Zenzie nodded. “Enif are the most artistic race in the Shells. My parents have a beautiful Enif mural.”
Eshaan touched his translator band. “Who was the artist?”
Zenzie wrinkled her brow. “Errr … oh yes, I remember! Someone called ‘Bervalean’.
Their skin crimped in pleasure as the two Enif discussed such news excitedly.
“Berviil and Ashalean formed a great artist. Your parents are very lucky to be able to study their work on the walls of their house. What does the painting depict?”
“It is the inside of an EM core, transforming into some sort of live being.”
More excited quivering. “We know the piece,” said Didjal. “Your parents are most honored to have been allowed to purchase it.”
“They think so. They have it for a hundred years, I believe.”
“Yes. A place has been reserved for it in the Siinala Monument. The pattern is already deposited there.” Its eyes went blank as it consulted an internal memory. “Slot 34-101-BB-756.”
“Do you know where every piece of art will go?”
“Not all, no. But many. It is the purpose of our whole lives, after all. Places in the Siinala Monument, even though it is huge, are limited. Not all Enif can hope to exhibit there.”
“Will your art have a place in the Siinala Monument?” The words were out of Zenzie’s mouth before she caught my instinctive movement to stop her. She turned to give me with a ‘what?’ sort of look. I rolled my eyes. She turned away again.
There was silence. Eshaan was looking at its feet.
Didjal shook its head. “No. We have not yet been chosen for such a great honor. But Eshaan’s work is exceptional and our lifespan is not yet over. There is still time to achieve posterity. We strive for such immortality.”
See what you have done? I stared hard at Zenzie’s back. She didn’t notice.
The Enif separated, Eshaan walking back into the shuttle. Didjal got up to examine the cables attached to Sammy’s tank. Zenzie, unaware of having caused any pain whatsoever, was idly tracing a circle in the sand she was sitting on with one finger.
I frowned. The Tyzaran’s unilateral Savior Protocol had failed to take one small detail into account. That the recipient might not actually want to be part of this protocol. I planned to set them straight on that point as soon as I could speak to one of their spokesdesignates. I couldn’t help feeling Zenzara might not take it well.
The first ship to reach us was Terran, which was a disappointment. The second was Avarak, which was even more of one. That meant we had to make a choice, and I didn’t like either of the possibilities. Whoever and whatever had started this war, it was either the Avaraks or the Terrans. I felt we needed a third option if we were to stay out of the fighting.
I needn’t have bothered. As it turned out, we did need a third option. Neither the Avaraks nor the Terrans would agree to carry us anywhere.
When the Terrans arrived on a large shuttle, it was Bull who welcomed them. He had become the children’s champion, and it was soon apparent that the incoming Flatlanders felt they owed him something. I narrowed my eyes as they arrived.
First, a detachment of marines surrounded the Avarak encampment, then another surrounded ours. My protests were ignored completely. I must say, I resented being on the wrong end of one of the Flatlander guns. As the Terran children were escorted onto the Earth shuttle, I saw Bull talking earnestly to one of the marines. None of the children bothered to say goodbye to us. If we had been expecting thanks for saving them, we were to be disappointed. They ran up the ramp thankfully, ignoring both us and the Avaraks present.
Then a Terran woman disembarked. She was wearing the bands of an Admiral of the Fleet. She was stocky and short, but held herself with dignity and great presence. She walked smartly over towards Bull and held out her hand.
Bull placed a small package in it and then looked over in my direction and smirked.
The woman vanished inside the shuttle doors to safety, allowing Bull to fall in and follow her. The Terran detachments saluted to the woman.
Perhaps we had our answer as to why both Commorancy and Raktor had been attacked. Commorancy must have been carrying some sort of intelligence. Something both the Avaraks and the Terrans had wanted. Something both races were prepared to kill for rather than let fall into the other’s hands. And Instructor David Simmonds, who most definitely had been more than just an instructor of children, had been carrying it. He must have passed it to Bull when he realized that Bull might be allowed off the Raktor, but he wouldn’t. And, like a fool, I had facilitated that. A slow anger began to burn inside me. I had the distinct feeling that my short-sightedness would cost even more lives than had already been lost.
Bull vanished onto the Earth shuttle that had come down nearby, omitting to say goodbye to any of us. He focussed ahead with a stony expression, ignoring Zenzie, who had stuck her tongue out at him as he went past.
I gave her a nudge in her ribs, and a hard stare. She looked cross, but closed her mouth. “Well; he was rude.”
“So were you.”
“I wasn’t rude! I just attacked him. He deserved it!”
“Attacking people is rude.”
She shook her head. “Attacking people is a legitimate defense.”
I opened my mouth to point out how much was wrong with that sentence, when I realized that the last of the Terrans were about to withdraw.
I ran up to the leader of the detachment. “Surely you aren’t going to leave us here?”
He frowned. “I have no instructions to take you on board.”
“There is an injured man. You must take us with you!”
He pressed his comlink and passed on my request. A few moments later we heard a muttered reply, but he shook his head. “Sorry, Sir. Admiral Ellison sends her regrets, but there is not enough space for you, and the Avaraks are in final approach. She suggests you ask them for passage.”
The soldiers headed back to the shuttle at the double, leaving us staring after them. My mouth was open. So were my eyes, which is how I saw Bull’s gesture from one corner of the ramp, before he disappeared for good inside his safe haven. It was a two-finger parody of a salute.
I had made an enemy.
So had he.
Zenzie grabbed at my arm and squeezed it to get my attention. She led me apart from the others. “Did you see that? Did you?”
“I did.”
“They have stolen something. Something important.”
“That would seem to be the logical conclusion.”
She frowned, causing the wrinkles on her face to bunch up. “Not a conclusion. An inference.”
I may have raised my eyes heavenwards, because she narrowed hers before continuing. “—And there is only one thing I can think of that would be worth all the trouble they are going to.”
The light bulb in my brain flickered dimly. Then it came on. “The Tyzaran ZEPH drive.”
She nodded. “Our new Zero Point Hyperspace drive – ZEPH drive, as you just called it – is a huge advance. And it is just what you would need to patrol your borders if you had unilaterally claimed ownership of the whole of one of the shells. No wonder the Human Omnistate wants the new drive. They could hardly patrol a sphere of 300 light years in diameter with EM drive. It wouldn’t be practical. They had to have been pretty sure of getting our new technology before claiming the shell as their own.”
“And the Avaraks would be determined to stop them getting it. Yes, that makes a lot of sense.”
Zenzie’s mouth was trembling. “I have to contact Tyzar. The authorities need to know about this.” She gasped. “We could have stopped this!”
“We can’t be sure that the ZEPH drive is what Bull was carrying. It could be some other i
ntelligence.” No, it couldn’t. As I spoke I realized it was a stupid thing to say. Occam’s razor told me it had to be the new drive. It was the only thing big enough to explain everything that had happened. She was right. We could have stopped this. We should have searched Bull. Incapacitated him in some way. “But how could they have got ZEPH technology? Who aboard the Commorancy would have access to it?”
Zenzie’s eyes widened. “I wondered why there was a Tyzaran delegation on the Commorancy! It was very strange.” The wrinkles on her little face deepened as the implications of that sank in. “Nobody in our group could have anything to do with this, could they?” she asked in a small voice.
I felt sorry for her. “One of your friends or family is a traitor to the Tyzarans. The conclusion, sorry, the inference, is inescapable.”
She went absolutely still for several seconds. Then her crest flared. She nodded, more to herself than to me. “There has to be a Tyzaran traitor somewhere.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “But that is impossible. No Tyzaran would betray their government. Not like that. Not to the Terrans! It is unthinkable!”
I couldn’t share her faith in her own people. Seven out of the eight Major Shell founding races have independently developed justice and penal systems, implying the existence of criminality amongst them. The Macers are the only race that hasn’t. I didn’t think anyone would accidentally bring cutting-edge technology onto a training ship belonging to another race. I hoped we were wrong, but I could feel in my bones that we weren’t. I pulled a face. “It explains why the Avaraks attacked Commorancy. It explains Bull Cunningham. It explains why Simmonds was acting as an instructor to those children. It gave him a perfect cover story.”
She gasped. “Surely the Omnistate wouldn’t utilize children that way? They could have been killed!”
Why did I have the distinct feeling that the Omnistate wouldn’t have cared if they had? That they had simply been expendable? I found my distrust of the Flatlanders shifting to outright dislike.
Zenzie had reached the same conclusion. “They didn’t care!”
“If we are right,” I pointed out, “then it is in Omnistate interests that we don’t get a chance to contact our respective governments. We may be lucky the Avaraks are coming. That Flatlander admiral can’t shoot at us if she is too busy escaping with the intelligence she wanted. I guess.” I thought about it. “… I hope.”
I looked up towards the departing shuttle. The others followed my gaze. It sure would be all too easy for them to lob a couple of ultrapulse bombs on top of us. But Zenzie’s crest remained down. Logic said that the Flatlander admiral wouldn’t hurt us. We were not a priority to the woman. The intelligence she had just got hold of was.
Once the shuttle had disappeared into the dark we rejoined the rest. There was a burst of angry conversation. It was hard for the others to believe that the Flatlanders had left us behind.
“What is wrong with them?” demanded Mel, arms akimbo as she stared into the sky. “Don’t they know we saved those children?”
Neither Zenzara nor I felt like replying. Sometimes you feel a very small part of a very big universe which doesn’t seem to care very much. I suppose, to a cluster of galaxies, one life truly is ephemeral. Unimportant. I felt a shiver of unease. I had grown up with a certain balance to my small area of the cosmos. That was melting into something approaching chaos. I wish I knew what all this was leading to.
Eventually we all sat back down again. We all knew that movement and conversation simply put more of a drain on our meager resources.
A few hours later I was awoken by excited chatter in the Avarak camp. They had just been contacted by their heavy cruiser. It would be over our position in another hour.
Sammy looked worried. “I still need to regenerate in this Zeroth tank for another three days. Do you think they will take this shuttle? Who does the Rastin belong to? Will they leave us behind too?”
A slight rustling behind me made me react. I twisted around and reached out. It was only Seyal. She leapt back with a cry to avoid my lunge.
I held up both hands in an apology. “Sorry. I’m a bit jumpy. You always move about so quietly.”
Zenzie muttered something unflattering about Spacelanders and their ability to hear.
Seyal stepped past me. “Me stay,” she said, pointing firmly to herself. “Me stay you. Rastin stay you.”
Now she had all our attention. “Will they let you keep the Rastin?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Rastin belong Solutor.” Her forehead creased as a memory came to her. She walked to the shuttle and came back some minutes later with an envelope, which she had opened. Her eyes were surprised. She held up the paper. “Solutor give me.”
I felt admiration for the burly Avarak who had foreseen this need. He had been about to die, but had made time to try to protect his unborn child. I didn’t think he would have done it for his wife.
“It is your personal craft now? That is good news. Can you get us back to one of the Spacelander worlds?”
She inclined her head.
We all began to chatter at once. I held up one hand. “Wait!”
They looked at me.
“Do any of you want to travel back with the other Avarak ship? I mean, you don’t have to come with us.”
They eyeballed each other, but there were headshakes all round.
“We should at least have asked the Terrans for some food.” I cursed myself for not thinking of that earlier. I didn’t think they would have obliged us, but I should have asked.
“I don’t think we would have been high on their priority list,” pointed out Sammy. “All they were concerned about was getting away from here before that Avarak cruiser arrived.”
“You have a point.”
So we sat quietly to one side as the Avaraks brought down a couple of shuttles and fussed over Orison, Dr. Vebor and the Avarak minors.
Dr. Vebor went into a huddle with the new arrivals. He seemed very eloquent about us; they all kept looking over in our direction. I made signs to them, asking them to take us with them. Vebor’s showed all his teeth as he leant forward to make sure he had my attention and then slowly and deliberately shook his massive head. It was the first time I had seen him happy.
One of the newly arrived Avarak officers marched himself across to our small group. He glared at Seyal and snapped out a question. She entered into a long conversation in Avarak with him. He didn’t seem to like what she was saying. He examined the paper with a tight face. Whatever was written there didn’t please him. He began a diatribe against her, overshadowing her with his larger body, using his superior size to intimidate her. She was forced to cringe back.
Seyal swayed at the stream of angry words coming from him, then Zenzie scrambled up and faced the large being. She lifted her chin and treated him to a long monologue in her fluent Avarak. His eyes got wider and wider.
She finished with a burst that sounded like it could have come from a machine gun, before grabbing Seyal’s hand in solidarity.
The large Avarak spoke sharply into a hand-held communicator. There was silence for a moment and then an equally harsh answer was returned.
“So there!” crowed Zenzie.
I put my hand on her shoulder, in case she was tempted to stick her tongue out again, but she gave me half a smile. “They just checked the ownership. It did belong to Solutor, and the letter is valid, so they can’t legally take it. At least, not right now.” She turned back to the Avarak. “So there!” she repeated with glee.
I thrust her behind me. “Do you have any water to spare?” I asked, in my painfully bad Avarak. “Food suitable for aliens? Fuel?”
His face twisted; perhaps my accent was so atrocious it caused him pain. Or perhaps my very existence bothered him. He jabbered some more into t
he communicator. When the answer came back he almost managed a smile.
“Nikkx,” he informed me, almost sweetly, letting his eyes slide meaningfully in Zenzie’s direction. Then he turned and strode away.
I pushed Zenzie back behind me again. She seemed inclined to go after him. “It isn’t worth it.”
“But they don’t want to help us! How can they leave us here like this? Sammy is sick! That is terrible! There should be an interstellar law obligating aid in such a situation!”
She wasn’t wrong. “Maybe one day, there will be. But there are only six of us now. We should have enough to get to the Landau Rift. We will be careful with our rationing.”
In the end, we didn’t have to be. Orison came over, dragging behind him a large crate. The new ship had routinely sent down two pallets before they knew the true situation. “We shan’t be needing them,” he told us, after nodding in slight deference to Seyal’s new widow status. “They will help you get to your destination. There is food, water and half a crate of fuel capsules.” He looked down for a few moments, before meeting Seyal’s eyes again. “Your husband died bravely. I would have wished for the honor of dying at his side. I hope that my future holds such an honor for me, too. Avarak Karax!”
Seyal inclined her head, tears running down her cheeks. “Avarak Karax!”
Orison smiled at us all, ignoring the angry looks he was getting from the rest of his group, particularly Dr. Vebor. “Safe journey!”
We wished him the same and then watched as he walked back to his group. The Avaraks then filed into the two shuttles and took off, leaving us to load up our meager supplies and blast back into space ourselves. Hopefully the limited stock of fuel capsules would be enough to get us somewhere better.
Chapter 4
We managed half a day of EM drive before we were forced to stop. Fuel was not the only problem we would be facing, it seemed. The core had overheated, rather drastically. There was no way we could continue like this. We were in the middle of nowhere. Naturally. Jhaharada’s Law. If you are going to break down, why let it be near a nice and safe space station? Much more fun for karma to make it light years away from any civilization.
Termination Shock Page 6
