10min-stories

Passenger of Record

She thought about calling Torvald again. She thought about the alarm panel, four steps to her left. She thought about the fact that this being had been living inside the walls of their ship — in the maintenance corridors, in the dark spaces between decks — for over two months, and had chosen this moment, her alone, the middle of the night, to finally appear.
It had chosen her.
Or it had chosen the moment she found the log. Perhaps those were the same thing.
“What are you?” she asked.
“A question you cannot yet answer with the framework you have.” It tilted its upper section slightly, and the filaments around its mouth trembled. “We have watched your kind for some time. Not your species — your specific vessel. You crossed into what we consider a boundary region forty-one days ago.”
Valentina checked the nav display without looking away from it. Forty-one days ago they had crossed the Vellari threshold marker. She had noted it in her own log as a minor milestone.
“You’ve been studying us,” she said.
“As you study what you find. Yes.”
“And the log entries — that was you building a cover?”
“A record,” it said. “Not a deception. I existed aboard this vessel. The log is accurate.”
There was something almost careful about the way it spoke — not defensive, but precise. It chose each word the way a surgeon chose an instrument.
“What happens now?” Valentina asked.
“That is what I came to discuss.”
It moved then — not toward her, but to the side, toward the long-range display, and it gestured with one of its lower limbs at the two faint coins of the Vellari system.
“Your destination,” it said. “There are eleven of our settlements in that system. Your survey will find them. This is not a problem — we anticipated your arrival by several of your years. But the information you carry back will determine the nature of what follows. We would prefer to shape that, together, rather than allow it to be shaped by fear.”
Valentina stared at the display. Eleven settlements. She thought of the colonial wave behind them — forty thousand people in cryo-transports, still eight months out. She thought of the government contracts, the land grants, the promises already made.
She thought of forty thousand people arriving to find a system already occupied.
“You want me to write the report,” she said slowly.
“We want your report to be the beginning of a conversation rather than the beginning of a conflict. Yes.”
“And if I refuse? If I wake my crew right now?”
“Then I will speak to them as I am speaking to you. I have no means of preventing your choices. I am one individual. I have no weapons aboard this vessel.” The pale eyes held steady. “I chose you because your log entries — your personal log, which I read, and I acknowledge the intrusion — suggest you are someone who considers consequences before acting on fear.”
She wanted to be angry about the intrusion. She found she wasn’t, quite.
“You read my private log.”
“Yes. I apologize. It was necessary.”
“Necessary for what?”
“For knowing whether this conversation was possible.”
The amber light pulsed. The ship breathed its recycled breath. Somewhere below, Torvald was dreaming whatever engineers dreamed about.
Valentina turned back to the long-range display and looked at the Vellari system for a long time.
Eleven settlements. How many of them? How long had they been there? What had they built, what had they lost, what did they want from the dark between stars?
She had forty-one questions and no good place to start.
She started with the simplest one.
“Vorath,” she said. “Is that actually your name?”
The filaments trembled. She was beginning to understand that this was the equivalent of a pause, or perhaps a smile.
“It is the sound of my designation in a frequency your auditory range can perceive. A translation, as you would say.”
“I’ll use it,” she said. “Sit down. If you sit.”
“I can approximate it.”
It folded itself into the co-pilot’s chair with a strange, unhurried grace, its segmented torso adjusting in sections, its four limbs arranging themselves with a kind of careful attention, as though it had thought about how to do this and was now executing the plan.
Valentina pulled up a blank document on her console.
She titled it: Supplementary Survey Notes — Vellari Approach.
She began to type.
Outside the viewport, the double stars of the Vellari system burned their slow, patient light across eleven hours of empty space — a distance that felt, for the first time, like something other than emptiness.