20: In Motion

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I’d never been inside a spaceship that was actually in good condition before. It was a novel experience.

Admittedly the random corpses, splintered machinery and shreds of ketestri tentacle were a bit of a vibe killer, especially since some of the evidence of carnage suggested tentacle ingresses and movements that defied the laws of physics, but beggars can’t be choosers and I was begging for absolutely anything that could get me into space and somewhere where I might have a chance of making a dash for Earth without dragging a bunch of aliens with me. If I could make it literally anywhere on Earth that had humans in it, I should be fine. I wasn’t a threat to humanity. A missing woman walks into a random town covered in injuries and ranting about aliens, that’s an interesting news segment; I show up with actual aliens, that’s something to take seriously, that’s something to propel humans into space, that’s something to create a major problem with the other aliens who were terrified of us and more likely to want to burn us out of existence than peacefully share the stars. That was dangerous. But if I could get out of here, find a craft small enough for one person to drive, get home and, I don’t know, blow it up or sink it in the ocean or something, I’d figure out how to destroy the alien tech later, and then find my family and…

One step at a time. For now, the ship.

It was in much better condition than the Stardancer had been, even I could see that. Things that were meant to move did so smoothly, and things that weren’t meant to move stayed still. Aljik blood and flesh cleaned up easily from unscratched surfaces. Maybe it had been brand new before being sent on this mission.

It was clearly build by aljik, for aljik. Corridors wound between rooms, most of them sized around the average tunnel width, with very few sharp corners even though building things rounded must have been a lot harder. Things were laid out so that they could be used under gravity, but it was clear that the ship was designed to spend most of its time without it; there were anchor points to grab onto everywhere, many corridors were inconveniently steep, and duplicate machinery and non-critical storage lined the walls and ceiling, too high to be easily accessed from the floor.

“This ship flies without gravity,” I said.

“Yes,” Kit said. “It’s designed to be fast and maneuverable. Spinning would make things much more difficult. A lack of gravity is also a lot easier to move and work in.”

I wasn’t sure about that. I was vaguely aware that low gravity was pretty bad for humans. Bodies adapted to their conditions; to maintain strength of capabilities that one wasn’t using was a dangerous waste of energy when food was hard to come by (as it had been for most of history). People living in high oxygen environments didn’t have as many red blood cells; making red blood cells they didn’t need was a waste of energy. People who didn’t walk or run had low stamina; keeping up stamina you weren’t using was a waste of energy.

People who moved about in low gravity, where everything from moving objects around to pumping your own blood was far easier, lost muscle mass, bone density, and circulatory strength. Which wasn’t a problem for as long as they remained in low gravity. But when they returned to Earth…

Well. I’d just have to get home as quickly as I possibly could. I wasn’t sure how long I had in zero gravity before that would be a problem, so I’d just have to hurry. And even if I did return to Earth incredibly weak… well. The rehabilitation would probably suck. But I’d still be home.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

The drakes had sent three young women to instruct a handful of our atil and both of our dohl. I encouraged any atil who had the time to sit in on whatever lessons they could make it to; no harm in redundancy. If something happened to our pilots, we’d need more. I also sat in on lessons (if I was going to find a way home alone, I was going to need to know how to fly some kind of spaceship) and so, to my surprise, did our captain, apparently for the opposite reason – she gave helpful tips and insights to the dohl, who also helped instruct the atil.

The drakes also confirmed that, so far as they could tell, the ship was in good condition. The only thing that looked deliberately broken was the communication system, presumably to prevent the ship from calling for help during the attack. The records of previous audio messages survived, and Glath went through them, checking for any clues about the status of the Empire and the search for our Captain.

“There’s not a lot here,” he told me, sifting through calls that were incomprehensible to me. “Mostly status updates and orbit course confirmations. It seems like they were prepared to spend a long time here, and they had no idea where the nest was, at least when this ship went down. They weren’t even sure if this was the right planet.”

“So unless they’re tracking this wreckage, they might still not know,” I said. Which made sense, because we hadn’t been blasted to bits yet. “They’re definitely going to think that something’s up when we launch, though.”

“Yes. We will not be able to safely dash until we’re free of the planet’s gravity, and when we do, they’ll surely follow us. We’ll have to be skilled and lucky to avoid being destroyed or captured.”

Capture would probably be better for most of the atil, not counting the Captain, but capture and destruction were the same from my perspective. No way would they risk keeping a Singer in Light alive if they caught me. Being shot out of the sky might actually be better – we’d probably die before I realised what was happening.

“Who’s that talking in the messages?” I asked Glath.

“Tup. The kel in charge of communications.”

“Do we know the captain’s name?”

“Lern.”

I bit my lip. “This communicator. Can we fix it?”

“Yes,” Kit said. “there should be replacement parts for critical systems like this.”

“Can we fix it before we launch?”

“Probably. But why? We want to be as quiet as possible, right? Buy ourselves a few minutes before we’re detected? Are you planning to talk to them to surrender? Because that won’t help us save the Emp – ”

“No, no; nothing of the sort. I’m planning to buy us as much time as possible before they get suspicious. Glath… you’re very good at imitating sounds, right?”

“Yes.”

“This Tup. Can you imitate his voice?”

—————————–

It was done. We were ready. We could launch, we’d make it to space (or die trying), we’d dash away and then… well, then I’d figure out the next step from there. With open space before me and my tiny nest of aljik, I’d have a lot more options. Chances to pinpoint Earth again and find a one-person ship and learn how to fly it.

This ship had six escape pods, which seemed like far too few given its size, an opinion supported by the fact that not a single person aboard had made it to one during the ketestri attack. Maybe I could get this ship close enough to earth to take one home, then dash it away again; the aljik aboard would probably be more interested in their Empire-saving mission than in chasing me down on Earth.

The ship was equipped for a long search far from home with a crew almost as large as our entire nest, meaning that there was plenty of aljik food aboard. Enough that we could use it to start up some biotanks and get my horrible foot jerky back in production. I was tempted not to bother – I’d eaten all kinds of things on the planet that the drakes had vetted as human-safe; whose to say that the aljik food wasn’t human-safe? Hell, I’d eaten aljik before. Surely if I was gonna be poisoned, I’d already been incidentally poisoned, right? But I couldn’t know that for sure. It would be horrible to get this far and then poison myself when safe food was available.

So foot jerky it was. Hooray.

The biotanks were working. The communication was fixed. The pilots were about as trained as they were going to get on short notice when the drakes training them had been operating on a completely different sort of ship and were just kind of doing their best.

It was time to leave.

I didn’t go back to the drakes to visit them for one last goodbye. I’d said my goodbyes before the regency fight, and nothing had changed. I thanked the pilot trainers and sent them ont heir way; they would be able to report everything. I didn’t return to the shore to say a sentimental goodbye to the nest, or the cliff, or watch one last sunset. I had no attention to spare for the past, only the future. I didn’t want to see any part of this planet ever again; every part of it I cared about was either at the core trees or on the ship with me. I made sure my nest was ready, made sure the ship was ready, and then, as Queen, designated immediate command to the ship’s Captain.

The controlled atmosphere of the ship did her good, with her healing lungs. Zero gravity would probably do her even better, sparing her the effort of holding up her massive body. She took over with practiced efficiency, sending crew to their stations.

“Keep an eye out for Queen Tatik’s ships,” she reminded everyone. “The moment another ship is in view, assume we’re spotted and Glath, you start broadcasting. Your job is to stall for as long as possible.”

“Understood,” Glath said. He knew the strategy. We all knew the strategy. I didn’t have a part to play in it, except to sit back and hope like hell that we could get up and out of here.

Well, I didn’t have an official part to play in it. I supposed that my unofficial role was the same as it always was, which was that when something went sideways, I should do something desperate and completely unhinged that would miraculously save everyone, probably injuring myself in the process.

The Captain gave the signal for everyone to strap down for the launch and I sat myself into the human-shaped chair that had been kludged together for this purpose. Aljik launched were apparently fairly slow compared to the ones I’d seen in movies and I wasn’t expecting particularly dangerous g-forces, but better safe than sorry. My tool belt was bulky in the confines of the chair, poking into my back; I took it off and strapped it securely to the back of my chair for the flight with some of the random object straps that were attached to random surfaces (apparently loose objects were a big problem in zero gravity; the ship had straps and sticky surfaces and secure drawers everywhere so nothing needed to be left out unsecured).

“Final checks,” the Captain called, and the crew who had final checks to do did them while I concentrated on strapping myself in. My damaged arm didn’t hurt all that much these days so long as I was careful not to jolt it, but I just knew that the rocking and inertial changes of this launch were going to hurt like hell. I told myself not to throw up. We were heading into a weightless environment and I did not want to throw up in a weightless environment.

“Power up,” the Captain commanded. The slight hum of machinery, a sound I hadn’t realised I’d so badly missed, started up from somewhere. The engines would take just under one minute to power up. Then we’d be on our way, and it would be a little over ten minutes before it would be safe to power up the dash, and that power up sequence would take about thirteen seconds; that was the most dangerous part, because even if Glath managed to fool the other ships long enough to get us up into space, there was no non-suspicious reason to power up for a dash. We could so, so easily die today. I hoped I could come up with some ingenious way to talk us out of getting shot before dashing within the next eleven minutes.

The engines were ready. Make that ten minutes.

“Brace.”

I checked my restraints one last time and pushed myself back into the seat.

“Launch.”

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