The Lost Colony
Copyright© 2026 by D M Arnold
Chapter 4: ExoScout 501
Nyk was startled awake by the bong-bong-bong of a chime. He looked up and saw white indicators blinking over his cabin’s viewports. The flash shutters began to close.
“Andra — Andra! Wake up.”
“Mmmmph,” she said and rubbed her eyes.
“We’re getting underway.” He folded down a jump seat and belted himself in. Andra climbed out of the bunk, folded down another and fastened her restraints.
The indicators flashed white to blue. A thud shook the ship and Nyk was thrown against his restraint. Andra’s overnight bag fell from a shelf onto the deck. Then a second jolt and a third. The warp indicators went dark and the viewport shutters opened.
“Where do you think we are?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He craned his neck to look through the viewport. “We slept through the start of the watch and the captain’s briefing.” He pulled on his tunic. “I’m going to take a stroll to the bridge.”
“I’ll join you after my shower.”
Nyk headed down the corridor and stepped onto the bridge. On the viewpane was a rust-colored planet. “Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re making planetfall on Nalos,” the first officer replied.
“What’s on Nalos?”
“Nothing. It’s what’s in orbit around Nalos — ExoService salvage yard. We’re here to pick up a comm relay.”
“How long will we be here?”
“Well, that depends, doesn’t it — on how long it takes to find one that Zane and the chief can coax back into life.”
“We’ve reached the coordinates,” the pilot reported.
“Thank you, helm,” replied the first officer. He touched a control panel at his post and a rectangular object tumbling lazily in space appeared on the viewpane. “That’s it — taken out of service a hundred years ago.”
An open transport with pressure-suited crew approached the relay station. “Are they from the salvage yard?” Nyk asked.
“Yes,” the first officer replied. “They’ll control its roll so our men can have a look- see.”
“It looks like dangerous work.”
“It is dangerous — but these guys are pros.”
One of the crew stepped from the transport. He paused for a moment and then activated his thruster pack. He approached the tumbling relay, his velocity matching its rotation and grabbed onto it. From a pack on his back he withdrew an object, secured it to the relay station, let go and headed back to the transport. Another crewman repeated the performance on the other side of the relay.
“What are those?” Nyk asked.
“Inertial sinks,” the first officer replied. “They’ll control the rolling.” The relay station’s tumbling slowed and stopped. “Ensign,” he called into a communicator, “you’re on.”
Another figure, riding a personal thruster like a motorcycle, approached the station.
“Is that Zane?” Nyk asked.
“Yes. He’ll give it the once-over. The yard master tells us they have three others if this won’t do.”
“And, if none of them do?”
“We’ll make one do.”
Zane approached the bridge in his pressure suit and carrying his helmet in the crook of his arm.
“Status?” the captain said.
“It appears to be functional,” Zane reported, “but...”
“But what, Ensign?”
“The control cabin won’t hold atmosphere. It seems the door seals are hardened from being in space for so long. Also, it’s missing its gravity generator. Likely explanation — it was scavenged years ago. We’ll have to do our work in pressure suits and zero-G. It won’t be easy.”
“Ensign, where in your enlistment agreement did you see the word ‘easy’?”
“Nowhere, Sir. Some day, though, a Communications Corps technician will be cursing us through her teeth. We’ll be able to work on it here in the bay during the crossing to Varada. We’ll have gravity and atmosphere — that’ll make it easier. According to the yard master, this one was fully functional when taken out of service.”
“Put a team together to bring it on board.”
“But Sir...
“Is there more, Ensign?”
“We couldn’t find a more marginal specimen if we looked for one. Certainly the Communications Corps has freshly-decommissioned relays that would be more suitable. We could call in a favor with them and...”
“You have your orders, Ensign.”
Zane snapped to attention and proffered the Floran two-finger salute. “Boom, Sir.” The captain’s eyes narrowed and he returned the salute. Zane turned on his heels and marched off the bridge.
Nyk stood holding hands with Andra as they stood in the observation lounge looking aftward. The scout had maneuvered so the house-sized relay station was directly aft, and had matched its velocity. The shuttle bay clamshell doors swung open.
Four open cockpit thrust tractors, manned by crewmen in pressure suits left the bay and headed toward the relay. Two before and two aft, they hooked cables onto it and began towing it toward the open bay. The gap between the scout and the comm station narrowed.
He watched two more crewmen wearing thruster packs drag cables out from the bay. These they hooked onto the relay. With the tractors hauling to the aft to keep the cables taught, they began to draw the device into the shuttle bay.
“It looks like a tight fit,” Nyk remarked. “Let’s go below. When will we have another chance to see the outside of a comm relay this close up?”
He headed for the lift and exited on the shuttle bay deck. Peering through the view panel in the pressure door he could watch the crewmen winch the relay station inside. A pair of crewmen placed roller dollies under the station. He could feel scraping transmitted through the deck.
The clamshell swung shut and he could hear the bay pressurize. The pressure door slid open as the captain stepped from the lift car. Zane removed his helmet and wiped perspiration from his brow. “We brought it in, Sir,” he reported.
“So I see.”
“Chief will start fueling the fusion reactors. As long as it’s in the bay, we might as well go over the exterior — make sure the antenna couplings are all sound. I’ll install comm protocol upgrades. We’ll have it ship-shape before we reach Varada, Captain.”
“That’s more like it, Ensign.”
Nyk approached Zane. “We’re giving this away?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Aren’t we afraid the Varadans will learn some secrets? Like our comm ciphers?”
“This will be parked outside their heliopause. They won’t be able to reach it — their fastest shuttle would take ten years to make the transit ... one way. If you’ll excuse me, I want to get out of this suit and start breathing life into this thing.”
Nyk wandered around the shuttlebay regarding the relay station. He poked his head into the docking tunnel and saw Zane sitting at a vidisplay running diagnostics. “Come on up,” Zane called to him.
He pushed a stepstool under the docking tunnel and clambered inside. “This is so much smaller than the one near Earth. Is that the crew cabin?”
“Yes,” Zane replied. “No one will want to spend any more time aboard this one than necessary — not without atmosphere or gravity.”
“How is it coming?”
Zane put down his diagnostic panel. “I have the comm equipment upgraded. This one only has two hundred channels, but it’ll do for the Varadans for years to come.” He poked some switches. “Assuming it stays running that long. Right now, we’re running it on ship’s power.”
“The reactors don’t work?”
“So far, the chief hasn’t been able to get the fusion reactors fueled — they leak hydrogen.”
“That’s not good.”
“He has one of his mates in the machine shop fabricating a new set of cryogenic couplers which should do the job.”
“What was it you said to the captain right before leaving the bridge?”
“Do you mean, Boom, Sir?”
“Yes — what does it mean?”
Zane chuckled. “It’s a bit of Service slang. It means, ‘I think what you’re ordering me to do is stupid, but because you out-rank me — consider it done.’ I find myself using it often with the command on this bucket.”
“Isn’t it insubordinate?”
“Oh, no.” He gestured toward the communications equipment. “Refusing to work on this piece of pootoo would be insubordinate. There aren’t any rules against having opinions, though.”
“Zane — what’s it like?”
“What’s what like?”
“What’s it like being a male ax’amfin? I’m sorry if my question seems too forward.”
He smiled. “Nykkyo — Andra has told me some of her experiences with you. I won’t consider anything too forward coming from your lips. Being a male ax’amfin is pretty much like being a female one except for the gender thing.”
“That’s a rather glib answer.”
“It’s the best I can do. Actually, Nykkyo — you and I have much more in common being men than Andra and I do being ax’amfinen. I think it’s easier being a man. Ax’amfin features are more striking on a woman, don’t you think?”
“I’d say so.”
“It must be difficult having your physical appearance define your whole life. That part of it is more difficult for the women, I think.”
“Don’t you ever wonder?”
“Wonder what?”
“What it would be like to fulfill an ax’amfin assignment?”
He smiled again. “Nykkyo — the day they told me I failed to make the final cut was the happiest of my life. It meant I was free to fulfill my own dreams.”
“The ExoService?”
“I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid. You have to realize what it’s like growing up with these features. My parents worked long and hard with genetic counselors before they created an embryo with the right features for the finishing schools. They knew time was running out on my mother’s biological clock.
“Finally they had all the features — the light skin, the blue eyes, the white hair ... certain innate cognitive abilities. It all lined up with the profiles. There was one small problem called a Y chromosome. It was either implant or start over. There’s always Rote Academy, they consoled each other.
“Rote accepted me — on a provisional admission.”
“What does that mean?”
“It meant they’d pay my parents only twenty-five percent, with the rest held in trust until I successfully completed the program. Of course, Rote doesn’t pay for boys what Vebinad does for girls in the first place. Here I was — a double disappointment for my parents. I didn’t want to go. When I washed out, they saw their graduation bonus vanish into thin air. I haven’t spoken to them since. They accuse me of deliberately failing.”
“Did you?”
Zane smiled. “Like I said, it was the happiest day of my life.”
“Are you enjoying the Service?”
“For the most part. They recognized my talents for the comm stuff during basic training. I got my certificate, but lacked the rank. So, they fast-tracked me through officer’s training and assigned me to this barge. Most comm officers are first lieutenants — or better. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
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