Chapter Ten:
As early as the next morning, Beka noticed a change in the general mood of the drift. Most of the passers-by already recognized them on sight as the instigators of this stand-off with the Sabra-Jaguar pride. People stared and whispered and narrowed their eyes, but no one dared any angry words or worse. Somehow, muffins the size of a small child's head didn't taste quite as good when Beka was sure the baker hated her along with everyone else.
The drift engineers had arrested the lazy drift of Tintar rad Yist (hence the name drift, Beka realized with a silent giggle), so they would not run into any more of the mines, but they had not yet isolated any exploitable weakness in the design of the mines. No one had thought to arm Tintar rad Yist with offensive weapons, and the mines would blast any ship out of the sky before it could move more than a few kilometers from the hangar docks.
And after all this, Tyr and Beka found themselves unable to carry out their original goal in coming here, conducting some quiet business, maybe discovering a rumor of the Andromeda's location if they were very lucky. Recent events had borne out Beka's suspicions of exactly how far she lived from 'very lucky'. But not even what felt by now like chronic bad luck could succeed against the natural human tendency – and probably of other species, too – to gather around diversion from the usual routine. Although the muffin baker seemed to hate them, a few people she met did not stare off into the wall and hurry away when she tried to approach them.
Somehow she entered into conversation with a man quite a bit older than her but still attractive for all that, and he seemed positively giddy to be talking with someone so important in the galactic scheme of things that the Sabras were on the cusp of actually launching a siege of Tintar rad Yist on their behalf.
"So what are they gonna do?" he asked as they made a lazy circuit of the hangars. His wide eyes would have suited a five year old and made her smile in spite of herself.
"The Sabras? Hell if I know. I think that'll depend on what we do, and we haven't exactly figured that out yet." That was her standard line when asked, not that she was asked as often as one might think. There was not much to divulge just yet, but if there were, not even a cute older guy who apparently could not get enough of her company, would change her mind.
He laughed. "That's the best way to keep 'em on their toes." The man nodded at the neat rows of ships lined up down the length of the hangar. "Which one's yours?"
"The broken one." The mechanics, even spurred by the Mayor himself, kept running into obstacles when they tried to fix the Maru. The sub-light engines had their problems and the slipstream drive had its problems, and evidently the life support systems had been functioning by a minor miracle when Beka docked. "If it were otherwise, we would have made our clever escape by now."
He gaped at her. "Even with the mines?" he asked incredulously.
"Hey," she replied with a grin, "you haven't seen me pilot."
She thought she spotted the Maru far in the distance and a couple of mechanics swarming over his hull. She longed to check on her baby, but she did not feel completely comfortable bringing this stranger with her. The thought of anyone else seeing the Maru in such a state physically hurt her. It had been hard enough letting Harper into the engine room all those years ago.
Her companion laughed but looked a bit uncertain. "So… you think you can do it?"
"I don't see why not," she said airily. "I've… well, I don't think I'm supposed to divulge all the messy details, but suffice to say, people say it's impossible until I pilot it."
After they left the hangar, Beka sneaked past the bakery and peered in for a brief moment. Brief as her appearance was, the proprietor saw her and glared. She sighed. "It's official. No more muffins the size of my head." The aroma of baking followed them until they turned into the next corridor.
In a flash, Beka remembered the time and the appointment she had made about five minutes ago to meet with Tyr and the mayor. She left her admirer looking forlorn and rather confused, secretly relieved to have found a good reason to abandon him. Maybe she had been spending too much time around Tyr, but this hanging-on annoyed her. He hardly dared disagree with her on anything and laughed a little too hard at her witticisms.
The mayor had nothing helpful to say, relaying bad news on all fronts. The drift's few defensive weapons showed no sign of damaging the mines in any meaningful fashion; repairs on the Maru were progressing very slowly; and they had picked up fragments of chatter from the Sabra ships which seemed to imply that a larger force would join them within a day. Beka could think of nothing helpful to add but was glad to see that Tyr had calmed since the last time he met with Alorna. They left the Perseid with an appointment for the next day and still no idea for how they would break this impasse.
When they returned to their room, the two crewmates occupied themselves quietly, reading flexis and surfing through the channels on the local entertainment network. Tyr projected an air rather more taciturn than usual, and when Beka tried to start a conversation, he answered in monosyllables or not at all. She rolled her eyes and wished just a little for her earlier, talkative companion.
Well, Beka Valentine did not need someone else to continually amuse her. She found an old holovideo, widely pronounced a classic but one she had never seen. Harper had introduced her to the wonders of popcorn, so she decided to be lazy and order some up from the drift's grocery. To her delight, they not only stocked popcorn but a self-popping bag, complete with salt and something called butter flavor. Tyr raised an eyebrow when she ordered it but raised no objection.
Five minutes after the order arrived, along with some things Beka thought she might like to eat later, she flopped on the bed and ripped open the popcorn bag. Fragrant steam spewed out of the bag and made her eyes water. "Ouch." She sneaked a glance at Tyr, who had not seemed to notice. "I got us some sandwich stuff and self-heating soup." No answer. "Do you mind if I turn this up?" she asked, nodding towards the large monitor opposite the bed.
He looked up from his book – a real book, Beka had never seen one of those outside a museum or Tyr's hands – to glance at the screen and give a tiny shrug.
"Oh-kay, I guess that's a no." She turned up the volume a bit louder than necessary, hoping to provoke some reaction. Soon, though, she lost herself in the plot and forgot to try to provoke a reaction. At one point, she became so caught up that she shouted and threw popcorn at the screen.
"It's no use," Tyr said suddenly. "The handsome stranger will turn up at the drift just as she has finished preparing her shuttle for take-off, and…" He sighed. "That's why it's one of the classic tragedies of its time."
Beka turned her head to glare to see him grinning faintly at her over his book. While she was relieved to discover that he was not ignoring her for some mysterious reason of his own, he did not have to ruin the holovid for her! She reached down to scoop up some popcorn to throw at him but came up with nothing but greasy fingers. Instead, she crumpled the self-heating bag and threw it at him. Of course, he caught it deftly and tossed it in the trash. She scoffed and returned her attention to the vid.
The hour for bed approached faster than Beka liked, and soon she was gazing longingly at the mediocre mattress and eyeing Tyr nervously. He must have noticed her discomfort but said nothing, still engrossed in his book. She went through her nightly routine and left the bathroom in her trusty pajamas. While she was changing, Tyr had turned off every light but the small lamp he used to read. She fell asleep more quickly than she would have thought, before she had to worry about him joining her.
The next couple of days took on a dreamy cast, with the mines and increasing numbers of Sabra-Jaguar ships outside the drift (Beka did not know when exactly Charlemagne tapped his own ships for the effort), along with the widening divide apparent inside the drift, between those who wanted to throw Tyr and Beka to the encircling Nietzscheans and those who had been pushed too far by übers all their lives and thought this would be a good time to take a stand against them. It was somehow amusing to be in the center of such an ideological battle, or would have been under less dire circumstances.
She would have thought that all of the people who conducted business on the drift would have been in the first camp, but they were evenly divided, excepting the drug dealers. They hated the sudden halt in traffic, and she suspected that the addicts were no happier. It was an accepted trait of life on Tintar rad Yist that the resident dealers conned the traveling buyers and the resident buyers robbed the traveling dealers. They were too good to fool each other.
They scared Beka a little every time she stepped foot outside her room, but they gave her an idea. The idea scared her too, but she was starting to suspect that it was the only chance she had. She decided to ponder it for a day or two before following through. She wished there was someone unbiased she could ask for advice, but she knew very well that Tyr and Alorna would be horrified at the suggestion. It horrified her too.
The decision was made for her one evening after she had gone to harass the mechanics and murmur reassuring words to her Maru. To her great surprise, they had nearly finished with repairs. Another long day of work and it would be finished, and it was not as if they had much other work at the moment, one of them informed her with a sullen glare. She heard a commotion from one of the corridors making its way into the hangar bay and instinctively ducked behind her ship.
A woman came limping in, trying to run with the weight of a large infant in her skinny arms. She was crying and screaming for a medical transport for her child, who was bright red and did not seem to be breathing. The mechanics tried to explain to her that they had nothing to do with the order to keep all ships docked, but she kept insisting that one of the ready a ship for her until a few uniformed security officers appeared from another direction.
They spoke with her quietly and left with the woman supported between two of them, the third holding the child. They promised to take her and her child to one of the doctors stationed around the drift while she wept and begged them to let her go. The child needed a specialist, it seemed, who lived about twenty minutes away on a well-traveled slipstream route. She could not even call the specialist to ask him to make a house call.
When she ran into Tyr later that day, he noticed her distraction and asked what was wrong. She replied that she was still distraught over the hatred of the muffin baker, and even though he clearly did not believe her, he did not press the issue. She was glad; she was not sure how long she could have held out under his interrogation.
The next morning she woke up early and avoided him all day, doing a bit of shopping and sitting in a café with a holonovel she had picked up while waiting in line. Somehow the hours passed before she checked on the Maru and discovered that it was finally ready to fly. Well, 'ready' might be an overstatement… it was capable of sustained sub-light and slipstream travel, at least enough for them to find the Andromeda. She had an idea of where they might be and was sure Tyr had more than a hunch.
When she had the Maru prepped for take-off, much to the consternation of the mechanics, she sent a brief, encrypted communiqué to Alorna, stating that she had a plan for getting her and Tyr out his hair… figuratively speaking… which required only his permission for the Maru's departure. By this time, he was too frazzled to argue and immediately replied with his consent. All she had left to do was send a messenger to find Tyr and tell him to hurry his ass back to the hangar.
He would not be happy, she knew as she assembled the final, critical ingredients for her scheme. He would not be happy, but he would live… and she would live, and no more little children with heart defects or brain tumors would die because of them. When she heard the outer hatch open to admit her crewmate, she shook the bottle, inhaled deeply, and dropped a single milky drop in each eye.
