11: Catching up

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Behind me, the crew were panicking. They didn’t understand what I was saying or who I was talking to. Glath was talking a lot; probably explaining the situation. I ignored them all. Nobody was pulling me away from the comms, and that was all that mattered.

“Derek! Are you alright, love? What’s going on? Do you need help?”

“Mum!” He started crying. “I was scared you were dead.”

“It’s okay, sweetie, I’m here. Where’s your brother? Are you two alright?”

More tears were his only response. Before I could panic, another familiar voice came on. “Jesus, Champers, you gave us a scare there. Both of the boys are with me. We’re all fine. What’s your situation like?”

“Kate?” My sister. My sons. Here. How? Why? What?

“Charlie. Do you need help?”

“I’m fine. What are you doing out here? What’s going on?”

“Abducted by aliens. Had to steal their spaceship. You know how it is.”

“That was you? You guys stole that shyr’s spaceship?”

“So that’s common knowledge now, is it?”

“No, she’s on my ship. Really upset about the whole thing. We can’t let her near you or the boys, I don’t know what she’d do.”

“Mummy?”

“Kieth! It’s okay, sweetheart, mummy’s here.” I was going to have to kill that shyr so that my family could safely come aboard. Not the first time I’d killed aljik, not by a long shot, but I’d never killed a shyr before. It would take some thought. If I could pinpoint its location on the ship, I could just find some way to destroy that part of the ship; I had enough crew that we could eat the losses. That’s be better, in fact; less people in the way to keep us from going home. Hell, if my family were in control of their ship I could just head over and blow this one up! These people had kidnapped me in the first place, it’s not like they didn’t deserve –

“Captain?”

I glanced over. Kit and Glath were watching me with concern.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and turned back to the comms. “Are you alright, love?”

“We thought you might be dead.”

“I’m right here, baby. Kate, what’s your ship like? Do you know how to pilot – ”

“Our ship’s chock full of aljik, and they are not happy about our presence, to say the least. We got them out this far, but they’ve been pushing back recently.”

“Are you safe?”

“Honestly? Hard to say.”

“I’m the captain of this one. It’s probably best to get you guys onto mine. If we can get rid of the shyr first.”

“Could you reason with – ?”

“No. I don’t trust her. If it was me and you, sure, but I’m not extending any faith when the boys are on the line. She’s been trying to goad me into starting a war with Queen Tatik specifically to renew her fear of humans. She’s really, really upset that you stole her ship. It’s a nice looking ship, by the way.”

“Oh, this isn’t the shyr ship. We crashed that one.”

“You crashed a spaceship?!”

“On purpose!”

“What?!”

“I’ll explain everything later. This ship’s crew are trying to break into our cabin, can you get your guys to calm them down?”

“Sure,” I said, glancing at my guys, who were also still mostly panicking. “I’m handing comms over, stay safe.”

I didn’t bother switching to our shared language; I just spoke to Glath, and let him translate. “My family’s on that ship and the aljik that have them are freaking out. Can you guys talk to them and make sure nobody starts a battle? I don’t think they want to fight any more than we do, or they’d have attacked already.”

Glath had clearly already imparted most of this information, because it took very little explanation before they got back to work. I leaned against the wall, as best I could in zero gravity, and rubbed my temple with my good hand.

My sons. My sister. Out here.

How?

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one wondering. Glath drifted over beside me. “What’s going on?”

“No idea.”

“How are they here? Is human space technology better than we thought?”

“Nope. I didn’t ask, but my guess is that they got out here the same way I did. And since they took a ship from one of Queen Tatik’s agents, I think we can guess who gave that order.” I really shouldn’t be talking this openly about the shyr. I’d never had any way to verify how much, if any, English she knew; Derek could clearly speak some radio aljik (he was so so clever), so there must have been some linguistic exchange. But in the circumstances, it would be weird not to talk about how they got into space, and what was I supposed to do, not warn my family that she was aboard my ship? She could kill me if she wanted, if it kept her away from the boys. “The real question,” I continued, “is how the fuck their abductors found them, specifically, among eight billion people, given how bad aljik are at understanding human sociology. Or why Tatik wanted my family, because there’s no way in hell that that’s a coincidence. I’ll have to ask them later.”

“If she took them in response to Nemo taking you, then it makes sense that she would want your nestmates.”

“It does?”

“Of course. They would have more information about you, and possible insight into why Nemo chose you, if Tatik thought there might be a reason for her to choose a human in particular. Also, if you met each other in battle, there would be a chance of them converting you to their nest if she could use them to offer greater exchange than Nemo had for your services.”

“Or I could’ve converted them to my nest.”

“Unlikely. Her nest is far more prestigious, and there are three of them and only one of you. You would not be able to hold sway over all three of them.”

“Proves that Tatik doesn’t understand what a mother is. Of course, when they’re teenagers, it’ll be a different story.” I had to find a way to kill that shyr and get them aboard. Or I had to get aboard their ship. It didn’t matter which. I just needed to verify with my own eyes that they were okay.

I briefly stressed about how difficult it would be to convince my crew to help my family; this turned out to be a nonissue. My crew were my nest and my family were my nest; ergo, we were retrieving nestmates, and not only that but nestmates favoured by the Queen. Being Queen really did make a lot of things so much easier.

Now, if I could just figure out some way to deal with that shyr.

———————–

“Okay, let me explain what’s going on.”

Sil had been hoping for an explanation from the beginning, but the prospect of getting one filled him with fear. What he had deduced was that there was no reason to fight the Oval Nine (good), because it had also been captured by this mysterious species of alien (very much not good). So if the two ships were going to bend together to search for whatever mystery object they wanted from the dead rogue Princess, then –

“We don’t need to search any more.”

Oh. Good. Or bad? Hard to know, at this stage.

“We’re going to bring Mum over on a shuttle. Her ship is very, very invested in her safety. If you hurt her or us, they’ll destroy this ship without hesitation.”

So the alien on the other ship was named ‘Mum’. Sil realised that he still didn’t know the names of these aliens. Ah well, one thing at a time.

“We don’t want any fighting,” Sil said.

“None of us do,” the spokesperson said. “Get the shuttle transfer organised.”

So Sil headed off to have his crew organise a shuttle transfer with the Oval Nine crew, wondering for about the ten thousandth time how he’d gotten into this position in the first place.

———————-

“All weapons are locked down?” I asked, for what had to be the thousandth time.

“Yes, Queen Charlie.”

“Triple guards at every lockdown switch, with alarms to alert everyone right away if they’re attacked?”

“Yes, Queen Charlie.”

“All under orders to trigger the alarm the instant anyone in their group is attacked, before fighting back or protecting the switch?”

“Yes, Queen Charlie.”

“Good. Glath?”

Glath poured out of the escape pod and assembled himself back into human shape. “Nobody is in there.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Charlie, you had it flooded with poisonous gasses for four hours with the hatch under full guard the whole time and nobody’s been allowed to open the door until I performed this sweep just now with you and all these other people standing right at the hatch. It is absolutely impossible for any aljik to have snuck in.”

“Any aljik?”

“Any aljik.”

“Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “We’re ready, then. Let’s… let’s go.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No, this is my Calm And Assured expression. Let’s get the hell out of here while I’m still calm and assured.”

We boarded the shuttle, just me and Glath. I didn’t want to bring any aljik and potentially cause problems with the crew of the other ship, especially since my family’s grip on things over there sounded tenuous. But I needed Glath, because he could crawl into every crevice once we were off the ship and check, once again, that there was absolutely no way that any shyr with a plan to keep us dangerous humans well away from the aljik had snuck aboard.

I strapped myself into the heavily modified safety seat. Glath strapped himself into an identical seat, which was pretty pointless because in the event of some sort of impact or engine problem no seat belt was going to hold a cloud of spiders together, but whatever. The actual launch was a blur; all I cared about was that at some point very, very soon, we’d dock with the Red Four, and the door of the escape pod would open. And I would see Kate. And I would see my boys.

That had been my goal for so, so long. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do after that.

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