Everything was dirty, rusty, and smelling of the thick oppressive atmosphere. I think I even smelled human waste mixed in. It was like the slums of the C and D rings back home. All the people wore tattered clothes and had radiation burns and lesions on their skin. They shied away from the Lancers and the Captains, but as soon as they passed, our group was mobbed by people showing off their wares. Some saw most of us were not human and actually screamed and ran in a panic. But most were fascinated and more interested in trying to get us to purchase their trinkets than fleeing.
I wondered absently what they used for money here. Was it a chit based monetary system like we used? It looked more likely that they used a barter system by what I was witnessing.
Then my breath hitched, seeing in the mix, children with the same radiation burns on their faces and arms. I grabbed my rucksack off my shoulders. A Lancer moved closer, lifting his weapon slightly as I unzipped the bag and started pulling candies, cakes, granola bars, jerky, and some toys that Graz' family had gathered up for me, and started pressing them into the hands of the children. Some grabbed at what I gave others but once a child had something from me, they held onto it with ferocity as they dashed away into the maze of structures.
Someone shouted, “Food!” And the place exploded into chaos. The crowds surged forward, pressing in on us, all caution over the non-humans with us forgotten as men, women, and children all started shouting about food and putting their hands out, grabbing at us.
The music cut out as I said over our tac channel, “Everyone. Give them whatever food you have. Rations, candy, jerky, gum...” Our people were handing out what little they had tucked into their gear as I was showing everyone my rucksack was now empty, and they kept pushing in on us until my ears started ringing at some loud banging sounds, and I saw sparks on the bulkhead above.
People screamed and ran and I looked around as I drew my twin MMGs, just to see some of the Lancers had their weapons pointed up, their barrels were smoking. Were those... were those projectile weapons? In space? On a spaceship? Were they insane?
It was as if the place had magically become deserted. Even carts and wagons were left behind as the people all scattered and disappeared into the buildings and shacks of metal. I saw people looking thorough metal shutters at us just standing in the middle of the deserted ring. Then Richter muttered, “Scavengers and savages.” Then he put on a politician's smile and said, “Sorry about that. The workers get testy around protein dispersal.”
As we started moving again, Y'nell asked the question on all our minds as we watched the eyes watching us, “Protein dispersal?”
Vandross shared, “Of course, the daily dispersal of protein and water rations for each person. You do the same I assume on the Leviathan?”
The Secretary said distractedly as he looked at the dilapidated structures we passed, “Do you not have agriculture and livestock to feed your people? Of course, we have monthly meal card vouchers you can use at the dispensaries or any participating restaurants or grocery stores.”
They looked confused over most of what he said, but Richter supplied, “We have the algae vats and soybean hydroponics. Reprocessed water. They supply all the nutritional needs of the Cityships. Leaders and the Lancers have some of the fruit and vegetable crops from what is left of the old agricultural domes, but those are for the elite.”
Algae and soy? That was all these people ate? And it was rationed?
I heard myself asking, “Has it always been like this?” as I realized we were standing on what was essentially a ghost ship. Sure, there were twenty-five thousand souls on each Cityship, but this wasn't living, was it? Our prisoners mining the Heart had more than the people here.
Vandross shared, “The historical data files that we have pieced together show it was different in the beginning. The six stations that supported the building of the great Worldship were retrofitted and launched to save more of the human race, to travel to that new planet which only their descendants would see one day.”
Richter continued for her, “But as ship systems failed, or vessels were damaged beyond repair, ships compliments would be moved to the other ships, and the abandoned vessel stripped for resources. Blight killed off much of the crops in the domes just as sicknesses swept thorough out populations, killing large numbers. But we persevered. The last two of the Cityships have finally reached the Leviathan at long last. Our promised home is within our grasp finally.”
There had been six Cityships, and only these two had survived? We were only halfway to our destination and looking at the current condition of the vessels and crew, they wouldn't make it more than a couple more generations. It was good they were able to catch up with us. Maybe together we could find a solution to their generations of problems here.
Chapter 7 – The Whole of the Moon
The control center was a counterpoint to the conditions we saw in the quarter-mile walk. It was clean and almost sterile, white walls everywhere, though there was evidence of centuries of jury-rigging of systems. And some equipment looked out of place, though clean and white like everything else.
The Lancers lined up against one wall as the Captains led us up to a raised platform in the middle of the space, where dozens of people dressed in white with those blue jackets with that green slash, were manning stations all around with hundreds of screens surrounding them.
They all looked up as we stepped up onto the platform. My eyes were flicking around the screens. A couple had data streaming, and a communications station had transmit logs with the Leviathan labeled on it. Then the majority of the screens were displays from internal and external cameras. Half were labeled Redemption and the other half Yammato. There were three exterior views on each, with one viewing each Cityship.
The rest were all monitoring all the occupied spaces of the ships. The people who were just barely surviving.
I saw I wasn't the only one from our expedition noticing all of this. Especially the fact that two lower screens displayed the Greater Fae from our group. I looked at the angle, then from Delphine to where the source of the signal would be, and saw cameras on the shoulders of a couple of the Lancers. These people were very serious about security.
I was tuning out as the Captain gave a brief introduction of his senior staff to our diplomats, as he spoke of the cutting edge technology integrated into their Central Control. But he had my attention when he said to one of the workers, “Raise the blast doors please Emmett?”
The other man nodded and hit a control. The far wall thrummed and seemed to split horizontally, as two massive bulkhead doors opened behind what looked to be a window that was at least three meters thick. We were treated to the familiar view of the nebula we were flying past and the brilliant star-field beyond as it rotated past, then the Yammato filled the view and rotated past.
These Cityships really were pretty spectacular. Not as awe-inspiring as our Worldship mind you, but still amazing feats of engineering to still be flying after all these years.
When I turned back to the room, I noted that all eyes were on our group. Well, most of our group except for me and the other Human. I was used to that, being ignored as a Human, but these were other Humans, and the looks on their faces weren't those of curiosity looking at the other races, it was something I couldn't quite place my finger on.
Captain Vandross addressed Secretary Y'nell. “Mr. Secretary, our arbiters... diplomats, are eager to speak with your people. Please join us in the planning room?” She indicated one of the doors along the back wall.
I started moving with them when he responded with a perfectly... diplomatic, “Of course.” But stopped and looked down to the hand on my chest. I looked up to Captain Richter, and he gave me a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “Lieutenant, this is the most secure section of the ship. Outliers cannot access it. Your people are safe, our Lancers will be out here to assure we are not disturbed.”
Before I could argue, Y'nell said, “Lieutenant... please return
to the ship with your contingent and help coordinate the transfer of supplies with Cityship personnel. This initial session will take most of the day. Return for us at nineteen hundred hours ship-time.”
I shook my head and said through my teeth as I gave a forced smile, “I can't do that. My orders are...”
“Changed.” He had a smarmy smirk as he showed his wrist console to me. “The President agrees with me that a military presence is not necessary when in discussions of aid and medical relief. Counterproductive if you will.”
Blinking and not believing what I was hearing, I said, “Mother, connect me with President Yang please.” He'd been communicating with Yang while we were being escorted here?
The President must have been waiting for my call because she responded almost instantly without greeting, “Shade. Statesmanship is a delicate process, something at odds with your particular flavor of doing things. Please stand down until Secretary Y'nell calls for you? The parameters of your mission have changed.”
“Well hello to you too, Madame President.”
“Don't get flippant, Lieutenant.”
“Sorry, ma'am.”
And the channel was cut from her end. It was all I could do to stop spitting out every curse word I knew. This new course of action was ill-advised and just threw operational security out the door. I just looked at the smug Elvish face that was staring at me and said through gritted teeth as I inclined my head in capitulation, “Mr. Secretary. Nineteen hundred hours ship-time.”
I motioned for the security detail to return to the airlock. They were all looking at me, even more dumbfounded than I was. How could these damn politicians be so idiotic? My people started to file out, with some Lancers flanking them.
Richter was staring at me, eyes wide. “You were speaking directly with the Leviathan?” I nodded and he asked in wonder, “That's the quantum entanglement communication system you're sharing with us?” I nodded again.
I think the smile he was now beaming our way was the first genuine one I have seen on this vessel. Then he turned from me and made an ushering motion to our oblivious politicians. “Ladies and gentlemen?”
They started to follow, and when a wary looking Delphine passed by I grabbed her wrist and she turned to look in my eyes, not looking down at my wrist console I had just latched to her. The Fae virtually never used wrist consoles. She just inclined her head and followed the others as I snicked up my visor and said to Mother without activating my external speakers, “Monitor and log everything that goes on in there. If you suspect anything hinky, let me know.”
She said in a very serious tone, “Of course Knith.” I nodded to myself. At least Delphine and her Summer Court counterpart seemed as uncomfortable with the situation as me. She never would have accepted my wrist console otherwise.
Then I turned and followed the rest of my unit out of the Control Center. Two Lancers on my heels as I reviewed in my head, everything I have seen on the Cityship so far... literally as Mother had anticipated me and was replaying everything from my helmet-cams since we entered the airlock in my peripheral vision. I assured her, “You're a wonder lady.”
“I know.”
“And modest too.”
“Aren't I just?”
Then I asked out of curiosity, “Does this place...”
“Creep me the fuck out, to use your vernacular?”
I tried not to chuckle and said, “Yeah, that.”
“Yes.”
Then I asked as I turned my head in my helmet a little, “What about you Graz?”
I was met with silence. “Graz? Mab preserve us all, where'd the flying pain in my ass get off to now? She shouldn't be wandering around a foreign spaceship.”
Mother responded, “She shut off her micro-wrist console so I cannot track her telemetry. She had shut it off when the people in the market mobbed you.”
That shows just how damn distracted I had been to not notice she hadn't been with me the whole time. Now I was worried shitless. I had to remind myself that the Sprite has survived for thousands of years without me, so I was sure she was fine.
When we passed back through the market, I noted the people were all going about their business, eyes down, not crowding us or offering their wares like the last time. When one man started to look up at us as he grabbed some trinkets from his table, he looked back down and backed away when a man in the crowd, dressed in tatters like the others, but with a blue and green armband tied to his arm took a step toward him. The vendor looked positively cowed.
I glanced around and saw others with the same armband sprinkled throughout the crowd. Were these the Outliers that were causing problems on the Cityships? Were they a... gang?
We didn't have many gang problems on the World. Whenever they popped up, the Enforcers would bring the law down on their asses. It is amazing how many questionable life choices can be rectified with a little hard time in the mines in the Heart.
A little boy, maybe five or six, with one milky eye near a radiation burn on his cheek ran up to me before anyone could stop him. He was holding up a scrap of metal that was twisted to look like a bird. I crouched as I lowered my visor, then shot a death glare at a woman with an armband who was moving our way. She froze and I squatted in front of the boy.
He smiled at me and touched my helmet in awe. I looked at the little bird he seemed to be offering me. I smiled widely at him. “I'm sorry, I don't know what you use for money here. I have this...” I reached into a belt pouch and pulled out a small emergency button light. I tapped it and it lit up then tapped it again and it shut off. I pinned it to his tattered shirt and accepted the little bird.
He was grinning widely as he started turning the little light off and on, then he just dashed back into the crowd to join a woman who wrapped an arm around his shoulders. I placed his trinket carefully into my pack and stood. I looked at my shadows. “Come along then.” They didn't say a word, just fell in behind me as I rushed to catch up with the rest of the security detachment.
I admit, I breathed a sigh of relief the moment we set foot back on the Underhill, leaving the Lancers outside the airlock. That lasted a moment as all my people started blurting out, “What the fuck, Shade?” “Were we really dismissed?” “What kind of idiots send away their protection on a foreign ship?”
I held a hand up. “The little weasel has been talking with President Yang. So right now, we follow orders.”
A Dwarf growled out, “And if things go FUBAR, we take the blame. Right?”
I chuckled. “Just as all other things politic go.”
They all chuckled nervously with me.
Mac came up the corridor, brow creased and eyes pinched. “Where's the rest?”
Shaking my head I said, “Doing what diplomats do.”
“Fucking up the world?”
“Pretty much.” I pressed the little metal bird into his hand. “Your souvenir.”
He squinted at it and prompted, “What is it.”
I sighed and gave him a sad smile and told him the truth, “About the most precious, heartfelt, and priceless thing on that ship. Don't lose it.”
He looked at it with new eyes, and it was as if he could see the value I saw in it and the boy who had held it before me. Then he nodded and walked beside me with it balanced on his hand as if it were made of spun silver. I called to our people. “Take five then get with the Underhill Quartermaster about aiding in the transfer of supplies.”
One called back to me, “Where are you going?”
I shrugged. “The mess.”
Then I told Mac, “I need to empty your galley of everything but what we'll need for the return trip.”
“And why would I let you do that?”
I looked at him and said plainly, “I'll pay for it all somehow if the President doesn't comp you for it. People are starving on this ship... children.”
Without another word, not even his infuriating habit of bartering an unfair price from me, he
just led the way to the galley with purposeful strides. Sometimes I just loved the man.
Music started playing over the intercom as we started pulling all the foodstuffs out of storage and started loading crates. Mother identified the music as the ‘Whole of the Moon’, by the Waterboys.
Chapter 8 – We Are the World
The rest of the day was spent helping the quartermaster coordinate supplies and sending security details out with the relief workers as they were led around to evaluate the citizens of the Redemption most in need of medical assistance.
Our doctors tell me that the medical services and personnel on the ships are woefully ill-equipped to handle all but the most basic of medical emergencies, and they apparently have no treatment available to mitigate radiation poisoning, which is virtually never fatal on the World as it is very treatable and reversible with time. Such treatments are critical on spacecraft traveling through high cosmic radiation expanses of interstellar space.
I was reviewing the data and visuals from Myra after I secured clearance for her to fly around the twin vessels to evaluate them for damage and space-worthiness.
One thing struck me as strange, and it had her as well since she had highlighted the damage around the section of the Yammato which had been torn away. The burns and melted metal at the shear zone looked to be burns made by high energy weapons instead of space debris.
We postulated, “Perhaps they used their mining ships to shear off some dangerous debris after the damage had occurred?”
When we were silent for a bit as I just stared at the data, she asked, “That's it? You aren't going to contact them to inquire?”
I smirked and asked as I switched over to the data feed from my wrist console on Delphine's arm, “I notice that you didn't either.”
She chuckled and purred out, “I'm glad to see things aren't adding up for you either. I thought it was just me.”
Shaking my head I said, “Even Mother has an uneasy feeling about this whole thing.”
Worldship Files: Cityships Page 8
