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“Yes, sweetness. Come here. Mind the coffee table.”
“This would be easier if the fire were lit,” she said, carefully making her way across the darkened room.
“Unfortunately, the projector works best in the dark.”
“Oh, the way you tease me, Lord Draven,” she said playfully. Her shins bumped into the table, but she otherwise made it safely across the room. A warm blanket settled over her shoulders.
“Sit,” he ordered, guiding her to the settee.
He extinguished the candle and the lantern dimmed. There was a click, followed by an odd electrical hum, and a light spilled from a small canister on a table. Ghostly figures hovered over a golden disc. The figures were frozen, and the colors washed out.
“What is this?” Charlotte asked. She stretched out her hand, her fingers passing through the figure without resistance. The image wavered. “Is that a halo?”
“Holo,” Draven said. He stood beside her, hands folded neatly behind his back in his relaxed posture. “The projector crystal has degraded. The images are meant to be vivid.”
“This is amazing.” She swept her hand through the figure again. It wavered, like disturbed water, but she felt nothing, not even heat from the lamp. “I’ve read about them. I never thought I’d see a working model.”
“They are meant to be immersive with sound and light,” he said, sitting down next to her and stretching his arm across the back of the settee. “Now sit back and watch.”
She perched on the edge of her seat, utterly mesmerized when the figures moved. The canister emitted distorted sounds, at first music and then voices. Charlotte had to focus on the words as it felt like she was eavesdropping on two people having a conversation at the end of a long corridor. The speech cadence was off. Old-fashioned. “What is this?”
“This is footage of the day we arrived on Nexus.”
“Landing Day?”
“Arrival protocol number three. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. There’s the captain.”
A tall woman with long dark hair threaded with silver—but that could be the projector—stood in the center of the crowd. Heads were bowed over handheld equipment. Some officers looked around warily, hands on their blasters.
Charlotte’s fingers itched to touch the image of Captain Beckford. She commanded attention without so much as saying a word. With a flick of her wrist, two officers followed her to the edge of a river. Charlotte recognized the scene and the faces. Illustrations were in every history book, after all. Captain Beckford and the crew’s first steps on Nexus were at the site that would eventually become Founding. The man with the shaved bald head could only be August Reeve, the cartographer. The woman with the long braid and glasses was her namesake, Charlotte Stoker, the ship’s navigator and founder of the university.
“This is remarkable,” she said. “How was it captured?”
“Recorded,” he corrected. “This footage was taken by a drone. That’s a small flying machine. We used drones to scout out the area and create maps.”
“I thought the planet was scanned before the ship landed?”
“It was. Those scans told us about landmass, water, and resources, and gave us the best location to land, but missed the finer details and fauna did not register at all.” He paused. “No one else has seen this since it was recorded. We only have this because of a last-minute notion for posterity.”
“Your idea?” She leaned back and shifted to face him.
He shook his head. “My brother’s, actually.”
He had a brother. That was new information.
“Is he there?” She pointed to the silvery figures. She had so many questions.
“No.”
“How is this possible? I thought all the electronics malfunctioned.”
“During a Nexus event, yes. The mineral deposits in the mountain act as a shield.”
“Winter solstice is approaching. Are we shielded here? Do we risk damaging the projector?” As much as she had explored the Aerie, she had no idea how far into the mountain her rooms were.
“This room is adequate.”
“Is that the colony ship? I thought it would be larger.” The ship was boxy and gray, all color washed out. The familiar three-star emblem decorated the side.
