Page 35 of Escape from Nova Nine
Unfortunately, six of the twenty launched ships hadn’t been so lucky. And worse, they only knew what had happened to two of them. The other four had simply vanished. Once the rest of the scattered ships had established tight-beam comms, they’d held a moment of silence to mourn the friends they had lost.
After they’d gone far enough, the pilot letWobbly, their newly christened ship, drift on its own. With no onboard weapons, not even debris lasers, their only defense was pretending to be one with the lifeless void.
Julke slept like the dead. Without stay-awake chems, her body had cratered. He’d carried her to the narrow bed in one of the quaint little staterooms and attached a strap to her suit in case they lost gravity. She only woke to down the water pouches he left for her.
He slept nearby on the floor on a makeshift mattress of blankets. Just as well, because Mayek and other griffins kept wanting to snuggle with him, and their claws tore up the bedding. Three of the rock griffins in particular had apparently adopted him. They orbited him wherever he went, so it amused him to name them after old Earth system planets.
The other seventeen griffins explored everywhere and tried to eat anything, to the exasperation of the rest of the crew. He didn’t have Sutrio’s enviable gift of mentally connecting to griffin thoughts, but he could project disappointment and warning when their behavior got out of hand. At least he figured out how to train the griffins to poop in designated areas, or the crew would have probably locked them all in the hold.
When he wasn’t fishing pieces of mealpack trays out of impromptu griffin nests, he and Lantham provided operations advice to other surviving ships with crews who didn’t have as much experience. All the ships turned out to have the same innovative hydroponics-enviro system design that was better than some modern ships. Lantham and Prughal, the enviro specialist, spent long hours examining them.
Then Julke’s help arrived. He’d needed to wake her for proof of life, and so she could handle the sometimes confusing and sometimes fraught negotiations. Indie traders, frontier planet defenders, and Volksstam ship leaders were understandably wary of one another.
Prisoners needed to be returned to their families and former lives. A few needed new lives. They all needed medical and stress-trauma care.
Not to mention, the hundred-plus griffins packed into the antique ships all needed new homes as well.
Julke sat in on all the meetings, using her presence and her words to remind them why they were all there. He sat in so he could learn, and support Julke if she needed it.
Nova Nine had ceased all communications. An impenetrable barrage of defenses shot at anything that got too close. None of the rescue ships were inclined to dig Kanogan or the pharma company minions out of their rat’s nest. It was theorized they’d already escaped and left a weapons AI to defend the asteroid. Zade wasn’t so sure, considering how much the warden disliked AIs.
It didn’t matter. Nova Nine would never be a prisoner trap again. Too many people now knew where it was and what it had. It was only a matter of time before the hyenas arrived to take it apart.
Also, something, maybe opening the airlocks or launching so many ships, had unblocked the emergency comms satellite. It had been broadcasting away ever since. That would eventually draw the CGC military to investigate why a nearly two-hundred-year-old comms node was now suddenly back online.
The jackers who were after Waorani turned out to be a rival pharma company’s mercenaries masquerading as jackers. Kanogan’s pharma company partner had been lax about security. The rival firm knew just enough to track the shipment of recruits, so they’d sent Waorani. When he disappeared, they hijacked a cargo as a bargaining chip and came looking. They’d just about decided to leave when the Volksstam fleet arrived and detained them for questioning.
Then Julke’s grandmother had invited her and the other four Volksstam to her personal ship for a consultation. They hadn’t said a word when Julke had added Zade’s name to the list.
Luckily,Wobbly’s cargo airlock was good enough to connect directly to the bigger Volksstam ship. It would have been a travesty to punch a new hole in the beautifulWobblyfor a new airlock.
Though he’d been tempted to take Mayek with him, he’d decided all the griffins would be safer staying onWobbly. As a precaution, he’d shut them in the largest cargo hold with enough open mealpacks to keep them busy for a day. Cleaning up the mess would be a small price to pay.
As they crossed the threshold, Zade trailed the group, watching Julke. Once again, he was the noob, watching the smartest person on the ship so he could stay alive. The only difference was, this time, he didn’t want to escape.
He did, however, want to clean up before meeting the grand matriarch. She clearly terrified the other Volksstam and made brave, wily Julke square her shoulders like she was marching into battle.
His exosuit stank, and he stank even worse. After six days of wearing it, with no way to clean out the pads, he felt like moss had started to grow between his toes, and less comfortable places. He’d have gladly traded his hearing protection implants for odor-blocking implants. The only consolation was that the rest of their little group smelled just as bad.
Apparently, someone anticipated this problem, because the person who greeted them took them straight to separate small rooms with their own tiny freshers. They’d even provided clothes. Zade used the chem spray cycle three times before he felt clean enough to slip into the pullover robe and belt it, then step into the loose sandals. He left the odiferous exosuit in the far corner. The room would probably have to be fumigated if they didn’t get the suit out of there soon.
The door chimed, then opened to reveal Julke dressed in a similar robe and sandals. She held out her hand. “Time for the pageant.”
He took her proffered hand, glad for the contact and to briefly reconnect his empath talent with hers. If he’d been a telepath, he could have told her he’d back any play she came up with. Since he wasn’t, all he could do was share his love and his determination to support her.
Once they were taken to the audience with Benthe Robynsdytr, he could see why Julke called it the pageant.
The room was big enough to rival a prosperous space trader guild hall. The decoration style could charitably be called eclectic, with a dizzying mix of art, color, and function. The twenty or so people in the hall had plenty of choices for chairs. Three giant holo displays showed groups of more people, presumably live connections to the other eight Volksstam ships that accompanied theArs Memoriae.
Benthe Robynsdytr sat in the center of the room on an ornate chair. The raised dais under her had three steps on both sides and the front. Behind her, a long antique was filled with serving dishes of food. The wonderful smells had Zade’s stomach reminding him that it had been shamefully neglected of late. If he never saw another prisoner mealpack containing “pasty striped neochi,” whatever that was supposed to be, it would be too soon.
Blessedly, Benthe, as she’d told everyone to address her, wasted no time in cutting to the core. She greeted the other Volksstam prisoners each by name, welcoming them back and saying she was looking forward to hearing their stories. That was the gist, anyway, based on Zade’s limited understanding of classical Dutch.
Then she turned to look at Julke and him. He couldn’t see any physical resemblance to Julke, other than height, but she had the same force of personality.
“Julke Defayensdytr, I understand you have important news.” Her Standard English had a hint of clipped consonants.
Zade hid a frown. Maybe it was just the Volksstam way, but it felt like disrespect for Benthe to be less welcoming to her own granddaughter than she was to the others. Despite his determined containment, he couldn’t help but notice that the matriarch was a shielder, a miniature black hole as far as emotions. Sometimes shielders had a hard time letting other people in.
