Grace Banked the ship as they continued the search flight plan. She regretted the that drink now—it felt like they were flying with the inertial dampers deactivated. It didn’t feel like they were aboard a starship but a vessel sailing the ancient seas of Earth, swaying from side to side as they moved.

  She was used to the bars of Mellotte II offering a variety of cocktails that she could shake off at a moment's notice—not whatever these dust farmers were brewing, sourced from who-knows-where.

  "Everything okay, Grace?" Miles asked.

  "I'm fine, Giles," she replied, slightly unsteadily.

  "It’s just that you’re looking a bit green," he replied.

  "It’s a good thing we’re far enough out that there’s no one near to fly into."

  "Good thing we’re far enough out there’s no police, man," Grace added.

  She got up and walked into the rear cabin, where she instructed the ship to generate a glass of water. It shimmered into existence, but after taking one look at it, she dematerialised it again, this time prompting the computer for one twice the size. She picked it up and took a sip.

  She tapped the menu to the side of the food dispenser and swiped through the last few meals she’d had on the flight out of here. Finally, she selected a simple burger. It flickered into existence. Grace grabbed it in her right hand, took a bite, and carried the water with her back to the cockpit. She set it down in the pilot’s cupholder.

  "I’ve always wondered," Miles began, "with those generated burgers—is it actually meat? Like, from a cow? Or—"

  He stopped to think about what he was trying to describe.

  "It’s best not to think about it," replied Grace.

  She reached down to the dashboard, tapping the navigational computer. The display showed the previous site they had started digging. The Brewsters’ team was obviously still there; their vehicles were still parked. Grace swiped the map and started looking at an area just over a thousand kilometres west.

  "Why there?" Miles asked.

  "Gut feeling," said Grace, just as her gut rumbled. She took another bite.

  "If there’s anything left, it’s all yours," she said, gesturing for him to help himself.

  "I’m fine for now," he said with a smile.

  Grace wiped her greasy hand on a napkin stuffed down the side of the seat before pushing the throttle forward. The fact they weren’t instantly pushed back in their seats indicated the inertial dampers were working fine, despite her senses suggesting otherwise.

  A few minutes later, Grace watched the distance dial as it started counting down. As it got closer, she overlaid a readout from the sensor probes. Multiple dots began populating the display.

  "What do you think that is?" Miles asked, raising his camera in her direction.

  "Don’t you dare," Grace said as sternly as she could, though her mouth was still half-full of burger. She choked slightly.

  Miles didn’t need to be told twice and put the camera back in his bag.

  Grace swallowed. "My first thought is those barflies have been busy."

  Miles shook his head. "I don’t think so. This is a modern shuttle that can make a suborbital flight in less than an hour. The land vehicles the locals are using would take the better part of a day to get here—and that’s the new ones. A lot of the locals’ vehicles would probably take a week. And that’s if they could convince a neighbour to lend them something."

  "That’s a good point," Grace replied. "We’re pretty far out, and these dots are pretty widely spread. Hiding some junk locally for a laugh is one thing, but this would actually take effort."

  Grace ran the sensor data against the ship’s library for the system.

  "Right," she said.

  The readout changed, listing the system as having an asteroid belt not far out.

  "That could account for a lot of these readings," she said. "Meteor strikes over the centuries."

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” said Grace. The number of results they’d been seeing suddenly made a lot more sense. If the metal from the asteroid belt had been raining down on this world for centuries, it would explain the readings.

  “Of course, that doesn’t help with our search,” said Miles, who was using the holographic interface to spin the globe round in circles.

  “Well, we’re not out of it yet,” said Grace, not giving up.

  “That wasn’t your sentiment an hour ago.”

  “An hour ago, we were in a completely different game. Now, let’s re-evaluate the search parameters and get a list of potential dig sites that we can search in order.”

  “That’ll take months,” said Miles.

  “No,” said Grace, “because we can find it straight away.” She grinned broadly. She didn’t think Miles believed her, and she didn’t quite believe it herself, but it was enough to keep them searching.

  “Well, how about this one?” Miles said, indicating a site even further out. “This one is one of the more remote locations. If it was natural, then it makes sense that those sites would be clustered together.”

  “Point agreed,” said Grace as she pulled up the ship’s navigation systems and began to close in on it.

  “We’ve got five hours of daylight left,” said Miles.

  “That’ll be enough for us to start.”

  “Definitely,” agreed Grace. They didn’t have the equipment for nighttime digging, and it seemed unwise to stay this far away from the settlement.

  “We’ll get started, and then we can—”

  She was interrupted by an alert from the communications system.

  “What the hell?” said Grace under her breath.

  Miles turned, wondering what had caught her attention. “I’m picking up a distress signal out here?” he questioned.

  “It’s coming from the planet’s surface,” said Grace. She cancelled their current course and began plotting a new one to take them to the site of the signal.

  Grace tuned the comm panel, and a familiar voice broke through the static on the speakers.

  “This is Brewster. Please help us. We are running out of water!”

  Grace looked at Miles and rolled her eyes. “What idiot has a dig in the desert and doesn’t bring enough to survive?”

  She cancelled the course change and brought the ship back around to continue their original route.

  “Grace!” Miles exclaimed. “You can’t be serious. It’s a distress call!”

  “Yeah, about idiots,” she replied.

  She switched the audio off and started playing late 20th-century pop music instead. She wasn’t sure which had irritated Miles more.

  “What about the laws of the starliners?” he asked.

  “We’re not on the starliners,” Grace replied. “When we were, the laws were common sense. And if it was us, you don’t think they’d help us unless there was a profit in it?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Sure,” said Grace.

  Miles seemed unimpressed. “Fine. Your ship. I can’t overrule you.”

  “No, you can’t,” Grace said reluctantly, cancelling the course a second time and bringing the ship back around.

  She felt bad about the way Miles had judged her. She’d always looked out for herself, sure, but this was the first time ignoring something could have left someone in real trouble. And as much as she liked the music—not her favourite but good flying music—she couldn’t leave it at that.

  “Twenty-five minutes flight time,” Grace said. She pushed down on the thrusters at the best possible speed. This time, she had lowered the inertial dampers just so the engines gave that extra kick. She still had a point to make.

  “Who orders spring water?” Grace muttered.

  The dig site where Brewster’s team was still operating looked the same as when Grace had left. She set the ship down, and Miles began generating water bottles from the food synthesiser. He packed them into a crate, snapping it together as it was designed to fit in the jet panel.

  Grace hit the door sensor with a closed fist, and the ship’s side hatch opened. She jumped the thirty or so centimetres down into the sand, landing in a slight crouch.

  Brewster, wearing dark glasses and a large, ornate hat, looked at her, clearly unamused.

  “Want the water or not, Brewster?” Grace asked, turning around and grabbing the side of the ship’s hatch to pull himself back onboard.

  Brewster sighed. He turned back around. “Yup, we need our water,” he conceded.

  Miles stepped up to the hatch, holding his box of the newly generated water bottles, and passed it down to Grace. The other members of Brewster’s team emerged from the tunnel. They all looked similarly parched. She began handing the bottles out one by one.

  “Thank you,” Brewster said humbly.

  “Not a problem,” Grace replied, trying to sound like she meant it. “How did you end up in this mess, anyway?” she asked.

  Brewster shrugged and wiped the sweat from his brow. “We thought we’d found something. Stayed longer than we meant to.” He looked up at the hot desert sun. “Should know better. I know.”

  “If only you’d had that intern,” Grace said with a smug grin.

  Brewster raised his bottle in salute. “You’ve got me there,” he admitted.

  Grace flipped over the now-empty box and sat down on it in the desert sand. Brewster had a foldout chair.

  “You’ve certainly got your wits about you,” Brewster said. “We actually could use someone like you.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “And yet you lowball me. Another thing you didn’t see coming, I suppose.”

  “You’re right,” said Brewster, not quite sounding like he meant it this time. He thought for a moment and looked her in the eyes. “You have been to Earth?” he asked.

  Grace wasn’t quite sure what he meant. “What, old Earth? Sol System?” she asked.

  Brewster nodded. “I was out there in my twenties,” he said.

  Grace tried to work out if it had been twenty or thirty years ago. She didn’t ask.

  “The sites I got to visit… I wasn’t originally interested in becoming an archaeologist. But I went to Greece. I saw the amazing dig sites. I even saw the Florida ruins.”

  Grace’s eyes widened. “You did?” She hadn’t wanted to show how much her interest was piqued, but she failed.

  “Oh yes,” Brewster said. “Most of it still inaccessible, of course, but what we could see was quite something.”

  “I had looked at holos,” Grace said. “We could recreate various dig sites. Whilst there are certainly older colonies in the cluster, there’s nothing like what they had back there.”

  Brewster took another swig from his bottle. “Not at all. Tell me, which was your favourite?”

  Grace thought for a moment. She knew exactly what she was going to say but didn’t want it to come too quickly. “Sutton Hoo,” she told him.

  “Okay,” said Brewster. “Not one of the obvious ones, the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Southern England.”

  “Did you go there?” Grace asked, her enthusiasm getting the better of her.

  “I did, as it goes.”

  “So, You know the dig was originally discovered by Basil Brown, an amateur.”

  “I know where you get your inspiration from,” said Brewster.

  “There are worse places,” said Grace. She stood up, looked at the sun’s position in the sky, and checked her slate. They only had an hour before it got dark. “I suppose I should offer you a lift back to the township,” she said, gesturing to her shuttle.

  “That would be most gracious of you,” said Brewster. He got up, and they started securing their ground vehicles to the shuttle’s rack. They used a magnetic field to secure them. If they were going any further, Grace would have strapped them down properly, but it was a short enough journey that she knew they’d be all right.

  The members of the team made themselves comfortable in the rear compartment. There were several couches. It was possible to transform it into a sleeping cabin, but for the moment, Grace had kept it in this layout. She strapped into the cockpit, and Brewster followed her in, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair.

  Miles had also come into the cockpit and realised there was nowhere to put himself. Grace gave him a shrug, and he went back out.

  “Will you go back to Earth?” Grace asked Brewster.

  Brewster thought on it for a moment. “A month ago, I would have said no without hesitation. But I’ve actually been looking at ticket prices, and now it’s too rich for my blood.”

  “You wouldn’t get value for money attacking everyone at no ships we are at Junction Station.”

  “I can believe it,” said Brewster. “What about you?” he asked.

  “Me? I’m cluster through and through,” said Grace, bringing the shuttle up to flight altitude. She flicked the switch, bringing the internal dampers back to full. She didn’t want these guys getting too rocked about. She had a reputation to maintain, after all.

  There was a vibration in her pocket and pulled out her slate. She quickly muted the sound of it’s alert and handed the shuttle over to autopilot, having previously mapped the route.

  Her probe had detected something. She grinned and then remembered her company. She tried to look stern and overplayed it.

  “Everything all right?” asked Brewster.

  “Absolutely,” said Grace. “Never better.” She folded her slate away and put it back in her pocket.

  They would get these guys back and investigate the new site this evening.