Second Wave (34 page)

Creatures that were roughly human-shaped, many still bearing a faded version of human coloring, crowded the room, which seemed to be missing a wall, the same wall where the safe had once been.

These forms, in addition to their human coloring, were metal gray, plasteel black or white, the brilliant orange of safety-painted equipment. There were perhaps forty of them, the remnants of former crew members, Khorii guessed.

They sank into the walls, deck, furniture, and equipment of the room, and that crumbled around them as she had seen the ships do. But, perhaps because they did not know they were observed, they speeded up the process. As they moved through the crumbling material, they left other matter behind, smoothing it as they passed it through and the next figure came after them. The furnishings and walls of the purser’s officer began to merge with a smooth tunnel like the others, growing forward as the wraithlike beings gradually lost their human form in the walls until, in their wake, there remained only the impressions where they had last stepped inside to feed and meld.

Without waiting for Khorii, Ariin, or Mikaaye, Coco and Fori bolted out of the hatch and jumped down the long well to the tunnel deck below, then bounded down it toward the docking bay.

G
uess it’s still a work in progress,”
Khorii told Ariin and Mikaaye when they had finally escaped through the tunnels and bounded over the hills and valleys that were probably the remains of the ships once docked in the
Blanca
’s bay. The most disturbing part of their escape was when they found that the tunnel connecting with the hatch had extended itself and now reached well beyond where the pile of debris had once been, as if stretching out like a long, hungry straw to suck up the two space vessels docked away from the bulk of what had been Captain Becker’s salvage cache.

Coco and a complete complement of henchmen were waiting for them, along with Captain Bates, whom Coco held on to awkwardly, one puffy space suit holding on to another. “He’s going to use us as human shields to take the
Mana,
” Captain Bates told her friends. “They tried while we were gone, but Moonmay and her grandpappy’s twelve-gauge persuaded them to wait until we were here to host them.”

Each of the Linyaari was grabbed by one of Coco’s men as they pushed their way through the
Mana
’s hatch.

Once aboard, Coco hustled everyone to the bridge, where the rest of the
Mana
’s crew met them.

Coco unsealed his helmet. Weapon at Captain Bates’s back, he pulled the awkward thing off his face, and said, “Lay down your gun, little girl, or I’ll shoot her dead.”

Captain Bates nodded. Moonmay put her weapon on the floor, then backed away. Coco kicked it back into the corridor, then he and his henchmen removed their helmets and allowed the Linyaari to remove theirs.

“Everybody on the deck, now!” Coco ordered. Reluctantly, the
Mana
’s crew obeyed. Elviiz wore a miserable look as Jaya helped him from his chair to the floor, afraid that the intruders would injure him. Khorii knew that her brother, who would have ordinarily been talking fast and full of ideas, was thoroughly demoralized at being unable to defend his friends with his former strength and intellect.

“You, too, Asha,” Coco ordered, nudging Captain Bates forward.

“Coco, you’ve become even harder than you used to be,” Captain Bates said, making herself comfortable with her legs crossed in front of her and drawing Moonmay under one arm and Sesseli under the other. “You never used to hold up kids.”

“Nobody else is left!” Coco said, running his free hand through his helmet-matted hair in exasperation. “With Petit and Pauli gone, I don’t have crew enough for the
Black Mariah,
much less to take this one in tow, but it seems a shame to waste a perfectly good hijacking opportunity, and with these handy horned kiddies on board, too. There’s a lot of wealth lying around loose in the universe right now, and not all of it has got alien tunnels running through it, but some of it might still have plague.”

“This is a lousy time to be greedy, Coco,” Captain Bates said. “There’s plenty of opportunity out there for able-bodied adults who aren’t in their dotage. Plenty of money to be made rebuilding things—maybe rebuilding them your way with you in charge. Let us go.”

Coco cocked his head to the side, and for a moment Khorii actually thought he might be considering the idea. Then he shook his head with an abrupt jerk. “Naw, my way’s easier.”

“Captain?” Ariin spoke up.

“What?” he demanded angrily.

“Captain, my sister and I are on our way home to see our parents. I’ve never met them before, and if Khorii can see that they are as free of the plague as everywhere else seems to be here, they can come out of quarantine.”

“Wouldn’t that be dandy!” Coco replied, clearly unmoved.

“But the thing is, she would also be reporting to our Council that the plague is gone and our people can come home. As I understand it, our people have been the ones maintaining order since the plague. With no more plague and with our people out of your systems, would you not have more freedom to ply your trade? Whereas if you take my sister, well, the thing is, sir, our people are nonviolent, but they are highly intelligent, extremely advanced, and very persistent. You may have heard of the Khleevi? Our people, led by mine and Khorii’s parents, were their downfall.”

“Yeah, well, your sister doesn’t know the plague is gone everywhere yet, does she? We need her to—”

Mikaaye interrupted. “All you need is someone to cleanse the place if there is plague, sir, and we do that automatically if one of us is along. You don’t need Khorii in particular.”

Coco started growling, but Mikaaye continued. “And well, the truth is, ever since I saw the vids on MOO, I have wanted to be a pirate. Not a violent one, of course. I would just like to have adventures with you. And I could keep your families safe and heal your men’s wounds, too.”

“Mikaaye, what would your mother say!” Captain Bates demanded.

Mikaaye, who had already seemed to have become a pirate in his own imagination, stared levelly back at her. “My mother would say that as long as this is my decision to join Captain Coco’s crew, she would let me choose my own path and not interfere, nor would she or any of our other people pursue me or my new friends.”

And privately he added,
“And she would know that one of us among these people could possibly help turn them to being useful rather than destructive to others. It seems to me, from what we’ve seen here, that these worlds are in for much more trouble. I want to go, really. I want to see what it’s like.”

“And you know that my sister and I very badly want to see our parents again, don’t you?”
Khorii asked.

This time she heard Ariin’s little suggestion to Coco.
“It’s the perfect solution, and you want to take it.”

Coco and the others looked at each other as if trying to and failing to find anything wrong with the scheme. He looked out the viewport and his eyes opened wider in alarm. The others rose to their knees and turned to look, too. Below, the metallic junk heap was shifting and stirring as a tunnel advanced like a beckoning finger.

Coco jerked his head back toward the hatch, and his men began filing out. He nodded to Mikaaye to go ahead of him, saying, “Come along then, boy, and shake a leg before both our ships get taken.”

Chapter 33

H
e’s not really a brutal captain, as the breed goes,” Captain Bates said, trying to reassure Melireenya. “I think Mikaaye picked that up from him. And he’s right, you know. A Linyaari could have a very good influence on that lot, especially the kids.”

The
Balakiire,
the
Neizayir,
and the tanker had arrived on MOO days before the
Mana.
The
Balakiire
had remained, hearing that the
Mana
’s crew had an important message it preferred to deliver in person to members of the
Balakiire
’s crew. The tankers, with Linyaari crews, were already on Vhiliinyar, off-loading the LoiLoiKuans.

“But he endangered the families of his crewmen!” Kharii protested. She and Neeva both were fiercely protective of Melireenya’s maternal feelings and rather miffed that the
Mana
’s crew had not relayed their message earlier and in more detail. Khorii knew they would have sent a search party after the pirate ship, but what would unarmed Linyaari have been able to do against such ruffians?

“I have a feeling Coco was monitoring them all the time,” Captain Bates replied. “They could not have been in any real danger. In fact, when Nisa intimated to me that I knew what Coco does to widows and children, what I really knew was that he’d be showing up soon. My mother and I were once a widow and child at his mercy, and although he was hardly the soul of altruism, and in many ways, pardon me, a total bastard, I survived the experience with fewer traumas than experienced by the average child slave my age. Besides, if he hadn’t had them under surveillance, he wouldn’t have known where they were on the
Blanca,
or more important to him, where we were when we went to save them. He probably didn’t expect them to leave the shuttle, and being on the planet’s surface would have been enough to lure us.”

Melireenya, somewhat to Khorii’s surprise, nodded. Her eyes warmed, and she smiled, “I have a brave youngling, worthy of his lineage. He will do well. Your clan cannot change his Linyaari nature, nor his gallant spirit in speaking up to spare Khorii and Ariin for the needs of their families and the humans coping with this new phase of the—I suppose we must think of it as an invasion now, rather than an epidemic? It is entirely probable that my son will change those around him for the better, which is good. The humans will need the strengths and skills of all the survivors if they are to fend off this new threat.”

She held out her arms, and first Khorii, then more hesitantly Ariin, embraced her.

“Now then, young ones, come. The
Balakiire
has the honor of transporting you to the quarantine area, where you will surely be reunited with your beloved parents, and Elviiz may be healed by his father.”

Khorii and Ariin had very little time to spend bonding, or even commiserating with Elviiz. The girls spent most of the trip to Vhiliinyar making a detailed report of their findings on Becker’s asteroid and the development of the alien beings. Captain Bates was making a similar report to Uncle Hafiz and Grandsire Rafik. With so little of the Federation force remaining, the Linyaari healers and House Harakamian had assumed many of its administrative functions.

The journey from MOO to Vhiliinyar by ship was a short one, and instead of landing in Kubiilikhan and taking a shuttle, the
Balakiire
took them straight to the edge of the quarantine meadows. The Ancestors, so like Ariin’s beloved Others, formed a protective ring between the newcomers and their family. In the center of the area sat the
Condor,
looking as dilapidated and unspaceworthy as ever.

Mother, Father, Uncle Joh, Maak, and RK were lined up to meet them, tension in every line of their bodies.

The girls, Elviiz, and the entire crew of the
Balakiire
disembarked. It was midday, the sky was a gorgeous periwinkle blue, the grasses lush and waving in a sweetly scented breeze. Beyond the meadow, the sea shone, and from the air the passengers of the
Balakiire
had seen the tankers on the shoreline along with other equipment necessary for the transfer.

A large delegation of
sii
-Linyaari frothed the water just offshore, waiting for their sea’s newest tenants. Already many other Linyaari lined the shore to watch and welcome the newcomers.

Ariin saw her sister staring in that direction.
“What’s the matter with you, Khorii? You haven’t seen our parents since before I did. Pay attention!”

“I’m afraid of what I’ll see. What if they’re not cured? What if the plague is still there? Could you bear it? Won’t you hate me for seeing it? I—”

“Do not be so negative and silly. The plague has disappeared and mutated everywhere else we’ve looked. It won’t have lasted any longer here, not on Vhiliinyar, with all of this wholesomeness and healing energy surrounding it.”

Khorii grabbed her twin’s hand as they stepped away from the hatch, toward the ring of Ancestors. Everyone was waving. Khorii and Ariin took two steps forward. Sending everything she saw to her twin, Khorii narrowed her focus and looked first at Maak. Her android uncle looked exactly the same as he had the last time she saw him except—no blue dots surrounded him. She felt almost faint with relief. Elviiz could be treated and returned to his old self. He would be so happy. Captain Becker and RK were also surrounded by nothing but periwinkle sky and fragrant delicious grasses. No blue dots.

Ariin squeezed her hand and forced her to look at Father and Mother, who stood with their arms around each other.

The sunlight sparkled almost prettily on the halo of blue dots surrounding them. Ariin dropped Khorii’s hand. “No! It can’t be. It’s your imagination. The plague is gone!”

But she knew as well as Khorii that it was not.

Everyone knew almost as quickly as they did. Their parents did.

“Khorii, by now you have more experience than we do with this disease,”
their father said.
“Why do you suppose we remain infected when everyone else can be cured?”

It wasn’t just a family conversation. Practically the entire planet was reading the images and words passing among them. Wanting to weep or scream or rant as much as Ariin did, Khorii instead methodically explained what had happened on Becker’s asteroid and what she thought it meant.
“I believe that you are not so much infected as infested at this point,”
she told them.
“Because you and everyone around you survived, the organisms that mutated into your strain of the disease did not further progress into the next phase of their development. It had no dead organic tissue from which to morph into its inorganic-matter-absorbing form, so it’s simply stayed the same with you. Perhaps—perhaps it will die of its own accord, without being able to change.”