Surprised, she stumbled back from the door as it opened and a group of seven quarians entered. Kahlee felt a brief moment of alarm as they marched onto the shuttle, but when she realized none of them had their weapons drawn she relaxed.
She recognized both Seeto and Ugho among them. And she thought the one standing at the head of the group was Isli, the leader of the security patrol that had first greeted them. The other four she didn’t know.
“The captain has agreed to meet with you,” Isli said by way of greeting, confirming her identity.
About damn time, Kahlee thought. Out loud she only asked, “When?”
“Now,” Isli told her. “We will escort you to the bridge to see him. You will need to wear your enviro-suit, of course.”
“Okay. Let me tell Hendel and Gillian where I’m going.”
“They need to come, too,” Isli insisted. “The captain wants to meet with all of you. Lemm is already there waiting.”
Kahlee didn’t like the idea of forcing Gillian to leave the shuttle and dragging her through the crowded decks of the Idenna, but given the circumstances she didn’t see how she could refuse.
Hendel shared her concern when she told him, but Gillian didn’t seem bothered by the idea. Five minutes later, once they had all donned their enviro-suits, they were off. Isli, Ugho, and Seeto went with them as their escorts, while the other four quarians stayed behind.
“They need to sterilize your shuttle,” Isli told them. “It’s better if you aren’t on the vessel while they’re working.”
Kahlee wondered if they were really decontaminating the vessel, or if this was just an opportunity for the quarians to thoroughly search the shuttle from top to bottom without offending them. Not that it made a difference; they had nothing to hide.
Isli led them through the ship while Ugho marched silently along beside her. Seeto fell back with the humans so he could provide the occasional comment or explanation on what they were seeing during the journey.
“This is the Idenna’s trading deck,” he said as they passed from the docking bays into what would have served as the cargo hold on an Alliance vessel.
The room was packed with quarians, all in their enviro-suits, milling about. Each one carried a bag or backpack. Storage lockers lined the walls. Most of them were open, revealing the contents to be a mishmash of mundane items, from clothes to cooking utensils. Similar piles of goods were loaded into large, open-topped steel crates and oversized metal storage containers scattered haphazardly about the floor, filling the room except for the narrow aisles that ran back and forth between them.
The quarians were moving from container to container and locker to locker. They would rummage through them, occasionally picking up an item and examining it before either keeping their find or putting the item back and resuming their search.
“Anyone who has unneeded goods and items stores them here,” Seeto explained, “so others can come and take what they need.”
“You mean you just let anyone take anything from anyone else?” Hendel asked in surprise.
“Not if someone else is using it,” Seeto said, his voice making it clear that, to him, the answer was blatantly obvious.
“But if you’re not using it, you’re just supposed to bring it here and give it away for free to someone else?”
“What else would you do with it?” the young quarian asked, the question making it clear that the concept of selling surplus merchandise to your neighbor was completely foreign to him.
“What if somebody hoards their possessions?” Hendel asked. “You know, keeping everything for himself?”
Seeto laughed. “Who would do such a thing? Your living space would become so crowded you’d have to sleep standing up, just for the sake of having items you don’t even use.” He shook his head and chuckled softly at Hendel’s foolishness.
As they passed through the trading deck, Kahlee cast a quick glance over at Gillian. It was hard to read her emotional state behind her mask, but she seemed to be okay.
Satisfied, Kahlee turned her attention back to the quarians hunting through the merchandise. At first glance the scene resembled the crowded market square of any colony world. A closer look, however, showed it was very, very different. It lacked the aggressive, bustling energy of a typical bazaar. Despite the crowd—forty or fifty people by her guess—nobody was pushing, shoving, or fighting over items. Often, two or three people would stop and talk, though they were always careful to move aside so they didn’t block the aisles when they did so.
It took her a moment to realize what else was missing: the noise. There were no merchants loudly hawking their wares, and no angry shouting of customers and proprietors haggling over prices. Only the soft sounds of people searching through the lockers and bins, and the low, good-natured conversation of neighbors and friends.
They were nearing the large freight elevator that would take them up to the next level of the ship when Kahlee noticed something else. A small desk fashioned from an unidentifiable alien hardwood had been set up in front of a door leading to a supply room off to the side of the cargo hold. A female quarian sat at the desk behind a computer, where a line of five or six others stood waiting. Two male quarians stood behind her.
The man at the front of the line said something to the woman, who punched some information into the computer. He handed her an empty pack, which she passed to one of the men behind her. He disappeared into the room, then emerged again a few seconds later and handed the pack, now filled, back to the man in line.
“What’s going on over there?” she asked.
“Essential items, such as food or medicine, are stored separately,” Seeto explained. “We need to keep track of our reserves to make sure we always have enough for everyone in the colony.”
“What happens when the reserves run low?” Hendel asked.
“If we manage them carefully, they never will,” Seeto replied. “Weekly shipments arrive from the Liveships to provide for our basic needs. And specific or luxury items are acquired by the scout ships we send out to explore the worlds of the systems we pass through, or through trading with other vessels in the Fleet.”
They boarded the elevator and began to ascend, leaving the trading deck behind them. When they reached the next level the elevator door opened, and Kahlee’s jaw dropped at the sight before her.
They were on what would have been the crew deck of an Alliance cruiser. But instead of the expected mess hall, sleeper pods, medical bay, or rec room, she got her first good look at how the vast majority of quarians lived.
Most of the interior walls of the deck had been torn out to maximize the use of space. Replacing them was a massive grid of cubicles, arranged in groups of six: three running fore and aft along the ship’s deck by two running port to starboard. Each individual cubicle was maybe a dozen feet on a side, with three walls fashioned from steel plates that ran three quarters of the way up to the ceiling. The fourth side, the one facing out toward the aisles that crisscrossed fore to aft and port to starboard between each group of cubicles, was open, though most had heavy sheets of bright, multicolored cloth hanging down from the ceiling like curtains to cover the opening. The noise that had been absent from the markets seemed to have migrated here, a general din of sound and voices that rose up from each cubicle.
“This is the deck where I live,” Seeto told them proudly as Isli led them down one of the aisles running through the center of the cubicle grid. As on the trading deck, the lanes running in both directions were crowded with people. These individuals moved with more purpose than the idly browsing shoppers, though they were still unfailingly courteous in making way for others.
As they passed cubicle after cubicle, Kahlee wondered if the colors and intricate designs sewn onto the cloth curtains that served as the doors had any significance, such as identifying individuals from a specific clan or family. She tried to look for signs of common or repeating patterns in the artwork that might hint at meaning, but if it was there it eluded h
er.
Many of the cloth curtains were only partially drawn, and Kahlee couldn’t resist the urge to glance from side to side at each cubicle as they passed, catching occasional glimpses of ordinary quarians living their everyday lives. Some were cooking on small electric stoves, others were tidying up their cubicles. Others were playing cards or other games, or watching personal vid screens. Some were gathered in small groups, sitting on the floor while they visited a friend’s or relative’s space. A few were even sleeping. All of them were wearing their enviro-suits.
“Are they wearing their suits because of us?” Hendel wondered.
Seeto shook his head. “We rarely take off our enviro-suits, except in the most private settings or intimate encounters.”
“We work hard to maintain our ships,” Isli added from up ahead, “but the chance of a hull breach or engine leak, remote though it may be, is something we must be constantly and acutely aware of.”
On the surface her explanation made sense, but Kahlee suspected there was more to it. Hull breaches and engine leaks would indeed be extremely rare, even in older, run-down vessels. And simple air-quality monitors, combined with element zero detectors, could alert people on board to don their suits in the event of an emergency long before any serious harm was done to them.
It was quite likely wearing the enviro-suits had become a deeply ingrained tradition, a custom born from the inescapable lack of privacy on the overpopulated ships. The masks and layers of material could very well be a physical, emotional, and psychological buffer in a society where solitude was virtually impossible to find.
“How do you go to the bathroom?” Gillian asked, much to Kahlee’s surprise. She had expected the girl to withdraw into herself in an effort to escape the crowds and overabundance of noise in the unfamiliar surroundings.
Maybe she’s getting some kind of psychological privacy from her mask and enviro-suit, too.
“We have bathrooms and showers in the lower decks,” Seeto explained, in answer to Gillian’s query. “The room is sealed and sterile. It is one of the few places we feel comfortable removing our enviro-suits.”
“What about when you’re not on a quarian ship?” Gillian wanted to know.
“Our suits are equipped to store several days worth of waste in sealed compartments between the inner and outer layer. The suit can then be flushed, discharging the waste into any common sanitation facility—like the toilet on your shuttle—without exposing the wearer to outside contaminants.”
Seeto suddenly darted up ahead and pulled back the curtain on one of the cubicles. “This is my living quarter,” he said excitedly, ushering them over.
Peering inside Kahlee saw a cluttered but tidy little room. A sleeping mat was rolled up in one corner. A small cooking stove, a personal vid screen, and a computer rested against one of the side walls. Several swatches of bright orange cloth hung on the walls, the color matching the curtain that was used to block the open entrance.
“You live here alone?” Kahlee asked, and Seeto laughed again at the foolishness of humans.
“I share this space with my mother and father. My sister lived here for many years, too, until she left on her Pilgrimage. Now she is with the crew of the Rayya.”
“Where are your parents now?” Gillian asked, and Kahlee thought she heard a hint of longing in her voice.
“My father works on the upper decks as a navigator. My mother is usually part of the civilian Council that advises Captain Mal, but this week she is volunteering on the Liveships. She will be back in two more days.”
“What about all the orange cloth hanging from the walls,” Kahlee asked, changing the topic away from missing parents. “Does it mean anything?”
“It means my mother likes the color orange,” Seeto chuckled, letting the curtain fall back into place as they continued on their way.
They made their way through the remaining cubicles until they reached another elevator.
“I will escort the humans alone from here,” Isli informed Seeto and Ugho. “You two go report back for normal work detail.”
“I’m afraid this is where we part company,” Seeto said with a courteous nod. “I hope we shall see each other again soon.”
Ugho nodded, too, but didn’t bother to speak.
The elevator opened and they followed Isli aboard. The doors closed and it whisked them up to the bridge. As they stepped off, Kahlee was surprised to see several more cubicles built along one side of the hall running from the elevator. Apparently space was so valuable that even here, only a few dozen feet from the bridge itself, every available inch was used.
“Those are the captain’s quarters,” Isli pointed out as they walked past one of the cubicles toward the bridge, filling the role of tour guide now that Seeto was no longer with them. The blue and green curtain was completely drawn, blocking any view inside. But based on the width of the corridor and the two steel plates that formed the side walls, Kahlee estimated the captain’s room was the same size as every other.
When they arrived on the actual bridge Kahlee noted with some surprise that this was the one place the ship didn’t seem unusually crowded. There were still a lot of bodies crammed into a small area—a helmsman, two navigators, a comm operator, and various other crew—but the same could be said of any Alliance vessel. The captain was seated in a chair in the center of the bridge and Lemm, his injured leg still encased in the protective boot, stood just behind him. The captain rose and approached as they entered, while Lemm clumped along behind him.
“Captain Ysin’Mal vas Idenna,” Lemm said, making the introductions, “allow me to present Kahlee Sanders, and her companions Hendel Mitra and Gillian Grayson.”
“You and your friends are welcome aboard the Idenna,” the captain said, extending his hand to each of them in turn. Once again, Gillian didn’t flinch or shy away from the contact, though she didn’t find the courage to speak this time.
It has to be the enviro-suits, Kahlee thought.
Captain Mal looked, to Kahlee’s eye, exactly like every other male quarian she had met. She knew her observation was more than just interspecies bias. Even accounting for the fact that many of the physical differences were obscured by their environmental suits, it was a safe generalization to say that quarians all tended to look pretty much the same. They were of an almost uniformly similar size and build, with far less variety than what was found in humans.
Apart from Lemm, who was easy to identify because of his boot, she had learned to rely on specific subtle differences in their clothing to tell the quarians apart. For example, Seeto had a small but noticeable discoloration on the left shoulder of his enviro-suit, as if it had been rubbed or worn at constantly over many months. However, if Hendel and Grayson were both wearing enviro-suits, it would have been easy to tell them apart without relying on similar tricks—Hendel was half a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier than Gillian’s father. That same degree of variance simply didn’t exist in the quarian population.
It’s like that with all the other races, Kahlee thought to herself. For some reason, humans just have more genetic diversity than the rest of the galaxy. She hadn’t really noticed it before, not consciously, but here on the bridge of the Idenna it seemed to strike home.
It’s happening to us, too, she realized as Hendel shook the captain’s hand. The big man’s mix of Nordic and Indian ancestry was the norm on Earth now, and the inevitable genetic by-product was a more physically homogeneous population. In the twenty-second century, blond hair like hers was a rarity, and naturally blue eyes were nonexistent. But with hair dye, skin toning, and colored contact lenses, who really cares?
“I extend to each of you the warm welcome of my ship and her crew,” the captain was saying, causing Kahlee to snap her mind back to the present. “It is an honor to meet you.”
“The honor is ours, Captain Mal,” Kahlee replied. “You have taken us in when we had nowhere else to go.”
“We are wanderers ourselves,” the captain replied
. “We have found safety and community here in the Migrant Fleet, and I offer that safety to you now, as well.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kahlee replied.
The captain bowed his head in acknowledgment of her gratitude, then reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing in close so he could speak to her in a tone so soft she could barely hear it through the voice modulator of his mask.
“Unfortunately, the safety of the Migrant Fleet is a false one,” he whispered.
Kahlee was caught off-guard by the cryptic warning, too surprised to give a reply. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to expect one. He took his hand from her shoulder and stepped back, resuming the conversation in his normal voice.
“Representatives from the Conclave and the Admiralty are coming to the Idenna to speak with you,” he told her. “This is a great honor for my ship and my crew.”
From the tone of his voice, Kahlee suspected he felt the honor was more of an inconvenience.
“Sir,” one of the crew members informed the captain, “the Lestiak is requesting permission to dock.”
“Send them to bay five,” Mal replied. “We’ll meet them there.
“Come,” he said to Kahlee and her companions, “we shouldn’t keep such important visitors waiting.”
TWENTY-ONE
Once again Kahlee and her companions were led through the ship by three quarians. This time, however, their escort consisted of Isli, Lemm, and the captain.
They took them back down to the lower levels and over to the docking bays. Instead of going back to Grayson’s shuttle, however, they made their way to one of the other occupied bays, where the Lestiak, along with its crew of VIPs, was already waiting for them.
Considering the political status of those on board, Kahlee was surprised to see the captain didn’t request permission before opening the airlock and entering the vessel.
“I guess the captain gets to go wherever he wants on his own ship,” Hendel whispered to her, making note of the strange behavior as well.
Inside the shuttle they were brought into a large conference room that appeared to be set up for what looked to be some type of official inquiry. Or a court-martial, Kahlee thought. There was a long, semicircular table with six chairs behind it. Five of the chairs were occupied by quarians, though one on the end was empty. Several armed guards stood at the back of the room, behind the seated dignitaries.
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