34

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. All characters are legal adults and over 18.

Preface:

There are two sex scenes in this installment. One in chapter 24, and the other near the conclusion of chapter 29. The final installment should be next.

A recap from Chapters 15-21:

After surviving a crash landing and arduous hike, the crew makes first contact with native life on Proxima b. They travel to a frontier town called Anukina where to their puzzlement, they are unremarkable, being mistaken for survivors from a crashed airship of a local conflict.

John is ill, his neural implant is malfunctioning due to immune system rejection, triggered by foreign compounds on Proxima b. The crew is taken to a larger city called Newtown where they learn of a war brewing between Northlights and Mainlights.

While in Newtown, John wanders off in his illness, discovering a local freedom fighter named Ralia, and the remains of an Expace space probe, along with a picture of Jennifer twenty plus years younger. He confronts her at the docks and forces the revelation of her deception in bringing the crew to Proxima b.

The crew's reaction is varied. John leaves in anger, taking a ship to Northlights. Greg uses a token to return to Anukina and figure out a way to contact orbit when Kassy returns to save them. Jennifer stays in Newtown to meet a member of the lost Fuzanglong crew. The attempt is a disaster; she and Sarah flee for their lives to a ship in the harbor called the Ikoa. A deadly battle at sea ensues, the ship is lost, and Jennifer's fate is unclear.

Arriving in Anukina, Greg befriends Nira. She takes him to the mountains so he can test his radio. He's unable to get a signal through the Proxima b ionosphere and subsequently tries to recover the high-power transmitter from their crashed ship, also failing. He resolves that he must build an amplifier for the emergency radio to reach orbit. Needing help, he and William ( who eventually fled to Anukina ) become members of Nira's clan so they may travel to the industrial city of Mainlights, and gain access to the technology they need.

Nira was a slave, and it's expected she will be coerced into ring-fighting again upon her return to Mainlights as that's how she earned her first freedom.

** Chapter 22: Northlights **

Jennifer lifted herself on one elbow while her waking eyes adjusted. A fresh bandage was present on her thigh. Steel cabinets with wood lining hung between gray support columns that looked like concrete, and a single fan embedded in the wall as an air duct hummed recklessly, its bearings beyond their service life. She sat up. The table in the room was filled with glass tubes and lidded containers, all neatly arrayed on its surface. Her pack was sitting on its edge, along with Sarah's. The room had no door, and outside was a hallway leading to a steel gate.

"You," a Teolid male said, appearing in the doorway, "Come with me. You do not need to stay any longer."

She steadied herself and slid off the table. Her first few steps were uncertain; there was a deep pain in her thigh. The Teolid waited by the steel gate, opening it when she approached, and leading her to an open courtyard.

Four windmills worked in the corners. A decorative artificial canal ran through the center, cascading over stepped waterfalls before leaving to the north. She was instructed to sit on a stone bench where John stood with one foot casually atop it. The male Teolid turned and left.

"Where am I?" Jennifer said.

"You're in Northlights."

"Where's Sarah?"

"She didn't make it. The first human casualty of your lies, to add to the dozens of Centauran lives. You managed to get an entire ship sunk. She saved you, you know. Dragged you to safety, kept you from bleeding out. How does it feel to be a murderer, Jennifer?"

"Nobody made you come down here, John. You wanted this."

"Except I didn't lie to four other people about it," he said.

"Tell me something, John. Do you think Kassy will save us? How do you think you'll get off this planet?"

"If we're to believe the lies you've told us, then CoreX will ride in on a celestial white horse, saving us all."

Jennifer stood up to stretch her leg and smiled mockingly at him.

"Haven't you wondered why there was never another mission after the Fuzanglong? If Expace had discovered the void strand, why wouldn't there be a steady stream of ships exploring interstellar space?"

"It'd crossed my mind. You told me it was a colony ship that day we discovered the void strand, and that's why it was kept a secret."

"Void matter is leftover from solar system formations, trapped in the center of gravity wells. The reason we stumbled across it was because of the asteroid splitting we'd been doing, but that wasn't a common event when the Fuzanglong was launched. It should be obvious why there were no other missions."

"So the stuff is rare; we already knew that, so what?" John said, switching his legs on the bench.

"We found enough for multiple void drives at Eureka5261; let's assume Expace did too. What makes more sense: that they are sitting on the material, keeping it secret for twenty-plus years, or that the containment facility was destroyed, sabotaged like the Fuzanglong was, and just like we were."

John took a deep breath, a look of suspicion forming in his eyes. "Putting on hold for a minute the question of who would perform the sabotage, I'll admit it's odd that we didn't see any other interstellar missions after the Fuzanglong, but we don't have strong evidence of sabotage. Space travel is hard. We could have had an actual navigation failure."

"It is hard, and well-covered sabotage is harder: Will your explosive charge work just when it's supposed to, incriminating the party you planned it would? The perfect way to sabotage a mission is to have an agent onboard, one who's willing to adapt to any circumstance. Kassy was programmed to sabotage us, except something happened onboard, something that changed her mind."

John held the flat of his thumb against his chin in thought. He sat down on the bench, facing the opposite direction from Jennifer. She circled around to his front.

"Uh huh, lover-boy is remembering something that happened on the ship, isn't he? When you were in the VR, she made a pass at you, didn't she? You weren't even sure if she was going to let you go. Does that seem like a stable ship's AI?"

"I didn't think much of it at the time. How would you know any of this?"

"Because she told me."

"If you didn't trust Kassy, why the hell didn't you tell someone?" John said.

"Where are you going to have a secret conversation on a ship that can hear everything you say, John?"

He rubbed the stubble on his face, coaxing his next thought out. "What I don't understand then, is -- why would she lie about the hull temperature probe readings? Why not just say everything is fine, have us ride back home, and then finish us off? Why would she have lied at your request? What possible influence could you have had over her?"

"I think when we survived her navigation incident, intended to destroy us, that she changed her mind and wanted to live. I told her the truth, that I wanted to come down here to look for my Father, but I never trusted her. I think in her mind, I gave her an option she calculated was just as good as killing us. She could fulfill her programming and keep her own life. She's not coming back, John."

"You're experiencing some kind of guilt. I can't trust anything you say. You're a murderer as much as Kassy might be until I decide otherwise," John said.

Jennifer brushed her now quite long hair to the side, discarding his comment and looking at the artificial waterfalls.

"Think about it. I saved your life."

"You're mad," he said, standing up.

"So what happens now?"

"I'm afraid we both live at the whim of our new keeper." He walked away.

Jennifer looked to the far end of the courtyard to see a Centauran approaching. She'd seen enough from the battle at sea to recognize her for what she was: a soldier.

"You are the Lani from the picture. A ghost I would never believe to see. Many soldiers died bringing you here, hoping you may be useful," Ralia said. She settled her red eye's gaze on Jennifer, making clear her last statement was a question.

"The picture, I wish to know anything you can tell me about it."

Ralia idly rubbed the clawed thumb of her right hand over her other claws, making a clicking noise, then laughed.

"I will answer your questions that suit me, but first there is the matter of your use to me. I only keep useful things here. You owe a great debt of blood to me. The two of you will attend today's dispensations, then we will discuss whether you will live another day. Follow me," Ralia said, taking a half step before turning back to the seated Jennifer. "It's not a request, Lani."

***

Jennifer watched six Telluki females and six males work loading a cart with boxes of food, dried meats, roots, and vegetables. The cart was hitched to a harness with two of the Centauran pack animals John simply called horses. Two males and two females took the driver's seat in the first carriage loaded with the supplies, while Ralia escorted Jennifer and John into a second carriage.

They left the compound, winding through narrow streets toward the city, passing rusty, thin buildings, dilapidated and misaligned as if only violence had been visited upon them over the years, never maintenance. Dark marks and smudges covered their sides. Holes existed where maybe there shouldn't be. Telluki or Teolid females sat on porches or leaned in doorways, and to Jennifer's curiosity, they waved with calm recognition.

The density of the buildings was increasing, and they turned down a side alley where groups of walking Telluki and Teolid were gathering. The scent of biological waste drifted between the buildings like urine in a city street of San Francisco slums, formed from the same despair -- foul and sour smelling.

"This was once a well to do part of town, all had jobs: mechanics, service providers, and tailors, in the days when our shipping was not impeded, when we controlled a fair share of quota at the evaporation refineries," Ralia narrated.

The drivers stopped and exited the vehicle. They began unloading boxes, carrying them through the back door of a nearby building which Jennifer, Ralia, and John entered.

"Do you rule Northlights?" John said.

"You flatter me, Star Eyes. Be careful; I may see you as more than useful. No, I do not rule them, though I wish I could. I do what my government will not. They've retreated to their decadence," she said, pointing to ornate buildings in the hillsides. "doing nothing while our exports suffer and our ships are attacked. This is the result: poverty and hardship while they maintain their lifestyle and waste time in talks and negotiations."

The front door was opened and the stream of waiting Centaurans entered, saying hello to familiar faces.

"How do you fund all this?" Jennifer asked.

"There are those who are willing and those who are desperate. They make their way to us via the sea or the railroads. They work gambling or prostitution, enabling the vices of those who destroy Northlights with their idleness. We take from the rich their wasted money and use it to help those they do not."

Jennifer's eyes drew a look of compassion for those she couldn't see, parallels of human trafficking crimes that occurred on Earth crossed her mind, something she knew well growing up in the poverty and sandbars off the shore of Fuzhou after the war.

"If you would see where they come from, you would not judge harshly. Mainlights corrals Teolids into horrid conditions. They take great risks to come here. I give them freedom. What they earn they are free to keep. I take nothing from them. Many become warriors for my cause."

Jennifer couldn't deny those she'd seen so far seemed loyal from purpose and not terror.

"We're done here. Let's go," Ralia said, gesturing back outside. Jennifer noted the line had grown. It lacked the hopelessness of a food kitchen on Earth. Ralia was a terrorist by her own admission but had she instilled hope here? Did she have sermons and recruitment rallies?

They reentered the same cart they arrived in, heading back a different way than they came. Around and around they twisted, climbing a long steady hill in circles until they reached the top where a stone building that looked like a lighthouse sat. To the north and below them, Jennifer could see the mouth of the great lake Kamalui that separated Northlights, Newtown, and Mainlights, and beyond it, the true ocean of Proxima b.

"This weapon of yours, you say with the aid of a machine inside you, targets can be hit from great distance?" Ralia said to John. She pointed to a far hill. "Could you kill someone sitting atop that building over there?"

"Yes," John replied.

"Show me," she said.

"What?"

"Kill them."

Jennifer watched a twinge run through John's face, a feeling, quickly packed away.

"I need a reason," he said.

"An honest one is the only one that will do: They are a bureaucrat; the spoiled child of a Mother who voted against retaliatory tariffs so that she could continue to benefit in her linens and high-end boutique sales."

He wore the same soulless gaze as when killing and eating the kyapu after their crash. "John?" Jennifer said.

He removed his SX5 from its holster and loaded a guided gyrojet shell. It was an easy shot, not something that would impress generals reviewing to purchase the technology, were this Earth.

He aimed and squeezed the trigger. A fizzing sounded as the tiny missile left for its target, and a short distance away, a sonic boom like a whip cracking. The tiny missile's guidance fins made minor windage corrections. As inevitable as a computer asked to solve an equality, it struck the skull of its target. The figure once standing on the balcony was gone.

"What have we become?" Jennifer said.

He holstered his weapon and turned to face her. "Murderers. What we needed to be to survive. Isn't that what you wanted us all here for, Jennifer -- to survive?"

"Kumu!" Ralia said to the driver, who continued along their route. If she had feelings about what just happened, she hid them well.

When they returned to Ralia's complex, John walked inside leaving Jennifer alone with Ralia, who smelled like mint, metal, and fresh killed meat.

"I do not like your names; they twist my tongue," Ralia said. "Are you a good fighter, Jennifer? I was told you did well defending the Ikoa's last stand."

I don't want to be a part of your insignificant war, Jennifer thought. You have no idea the plague of locusts that will descend on your planet, how unimportant all this will be.

"The picture of you, the Lani who kept it, they may yet live," Ralia said.

Jennifer grabbed Ralia's shoulder, "What do you want? I will do what you want for this information."

"Your marksmanship skills, to cleanse the local government."

"No!" Jennifer said.

Ralia turned around to face Jennifer and growled, sizing up the human from her 190cm viewpoint. "You wish to die so soon?"

"You take me to see the Lani or I do not help you at all."

"Growl-hmm. And what motivation would you have to do as I ask after you have what you want?"

"Because after I have what I want, I might care if you kill me, but right now I don't."

Jennifer could see Ralia was thinking, so she pushed harder. "When we were rescued, the locals told us it's not uncommon for airships to crash in the mountains. I'm guessing those airships are yours, Ralia. Why?"

"There is a railway under construction in the eastern valley by Mainlights. I wish to destroy it, but it is difficult terrain and I cannot get enough soldiers through the mountains protecting it without alerting Adir to my efforts. I have lost airships attempting to navigate the mountain range between North Green Guard and Anukina.

"You mean the mountains where our ship crashed?"

"Yes. North Green Guard is a training outpost. I watched your ship crash and knew you would soon arrive in Newtown."

"Then you know where our ship is. There is something I need from it."

Jennifer knew the reason Ralia couldn't get through those mountains was because the peaks were tall and they lacked radar and other sophisticated navigation aids. Greg hadn't been able to talk to the cube satellites, to access their navigation broadcasts, but they had to be functioning; it was impossible for them all to fail. There was a logical reason why they weren't broadcasting positioning info, and if she could talk to them, she could correct it.

"How do your airships navigate when they are above the clouds, Ralia?"

"It is a great deal of guesswork at times, but the principles are the same as the oceans."

"I have maps of those mountains taken from the sky. What if I could show you a way to track true on straight lines in the air, even when blind in the clouds, regardless of the wind direction."

"If this were possible then I would send ships to destroy Adir's eastern railroad. It would be a great blow to her economy and morale."

Ralia touched Jennifer's head, running a clawed finger through it as if she'd been curious about its texture. "Your request or your death cost me equally little, therefore I'll grant your request. I've shown you what I'm fighting for. It may be that we have something in common."

"You're a justice seeker, Ralia. That's what we have in common," Jennifer said.

Ralia straightened her posture and looked at Jennifer's leg. "We will sail for North Green Guard when I have made travel arrangements. It will give your leg time to become stronger. See that you attend to it in the following days."

** Chapter 23: Mercenary **

North Green Guard was an entire town that came and went with the arrival of ships. With no power or permanent heat sources, Jennifer understood why the crew was unaware of its presence during the scans for Raphael landing zones. The port was not on the massive inland bay the Centaurans called Kamalui, but instead north of Anukina, situated on the west shore of the true Proxima b ocean. After the battle at sea between Adir's ships and the Ikoa, an open war between Mainlights and Northlights had started. Adir's ships would not enter the ocean to attack, as they held no military or economic interests, and this made for an uneventful, but long sailing journey eastward from Northlights.

In a lower deck of the anchored ship e'Likane, filled with the noise of creaking alien alloys, Ralia told Jennifer and John of the Fuzanglong crew survivor.

"The Lani you asked about once lived among us in Northlights. It was his image that we dressed a Telluki male in, to lure you into the alleys of Newtown, chasing something you thought you saw," Ralia said to John. "It is said he still lives in the eastern mountain range, at the canyon of The Broken Jaw."

"And where is Broken Jaw?" Jennifer asked.

"That is all I wish to share. Prove to me you can navigate my airships, and we will talk more of Broken Jaw," Ralia said.

Jennifer and John were rowed ashore in a dinghy to a place where Ralia played war games. Her soldiers wore uniforms with armor, armed with revolvers and rifles. The time of treaties restricting chemical weapons had come to an end. This was a war.

The smell of cooked meat, caught wild from the surrounding mountains reminded Jennifer of the street vendors in Newtown. In the following waking cycle, she and John, along with a detachment of soldiers, tracked through a south-running ridge trail into the mountains. John had pinpointed the crash location of the Raphael using his original maps and was leading the way.