Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(96)

James and I are in the lab, discussing the design for a new attack drone, when Oscar’s voice comes over the comm.

“Sir, we’ve made contact with Midway.”

We race to the bridge, both eager, both dreading what we’ll learn.

As usual, Oscar’s face is a mask, betraying no emotion or hint of what Midway has found.

James works one of the terminals on the periphery of the room and the data appears. There’s a lot more than I expected.

He clicks the map and puts it on the main screen. I stare in awe. The drones have traveled farther than we programmed them to. How? Why? Someone—or something—altered their programming.

“All crew to the bridge,” James says.

Like the bubble in the Pax, Sparta One’s bridge has a table in the middle with multiuse terminals. When the crew is here and tethered to the table, James says, “We’ve just gotten our first data burst from Midway.”

Several of the crew stare silently at the screen, a couple of mouths drop open, and someone whispers, “My God.”

The count so far, James says, is 24,137 solar cells, all en route to the sun, all traveling along a vector that is consistent with a Ceres-based origin.

Seeing the scale of the threat in black and white, on the screen, makes it even more real to me. It would seem that James has guessed correctly once again: there is something waiting on Ceres, camouflaged from sight. Or beyond.

We need to figure out what happened to Midway. The possibility strikes me then: Could the data be fake? Did our enemy intercept the fleet? Could we be flying into a trap?





James and I have done the math. We’ve timed the return of the comm drone we sent to the Pax down to the minute. We are on the bridge when that minute arrives, both tethered to the conference table, working at our stations, or at least trying to work, trying to make it look as if we’re working. The other crewmembers drift in and take their places.

The drone is late. No one announces it. No one wants to make a big deal out of it. But I’m worried.

Three hours later, the main screen flashes a message:

Comm initiated.





I expect to see text data scrolling by. Instead, an image appears. It’s extremely low-resolution, in grayscale, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The crew of the Pax stares back at us. In the photo, they’re floating in the bubble, waving at the camera. Grigory is stoic. So is Lina. Izumi looks concerned. So does Charlotte. And Harry has a big grin on his face.

My heart sinks as I study the image. Their faces are gaunt. They’re starving.

A message appears on the screen beside the photo.

To the crew of Sparta One,



Welcome to the artifact Easter Egg hunt.





I figure Harry wrote that part. I get a good chuckle out of it.

We figure you’re not out here for us. We figure you’re out here to end the Long Winter. Don’t let us get in your way, and don’t spend any energy trying to rescue us. Just tell us what you need, and we’ll do our best.}}



–— the crew of the Pax





Definitely Harry writing.

Heinrich is the first to speak. “Should we alter course?”

“Yes,” James says. “We’re going to rendezvous with the Pax. Plot a course and send the drone back to them with coordinates.”





The first of our high-speed drones has reached Ceres, performed a long-range fly-by, and returned. It found nothing. Just a barren chunk of rock floating in the asteroid belt.

This has thrown us into chaos. We have assumed that the harvester is camouflaging itself somehow, perhaps using its hull to project an image identical to what we see on the surface of Ceres. But we’ve also assumed that our survey drones would be able to detect some sign of it. We were wrong.

James insists it must be a mistake. We run a diagnostic on the drone, issuing the commands via the comm patch. It’s fine. The systems check passes.

The certainty that we felt after seeing the data from Midway is gone. The only thing we’re certain about is that the Pax is out there. We’ll meet up with them soon and hear their story.





Our second high-speed survey drone to Ceres has returned and comm-patched its data. Nothing. It found nothing on Ceres.

The arrival of a drone has become an all-hands event. Everyone is gathered in the bridge. When the data flashes across the screen, all eyes turn to James. His face is a mask, a player at a poker table who just drew a card and can’t afford to make any reaction.

Even his voice is nonchalant, as if he expected this.

“Run a diagnostic. And I want to download the full telemetry this time.”





We’ve studied the telemetry from the second drone. There’s an anomaly: a power surge two days before it reached Ceres. It could be a random malfunction. But it has inspired our curiosity—and hope. Maybe the data’s wrong. Maybe there is something on Ceres, and it intercepted our drone and altered the data. That’s our working hypothesis. It’s a hypothesis that gives us a chance.

A third scout drone returns, and its data reveals the same thing: nothing.

We run a similar diagnostic, and it too has an anomaly, but in a different location. This one occurred much closer to Ceres.