The Silver Ship and the Sea (28 page)

She didn’t sound convinced as she said, “I will talk to the other Councilors.”

“Akashi is here. He will come to the meeting.” I glanced at him; he nodded. I tried to pitch my voice as friendly as I could, to reach across the void between me and Nava, to touch her. “Do you remember when we took that walk the day before we left? I asked what you needed, and you said for us to fix the data networks. We did that.”

“And to see how dangerous Alicia is. You are all dangerous. Bryan snapped Garmin’s arm as if it were a twig.”

“People our age beat him up. People who could, should, be his friends. His
brothers
helped.”

“Point,” she said. She sighed heavily. Her voice had lost its frost, but it had not gained warmth; just exhaustion. “I will talk to the Council.”

“Thank you. Please call me back tonight so we can be prepared.”

“I will let you know by morning.”

I turned to the group, meeting their eyes one by one. “Nava will let us know if they’ll meet with us.”

At first, no one commented. Alicia spoke from her position on the ground next to Joseph. “I think we should go get Bryan tonight. Use the skimmer, land across the river, and get Bryan. They won’t expect us. The fire will stop them, and they will expect us to be stopped, as well.”

I wanted to agree with her. I wanted Bryan. But it was wrong. “We don’t know if they saw the skimmer. If they didn’t, we don’t want them to. Besides, we don’t know what kind of defenses they have.”

Akashi nodded. “Best to let the talks happen. Artistos is well defended.” He looked pointedly at Paloma.

Paloma nodded, chewing her lip. “We shot down skimmers.” She swallowed. “I shot one down, myself. There are mortars stored in the armory. My guess is that they still work.”

Alicia said nothing else, but her violet eyes blazed with frustration. I’d have to watch her, talk to Joseph when he woke. But for now, I let it lie.

There was no point in setting firm watches. Most of us had slept nearly all day. Except Alicia and Joseph and Jenna. I walked over and retrieved a few blankets, tossing them to Alicia. “Alicia, why don’t you stay with Joseph? Sleep some if you can. The rest of us can unload the skimmer and take turns on watch for a while.”

Akashi held up his hand. “Chelo?” He waited for everyone else to notice, to pay attention. Even Jenna, who still stood a few feet back from us, stopped. “Chelo. I don’t know if there is a solution here, but I thought someone should acknowledge you. I acknowledge you. Thank you for trying for peace.”

Alicia pointedly looked away.

Jenna watched me carefully, her face unreadable. I wanted her approval, but clearly I would have to settle for acceptance. If I even had that much. She was a force I had no idea how to truly manage,
or even understand. She knew so much, so very much. She alone, of all of us
altered,
understood being shot at.

I amended that thought. Perhaps Alicia did, too, in a way. Bryan was learning. Akashi and Paloma had been in the war; they wanted peace. But Jenna? I had to figure out what she wanted. I nodded at Akashi. “Thank you. We will all have to work together. Perhaps there is a good choice here.”

Kayleen gave me a soft, encouraging smile, and all of us except for Alicia turned and started walking toward the hangar. After a few steps, I stopped. “No. At least one must watch. That way Alicia can sleep. Kayleen?”

She nodded, and turned back toward Alicia and Joseph. I felt immediately better.

As we neared the hangar, Liam came up beside me and put an arm around my shoulders. It warmed me. It reminded me of walking back from the tent tree to Artistos the day the roamers came back, when Bryan helped me walk because my leg was stiff. I curled my arm around Liam’s waist, feeling his strides, the slip and movement of his thigh muscles. I liked the feel of him next to me.

As soon as we stepped inside the hangar, Liam separated from me, jogging toward the skimmer. I felt his absence immediately, a cold place near my side where he had been.

He glanced back at Jenna. She nodded, and he clambered up the ladder into the still-open door. She followed him, the two of them ducking down, disappearing. Moments later, a wide rectangle of silver skin rose up from the back of the skimmer. I did not realize how silent the mechanism was, we all were, until a short sharp bang shook the floor lightly under my feet as the ramp touched the concrete. The opening revealed a cargo bay filled with boxes. Liam and Jenna appeared inside the bay.

Akashi jogged quickly up the ramp and stopped dead at the top, staring unhappily down at the boxes. “You know, Jenna,” he said sadly, “we once promised to leave the past buried.”

She spoke slowly. “I remember
my
promise precisely.
To keep the peace.
I did not break it.”

He shook his head but did not pursue the conversation.

She strode over to the smallest of the boxes, hiked it up under her one arm, and brought it down to a corner in the hangar. Akashi and Liam and I helped, until seven boxes were stacked; three together in one pile, and four in another. The three were
New Making
metal, the four all of Fremont forest wood.

Jenna started with one of the metal boxes. She pulled out a blan
ket, doubling it over so it made a cushion against the concrete floor. She reached into the box, and took out a wrapped round silver ball, carefully removing a silver cloth that swaddled it, and putting it down gently on the blanket, as if it were a baby.

“What is that?” I asked.

Akashi answered, his voice trembling. “If you throw that ball into a group of people, it will kill everyone close to it.” I tore my gaze from the ball, looking at him. His eyes were—sad. A simple word, but his face looked as if all the hope had gone from it.

Liam asked, “What is in it?”

Jenna reached back into the box, pulling out a second ball. “These have some explosive and bits of metal in them.” She pulled out a third and looked up at Akashi, finally acknowledging the disgust in his voice. “I hope that we don’t need to use them. But if we have to defend this place”—her gaze swung to me—“they will be useful. They throw…shrapnel, in a large area.”

I swallowed. I’d promised to talk about defense, but this was not talk. Jenna reached back into the box, and I watched, fascinated and repelled. No wonder Hunter kept every
altered
artifact he found. He was keeping Artistos safe, not hiding our heritage from us. Or both. The headband and projector were neutral, and we could use them for good. The skimmer. The ball’s only purpose seemed to be to kill.

Everything Jenna pulled out was unfamiliar. Twice she wedged boxes between her powerful thighs to gain the leverage to open them with one hand. A long box produced a long stick that Jenna described as a rifle, meant to kill at a distance. Jenna handled everything herself, setting each item or group of items a little apart from the others. She used her mouth when she needed to, when just one arm wasn’t enough; an extra appendage to help unwrap objects encased in soft material.

We stood around her in a loose half circle.

No one spoke or offered to help.

Akashi and Paloma looked miserable; Akashi glaring as if he wanted the box and all of its contents to sink into some deep hole
somewhere, Paloma as if she might get sick to her stomach at a feather’s touch. Liam looked curious, but kept his distance and his tongue. I counted fifteen things. Fifteen weapons, I was sure. Five were the same: small cylinders as long as my palm, thin on the ends but fatter in the middle, shaped for a hand to hold; all of
New Making
metal.

When Jenna finished with the one box, she seemed tired. She sighed, glanced at the other boxes, but didn’t reach for them. She lay a second blanket atop everything but the five small cylinders, and said, “The covered items are for me only. Do not touch them. Do you understand?”

“What do we do if anyone else comes?” Liam asked.

“Do not go near these things.” She pointed to the others, and looked up at Akashi and Paloma. “You know what these are?”

“Microwave guns,” Akashi said.

“The simplest and least lethal choices I had available.” Jenna watched Liam and me this time. “They’re small enough to hide easily. To use one, just apply pressure. Grip it with your fingers to fire it.” She placed the cylinder between her big toe and the one next to it, held it, and twisted with her hand. “There, now it’s activated. It will have power for up to a week, then it can be recharged. You will, of course, draw down its power if you use it.” Then she pointed it at the wall and squeezed. There was almost no noise; just a tiny click that I suspected normal human ears would miss with any background noise at all.

“See,” she said, “nothing happened. There has to be a target in range…something for it to hit. A living target, animal or human.” She held the cylinder out to me. “Then after the click, it will hum softly while it’s being fired, and a light will show what you’re hitting. The noise and light have nothing to do with the microwave beam; they’re for you, so you can tell what the gun is doing. Whatever you hit will immediately feel intense pain. The damage will only be permanent if you fire on the same spot for more than a few seconds. It is a very smart simple weapon.”

I didn’t want to take it. We had always been refused even hunt
ing stunners; I had never even held one. The small cylinder felt heavy for its size, a good fit to my hand. Holding it seemed to split me—Chelo after holding a gun felt as changed as Chelo after hunting. Simply taking the gun felt like the moment I knew I had to kill the djuri I’d downed, that I’d gone too far to save its life. A shiver ran deep inside me, along my spine and up and down the back of my legs, my neck.

Jenna watched me carefully. “Keep the nose pointed at the ground, even when it’s off.”

I adjusted the angle of my wrist.

“If you fire this at a person, or an animal, they will feel like they are burning. You cannot hold it on long enough to kill easily; but it can kill. It disables even from a distance. Effectively, although temporarily. We will practice with it later.”

I swallowed, sure of myself, and spoke clearly and evenly so there was no mistaking my words. “I won’t need this.”

Akashi spoke from beside me. “I hope not. But tomorrow, tomorrow when you meet whoever comes from Artistos, you should assume they will have weapons capable of killing you. No matter how much strength and speed you have, you aren’t combat-trained.”

“Hand it to Liam,” Jenna said, her voice as even as mine.

I felt lighter as soon as it went from my hand to his. I looked back at Jenna, who held another microwave gun out to me. She said, “Carry it. Put it in your pocket. Get used to it. I’ll show you how to fire it later.”

And so Liam and I both ended up with weapons, small ones, but in my pocket, the gun seemed heavy and huge, so big that I felt for it a few times, expecting it to fill my pocket to bulging, to mess up my balance, even though it was, in truth, much smaller than a flashlight. The projector was bulkier, and I hadn’t worried much about being caught with it.

At first, neither Akashi nor Paloma would take a weapon. Paloma looked miserable when Jenna held one out to her, saying, “No one will shoot at me.”

Jenna shook her head lightly. “They may shoot at your daughter and you may want to protect her.”

Paloma nodded, her eyes wet but her face resolved. “I hate this.” She took the gun and pocketed it instantly.

Akashi also armed himself, with no argument. Now there was one cylinder left. And three people. “Jenna—will you take the last one?” I asked.

She waved her hand over the blanket. “Do not worry about me.”

All those times she showed up with dead paw-cats across her back. Did she use weapons, or kill them with her brute force? I had always thought she used her physical skills…

“The last one is for Joseph,” she said.

I did not like that. But Kayleen was too impetuous, Alicia too likely to use a weapon. I nodded. “Let him sleep for a few hours.”

She shrugged. “Not for long. I need him. Chelo? You know not to show that unless you plan to use it?”

“I don’t intend to ever show it to anyone.”

Jenna stood up and gestured toward the
Burning Void
. “You wanted to see inside?”

We climbed, briefly, one by one, into the skimmer; a row of soft seats clearly designed for multiple body types, with straps. There were two screens in front and one on each side; dead now, but surely for navigation. I was positive that when the skimmer flew, data flowed throughout the cabin. Data Joseph or Kayleen could immerse themselves in, but which would forever be invisible and silent for me. There were two pilot seats in back, similar to ours, but with buttons on the armrests. The walls were all smooth and rounded inside; utilitarian.

We were gawking when we should be getting ready, planning, doing
something
. There was much I still needed to know. “Jenna? Will you take a walk with me?”

She nodded, and we all climbed back out of the skimmer. The ramp folded in again, becoming smooth skin. Jenna looked at Liam, who was watching the sleek ship, a thoughtful look on his face. “Can you unpack the wooden boxes?” she asked. “They are…gear. Clothing and supplies. Nothing in them will hurt you.”

Liam nodded, eager. Akashi asked, “Okay if Paloma and I stay to help?”

Jenna hesitated a moment, and said, “All right.”

She and I walked out of the hangar and under the stars. On her way out, Jenna stopped by the skimmer and picked up the paw-cat cloak she’d worn the day they investigated Alicia’s claims. Draped in cat fur, walking with feline grace, she looked like a predator all over again. I swallowed hard, suddenly a little afraid of her. I took a breath. “Jenna? What do you want?”

She walked in silence for a while, her strides longer than mine; I had to jog to keep up with her. The cooling night forced me to wrap my arms around myself for warmth, wishing for a coat. Jenna must have noticed, because she veered toward the keeper’s cabin. Finally she said, “I want to go home.”

Fremont was home; I’d dreamed of leaving. A daydream; a thing to want but never a thing to have. Never a possible thing. To find a home where we fit! Confused, I listened to the crunch of my feet on the ash-covered concrete for a while. I remembered the questions Kayleen and I had mapped while grooming the hebras. “Why did you come here? Why did the
altered
come at all?”

Her response was quick. “Why did the first colonists come?”

“To…to find a place they could live like they wanted. A place no one else wanted enough to fight for.”

“That is why we came. Fremont has raw materials. We brought tools and knowledge to transform it into a paradise; we were more prepared than the original colonists. We planned and scrimped and saved and traded and sacrificed to obtain this world. In the end, we were able to purchase it straight out.”

“You what?”

“We bought rights to Fremont. For a hundred thousand years. Artistos’s ancestors filed a claim for it, with the Planetary Registry. The surety they gave collapsed in the markets, invalidating the claim. We bought rights to Fremont. We knew about the old claim—that’s how we found it, since it’s not near any commercial systems. We didn’t imagine the claimants were still here, or that they’d even ever gotten here. No record existed, and why would
settlers choose to close off all contact with the greater world? They never even confirmed their claim.” She hesitated. “We followed the laws. Our affinity grouping is not rich enough to write off such a loss. We pooled all of our resources to come here, to build our new home.”

I didn’t know what to make of her words. They sounded like the narrator’s voice, on the projector, the day Kayleen and I were trying to pull meanings from strange words under the pongaberry trees. Besides, what difference could it possibly make? The
Traveler
brought the colonists here, but it was a one-way journey. The ship had no fuel to return, no pilots. Fremont’s residents were not going anywhere, no matter who had what claim. “What is an affinity grouping?”

She stopped. “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand all that. An affinity group is a set of beings that chooses similar lifestyles and shares an economic future—that owns the same things. Like the original humans that started Artistos. It is like…like an extended family, only more diverse. An affinity group will stand up for its members when no one else will.”

“So me and Joseph and Kayleen and Liam and Bryan and Alicia are an affinity group?”

She paused. “You are part of ours.” After a few moments, she said, “You
could
make a separate group.” She waved her hand up at the sky, “Out there. If you had any resources. But you don’t, not yet.”

I changed the subject a little. “But now you want to go home. Silver’s Home?”

We had arrived at the keeper’s cabin, and I rummaged through my pack for my coat, shrugging it on quickly. We went back outside and continued walking.

I had just about decided she wasn’t going to answer me when she stopped near the edge of the concrete pad, folding down cross-legged twenty meters from the
New Making,
close enough that it loomed above us. The ground around the pad the ship rested on had burned black, but
New Making
’s outer skin showed no scars from the fire, no sign it had been affected in any way.
“We came from Silver’s Home, and the others most likely returned there.”

My heart leaped into my throat. “Were my parents there? Did they get away?”

She shook her head, and I swallowed, unbidden tears stinging my eyes. My breath caught, hard, sobs struggling to break free of my throat.

Her one eye never left me. The scars across her face shifted. Softened? “I said that wrong,” she said, “I’m sorry. The bodies were all burned. They buried the ashes. I was…incapacitated for a long time, after. Surely they all thought me dead with everyone else. So I don’t know who escaped. Enough to fly away, and at least one pilot. Your father was a pilot.”