Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [112]
‘Pardon, I—’ Mira began.
But Josefia touched her arm. ‘No matter, Baronessa—it is quiet enough and I could not sleep. Davina’s mama cries and cries. What is happening to our world? Why have these Saqr creatures come here? I want to kill them all,’ she said fiercely.
Mira wiped her sleeve across her facefilm and stood. On awakening, the leaden feeling had returned to her chest. She did not share Josefia’s desire; death was not on her mind. Only escape. She knew that she wanted to leave Araldis for ever.
Josefia took the rifle from her. ‘Thanks to you, I know how to use this. First sight of them . . .’ She jerked the gun viciously.
Mira left Josefia to take a drink from the trough but the young familia woman’s words haunted her. Had she been wrong to insist that they learned about weapons?
No. she told herself, weapons by themselves do not make hate.
She laid down the scoop and bent against the nightwinds to reach the canopy. Her fellala was barely cooling now and she wanted to strip its sodden weight from her, yet she knew hotwinds would rip all the moisture from her body in a matter of hours. Better that the garment stayed on her skin.
She searched for Vito among the sleeping bodies and found him in the crook of Cass’s arm where she slept near Thomaas, her own bambini between them.
Mira did not have the heart to move him. Instead, she found a space next to the korm and settled herself on it. The alien roosted on the ground uneasily, jerking and chittering softly in its sleep. Of all of them, the korm was in the greatest danger of starvation. As she drifted off to sleep, Mira reproached herself for not paying closer attention to its needs. What could she find for it eat? Little enough lived on the plains ... little lived.
* * * *
They gathered to talk at dawn. Cass drew a map of their position in the dirt but the wind spun little spirals in it, distorting her lines. It had not dropped at daybreak like a normal nightwind.
‘We’ve heard that the Pablo undergrounds near Pellegrini B will be safe but we have little food and water is scarce,’ said Cass.
‘How far?’ a woman asked.
‘Maybe three hundred mesurs. We have one compass only. The navigation aids must have been destroyed.’
‘What about going to Dockside?’ suggested someone else.
‘The mercenary told us that it is the worst of all. Overrun by Saqr,’ said Cass.
‘What happens if the Pablo mine is not safe?’
Others voiced similar fears.
Mira climbed up onto the doorbridge. The hundred or less women and ‘bini and the few men crowded in a semicircle around Cass. Despite having washed and eaten a little the night before, their faces looked as ragged as their protecsuits.
The korm roosted at the very back, near the trough, weak with hunger despite Mira’s morning attempt to make an edible paste from thorn-scrub roots.
‘What do you think, Baronessa?’ called Josefia.
Mira shifted Vito’s weight to her other arm. ‘I swear we shall find help there. If we ration ourselves—one portion of food a day for the adults, two small portions for the children, we shall have enough to last four days at our present travelling speed.’
The group murmured among themselves.
‘What about dust storms? We’re in the season,’ called a tall woman.
Mira looked into the distance. The wind was gusting abnormally, lifting the tattered trim of her fellala. If it turned to a storm, it was likely that most of them would perish long before they reached Pellegrini B. Long before they reached anywhere. Was that why the Saqr had not pursued them, she wondered? ‘That is why we must decide and move on.’
‘I want to go to Dockside. My family is there,’ demanded the tall woman.
‘What about Chalaine?’ Marrat suggested.
Chalaine-Gema lay at the foot of the southern ranges. Neither their food nor the barge would likely see them that distance. ‘Perhaps. Yes. But not without more food. We would starve,’ Mira said flatly. ‘The Pablo mines have subsidiary tunnels that run for mesurs in that direction. We could travel underground.