Jumpship Hope

by Adria Laycraft

  “You will not threaten the friends we have here,” he said. “You’ve already screwed things up bad enough.” Blood flowed freely down his face, making him look demented.

  Sounds of reaction made Janlin realize they’d drawn a crowd. Teardrop stood in the entrance of the med-hut, eyes wide. Two of the Leadership Circle watched, gazes flicking between Stepper, the smashed device, and Janlin.

  Gordon moaned and fell to his knees. With the greatest care, he gathered the pieces of plastic and electronics in his big hands. When he looked up, it was to nail Stepper with a look of pure hatred.

  “Your grasping for power over others has really gone too far, Stepper.”

  Janlin recognized Gordon’s words as a deep truth. It explained Stepper’s actions all along—his choosing a Mars assignment that didn’t include her, his building the Jumpships without authorization, his creation of a governing party here that included him but didn’t ask for input from the group as a whole. She turned to the gathered onlookers.

  “I didn’t want to tell you of this because I didn’t want to raise false hope. There’s no telling if my friend can secure the Hope from the Imag.” Latecomers gasped at the idea. “And I really wasn’t sure of how to broach the subject with the Huantag.”

  “The who?” asked Inaba.

  “That’s the name of the Birdfolk. Huantag. It’s the name of the planet, too. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t listen to Gordon and me about helping us get off planet safely without putting them in danger because of some promise they made to the Imag. And now, because we tried to go against that, they’ve made us prisoners here. There’s no doubt they’re not going to like this plan either, since they wouldn’t trust my friend’s good intentions.” She tried to find a straightforward way to explain it all. “There’s so much misunderstanding going on.”

  She helped Gordon to his feet. In his big hands, he cupped the destroyed comm-unit.

  “Did anyone here know Victor?” she asked.

  “I did!” said Linder.

  “So did I,” said Teardrop. “He was a good friend.”

  Janlin nodded and took a deep breath. “I have a story to tell you.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  AS JANLIN SPOKE, Gordon sat against the wall and began to painstakingly reconstruct the comm-unit. Teardrop sat in the doorway to the hut, tears glistening in her eyes as she listened. Stepper also leaned against the wall, head back in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. No one offered to help him.

  “Victor recorded himself not long before his death. ‘Trust Anaya,’ he said.” Janlin scanned her audience. “I do! I trust her, and believe that if we follow the plan she set forth, we have a chance to go home.”

  “The Birdfolk are so peaceful, though,” Linder said. “Even after Gordon’s outburst. How can we rightfully undermine them, let alone threaten their entire planet’s safety?”

  “Yeah, chances are if this friend of yours does steal the Hope, the Imag will be hot on her tail. If they find out we’ve taken the shielding down . . .”

  Agreement rippled through the crowd. The threat was clear, and Janlin understood both sides of the argument. “We’ve asked them for safe transit to orbit, but they made a deal with the Imag. They took us in on the understanding that we are not to ever leave again, or it will be taken as an act of war.”

  “Then they can’t go back on that without being prepared to go to war,” Inaba said. “And that goes against everything they believe in.”

  “It doesn’t though,” Janlin argued. “They must see we need to return to our own planet—that they are right in the sense that we should never have left it in such a mess. If we took home some of their ideas, maybe we could make our own comeback like they did. If they would just help us a bit, we could do the fighting for them.”

  At this thought everyone spoke at once, talking over each other, and finally Teardrop shouted. Janlin started. She had no idea she had it in her.

  “Before we do anything, we should ask the Birdfolk for help with this infection,” Teardrop suggested. “We may still have a long time to wait before this friend of Janlin’s returns, and this is far more urgent.”

  “And I’d imagine everyone will want to hear Janlin’s story before we put it to discussion,” said Inaba.

  Janlin stifled a moan. She knew everyone had a right to know what was happening and have a say in the decisions made, but her impatience sometimes sent fair play out the window, especially when she thought it was perfectly clear what was right for everyone.

  She looked again at Stepper and realized how wrong she could be in making those assumptions. Stepper saw this as home, a place of peace, and didn’t want to see it threatened. He thought he was clear on what was right for everyone, to just live peacefully here and give up on going home.

  The crowd dispersed, urged away from the med-hut by the leaders once they understood the gravity of Teardrop’s concerns. Stepper continued to sit, back against the hut wall, bloody shirt held to his nose with an arm propped on a bent knee.

  Gordon muttered new curses as he turned shattered pieces this way and that. Janlin knelt beside him.

  “Anaya won’t give up,” she said, pitching her voice so Stepper would hear it too. “Neither will we. I’m certain the Huantag have communication devices of some kind we could play with.”

  Gordon nodded, though he didn’t stop trying to fit the pieces into place. A tear dropped onto one, and he quickly wiped it dry with exquisite care.

  “I want to go home,” he said, his voice a bare whisper that rasped over a broken heart. He looked up, and the pain of hopeless longing welled in his grey eyes. “I promised Ursula . . .”

  He covered his eyes with one big hand. Janlin wrapped her arms around him from the side. There were no words she could offer her friend, nothing but her belief in the promise of a stranger.

  She looked over to find Stepper focused on them, his mouth turned down in pain and anger and—somehow—bewilderment. Janlin stared back over a chasm of regret and new anger.

  A FEW HOURS later Falco came winging into the village, circling until he spotted Janlin waving. He landed a few feet away from her.

  “Janlin, there are many sick in our city,” he said. He struggled for breath. “I wanted to warn you to stay away, even if your guards fall short in numbers.”

  “We’ve got sick people here too,” she said. “Is there anyone looking for a cure? There is a chance we brought this illness, and you may only find a cure through our blood.”

  “I will pass this idea to the council.” He moved to go.

  “Wait!” He turned back only half way, his wings partly spread and knees bent to launch. Did he fear the illness? Whatever it was, she wasn’t done with him now that she had someone listening.

  “Why did you shun the Imag?” And the Gitane, but that wouldn’t translate. “Why didn’t you try and teach them, help them with their own world?”

  Falco’s head twitched side to side, but he still answered. “You know the story. They caused great destruction and refused to follow our rules to protect the planet. They argued that we’d fixed things and didn’t need to worry so much. They felt they could go back to their old ways.” Then he fixed her with his intense gaze. “Why do you ask this?”

  Janlin considered. “I met someone before I came here. I considered her a friend. I may be wrong about her, but she felt you did not give them enough of a chance.” She made sure she had his full attention. “I have a feeling she knows a way to cure this illness. But the bitterness at being turned away from the only inhabitable planet in the system may prevent her from wanting to help.”

  “This is Imag?”

  “No . . . Imag-like, but not Imag. Gitane.” How did she explain? She was so sick of the confusion, the communication breakdown, the questions and doubts spinning in her head. “If you would contact them, be willing to work with them—”

  “No, Janlin. That will never be a good choice. I will report to my superior, let them know you have this ill
ness too. It is just as I suspected, and now we can take the proper procedures to end it.”

  Falco pulled into his full height and expanded his wings. “We may have been wrong to let Imag extract our promise, but the council says there is no going back.”

  “I need my flight gear,” she said as he turned away.

  He didn’t reply for a long moment before clacking his beak-like protrusion in a way she’d never seen before. “I left your flight gear in the place where you and Gordon meet.” Without warning, he stuck his face right in hers. “Be sure of your choices, Janlin.” He turned away and launched into the sky.

  She watched him fly away. “Sometimes that’s impossible, Falco.”

  She turned and ran all the way down into the sage meadow. The guards above her circled, but did nothing more. Many times, she and Gordon had sat out here watching them fly overhead.

  At first, she thought Falco lied, but then she saw the tuft of fabric hidden beneath the boulders. She stood sweating, chest heaving, and stared at the tiny speck that was Falco returning home.

  Then she looked up at the circling forms above her.

  It would have to wait. At least she had a new opportunity to work with.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  THE QUARANTINE DIDN’T work.

  More fell ill over the next couple of days. Despite Teardrop’s warnings, Janlin helped her nurse the sick. Janlin noticed Teardrop lagging and pale, and attempted to put her into a cot, too.

  “I can’t, Janlin,” she protested, and Janlin could hear the rasp that gave away the sore throat.

  “You can and will. There is nothing more you can do, and you won’t be helping if you’re sick.”

  Tyrell agreed. “Come lay here with me,” he whispered, and Teardrop gave in. Janlin brought them both flowerbud tea.

  “You two just keep an eye on Sandy and Ron from there, okay? I’ll be back in a while.”

  Sandy and Ron rarely woke any more, only tossing and muttering in feverish delirium. Janlin gathered the bedpans that needed scrubbed and headed for the river. Turning at the door, she was heartened by Teardrop’s drooping eyes. If she just got some rest, she would recover more quickly.

  After cleaning and delivering the bedpans back to a sleeping group, Janlin walked the deserted paths down to Inaba’s hut. She called out a hesitant greeting, worried by the profound silence that wrapped the entire common area. It seemed like just a few days ago that they’d danced and celebrated here.

  “Inaba?”

  “Don’t come in,” came the answer from within the hut.

  “It’s okay, I’ve been nursing the sick,” she said as she entered the hut. The Japanese man sat wrapped in blankets, yet still he shivered. Janlin frowned. The day had its usual heat. Why didn’t he sit in the sun and get warm?

  Then she saw that he sat very close to another cot, occupied by a sleeping form.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” Janlin asked, keeping her voice low.

  “No,” Inaba said. “Unless you can bring us a miracle.”

  “I had hopes for one,” she said, thinking of Anaya and the broken comm-unit.

  “I suspect this may be the Imag’s plan,” he said.

  Janlin blinked. “Sorry?”

  “The Imag could not rely only on you succeeding in taking the shielding down, so they set an alternate plan in action. One or many of us were probably infected with this on purpose. I speculate that’s why we were all brought here.”

  “Brought here to die,” Janlin whispered.

  “And to infect the Birdfolk.”

  Janlin closed her eyes. Where was Anaya?

  “How is it you are not sick, Ms. Kavanagh?”

  She remembered Yipho’s injection.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said. “The aliens I travelled here with injected me with something. It was either the disease or the cure. Could I be the carrier without being sick?”

  Inaba looked sad. “It is quite possible.”

  Janlin watched him tug at his blankets and shiver. “Why don’t you come sit outside in the sun for a bit?” she said.

  He looked down at the sleeping form beside him and considered. “Maybe just for a few moments. I am so cold . . .”

  She got him settled and sat beside him. “So, I’m either a carrier, a live biological bomb, or I am proof that my friend saved my life.” She told him of Victor’s illness, and how he had been separated from the rest of Renegade’s crew and subjected to a series of tests before Anaya stole him away. “I’d like to believe in Anaya.”

  “So, you need to remove the Birdfolk’s shielding in case she waits without being able to tell you she’s here.”

  Janlin nodded. “I am worried that the device was already out of power or broken before Stepper’s actions. But taking down the shielding has proven to be more difficult than I thought it would be. And what if I’m wrong? I could make a very bad situation much worse.”

  Inaba sighed. “If we are to die anyway, then the risk is worth it, yes?”

  Janlin stared in shock. “Do you think it’s that bad?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Okay, so how do I do this?” She gestured at the sky to indicate their imprisonment. Hawk-like Huantag watched by day, owl-like ones by night.

  Inaba just shook his head. “I do not know, Ms. Kavanagh. But I fear all our lives rest in your hands now.”

  FALCO FLEW IN again that evening. He looked and sounded awful, his plumage ragged and his step unsure.

  “I am sent to collect things to make a medicine.” Once he explained, Janlin led him to the med-hut and asked him to wait outside.

  As she stepped into the relative cool, she instantly registered the awful scene at Sandy’s cot. Teardrop turned, an anguished expression on her face. Ron sobbed, his head buried in the blankets over Sandy.

  “She’s gone, Janlin. Just like that. Gone.”

  Janlin pulled Teardrop into a hug. “You did everything you could, Teardrop. We all did.” She pulled Teardrop aside and told her Falco waited outside.

  “They want to study swabs and blood samples,” Janlin explained to Teardrop. “I think they are working to find a cure.”

  “We will sterilize everything carefully,” Teardrop said, pointing out the materials and a case to store them in. “Do your hands, too, and the case. In fact, wipe down everything before you take the samples, and then again when you’re done.”

  Janlin shushed her at that point. Teardrop's obvious pain when speaking made Janlin wince when she heard it. She held up a stick of some sort of plastic. “Is this what I take swabs with?”

  Teardrop nodded and held out her hand. “I will do my own throat, and you hold the case open. I don’t want you to touch it.”

  Janlin wanted to point out that if she was going to get sick, she would’ve by now, but she simply did as she was told. Teardrop struggled to get her feet under her, staggered a few steps, and dropped to her knees by Tyrell’s cot. He hadn’t noticed Sandy’s passing, and that made Janlin more worried than anything else.

  “Pass me the syringe.”

  Janlin brought the case, watched her draw blood without any reaction from Tyrell, and closed the case on the completed samples.

  “Wipe everything—”

  “I know, I will,” Janlin assured her. She set the case aside and helped Teardrop to her cot. “Just rest, and try not to talk.” She wrung out a cloth and laid it over the woman’s forehead.

  Teardrop closed her eyes and sighed. “Just tell them—ask them to hurry, okay?”

  She was asleep before Janlin stood.

  Once outside again, Janlin bit her lip. Who would care for the dead? The breeze ruffled her auburn hair, now long enough to tie back if she had something to do it with . . . or some time to think of such inane things.

  Janlin approached Falco and handed him the case. From the corner of her eye she saw anxious faces peering from doorways and shaded corners.

  “If any of you are w
ell enough, we could sure use some help,” she said.

  Falco whistled, and she could hear the harshness of it under the translation in her ear.

  “I have tried to bring help, Janlin. No one will come, and too many are sick too quickly.”

  Janlin sighed. “I understand.”

  He turned to go, but before he could launch, Janlin called out.

  “If you would give me access to some communication equipment, I might be able to get help.”

  “Might, Janlin?”

  Yeah, might . . . that was the problem. “It would be better than the alternative,” she said, letting a warning note through in her voice despite not knowing if it would register in his translator. “If you don’t help me find a way to communicate with any ships that might be out there, then I’m going to find a way to bring down those shields, Imag warship be damned.”

  “Please, Janlin, be patient. We will study this and make medicines,” Falco said. He crouched and launched, the case cradled in his arms.

  Before he was out of sight, Stepper accosted her.

  “It’s you, don’t you see? They planted it in you, and when we’re all dead, you can go take the shields down and they’ll just move right in.” He stumbled a bit, righted himself, and glared through a fever haze at her. “I did the right thing breaking that device.”

  “Stepper, you look awful.”

  “You’ve betrayed us all, haven’t you?”

  “Are you really saying I would intentionally murder everyone, to say nothing of a Hauntag genocide?” Janlin’s mouth worked, and she longed to spit away the awful taste that rose in her throat. Doubt ate at her. Did they give her the cure . . . or the disease?

  Stepper stared at her in horror. “The Birdfolk are sick, too?”

  Janlin cursed. No one needed that kind of information right now. “They are working on a cure. I just delivered samples they requested. It’s going to be okay, Stepper.”

  “You can’t know that. Even if you didn’t know, it was you they sent it with. Why else are you healthy?”