In the back of my mind I was expecting some trouble from Ming, and he didn’t let me down, but the magnitude of what he did next took everyone by disbelief.
It was about mid-morning of the next day when Dr. Danjuma called for me. “First Citizen, could you and First Citizen Kalana please come by the med unit, please? We have a small crisis here.”
Kala and I immediately headed to the med unit and entered to find one of the Chinese women in hysteria and Dr. Danjuma trying to calm her down. Kala immediately went over to the woman and tried to comfort her, but with little result.
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked the doctor. “What is this woman so upset about?”
“I don’t know, I told her that her child was due any day now and at any time, and suddenly she became hysterical and started screaming and acting like you see her now. If I were to let her leave here I think she would try and kill herself.”
“Has she said anything intelligent at all?” I asked.
“Nothing that makes any sense; she mumbles about drinking blood and eating sick meat and that she cannot…and then I don’t understand anything after that because she is sobbing so hard.”
Suddenly, the woman Kala was trying to calm broke free and ran to the door, straight into the arms of Jenira, who had mysteriously appeared at that moment. The woman was sobbing wildly and hugged Jenira as though she was relieved to see her. Jenira held her a moment and then pushed her back and began signing to the woman.
“What is wrong, why are you so upset?” Jenira signed.
The woman sobbed. “Please, Nǚrén De Dāopiàn, do not let my baby be eaten!”
“What!” I exclaimed when I heard this, nearly missing what Jenira signed back. At the same time I realized that in Chinese Nǚrén De Dāopiàn translated to Woman-with Swords.
“No one here will eat your baby,” Jenira signed as she looked accusingly around the room at us.
I raised both my hands in a surrender position as I responded,” Certainly not I, and I don’t think Kala or Doctor Danjuma would do something like that.”
“Oh my god no!” Dr. Danjuma exclaimed suddenly. “Don’t you see? It all makes sense now. She’s not talking about us or the crew of your ship! She’s talking about MING!!!”
I was floored. “Surely you don’t think Ming would eat a child?” I exclaimed as the Chinese woman began to wail even louder as she clung tightly to Jenira. “I know he’s an arrogant bastard, but to eat a CHILD?”
“But don’t you see, it makes sense. Ming, Yǎnjìngshé, and Láng are the only ones whose B12 levels were high; all the rest were deficient. The three of them had to be getting meat from someplace. The pregnant women are all spaced at about 4 to 6 weeks apart in their pregnancies. Ming was breeding them like cattle to keep a supply of meat going for himself and his friends. He didn’t want to eat his own children, so he put the breeding duty on to Láng, Yǎnjìngshé was the caretaker and overseer of the operation.” Behind me I heard retching and looked to see Kala doubled over vomiting on the floor. I was feeling a bit ill myself at that point. I looked at the woman in Jenira’s arms with a questioning look, and with tear filled eyes she nodded affirmative to what the doctor was saying. Suddenly I saw Jenira’s eyes fill with rage and she pushed the woman away and started out the door, her hands reaching for the hilts of her swords.
“NO! Jenira, STOP…!” I shouted, but to no avail, as she sped down the hall ahead of me towards Ming’s suite. I knew there was no way I could catch her, but I also knew it was a long way to Ming’s suite. I quickly called to Kerabac on the bridge. “Kerabac, I need you to seal off all the accesses between the med units and Ming’s suite. Do it immediately!”
“Okay, Tibby, it’s done. May I ask why?”
“I’m trying to keep Jenira from killing Ming, although after what I just learned I’m not sure why I am trying to save him. Can you locate which area Jenira is trapped in at the moment?”
“Yes, I can see her on the vid screen right now. She is trying to pry a hatch door open with one of her swords. She looks madder than an Izurian mindat with its tail on fire.”
“Is there a way you can route Marranalis and a security team around her and get to Ming’s suite?” I asked.
“Hmm let me check. You’re in luck--Marranalis is not far from Ming at the moment. It won’t be hard to get him there.”
“Great! Have him go to Ming’s suite. I want both Ming and Yǎnjìngshé taken into custody and placed in a cell. No one is to get to see them until we get back to the Federation, especially Jenira; we may have to lock her up to keep her out. Once we reach Megelleon, I want Ming, Yǎnjìngshé and Láng turned over to the proper authorities for prosecution.”
“By the stars, Tibby, what have they done?”
“I’ll tell you later. It’s a very long story and it’s more important we get Ming and Yǎnjìngshé isolated before anything else happens.”
Jenira was furious by the time I had Kerabac unseal the corridor she was in; but with a little effort on Kala and my part, we were able to calm her down, although she still wanted to go slice Ming up into pieces. We had not been able to locate Yǎnjìngshé; Marranalis said she was there one minute while they were taking Ming into custody and the next minute she was gone. We checked the security cameras and she was seen leaving Ming’s suite, but none of the other security cameras picked her up. Marranalis theorized that somehow she had gotten hold of one of our cloaking wrist bands and used it to get away and that she was hiding somewhere on the vast ship. We had everyone on the ship searching for her, but were unable to locate her. Although we had gotten Jenira to promise she would not harm Yǎnjìngshé if she found her, I was worried that she would kill her if she found her first.
With Ming and Láng both imprisoned and under guard, the Chinese women were more talkative and seemed less tense; they even smiled and laughed a little, but they tended to congregate around Jenira, apparently feeling safer in her presence. I had a difficult time getting Commodore Stonbersa and Captain Kerabac to believe that Ming, Láng and Yǎnjìngshé had been killing and eating the babies born to the women on the lunar colony, but once convinced, Stonbersa was all for passing judgment on Ming and his cohorts and dumping them into the vacuum of space. I was reluctant to do so, as I felt that judgment of the Federation would be better suited to the situation.
I didn’t get to meet with Dr. Hughes the following two days, as he felt he needed to spend time with the Chinese women discussing what had happened to them and to help them to deal with the feelings they had about it. At first they were very reluctant to speak with him, but finally they agreed as long as Jenira accompanied them. Reluctantly, Dr. Hughes agreed, but he was afraid that Jenira would interrupt the sessions with her own thoughts, which he didn’t want her to do. He was very surprised when Jenira didn’t say anything at all but simply sat silently in the room while he worked with the women.
In the mean time I was busy with search teams trying to find Yǎnjìngshé. She managed to disappear and stay hidden without a trace of her whereabouts. I had anticipated that after a few hours when the power in her cloaking device wore down that we would find her, but she had apparently found an area not under surveillance on the ship and was staying put. I turned to A’Lappe in hopes that he would be able to locate her, as he knew the ship better than anyone and had avoided us finding him for weeks, even after we became aware of his presence on the ship, but he was as much at a loss as to where she could be as we were. We were still about two days out from Megelleon when Yǎnjìngshé came out of hiding.
Kala and I had been lounging in our suite listening to some of the classical music retrieved from the data cubes the Mars team brought with them from Earth. Kala was enthralled by the works of Tchaikovsky; on this particular occasion, we were listening to Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor Op.23. Kala was enchanted by the piece, and I must confess that I enjoyed it also. However, I was more of a Beethoven fan, possibly because I had more exposure to him in high school music and found
myself fascinated when I discovered he wrote most of his best music when he was deaf.
Kala was lying on the floor on some large throw pillows in front of the fire place deeply engrossed in the music while I lay there admiring her now bulging stomach that left little doubt as to her pregnancy. She noticed me looking and smiled as she took my hand and placed it on her abdomen. Abruptly I felt a thump against my hand, and then another.
“Is that them kicking?” I asked in astonishment to think that inside her two small human babies grew, receiving nourishment from her body.
“Yes, that’s them, they have been quite active today for some reason.” The fact that they shared Kala’s and my DNA made it even more exciting and amazing to me.
The particular rendition we were listening to was an old recording that had been performed by Van Cliburn and had been recorded during my lifetime on Earth; I had heard it several times in my life; it was during one of the mellower and more romantic parts of the rendition when my com link beeped.
“Tibby here,” I answered.
“Tibby, this is Kerabac. We have a problem. Ming and Láng both have escaped and are on the loose in the ship someplace. We found the guards to their cells dead outside the compartments they were confined in. They were killed by some small poisonous darts, but we have no idea how they were delivered. We just checked the vid cameras in the corridor where Ming and Láng were confined and we can see the guards fall and then Yǎnjìngshé appears and releases both Ming and Láng. You can see Ming and Yǎnjìngshé appearing to argue briefly and then Ming and Láng go off in one direction and Yǎnjìngshé goes another. Marranalis and our security teams are headed to the area now, and doing a sweep as we go looking for them. We are issuing a ship wide bulletin alerting people to their escape and telling them that if anyone sees any of the three to let the bridge know immediately.”
“I’m on my way,” I replied. Kala looked at me questioningly. I was sure she had heard the conversation, so I said to her. “You should stay here. You’re not in any shape to be out chasing down the bad guys.” Kala nodded and lay back on the pillows. “You better arm yourself before you go out there,” she said.
“Right,” I said as I backed away from the door and went to the small arms locker in the wall and retrieved several weapons. “I think it would be best you stay here in the suite until I return, or until you hear that we have our prisoners in custody again.”
“I’ll be right here,” she answered. I turned and walked over and gave her a kiss. “I’ll be back shortly, after all, where can they go?”
“Ha,” Kala laughed. “Look how long A’Lappe and Yǎnjìngshé managed to elude you on this ship. It could take you months to track them down.”
“Not this time,” I answered, “we’ll find them pretty quickly I’m sure.”
I headed out and started back to where the holding cells were that Ming and Láng had been held in. I was pretty angry; several of my crew had been killed by Yǎnjìngshé; she, Ming and Láng had been breeding women like cattle and harvesting and eating their children. Why was I allowing them to live to stand trial, I asked myself. I hadn’t gone far when I encountered Jenira hastily coming down the corridor toward me with a look of concern on her face.
“Where is Kalana?” she signed rapidly, “is she safe?”
“She’s in our suite listening to music,” I signed, “She’s fine.” I started to head on and then on an afterthought I said. “I’d appreciate it if you went and stayed with her until this is all over.”
Jenira didn’t answer but turned and headed toward Kala’s and my suite at a rapid pace.
I called Marranalis on my com link as I headed toward the prisoner holding area. “Are you making any progress? Any signs of Ming?”
“Nothing so far, Tibby, we suspect that he will try to get off the ship, so we are concentrating on the hangar and the space between there and the prisoner area.”
“Well unless he has one of our crew to pilot one, he’s going nowhere. All our ships are coded for entry and only their assigned pilots and crews can access them. Besides, neither Ming, Yǎnjìngshé, nor Láng know how to pilot any of our ships, so where do they think they are going? This doesn’t make sense, it’s a very poorly conceived plan,” I said.
“You’re right, Tibby, we’ve just covered the space between the hangar and the prisoner area and there has been no sign of them. All the space suits are still in place, so they can’t be in the hangar, but just in case, I’m having a team suit up to check out the ships and make sure that somehow they didn’t get out there and aboard one. Tibby, you don’t think they may have found the ALI and headed to your personal hangar?”
“If they know about my personal hangar, then they most likely know about the maintenance tunnels throughout the ship. That would explain why we couldn’t find Yǎnjìngshé earlier and why we can’t find Ming and Láng now. They’re in the tunnels or at my personal hangar trying to get into the ALI. I’m on my way there. Meet me there as soon as you can.”
Once I had gotten down in the maintenance tunnels I moved slowly. I had been there before with A’Lappe and sort of knew my way around, but there were so many trunks and tunnels that veered off the main tunnel that it was easy to get confused. The cables and pipes and the spaces in and around them offered lots of hiding places as well, so I moved with caution looking right, left, up and down everywhere trying to spot any of the escapees who might be hiding there. I was getting close to the ALI hangar area when I started picking up the sound of Ming's cursing.
“Yǎnjìngshé didn’t tell us how to board this ship!” he fumed. “Where has she gone? Why is she not here to get us out of this place? Soon their guards will think to look here and we will be captured again.”
“Yǎnjìngshé will be here soon,” Láng answered. “She said she was going to make Tibby pay for how he has treated you and will bring you something you highly prize.”
“I would highly prize being out of here!” Ming declared. “We must find a place not in this Federation that Tibby talks about.”
“Yǎnjìngshé has been using their learning headbands and says she has learned how to navigate and fly their ships and she is sure she can get us to worlds not part of the Federation. She believes we can sell this ship of Tibby’s for a handsome sum of money and establish ourselves in a safe place, or we can use this ship to raid other ships and accumulate wealth.”
Unexpectedly, I could hear Marranalis and his men coming through the tunnels from the other side of the ALI hangar area.
“Silence,” Ming ordered Láng. “We need to hide somewhere."
“Back there in those tunnels,” Láng said.
I heard them coming my way, but before I could get out of sight Láng spotted me.
“Look out Ming, it's Tibby.” Láng shouted as he lifted his arm to fire with one of the weapons they had taken from the guards when they escaped. I reacted instinctively, and before he had a chance to get off a shot, I fired, burning a hole through his chest. Láng buckled at his knees and then dropped face down on the deck, dead. Instantly Ming raised his arms shaking and cried out, “Don’t kill me! Don’t shoot! See-- I am unarmed,” he sobbed.
It took all my restraint to keep from killing Ming on the spot; I was gritting my teeth so tightly that I am amazed I didn’t break a tooth. Behind Ming in the tunnel I saw Marranalis and his men rushing forth; two of them grabbed Ming and put him into restraints while Marranalis and another checked out Láng’s body on the deck.
“This one isn’t going to be going back to a cell, he’s dead.” Marranalis stated. “Why didn’t you kill this other piece of filth as well?”
“Believe me, I want to, but I think he will suffer more if kept alive in a Federation prison for the rest of his life.” I replied.
“Where is Ming’s woman?” Marranalis asked.
“Láng said that Yǎnjìngshé went someplace to do something to make me pay for my treatment of Ming,” I responded as I began pondering what that might be. I doubted th
at she would have the ability to do anything to blow up the ship, the only thing that she could do that would really hurt me was…. “Kala!, she’s going to harm Kala!” I lifted my wrist com to call Kala. “Kala, Yǎnjìngshé is headed your way; she plans to harm you in some way.” There was no reply. “Kala, did you hear me?” Silence was my reply as I took off running down the tunnel back the way I came and toward my suite. As I neared our suite I suddenly saw a raised panel in the tunnel above me; it was obvious that Yǎnjìngshé had used this as a way into our suite.
Cautiously I climbed up through the open hatch to find myself standing in the bath area of my suite. From deeper inside our suite I could hear Yǎnjìngshé’s voice. “So lovely you are,” she said tauntingly as I crept closer. “When I am finished with you, you will not be so pretty for Tibby anymore.” As I crept nearer I could see part of Kala’s form lying on the floor, but the rest of her body was hidden by the bed. For a moment I got a glimpse of the top of Yǎnjìngshé’s head on the other side the bed, and it was obvious that she was kneeling on the floor by Kala’s body. Kala’s head was turned toward me her eyes open, but she appeared paralyzed and unable to move or speak. “Tibby ruined Ming’s feast,” Yǎnjìngshé said in a bitter tone, but now Tibby’s children will feed him, a just payment I think.” I saw Yǎnjìngshé hand raise just above the top of the bed, a knife in her hand, I tried to aim and fire, but before I could, Jenira flew into the room behind Yǎnjìngshé, her two swords a blur as the came down in a stabbing motion. I rushed into the room to Kala; Jenira looked up at me for a second as I reached Kala’s side. I glanced at Yǎnjìngshé to see both of Jenira’s blades protruding, one on each side of Yǎnjìngshé body between the collarbone and the neck and straight down in her body. Yǎnjìngshé’s head hung forward and it was obvious that she was dead.
Solbidyum Wars Saga 4: Too Late for Earth Page 28