“No, this looks more like it is a regulator.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, my stomach tightening.
Travnyk shrugs and grunts. He points one of his thick, green fingers at faint lines that thread through the… whatever material this thing is made of. Liquid metal? Organic metal?
“The pattern,” he says simply. “Resembles a throttle, a regulation of power. Or… something.”
I see what he does and in my mind it looks similar to the veins in a plant. The lines, sometimes only visible with magnification, that move the ‘power’ or energy through the leaves and into the stalk. It makes sense.
“Okay, but… what? What is it regulating?”
Travnyk doesn’t answer right away. He emits a low rumbling sound as he leans over, closer, studying it carefully. He traces some of the lines with his finger, carefully not touching as he does.
“Output,” he says after a few moments of this.
Rakkh’s head snaps up. “Output of what?”
Travnyk gestures subtly at the basin.
“Energy. Matter. Waste products. Byproducts of long-term system operation. All of those? I do not know.”
The wordwasteechoes in my head. Images flash unbidden—dead plants with scorched roots, animals sick and glassy-eyed, blackened ichor where nothing should rot that way. All the effects of whatever is leaking into the ground and poisoning the desert. If this is the source, like it seems it must be, then it is not intentional.
“It’s not trying to poison the desert,” I whisper.
Rakkh turns toward me sharply. “What.”
“It doesn’t see it as poison,” I say. “It sees it as excess. Discharge. Something meant to be dispersed into an environment that could handle it.”
“An environment that it no longer exists in,” Travnyk says, narrowing his eyes.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a ship. It’s supposed to be in outer space. Not crashed and half-buried into the planet.”
Silence settles, thick and heavy. Tomas lets out a shaky laugh.
“So… the ship’s been dumping radioactive garbage into the ecosystem because it thinks Tajss is still… what. Pre-war?”
“Pre-Devastation,” I say.
The basin pulses once—soft, controlled. A faint shimmer passes through its surface, then fades. The ship isn’t hiding anything, it’s trying to show me.
“It was never meant to come down this way,” I whisper. “Not without oversight. It’s not supposed to be here, like this.”
Rakkh steps closer, his presence solid at my back. He lays one hand gently between my shoulder blades. Warmth emanates from that single point of contact, welcome and distracting at the same time.
“And now what? Why is it here? How do we fix it?”
I close my eyes, focusing on the impressions pressing at the edges of my awareness. Not memories this time—systems logic. Cause and effect. Inputs and outputs looping without correction.
“And now,” I say slowly, “it’s compensating for its failure.”
Travnyk exhales. “By increasing output.”
“Yes.”
Tomas swears under his breath.
The light along the seams brightens a fraction, then stabilizes again. The basin’s surface stills, smooth and dark. The ship is informing me.
