by C H Gideon
Jiya rubbed her hands together at the thought of going after the stalking ship.
“Do tell,” she said.
While they had to wait to take a shot at the Loranian cruiser, Jiya could at least live vicariously through Asya.
Not long after the Pod departed for the planet, the maintenance crew, along with Ka’nak, showed up at the lab to help Reynolds.
“I was told there would be food,” the Melowi mentioned as soon as he arrived.
“There will be,” Reynolds assured him, “after all this is put together and transferred to the mess hall.” He gestured to the worktable covered in a maelstrom of parts.
Ka’nak groaned. “XO lied to me,” he said.
“That’s his job,” Reynolds fired back, grinning. “Now help me assemble this frame.”
“Not only do I miss out on R&R down below, but I’m also getting screwed out of lunch,” he complained. “Sounds like a plot by the Man.”
The crew chuckled quietly behind him as they started in on their work.
“Be careful, or the Man will give you the roughest twelve inches of your life,” Reynolds told him. “My foot up your ass.”
“That’s what the Man would say,” one of the crew joked, setting off the rest into bursts of raucous laughter.
After the laughter died down and the crew got to work in earnest, Geroux looked up from the table and Reynolds caught her smiling for no reason.
He nudged her. “What is it?”
She started, having been lost in thought. “Oh, nothing really. Was just thinking that we’re a bit like the Telluride.”
“Golden and crazy?” Ka’nak asked.
Geroux giggled. “No, more like we’re having to adapt to new things and a different way of life,” she answered. “Both they and the Grindlovians are being confronted by a dilemma, and they’re having to figure out how to cope with it. Just like us.”
“And like this crew,” Reynolds said, “they’ll adapt and prosper and be all the better for it.”
“There’s that Man talk again, always trying to get you on their side, working an angle,” Ka’nak mumbled.
Reynolds pushed him back to his assignment. “Get back to work, lackey!” he joked.
“Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! Violence inherent in the system!” Tactical shouted over the speakers, encouraging the outburst by the crew.
“See?” Ka’nak said. “Even the other parts of you are feeling downtrodden. And that guy is crazy.”
Reynolds chuckled and went back to work on the agroprinter frame.
Even though they didn’t have it remotely close to ready to go, he could already tell that just the idea of it had made the crew happier. After the attack on the ship and all the injuries, they needed the boost to morale.
Hope was always a good way to get it, especially linked to a good meal.
Jiya grew restless on the bridge.
With nothing to do but stay vigilant, the Loranian ship holding steady out by the gravity well, and not doing anything, boredom had set in.
She’d started thinking about what was going on below and what she could do to help ease the transition.
That’s when it hit her.
She hopped out of her seat and headed for the exit.
“Where are you going?” Asya asked.
“Back dirtside,” she replied. “I have an idea.”
“Uh oh,” Tactical mumbled. “I’ll have a rescue squad standing by.”
Asya chuckled as Jiya made a sour face.
“Hey,” she complained. “It’s not like I’m always getting into something.”
Asya stared at her, and Jiya could feel the AI personalities doing the same.
“Okay, so maybe there is some truth to that,” she gave in, sighing.
Asya laughed. “Go on, get out of here. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Jiya grinned and spun on her heel, marching off the bridge and heading to the hangar bay.
It wasn’t until she was there that she remembered that the crew had taken all the Pods down to the planet already.
“Damn it,” she grunted, looking around for a quicker way dirtside than summoning one of the Pods back to the ship. “Oh…yeah,” she said, thinking of how she could do it.
She went over to the emergency escape pods and crawled inside of the cramped vehicles. She hesitated a moment, examining the minimal controls, then decided to go ahead with her plan.
She wanted to speak with Gorad while things were still in flux down below. The escape pod would get her there quickly, without needing to draft a Pod and take it away from the crew.
So she triggered the hatch and strapped in as the pod sealed. Jiya programmed her coordinates as well as the tiny computer was capable of, and she initiated the launch sequence.
“I’ll be there soon enough,” she said to herself. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
As it turned out, the worst that could happen was that the escape pod launch system had been damaged in the sneak attack by the Loranian ship, and Jiya hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
The pod shot out of the Reynolds and immediately began to rattle and shake as if it might tear itself apart.
Jiya groaned as the pod began to spin as its engines misfired in an attempt to correct its drift.
“This is going to hurt…I think I’m going to be…”
The tiny ship hurtled through space and collided with the atmosphere.
The ride only got rougher from there.
Alarms wailed and lights flashed all around her as Jiya tried to bring the craft back under control.
It was wasted effort, however.
The escape pod streaked toward Grindlevik 3, and there was nothing she could do about it.
The edges of her vision blackened and began to encroach.
Hell of a way to die.
The Pod plummeted, the sky a blur outside the small window.
Then the autopilot engaged properly, and Jiya was pushed hard into the seat as the pod corrected and did its best to land carefully.
It almost pulled it off.
The escape pod hit and bounced, once, twice, and then corrected again, bringing the tiny ship to a stop only a short distance outside of Gorad’s complex.
Once it stopped spinning like a top, and Jiya could breathe again, her heart stuffed in her throat, she opened the hatch and stumbled out of the pod.
She managed to stand on her third try, still in a daze as the world spun around her.
Dozens of Grindlovians watched her from their chairs, eyes wide.
Or as wide as they could be bothered, which wasn’t really all that wide, once Jiya thought about it.
After she felt stable enough, her entire body aching from the impact, she staggered off to find Gorad.
Fortunately, he’d heard about the crash and came out to meet her just as a group of Telluride reached her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, rushing over to join the golden aliens in assessing her.
“I’m fine,” she answered. She thought she was grinning.
Based on the concerned expressions on everyone’s faces, it might have been a grimace.
“I had an idea,” she told the AI.
“And you had to nearly kill yourself to tell me?” Gorad asked.
She shrugged. “That wasn’t part of the plan, I admit.”
Gorad chuckled. “Well, please, tell me your idea since you risked all to be here.”
Jiya nodded, then paused a moment everyone stopped swimming before her eyes. “I was thinking, since you wanted to let the Telluride and Grindlovians care and rule for themselves, it might be in everyone’s best interests if you took a seat on the council.”
“The council?”
“Yeah,” she told him. “That would leave you in a position of influence, but it would help lower expectations that you’re the supposed overlord of the whole planet and its people.” She wagged a finger at him. “If you only get one vote, then once the food production and maintenance ar
e covered, you have no more power than the rest of the shared council.”
Jiya could tell Gorad was contemplating her idea when he paused. She swayed in the arms of the Telluride who had grabbed her and were holding her up.
“That’s an interesting idea,” he told her, though he didn’t seem overly excited by it.
She wondered if that was because he didn’t care for the idea or she was too concussed to recognize how he really felt.
She figured it might be both when she swayed again.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, racing down here to offer suggestions to help with the transfer of power,” Gorad told her, “but you could have just called, you know?”
Jiya chuckled at that, thinking the AI was right.
She should have called.
“I wish I’d thought of that.”
Then she wasn’t thinking about anything as she blacked out.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jiya woke to wailing alarms.
She leapt from her bed, only realizing it wasn’t hers after she was on her feet. She staggered as she tried to orient herself.
“What in the furry blue fuck is going on?” she mumbled, holding her head.
It took a moment of the alarms continuing to scream until she determined she was in Gorad’s complex.
“That’s right, I crashed,” she said out loud as if it would bring reality closer.
In her uniform, her shoes still on her feet, she exited the room and ran into a crowd of Telluride and Grindlovians racing through the halls.
She grabbed the arm of one of the passing Telluride. “What’s going on?”
“Someone’s killed an elder in the council chambers,” he told her, breaking loose and running to catch up to the crowd.
Jiya gasped as his words sunk in.
“Oh…shit.”
She ran after the group of aliens, wincing at the pain in her head, and followed them out of the complex and around the corner to the building with the council chambers. Practically the whole town had gathered nearby.
The alarms finally eased into a low background hum, and Jiya pushed her way through the frantic crowd to get to the door of the chambers. She slipped inside a moment later.
She regretted it instantly.
There on the floor inside the chamber was not just one of the council members, but two.
Fulla Sol and Fulla Vae stared back at her blankly.
Her stomach churned when she saw the blood pooling around the two councilmembers and their podium chairs, both of which were on their sides, wheels still spinning.
Mechanical assistant limbs jutted from both chairs, and Jiya could imagine what had happened based on the blood staining the mechanical hands.
A Grindlovian bumped into her from behind, and she inched over to get out of the way as she pushed forward to get a better look.
Disgust washed over the female’s face, and she sneered at Jiya as another Grindlovian in a chair came up beside her.
The second female held her hand over her mouth, and Jiya heard the barest gasp.
“Who would do such a thing?” she asked.
The first snarled, staring even harder at Jiya. “It’s clear these foreign instigators are the cause of this.”
Jiya shuddered at the jagged intensity of the female’s voice. The first officer raised her hands and backed away from the female, losing herself in the crowd. She triggered her comm.
“We’ve got a situation on the planet, Reynolds,” she reported. “You’re going to want to get your metal ass down here right away.”
“What’s going on?” the AI asked.
“Two dead council members,” she replied, saving the details for when he arrived.
“Fuck a tree trunk,” he cursed, something that was creeping back into his vocabulary because of the crew’s increase in colorful language. “I’m on my way. Summoning a Pod now.”
The comm went silent.
L’Sofee spotted Jiya and came over to stand beside her. San Roche came with her. They all stared at the bodies on the floor until Gorad arrived. Those in the chamber gave way as he approached and bent to examine the dead females.
“What do you think happened?” San Roche asked.
“We all saw Fulla Sol’s reaction to Fulla Vae’s request that we be treated equally,” she answered. “It takes little imagination to presume what might have happened in the aftermath of their feud.”
Jiya nodded, regretting the motion when her head throbbed. “That was what I was thinking,” she said, and San Roche nodded in seeming agreement. “But the Grindlovians have a different idea.”
“Let me guess,” L’Sofee started. “They think you did it?”
“Got it in one,” Jiya replied.
“They’re prone to bouts of drama, in case you haven’t yet noticed,” L’Sofee explained. “It’s best we clear this up before that malicious rumor spreads.”
Jiya couldn’t have agreed more, and she and L’Sofee circled the bodies and joined Gorad as he examined them.
“This is not good,” he told them. “We have never had a murder in all the years I’ve existed.”
“First time for everything, sadly,” Jiya replied, although she sure wished they could have skipped this particular first.
“While that may be true, this is not something I wanted to preside over.” Gorad sighed. “The separation was going to be difficult enough without violence.”
Reynolds arrived, setting a personal record from orbit to dirtside. He pushed through the crowd with Ka’nak and Maddox in tow.
No one said anything for a few moments as Reynolds surveyed the scene, shaking his head once he was done.
“Looks to be a double murder,” he said, pointing to the mechanical arms covered in blood that stood out ominously.
“My thoughts exactly, though there is no video surveillance in the room to corroborate that,” Gorad agreed.
“Maybe not, but there’s plenty of evidence,” Reynolds went on. “Given the last encounter between these two, I’m thinking Fulla Sol confronted Fulla Vae, thinking her a rival for the leadership position with all the changes coming up and her taking the side of the Telluride.”
Reynolds leaned closer.
“The blood on the limbs matches that of the council members, and the wounds appear to coincide with what might be inflicted by the mechanical arms,” Reynolds went on.
“I still find it hard to believe they could be pushed so far,” Gorad said.
“Politics is dangerous,” Jiya told the alien AI. “People go to extremes to protect their point of view. Egos keep people from looking at the bigger picture.”
“It’s a shame,” Maddox said, looking at the bodies. “These females could have helped lead their people to peace. They turned on one another and attacked instead of working it out.”
Vor Stygn rolled over just then. His face was nearly expressionless as he took in the scene.
“I knew the idea of sharing the council was a bad one,” he spat. “Look what it’s done.”
“This is on them,” Jiya corrected, but Vor Stygn snarled at her.
“Lies,” he barked. “This entire rebellion was instigated by you and your people. We should call off this farce of parceling out council seats and return things to the way they have always been. There were no deaths before now. See what you have done?”
Gorad waved the council member to silence. “Enough!” he shouted. “The evidence is before you that Fullas Sol and Vae struck each other down. This is their crime and no one else’s. Change was inevitable, no matter what the catalyst.”
The community comm system came on, and although Jiya thought the imagery was graphic and lingered too long on the bodies and their wretched state, Gorad informed the populace of the situation, making sure to detail the evidence to stop more violence from occurring in the aftermath of the deaths.
“We must immediately convene the council in the wake of this tragedy so that our people are not without representation,” Gorad said o
ver the system. “To that end, I assign L’Sofee and L’Willow of the Telluride to the posts of council members, to assume the seats of the departed Fullas Sol and Vae.”
The crowd gasped in response.
“Further, those Grindlovians currently in place upon the council shall remain at their posts, except Fulla Lofn, with whom I will discuss an alternate position befitting her exemplary service,” Gorad explained. “And to help facilitate the peaceful transition of power until a system of fair voting can be established to determine the ultimate council members, I appoint myself an equal position on the council.”
Jiya realized then that, given the makeup of the council now, Gorad had made himself the deciding vote.
There was silence for a few moments as the crowd digested the news and came to the same realization.
Then a smattering of applause began that turned into a roar as the Telluride and Grindlovians realized that, despite the obvious changes, Gorad would stay among them and remain in control.
Vor Stygn did not take the news well.
“If we must suffer the Telluride upon our council,” he called, amplifying his voice, “then I feel it is best if they leave the city as soon as possible. They are partly responsible for this travesty.”
“You would simply have them out of the city and away from you,” L’Sofee argued, pointing an accusing finger at Vor Stygn. “There is nothing more to this than that.”
“You know nothing of leadership,” Vor Stygn fired back, aggressively wheeling closer to L’Sofee.
Reynolds and Gorad went to step in and Jiya raised her voice to shout down the crowd, but Ka’nak got there first.
“Shut the fuck up,” he screamed, raising his hands in the air. He dominated the room as a physical presence outsizing either of the AIs. “Both of you.”
The crowd went silent as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
Ka’nak cleared his throat and continued, “You might want to rethink your idea of sending the Telluride out of the city.”
Gorad broadcast a holo of him across Grindlevik 3.
“In case you people didn’t know, there is an enemy cruiser lurking near your planet,” he went on. “This is the same ship that instigated the attack on the Reynolds by hacking into Gorad’s system and sending one of the planetary defense destroyers after us.”
