“It...”
I repeated Mother's words to her, “Creeps you the fuck out?”
“Precisely.”
While I read over the dialogue of the diplomatic meeting, I absently shunted a feed from my helmet to her so she could see the reactions of the people in the ring and their condition. She was silent for a long time as she slowly flew back to dock with the Underhill.
I prompted since she technically held a higher rank than me even though I was the commander of the mission, “You hold the fort here? Mac and I have something we need to do.” The schematics of the interior of the Cityships were pulled up in my peripheral, courtesy of the detailed scans of the ships from Myra's magi-tech enhanced sensor sweeps.
“Rodger dodger, Fae-lips.”
Fae-lips? Just space me now, I hope nobody on the secondary tac-frequency was listening, I'd die of embarrassment if that got around. “Shut your feline face.”
She chuckled as I went back to the scans.
We had only seen about one percent of the inner ring volume. And the scattered returns showed that the ramshackle dwellings and business district was pretty much strung out along three quarters the circumference of the Redemption.
I sighed when I looked over at the two mag-loader sleds piled with foodstuffs, knowing we wouldn't even make a dent, but at least maybe some families wouldn't go hungry for one night. What I was doing hadn't been sanctioned by either side, so I looked around for someone who would step up to help me with the second sled, but blinked when I saw Mac holding the controls for it with Mir... in clothes... beside him.
I asked, “You sure? I mean... you're the Underhill's master.”
The man shrugged as he started the sled moving. “Jane's at the helm.”
Ah.
When half the security unit that wasn't already escorting our people started to move out with us I held up a stopping hand. “This is off the books, people. We'll be fine. Commander Udriel is in charge while I'm out. Jane Doe is in command of the ship.”
They all looked put out, they knew what we were doing and wanted to come, but if I was going to see a reprimand for this, I didn't want to drag anyone else down with me. Mac and Mir, not being citizens of the Leviathan, could do whatever they wanted without repercussions... within reason.
To my surprise, one of the few Orcish women on the world stepped up and handed me a couple items of food. “From my personal stash.” I looked up to the six-foot ten woman and nodded my thanks, then was surprised when a couple others did the same.
Just as we reached the airlock I stopped dead, Madame Zoe was standing there, wrinkled and withered, her glassy eyes looking through me as she said, “Know the enemy within us, Knith Shade, or the journey ends in the middle before it even starts.”
Clairvoyants freaked me out in more ways than one. Humans who embraced witchery burned their own physical and mental energy in exchange for a sliver of the power the Fae threw around lazily every day with no ill effects. This is why all the stories of witches and all their derivatives in human history conjure up the very image of Madame Zoe in our heads. Withered and wrinkled, looking at the ends of their lives at just thirty or forty.
I don't care if that power brings them the wisdom of people many times their age, why would you trade your life away like that? And the clairvoyants and oracles were even more frightening, because they spoke in riddles, since their minds were warped by the magics, and it was hard to tell if their words were truly prophetic or if they were just the ramblings of a broken mind. I always viewed them as unwitting charlatans, but Madam Zoe has always been too close for comfort with her riddles than I cared to admit.
Then she smiled her almost toothless smile and held something up to me. “Butterscotch?”
Mac stepped up to her and cupped his hands around hers. “Not now dear. Young Shade and I are needed elsewhere.”
He looked up and one of his crew-members, whom I didn't know, hustled up and took her arm gently. She smiled at the Satyr and offered, “Butterscotch?” The man inclined his head and smiled at the woman as he led her away. She hesitated only a moment and called back, “The father is exposed.” Then she started singing to herself as she was led away.
Mac nodded as if heeding wise words then looked at me. “Lead on, child.”
Mir virtually draped herself on me as we moved out. I spoke out of the side of my mouth to her, “Nice outfit.”
She smiled and said, “Thanks. I got it from your quarters.”
Son of a... I rolled my eyes at her. I wasn't going to complain since the last thing these people needed to see was a naked mirror skinned woman parading around on their world. Then I exhaled when she asked, her brow furrowed, “Where's Graz? I haven't seen her all day.”
I sighed. “Doing what Graz does.”
“Spying, or getting into trouble?” Mir asked.
“Likely both.”
The moment we exited the airlock onto the Redemption, my shadows stood from where they were sitting on the stacks of scavenged materials in the corridor. I prompted before they could speak, “Where's the most heavily populated area within walking distance?”
One started to say as he pointed the opposite way we had gone before, “Little Manila is just...” The other one backhanded him hard and glared at him. The other man just shut up.
I just started moving and the senior man said, “I don't have records of any more supplies. Manifest?”
Mac said before I could, “I'm the master of the Underhill here, I've got foodstuffs to trade at your markets while these do-gooders play politics. Profit is profit, and I'm not making any just sitting on my ass attached to your airlock.”
The man exchanged a knowing look with Mac then said, “Of course we'll have to inspect for contraband.”
Mac nodded and stepped back. I looked at him and he nudged his eyes so I stepped back too. The men looked in the first couple containers, and the senior man took a box of crackers and a box of juices and said, “Our fee for permitting you to trade on the Cityships.”
Mac was very accommodating, and I've seen the man almost go into apoplexy when Graz cheated him out of a single chit on a half-burned thermo-coupling. Instead of getting upset, he just smiled widely and inclined his head. “Of course.”
Then the man motioned us past and we moved out of the corridor and into the ring envelope. I turned the way to where the other man had pointed and started walking with our Lancer shadows at our backs.
We didn't go far before the density of people and makeshift structures were five or six times heavier than the first barter market we had visited. It was counter-intuitive that there would be fewer people closer to the control center for the ship.
Mother sensed my apprehension at what I was seeing and started playing a haunting tune, ‘We Are the World’, by a variety of artists that scrolled in my vision for quite some time.
For the longest time, people just moved aside to let us pass, all eyes were on Mir. I glanced at her and had to double-take. She loved being the center of attention normally, but this was the first time I had seen her nervous as she just looked around at all the people watching her, eyes darting.
Then Mac stopped, and I brought my sled to a halt next to him. We exchanged a look and then started opening crates as I called out, “We've food from the Worldship to share.” I held out a package of cookies toward a woman who had a cart full of what looked like twisted wire necklaces on display. “Please everyone, just take one item and let others get some.”
The woman looked at me, eyes wide, then she looked over her shoulder and I followed her gaze, a woman with one of those armbands was standing on the second level just above the marketplace looking down at us. When the watcher didn't say or do anything, the woman almost dove on my offering.
As soon as she had it, she handed it down to a little girl who looked like her, and the girl crawled through a loose vent on the side of the first structure as many hands tried to grab the prize from
her hands.
Then all hells broke loose again as the crowds surged toward us, murmurs of “food,” filtering all around us as Mir, Mac, and I tried to keep people from grabbing right out of the containers as we handed items out.
When it was getting a little rough, people screamed and started running when the Lancers again fired off their weapons into the air, the projectiles sparking and ricocheting off of the structure above. The senior man roared out, “Settle down you filthy animals! You heard them, just one item and move on! Form lines!”
And the people scrambled to do what the rudely brash man had ordered. The lines formed almost too quickly. I realized this was probably what they had to do when the protein rations were dispensed once a day here.
Mir and I exchanged looks, then we started handing things out in an orderly fashion as people waited their turn. I had never seen so many desperate people in my life. When I glanced over at Mac, he looked stricken, especially when a child stepped up.
People were thanking us, and a few insisted we take something in exchange. They left us with all sorts of handmade wares. All looked to be made from scavenged scraps. One woman with a child hugged me. And before I released her I whispered, “Who are the people with the armbands?” I had noted six or seven hanging around, but none of them got in line.
She whispered back, her voice wavering in fear as she started to shake, “Outliers.” I nodded thanks. Then reached into the last bin for the next person just to come up empty-handed. I rummaged through the other containers then looked to Mir and Mac and they shook their heads. There were still so many people in line.
I called out, “We're sorry, that's all the supplies we have left on our ship. If we return, we'll bring more.”
It was almost as if a wave of depression, disappointment, and even despair rolled through those in line. Then the people started moving away, except for a few who moved around Mir. Asking questions, reaching out to touch her. Some were asking if she were Fae or even a robot. She informed them, “I assure you, I'm human, like you. I just have a lot of augments.”
I noted a young woman who was barely older than a teen, her pretty face and arms marred by a rash and radiation burns, as she squatted by the containers on the sled. She reached out and tapped one with the tip of a finger listening like she was trying to determine what they were made of.
I looked at her, crouched and smiled, then asked, “Do you want one? Take it. It can be useful to store things or I'm sure you can use it for materials to create other things.” Without a word, she beamed a huge smile at me, and grabbed one and ran off through the crowd, like she were afraid I'd change my mind.
Others saw this and some started to line up again. I told my companions, “Give them the containers and crates.” And so it went. And when there was nothing else but the gifts the others had heaped on us, we bid our farewells, promising that if we were allowed another visit, that we'd bring more when we returned.
I sighed as I looked around, then started back to the Underhill. I felt so... emotionally drained. It was like my soul was just dragging behind me as we went. Mir looked stupefied, and Mac... Mac looked mad. Not just mad, but like he was using all his willpower not to simply blow up and combust on the spot.
He reminded us, “That could so easily be the Leviathan.” It made me to aware of how delicate a balance our world truly was in. With the wrong combination of catastrophes, we would be living that way too. In an instance like that, the immortal beings on our ship would likely be the only ones to arrive at the new world with a virtual ghost ship if that occurred.
I just sat in the cockpit with Mac, Mir, Jane, and Myra and contemplated how emptying an entire ship's stores hadn't put a dent in the overwhelming need for... well for everything on these ancient flying wrecks.
When a chime went off, signaling it time for me to go escort our people home, I was grateful to have a task to keep my mind off the dark spiral I was in.
Chapter 9 – Smoke On the Water
The next day was worse, besides escorting the medical and relief staff around while the politicians did their diplomatic thing, there was nothing to do except sit on the Underhill and try not to think about the people out there.
I sat on the bridge, looking at some of the cleverly fashioned trinkets we were gifted by the residents. One I especially liked. It was some sort of round piece of metal that looked to have been some sort of access cover at one point, it had been hammered flat and drawn on with what looked like charcoal.
The artist had been incredible, depicting a scene with what I was assuming was their interpretation of the inhabitants of Fairie in an alien-looking forest, pointing to six stars in a row in the sky. I touched the stars with my fingertips. Myra sat up from where she was filling out status reports to file with Mother. “What's that?”
I showed it to her and her cat ear implants twitched as her eyes widened, “That's stunning.”
As I nodded, I pointed at the stars. “I think it is depicting Planetfall. These stars being the six Cityships that began their journey, and these must be the Fae from the Leviathan looking up to see the new arrivals.”
“They don't look anything like the Fae.”
Shrugging I supplied, “No, but their people have never seen a Fae. And from what I saw, they don't have their original computer core as most of the systems were manually switched by people manning all the stations. No AI to do it for them. So they likely don't have any visual records of the varied races that joined the Humans on the Worldship either.”
Mir said from over my shoulder, “Beautiful, I've never seen such fine artwork done with such primitive tools before.”
Mac just mumbled something from the Captain's chair. I narrowed my eyes. He was there before I turned in, and he was there when I woke to get in some exercise before escorting our diplomats back to continue their discussions, and he was still there, looking through terabytes of information Mother was supplying him.
Mir followed my gaze, then said as she strode over to him to place her hands on her hips, “He hasn't moved from there since we returned yesterday.” Then she said louder, enunciating each syllable, “He needs to get some sleep or he'll be useless when we undock tonight.”
He didn't even look up, he just absently waved her off, growling gruffly, “Sleep is for the young or the dead. I'm neither.”
I opened my mouth but Mir just huffed out a breath she didn't need. “Don't bother, he's too obstinate to listen.”
I prompted for about the tenth time, “What is so important about the files you are sifting through?”
He finally looked up and told me like it were obvious, “Historical records from the construction of the Leviathan. Knowledge is power. I'm arming myself.”
I looked at the data stream being fed to him in the lower right of my field of view and exhaled. He was consuming almost a gigabyte a minute. Did he think I wouldn't notice? His game of pretending to be someone else was crumbling slowly around him no matter how much he denied it.
I thought to Mother, “Is he skimming the data or reading it?”
She responded, almost carefully, “He is accessing every byte of data, but only as fast as the old systems on the Underhill can receive them. I suspect he can assimilate data as fast as some of my subsystems.”
Then I glanced at the door when the quartermaster stepped in. I almost blurted, “Any word?”
He shook his head. “No contact with Graz yet.”
I prompted, “Mother?”
She answered mechanically, “No mention of her on any of the Cityship communication channels.”
Frustration had me pacing the cockpit deck again. I had found her tiny wrist console tucked between my armor and my skinsuit when I asked Mother to ping it. That was both promising and worrying.
She knew what she was doing when she went out snooping. If we could track her wrist console, maybe the Redemption could trace its emissions too. But it also meant that she couldn't contact us if she ra
n into trouble.
She knew our departure time, so I held out hope she'd be here in time. We couldn't hold launch to wait for her without Richter knowing she was on their vessel. If she didn't make it back, she'd have to fend for herself until the next diplomatic visit or when they caught up with the Leviathan in a little over a month.
I tried not to dwell on the fact that she wasn't with us by going over our medical staff's health evaluations of the residents of these floating death traps. It looked grim. With the exception of a few dire cases, there were thousands in need of medical intervention mostly because of tissue and organ damage from the radiation their engines were spewing.
Our people ran out of meds to treat the radiation sickness in some people with severe cases in just an hour yesterday. Now they were coordinating with Med-Tech back on the world, trying to come up with a solution to treat the people most in need faster than it would take to fly another mission out.
The prevailing plan was to wait just a few days until they were in the range of one of the massive tugs to act as sort of a medical triage carrier, and now that the Underhill's cargo bay was empty, we would be bringing as many high-risk patients back with us as we could. We secured sixty cots there with mag-anchors for the trip. We had water enough though food would be scarce, but it would be only a couple days as the distance was diminishing by the hour.
Madame Zoe, surprisingly, could help there. It seems the clairvoyant has quite the green thumb and has a mini hydroponics garden set up in a maintenance storeroom next to her cabin. I guess it has been passed down for generations in her clan aboard the Underhill since Exodus.
It not only provided her clan and the ship with a small amount of food during tough times but also provided a small amount of oxygen and CO2 filtering for the vessel as well to aid the environmental processing systems. The more I learned about the secrets the Underhill and her crew, the more impressed I got.
I noted when I reviewed the footage of the diplomatic feeds that Delphine was transmitting to us, that the Captains and their council members, all wearing those same blue jackets with green slashes, seemed to have quite a lot of fresh food available, even in excess as porters brought in meals for everyone in the conference room a couple times a day.
Worldship Files: Cityships Page 9
