Chapter 75: Local Control

Aramaeis did not touch the practice panel.

He stood before it with his hand raised, silver gathered over his fingers, and watched the little light beside the contact surface.

Enna waited behind the observation barrier.

Dinraal stood beside her.

“What is he waiting for?”

“The panel.”

“It isn’t doing anything.”

“Exactly.”

Across the room, Aramaeis lowered his hand.

“Again.”

Enna reset the equipment.

This time, when he approached, the little light changed.

His silver touched the surface.

A narrow line appeared on the display.

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.

Aramaeis withdrew immediately.

The line vanished.

Dinraal looked at Enna.

She lifted one shoulder.

“He asked us to make it refuse him at random.”

“Why?”

“Because he says an old door that suddenly agrees with everything he wants is a door worth distrusting.”

Aramaeis turned toward them.

“And because we have no idea whether the station still follows the procedures I remember.”

Dinraal nodded.

His uncle’s expression softened a little.

“I intend to open a door. That is as much as I am promising.”

The mission took shape around that promise.

They would enter the service gallery, establish contact with the closure station, and retrieve whatever records remained.

The thirty-two people observed in the adjoining maintenance rooms would be brought out if they could reach them.

They would not attempt to close the central opening.

They would not restore unknown machinery.

They would not follow an instruction simply because it appeared on an old military screen.

Alexander stated the last point while looking at Asha.

She looked offended.

“I do know that.”

“Yes.”

“You could look at someone else when you say it.”

Alexander turned toward Dinraal.

Isolde made a small, approving sound.

Dinraal folded his arms.

“This briefing has become unnecessarily personal.”

“It has become specific,” Aramaeis said.

The clocks required more discussion than the weapons.

Each member of the entry team carried an independent timer.

The recovery craft would remain outside the strongest distortion, connected to them by a physical line carrying both communications and a repeating time signal.

A display on Dinraal’s wrist would show two elapsed times.

His own.

The recovery crew’s.

“If they separate beyond the limit, you turn around,” Eve said.

“How far beyond?” Gilgamesh asked.

“Enough that we can no longer predict your return.”

“That sounds like something we should express as a number.”

“We have.”

She showed him.

He studied the display.

Then nodded.

“Better.”

Dinraal watched the two counters begin together.

He disliked how quickly the exercise made him check them.

Isolde stood beside him.

“Imagine how much worse it would be without them.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“That seems wise.”

Hadrin left the morning before the expedition.

He wore a borrowed coat and carried the box containing his clothes, seeds, and shears.

Lethan came to see him off.

So did Mira.

She handed Hadrin a folded sheet.

He opened it.

A drawing of a bird.

Its feet had received considerable attention.

“For your sister,” she said.

Hadrin examined it solemnly.

“She’ll like this.”

“Tell her it’s real.”

“I will.”

He embraced Lethan carefully.

For a while, neither let go.

Then Hadrin stepped back and looked toward the transport.

Twenty-six years of captivity had not made boarding another ship easier.

Dinraal waited beside the ramp.

Hadrin glanced at him.

“You’re going back.”

“Yes.”

The old man looked down at the box.

Then handed it to the waiting porter.

“Find the ones who still have someone waiting.”

Dinraal drew a breath.

“We’ll look for all of them.”

Hadrin’s face changed.

After a moment, he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course you will.”

They reached the shipyard by the ordinary route.

Four long jumps.

A resupply stop.

A careful approach from above the orbital plane.

The second visit made the great arc no less difficult to look at.

Its central darkness occupied a place on the display where Dinraal’s eyes kept expecting to find distance.

Instead, they slid away from it toward the rings, the docking arms, the captive ships.

The Summer Orchard’s berth stood empty.

Two maintenance craft hovered beside it.

Something pale had begun growing across the torn connections.

Alexander changed the view.

The service gallery appeared.

The old door remained shut.

“Occupancy?”

“Thirty-two signatures in the outer rooms,” Eve said. “No clear change.”

“Attendants?”

“Two visible. Possibly more inside the connecting passage.”

Aramaeis checked his harness.

Beside him, Isolde fastened the return line to her suit.

Dinraal watched the two counters on his wrist.

Both read zero.

They entered through a broken inspection shaft beneath the gallery.

The scout had found it.

Sovan had recognized where it led.

A pressure shelter sealed the opening behind them, giving the recovery crew a place to receive anyone who could not survive the exposed route to the ship.

Gilgamesh carried the first air unit through.

Enna followed with her tools.

Aramaeis went ahead.

Dinraal and Isolde brought the compact reference assembly between them.

The corridor was narrow, old, and almost entirely dark.

Pale additions clung to its outer walls.

None crossed the sealed doorway at the far end.

Dinraal noticed that before he saw the symbol above it.

Three lines.

An incomplete circle.

Aramaeis stopped.

For several seconds, he simply looked.

Then he raised a hand to the panel.

The panel remained dark.

Aramaeis lowered his hand.

Enna knelt beside the housing and examined the physical connections.

“There’s a supply, but it isn’t reaching the interface.”

“Can you restore it locally?”

“Yes. If the isolation points are where your drawings say they are.”

She opened a narrow cover.

Inside lay metal that had not been made by the Empire.

Clean angles beneath a film of dust.

No pale roots.

No living repair tissue.

Enna checked the circuit before attaching her own power source.

The panel lit.

A single symbol appeared.

Aramaeis read it.

“Identify.”

He touched the surface.

Silver spread beneath his palm in a thin, deliberate layer.

The display changed.

Then stopped.

Dinraal looked toward him.

“What does it say?”

His uncle’s jaw tightened.

“Credential disputed.”

“Because the archive listed you as dead?”

“Perhaps.”

Aramaeis studied the next line.

Then he gave a short, humorless laugh.

“What?”

“It wants my unit commander to confirm.”

The attendants found them before the panel finished its second check.

A door opened along the adjoining passage.

One stepped through carrying a narrow instrument.

It saw the silver.

Stopped.

Then lunged toward Enna.

Isolde struck it across the chest and drove it away from the panel.

The second came low along the floor.

Dinraal caught it before it reached her legs.

Its limbs folded in the wrong directions beneath his grip.

Beyond them, Gilgamesh closed the passage barrier.

The first attendant tried to rise.

Isolde pinned it.

“Aramaeis.”

“I’m working.”

The panel flashed.

A second contact point appeared beside the first.

“Witness confirmation,” he said.

Dinraal looked toward it.

“Can I?”

“It may reject you.”

Dinraal placed his hand against the surface.

Silver met silver beneath the old glass.

The display filled with symbols.

For a moment, he felt a faint pressure pass along his wrist.

Then the panel cleared.

LOCAL ACCESS PERMITTED.

Aramaeis stared.

“What?” Dinraal asked.

“Later.”

The door began to open.

The room beyond was smaller than Dinraal expected.

A curved console faced a dark observation window.

Three seats stood before it.

One had fallen onto its side.

A body remained in another.

There was no movement.

No last breath waiting across the years.

Only a uniform preserved by dry air and the remnants of a hand resting near the controls.

Aramaeis entered slowly.

His gaze passed over the collar insignia.

Then the little plate beside the seat.

He said a name Dinraal did not know.

“Did you serve together?”

“No.”

His uncle bent his head.

“But she served.”

Enna checked the room before bringing the portable supply inside.

Isolde stayed at the entrance.

Beyond the barrier, something struck metal.

Gilgamesh’s voice came through.

“Visitors.”

“How many?” Dinraal asked.

“Enough that I would appreciate a shorter visit here.”

They found the maintenance crews in two adjoining rooms.

The doors were locked from the passage.

Dinraal opened the first mechanically.

Inside, people backed away from him.

One man raised a length of broken shelving.

Dinraal stopped in the doorway.

“We came from the Summer Orchard.”

The man’s grip changed.

A woman behind him began shaking her head.

“That ship is gone.”

“Yes. We took her out.”

“No.”

“Lethan is alive. Sovan too.”

The woman pressed a hand against her mouth.

Dinraal continued.

“Sovan told us about the gallery. She told us where the inspection shaft led.”

The man lowered the metal bar.

Only a little.

“Where is she?”

“Hearth. Our settlement.”

“What does she look like?”

Dinraal described her.

The repaired wrist.

The way she watched a pressure gauge before trusting anything else.

The woman began crying.

“She used to hit it first,” she said.

A thin laugh broke through the room.

Then people started moving.

Inside the closure station, Aramaeis found the local records.

Enna copied them through an isolated reader while Isolde photographed the physical controls.

The system’s central display came alive.

A model of the arc appeared.

Most of it was marked in amber.

Several sections were red.

At the center, a dark sphere turned slowly.

Aramaeis read the status lines.

His expression grew still.

“What?” Isolde asked.

“The closure was never completed.”

“Why?”

He moved through the surviving entries.

A failed actuator.

A severed command line.

Emergency control transferred.

Then a final entry, repeated until the station exhausted its ability to report.

LOCAL CLOSURE EXECUTED.

PRIMARY SEVERANCE NOT CONFIRMED.

Isolde looked toward the central sphere.

“This station closed its own section.”

“Yes.”

“And kept it closed.”

Aramaeis glanced at the door.

At the clean machinery.

At the pale growth that stopped outside.

“Yes.”

Dinraal’s wrist display flashed.

He had been inside for eighteen minutes.

The recovery crew had waited twenty-seven.

He called the station.

“We’re approaching the limit.”

Enna answered.

“Copy nearly complete.”

“Nearly isn’t complete.”

“Then give me something useful to do with that observation.”

He smiled despite himself.

At the first junction, a rescued worker stumbled.

Dinraal caught him.

The man looked down at the paired counters.

“What are those?”

“Clocks.”

“Which one is right?”

“Both.”

The man stared for a moment.

Then nodded with weary understanding.

“That sounds like this place.”

Thirty-two people reached the pressure shelter.

Two needed carrying.

Gilgamesh brought the last one through while the barrier behind him bent inward.

He looked at Dinraal.

“The door has become less persuasive.”

Dinraal sealed the shelter’s inner hatch.

The recovery crew took charge of the survivors.

“Aramaeis,” he said. “We need to go.”

No answer.

He looked toward Isolde’s marker.

Still inside the closure station.

Then his uncle’s voice returned.

“There’s an observation record. Local only. It’s opening now.”

Dinraal watched the counters.

Twenty-one minutes.

Thirty-five.

He turned back down the passage.

The window in the closure room cleared as he entered.

For the first time, they saw the central darkness from beneath the arc.

Great structures reached toward it.

Some were broken.

Others remained intact beneath layers of pale additions.

Asha’s voice came through the return line, stretched and uneven.

“We’re receiving your images. Don’t—”

The rest dissolved into noise.

On the console, the old record advanced.

The arc appeared as it had been before the present additions.

Intact.

Bright.

Ships moved away from it.

At the center, the darkness pressed outward.

The great structures drew tight.

Dinraal understood before anyone spoke.

“They were closing it.”

Aramaeis nodded.

The record continued.

Three sections failed.

The darkness spread through one of them.

Lights vanished.

Then a new structure began growing around the broken machinery.

Using it.

Turning it.

The record ended.

Isolde looked at the live view.

The same mechanisms remained.

Buried beneath the Questioner’s work.

“It didn’t build all of this,” she said.

“No,” Aramaeis replied.

“It captured it.”

The console offered a command.

RESTORE PRIMARY CONTROL.

Aramaeis did not touch it.

Enna leaned closer.

A warning unfolded beneath the words.

External sectors unavailable.

Local personnel unaccounted for.

Unverified loads attached.

Dinraal thought of the captive ships.

The stolen power.

The rooms where people waited.

“We leave that alone.”

His uncle was already withdrawing his hand.

“I know.”

Another impact sounded beyond the doorway.

The outer passage lights flickered.

Isolde looked at her wrist.

“We’re out of time.”

Enna detached the reader.

“Got it.”

Aramaeis turned toward the body in the chair.

For one moment, Dinraal thought he would try to carry her.

Instead, his uncle removed the little identification plate and placed it carefully inside his suit.

“We know where you are,” he said.

Then they left.

The station closed behind them.

As the door sealed, an attendant reached the far end of the passage.

It stopped.

Its face turned toward Aramaeis.

Then toward Dinraal.

A voice emerged from it.

“Authority has returned.”

Dinraal felt the silver tighten along his arm.

The attendant took one step.

Isolde pulled him toward the inspection shaft.

“Keep moving.”

He did.

Behind them, the old door’s locking bars settled into place.

The attendant struck it once.

The sound followed them all the way to the pressure shelter.

They withdrew with thirty-two survivors, a copy of the closure records, and eleven minutes less air in their external reserve than the entry team’s clocks could explain.

Alexander did not discuss that over the open circuit.

He brought the recovery craft aboard.

Turned the escort outward.

Waited until the distortions fell behind them.

Then he met Dinraal at the lock.

“You reached the limit.”

“We left.”

“You reached it before you left.”

Dinraal looked at him.

Then at Isolde, who stood quietly beside him.

“Yes.”

Alexander held his gaze.

“Next time, the return begins earlier.”

Dinraal nodded.

No excuses.

They had learned something important.

That did not make the lost margin imaginary.

Aramaeis found him later in the small briefing room.

Dinraal had the copied records open, but he was watching the paused image of the attendant.

“Authority has returned,” he said.

His uncle sat down.

“It saw us use the station.”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t know.”

Dinraal looked toward him.

“At the door. When I touched the second panel. You said later.”

Aramaeis was silent for a moment.

Then he brought up the access record.

His own identification appeared first.

Disputed.

Obsolete registry.

No command confirmation.

Below it was Dinraal’s contact.

The system had recorded no name.

Only a classification.

Aramaeis translated it.

“Unassigned silver authority.”

Dinraal stared.

“That sounds like a mistake.”

“It may be an old category for someone outside the unit structure.”

“Or?”

“Or we need to learn why the system considered you qualified to witness my access.”

Dinraal looked down at his hand.

He thought of Bahamut.

Of the things inherited without explanation.

Of all the times the silver had become something he had not known he needed.

His uncle touched the edge of the display.

“We have a record now. We can ask better questions.”

Dinraal nodded slowly.

He preferred that to a prophecy.

In the medical compartment, one of the rescued workers recognized Sovan in a photograph.

He touched the image with a trembling finger.

“She got out.”

Isolde sat beside him.

“Yes.”

He looked toward the other beds.

Then back at her.

“She said the old room still mattered.”

“What did she mean?”

“She didn’t know. Only that they kept trying to get inside it.”

His eyes moved to the door.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

The man leaned back against his pillow.

For the first time since they had opened his cell, he seemed to let himself become tired.

“Good.”

The fleet turned toward the staging point.

Behind them, the arc remained.

The captive ships remained.

The Questioner remained.

But aboard the escort, a map now showed the machinery beneath the additions.

Three failed closure sections.

Two command stations whose status was unknown.

One central severance mechanism still listed as intact.

Dinraal studied it with Isolde at his side.

They had not found a weapon that would make the coming work easy.

They had found instructions left by people who had nearly succeeded.

He opened a new page beside the map.

At the top, he wrote the number of known occupied berths.

Below it, the power systems they would need to replace.

Then the routes by which people might escape.

Isolde drew a chair beside his.

“Where do we begin?”

Dinraal moved the map toward her.

“With the ships we can reach.”

Together, they started marking them.