Cat and Company (21 page)

Varnham hung in the sky ahead, a blue globe with swirling clouds and the misty edges that spoke of a rich atmosphere. In front of it was the sprawling, eclectic space city.

The space between the
Hana
and the city was thick with ships, far more than had been hanging in the space around Charlton. Even as she watched, new ships were winking into view.

Cleon, the second navigator, swiveled on his chair to face Devlin. His gaze, though, was focused on the flow of information he was receiving via his tether. “Bedivere sent the coordinates across the datacore. We have ships reporting in from all known systems and some non-registered craft.”

“Dark space ships,” Catherine said. “New Gaia, Fu-Sang, the mining colonies....they’re all responding.”

“United against a common enemy,” Devlin said. He moved over to the sofas and sat on the one opposite her. “This is out of my hands,” he added and nodded toward the three pilots. “The Varkan are uniquely skilled. They are the only ones who can do this, now.”

“Any ship that can land has been directed to the surface to pick up as many passengers as they can,” Mael said. “The rest are to latch onto the space city and take passengers from there.” He swiveled the chair enough to look at Devlin for permission.

“Do whatever you’re asked to do,” Devlin said. “We’ll dock at the city, of course.” The
Hana
was too big to land. It had been built in space and entering the atmosphere and gravity well of a planet would tear it apart.

Catherine got to her feet.

Devlin glanced at her and lifted a brow.

“We’re going to be taking a lot of people aboard,” she pointed out. “All they need is enough floor space to stand up, so every square centimeter of the ship will be full. That’s going to take coordination. To begin, I want all the permanent crew here on the bridge, and the boardrooms behind it. And I want their quarters opened and the space available.”

Devlin stood. “There’ll be a lot of hysterical people to deal with. I’ll help.”

* * * * *

That was the beginning of the exodus from Varnham. The Periglus fleet took three days to reach the planet from the system gates, which were on the far side of the system from Varnham. In those three days their approach could be seen like the aurora that heralded sunrise. Their ships lit up space with the glow of their engines and the reflection of the Sunita star off their surfaces.

In those three days, no one slept except for cat naps when it wasn’t possible to go on without passing out. Catherine ate when someone pressed a handful of food into her palm as she worked. She had directed one of the AIs to coordinate human biological needs and make sure no one on the ship was deprived too badly while they concentrated on the urgent matter of survival and the AI in turn directed Varkan and people to make meals, serve portions and provide water as needed. It was background activity she barely noticed.

Catherine lost track of how many jumps they made. Each time they docked at the station city and opened the doors, a flood of people would stream onto the ship through every portal it had. After the first few jumps the crew developed a routine that would fill every crevasse of the ship in the fastest time possible. No one was permitted to bring possessions with them except for what they could hold in their hands, to maximize the numbers they could take onboard.

As soon as the ship was filled, it would drift off into local space, then jump back to Charlton.

Every Varkan-piloted ship in the galaxy was repeating the same process. They would take on board the most people they could squeeze in, then jump back to their point of origin, offload the evacuees, then jump back to Varnham.

On the second day, the station city was emptied. Only the people living on the planet itself were left. AIs and the station’s citymind ran the automated processes needed to allow shuttles from the surface to dock and disgorge their passengers, and direct them to the nearest waiting Varkan transport.

Other Varkan ships that could navigate the atmosphere and land were picking up passengers from the surface directly. That would include the
Aliza
, for Bedivere had insisted that whatever ship he owned must be able to maneuver and land in gravity. The ability to land had proved far too useful in the past, so he had eschewed one of the light, large and elegant Varkan-designed craft for a new ship built using traditional designs meant to withstand inertia and gravity stresses and could cope with whatever atmosphere it found itself in.

Bedivere coordinated every single ship, in a prodigious display of multi-tasking and control. Every time Catherine or the three
Hana
pilots had a question, Bedivere always had the answer. And he was doing it all while piloting the
Aliza
himself.

Catherine didn’t speak to him directly at first. She didn’t want to trip him up with unnecessary chatter when he was so busy himself. The
Hana
pilots were equally busy. She had no idea how they were doing it, but every Varkan pilot was coordinating with every other Varkan pilot so that no ship jumped into a location around Varnham that was already occupied by another ship. She could tell it was taking all their concentration to do it, though, for all three of the pilots wore glazed expressions and moved like automatons, as they communicated via their tethers and the datacore, pooling their data and conferring with each other.

The Varkan are uniquely skilled. They are the only ones who can do this, now.
Devlin had been profoundly correct. This was completely out of mere human hands.

On the second day, though, Bedivere contacted her directly. They had just closed the doors on the
Hana
and were floating carefully out into open space. Catherine had squeezed through the crowded corridors to her room, which held another few dozen people, to use the bathroom facility there and take five minutes to breathe. His communication code sounded on her personal board as she emerged.

Surprised, she answered it. “Aren’t you too busy to be talking to someone like me?” she asked as his image formed on the screen.

“I’m talking to anyone I have to,” Bedivere said shortly. “It’s the only way this will get done. Your cortisol levels have risen in the last two hours, Cat, and your body temperature has fallen. You need sleep.”

“No kidding. You’re…following me?”

“Your AI that you told to monitor the crew has been monitoring as requested. It says you told it to go away when it suggested you sleep.”

Catherine growled. “I don’t have time for sleep any more than you do. You look like last week’s leftovers, Bedivere.”

“I’m sleeping on Charlton, while the ship unloads.”

“In your chair and upright, I’ll bet. I’ll sleep when you do,” she replied curtly. “You have better things to focus on.”

“I
am
focusing on them.” He gave her a small smile. “I hope you’re not disappointed that you’re not my sole priority right at this moment?”

Catherine blinked her eyes back into focus. In the last few seconds as he had been talking, she had been drifting sleep on her feet. Damn, but he was right. She was passing out for lack of it.

“Sleep, Cat,” he said softly. “Even five minutes. You know you can’t function without it.”

True. She felt the ship shiver as it jumped back to Charlton. From experience, she knew it would take nearly an hour for the ship to offload all the passengers. An hour’s sleep sounded like a luxury.

Devlin’s quarters were the only ones not being used by evacuees. There were too many sensitive controls and equipment there to allow strangers into the suite. She dropped onto the sofa there and it was possible she was asleep before her head settled.

* * * * *

The last day and a half of the evacuation was a blur of ceaseless activity. Everyone had become more practiced and efficient at shepherding frightened people aboard and helping them disembark, and they had also become accustomed to dealing with the problems that occurred, from lost luggage to injuries, to fights that broke out when people thought they were going to be turned away from the ship when they had come so close to rescue.

Devlin worked tirelessly. He was as stubborn as Bedivere and would only sleep when he was crumpling from the lack of it. He took all his catnaps on the sofa on the flight deck. As the days stretched on they both needed more and more of them to compensate for the lack of deep REM sleep.

Devlin was needed. He was deft at dealing with people—frightened, angry, hysterical, withdrawn, traumatized and sick…everyone who shuffled on board wore a shell-shocked expression as they dealt with the sudden end of their current lives. Devlin seemed to be everywhere at once, soothing and calming pockets of fear and fury before they got out of hand. He left the piloting and control of the ship to the pilots and told Catherine to keep an eye on them. She handled the odd question the three pilots had, but they were getting most of their directions from Bedivere so she left the flight deck to fend for itself while she coordinated the coming and going of passengers.

The job of moving millions of people out from under the descending Periglus would have been next to impossible without Devlin’s skill.

On the third day and eighteenth hour of that day, Bedivere sent a widecast message that she not only heard on the flight deck, her board alerted her and the pilots all turned to repeat to her as well.

“The Periglus have come to a halt. We have time only for one last round trip.”

They were on Charlton when the message arrived. Catherine nodded. “Hurry. Back to Varnham. This time, we tie people to the ceiling if we have to. No one gets left behind.” She turned to look at the Varkan crew sitting on the bare deck plates, crowding the back of the flight deck. “Everyone off who isn’t directly assisting. Clear the deck and the boardrooms. I want every skerrick of floor space freed up. Take furniture with you. Out! Out! Run!”

They ran. Devlin squeezed past the stream of hurrying Varkan and climbed up to the flight level. “I heard,” he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and his chin dark with growth. “This is the last chance.”

“We’ll take as many as we can,” she told him. “Even if we have to hang off the sides of Mael’s chair to do it.”

The engines began to rumble and the deck to vibrate under their feet as Mael got the
Hana
ready to lift off again and everyone began to move even faster. She could hear the barely controlled panic in their movements and speech, echoing up to the deck through the corridors.

The last jump took the longest, because they sat on the docking pad at the station until the very last moment, squeezing in more and more until there was no one left waiting. Then they lifted off, moving very slowly because of the extra weight and inertia and drift out into space.

Catherine squeezed and sidled her way onto the flight deck. There were people there, too, although they weren’t quite clinging to the back of Mael’s chair as she had threatened to let them do. There wasn’t a lot of clear space between them and the pilots, though. Devlin stood between Mael’s chair and Wayna’s and glanced at her. “Look,” he said, nodding toward the windows as they moved out of the docking bay.

The armada of Periglus ships hung like a black crescent above them. They were too far away to see any details, but for the mass of ships to create that dark shadow, there had to be thousands of them.

In the middle of the crescent, something was glowing and pulsing in a deep, angry red. The corona of the glow was growing bigger as she watched.

“The terraforming device,” she breathed. “They’re not going to wait even a second to assess the planet?”

“They had three days to do that on their way here,” Devlin pointed out. “They’re not shooting at us, or paying any attention to us. Draven Tucker was right. We’re cockroaches to them and that thing, whatever it is, will exterminate us.”

“Ready to jump,” Mael announced.

“It’s time. Let’s get out of here,” Devlin replied.

The space around the station was empty. There were no more ships or shuttles coming up from the surface, either. The
Hana
was one of the last ships to leave.

Catherine pulled out her device and connected with Bedivere. “Tell me you’re at Charlton already,” she said.

“Almost.” He looked like he was on the very last reserves of energy. Even his shoulders were hunched over the console.

“What does almost mean?” she demanded. “You’re either there or here and if you’re here, you need to be there
now
!”

“There’s one last thing to do,” Bedivere replied. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“There’s no time! Jump now!”

“He can’t,” Devlin said quietly. “Bedivere’s right. He has to finish this.”

“Finish
what
?”

“I have to destroy the jump gates,” Bedivere told her.

The
Hana
jumped, leaving Bedivere behind.

Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187

“Print more beds and put them in Bedivere’s room, too,” Lilly told Zoey as they hurried along the Centre City concourse. “We can recycle them later and reclaim the energy, but for now, no room, no space on Charlton is sacrosanct.”

“Including my room,” Brant said, teasing Lilly. He had worked for two days straight to find beds, accommodation and food for the refugees and it had been his idea to open up their room temporarily, which had made Lilly swear and mutter before nodding shortly and agreeing that it should be done. Now, whenever he mentioned sharing their room, Lilly blushed and lost track of her thoughts, so he kept doing it. It was good to know he could still flummox her. Sometimes, anyway.

There were even camp beds and pallets being spread in the parks and gardens, which had given Yennifer a moment of hesitation while she adjusted the weather controls for those areas so the new occupants wouldn’t have to deal with rain on top of everything else.

Charlton was splitting at the seams and the stresses were showing. There had never been a formal policing authority in the city as the population had been overwhelmingly Varkan, who could get along with each other far more peaceably than humans did. The minority of humans were law abiding, too. Any civil disruptions had been dealt with by the mayors and reeves of each village, with the verdict being voted upon by the village residents. True democracy worked very well, but only if the numbers were small enough that everyone voted for themselves on every decision.