He gave a frown. “You have to get us out of here, Cadet!”
“I don’t ‘have to’ do anything, Instructor, and there are no ranks on training courses. We are all merely temporary recruits. However, I will attempt to evacuate all of you. Now, please stop talking, gather the children together, and follow me. We are trying to secure shuttles.”
He looked as if he were about to say something more, then thought better of it. As I walked towards the rear of the hold, I could hear his voice raised behind me, organizing his charges, stewarding them into two neat files that followed us. Bull brought up the rear, pushing the Tyzaran girl child in front of him and checking continually that the Avaraks still hadn’t discovered our whereabouts. It seemed they were busy elsewhere. I hoped our good luck would continue.
Mel was down at the end of the bay, in front of the largest shuttle, her two feet set well apart to keep her balance on the shuddering deck. She must be terrified but so far she was still functioning. She was doing good.
There was the lanky figure of an Enif near her. I looked around for its partner – its faliif. They always came in pairs. But this one seemed to be alone.
Mel introduced us by poking her rifle towards the figure. “Engineer,” she informed me succinctly. “Trapped working down here. Name of Didjal.”
At last, some decent news. “What ships are ready?” I asked it.
It was a thin alien, graying at its black temples, with a grizzled look around its mandible. It gave me an offended look, its multi-faceted eyes glittering. “All of them. But you won’t get all that lot on just one shuttle. These are personal shuttles, meant for private, short-hop use. They will only have life support autonomy for a few days, at best. The biggest, the Henson-Avinger IIIs, can take seven at a pinch plus pilot, but there are only two of those. The Berlinger Vs would be overweight with four each plus pilot. You’ll have to take four of the Berlingers as well as the two Avingers if you want to evacuate all those children.” Its voice grated; Enif talk between themselves by tactile communication. Vocal communication comes to them with great difficulty, thanks to a cylindrical touchpad translator strapped to one of their forearms. The translation has an unfortunate tinny quality.
“Can you pilot a shuttle?”
There was a silence, accentuated by the dull explosions going off tens of decks above us. The creature looked even greyer. “I never have. I could try.” It seemed to be scanning the hold. “But I must find my faliif first. I will not leave without Eshaan.”
I compressed my lips. “All right. You have five minutes.” The Enif disappeared, using its elongated tarsal bones to help propel it across to the far side of the hanger at high speed, making it look almost robotic.
Piloting was going to be a problem. Sammy didn’t look to be in a fit state to fly anything. Mel didn’t know how. She had been diagnosed as being claustronetic at an early age. She detested traveling by spacecraft, being hypersensitive about the thin metal canisters we worked and often lived in. It was no longer called claustrophobia, because many Spacelanders claimed that there was nothing irrational about the condition, and it could therefore not be classed as a phobia. Such people argued that to be scared of spaceships was rational and indeed logical.
Claustronetics normally stay on one of the Spacelander planets for virtually all their lives. Mel had too, but even claustronetics are required to undergo basic ship training every five years. They can’t remain Spacelanders unless they do. So there are invariably a few trainees who shiver their way around the ship, staring anxiously out into open space. You can always spot them; they have a desperation about them which is hard to miss as they linger around the airlocks.
Her father, a member of the space-founding Estamain family, had been so disappointed in her that he had refused to train her for anything at all when she was little. He loved to belittle her in front of the rest of her family, ensuring she never developed any self-esteem. Apart from that, his fierce regimen of disapproval had made her obsessive about not breaking even the silliest of rules.
That left Bull and I and an elderly alien engineer who looked as if it was close to the Enif end-of-life ‘state of enlightenment’. Three of us, and we were going to need five pilots. Not the best scenario.
I turned to the instructor. Worry made my voice sharp; he almost winced at my tone. I moderated it. Even to myself I sounded a bit too authoritative. “Allocate your pupils: ten to this shuttle, eight to that, six to the other two. We can only take four ships. We don’t have six pilots.” I treated Mel with a challenging look, knowing that her need to follow regulations was going to make her protest the increase in passengers on board each ship. She grimaced, and then gave me a short nod. She could see there was no choice. She was looking even paler now she knew we were moving from a big ship to a small shuttle.
The instructor did the math too. His eyes flickered to the first shuttle, one of the Hensons, and he took a small step toward it. I shook my head, and nodded sideways at the second of the Berlingers. He met my gaze. We exchanged a long look before he dropped his eyes. He began to organize the egress, his lips so thinned that they looked glued together.
“Mel, get Sammy on board that one.” I pointed at the other smaller vessel. “He knows how to fly her. You can pilot; he can tell you what to do.”
Mel froze. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“There isn’t anyone else.”
“No, but …” Her voice trailed off. She stared around at the children, still on deck, their eyes huge. Like hers.
The instructor counted off the first ten from the line. The small alien girl was still standing next to me to one side of that line. I drew her apart, signaling that she would be going with me.
We followed him as he ushered his charges towards the first Avinger III. “Come on then, those of you I have picked … quietly and quickly onto this ship.”
They straggled up the ramp. I put the Tyzaran girl on the copilot’s seat, and wedged her in with a larger kid on either side. There seemed to be nowhere for the rest to perch, so the instructor told them to sit squeezed onto the deck just behind the two command stations. Then we started to fill up the other three shuttles.
We left space for the Enif and his faliif on the second of the larger Avingers, though there was no sign of them yet. I put one of the kids on the copilot’s seat of the Engineer’s shuttle and the remaining seven on the floor.
Mel settled Sammy into the copilot’s station. He was still conscious, but grey around his eyes and mouth. He managed a weak nod to me. He was grateful we hadn’t left him behind. He would manage. So would Mel. At twenty-six, she was two years younger than me, but she’d got through the last half an hour. She wouldn’t stop now.
Finally Bull pushed the instructor into the copilot’s seat of the shuttle he would be taking, instructing him curtly to strap himself in. Then he signed the last kids to squeeze into the remaining space behind the station before executing an agile jump into the pilot’s chair.
I made my way back to the first Henson Avinger and clambered up to the cockpit, just as Didjal clattered back around the corner with another Enif lagging behind it. At least, I assumed it was Didjal leading. I couldn’t tell them apart.
As it buckled itself into the pilot’s seat and its life partner settled in the copilot’s seat, I was able to talk with it through the comlink. I asked the engineer its age.
It vibrated. That was probably something quite rude in its own language. I had to grin.
“Young enough to want to live,” it told me severely.
“Good. Now, how much help are you going to need?”
It vibrated again. “I suppose I can manage. I have a few hours sim practice. But I don’t know anything about navigation.”
That was some relief, at least. “Just follow me. No need to do anything else. Try
not to hit anything.”
I still couldn’t figure out why these Earth kids hadn’t been evacuated on the Seyfert twelve hours ago, when this attack could only have been a remote possibility in some leader’s head. Avaraks were not prone to attacking without reason. They were miners. Tough survivors who knew better than to lob bombs at other cultures. Somebody had to know what was going on. Somebody had messed up. A familiar wave of frustration crept upwards from my stomach, flooding through me. I tried to stifle it, though some of the ways the Space Trust worked were almost incomprehensible to me. Back on Faraday we had organization beaten into a cocked hat. We had to. Out on the edge of the Rift you could lose your life too easily if you didn’t.
Why the Space Trust wasn’t as efficient was beyond me. After all, they were responsible for teaching half a million young Spacelanders basic military and defense strategies each year. You’d think they would have at least considered what to do in a real attack by one of the other species sharing this galaxy with us. Especially since there have been sporadic wars between all of us in the past. Nobody likes sharing deep space. There is always the fear of expansionist dreams on the part of armed aliens. It never goes away.
All four shuttles were powered up. I opened a private channel to the engineer. “Can you open the shuttle bay doors, Didjal?”
Its voice, dimmed by some static, came back immediately. “I can. I have the remote codes.”
“We need to go.” The voice that broke in was unknown to me. It was almost liquid, yet quite pleasant. “The Commorancy is about to break up.”
My eyes slid to my right. Sure enough, the Tyzaran kid had slipped on the copilot’s headset. She caught my look. “I can feel the ship’s distress,” she told me.
“Thanks, kid.”
Her widely spaced eyes gave a dangerous flash. “My name is Zenzara.”
“Nice name. So … you think we ought to get out of here?”
She inclined her long neck and the ridge running over her head and down toward her back slowly settled back to her scalp as her distress faded. She trusted me, for some reason. “I deem it immediately advisable, yes.”
“Didjal?”
“Inputting the codes now.”
I heard faint tapping in the background. Enif have quite long, almost metallic-like digits. I checked around at the other shuttles. Their pilots responded with thumbs up.
The huge shuttle bay doors began to screech open. There had clearly been some damage, because they were objecting to every centimeter we made them separate. We were lucky they hadn’t been a primary target. This was only the small VIP shuttle bay. The rest of the crew would have evacuated from the main shuttle bay, fifteen decks up and aft of us. They would have made more of a target. We were coming out of the bows of the ship, rather than the stern.
As soon as the doors were half open, I lifted the shuttle off the deck, wincing at the pain in my arm, and let her slide towards the opening. She would just about fit through. It would have been better to wait for another five minutes, but I took the kid’s comment very seriously. Tyzarans are known for their fabulous ability to sense stuff the rest of us can’t. Young or not, she could just be right. I tilted the wings of the Henson-Avinger and slipped through. The engineer followed, rather more slowly. He was followed by Mel and then Bull, the latter flashily tilting completely sideways to scurry through. I felt sorry for his passengers. If you aren’t used to it, that can really turn your breakfast to acid.
I didn’t have to do any navigation. I have been doing stuff like this since I was three. My mother used to make us take a shuttle three times round the shipstation every day when we were just toddlers. I simply pointed the nose away from the Avarak ships and pushed the throttles as far as they would go. Although I had heard Avaraks were scrupulous about not shooting down escape pods, I didn’t want to risk looking in the least dangerous or aggressive. Even though shuttles weren’t normally armed, they could still carry weapons. I wasn’t about to hang around to see what the Avaraks would do. I planned on getting as far away from the danger, as fast as I could.
We shot out of the dying ship like corks out of champagne bottles, a tiny string of life trying to escape what was about to become an inferno. Didjal was clamped so close to my tail that I would have had to think twice about throttling back. Its shuttle was weaving from side to side, and for one moment I seriously thought the Enif might have its eyes shut.
I took the group fifteen minutes away from the fray, then brought us carefully around in a large circle, until the others could see that we were simply marking time. When they had all checked in and were ready to slow our speed in unison, I began to pull back on the two main throttles.
Soon we were bobbing in space, side by side, facing our old ship.
So we were watching as Commorancy blew herself to hell.
Ludicrously, it was quite pretty. The different structural metals contained colorful elements. It was like watching a firework display magnified a few thousand times. Except it incinerated people I had known. Quite a lot of them, probably. Even the kids couldn’t rake up any enthusiasm for the show.
We sat waiting as the fires died down, soon extinguished by the lack of air in outer space. We watched the three Avarak vessels tire of their vigil. They turned, and within ten minutes all three had gone FTL.
It was three hours before Seyfert arrived. They contacted us on a tight-beam, which is a ship-to-ship communication system of audio only.
“Shuttle group of four, what is your status?”
“One Spacelander trainee, status bullet wound in leg, unconscious. One … err … Spacelander trainee, broken scapula. One Tyzaran female child, status unharmed. Thirty Terran children, status unharmed. Two Enif … engineer and partner, status unharmed. One further Spacelander trainee, female, status unharmed. One Terran trainee, status unharmed. One Terran instructor, male, status unharmed.” I felt like adding that he was hostile, but thought better of it.
There was a short pause. Then: “You have been designated low priority. Please wait where you are for further instructions.”
“Copy.” I looked at Zenzara. “They don’t seem in a hurry to get you back.”
She rolled her eyes. The Tyzarans have big eyes. There was a lot to roll. I am surprised she didn’t make herself dizzy. With all the extra skin she sported in folds around that small face of hers it looked really strange. “Their decision is quite correct. I am unharmed, which makes me of secondary importance.”
I grinned to myself. I could hear the chagrin in her voice. She was unused to being made to wait, if determined not to let it show.
“Never mind, Zenzie. I care.”
Her eyes flashed. “My name is not Zenzie.”
That’s what she thought. “’Tis now. How old are you, anyway?”
She put her chin up and out. “Eight. Why?”
A sudden buzz told us that we were wrong. She had been missed, after all. Turns out, so had I.
“Zenzara, are you there?” The voice was harmonious if stern.
The girl jumped. “Y-Yes, X-X-Xynia, I am.”
“Spokesdesignate Xynia, if you please. Perhaps you could explain to me what circumstances caused you to miss the evacuation, thus causing great dismay to the Ambassador and the whole diplomatic mission?”
I saw the girl wriggle uncomfortably in her seat. “I regret I was not paying attention, Spokesdesignate Xynia.”
“We were forced to assume that you were deceased.”
“I … I am alive.”
“This is seen, Zenzara Zylarian. You have caused much distress.”
“I am sorry, Spokesdesignate. I was in the area of the engines when fighting broke out.”
“Is it your opinion that you would have died if left alone?”
Zenzie suddenly looked sick.
“I … that is … errr … yes, I suppose that is true.” She gave a swallow and I saw her look quickly in my direction.
“And were you assisted by the whole group, or one individual?”
Now she was green. “I was accepted into the group at the request of one individual, Spokesdesignate.”
“Then you do realize that the Savior Protocols will now apply?”
“Yes, Spokesdesignate.”
The Tyzaran fell silent, but someone else came on the line.
“Tevis here. Who is in charge there?” a rather fastidious voice demanded.
I started, forgetting my injury. Pain shot through my arm again. “Captain Tevis? It’s Mallivan, Sir, from the training program. Ryler Mallivan Bell.” The Captain, then, was safe. He must have been one of the first to abandon poor old Commorancy. What a surprise.
“What are you doing there? Who is your team leader?”
“Major Wolseley, Sir. He didn’t make it.”
His voice sounded puzzled. “Didn’t make it? Then how did you get out?”
His level of confidence in his own trainees spoke volumes.
“We used our own initiative, Sir.”
“Initiative?” He actually sounded disapproving. Were we expected to have gone down with the ship? “You mean you fought the Avaraks on your own?”
Should we just have laid down our arms and waited to be shot? “That is correct, Sir.”
“Then I really don’t see how you all survived.” He seemed quite put out. I heard the voice of one of the Tyzarans in the background. There was a pause as Tevis seemed to listen, and then he came back on line. “Unfortunately you have Terrans with you. They are responsible for this aggression and we cannot at present compromise our own situation by taking them on board. As a Spacelander ship inside the Local Shell, our status is currently non-combatant.”
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