Chapter Twenty

A Truly Painful Past

ARAZIS

She ran to the middle of a yellow field of wheat. Of course, she did not know the name of the plant or understand the reason for its growing.

She felt comfort in the field. She had never seen plants like it, but there were similar red ones back on Third Colony. The soil on the ground only added to the illusion. She felt back at home. She felt safe. The then lifted her head to face the metal walls to realise she wasn't back home, but still on this dreaded ship headed for oblivion.

She began to cry. There was nothing left to do. She couldn't run from it. She was stuck here. She had already forgotten most of Captain Jeremiah's last words. She didn't know what else to do but cry.

There was the sound of movement. Had Isel come to tell her they were leaving? Did a guard see her and come to take her back to a cell? She turned to see neither. She turned back not to face her.

"You must be Janet."

"How did—"

"Don't ask. I guess you've come here too to tell me how much you hate me, how I am emotionless, how I'm a demon? Is that it? I can't stand any of you!" she screamed.

"Calm down, I didn't say anything,"

"Now, but your mother did, and so has everyone else I've met here on this ship, why?"

"Why are you here on this farm? You're trespassing you know that?"

"Great! Another thing that I don't know the meaning! Throw me a dictionary or an encyclopedia and maybe I'll look it up!"

"It means you can't be standin' here! So don't get snippy with me!"

"Why not, no one can own land. But this isn't land, this is an illusion. Or can you own a piece of land with your flawed laws."

"It isn't flawed to own land. That's the way I grew up, that's the way I'm livin' and no one will change that."

"Just stop talking! The more I hear from you Kushan, the more questions I get. Just stop with the nonsense! I can't take it!" then she ran farther into the field. But Janet just followed.

"Why're you here?" she asked.

"Well, I came to find out about someone's past, but instead I was called a demon with no emotions. I just feel like throwing myself out an airlock right now."

"Don't be talkin' like that now, who you been trying to find out about?"

"Mark. I wanted to know just how painful his past it. So I can relate to him. So I can understand him. But so far, this whole trip has proven to be useless. Maybe I should just go ask Jay. I don't care if Mark finds out."

"Mark? What about Mark? I don't want to hear that name again. Now go away. I got work to do."

Now she was getting somewhere. "What happened?"

"He left us. That's all I know, and it's all I care to. He brought his pain on himself."

Arazis decided she was getting nowhere with this one. And she couldn't go back in there with Lisa. There were two options left. The man named Dane, or Mark's friend Jay. She would like to talk to Jay, but she was already here, and the other was probably with Mark at the time.

She walked right past Janet, and out the field.

Unsure where to go, she decided to head to the elevator. She couldn't do anything else here.

"Wait!" the voice came from behind. It was Isel calling to her.

"What do you want? Just leave me alone."

"Well, while you were gone, I found out something . . . well . . . something just horrible."

"Mark?"

She nodded. "We should go somewhere to talk."

ERIC

He couldn't believe what he did. Everything around him was just turning out for the better. William wasn't going to bug him, and that was certain, the whole record about his ship's sabotage was solved, and Triikor was free to walk around the ship, with the occasional surveillance of course. But there was one thing that pretty much topped them all.

He kissed a girl. He never did anything close to that his whole life.

After that happened, it was clear that Trix was lying before just to cover for her emotions.

"So . . . what now?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. I guess we can take a break now." He never thought about that part. With Will gone and the war on hold, there was nothing left to do but relax and take it slow.

"I'll be continuing my book tonight, tomorrow . . . I don't really know."

"There's not much to do in this fleet, is there." She commented.

"Well, there's plenty to do on the Mothership, I should bring you over some time."

"Besides, it's a pirate ship. I'm sure we can find something fun to do." It seemed as pirate humour is the same Kushan and Taiidan.

"So how did you know he was a Kadeshi anyway?" referring to the incident from the day before.

"Well, you could say that I met a friend in prison." She winked.

MARK

"That should do it!" We just finished the main repairs on my fighter. Gotta say, there was a lot of damage. And working in this constant heat was near impossible. They really need to get that fixed.

Sure, Karu and his team repaired it before the end of the battle, but it's only temporary. I'm not exactly sure how to explain it, but the alloy used on the corvettes' repair beam only lasts so long before dissolving.

That's why the Matriarch-class frigs were such an improvement. They fix the damage permanently. They're still working on the technology for the same technology to fit in a corvette-size hull. It's just too big.

"So what about the boosters?" John asked.

"Not sure about that one. I think I'm gonna see what I can do about a more fuel efficient one this time." I was getting pretty tired with burning my whole tank in less than ten minutes.

"Maybe you can see about those boosters we found in storage on my Porter?" I almost forgot about those. They might actually work. There's been some major research done on them. I wonder if they're almost ready for a test run.

"We can see about it, but it might still need some work."

"What are we talking about here?" Well, John has been out of the loop for a while. Karu knew about it, so why not him too?

Jay was the first to explain. Good. It was a mouthful. "I found it one day while looking through storage compartments. The designs said it was the start of a fighter technology that would run almost entirely without fuel and propel at double the speed of conventional drives. In other words, a fighter that doesn't need to refuel until the battle's over."

"You're joking right? That's just . . . impossible!"

"For now," I corrected, "but it's in Hub 3 right now. You've been goon a while, man."

"No kidding! That would be so much of an improvement." Oh. Now I see why I didn't tell him earlier over the videophone.

"But . . . that means . . ."

"Sorry, but yeah."

"Huh?" there's Jay the clueless again,

"It means there won't be much of a use for support frigates." Well, at least Karu was the one to tell him and not me.

"Well I'm off-duty anyway. That just means I won't be able to help much."

"You'll still be able to help, you still repair the large ships, and the fighters will still need to dock somewhere for repairs." Anything to make him feel a little more useful.

"Well, we're done here, so . . . Karu, you should go check up on the girls. Make sure they don't get in a catfight." Jay, always the comedian. We did laugh though.

"Yeah. I probably should."

"And John, well,"

"I'll go check up on my crew."

"All righty then, Jay and I will head on over to the research division and see what's up." And the group parted.

"So what do you think?" I asked staring at my—now half painted—ship.

"Think it needs to be repainted."

"Thanks, captain obvious, but really."

"Like the upgrades. And with those new engines, it'll be even better."

"I hope so."

We arrived at the elevator. We didn't need to get far to reach the parking for the research ships. It was all the way towards the bow-section of the hangar.

"So what do you think of the Kadeshi. Personally." I asked.

"I think it's wrong what they're doing to them. They look like us don't they? And the research from the Khar-Toba ship in the Nebula seems to add up. I'm not so much for the 'let them join the fleet' part of it, but they shouldn't be imprisoned." At least he was partly on my side with this.

I have to agree with my friend though. Letting them into the fleet isn't going to be welcomed freely. And it won't be easy. I'll need to disguise it as forcing them into their own ships and making them work for us. But I'm sure if they want to survive, it would be in familiar surroundings and not in a prison cell. I felt confident they wouldn't attack us again. They would be seriously outnumbered.

Which brings up another problem, what if they don't want to go along with the plan? What if they don't want to fight? I can't force them, but like with my own people, I may be able to give them inspiration of some sort.

I'm sure I'll figure it out when the time comes.

ARAZIS

"Where are we going?" the Kadeshi and the Kushan pilot were moving through what looked like random halls and staircases. She was sweating from the heat of the area. It was near the engine room, so the heat was worse than the public areas. And it didn't help that Isel didn't have much that fit her, and what did was usually not meant for this heat.

"Somewhere that no one will find us. Not even Mark." Isel knew exactly where she was headed. Some five minutes later, they came upon, that at a first glance, looked like an abandoned storage facility. In fact, that's exactly what it was.

"This is where they keep the parts used for the ships being built."

"Built where? Not all the way on the other side of the ship I hope, that would be a real big inconvenience having theme here."

Isel flicked a switch, and there was a groaning sound, then a three-foot tall opening appeared that ran the length of the whole wall.

Arazis looked down over the piece of wall still left and saw that there was an absolutely immense, light blue, brightly lit room with half a carcass of a ship still inside.

"It's a Revelation-class destroyer. You might have seen them."

"I sure did." The memory of the Amun being blown to bits just after Jeremiah read a script from the Book of Kadesh.

"Well you don't even know the half of it. These babies can really pack a punch through any fleet when they're in groups. They're the strongest members of our fleet. Even better than the Taiidani Skaal Tel-class. The big yellow ones."

She stared in awe at the sheer size of it. From afar it didn't look all that big, but from this close, it was huge.

"Getting to business, you should know you won't like everything you find." Two metal blocks raised from the ground, and they both sat down to talk.

"So what is it?"

"A lot. Well, where to start . . . I guess the beginning." She took a deep breath, and started. "He was abandoned by his parents as a baby on the doorstep of the farmers you met earlier; they raised him to the age of twelve. Then, he ran away from home. No warning, no announcements of any kind. He wrote a note saying that he was going to take the Desert Train to the north and meet up with his father. Well, as Mark told them, he missed the first train, and the next wouldn't be coming for another month and a half. He didn't want to wait that long, so he started off by stealing a Dunesailor.

It was fast, and moved with the wind and sailed across the desert sand using special tracks to move across sand when there's no wind.

He traveled that way for days with nothing but a big keg of water, what little food he managed to grab from the farm and whatever preserved meat he could steal from the small markets. He sailed alongside the industrial tracks that went from the south Polar Regions to the northern hemisphere.

The next place he stopped was a small village of Somtaaw Miners. He go water there, and told his story to some traders and was given a quad ATV, a vehicle that traveled through most surfaces, but not sand, in exchange for his Dunesailor. He was on top of a huge expanse of rock, and there was no more sand to sail on. Once again, he gathered what he could carry, some fuel, and left for the desert. Always following the tracks, hoping to catch a train ride."

"So what happened next?" she was very interested in this story.

"Well, he left on the Sepaah Mesa following the tracks. He traveled a whole seven hundred and fifty kilometers before he ran out of fuel. He hit the end of the mesa a day later on foot. The Great Banded Desert lie before him, an endless expanse of light sandy terrain covering most of the side of the planet, as well as stretching something like fifteen thousand kilometers from north to south. Within that wasteland, temperatures soar to over a hundred and eighty degrees. No one can live there without artificial habitats.

His water was low, and he had no more food over his month-long journey on a quad. But he reached where he wanted to go. He found the small research outpost on the line of the desert and the mesa. He was given water and food, again, and sold his quad for money. He didn't need it anyway.

The train arrived the next day after he got some well-needed rest. He boarded the luxury liner in the cargo section. He was never for traveling in style. The area was still cooled to a survivable temperature, and he had a window to see what was happening. The journey would last two weeks."

"Two weeks! On a train!"

"He just spent a month on a quad. I don't think he minded."

"Right. Go on,"

"In the middle of the second week, while still well inside the Desert, the train was attacked by raiders."

"Turanic?"

"No, why would they . . . never mind. Just pirates. But they took control of the barge. The temperature soared to the same as the outside, around one hundred. People died of thirst, and heat stroke. They were not used to the heat. Mark, being in the cargo area was not detected and formed an escape plan. He found a small Dunesailor inside and attached an engine to it to propel it some of the way. He stole whatever he would need, and pressed the emergency release button and opened the door to the bright, hot outside. Then, the terrorists found him and started shooting. But he started up the engine and was off. He was safe from the pirates, but then there was the desert. Even putting your foot on the ground in that heat would give you first degree burns."

"Did he make it?"

"He's here right now isn't he?" she then shut up and stopped asking stupid questions.

"The engine died and he made it maybe a day going a lot faster than the train would have. It was still searing hot, and he only travelled at night. He dug himself under the sand for day to keep cool. He ran out of food a week later, and then was running very low on water. Every time he found a desert creature, no matter if it was a snake or a spider, he ate when he could, and didn't regret it despite the taste. He made it months like that, and then had no water left. He found smaller pockets of rocks, meaning he was closer north now. He dug down, and found water. It was not distilled, but he didn't care what disease he got. He needed to drink.

That lasted another few months. He thought he saw a train go by in the south direction, but wasn't sure if he was dreaming. He didn't have any money and wasn't going back south anyway. He then found an oasis maybe half a kilometer from the tracks. He didn't want to leave them, but he needed to find some food. He did, and he ate even the leaves off the palm trees. He filled his water, and his mouth. He even decided to take a bath, but I won't get into details about that.

The end of it was, when he was ready to head back to the tracks, he was not hallucinating, and saw the train go by. He wasn't getting to Tiir that way, so he decided to stay close to the tracks mainly for direction. The days turned into months. He then ran out of water again. But not until a month later. He found food the same way, and almost died from several bad stings and even desert fever. But in the end, he saw the glimmer of white in the distance that to him, meant civilization. He couldn't tell how far, but at least another two days walk.

He made it to a research station, and was found unconscious at the doorstep. Funny thing, he didn't even have the strength to knock on the door. From there, well, he found his dad, life went on."

"Wow. And this is no exaggeration?"

"No."

"That must have been worse than hell!"

"No kidding. I was speechless. There are more incidents, but I think that tops them all, and at twelve years old!"

"Okay, I think I understand his pain a little. Maybe it was a little too much. How many times did he almost die?"

"He lost track after week two."