This Starry Deep (23 page)

Chapter 41 - Jonah

WE CLEARED THE BUNKER by inches, Shae bringing another wall down behind us. Rubble and dust were everywhere, and we used the confusion to take off with the GravPacks. We went straight up like greasy rats squeezed in a fist. Shooting clear of the gravity well of the planet, we each hit a different direction and signaled Chellox.

He tossed back an encoded burst with his location. We each zeroed in on and boarded the ship, even as the Hurkz started to fire.

“Chellox, I think we might want to get out of here,” I said, reaching for the first aid kit.

“That was the general idea,” he said. “You three might want to strap yourselves down.”

We did what we could, passing the kit back and forth. We were running out of bandages. That was never something you wanted to realize. I ached, and I hated it. Shae looked tired, too. Mud, though also battered and shot once that I’d seen, looked like he was ready to go at least one more round in the breach.

Good for him. For my part, though I didn’t want to admit it out loud, I was ready for the fighting part of this mission to be done. I sat back and let the ache take me over for a while, feeling the twists and turns of Chellox’s flight plan.

At this point, anything in the sky that wasn’t Hurkz was being fired on. That really ended up meaning only us. Chellox had his hands full trying to keep from being shot down while still working a way out of the area.

He pulled a few turns that felt, even within the ship’s compensating gravity, like a broken rollercoaster about to go off the tracks. I tightened my straps and glanced at Shae. She shook her head, not enjoying Chellox’s flying either.

We leveled off and hit a clear patch. “I think they’re all behind us now,” Chellox said. “Which means they can’t hope to catch us if I do…this.”

The acceleration wasn’t something you could brace for. Not this hard a jump. It felt like we went from zero to infinity in one jolt. I’d assumed we’d come in as fast as the ship could go, but now I saw Chellox’s plan. Just in case the Hurkz had spotted us, he’d kept something back so our getaway would work.

The speed kept up, but we all got used to it by the middle of the first day. The three of us rested as much as we could, using the last of the first aid supplies to do the best we could. Our wounds would close and not get infected. Everything else got tossed into the ignorable clutter of details.

Around the middle of the second day, I reached out to Mills.

“Mills, we have the stuff. The Hurkz won’t be happy, but we’ve got it. Get everyone who might be able to help and keep them together. We’re gonna come in hot.”

“Jonah, there’s been—”

“Mills, has war broken out?”

“No, but—”

“Then right now we need to focus on making sure it won’t. Best way is to get this tech working.”

“All right, but Jonah—”

“Mills, I need you rounding people up. We’ll talk when I get back.” I cut off. I didn’t know what he wanted to tell me, but I knew it would be bad news. The problem was, from where I literally sat, I couldn’t do anything. If it had been something I could cleanly advise on, he wouldn’t have given me a bad-news lead-in.

Not being able to do anything would just make me focus on the problem and chew on it. No, I needed to focus on these plans and getting this hibernation tech running.

Assuming that the Hurkz had allowed the real plans to be stolen. The fact that Slon had actually agreed to this bothered me a bit. Mud knew them better than I did, and he was right - they were incredibly confident - but this was plain stupid. It might’ve been as simple as a hunger for power that made him think he could taunt me with the plans, take Mud, and then double-cross me by leaving fake, deadly, plans out for us.

Some belief like that sure could’ve led him to miss seeing my own double-cross, or at least to assume he could deal with it handily. But I could also explain it easily enough if he’d made the plans fake. Something that looked real enough to fool us but that would kill anyone it was used on.

We landed after too many more hours and were met by a whole crew. They took us straight to a briefing room while a team of medical personnel followed, treating us as best they could on the move.

Techs took the plans from Shae and the medical crew started to discuss them. We all did. Thankfully, everyone else landed at the problem of it potentially being fake as well. Tslakog sent over a few of his scientists to help us with their biology. Even if these plans were real, they would need adapting.

It became a race against time that I could do nothing to further along. This sort of thing isn’t in my skillset. I hung around to make sure everyone else stayed on track and because I felt possessive of the problem. If it blew up in our faces, I wanted to be there to pick up the blame myself.

Everyone was on edge. The scientists, human and Tsyfarian, worked around the clock, but time kept slipping right by. Tests were run and rerun. Models were made and discarded. The plans seemed close to real but there was a problem with them. Damn.

Still, no one gave up. New models were made. It came down a question of time. The Tsyfarians didn’t have much left. As it was, another incredibly large shipment of food was on its way to them from our stores; even if the hibernation tech worked, we’d cost them too much time to make it without an influx of sustenance, and the size of it would be the last we could possibly do. Without the tech, they were finished.

Mills cornered me somewhere around hour twenty.

“Jonah. We need to talk.”

“Now, Mills?” I asked. “We’re right in the middle of this.”

“Jonah, you’re pacing. That’s all you’re doing. Let these people work and talk to me. You need to hear this.” He sounded insistent enough that I followed him out of the lab and into the hall.

“All right, Mills, what is it? I know it’s bad, just come out with it.”

“Fighting broke out while you were gone. It was stopped, but not cleanly. Shots were fired from both sides.”

“But it was stopped.”

“Yes. But one of your crew, that ship you had doing rescue duty? With the refugees?”

“Bee and them?”

“Yes. One of them didn’t make it. Kem, I think his name was.”

That hurt. They’d agreed to help out because they didn’t know what they were getting into. By the time they realized, they’d kept helping anyway. I wanted to race out, to do something, anything, be the leader they’d needed me to be while I wasn’t around, but I knew nothing would do. They were all good people - some of the best, given what they’d tossed themselves into to help others. And now one of them had died because my plans ran into a snag. “The others?” I asked, looking for a small bit of light.

“They’re all fine. The ship is limping along, and they’ve been insisting on staying where they are, patrolling the empty space between fleets as a showing of the cost of a breakdown in peace.”

“Call them in,” I said thickly.

“Jonah, they refuse.”

“They refuse you. Tell them I’m back and they need to come in now.” I turned away from Mills and walked down the hallway by myself for a while. This was part of why I’d retired in the first place. Losing team members cost my soul, every time it happened. I was sick of it, physically sick.

I met them down on the hanger deck about an hour later, and greeted them each warmly, even Olivet. I told them, in quiet words, how amazing they each were and how much two entire species owed them. They swelled at my pride in them, and that hurt like a dagger to the chest. That desire to please me that they now wore as a badge had cost Kem his life, and far too soon.

But I didn’t say anything. I smiled at them and made sure they got the medical attention they needed and told them again how proud I was of them. My pain at their pride would only serve to hurt them when they needed only to know that the cost had been worth it. And it had been - if not to me, but to them. They needed that reassurance, and though it hurt me to do so, I wouldn’t deny them that. Ever.

Leaving them and finding my way back to the labs, I ran into Mud. He entered with me, and I asked where we were in this whole problem. He shook his head. It didn’t look great. They’d been using blood samples from Mud, trying to get his cells to go into hibernation and come back out. They’d managed it once, and then twice, but there was something still not quite right.

Until they fixed that, there wasn’t a good way to go forward. Mud stepped to the lab bench and rested a hand on it heavily. “What we need to do,” he said slowly, “is test it on me. Not some blood, but me.”

“Mud, that’s crazy. They’ve gotten this to work, but only mostly. It could kill you,” Shae said, coming around to our end of the room.

“Sure, Mom, but we’ve all made incredible progress. And this is the final test we need. We all know it, including you and me and Dad.”

“He’s right, baby,” I said. I didn’t want to put our kid at risk, but like before, I had no choice.

Shae shot a look of hatred at me but then turned away with a brief nod. She knew it, too.

Mud hopped up onto a test bed and rolled up one sleeve slowly. He relaxed back, staring at the ceiling.

“So let’s do this thing so we can adapt it for the Tsyfarians,” he said to the techs in the room. “We don’t have all day.”

Chapter 42 - Mud

THE TABLE WAS COLD, and the lights too bright. A needle pierced my skin and I wanted to laugh when they said it might sting. If they knew how many needles and how much stinging I dealt with…but of course they didn’t. So I nodded at the med tech and closed my eyes.

The medical guys felt sure the formula would work. It had managed to work on my cells fine, in multiple trials. The problem was, no one was sure how it would work on organs, much less my brain. So they would drop me into hibernation for twelve hours and see what happened when they tried to wake me up.

The serum started to take hold and my eyelids grew too heavy to open. They fit a mask over my nose and mouth and flooded it with the gas they’d prepared. I breathed deeply and started to drift away. I had a moment of panic as I grew convinced I could feel my heart stopping and my life draining away. I fought back the urge to struggle, to strike back against the darkness. I gave in to it and hoped I would live to see the other end of the experiment.

My eyes opened slowly and I cursed under my breath. The serum hadn’t taken. This was going to be a problem. Or so I thought until I caught sight of a clock. Twelve hours had passed. They’d done it.

Mom and Dad helped me off the table and both gave me hugs. I returned them, once my brain processed what I’d just done. The science techs smiled at me and drew some more blood to see how the hibernation had affected my system. A short test, but still one that would be telling.

I felt fine, but knew that wasn’t enough to go on. The Tsyfarians looked pleased, though. This might be the answer they’d needed. The tests started and Dad took Mom and I to meet some people. Three folks who had flown a rescue ship and then held the peace, in a tiny rickety ship. Untrained, even. Dad was proud of them, but I could see it hurt him to be around them. They’d lost one of their own, and Dad felt it worse than they did. He hadn’t been there, and I knew that was what ate him up.

The five of us talked while tests ran. We didn’t discuss anything important, tell any deep personal stories. We just talked as if we were five people who hadn’t been to war that week. It was a nice illusion.

Eventually Mom, Dad, and I were called back to the lab. The tests had come back and everything was a go. The Hurkz had given us bad data, but hidden it inside too much good data. Now it just needed to be adapted for the Tsyfarians. They gave us some blood samples and all the work started over again. This time, though, it wasn’t about “if” anymore. It’d become a conversation about “when.” We left them so Dad could call Tslakog.

“If you haven’t heard, we’re almost there,” Dad opened with, instead of any sort of greeting.

“The food you sent has also arrived. There is a chance, my friend, this will all work.”

“Or at least enough of it to scrape by, huh?” Dad leaned back.

“I am truly sorry to hear about the loss of your comrade. That was a regrettable mistake,” Tslakog said.

“No one is placing blame,” Dad reassured him, telling him a pretty lie since both Mom and I knew he placed lots of blame squarely on his own shoulders. “It was a mad, tense time. Still is. A mistake was made and, thankfully, stopped.”

“You speak with wisdom.”

“Not wisdom,” Dad insisted, “old age. I’ve seen too many wars started over something stupid to not recognize it.”

“I, too, am sick of war. Jonah, truly, your whole family is a friend to the Tsyfarian people, now and forever, for all that you have done. Possibly sparing us from the slaughter we partook in before, no one can calculate how many lives you may have saved.”

“Thank us when the job is done. We’re not there just yet.”

“But we will be soon,” Tslakog said, full of confidence.

“We hope. But we won’t know until we are.”

“You play your joy close.”

“I’ve run afoul of being too confident before,” Dad said.

“Well then, I shall let you go back to your work, and hope to hear soon that we have found success.” The screen went dark and Dad sighed.

“He’s right,” he said after a minute, “we should get back.”

“I was sort of enjoying just sitting here, as a family, without gunfire for a change,” Mom told him.

“It is nice,” I agreed.

Dad laughed. He also stayed where he was. We sat there like that, in silence together, for at least an hour. No one came to find us, no one bothered us - we just relished sitting there and not having to be at war. Too often, growing up, I’d missed this. Both my parents had been off saving a world somewhere, and when they weren’t I was demanding we go find an adventure I could be a part of.

I didn’t regret it my choices. Deep down I don’t think any of us thought we’d been wrong in how our lives had been led. It still that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to try the other side for a while. I felt, for the first time, really, like an equal. They would always be my parents, always ready to rush in to help, but the three of us had never done this before. Gone into one of their situations - together. It felt nice. Really nice. I felt sure they knew it, too.

Mills came into the room. “Jonah,” he said, after a quick apology, “they’re ready for you, all of you.” He nodded at us and stood by the door. We got up and followed him back to the lab.

“We’re ready for the final test,” one the techs said as we entered. “If this works, we’ve done it.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Mom asked, looking at the Tsyfarian lying on the exam table. They were injecting the serum into his arm and readying the mask.

“Then,” the Tsyfarian said, raising his head before the mask came down, “they will try again, without me.” He lowered his head and we all grew silent. They were a brave species, the Tsyfarians. Loyal and true, at least the ones we’d met.

Shame about the genocide. I suppose if something happens so infrequently that whole generations pass between each occurrence it becomes almost religion, and you don’t question those openly too often. But when you did, the whole world could change around you.

We stood watch while he dropped off, sinking into the same oblivion I’d found. He’d be back. The Tsyfarians were different from the Hurkz, but closer to each other than either were to humanity.

We stood watch over him, not wanting to move even though it would be twelve hours yet. Eventually everyone in the room had to leave: to eat, to nap, to deal with other problems big and small. We went in shifts, though, making sure we all knew where everyone was. When it came time to wake him, we all wanted to be there. There was a notch in the clock, it felt like, a single notch that could tell the tale of two species. All we could do was wait for the clock to strike.

Eventually, of course, it did. They pumped the reviving gas through the mask and nothing happened. We quieted, watching as his vital signs didn’t peak. They laid flat, almost imperceptible. One of the med techs reached for a defibrillator, thinking that might kick-start the cycle, but suddenly the levels all jumped. The gas was working - it just took longer than it had on a Hurkz, namely me.

He woke up, sitting up and glancing at the clock. Then he smiled. “Let us begin the after-effect tests,” he said, holding out one arm. We cheered, every last person in the room.

While they ran their tests, Dad went to call Tslakog again, just to give him the latest update personally. No one wanted to deny him that pleasure.

“So, what about Hodges?” I asked Mom while he was gone making his call.

“What about him?” she gave me a look.

“Is he going to just get away with kidnapping you?”

“You’re asking something I don’t have an answer to. If you’re really asking if I’d like to deal with him, you know that answer. But that doesn’t mean I will, or that it would be the right move.”

I nodded, and Dad came back in the room. I let the Hodges question drop for a few as the tests came back good. The hibernation technology would work on the Tsyfarians. And I thought we had all cheered before.

I went along this time, as Dad gave Tslakog the final update.

“It works,” Dad said. Simple and direct. A war had been one, by avoiding it, and that made this a great day.

“Then we can go and decide our own fate,” Tslakog said.

“Always,” Dad replied. Behind him and allowed myself a smile.

“In return,” the lizard-faced leader said, “we shall divert our fleet and aim it directly at the Hurkz.”

“Uhm, what?”

“They are now your enemies and so we name them ours as well. Harvesting their planet will allow us to range even further afield from human lands.”

“You can’t,” I cut in, stepping forward.

“We can, and we shall, stranger,” Tslakog, said.

“Mud, mayb—”

“My name is Mud, son of Jonah,” I said, cutting Dad off and trying to adopt a more diplomatic tone. “And committing genocide in our name is wrong.”

“But Mud,” Dad said, “I mean, it’s wrong but I can’t say it wouldn’t solve problems.”

“And you don’t think they should, either. But you’d probably give in, wrongly, just for a second, right now.” I shifted my focus back to Tslakog, “Which is why I have to step in. No.”

“You can not order our fleet,” he replied.

“This race you consider is my original race. They hunt me,” I told him, “and wish me dead. That does not make it acceptable for me to kill them on a whim. Nor does it allow me to wish their destruction, even from someone I would like to consider a new friend and ally.”

Dad looked at me and nodded. The joy of the moment, the rush of it, brought him close to an edge. Add in his exhaustion and hurt over the loss of that guy on the ship, would he have done it? Allowed it? No. But for a second he may have faltered and that could have dug just enough of a hole. It didn’t matter. He didn’t have to carry every load alone.

Tslakog kept a level gaze through the screen. “Son of Jonah you may be,” he said, “but I have had my fill of being told how to direct my race recently.”

“You can stand with us, with humanity, against needless slaughter like the actions you threaten, or you can stand against us. Against us isn’t smart. Not,” I added quickly, “because of war. But because it rejects newfound alliances. Ones we all need. It rejects the spirit of life we would all wish to live under. Including the Tsyfarian, I think.”

“I shall take,” Tslakog said, “your…wisdom…under consideration.”

He flipped the screen off and Dad smiled at me. “You did amazing, kid. Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt proud of myself, and stood a bit straighter as we walked away together.

“Think they’ll listen?” I asked the old man.

“He will. Tslakog is a good guy. He’s smart. I think, like me, sometimes he just needs a push in the right direction. Again, thanks. Mud.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence. Dad peeled off to deal with a minor issue Mills radioed him with. I went right back to the others.

Everything else happened quickly. The Tsyfarians would be escorted through human space, just to alleviate any lingering concerns. They’d be outfitted with a host of techs to build them more hibernation beds until they could manage on their own. Another food supply drop would be made as well, just as insurance. Their migration could continue, unharmed, without needing to take another single life.

Once clear of human space, the escort would retreat and allow the Tsyfarians to continue, unaided and unfollowed. They would proceed to their destination, broadcasting their peaceful intent to pass through any inhabited spaces without incident.

I’d been a part of that. The entire shift in the way a species operates, the safeguarding of two different cultures, parts of it were down to me. I began to truly see why Mom and Dad did what they did with so much of their lives. It hit me hard. I smiled at them, and they returned it, but I think we each had our own reasons for our joy.