Liberation, page 10
part #3 of Tribari Freedom Chronicles Series
“Well, so far none of your crazy plans have gotten us killed. I’ll trust you on this one.”
“The rover,” Tal reminded him, “was your idea.”
“True. But that wasn’t crazy. That was genius.” Tig added with a grin, “If I don’t say so myself.”
He laughed. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“No. So, supposing this works out and you don’t get us killed-”
“Great optimism.”
“Where do we go after that?”
“Hell, I don’t know. There’s a few more settled worlds out there.”
“Settled worlds mean imperial presence.”
“Yeah. On the other hand, the empire has ships in most of the star systems around here. There aren’t many places to hide.”
“No,” Tig agreed. “But there’s some habitable planets that haven’t been colonized yet, right?”
“Yes.”
“I say we head as far as we can get out of here, and find one of them. Set up shop there.”
Tal frowned. “An uninhabited planet?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Well…that means, no other people. At all.”
Tig nodded. “I can live with that.”
“I don’t know…and what would we do for food?”
“What our ancestors did: live off the land.”
“I’m no farmer. Not much of a hunter, either.”
“Well, what’s the alternative? Hope we find a colony that won’t turn us over to the protectors?”
Tal considered, then admitted, “Pretty much.”
“Those seem like worse odds than learning to hunt.”
It was a fair point. Still, the idea of such an exile from Tribari-kind filled him with dread. He wasn’t the most sociable of men, but to be stranded on a planet in the far reaches of known space, with only a single person for company? “I don’t know, Tig. I’d rather find a place with a large enough population where we could slip under the radar. Like Tau, maybe. Or Triole. I could program the shuttle to take off after we left, and keep going until it ran out of fuel. We could lay low in one of the cities, blend in.”
His friend nodded slowly. “I guess.”
“We’d have better odds of surviving that way than trying to make it in the wilderness.”
“Yeah, suppose so.” Tig didn’t sound convinced.
“You’re not…wanted on Tau, are you?”
An eyebrow raised on the other man’s face. “Gods. Once a protector, always a protector, I guess. No, Tal, I’m not wanted on Tau.”
He flushed. “Sorry, Tig. Just, I had to ask. You seem pretty hesitant to go there.”
“It’s not Tau in particular.”
“Then…what is it?”
“Just…” Tig frowned. “I don’t want to get caught. They catch us, they’re not going to kill us. They’re going to take us back. And if you think it was bad the first time…” He shook his head. “We did what no one else has. We got off-planet. We outwitted them, stole a rover and a ship right under their noses. We killed one of their prisoners, and they killed one of their own protectors trying to stop us. They’re not going to forget that.”
“Or forgive it,” he agreed.
“Exactly.”
“I still think it’s our best shot, Tig.”
The other man nodded slowly. “Alright. Then, let’s do it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Captain Le is demanding to speak to you again, sir,” Ensign Vor said, managing to keep most of the frustration out of his tone.
Elgin, on the other hand, made no such efforts. Le was not adapting well to being in custody. He didn’t seem to consider that the alternative was being left on a derelict ship. “Mothers of the gods. Tell him I’m going to disable the comms in the brig if he doesn’t quit it.”
“Copy that, Captain.” The ensign smiled discreetly, relaying the message.
For the first time since he’d taken Le onboard, Elgin almost wished he could hear the other man – just to hear his irate response. To judge from Vor’s smirk, it would have been worth listening in on.
“Lieutenant Dagir’s patrol is returning, sir,” Kerel informed them.
“Copy. Open a line to the lieutenant, Vor.”
“Yessir. Line open.”
“Dagir here,” a voice filled the bridge.
“Morning, Lieutenant. How’s our beautiful home world?”
Dagir had been tasked with a flyover of the city. Since destroying the Night Dragon the day before, they’d had no official communiques from Central. Velk had locked down interplanetary broadcasts, leaving the fleet entirely out of the loop.
He was doing his best to conceal it, but the silence was worrying Elgin. At this point, he would have preferred Admiral Lenksha’s threats or Supreme Leader Velk’s fury to the radio silence.
“I’ll be onboard in five, sir. I’ll give you my report in your ready room.”
Elgin blinked. As omens went, that was a hell of a one. He kept his voice easy and light, though. “Roger that. See you in five.”
Dagir’s evasiveness had not been missed by the rest of the bridge officers, if the glances flying around deck were anything to go by. “As you were,” he said mildly. He didn’t need them indulging speculation. He also didn’t need to put the kibosh on it in too marked a manner. That would fuel rather than silence any doubts.
He waited a few minutes, as nonchalantly as possible, then left the bridge. It was still several minutes before Lt. Dagir arrived, and he spent them pacing the room.
A knock sounded, and Elgin seated himself, calling, “Come in.”
It was Dagir, and he saluted as he entered. “Captain.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Sir, Supreme Leader Velk…he’s been executed.”
Elgin might have been, as the saying went, knocked over by a feather at those words. “What?”
Dagir nodded grimly. “Executed, sir. The rebels held some kind of kangaroo court trial. And they killed him.”
“My gods.” The weight of his own complicity in this murder hit Elgin like a punch to the gut. He’d been ordered to stop the rebels, and he’d refused. He’d prevented anyone else from intervening either. And now the Supreme Leader was dead as a result. “How…how did they even reach him?”
“They stormed the palace, sir.”
“They must be insane. That place is a fortress.”
“Yessir. But…” Daggir shook his head. “Velk killed Nikia Idan’s parents, and broadcast the execution throughout the city.”
“What? Her parents?” Elgin was confused. Luk and Elsa Aldir were Grand Contributors, citizens of the highest standing. “Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. Even planet-side, it was hard to plug into the comm network. But I saw the broadcast. He said they’d been charged with collusion.”
“Retribution, then,” he said. “For their daughter’s uprising.”
“Yessir. I think Velk ran his own kangaroo court.”
“Son-of-a-bitch. So Idan stormed the palace and murdered him in turn?”
“No, sir. She had some kind of medical emergency. I don’t know what happened, but they took her out on a stretcher, unconscious or dead. That seemed to be the rallying point, though. They broke through the barriers, and swarmed the palace. Even some of the protectors walked off the job.”
“Well fuck,” Elgin said out loud. “I’m not sure I even blame them. To kill the Aldirs? That’s not right.”
“No,” Dagir nodded. “None of it’s right.”
“To execute the Supreme Leader, though?” Elgin couldn’t wrap his head around it. On the one hand, under Tribari law, no life was worth more or less than another. Velk had taken two innocent lives as punishment for what someone else had done.
On the other, the supreme leader was still the supreme leader. In theory, his life might be worth no more than anyone else’s, but, in practice, men died by the scores, by the hundreds and even thousands, at the whims of a supreme leader; and no one batted an eyelash. It was just the way things were done, and had always been done.
“Sir?” Dagir asked.
Elgin looked up, meeting his lieutenant’s expectant gaze. Apparently, he’d missed something. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked, what are your orders, sir?”
“Orders? Hell, Dagir, I’m still wrapping my head around this. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet.”
“Understood.”
“Still, I’ve got to figure something out sooner rather than later. If we’re going to let this stand, we need to make the decision now. And if we’re going to intervene, we can’t waste any more time than we already have.”
“Yessir.”
“I’m going to assemble a briefing with the other captains, Dagir. I’m going to need you on it.”
“Understood.”
Brek’s injured leg felt like it was on fire, but he didn’t dare slacken his pace. He’d skirted most of the lake, and the wolf was almost out of sight now.
The cavern was huge, much larger than he’d realized. Now, as he neared the far end of the lake, he felt something he hadn’t felt on the other side: a draft.
His skin prickled with cold, but not just cold. Excitement coursed through his veins. Airflow meant a space to the outside. It meant a possible escape route.
Now all he had to do was find it.
He hobbled on. The ceiling was getting lower here, and the wolf had vanished completely, swallowed up by the darkness. After a space, he was walking hunched over, running a guiding hand along the stone overhead; there was not room to stand upright.
Brek came to the farthest shore of the lake and continued on past it. The passage grew narrower and lower. For a little way, the blue glow of the lake cast a faint illumination into the tunnel, but soon it was gone.
For a stretch, he was forced to proceed on his hands and knees in the absolute darkness. It was slow going, and rough on his battered body.
The passage wound this way and that, and he began to fear that he’d be so inexorably turned around he’d be lost. Then, all at once, the ceiling rose. Brek blinked into a vast gray enclosure, and breathed in a blast of cold air. He could smell water, the same strange and sulfurous odors from the glowing pool inside.
But his eyes were focused beyond the silhouettes of stone pieces, beyond the walls and the uneven floor. Brek stared at a patch of light: clear, crisp, beautiful starlight.
He’d found the end of the caverns. He’d found a way back outside. Sinking to the ground, Brek wept with joy.
He was free, at last.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Hey,” Tal said, reaching out a hand to shake his friend.
Tig was mumbling fearfully in his sleep in the seat across from him, and he woke, gasping. “What?”
“Shit. You okay?”
Throwing wild eyes around the cockpit, he breathed in a few long, deep gasps of air. Then, he nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”
Tal was used to the other man’s nightmares. Their cots had been side-by-side in the barracks. Still, they unnerved him, not less now that he understood something of their source. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine.”
Tig wasn’t going to talk about it. He knew that. “Alright. I just wanted to let you know, we’re coming up on Trapper’s Colony.”
“Oh.” He nodded, seeming a bit more collected now that he had something else to focus on. “Good. Have we had any hails from the planet?”
“Not yet. But unless we land on the far side of the rock, we’re going to be in range soon. And there’s nothing out there but oil rigs.”
“You think they’ll let us land?”
“I’m hoping so. Especially if what that protector on Zeta heard was right, they’re on the outs with the empire. Hopefully they won’t be in a hurry to turn us over.”
“And if they are?”
Tal shook his head, tapping the gun clipped to his side. “It’s going to be a bad day for all of us.”
Tig accepted this with a slow nod of his head, and they fell into silence for some minutes thereafter.
Trapper’s Colony, a distant point of light on the horizon, grew larger. It was an uninspiring world, sporting long stretches of inhospitable, barren browns and inky black oceans of crude. There was no surface water here, no great oceans or shimmering rivers or placid lakes. The only water to be had was deep underground, and could only be reached by drilling into the bedrock.
Why anyone had ever settled here, he couldn’t imagine. Certainly, with the care and tending of its settlers, Trapper’s had sprouted impressive settlements. Those were the patches of cheery green dotting the globe. But they were so few and far between that they seemed almost to mar the drab symmetry of the place. What could have lured people to this cold, dry rock, with its brown vegetation and endless plains in the first place, though?
Tig’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Hell of an ugly rock, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “It is.”
“Still, it’s got to be warmer than Zeta. I don’t see much snow, except on the poles.”
Tal laughed. “By quite a few degrees.”
“Ugly or not, then, it’ll do.”
They flew for another minute or so before a hail came in. “Tribari space shuttle, this is Trapper’s Colony air control. Identify yourself.”
“Air control, this is the TSS-Genevieve. My craft is running low on fuel. Requesting permission to dock and fuel up.”
A moment of silence stretched out between him and the voice on the other end of the line before the answer came. “Permission granted. Docking coordinates being transmitted now.”
“Alright,” he said after the connection terminated, “that wasn’t so bad.”
“Let’s hope they don’t look the Genevieve up,” Tig said. “She’s got to be reported as stolen by now.”
“Yeah.” The concern soon made way for more pressing matters as Tal turned his focus to landing. There was, he was sure, an autopilot landing sequence, but he hadn’t figured it out yet – and he wasn’t about to risk their lives on guesswork. It was one thing to test autopilot in the void of space – he had, and it worked fine – but when hurtling toward the surface at speeds that could crush your ship like an eggshell? No thanks.
He guided the ship into the atmosphere, and brought her to the coordinates indicated. Then, he glanced around. They were on an open landing pad, with maintenance buildings and other landing zones nearby. Two men in utility jumpsuits waited a short distance off. “Well,” he said, “you ready?”
Tig nodded. “Here goes nothing.”
They stepped out of the shuttle and headed for the two workmen. “Afternoon,” Tal called.
The men walked toward them. “You’re the Genevieve, right?” the older of the pair asked.
“That’s right. We got clearance to land for a refuel.”
The younger workman nodded. “We got the work order.”
“Great. Anything we can-” Tal broke off as movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention. He spun toward it, and froze, his hand midway to his pistol. They were surrounded by half a dozen men who had seemed to materialize out of thin air, all training rifles on them.
“Don’t move,” one of the crew called.
Tal could see Tig fidget next to him. He knew what was running through the other man’s mind. “Don’t,” he warned in a whisper. If one of them was going to play hero, it should be him; he had the requisite experience. And right now, they were two seconds away from death. If they were going to get the draw on their double crossers, they’d need a more opportune moment.
But Tig said, “Sorry, Tal. I won’t go back there.”
Shit. He knew what that meant. Tig was going for his weapon. Tal reached for his own, too. And half a second later, a searing burst of energy ripped into him, and he collapsed to the ground.
“I need to talk to Giya,” Nik insisted.
Dr. Kel sighed. “I think you should wait. It’s not worth the risk. Your blood pressure is finally starting to normalize. It’ll keep – it’ll all keep for a little while longer.”
“It won’t. I need to talk to him about Diven.”
“Alright. I’ll call for him. But I’m going to stay with you, Nik. And the instant I start seeing anything that worries me – changes in your heart rate, your blood pressure, anything – I’m turning him out.”
“Done,” she said. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best she’d been able to do in two days.
He nodded, apparently satisfied in turn with the concession he’d won. “Okay. Sit tight, then. I’ll call him.”
“Thanks, Doctor Kel.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t thank me, Nik. I’m doing it against my better judgement.”
She smiled. “I don’t just mean for getting Giya. Although, I do include that. I mean for everything.” She shook her head. “You’re taking a hell of a risk, taking care of me. If this doesn’t work-”
He held up a hand. “Yes, yes. It’s off to Zeta for me. Believe me, I’ve given it enough thought.” Despite the tenor of his words, his tone was kindly. “I don’t know what the hell this world’s come to, but I knew your parents before you were even born, Nik. I watched you grow up. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by and let them kill you too.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Godsdammit, Elgin,” Captain Mercer swore, “I knew staying out of it was a bad idea. Velk, dead? My gods.”
“What were we supposed to do, Mercer? Gun down our own people?” Elgin countered hotly.
“Velk started the shooting,” Captain Rel reminded his peers. “Him and Presider Denis. I don’t agree with the rebels’ tactics, but they were playing out of his book.”
“What the hell are we going to do now, though?” Captain Echil, of the Firebird, wondered. “Velk’s dead. The rebels have taken the capital. Do we intervene – and cause more death? Will there be more killings if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Elgin admitted.
“You don’t know? Godsdammit,” Mercer repeated. “I never should have listened to you.”
