The Archivist

DATE: Year 308-B, Sol 430

LOCATION: The Deep Archives (West Mars Republic)

Clara adjusted her leg braces. They whirred softly in the silence of the Reading Room. She was supposed to be in her dormitory, sleeping through the Third Shift. Instead, she was three kilometers beneath the polar ice cap, huddled under a holographic table, in the Archives of West Mars.

She tapped the glass interface.

Vector Analysis: Sector Escape Trajectory.

The screen flickered. The data from the MTC newsfeeds was garbage, but the independent seismographs the WMR had access to didn't lie. They had recorded a gravity-whip maneuver around Earth that shouldn't be possible for a scavenger ship.

She traced the line with her finger.

-Venus, she whispered.

-It’s a sloppy calculation, a voice said behind her.

Clara froze. She scrambled to clear the screen, but her hand was shaking.

A woman stepped into the pool of blue light. She was tall, wearing the heavy crimson robes of a senior archivist, but she wore them carelessly, open at the collar to reveal a grease-stained thermal undershirt. Her hair was grey, cut short and severe. She adjusted a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. They were real glass, an affectation of the eccentric elite.

It was Dr. Murray, one of the navigational archivists.

-You didn't account for the drag of the debris field, Murray said, walking over to the table. She tapped the console, correcting Clara’s math.

-The Sparrow didn't just burn away. It rode the shockwave.

Murray looked down at Clara.

-You’re the Lanky student. The one who keeps hacking the commissary databanks to read shipping manifests.

Clara stood up. Her braces clicked, locking her knees. She tried to look brave.

-I was studying, Magister.

-Current affairs?

The Archivist swiped the table. The image changed. It was raw telemetry from the WMR’s polar sensors.

It showed a silhouette of the Earth. And then, it showed the pulse. A massive, rhythmic spike of magnetic energy that erupted from the Halo the moment the Sparrow interfaced with the derelict.

-The MTC thinks that scavenger blew up a ship, Murray said softly.

-They think he’s a terrorist.

Murray looked at Clara, her eyes sharp behind the glass lenses.

-But I know what I saw. He didn't blow anything up. He turned a key.

Clara looked at the data. The pulse looked like a heartbeat.

-He woke it up? Clara asked.

-He knocked on the door, Murray said.

-I don’t get it.

Murray walked around the table. She looked tired.

-Why do you care, girl? Murray asked. Why is a ten-year-old from the Belt tracking a fugitive scavenger?

-He has my brother, Clara said meekly.

She pulled the shard of yellow plastic from her pocket. She placed it on the table next to the thermal scan of the Sparrow’s cockpit, the one showing the yellow drone helmet.

-His name is Small. I gather they call him Bit. They never named him when he got old enough. He’s on that ship, she said, pointing.

Murray looked at the shard. She looked at the scan.

-A Wildborn, Murray mused. And a Scavenger. Carrying an Old Earth device they didn’t understand.

Murray laughed. It was a dry, dusty sound.

-The Consortium is looking for a mastermind. A Saganite spy. And instead, the fate of the solar system is in the hands of a garbage picker and a kid.

Murray tapped the console again. She brought up a new map. Mars Surface Navigation.

-If they are going to Venus, Murray said, they are going to die. The MTC will intercept them, or the planet will destroy them.

-I have to find them, Clara said. I know the Belt dialects. I know how to hide. I just need a ride.

-You can't leave the Lowlands, Murray said. The WMR is sealed. Commercial travel to Venus is almost non-existent. Venus may be near the center of the inner solar system, but it’s at the fringes of humanity.

-There’s always a way out, Clara said. And a way in. It just takes chits, right? Like everything else.

-Chits won't buy you a launch window in a lockdown, Murray said. Tea bricks might. But anyway, you need clearance. You need a ship that doesn't exist on the registry.

Murray pulled a data-chip from her robes. She slotted it into the table.

A route highlighted in red. It didn't go to the main launch pads in New Paris. It went south, through the salt flats, across the green line, out of the terraformed zone and eventually into the Valles Marineris.

-The WMR has long wanted to know what happened at Earth, Murray said. We had many expeditions in the decades after the Rip, all failures like everyone else’s. Now we’re too afraid of the MTC and the scavengers in the Halo to try again.

She looked at Clara.

-I’m not afraid. I’m old. And I’m tired of reading history while other people make it.

-You want to go? Clara asked hopefully.

-I want to see this device, the key, Murray said.

Murray deactivated the table. The room went dark.

-Pack your things, Clara. Warm clothes and the best exoskeleton they give you access to, make sure the tank is full and it’s topped with the slurp. We aren't taking a shuttle. We’re taking a crawler.

-To where?

-To the equator, Murray said. To Valles Marineris. If we want to get off this rock without the MTC seeing us, we can’t use a launch pad. We’re going to the Elevator.

Clara looked at the map. It was thousands of kilometers of hostile terrain. MTC patrols. Dust storms. Warlords. And a lot of emptiness.

-It’s a long walk, Clara said.

-Its’a crawl, Dr. Murray said with a smile.

-Then we better start crawling.