“Who would they relinquish them to?” Asten argued.
“An interesting point,” Ardeis said, considering it. “And one, I believe, in our favor. Unlike the native sentient species of Corsida, the Katarans are still very much alive. One might say they are thriving, in fact. And it is largely thanks to us.”
He leaned back in his seat. “But of course, we must surrender what territory we have claimed for ourselves, mustn’t we? After all, we are not of equal worth to humans, the Calae, the Heg-shail or the Harskans. All colonizers and conquerors. All forgiven for their crimes as they’re so long forgotten. Which is odd, isn’t it? How could everyone forget what the humans did, for instance? Even when the Federation is referred to in some history texts as the Federation of the Corsidan colonies... a name that rather overlooks the two other founding groups of the Federation, the Vaschassi and the Ksia. But there’s your woeful ignorance of history again. Still, even with all these worlds, people don’t stop and think about how the human species came to live on them all. Corsida. Halea. Eraecam. Marno. Narvashae. Cirtan. Laonist. Half the worlds of the Federation. Half the Frontier worlds too and even the worlds of the Minstrahn. So many different planets. And, with only a mere handful of exceptions, sharing a common language. What an evolutionary marvel it must have been, to have this one dominant species naturally emerge on worlds too numerous to count.” His eyes narrowed. “And your people dare to criticize mine for taking worlds of our own?”
“Look,” Asten said. “I’m sure humans have done many terrible things in their time. And I know that even now, many humans cause immense suffering for others for profit or simply for the sake of being cruel. But our days of collectively colonizing worlds that didn’t belong to us are long gone. A thousand years. Five hundred years. It’s long enough. And, furthermore, if we could right the wrongs of our ancestors, we would.”
“But you can’t, can you?” Ardeis said. “No one remembers who lived on Corsida before your people made it their home, or your world of Halea, or whether the homeworld of the Narvashae was once inhabited. When your people took what they wanted from those who possessed it, they gave no quarter in return. However, as we have already observed, the same cannot be said of my people. If you saw Katara, you would see there is no suffering there. The Imraehi are not slave traders or the orchestrators of acts of genocide. We have taken the people of Katara under our protection and care. Now, the Katarans want for nothing. Their needs are met. They have time to spend with their families and their loved ones. There is nothing more that they want and there is nothing that your precious United Frontier can offer them.”
“But they don’t have self-determination,” Asten said.
“Why in the name of all that’s good and decent would anyone want that?” Ardeis asked. “Do you know what self-determination, true freedom, is? It is loneliness, Master Asten, cold and absolute. It is to be dependent on no-one but yourself. Now, could there possibly be a man alive who could provide all his own needs and wants? Dependent on absolutely no-one else, not for the clothing that keeps him warm or the food in his belly? And, you! You ply your trade between the stars themselves, your life and everything it means dependent on the ingenuity of those who designed your vessel, the perfection in the work of those who built it, who all in turn are dependent on the inventions and discoveries of countless people who lived and died before they were even born. And you talk to me about self-determination?”
“You raise some interesting considerations,” Asten conceded, “but they’re not matters of self-determination. What you’re talking about is opportunity.”
“You cannot separate the two, Master Asten,” Ardeis countered. “Opportunity and the degree of one’s self-determination are inextricably linked. When you are dependent on yourself, you will see, Captain, and you will, that your opportunities are considerably more limited than you’d think. The people of Katara, Master Asten, in terms of their standing within the grand and complex web of the nations of this region, had self-determination for centuries and they made nothing of this gift. They would never, on the strength of their own knowledge and ability, ever come close to rivaling a nation like Kordan or even a slightly less powerful world like Koratav. Under the guidance of the Imraehi however, they are part of a nation that may one day rival the Phalamkians.”
Deramar Ardeis gave himself away in this, Asten thought, but he said nothing. He also wondered what the man meant by saying that he would see what it was like to be dependent on himself but he guessed he would find out soon enough.
Selina was also thinking somewhere along the same lines. “So what happens now?” she asked.
“That is the question,” the Imraehi leader replied, “isn’t it? There’s little value for me in keeping you two prisoner. I’ve looked over your interrogation reports, as I’ve said, and it’s the opinion of my experts that there is very little you know that we didn’t know already. Perhaps, the Adopted Lady Erama and Master Zak would have been more informative.”
“Well, I’m so sorry to have disappointed you,” Asten said.
“And I can’t shoot you either,” Ardeis continued, ignoring him. “That would be... impolite. So it is something of a minor difficulty. However, I’ve been giving it some thought over the course of our discussion here this morning and I found some inspiration reading that book of yours, Master Asten.”
“And?” Asten asked, getting impatient and trying not to show it. Right then, he felt like bringing in the whole Phalamkian navy and leveling every building in this city, particularly the one he and Selina were sitting in.
“I’m going to give you what you want,” Ardeis said. “A taste of freedom. An opportunity to enjoy that sense of self-determination you seem to value so highly. In addition, because I have no wish to be seen as unsporting, I will give you two machetes, two portable cooking sets, two sets of field rations, which should last you two weeks, two water flasks and two small portable shelters in two backpacks. I was also considering giving you inoculations for various fevers and tropical diseases but I understand you’ve already received the standard inoculations for interstellar travelers within the last five years.”
Selina frowned. She remembered being asked about that during her interrogation. Somewhere in the thousands of questions she’d been asked that day. Turning them loose in the jungles of Imraec Tarc, which was clearly what Ardeis was intending to do, had been the plan all along.
“Thank you, both,” the Imraehi leader said, planting his hands on the desk and climbing to his feet. Behind Asten and Selina, the door opened, admitting the man who had brought them there.
“Merceil will escort you to your transport,” Ardeis told them. “A pleasure to have made your acquaintances. Good day.”
Drackson opened the hatch and smiled as his companion came back aboard.
“Alia,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“Have you got a fix on Jiang?” Alia asked. “Because if you don’t, I’ve been tracking -”
“It’s fine, Alia,” Drackson said, his manner a little offhand. “We know where she is.”
Alia frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Drackson sighed. “It’s Asten and Selina.”
“What about them?”
“They’re on Imraec Tarc too. It’s a long story. But Naima and I have been tracking them too, just like you and Jiang. And we’re tracking the Lady Hawk too. Anyway, their signals diverged from the Lady Hawk’s. When we last got readings, they were planetside and the Lady Hawk had gone into orbit. Without them.”
“That’s weird,” Alia said.
“And it gets more so,” Drackson told her. “Because now we can’t get a reading on them at all.”
The small air speeder touched down and Asten and Selina heard the sound of the engine drop to a low hum. The door behind them opened and Merceil appeared, carrying the two backpacks Deramar Ardeis was supplying them.
He stepped past, opened the hatch and flung the backpacks onto the ground outside.
; Asten and Selina peered out. They were in a tiny clearing surrounded by large trees, with leafy ferns around their bases. The heat and the humidity from outside flooded into the speeder, drenching them.
“Out,” Merceil ordered, cocking a blaster and pointing it at them. “Or I’ll stun you both and throw you out.”
Selina moved towards the hatch and Asten moved to follow her. Then he lunged for Merceil, gripping his wrist and trying to pry the blaster from his grip. He would have succeeded too if Merceil hadn’t clapped his other hand on Asten’s neck and dropped him to the deck of the speeder.
Selina rushed to her husband and looked at Merceil in disbelief.
Merceil for his part just shrugged. “I thought he might have tried something like that.” Then he opened his other hand, revealing a small electronic device in his palm. “So I came prepared.”
He reached down, hoisted Asten up and threw him onto the soft ground outside.
“Guess you’ll have to wait an hour or so for him to wake up before you go anywhere,” he told Selina as she left the vehicle. “Not that it should make much difference to your travel time.” He nodded past Selina’s shoulder. “The coast lies that way. If you can make it that far, no one’s going to stop you leaving this planet. Ardeis’ orders.”
Selina watched as Merceil climbed back into the speeder and the vehicle took off, climbing up above the canopy and disappearing from her sight.
With a sigh, she dragged Asten into the shade, recovered the two backpacks that had been provided for them and started thinking about the long journey ahead.
“Naima?”
The golden hued Harskan woman, leaning over the tracking instruments that Alia had set up in an alcove near the Albatross’s mess, shook her head. “It’s no good,” she said. “I can’t get the signals back. The Lady Hawk’s still registering but I’ve got nothing on Asten and Selina.”
Behind her, Alia exhaled. “And I thought we had enough to worry about with Jiang.”
Drackson for his part appeared impassive.
“How did our other ship handle herself, by the way?” Naima asked as she made further adjustments to the instruments.
“She handled well,” Alia said. “I think we should keep her.”
Naima nodded, bringing up a display and magnifying it. “Well, I don’t see... why not. Drackson’s rich enough to manage two ships.”
Drackson tried to smile. He appreciated Naima’s efforts to lighten the mood but it was hard fighting down the anxiety he felt for his friends.
“Here,” Naima said, still looking at her display. “They were both here, in Port Alema. They left the ship near the western outskirts of the city and they stayed there all day. Then -”
“All day?” Drackson asked.
“According to the logs here,” Naima said. “Then, in the late evening, they went to a building by the coast. Then they moved - quite quickly, so they were probably in some kind of speeder - about three hundred kilometers to the north along the coast and went inland. That’s when the readings cut off.”
Drackson leaned over her shoulder, looking at the display and the information it displayed about topography, ecology and atmospheric conditions.
“That whole area’s covered in rainforest,” he said. “Jungle. Occasional patches of shrub land. But I’d say there’s something in the foliage that interferes with the transmissions from their beacons.”
“Why would they go there at all?” Alia asked. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I’d guess they didn’t go there by choice,” Drackson said. “Alia. You have the helm. We’re going to Imraec Tarc.”
Selina watched as Asten sat up, blinking in the glare of the sunlight penetrating the canopy of the trees above them.
“What happened?” he asked.
She glared at him. “What happened? You nearly got yourself killed by being a complete idiot. What the hell were you thinking?”
Asten rubbed the back of his head. “I was thinking of stealing that speeder off Merceil and getting out of here.”
“Yeah, well. What if he turned off the stun setting on his blaster? Or what if he had another weapon on him? Don’t do something like that on my watch again.”
Asten sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“I think you and I are a little too old for that kind of stuff. We should be wise enough now to know better.”
“It’s not the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done,” Asten pointed out, trying to lighten his wife’s mood.
Selina relented with a sigh and, despite herself, she chuckled. “I suppose that’d have to be either that time at the Phalamkian shield generator or the time we were chasing Lord Ilian.”
“It’s a hard call,” Asten said, “but I think those would be my top choices. That and going head to head with Vendon, although I didn’t exactly do that by choice.”
“Well, I guess I’m grateful for that one. Otherwise we would never have met.”
“True,” Asten said. “You know, I don’t know if I’ve told you or not but... ever since that time we went after Lord Ilian, I’ve been terrified of heights.”
Selina smiled. “Me too, now you mention it. And I never went dangling off an atmospheric yacht like you did either.”
Asten smiled back. “Well, there’s something at least. We’re not dangling off an atmospheric yacht.”
“Yes, that’s something. Small mercies and all that.”
“And Drackson will find us soon. I’d say once Ardeis had us flown out all this way, Drackson or Naima would have noticed something wasn’t right.”
“Probably. But I don’t know how soon we can expect a rescue. We can’t communicate with them and they might be occupied with something. And they did say they wouldn’t be here for a little while.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Asten conceded. “We got ourselves in trouble a bit sooner than we planned.”
Selina smiled and put a hand on his thigh. “Anyway, the best thing is to head somewhere where they might have a better chance of picking us up and I’d say this foliage would interfere with the tracking devices a bit.”
Asten sighed. “So we may as well play Ardeis’ game and head for the coast?”
“That’d be our best option anyway,” Selina said.
Asten looked around. “So which way should we go then?”
Selina nodded over her shoulder. “Merceil said it was this way. And I did a little bit of exploring while you were sleeping and I found a stream back there.”
Asten brightened up. “A stream?”
“That’s right,” Selina replied. “So I say we follow it as far as it goes and take it from there. No matter how long it takes. Water flows to the sea and if we can reach the coast, then we should be in better shape than we are right now, no matter how long we have to wait for a pick up.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Asten said, getting up. “Still though, I sure hope someone’s looking for us when we get there.”
“Well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it,” Selina said. “Besides, if we can make it to the coast, we might find a way to get off this planet ourselves. I think that’s part of the sporting chance Ardeis is giving us. And his monkey boy said no one would try to stop us from getting offplanet if we made it that far.”
“Very sporting,” Asten muttered. “So, ah, you’ve looked around. Are there any big animals about or anything like that?”
Selina shrugged. “Don’t know. But I haven’t seen any.” She smiled and reached into her backpack. “Here. Thought you might like this.”
“Our field rations? Are they any good?”
“I’m sure they’re as good as any field rations, for better or worse,” Selina said. “But this is something I found here.” She pulled out some kind of fruit with a semi-hard skin. Then she peeled it off and handed a bit of the fruit to Asten, who gave it a try.
“Mm,” he said. “It’s good. Kind of citrus-y.”
“Yeah. Something to break up field rations. So this place
isn’t without its charms.”
“No,” Asten agreed, taking another bite of the fruit. “Or its opportunities.”
Selina gave him an odd look. “Its opportunities?”
“That’s what this is all about,” he said. “Ardeis has given us that freedom that we want to give the Katarans, along with our backpacks and supplies. So we’ve got freedom and the right to self-determination. But he wants to make his point about opportunity.”
Selina shook her head. “Why?”
“Because he’s a petty bastard who needs something better to do with his time. However, I don’t think the trip to the coast is going to be easy.”
“You may be right.”
“But he wants us to survive at least. I guess he’s hoping we’ll go back to the United Frontier after we’ve learned our lesson and tell everyone how wrong we were about the Imraehi.”
“Well, I think he’s going to be in for a disappointment then,” Selina said. “I don’t think his arguments hold up to too much scrutiny.”
“Yeah,” Asten agreed. “Like how he compared human colonization from five hundred years ago to the Imraehi occupation of Katara? They’re two completely different things. And the way he talked about the people of Katara. Honestly, it sounded like he believed the Imraehi were doing them a huge favor by occupying their world.”
“Oh, I imagine he does believe it,” Selina said.
“You may be right. But I think he’s deluded enough to believe we’ll come around to his way of thinking because of this hike. He wants us to understand him. I mean, why would he bother trying to justify himself to us this morning like that? Who are we to him? Why should he care what we think? But he does care.”
“Because we’re not here representing the United Frontier,” Selina said as a thought occurred to her. “We’re representing Phalamki.”
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