Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 1 of 15

Alyssa Redd had been staring at the same star chart for six hours when the readout finally blinked green. She sat up straight in her workshop chair, red hair falling over the black heart tattooed under her eye. The screen showed a signal returning from a coordinate the Shrumella government swore was empty space. Empty space did not bounce signals back. Earth did. She pulled the printout free and smoothed it flat on the bench. Her grandmother Beverly used to tell her Earth stories in the kitchen — oceans, cities, birds — until the day Alyssa was old enough for someone else to correct her. Earth blew apart, they said. A million pieces. Beverly had smiled and kept telling the stories anyway. Beverly had been dead three weeks. Alyssa had been in the workshop for most of them. The planet survey wall behind her glowed with a dozen borrowed feeds. Habitat charts. Gravity readings. A blue-and-green marble the state archive labeled DEBRIS FIELD. Alyssa had spent a month cross-referencing the archive against the raw telescope pulls she wasn't supposed to have. The numbers did not match. Tonight the signal proved which set was lying. She knew how systems failed just by standing near them. It was the one thing she was good at and the one thing no grocery store on this mushroom-choked rock wanted her doing near the registers. Right now the skill was pointed at a government story, and the story had holes she could put her whole arm through. She needed someone who could move a printout without leaving a trail. She locked the workshop and walked to the payphone Tomas Leclair used on the west side of the market. He answered on the second ring, the way he did for people who paid late but paid. "It's Redd," she said. "I need a courier who doesn't ask questions. And I need to know if anyone's been asking about my feeds." A pause. Paper shuffled. Tomas Leclair skimmed a cut from every deal in this city and paid the desperate ones first, which was the only reason Alyssa trusted him at all. His rumpled voice came back flat. "Two people asked this week. One badge. One not. I told the badge nothing. The other one I owe a favor to, so I gave him your workshop street. Not the door." "How long ago." "Tuesday. You've got maybe a day. What did you find." Alyssa looked at the printout in her hand. The signal was steady. The coordinate was alive. "Earth," she said. "It's still there." She hung up before he could answer. Then she walked out past the edge of the settlement to the small stone under the red-capped mushrooms and knelt where Beverly was buried. She laid the printout flat on the dirt so her grandmother could see it too. "You were right," she said. "Now they know I know."