersby judged them they had paid the exorbitant fee to enter Kheria’s Arboretum, a huge private garden running around one quarter of the arc of the shard and stretching deep toward its centre. Here a series of interconnected glass observatories and field-separated chambers held exhibits representing most of the major biomes of the Third Horizon, or at least those that were comfortable enough for Coriolis’s wealthiest residents to enjoy picnicking in. Cool, mist-shrouded moss gardens from Mira led into the reed-beds and shallow, weed-clogged marshes of Bahram, which in turn opened into the tangled mangrove forests of distant Menkar, where the Third Horizon’s second Monolith towered over a vast river delta that glowed with strange floating globes of light, reproduced in the Arboretum by small insects imported from Zadaam. A separate observatory on a raised mound held the exotic flora of one of the jungle moons of Uharu’s brown dwarf, and from the rear of that observatory one could look down on tiered platforms of shale from which grew stubborn succulents and wiry weeds imported from the Serpent Belt, one of the three colonies still surviving in Nharmada beyond Algol. Many more carefully curated landscapes from across the Third Horizon lay deeper into the Aboretum, but after an hour of exploration the Firebirds settled into a small, cultivated rhododendrum garden, which seemed to be a recreation of the huge forests of Awadhi, in which the mysterious Portal Builder ruins known as the Woodland Temples could be found. The Arboretum’s recreation of the rhododendron forests hosted a pretty little tea shop, and scattered groves with seats recessed among the plants. It was here that the Firebirds retreated to give Adam a chance to rest his recuperating left leg, and to enjoy the shop’s famed pearl tea, which was said to be based on an Awadhi recipe.

  “You won’t be coming with us,” Dr. Delecta pointed out to him, fussing with Adam’s recovery patches as she spoke. They had stayed on Rockhome 3 for three days after the battle, during which Adam had received intensive treatment with the best equipment the colony had, and his leg had healed rapidly but it was still stiff and painful, and in preparation for their imminent trip to the surface of Kua he had insisted on an aggressive and painful rehabilitation process that involved over-use of trauma patches, steroid treatments, and immediate exercise. Dr. Delecta had overseen his recovery on the ship, which he had endured stoically, and now insisted on checking the trauma patches and rehabilitation devices regularly. Adam winced but endured the attention without complaining, the two of them interacting with an easy, silent familiarity that hinted at the prior association they had kept largely secret from the rest of the crew.

  “You can stay on the ship and monitor the situation,” Al Hamra told him, “Give us advice or info when we ask for it. There’ll be no risk for you.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” Lavim Tamm replied. “I don’t want you to die out there, and I don’t want to hear it happen.”

  “You won’t,” Adam grunted. “Anything attacks us, I’ll kill it.” He hissed as Dr. Delecta did something painful to his leg, leaned back and took a big sip of his pearl tea, then cursed once in a language no one recognized as Dr. Delecta wrapped up the recovery patch again.

  “We should find out as much as we can first though,” Siladan suggested. “Whatever attacked you Lavim, it was guarding the statuette. Or connected to it. So we should find out everything we can about it, and about your dig site.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Lavim reminded them. “I was just a porter. All I know is where it was.”

  “It must be registered, though,” Siladan said. “All digs on Kua should be. So we can find the registration and look up the public details. Also we can investigate the research background of the dig leader, see what kind of topics they work on. That should give us a clue. Maybe there are past digs in the same site, as well.”

  “That means access to the Foundation,” Al Hamra pointed out, referring to the sprawling system of research and development organizations supported by the Consortium Faction, “And also to the University District.” Many schools and colleges were clustered in the Core of Coriolis, beneath where they sat now and easily accessed from the Ring where their ship was docked, but typically the important libraries and information stores were not open to the public. “Do you have that?”

  “Not anymore,” Siladan conceded. “But we can probably pay to get into at least the public libraries, which should give us something. Also the Museum of History is partly public, we might be able to find something in the Primitive Era.” The Primitive Era was the period immediately after the arrival of the Firstcome fleet almost a millenium ago, when colonies were established across many systems of the Horizon. Most of those colonies collapsed or degenerated into primitive barbarism in the century after their foundation, as local conditions overwhelmed the na?ve energy of the colonists and the original Firstcome fleet proved too small to maintain healthy trade and communications between the scattered colonies and systems. Even many of those that flourished in the first centuries after their initial settlement collapsed during the Long Night after the Portal wars, which destroyed a large portion of all the interstellar travel resources available to the Third Horizon, rendered many Portals unstable, and unleashed a wave of chaos and ruin that drove many colonies to collaps or primitive regression. “I guess that was when the statue was made.”

  “I can get us access,” Dr. Delecta interrupted. “I can get us into the College of the Colonial Agency and the Academy of Archaeology. And to most of the Infoteca,” she added, which elicited a low whistle of approval from Siladan. The Infoteca was the Foundation’s data storage, containing almost all the memories of the Third Horizon that the leadership on Coriolis had been able to gather over the two centuries since their arrival. It contained the Museum of History, which was partly accessible to the public, but also a huge amount of additional material that was only available to academics and Foundation members, and sometimes not even to them.

  “How?” Siladan asked her, and she shrugged.

  “A pass my dad forgot to cut me out of.”

  “Let’s hope it still works,” Al Hamra said. “Can you two think of a plan?”

  “Siladan and I investigate the statuette,” Dr. Delecta suggested, “Using the databases in the Infoteca. Captain, you and Lavim Tamm go to the official dig records in the University and find out who was digging there, what they studied, find out everything you can about the site. While we’re researching, Saqr can scout out the area for landing sites and camps, and Olivia can prepare gear for a camp. Also Adam, if you can ask around, maybe you can find out who was hired as a guard for the dig, whether anyone is mad that they didn’t come back. Maybe we can find out something about the dig from the team they assembled.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find anything,” Olivia said. “I think this dig isn’t registered.”

  “What?” Siladan asked. “It has to be, they almost all are. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “That or it’s been covered up.” Olivia sat primly with legs crossed, leaning forward slightly with her pearl tea clutched in long, elegant hands, looking across at Siladan from beneath a cascade of rare blonde hair. “Think about it, it’s been weeks since it happened and we haven’t heard a thing about an entire archaeological dig being torn apart by monsters, on the planet right beneath our feet.” She lifted one hand and pointed expressively down at the floor with one long finger. “What else haven’t we heard about on the Bulletin in the ten days since it happened? The battle at Rockhome 3. And why not? Because the people who did it don’t want anyone to know. It’s the same I reckon for this dig. Lavim’s the only survivor.” She nodded in their deckhand’s direction. “Which means it wasn’t registered, because nobody’s reported on it.”

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  “Why wouldn’t the dig be registered?” Siladan countered. “It’s just a safety requirement.”

  “My guess is that whoever organized this dig knew it was risky,” Olivia explained. “Maybe they thought that if they registered it someone would try and stop them. Or, whatever was down there was so valuable that they didn’t want anyone else to know they had it. And they were right! Everybody died. So it was dangerous.”

  “If so,” Al Hamra said in a slow, thinking-aloud voice, “Then maybe that’s why nobody would buy the statue from Lavim. They looked up the dig site, saw it wasn’t registered, and didn’t want to get involved with whatever organization sponsored an unregistered dig.”

  “Or they guessed that the statue was dangerous,” Olivia added, “Or they thought they could use the information about the dig site. Lavim, was this your first dig?” She asked the boy, who nodded. “And who hired you on?”

  “Just a labour dispatch company,” Lavim told her. “It paid well and I didn’t find out it was a dig until I got down there.”

  “There you go,” Olivia concluded, slapping one hand gently on her knee. “Someone knew it was dangerous, and that if they registered it or told people what they were doing they might get stopped. Maybe by the Foundation, maybe by rival academics. Or …” She paused, thinking briefly, “The other possibility is they knew that whoever brought out the statue would die, and they were planning on picking it up from the wreckage. But they didn’t count on Lavim getting away.”

  “That is very cynical, Olivia,” Dr. Delecta said, “But you could be right. Adam, you need to be careful asking around.”

  “There’s got to be an angry lover or something, looking for answers about someone who didn’t come back,” Al Hamra said, “We might not find them, or they might have already given up. But it’s worth looking, at least so we can try and find out who we need to be careful with.”

  “Do you think the old man knew?” Saqr asked, meaning Merez.

  “Maybe,” Olivia agreed. “But he seemed like a typical criminal chancer. Maybe he just heard from one of the shopkeepers on Archaeology Alley that Lavim was selling something dangerous and valuable that they didn’t want to touch. Then he thought he could move in and take it, find his own buyer later.”

  “And he realized that whoever originally looked for it was dangerous and decided to keep it quiet by killing us and Lavim,” Al Hamra added. “As well as being a cheapskate.”

  “It wasn’t humans that killed us,” Lavim reminded them. “It was monsters. I think you’re digging at the wrong well.”

  “Maybe,” Olivia replied, “But maybe whoever organized this dig knew what was there, and didn’t expect you to survive.”

  “Or maybe you got confused,” Adam suggested. “You aren’t a fighter Lavim, things can get real confusing in the dark, when you’re scared. Fights happen fast. You might have thought it was monsters, but someone in exo-armour with a vibro halberd is just as scary as any monster from the Dark, when you’re on the wrong end of their anger.”

  “And much more common,” Dr. Delecta added.

  “Still, we should be ready for anything,” Al Hamra said, as Lavim protested and shook his head, still certain he had been killed by creatures from the Dark Between the Stars. “We should think about any defenses against creatures from the Dark.”

  “That’s me,” Adam announced in a firm, solemn voice. “I’m your defense.”

  “Maybe, but –“ Al Hamra began, but seeing a glance between Adam and Dr. Delecta he stopped.

  “You don’t have to tell them, Adam,” Dr. Delecta said quietly.

  Adam nodded. “I know, Banu, but if we’re doing this they should know.” He looked around to the group. “You’ve heard of bio-sculpts, right?” He asked them, flexing his enormous bicep by way of demonstration, and they nodded. Biosculpts were a form of cybernetic enhancement that was common across the Third Horizon, bio-engineering that enhanced one’s physical characteristics or senses, giving superior sight or hearing, superhuman strength, or sub-dermal armour. “Well, the Draconites have been developing what they call pscyho-sculpts, and I was one of their experimental subjects. I’m engineered not to fear the Dark.”

  They looked at him in stunned silence. After an uncomfortably long time Olivia asked him, “Is that why you can’t attack Draconites?” She reminded them of the day they had tracked the statue to a Draconite ship. “Back at the Shadow Hunter? Because you’re a creature of the Draconites?”

  He nodded, and shook his head when Saqr asked the follow up question: “Can they control what you do?”

  “Psycho-sculpts can change your will but they can’t be used to actively control your actions,” Dr. Delecta told them, and when she saw Al Hamra’s quizzical look added, “I found some basic information about them when I, ah, first met Adam.”

  “You’re on the run from the Draconites aren’t you?” Olivia asked them.

  “Not quite,” Adam said, and Dr. Delecta jumped in with, “They think he’s dead. And they don’t know I helped him.”

  “Is that why you were on the Ghazali?” Al Hamra asked.

  “No,” Dr. Delecta shook her head. “We just needed money, and we figured that whatever happened on Taoan there might be creatures from the Dark Between the Stars involved. If there were then Adam could fight them better than anyone else. It was good money and a chance to help.” The Ghazali’s ultimate destination had been the mining colony of Tsurabi in the Taoan system, but it had never made it, succumbing to its fate in the Hamura system as it was entering the Portal to Taoan. “We already made the Draconites think Adam was dead, but after the Ghazali …” She left the point hanging. As far as anyone knew they were all dead, their stolen ship sold off as salvage in a different system. Whoever had sabotaged the mission to rescue the Tsurabi colony did not know about their escape, or any information they carried with them from the doomed vessel.

  “So we have a Mystic and a dead Draconite fugitive in our crew,” Saqr observed in a taut, acid tone.

  “We’re all fugitives,” Olivia pointed out, “If the people who destroyed the Ghazali find out we know what they did.”

  “Well, they can’t,” Al Hamra reminded them all. “Whoever sabotaged the Portal couldn’t have known that the Beast of Burden was hidden in the Fatima’s Bounty, and I doubt they noticed us going back through the Portal. There was too much floating wreckage, the radiation signals were obscured by the Ghazali’s explosion and the Portal was unstable. But even if they spotted the energy signature when we entered the Portal, they would have expected us to arrive in Kua or Taoan, and we didn’t. Even if they realized the Portal’s instability had dumped us on the other side of the Horizon there’s no way they could find out where or when, not within a few years. We’re safe from whoever did it, for now.” They had been over this several times already, but every time Al Hamra reiterated their escape plan it reassured them all that they had nothing to fear from the incident that had brought them together, and plenty of time to investigate the crisis that they had lived through.

  “Do they even know that the Zafirah sent an emergency warning, or that the Ghazali picked it up?” Saqr wondered, picking over the same old question. “The warning was on a tight beam just for the Ghazali. They obviously wanted to destroy the Zafirah and then the Ghazali, but they couldn’t have expected half of it to get spat out on our side or the energy surge from that to stop the Ghazali entering the Portal.”

  “And they can’t know that we found the Zafirah’s emergency warning,” Siladan added. “They couldn’t know we got to the bridge of the Ghazali, or what we found there.”

  “That was the riskiest Portal jump I’ve ever done,” Saqr whispered in awe, remembering the rapid calculations, the fluctuating fields of the Portal, and the silence from the station whose small crew complement had been killed by the radiation surges hours before.

  “Good thing you messed it up,” Al Hamra countered, his voice also low and solemn. “If we had arrived in the Kua system someone might have been waiting, or they might have traced us. As it is, whoever was waiting to ambush the Zafirah in the Portal probably doesn’t know we escaped. They think their attack was a complete success and everyone on the Ghazali and the Zafirah is dead. And if they did register us escaping through the Portal, they don’t know where we went because of your error.”

  “So we’re all dead, and Adam is twice dead,” Dr. Delecta finished. “But we don’t know who ambushed the Zafirah or how, and the only clues we have are the energy signal that the Zafirah sent back before it blew up.”

  “So we should still keep our heads down, and focus on getting enough money to get out of Kua with our new ship,” Al Hamra concluded. “But before that, I want to know what this statue did, and why it was so valuable to Adam’s psycho-sculptors.” A small bow to Adam as he said that. “So, from tomorrow we get to work. Just as Banu suggests, she and Siladan to the Infoteca, me and Lavim to the University to find out what digs are registered. Adam, you sniff around to find out if anyone who was hired to work dig security hasn’t come back, while Saqr does terrain maps and Olivia gets camping supplies. Everyone keep your heads down and your eyes open. We’re all dead, so let’s try and stay that way.” He raised his pearl tea, and they all raised theirs in response.

  “To the schemes of the Already Dead.”