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chatter with the rest of the ship to prevent rumors from spreading. In the meantime, Almacantar ’s sensor arrays operated in full diagnostic mode—checking and rechecking all the data coming from the Martian surface, looking for any indication that the core construct was flawed. With the crew busy, they had less time to ask questions she couldn’t answer.
    “Try bleeding some power from the pulse jets into the array,” Farina ordered the engineering duty officer. “Maybe we just need to punch through some interference.”
    “I’ll need to program a flow containment subroutine to make sure I don’t overload the sensors,” the officer replied. “That could take some time.”
    “We’re not going anywhere,” the captain assured him with a smile. The gesture had the intended effect, putting the engineering officer at ease—and that, in turn, reduced some of the strain on the bridge. They were still in a world of shit, but at least it now felt like part of the routine.
    Ain’t that the truth, Farina thought, relaxing a little in the command chair. Show me a salvage op where nothing goes wrong, and I’ll show you a ship that never leaves dock.
    Nathan Straka had served with her long enough to know the drill—though he appeared even more worried than she did as he spun open the hatch and stepped onto the bridge.
    “Please tell me it’s a mistake,” the captain said.
    “Wish I could,” Nathan replied, sealing the hatch behind him. The rest of the crew fell into an uneasy quiet at hearing the diagnosis. “I ran it a couple of times to be sure. Something is most definitely out of whack.”
    Farina shook her head, then sank back into the command chair. “Give me max resolution on the main viewer,” she ordered, as Nathan took his place beside her. On a large screen at the forward end of the bridge, the endless desert surface of Mars glistened. Shades of brown and red blended together across Settler’s Plain, reaching all the way to the base of Olympus Mons. From orbit, it was difficult to imagine the rivers and lakes the terraformers intended, feeding a wild ecosystem that could sustain human life—especially with the domes of their encampment scattered like cemetery stones across the frozen sands.
    Towering above all of them, the gigantic atmospheric processors rose up near the southern end of the settlement. Designed to pump out perfluorocarbons as a preliminary stage in the terraforming process, they now sat in silence—as they had for the better part of a decade, weathering the sandstorms that had buried some of the other structures. From a salvage view, however, Farina thought that the old settlement appeared to be intact—a cause for celebration, if not for the complications Nathan brought her.
    “Might as well fill me in,” she sighed.
    Nathan slipped a memory card into Farina’s chair console. The tiny screen displayed some of the raw data he’d collected during the last core sweep. “I was able to track those signals we picked up,” he said. “Could be something, could be nothing—but at least we have a place to start looking if you want to investigate.”
    “I don’t see how we have much of a choice.” Directorate regulations gave Farina wide discretion when it came to diverting mission resources for scientific reasons—but a biological signature in deep space put everything else on hold. “Where’s it coming from?”
    “Somewhere in the caldera of Olympus itself.”
    The captain frowned. Nathan’s tone was a bit ominous.
    “A random chemical surge?” she asked, ever hopeful.
    “Not even close,” he said. “It’s neural.”
    That word settled in her ears like some unspeakable secret. Farina considered it, taking into account Nathan’s apprehension. In her view, information technology walked a fine line between science and black magic, but she had seen her ICO handle even the most bizarre iterations with aplomb. If this thing had him shaken, there was a real reason to