Ch. 001| An Anomalous Regularity

"Nova wants planetfall within 72 hours."

Vale came out of the conference room with his head still not quite facing forward. Ninety minutes of argument had boiled down to that one sentence.

Riley was waiting for him at the entrance to the Central Command Tower, two cups of coffee in her hands. One for him, one for herself.

"How many days did you want to push it?"

"Seven."

"How many hours did she give you?"

"Zero."

Vale took the coffee and drank. It tasted like plastic—all the coffee on the Daedalus tasted like plastic. Four years into the voyage, nobody expected to taste the real thing anymore.

"Lieutenant," Riley said.

"Mm."

"Did she bring it up?"

Vale paused a beat before answering.

"No," he said. "But the way she looked at me, that was her bringing it up."

It had been two years ago.

The Ares, a second-tier colony ship. He'd been security officer aboard her. The deep radar had thrown up an anomaly, and he'd read it as a suspected biological rhythm and reported it up to command per SOP.

The command review took 48 hours, and in the middle of it a 30-second emergency message went out to Earth. It later turned out to be an aging probe battery.

Earth hadn't even finished reading the message before the United Colonial Bureau busted him down a grade, pulled him off the Ares, and shipped him to the Daedalus—then prepping for a four-year voyage—as security officer.

Ever since, every time Vale logged into the ship's records board, a line of red text would surface in the page footer: premature report. Janus had flagged it under regulation. He'd never applied to have it removed.

"Nova wants one more line on command's record—planetfall within 72 hours, mission complete," Vale said. "She needs that line."

"So what are you going to do?"

Vale didn't answer.

He walked to his station and sat down.

The station sat at the dead center of the observation deck's ringed glass paneling, a semicircular console. The light panel of the Daedalus's primary control AI, Janus, glowed low in front of him.

Hour 7, minute 42—measured from arrival.

Hour 7, minute 43, and a gray frame popped up on Janus's panel.

"Deep pulse," Janus said. "37 kilometers below the planet's surface. Period 72.0 seconds. Non-geological signature. Recommend biology team review."

"Source," Vale asked.

"I don't know," Janus said.

Janus was the primary control AI of the Daedalus.

Over the four-year voyage, the people aboard could go into hibernation. Janus couldn't. It controlled the heading, the reactor, the air cycle, and the life support of the hundred thousand hibernation pods in the hold. The captain could command it, the security officer could override it, but nobody could keep this ship alive once it stopped running.

Vale had known it for four years.

Janus would say "risk insufficient to estimate." It would say "data lacking." It would give survival rates down to the sixth decimal place.

It never said "I don't know."

Vale sat up straight in his chair.

Riley looked over from behind his shoulder.

"Lieutenant. Gray frame."

"I see it."

Gray was the color Janus threw up three or four times a day—the "pending review" level, nine times out of ten a probe misreading itself.

But the timing was wrong.

Vale set the coffee down and opened the gray frame. Inside was a line of text, a waveform, and a coordinate.

The waveform was too clean. The rising edge was abrupt, the flat top didn't waver—like a square wave straight out of a lab signal generator.

Vale had spent six years in the Marine Corps subsurface operations group. He'd seen natural pulses from the lower crust. They looked like trampled hemp rope.

This was not that.

"Janus."

"Here."

"Give me the geological background at this depth."

"Kepler-942c crustal thickness averages 41 kilometers. 37 kilometers down sits in the lower crust layer, estimated to be basalt-derived rock. Expected pulse signature is low-frequency, non-periodic, single energy peak under 10 joules."

"This one."

"64 joules. Period 72.0 seconds. Repeated 435 times. Over a hundred of those come from before orbital capture, from background records while the probe was still in its deceleration phase. Intermittency rate: zero."

---

Vale sat in front of that gray frame, looking at the waveform.

His fingertip rested at the edge of the trackpad and didn't press down.

If he pressed, the gray frame would automatically enter the "report to command" workflow. SOP read: unknown anomalous data, security officer to report to command within 30 minutes of receipt.

It was hour 7, minute 44. He still had 26 minutes to stall.

But the SOP didn't say "if the captain has already told you, before your meeting ended, that she wants planetfall within 72 hours, do you still report anomalous data the same way."

Vale read that line of SOP through from start to finish in his head.

Last time he'd reported by the SOP, he'd lost a grade.

"Riley."

"Lieutenant."

"Have the biology team pull the probe's synchronized records from this seventh hour."

"Yes." Riley put on her headset. A second later she turned back. "No one's on duty—Dr. Voss and two assistants clocked off three hours ago, went into their personal pods 40 minutes ago."

"Call her."

"Now?"

Vale didn't answer. He looked down at the waveform—the next pulse arrived in the same second he was looking.

"Now."

A second line of text appeared on Janus's panel:

Don't report to command yet.

Vale looked at the line.

Janus's "recommendations" were computed from crew survival rate—every decision dropped into a probability model, the path where the most people lived selected. Vale's security officer code had the authority to override most of its recommendations. He'd never used it.

But this time Janus's "don't report yet" and the "don't report yet" in his own head were the same sentence.

"Why?" Vale asked.

"A 72-second period, a non-geological signature, the seventh hour of arrival day—those three together, I can't find a matching case anywhere in the colonial records. I can't estimate a false-positive rate," Janus said. "I don't recommend reporting directly."

"How long can you stall?"

"24 hours."

Vale looked at the line.

24 hours—he'd seize them by invoking the security officer's broadcast lockout authority. The instant he locked it, his security officer code would flash up on command's screen. His record from two years ago would be automatically appended.

Nova would see what he'd done within three minutes.

If, 24 hours later, this signal was confirmed by review to be a genuine anomaly—the lockout would be worth it. But first he had to gamble that within those three minutes Nova wouldn't bust him down before he reached the captain's office.

If, 24 hours later, this signal was confirmed to be probe aging—he'd lose even the Ares's single demotion. Straight back into a hibernation pod, the hundred-thousand-and-first frozen body in the hold.

His son was on Earth, twelve years old, would wait four years for him.

If the wait came to nothing, all his son would receive at fifty-three was a single line of record: father, second offense of premature reporting, dereliction of duty, died 41 light-years out.

Vale set the coffee cup into the holder by his feet.

"Riley."

"Lieutenant."

"Initiate security officer broadcast lockout. 24 hours. All bands."

"It'll flash up on command's screen."

"It will. But I'll reach her office before she opens it."

"Why not just report?"

Vale pulled a trackpad from his station drawer, copied the full set of this round's data into it, encrypted it, and clipped it to his side. Once it was clipped, his right hand paused one more beat at that spot on his hip—in the Marine subsurface group, after you gave an order you'd tap your weapon. There was nothing there. He finished the motion before he answered.

"Last mission I reported early," Vale said. "This time I review first."

Riley waited until he was done.

"She won't be happy," Riley said.

"She can be unhappy."

Riley's finger rested on the headset key, rested there about two seconds.

Vale watched her.

"Lieutenant," Riley said. "That record from two years ago, I've seen it—I cross-checked the timestamps for the three days around your demotion. Nova applied to transfer onto the Ares the day after you were busted down. She'd wanted that ship for a long time."

Vale didn't answer.

"That one wasn't your fault," Riley said.

She pressed the headset.

"Dr. Voss, the lieutenant wants you on the observation deck immediately."

---

For the next 12 minutes, Janus ran through every possible non-biological source for comparison. Crustal movement, magma activity, geomagnetic variation, artificial sources—each one struck off.

The exclusion list finished running. The gray frame didn't disappear.

Two new gray frames popped up beside it.

Signal amplitude contracting: amplitude increasing 0.7% per pulse.

Signal period contracting: period shortened from 72.0 seconds to 71.96 seconds.

Vale read the second frame twice.

71.96.

"Janus, run it again."

"71.96 seconds."

"Why?"

This time Janus paused a beat—exceedingly rare for Janus.

"I don't know," Janus said. "Data complete. Mechanism not derivable."

Vale pushed his chair back one centimeter, no more.

The 24-hour lockout authority was already active. His code should already have flashed up on Nova's screen. He checked the time on his watch.

Hour 7, minute 56.

Her office was two levels below the command tower, three minutes from him. She should have seen it by now.

Beside Vale's security officer code on the panel, a line of red text lit up:

CRANE / ID-001 / Two levels below Central Command Tower / Opening your lockout record now.

She'd seen it.

Vale's right hand went back to the spot on his hip where the sidearm sat. This time it paused three beats and didn't pull away.

---

When Elena Voss walked out of the hibernation pod, there was still green dye under her fingernails—the fluorescent indicator from the Kepler-942c orbital sampling.

Her work over the past three months had been one thing only: confirming whether anything on Kepler-942c would kill the colonists. The original conclusion had been "nothing would."

She hadn't changed out of her shift uniform. Her hair was plastered to the side of her head by the cold of the biology module. Riley moved to hand her a hot drink; she went around Riley and walked straight up to Vale's station.

"Show me."

Vale handed her the trackpad.

Voss scanned it. Her hand paused on the pad once, not long. Vale saw the tip of her index finger curl slightly.

For Voss, that was the equivalent of someone else sucking in a breath.

"Marcus," she said.

"I know."

"I haven't let you talk yet." She held the trackpad in her hands, her voice back to the one she used in her everyday lab. "Janus, intermittency rate."

"Zero."

"Has the amplitude fallen back at all."

"No. Increasing 0.7% per pulse."

"Is there any accompanying low-frequency noise background corresponding to crustal activity."

"No. The background signal's spectral shape is consistent with the previous six hours."

Voss set the trackpad back down in front of Vale.

"You want to say this waveform isn't a geological signal," Vale said.

"What I want to say is, I can list out what this waveform should look like according to geological rules," Voss said. "By that list, not a single thing about it fits."

Voss pulled the waveform up to full size. That clean square wave sat between them.

"72 seconds," Voss said. "Now 71.96."

"It's accelerating," Vale said.

"It's accelerating," Voss said.

"It's a heartbeat," Vale said.

"For now all I can say is, it's like one," Voss said.

The corridor lights held an Earth sea-level color temperature overhead. Vale looked at Voss under that color temperature.

She had no expression.

A third line of red text appeared on the panel:

CRANE / In my office within 3 minutes. Or I lift your lockout.

Vale took the trackpad back out of Voss's hands.

"Riley."

"Lieutenant."

"Is there anyone in the comms team who runs deep-space signal background analysis—someone who can pick out a sub-signal hidden in the noise, beneath the main signal."

Riley blanked for a second.

"Volkova. Kira Volkova. She came off a second-tier watch half an hour ago, went into her personal pod."

"Call her."

"Why?"

"Because," Vale said, "if this planet really is beating, it shouldn't be beating just one sound."

Janus appeared on the panel.

"I don't recommend it."

"I didn't ask for your recommendation."

"Understood," Janus said. "But I'd like to log the timestamp of this decision."

Vale didn't answer.

A fourth gray frame popped up on the panel.

Latest pulse complete. Period 71.91 seconds.

Vale looked at the number for a while.

No one spoke.

71.91.

He set the trackpad down and stood up.

"Change rooms," Vale said to Voss. "Janus, transfer this station's broadcast authority to 14B."

"Understood."

"Riley. Send Volkova to 14B. Don't take the central passage."

"Why?"

"Nova will intercept me in the central passage. I want her to intercept me, not her."

Riley nodded.

Vale took the coffee cup—the one Riley had given him that morning, still half full—in his hand and walked out of the command tower.

He went down two levels.

The corridor was empty. By the seventh hour, most of the Daedalus's central district below command level were still at their posts, prepping their own work ahead of colonial landing. Vale passed the engineering team's door. It was open. Inside, three engineers stood in front of a projection discussing the geological scan of the landing site—they didn't know there was something 37 kilometers underground beating once every 72 seconds. In another 24 hours, Vale would decide whether they knew.

24 hours might also be the last 24 hours of his career.

He went down one more level.

Nova's office was the third door on the right.

Before he reached her office, he finished the coffee.

【Ch. 001 End · Daedalus Central Command Tower observation deck → corridor → Nova's office】