The blood-red clouds of Eleva made the industrial purpose of the planet no secret. Thousands of years collecting the galaxy's waste and reprocessing it back into raw elements had left Eleva a polluted orb circling an aging star.

From space, the planet’s thick, acrid clouds obscured the surface. The true destruction of the world revealed itself as Dr. Alan’s small ship pierced through the high layers of acid haze and oily smoke.

“Etsel,” Alan said, “you still got me?”

“I hear you,” a man replied through the earpiece. “Welcome to the galaxy’s dump.”

From horizon to horizon, the surface was covered by a patchwork of sprawling cities of dark, soot-stained factories, and vast plains of refuse waiting to be processed. Yellow lights sparkled across the dreadful landscape, the only sign that the wasteland was still in use and not a relic of some long-gone civilization.

“Yeah. Charming place, this planet,” Alan said.

He commanded the flight computer to land at a hangar tucked between two sprawling factories, each venting roiling black smoke into the air. He found himself in disgusted awe as the ship approached and the full scale of the buildings was revealed.

The vessel descended into the canyons of the city, its thruster stirring up the gray ash that covered the buildings like snow.

The craft settled onto its struts. Alan shut it down and peeled himself out of the pilot’s seat. It was a compact shuttle, meant to ferry people between a deep-space exploration ship and planet surfaces. It lacked the comfort of a long-haul vessel, and Alan had to hunch over while moving about the tiny cabin.

“You know the ship has two seats. You could have come.”

“One visit to Eleva is enough for me. I’ll watch you from up here.”

“OK, but next time we do something like this, let’s try to arrange it someplace nice.”

“Like Nadziboro?”

Alan could hear the smile in Etsel’s voice.

“You’ll never let me forget Nadziboro, will you?”

“Not as long as it’s a great story.”

“You only like that story because I was the one being chased.”

He opened a closet in the aft of the ship and pulled out his respirator and a jacket. The planet’s atmosphere was so saturated with fumes that respirators had to be worn even in most of the climate-controlled areas of the city. He opened the vessel door to reveal a narrow corridor littered with loose trash.

“You have our guy up?” Alan asked as he put on his respirator.

“Yeah, he got on the link while you were headed down. Name is Ebo. He’s ready, and not too far from where you landed. He’s at a restaurant called Rahka-Rahka. You can try a local dish.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“You might never get the chance to taste the fare of Eleva again.”

“I can live with that.”

The hallway opened to a massive atrium rippling with the activity and noise of hundreds of people milling between mazes of food stalls and vendor tables. Along the perimeter of the mall, under colorful electronic signs competing for attention, were the stores and restaurants of the bazaar. Overhead, the red clouds of Eleva were visible through a tremendous skylight.

Alan found the sign he was looking for perched above a discreet doorway. He weaved through the crowds and stopped at the steps leading to the restaurant.

“Alright. This is it. I’m going in.”

“Hey,” Etsel said, “be careful. This guy, Ebo, is a strange one. I don’t trust him.”

“I’ll keep it short.”

Rahka-Rahka was dark, busy, and noisy. Sixty people crammed into a room built to hold thirty. People of all forms and species stood drinking and talking in clusters against the walls and packed around small tables.

Over loud music and bar chatter, a voice rose above all others: “Alan!”

From a table at the center of the small establishment, a figure waved and caught Alan’s attention. Alan pulled down his respirator and moved through the crowd. At the table was a single open chair opposite a seated man with two glowing drinks. He was slender and unkempt, his coveralls dabbled with aged stains and his oily hair matted across his brow.

“Ebo,” Alan said as he settled into the chair.

“A man travels across the galaxy and joins another for a drink,” said Ebo. “One man has a pocket full of money and the other has a pocket full of history. But sitting a few tables behind them are three Brabillia who have, well,” Ebo pushed a drink to Alan, “a lot of muscle.”

Alan looked at the drink and realized the source of the light in the cup was a small fish. The glowing creature slowly turned in the glass, lazily chasing its own tail.

“The Brabillia want the history,” Ebo struggled for a word, “the artifact. But they know the man who holds it is part of a big, protective family. So they know they can’t just take it from him. They can’t take the artifact—until I give it to you. Do you see?”

“So, to be clear, I’m the one with the money in this story?”

Ebo frowned. He reached under the table, produced a finger-length silver cylinder, and placed it on the table. He removed its cap to produce from within a small rectangle, an inch long, metallic and etched with red and blue stripes.

Alan recognized it.

“So much money for something so small,” Ebo mused.

“You don’t seem like the type who would appreciate relics from the first civilization in the galaxy.”

“You’re right. I don’t care about myths,” he said as he put the artifact back in its cylinder and sealed it. “I care about the money you’ll pay for it.”

Alan rapped his fingers on the table in thought, then reached into his jacket and produced a metal card. He placed it on the table next to the cylinder. The man looked at the card, picked up his drink, and swallowed its contents. Alan felt a pang of regret for the fish.

Ebo hesitated for a moment, then leaned in. “Listen, traveler,” he put a finger on the cylinder, “when you touch this, it is no longer mine, and they will come for it.” Though he spoke to Alan, his gaze shifted to a table behind them.

Alan glanced over his shoulder. Even in the dim light of the restaurant, he could spot the group of Brabillia sitting a few tables back. The race was well known for its size, strength, and asymmetrical face. Three eyes on the right side of a stocky head with no neck, one eye on the left, all mounted on a body that had to walk sideways through doors. In a straight fight, a human faced steep odds, but if speed and agility were brought into the equation…

“Right.”

Alan reached for his glass and brought the liquid to his lips, but stopped short of drinking it. He put the glowing drink back on the table and stood up from his chair.

“I’d like to stay and talk about your business ethics, but I think I have to run,” Alan said.

“I should think so.”

Alan held his hand over the cylinder for a moment, then snatched the object and headed for the door. Behind him, three hulking figures stood and followed, their mass jostling the crowds of seated patrons as they passed.

Ebo held up Alan’s glowing drink. “You don’t want the fish?”

Outside the restaurant, in the atrium, Alan tasted the noxious fumes ever present in the air and moved his respirator back over his face.

“Etsel, it’s another damn Nadziboro.”

“You got the artifact?”

“Yeah. And three Brabillia are tailing me. Your guy set us—me—up.”

“But you got the artifact!”

“I hate chases!”

As he cut through the crowded mall, he caught sight of two beastly figures in front of the hangar and abruptly pivoted his stride ninety degrees.

“There are another two blocking me from the hangar. They are either smart or I have bad luck.”

“Bad luck. Get on a train. At the next stop, you can summon the ship to a nearby hangar.”

“Good plan, I just have to—”

Alan sensed a commotion and spun around to find the three Brabillia from Rahka-Rahka breaking through the crowd. The closest swung its fist at Alan’s head. Alan fell onto his back, reflexively and without grace, the fist sailing over him. Figures in the crowd shouted in alarm and withdrew to clear space as the melee unfolded.

Alan quickly rolled and sprang to his feet. He dashed to his left and tucked his way into the throng of stunned spectators.

“Alan?” Etsel asked through the earpiece. “Are you getting to the train?”

“Working on it!”

Across the mall and past the vendors, a train platform flashed a departure notice. Behind him, three lumbering beasts parted the crowd. Alan sprinted through the shoppers, and when he reached the thick masses of commuters, he elbowed his way forward, earning the disapproval of those he cut in front of. He reached the train and slid into a crowded car, turning to see whether his pursuers had caught up. The doors sealed with no sign of the Brabillia.

After a moment, the train lurched, beginning its steady trek to the next stop. He released his breath. The cars were packed shoulder to shoulder with masked passengers; wherever he was going, many others were headed there as well.

“I got on,” he said to Etsel, “but I didn’t see whether my buddies did too.”

“The next stop is a few minutes away. It should have a hangar, so just stay low and maybe you can get through this without a fight.”

Now I know why he didn’t come.

From the middle car, he began working his way through the mass of packed passengers toward the head of the train.

Out the windows, the claustrophobia of the city fell away, replaced by an endless plain of shredded industrial waste that disappeared into the horizon of red murk. The train glided twenty feet above the landscape of refuse, continuing toward a factory, passing over robotic tractors and workers moving and sorting the piles.

As he reached the lead of the train, the crowds thinned, and he found a pocket of space. From the front, he could see a conveyor belt loaded with waste tracking parallel to the rails. Its destination was the same as the train’s.

Alan glanced around the car. He turned to face the window, retrieved the cylinder from his jacket, and opened it. With a gentle shake, he urged out the contents into his palm: the small rectangular artifact.

The curiosity was millions of years old, a fragment of technology from a civilization that, Alan and others suspected, had seeded the galaxy with intelligent life. Piece by piece, they were putting together a puzzle that would explain where the ancient Seed civilization had vanished to.

The sound of a scuffle caught Alan’s ear, and the passengers in the car parted, revealing three Brabillia pushing their way toward him.

He closed the cylinder and put it back into his jacket.

“They found me.”

“You’re so close! You can’t lose the artifact. Stall them, then get off the train!”

He held his hands up. “How about we get off at the next stop and work this out?”

The center Brabillia stepped forward and reached for Alan’s neck. He sidestepped it, then landed a quick jab at the alien’s right cluster of eyes. The creature hadn’t expected a fight and stumbled back.

That trick will only work once.

The passengers moved away from the fight.

“Can you hear me?” Etsel said, anxiety welling in his voice.

“Not now!”

Alan backpedaled to the wall as the figures moved toward him. Trapped, he braced himself and yanked the red handle above his shoulder. The train’s wheels locked, jolting the train and sending the Brabillia and all the standing passengers sliding forward.

Alan scrambled over the writhing pile of people that blanketed the floor and moved down the car to the second door.

“Alan, get out of there!”

“Shut up until I’m off this train!”

He realized as he shouted to the voice in his ear that he had been locking eyes with a screaming woman. Stunned, the woman quieted down.

Alan gestured to his ear. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Etsel said.

“Not you.”

The train came to a stop as he wrenched the doors in the middle of the car open. As they relented, hot, acrid air poured in, and the loud clamoring of the parallel conveyor belt ten feet below the elevated rail line filled the car with noise.

Alan glanced to the front of the train where the Brabillia were emerging from the pile of passengers. He looked out at the conveyor passing below, gauged his jump, then leapt.

With a crunch and a cloud of rust, he landed on the belt and fell to his side. Hard shapes punched into his ribs and legs, eliciting a groan. He stumbled to his feet. A Brabillia jumped from the car and landed on the conveyor, falling as Alan had. The first was followed by the other two.

Alan sprinted toward them and threw all his weight into a flying kick that knocked the first Brabillia to rise off-balance and over the side of the belt. Alan worked his way to his feet and saw the other two brutes up and on their way to him. With no advantage, he ran toward the factory, leaping over piles of debris and opening some distance between him and his pursuers.

Ahead, the conveyor belt passed through a narrow arch. Alan stopped his sprint and turned to face the Brabillia, who were catching up. Reaching down to the trash under his feet, he pulled a long rod from the pile and hung its ends over the edge. As the belt passed through the arch, the rod caught the legs of the arch and leapt out of his hands.

One pursuer realized Alan’s plan in time to duck under the rod. The other was caught square in the chest and dragged down the conveyor, away from the fight.

Alone, and with anger in its four eyes, the last Brabillia charged as Alan fled. The two ran down the belt, leaping and stepping over trash.

“Alan?” Etsel said through the earpiece.

“Can’t. Talk.” Alan struggled. “Running.”

The air within the respirator had become thick and wet, his need for oxygen outweighing the respirator’s ability to supply it.

A shadow fell over the belt as it entered the enormous processing plant. The interior was cavernous, hundreds of feet tall, with conveyors moving materials between massive machines and sorting lines. At the far end of the long building, smelting chambers spewed heat, smoke, and a fiery orange glow.

Twenty feet below the belts, the floor of the facility was a highway of moving tractors and transports—hundreds of labor-bots tending to equipment and unloading materials. Piles of stacked fuels, agent barrels, and manipulators dotted the floor, the highways moving among them.

Alan tripped on a stray loop of wire and, twisting, fell onto his back. He felt the sting of metal pierce his leg. Before he could get to his feet, the pursuer was on top of him, its tremendous weight crushing his body, a giant hand around his neck.

He clenched at the Brabillia’s hand and threw a wild punch, but the attack produced no effect. In desperation, he threw strike after strike.

“Give it to me!” the creature shouted.

With all his effort, Alan tried to shift the attacker off, but the weight was too much for him.

Through the cacophony of clattering trash, the sound of steady thumping emerged. The two looked up the line to an approaching set of pile drivers.

“Give it to me!” the creature repeated in Alan’s reddening face.

Alan reached into his jacket and pulled out the cylinder. He held it in front of their faces, then flung it over the edge of the belt down to the factory floor. The Brabillia looked to the crushers ahead, looked toward where the cylinder had gone, and then looked at Alan. He let go of him, rose to his feet, and leapt off the belt.

The pounding of the pile drivers grew louder.

Alan winced as he struggled to his feet. The thin metal shaft on the conveyor was wet with his blood.

Just ahead of the pile drivers, passing under the belt, a catwalk was approaching. With little time to prepare, he flung himself off the belt and onto the walkway, tumbling onto its unforgiving metal railings.

He clambered to his feet and limped beneath the conveyor to an access door. As the door sealed behind him, the heat and roaring of the plant subsided.

Alan slid down against the metal wall. The air in the respirator was soupy, and he breathed long and hard until he could feel oxygen running through his blood again. His body ached, covered in ash and rust, and his clothes were torn and punctured.

He reached into his jacket and produced a small rectangle of red-and-blue metal.

It survived.

He tucked the object back into his pocket, then pulled out his hand computer. It showed he wasn’t far from a hangar. His pursuer wouldn’t be fooled for long, and it was time for a quick exit of Eleva.

“I’m coming up,” Alan said.

“You still have it?”

“It's fine. I’m fine. We’re both in one piece.”

Just one last sprint.

* * *

In a high orbit over Eleva, the glimmering white silhouette of a deep-galaxy expedition ship silently disappeared into the shadow cast by the planet. The vessel was the long-term home to a handful of engineers and scientists who signed onto research missions far from the populated core of the galaxy.

On board the ship, the computer lab was brightly lit and packed with equipment. Robotic arms with needle-tipped probes, oil baths with cables running into wire harnesses—every device a researcher could use for making sense of alien technology. In the back of the lab, a tiny red-and-blue rectangle was mounted in a holding case with cables running to a console.

Three individuals stared at a diagnostic display mounted from the ceiling. A column of text crawled down the screen.

Alan, with fresh clothes and damp hair slicked back, opened the lab door and limped in. “No med-bot can hold me down.”

As Alan shut the door, the figures turned from the display. Etsel was the center of the trio, flanked by a student assistant and a man Alan did not recognize. Etsel was dressed in the formal style common with executives back at the school. He aspired to lead the xenoarchaeology department and dressed the part. Alan did not have fantasies of a reliable desk job, so he dressed simply. The stranger in the group was clothed as formally as Etsel, but in the more colorful style found in the Core regions. His graying hair was well kept.

“Alan! It’s good to see you on your feet again, but I’m hoping the medical system isn’t going to complain to me you were supposed to stay in bed,” Etsel said as Alan hobbled to the group. He put a hand on the stranger’s shoulder. “Dr. Zu, let me introduce you to Dr. Alan, the man who was able to secure us this piece of history at great personal risk.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Dr. Alan. I’m Mattia Zu, here on behalf of the Core Alliance Research branch. As soon as Etsel contacted me, I had my ship get here as fast as it could—which sometimes isn’t fast enough.”

Core Alliance Research branch? Alan thought. What is the Alliance doing here?

Etsel continued, “We were just speaking about the implications of this bit of the Seed puzzle you found. I was telling Dr. Zu about all the effort we’ve put into tracking this one down: three systems over five months.”

“For an intact memory module from the Seed, it’s worth it.” Alan looked up at the diagnostic screen. The test harness had connected to the artifact and was reading raw data from the ancient device segment by segment.

“And Dr. Alan here pioneered the techniques to decode and transform the memory—”

“Oh, we’re familiar with Dr. Alan’s work back at the lab.” Zu interrupted. “We’ve been following him since he found the very first Seed artifact, the L9 specimen. The techniques you used to decode L9 — we’ve been replicating those and developing a few of our own.”

“That leads back to why Zu has joined us here,” Etsel said. “To make the most of this new discovery, the university decided that it was safest to let the Core Alliance Research team take possession of the artifact.”

“What?” Alan laughed and turned to meet eyes with Etsel. “We tracked this thing through the Cistla sector for months. Why’s it going off to the Alliance? Why isn’t it staying here in the lab or going back to the school?”

“The Alliance has a team ready to try some fresh approaches they’ve been developing. And for our effort, they are funding this expedition for another two quarters,” said Etsel.

Alan’s face flushed, and he stepped back for a moment. “You’re serious?”

“It will be in expert hands, Dr. Alan,” Zu said. “We’ll be taking it to a secure facility for study.”

Alan looked at Etsel, then Zu, then back to Etsel. “It’s right here, ready to be worked on.”

“Thank you, Alan. Thank you for getting this, and to your assistant for helping validate its completeness,” Zu said, “but I have to take it now.”

“So, that’s it? It’s going into a vault?” Alan said, anger taking form in his tone.

“It’s going to Core Research Labs,” Etsel said coldly.

“They don’t publish their work, you know that. Everyone knows that. They’re a military institution—”

“Not military,” Zu corrected.

“It’s an institution that doesn’t share what they discover.” Alan pointed to the artifact. “If this memory block holds information that advances our understanding of who the Seed civilization were and where they went, we’d be the last to find out.”

Zu produced a black case from his pocket and opened the lid. He looked at the lab tech. “Could you please put it in the container?” The tech scooped the rectangular tab of metal from its cradle and lowered it into the case, ignoring the conversation occurring around him.

“This is incredible,” Alan stammered. “I didn’t expect this from… from…”

“Please,” Etsel said, “do your best to understand there are things that have transpired that you are not aware of.”

Zu closed the lid. “The Alliance has tremendous resources to—”

“I don’t… I can’t hear it,” Alan interrupted.

Zu and Etsel exchanged glances.

“Etsel, give my regards to the captain. I’ll contact you when I get back to the lab. Great work.”

“Certainly.” Etsel looked to the lab technician. “Please escort our guest to his ship.”

Zu and the assistant left, leaving Alan and Etsel in the lab in stony silence. Alan held himself against the counter and looked at the empty cradle where the artifact had been.

What have I been used for?

“Alan, I don’t know what to say. I didn’t imagine you reacting --”

“You knew the entire time that this was going to the Alliance.” He paused and looked at the floor in thought. “Why didn’t the Alliance just send their own man to get the artifact? Why did you send me?”

“Well, for starters, you worked on the L9 specimen for years and then literally wrote the book on Seed tech. If someone tried to give us a fake, or the situation evolved down some path nobody could predict, there’s no better person to deal with it than you.”

“I didn’t join you on this ship to run errands and get chased all over backwater planets. I joined because I need to understand the Seed. And I thought you did too.”

Alan rubbed his brow in frustration.

“Research gets messy sometimes,” Etsel said. “This ship, this expedition—it isn’t cheap. If you want to explore the distant boundaries of knowledge, sometimes you cut deals to pay the way.”

“What if I don’t want to cut deals?”

Etsel leaned back against a table. “There is a place for you on this expedition. You know that. But if you can’t handle how it’s run, then I can return you to Denarii where you can go back to digging up relics by yourself.”

The room was quiet.

“What’s it going to be, Alan?”