by Erik Wecks
The thought of someone making away with precious medical equipment made Katy’s stomach turn. “Maybe I’ll combine the two and sleep there … and lock the door.”
Freddi managed an exhausted grin. “That’s a good thought. There’s a meeting scheduled about six hours from now. You’ll want to be there, and there’ll be a wake, too …”
Katy’s throat felt too tight to breathe, let alone speak. She just nodded and turned to find the medical bay, wiping away her tears.
After a fitful sleep aided by the auto-doc, Katy arrived early for the meeting in Dùn Dubhar’s nearly finished command center. She sat at the side of a long conference table. Jones stood near the head of the table, Neela and Freddi nearby. The rather awkward computer technician and first officer looked like he was about ready to puke.
Tanith sat in a corner as far away from the others as possible. Neela had told Katy that he had been asking about Jo. Apparently Soren had been sending messages to them as well, and at least some of them had accepted. When Katy entered, he didn’t recognize her. It took her a second to remember why. Katy/Jo stepped over to the Timcree and greeted him in Kree. Katy could see the surprise in his eyes, and though she explained her appearance, she could tell that the laconic Timcree was still wholly uncomfortable with the thought. She could imagine what the Timcree must think about willfully changing your looks. When she considered the Timcree fear of modern medicine, it didn’t feel like a very kree pa act.
They spoke briefly, bouncing back and forth between Kree and English. Katy gathered that Kolas had died not long after she had left Korg Haran. Tanith didn’t say exactly how he had died, and she decided not to push, wondering if it had to do with the fallout of her time there.
The Timcree had not fared well in the attack, and most of those who survived had scattered into small bands. It was an old strategy that had served the Timcree successfully in the past. Small bands almost guaranteed that some escaped to live another day. Only about two hundred Timcree had arrived at Dubhar so far. Tanith was trying to contact others now to see how many could reach this place.
She thought Tanith seemed a little distant, but she was shocked at how well he was functioning under the circumstances. He seemed bright and analytical about the situation.
Katy eventually commented on his demeanor.
When he replied, it was the first time that Tanith held eye contact during their conversation. “Unlike you, Gravlander, we are not so foolish as to think suffering is not part of living. If we cannot survive suffering, we will not exist. This was to happen at some point for Kree. It is you Gravlanders who think that one day all suffering will die. The Kree have no such illusions.”
Katy tried not to cry. She didn’t want to agitate her grieving friend.
Tanith must have noticed her emotions because he continued. “Maybe you misunderstand? Because we have no illusions, we are more content.”
Instinctively, Katy took a risk and reached out to Tanith’s arm. “Much has happened since I left Korg Haran. I am not the same. I live the Kree pa now. At least in the way we must experience it, life is more than physics.”
Tanith’s eyes got wide. He tipped his head, and Katy thought she saw the hint of a smile. “Kree pa, little Meeta.”
“Kree pa, Tanith.”
Katy considered inviting Tanith to join her at the conference table, but as more people filed into the room, she could see that he was becoming less and less comfortable, so she let him stay in his chair in the corner.
There were others for Katy to greet. Her attempts to help create a better life for people in the Unity had led to a violent crackdown in each of the locations where she had done her development work. A couple of the scientists had managed to escape the destruction of the station on Corinthia. They had been at a conference when the beam attack from orbit started. The last act of the communications officer at the station was to send a message, telling them not to return and sending the nav instructions to get to Dubhar.
Only Bainboue seemed largely untouched by aggressive retribution, but that didn’t surprise Katy. The materials industry there was too important to the Unity to destroy it. However, as a precaution, the mayor and other prominent supporters of her tidal-power project had gone into hiding.
Katy was starting to feel overwhelmed by it all when Alia entered, along with Gantry. The young, former crewmember of the Clarion was clearly pregnant. Katy stood from her chair and gripped both of them by the arms of their dirty jumpsuits. “How many got away?”
Alia almost smiled. “Just under eighty percent. It was a real miracle. They weren’t at all prepared for what we had in store.”
Katy did some quick math. “Sixteen thousand people! And they’re all here?”
Gantry smiled and almost laughed. “We’re figuring out how to land them all now.”
Katy felt herself relax a little. Between that and Bainboue, the majority of the humans she had tried to help had survived. She still grieved the loss of Korg Haran, but her work didn’t feel like it had been a total failure now.
After talking with Alia and Gantry for a bit, she flopped down into a conference chair at the table, somewhat stunned. Accept the good and the bad. When you climb mountains, the way to the top is never straight. The thought had been one of the earliest things Soren had taught her as they worked through Katy’s past and brought her to a place where she could embrace the present, but the thought brought with it a fresh realization of who was missing in the room.
Katy’s shoulders started to shake as it washed over her for the first time that Soren would not walk through the door.
Head bowed, she felt someone put an arm around her shoulder. She opened her eyes to see Alia’s shining with hers. “I miss her.”
“Me, too.”
They all sat there in silence. Eventually, Jones cleared his throat twice and said, “Well, I think we should get started. We’re missing a lot of people …” He cleared his throat again. It sounded sore. “I’m not one to really be in the front of the room, but technically I was the first officer on the Clarion when Soren … Anyway, that makes me the captain, for now, so I’m leading this meeting.”
Jones ended with an awkward pause, almost as if he were waiting for someone to object. When no one did, he went on. “I guess I should start by saying welcome to Dùn Dubhar. For those of you unfamiliar with what this place is all about, you are sitting in the unfinished refuge of the former Empress and her government. Supposedly the Empress was fleeing to this place when her vehicle was intercepted on the Imperial compound.”
Gantry spoke up immediately. “If that’s the case, how do we know that the secret is safe and we won’t have the Unity crawling down our necks?”
With a glance at Jones, Freddi answered him. “Outside of the Empress and her security staff, all of whom are dead, there were only seven other people who knew about the existence of this place. Three of them are in this room—myself, Jones, and Neela.” Freddi pointed at her across the table. “Of the other four, two are known to be dead, and two of them are missing, presumed dead in the re-ed camps.”
“You’re saying the government didn’t even know about this place.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Gantry’s eyebrows rose, and he leaned back.
Jones looked around a little nervously and tried to take back the meeting. “We really ought to introduce ourselves before we get started.”
Introductions were made with little formality, the only surprise being Tanith, who sat so quietly in the dim corner of the room that some hadn’t even noticed the Timcree’s presence. Katy was grateful to see that almost everyone around the table seemed to accept the presence of the outsider. In fact, she noted that Tanith himself seemed a little taken aback at their acceptance.
While everyone introduced themselves, Katy had been thinking about all the containers in orbit, in part to give her mind something to do other than mourn the loss of her mentor. When the moment was right, she asked her qu
estion. “How many people will this place hold?”
Freddi shook her head. “Not enough.”
Both Gantry and Alia sat up and started to object.
Freddi held up her hands. “I’m sorry. I should be more clear. Not long term, anyway—at least not yet. We can get all your people landed in our docking bay, and since they brought their houses with them, they will at least have shelter. We’re trying to figure out how to configure stacks of their homes to leave a path out for the rest of our ships.” Freddi waved her hands. “But we’ll figure that out. Air … that’s a little harder. There’s a pretty good-sized subterranean ocean on this planet and a deep layer of frozen hydrocarbons on top of that, so raw materials for a good atmosphere aren’t the problem. Technically our generator can handle the load but that’s running at full capacity using the backups as well. It puts us in a real bind if anything were to break. We don’t have any redundancy.”
Tanith, who was still sitting in the corner, sat forward and said something in Kree. He looked at Katy, expecting her to translate. Startled by his participation, Katy had to ask him to repeat himself. “We have the reprocessors from Korg Haran with us. The Gravlanders may use them if they would like.”
It was a generous offer, and Katy thought that hidden behind it was an attempt to compensate for the help they had received.
Speaking in Kree, she asked, “Are your people going to stay here?”
Katy’s trained eye saw the difficulty Tanith had in answering the question. “Some, yes. Things changed after you left. We fought amongst ourselves and many got sick. Some said you cursed us. Others … others, like me, said we cursed ourselves by sending you away. Some of us will stay.”
“What about besh?”
Tanith shrugged. “Times change, Meeta. Maybe besh changes as well. The most important thing is that we live the Kree pa. Besides, if we are wrong, can we even have more besh than we already do? We’ve already lost everything. What else could the besh take?”
Katy slowly nodded. It was good to understand what Tanith was thinking. Turning her head, she realized that the rest of the group was watching her and Tanith converse. Gantry looked more than a little surprised to hear her speaking Kree. “Sorry. I forgot there were others in the room.” Her cheeks flushed a little. “Tanith says that at least some of his group will stay with us. I think he is offering his reprocessors to the community as a gift.”
Glancing at the Timcree, Katy saw him nod at her once.
“If we have air, are we set?” asked Neela. “What about food?”
Freddi shrugged. “I haven’t really given it much thought. I was too busy worrying about air, but I think food is going to be a problem. There are stores here and some hydroponic gardens, but nothing like what we need.”
“Then we’ll have to go out and get it,” Neela stated matter-of-factly.
Freddi nodded. “I agree. My mind changed with the arrival of all those from Salvador. Without them, we might have holed up here and licked our wounds, but not now. Now we have to continue forward. What I can’t see is how. How do we continue? We don’t have a ship, and even if we could repair her, the Clarion is banned from Unity space.”
Katy gestured toward Tanith. “I think he could teach us a thing or two.”
Freddi again let her worries show. “But 16,000 people. Surely—”
“Ships like Tanith’s fed that number on Korg Haran. It can be done.”
Alia spoke up. “The Clarion wasn’t the only ship willing to lend a hand on Salvador, either. There are other ships out there with similar thoughts and actions, far more than I knew before I lived there.”
Freddi looked at the man at the head of the table. “What do you think, Jones?”
Jones held his hands up. “Don’t make me the decision maker. I’m not the leader, or if I am, I don’t want to be. It’s not my call. Besides, we’re not talking about a ship any more. We’re talking about setting up a colony. That’s a different thing.”
Freddi nodded. “I know. That’s what makes me so nervous.”
Alia leaned forward. “There is someone in the room who has done that, you know.”
All eyes turned to Gantry.
The quiet man was slow to speak, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. “I would be happy to lead this group of people, with your help, of course. But there’s something that’s bothering me. Even if we create a colony here on … what did you call this place?”
“Dùn Dubhar,” said Neela.
“Even if you created a colony here on Dùn Dubhar, the Unity has still defeated us. They still won. If you stop the work that the Clarion was doing, I’m not sure I can live with myself if I let that happen. I’m sure we’ll get by here. I think we can figure that out. It’s not the colony that I worry about. I’m worried that you on the Clarion might quit. It was always my goal for our colony on Salvador that we figure out some way to get off our rock and do things to help. We were just about there. We had just put an offer in on our first ship when the Unity showed up. I’m not ready to quit trying.”
Freddi looked almost embarrassed. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. In the last couple of days, I’ve been so caught up in trying to live … I guess I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead yet.”
A moment of silence followed while those at the table digested what Gantry said.
It was Neela who spoke Katy’s thoughts. “If we keep going, more people will die …”
Katy spoke quietly, almost to herself. “Soren wouldn’t have wanted us to stop.” She looked up to see agreement. “If we quit at the first battle, it won’t be much of a war.”
Neela scowled at the table. “I guess I never really thought of it as a war until now.”
“Maybe that’s what we have to decide,” said Katy. “Is this a game, or are we at war? A war where one side has all the weapons.”
Gantry smiled. “They may have all the weapons, but we have the people, and that will make the difference.”
“I hope so,” said Katy.
Jo held up the small military mirror and looked at her short blonde curls. She still wasn’t sure yet what had made her do it. Part of it was that she had been bothered by the way Tanith looked at her. When she had been investigating the state-of-the-art surgical center while exploring the compound, the idea hit her almost like a whim.
Behind her, Vi warbled an off-key version of some tune Jo had never heard. There hadn’t been a lot of singing around Dùn Dubhar. Jo thought that Vi’s persistent enthusiasm might be her favorite bit about the woman.
Jo smiled and continued to inspect her face. For a while she had resisted the urge, but two days later, while sitting in her quarters, she was mulling over the conundrum of fighting a war without weapons when she came to understand that she had unfinished business with her past, and that made up her mind for her. A rebellion needed guns, and she knew where to get them.
Coming up behind her, Vi ran her fingers through the curls. “I like them. This is you.”
Jo tipped her head back a little, brushing it against Vi’s hand. Vi moved off to get dressed, and Jo went back to getting herself together for the wake.
Things with the Ghost Fleet will be complicated enough, she thought. Besides, Katy had always felt like an ill-fitting skin that the Unity forced her to wear.
A few minutes later, Vi was dressed and at the door. Jo was sitting on the bed, just finishing tying the laces on one of her boots.
Vi held up her bottle of alcohol. “You ready?”
“Almost. I’ll catch up.”
The young woman sighed. “It’s not going to feel right to do this in gravity. By rights, it should be zero G. You don’t have to drink nearly as much, and you don’t end up so sick afterward.”
Jo felt a lump in her throat form. “Yes. But we still have to do it. We’re a family on the Clarion, and this is what we do. I know for sure that Soren would want us to laugh and drink together. That’s how she’d want us to remember her.”
Suddenly unabl
e to speak, Vi wiped her eyes. When she had herself a little more under control, she said, “See you there. Don’t be long.”
Jo reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “I’ll only be a moment. I’ve got something I need to do for myself.”
When Vi had stepped out of their shared quarters, Jo sat down on the bed. Taking a deep breath, Jo flipped down her heads-up. Checking in with the recording device in her arm, she made sure it was activated properly.
Looking straight ahead, she said, “This message is for Admiral Halloway and Prince Athena.” No, that was wrong. If she’d learned anything, it was that she needed to embrace any family she had—she was going to need them all. She started over.
“Dad, Jonas, I owe you an apology …”
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Thank you so much for reading the third book in the Pax Imperium wars series. I’m looking forward to bringing you the final two books. I do make my living as a full-time writer and you can really help me out by writing a review of Gravlander on its page on Amazon.com. Thank you for all your support.