Page 100 of Colossal

“He didn’t know what he had. Wasn’t a navigator, but worked with them. Had access to all prospective expedition data, since his job was to inspect it for signs of existing high-level life—”

“High-level?” Kaia frowned.

“Intelligent. Humans. Uhyre. Who knows what else is out there?”

Kaia hadn’t thought about that before. The only offworld species humanity had interacted with was the uhyre, and that was a disaster. What if there was something worse?

“These records,” Orion continued, “contain so much more data than the virtual lib. Nav specs, planet details, scans, other expeditions and ship disappearances. Everything. Kaia.” He leaned forward, staring. “I don’t think Paul Creaton knew what he’d gathered. I think I know where to look for New Earth.”

He looked so utterly sure. The conviction in his eyes was doubtless.

And she believed him.

Fuck. She believedinhim.

“Orion, we have to talk.” Kaia sat back on her haunches. “I need to tell—”

“We will talk.” He stood abruptly, practically throwing her off his knee, and made for the door. “But I have to go tell Mother. Have her recalc for a new destination. We aren’t going to X1s. Not with this.”

Kaia remained sitting there for a long time after he left the cabin, staring at the papers strewn on the floor. She didn’t need to read them. She knew with the entirety of her being that Orion was right. Call it faith in the reported uhyre intuition. Call it trust in all the work he’d put into this. Call it what it was, hanging on her breath as she tried the label on silent lips.

CHAPTER57

ORION

“Look.” Orion projected the NS scan of the document onto the wall of his mother’s cabin. “Two dozen craft have not come back from this sector over the last two hundred years.”

Mare Halena looked bored. Per Halen, standing behind her as usual, looked amused. Orion scrolled through the data he’d scanned. Paul Creaton didn’t gather his information in neat tables. It was nav and peripheral research thrown together over the years, the threads of it lost to his deteriorating mind.

“Paul Creaton studied Kann Galaxy, in that direction, and detected an anomalous signal.”

“We detect anomalous signals all the time.” Mare Halena rubbed her eyes. “Orion, you’re reaching.”

“That isnotfucking it, Mother,” Orion growled. How could she be so nonchalant about this? She was sending them on a fool’s errand when the answer was right fucking there. “Missing vessels. A signal. And an artifact.”

“Whatartifact?” Mare Halena sighed.

Orion brought up the numbers.

“What is this?” Per Halen leaned forward, squinting at the table of figures. Orion couldn’t blame his cluelessness for this one—the data didn’t mean anything to most people. He’d barely been able to decipher it himself.

“Subspace resonance detection. Paul Creaton found a way to scan far reaches of space in narrowly defined ranges for subspace signatures. He found one. Organic.” Orion turned to his mother. “Suspected plant matter.”

“Plant matter? In space?” Per Halen laughed. “Orion, this is…”

“You’ve been chasing your tail long enough, Orion.Subspace resonance detection? Everyone knows that tech was a dead end. The ships that disappeared weren’t even colonies! They were small station craft—and they followed each other into a black hole because they were desperate.” Mare Halena leaned back, flicking the projection off with a blink. “Focus on your duties, Orion. Having your wedding and putting an heir into that girl. I’m just glad your father will be here to help guide you once I’m gone because you’re clearly not prepared for any of this yourself.”

Orion stood there for a moment, the realization dawning on him as his mother bristled in her seat, uninterested and unsurprised.

She already knew this. Everything he brought her, she’d seen before.

So why was she ignoring it and sending them to X1s anyway?

CHAPTER58

KAIA

It was the morning of the wedding, and Kaia was fucked.

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