First Contact
A short story set in the Integration era.
©2026, by Charlie Forêt, all rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Cover Photo: ©2026, by Charlie Forêt
Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9985516-9-7
Part Six
The system had been quiet for a long time.
We'd gotten Harko on his feet and retraced our steps with Nev or me supporting him. First the creek with the bluff rising on the eastern bank, then the pathway winding back to the northwest and then the bamboo forest. Now that we had reached the edge of the potato field, Harko needed to rest again. The sky was turning from deep indigo to the thin wash of gray-blue that signaled dawn approaching.
Nev stood facing back the way we'd come. She wasn't speaking. She wasn't checking her overlay. She was just watching the dark where the rift was, beyond the bamboo line and the bluff and a forest of trees we couldn't see from here, her body still and her arms loose at her sides.
Her magenta outline was gone. So was Harko's yellow aura. The imagery had faded as we moved from the region of the rift.
Both of them glowed. Harko sitting at the field's edge, a teal-to-cyan luminescence at his edges, faint enough that I almost missed it. Nev standing, the same residue brighter on her, the way she always seemed to take more of whatever was in the air. The system's word for it was Flux residue. The sight of it on them was new.
I looked at my own hands. They were just hands, the same as always. If Nev or Harko could see the glow, they hadn't said anything.
I let the quiet be quiet.
Harko was the first to move. He shifted from sitting to lying back in the grass, slow and careful, like a person who'd just figured out that the muscles he'd been using to hold himself upright were the same ones that wanted to give up. He didn't close his eyes. He looked at the sky.
I looked too. The sky did what it always did at this hour, stars faded and the deep blue-black lightened, warming with the barest hint of yellow in the east. Beautiful in the same way the rift's interior had been. The thought sat strangely.
Nev turned. She didn't say anything. She didn't sit. She turned ninety degrees and faced the settlement, the same as she'd been facing the rift. Still, attentive, weight balanced. I watched her without being noticed, and she watched everything else.
I stayed still myself. Flux had moved in me. Not pain. Not strangeness. Different, like a glass being full instead of half-full. I was filled with something I hadn't been carrying before.
And that full weight was something real. I had found the exit with part of what filled me. I had felt the pathway out.
I might have created that path. That thought stopped me cold. If Flux could be controlled, I'd spent four years consciously not practicing.
I could still feel where the rift had been, even though I couldn't see it through the bamboo and the bluff and the dark. I could feel where the settlement was, ahead. I could feel the space between the two of them as a thing with shape.
The sky had moved further into gray. Not yet dawn but no longer night.
I had not opened my overlay. I was waiting for the quiet to be enough.
It nearly was.
Harko's breathing became less labored, more natural. He still didn't say anything, just lay back looking skyward.
The chime came inside my head. The soft ping meant the system had something to say, not jarring or intrusive, but what it thought was important. Nev went still beside me. It wasn't her watching our surroundings now, it was looking inside. Harko's eyes shifted as well in the dim light. The system was speaking to us all.
I opened my overlay.
[Encounter complete.][Engagement criteria met.][Party record — Kes Marrow: Flux 12 → 16. High affinity reclassification.][Class 5 Flux surge absorption recorded.][Active navigation under critical conditions recorded.][Signal, Frame, Drive, Echo: reduced. Recovery advised.][Party record — Nev Cassler: Frame 11 → 12. Passive Flux exposure confirmed.][Echo 7 → 8. Sustained coordinated navigation under critical conditions recorded.][Party record — Harko Selt: Encounter logged. Points awarded: +1. Pending allocation.]
Engagement criteria met.
Four years of Reassessment recommended upon measurable engagement.
I read it again. Criteria met. That was all it said. That was all it needed to.
I read the next line again. Nev's award. The Frame increase I had guessed. She got it the same time my Flux jumped, at the rift. I'd seen her go quiet then. The other increase was newer. It was linked to our escape. I led, she followed. Together we navigated our way out.
Harko had survived, and gained a point.
I wonder where he'll allocate it?
It didn't really matter. Surviving was the most important part.
Harko must have reached the same conclusion. He didn't sit up, but his head moved from side-to-side. His jaw worked, producing no sound. Then:
"Good news is, I'll remember this more than the assessments I've passed."
It was a Harko line, just like so many he'd landed before. He focused on the mundane, some would say trivial, and landed it every time. No explanation, just Harko.
Nev heard the same thing I did. I knew without looking by the way her stillness shifted half an inch. She wouldn't comment, but I knew she was cracking her half-smile and resisting the urge to nod in agreement.
I applauded him with silence. The sky continued to lighten above us.
I looked at Nev. Her eyes shifted still, her attention split between the overlay and the world around. I marveled at her discipline and focus. Then her eyes flicked up to the left, the overlay dismissal gesture we all knew.
I mimicked her, closing mine. Her glow was fading. I was going to miss the subtle outline around her. The night was passing, the dark was lifting.
She's beautiful.
I looked at her, then away. It was habit. Four years of friendship and patterns of behavior had become ingrained.
I'd stepped in front of an unknowable force to protect her.
If I could do that, I could meet her gaze. I looked back.
She sensed it, I could tell. Her ever-present watchfulness ensured that. Even when I didn't think it, I knew she followed my movements. Harko's, too. She looked out for us both.
Then she changed. She turned slightly, almost as if scanning the field, then stopped. Her shoulders softened. Her eyes found mine. Neither of us looked away.
The habit broke.
I had faced a Class 5 flux rift, with her.
I could share simple feelings.
Her lips opened slightly. She took a deep breath.
I could say what I felt.
Now was the time.
