The Ithe woman had so far not spoken a single word and only after several assurances by Cateria that she would not harm her children did she let go of the small one so my CMO could examine the infant. While I knew next to nothing about the Ithe, I estimated the bigger child to be around four or five years old and male.
He stood next to his mother while a med-bot hovered overhead, weaving a new layer of skin over a cut on his mother’s arm. His eyes on short stalks moved independently. As alien as his face and appearance was, I could no longer see him as an alien as I noticed him clutching a little stuffed animal.
She turned to me and said, “Physically there is nothing wrong with them, save for a few scrapes, small cuts, and superficial bruises. Generally speaking, they are all a little undernourished and suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies. I cured a range of allergies and hypersensitivities in all three of them, but emotionally and psychologically, they are in shock; their world as they knew it is gone. They had been simple workers till yesterday and now they are homeless and state enemies. As they are supposed to be dead, they can’t go back to their homes. At least in the case of the female, I would suggest some psycho-surgery, but of course I can’t do that on non-Union citizens without their consent.”
“No, Cateria, not this time. A Togar warrior is one thing, a mother with children another altogether.”
The white-furred Togar female fussed over Har-Hi, tending to the many little cuts he had received. Cateria noticed my glance and her lips curled to a faint smile. “Jolaj learns very fast, and she is working full shifts. Our Togar snowball is very popular, especially among the Human male portion of our crew, for some reason.”
Despite my growing comfort being female, this was not a mystery to me. “I guess we need to make her an official member, after all. Send me your recommendations.”
“She already takes Union class with SHIP.”
It was only about 30 minutes since we had returned to the Tigershark. Cateria insisted on scanning and examining me, too, especially after it turned out that the biting bugs had done more than just bite, but also deposited eggs into the wounds they caused. Har-Hi was his stoic self as the beautiful Togar told him he was infested with thousands of alien bug larvae inside him, but I knew him well enough to see the disgust in his eyes.
Cateria pushed the med scanner up and said, “There is nothing wrong with you, captain. The micromesh prevented the bugs from hurting you. I still suggest a hot shower and a change of clothing. There are hundreds of dead larvae sticking all over your suit. There is an autodresser in my office you can use.” She did not have to ask me twice.
After a refreshing shower and getting a new suit, I returned to the treatment room. Cateria was checking on the infant while she was closely observed by the Ithe women. Her little boy stood forlornly in the middle of the room.
I went over to him and he backed off, hugging his stuffed animal even tighter. So, I went to my knees and said as soft and friendly as I could, “What is the name of your friend there?”
His stalk eyes focused on me and he said with a weak voice, “Crancy.”
“Do you have a name, too?”
“Crancy is very afraid, and I am Drenc.”
“I don’t think Crancy needs to be afraid, he is safe here.”
He looked around. “Is this where you have taken Daddy, too? Can I see him?”
“No, your daddy is not here, but we will look for him.”
The mother finally spoke. “You are from the Union, are you not?”
I got up and said to her, “Yes, we are.”
She looked around, moving her eyes without moving her head, and said, “It is all so bright and clean. You help me but why don’t you help us? Why don’t you do something for all of us?” She spread her arms. “We are simple people. I am just a seamstress working on sewing machine 3454 in factory 865. My life partner was a pattern cutter in the same factory. We know nothing of galactic politics. It is forbidden to know anything about other worlds. It is forbidden to ask questions.”
I sighed. “Lady, I know very little about the conditions on your world. We are quite distant from any Union outpost or planet. What are we are supposed to do?”
She cried while she pointed her finger at me. “It is all true, what the Instigators say. The Union is clean and mighty and powerful and cares little about others. Do you know how many Ithe died or disappeared just because they listened to the Instigators and their dream to join your shiny Union?”
She sobbed and looked at her children. “Now my partner is on his way to slowly die as a slave on the Smelter Moons on drummed-up charges to appease our cruel true masters, the lords of Karthania.”
She gestured over to her children. “What will become of them?” She put her hands over her stalk eyes and whispered, “What will become of me?”
I asked her, “Is there a place you can go?”
She uncovered her eyes and said, “I think I could find shelter with my grandparents. They have a small Nuktur farm in the mountains, the gray leather coats of the Drake rarely go there.”
I said, “Okay, then that is where we will take you as soon as possible.”
She looked at me. “Rench, my partner, said there is a secret community of the Instigators and those who want to fight against the Karthanian oppressors and their puppets are welcome there.” Her tone of voice changed and there was an edge. “I never wanted to have anything to do with them, but now I want to fight. Make them pay for what they did to us, but if I fight what will become of my children?”
The little boy held out his stuffed animal and said to me, “Crancy is hurt, too; can you make Crancy well, too? Daddy said I must take very good care of Crancy.”
I smiled and took the stuffed animal. “I am sure we can.”
I put the toy on the diagnostic station, and Cateria pulled down the diagnostic scanner with a sigh.
“I knew I would get some strange cases, being your CMO. Nul, Y’All, with a toothache but I never dreamed to perform surgery on a stuffed toy animal.” She then glanced at the boy and changed her tone and said, “Let’s see what is wrong with Crancy.”
The young Ithe boy looked in awe as his stuffed animal appeared as a large three-dimensional scan image on the field screens. There was an obvious tear in the fluffy fabric and some of the white stuffing was coming out.
One of the scan images showed the interior of the animal. It had some sort of mechanical or electronic component inside. She glanced at me then she said, looking to the ceiling, “SHIP, can you call an engineer up to sickbay? We have a special patient here.”
SHIP responded, “Circuit is on his way.”
I smiled at the boy. “Crancy will be good as new I am sure of it.” To his mother, I said, “I suggest you find some rest and then we’ll figure out how to get you to your grandparents without being seen.”
She nodded and I left sickbay to check on the bridge and the ship’s status.
Outside, I almost ran into Narth, who just popped out of thin air. He said, “The Ithe woman is not as innocent as she says she is. She belongs to the rebels of that society.”
I looked over my shoulder toward sickbay and said, “I had a feeling she was. On the one hand, she claims to be just a factory worker but with the same breath she accused us of not helping. I still sympathize with her. Maybe the civilians weren’t as innocent as I assumed they were, but shooting women and children after dragging them out of their homes is still the vilest thing I ever thought possible.”
He nodded. “It is, and from what I can gather, they do fight for liberties and freedom and those are very strong concepts I can understand.”
“Anything happen while we were gone?”
“Of course, many thousands of events happened while you were gone, but none of any significance to ship, mission, or crew.”
“I thought you were getting used to Human expressions by now.”
“Getting used to them is not the same as understanding them. Do you have any idea
how many such expressions you corporal beings use every day? It takes a significant portion of my intellect and several thought levels at once to constantly analyze and reference them.”
“Well, I am glad you found something to do with that superior intellect and all those thought levels of yours. It would be a waste to have them do nothing.”
“Do you want to talk about your first use of telekinetics?”
I stared at him. “My what?”
“You saved that child from falling, by reaching out with your psionic abilities.”
I wanted to argue with him that I had no psionic abilities, but it was a lie I told myself. What had become of the Neo-Viking that left Nilfeheim not so long ago? Not only my outside had changed, and it was not simply growing up. I’d evolved and mutated into something else.
I looked at my mysterious friend and sighed. “What am I?”
Narth put his hand on my shoulder and said, “The sum of all that is Narth would fail to predict what you are going to be, but I, for the moment, would say you are a very stubborn Neo-Viking refusing to accept the facts and you should really begin to practice the exercises I have asked you to do.”
“Narth, deep down, I am still a simple boy from Nilfeheim. I never understood my own desires to be female, and I prefer a sword of cold steel over blasters and psionics.”
Then I added quietly, “I am more afraid of the unknown thing inside me than I am of anything else. Despite the efforts of the Narth Supreme to erase or bury memories of recent events, I can feel it stir. I can feel someone, something, move in the deepest regions of myself.”
He said, “I know, I can feel it, too, but you are not alone. Har-Hi, Shea, and me, I am not just Narth, I am your friend. The exercises are very important though. You know how dangerous it was for Alice.”
“She is very powerful, as you said. Moving a child and pounding a landing tank to scrap is a different story. How is she anyway?”
“She is fine and taking Union school classes; her education was severely neglected on Trash Island. As for your level of—”
We were interrupted by Circuit who came out of sickbay. “The toy is as good as new and does all the things it is supposed to do.”
I smiled at him. “I didn’t think a toy would pose a serious challenge to my chief engineer.”
He held up a tiny, black, wafer-thin, square-shaped thing. “This, however, was not part of the original design of the toy.”
I looked at it. “What is it?”
Circuit held it higher. “It is a truly ancient program chip. Like the ones Mothermachine used many thousand years ago. I am sure it’s some sort of activation key for something like a computronic.”
I shrugged. “Could it not be part of the toy’s program, or from some other electronic toy?”
“Captain, that chip is at least 5,000 years old and it appears Karthanian. Yet it is way beyond Karthanian technology of today and certainly beyond anything the Ithe could produce.”
To me, it looked just like a little bit of plastic. “Can you and Shea try to figure out what it exactly is?”
He palmed the thing. “That is where I am going, as soon as Shea’s bridge shift ends.”
“All right, keep me posted.”
I went to the bridge myself and found Shea sitting in the command chair. She smiled at me, and her eyes told me she was very glad I was back. Aloud, she gave me a situation report and then Elfi said, “The Red Dragon called and left a message. He said that we should meet him as discussed in 60 days on the Second Planet. He also wanted you to know that all associated with the quest were able to leave with all their possessions, but the pirate Nocturna has indeed died. Her crew elected a new captain and left Itheamh.”
I said, “It looks like you’ve got things well in hand here. I need to return to Itheamh once more to make sure our guests get to a safe place.”
Shea said, “I heard you rescued a woman and her children. We saw the execution, as it was broadcast. Heavily edited, of course, but it was still horrible.”
“Yes, it was. I was under the impression Itheamh was a lawful, somewhat oppressed, but normal world, but it is anything but.”
Sobody got up. “It is, captain. It is just not Union laws they are enforcing. The Ithe have a long and violent history. This world is not their real home world, after all. It is the second one, the first one had been made barren and inhabitable by a nuclear war. The Ithe society here grew out of a former colony. Ithe and Drak are the same species.”
He walked toward the main screen that showed the planet below from a visual feed of the dock the Tigershark was still in. He pointed at the world below. “This world is barely able to sustain life. It is a very dry world with very little water. The colonists needed help to survive and help they got from the nearby Karthanians. The help they received was not free; they paid and are still paying for it after over 500 years. The Drak, supported by the Karthanians, oppress the Ithe that had been here, but it is lawful.” He sighed. “The Karthanians are not like the Union, who would help without asking for anything in return.”
I also looked at the ash-colored planet slowly turning below. “Why haven’t they simply taken over then?”
Sobody explained, “The Karthanians are extreme xenophobes. They do not like other beings sharing their worlds with them. Yet they want to do business with the rest of the Galaxy, so Itheamh and a few other worlds like this are used by them like storefronts. You can buy Karthanian tech and ships here, have ships repaired in docks like this that are in orbit. Most of them are, as you know, controlled by the Karthanian Guilds.”
Shea looked at her PDD. “Since there was not much to do, Mehedi and I analyzed their political situation. From what we could gather from their broadcasts, it is the Karthanian who cleverly keep the division between the Ithe alive. The old reasons that drove them to war on their old world are kept alive here. One part of the population is in power, even though they are nothing but puppets, while the other is kept just above poverty and does all the labor. The ones in power have to keep their masters happy, provide the Karthanian with cheap labor and maintain their status of power over the rest.
“There is a group calling themselves the Instigators, who want to break free from these conditions and unite all Ithe. While the Instigators have a broad base of sympathizers in the general population, they are split among themselves. There are the purists who want to brush all alien influence away and decide on Itheamh’s future alone. Then there are those who believe they have no chance doing that on their own. They hope for Union interference and finally Union membership. This group believes that the Union would protect them from Karthanian reprisals.”
I said, “Would that not be the best solution for them? Maybe we can do something in that regard.”
Sobody glanced at Shea’s PDD and spread his arms. “I have assisted Lt. Schwartz in that analysis as well and we have found out that an Official Union Delegation had been here about a year ago, following an invitation by the Instigators, but they left without taking the application to Pluribus because it could only be considered if all of Itheamh applies for Union membership. The Magistrate of Ithe is still the official government and the Instigators could not even claim to have a large majority behind them openly wishing for membership.”
Har-Hi had silently stepped onto the bridge. “I have seen the execution, too, captain, and I would love to do something about that, but nation building and interfering with local politics takes much work and lots of time. They have been at each other’s throats for over 500 years.
“If we remove the evil that controls them, there is a good chance they’ll use their newfound freedom to do what they had done before the Karthanian helped them and bomb themselves out of their second home.”
I knew he was right. What he said made much sense and again he showed how well he knew me. I wanted to do something for the children. Find their father if possible or at least get something in motion that would provide them with a better future. Not that I ha
d any idea how I would even get started doing that and still follow the Red Dragon on his quest in just two months.
I said, “Let us get our guests into the mountains to safety and forget about Itheamh.”
We decided to use one of our camouflaged landing tanks. These marvels of Union technology could cloak.
Not that the Ithe maintained planet-wide scans in the first place, but I wanted to make sure we could drop the woman and her children unnoticed by anyone.
Mr. Eeeryt, our chef, came almost running, carrying a big package. “We can’t have them leave without some provisions!”
I smiled at him and said, “I guess the whole ship knows about our guests?”
The Elly wiggled his short trunk-like snout and said, “It is you who allows everyone to listen to what is going on. We are all very proud of you, captain.”
I blinked. “What for?”
The cook pointed at the Ithe family standing next to the landing tank, the mother holding her children close while she was talking to Har-Hi and looking on a PDD.
“Saving them, captain, of course. Isn’t that the real reason we are out here? Making a difference to those who can’t do it for themselves; that is what we are really about. It’s not the ships and the tech that makes our Union stronger and better, but that we don’t turn away from those who need help.”
I sighed. “I wish I could do more for them, but the situation is complicated.”
“We know, captain; we heard the XO. Still, we know you’ll find a solution to all this.”
He said that with such conviction that I did not contradict him. I said, “I try my best, Mr. Eeeryt.”
Har-Hi walked over. “It wasn’t easy, but she finally recognized the village she needs to go to. She has virtually no geographical knowledge of her own continent and there are quite a few mountain villages.”
“Well, let’s get this over with.”
Har-Hi raised one eyebrow. “Captain, there is really no need for you to come along. We drop them at the bottom of the path and all they have to do is walk two kilometers and they are safe.”
Eric Olafson Series Boxed Set: Books 1 - 7 Page 136