Expendable - James Alan Gardner [104]
“It is an excellent whale,” Oar said approvingly. “I have seen pictures of such animals, but I did not know they were so large.”
“It’s a ship, that’s all,” Jelca replied. “And it happens to be the biggest in the city—the only one with enough room to house all the Explorers here.” He turned to me. “Sixty-two Explorers now, counting you.”
“Sixty-two?”
“And five non-Explorers,” he went on, “who haven’t got around to dying yet. Admiralty officials who got ‘escorted’ here—two embezzlers, two addicts, and a pedophile, all of whom the High Council preferred to have disappear rather than go through the messy embarrassment of a trial.” He gave me an angry look. “Isn’t that great? Getting banished here with the likes of them? The admiral Ullis and I came down with was a total piece of shit…took bribes from a contractor so the guy could keep selling shoddy equipment to the Fleet. God knows if anyone was hurt because of it; the admiral never asked. Never tried to learn what damage he’d done. And the council condemned Ullis and me to the same fate as a man like that!”
I said nothing. Jelca’s words sounded like a rehearsed speech: a sore that had festered inside him so long, he was happy to have a new listener to hear. I knew the feeling. On the other hand, it had never occurred to me that most Explorers came to Melaquin in the company of criminals and other genuine undesirables. Somehow, I’d thought the exiles would all be people like Chee—out of control but not vicious. Naïve, Ramos, I thought; too quick to romanticize the High Council as tyrants and their victims as heroic political prisoners. No one was as good or as bad as I might like to believe.
“What happened to your admiral?” I asked.
“YouthBoost meltdown,” Jelca answered with a shrug. “The usual fate of the scum who are sent here—they’re old and fat and ready to fall apart as soon as they’re cut off the teat. They keel over and problem solved…except for us Explorers, stuck in this hellhole.”
“It is not a hellhole,” Oar growled. “Melaquin is an excellent planet!”
“Sure,” Jelca said. “Everything a man could want.” He gave me a sideways glance. “That’s why the council gets away with it, you know…why the League lets them get away with it. To an alien, there’s nothing wrong with dropping Explorers on Melaquin; what other planet in the galaxy is better suited for human life? Depositing us here is damned safer than assigning us to explore a subzero ice-world or thousand degree inferno. Melaquin is a paradise for our species. When the council maroons us here, the League probably thinks it’s a favor. Forget that we’re cut off from civilization, forget that we’ll never see our friends and family—”
“Your friends and family are probably very stupid,” Oar interrupted. “Festina is very bored with the way you complain and wishes you would talk about something else.”
Jelca gave a humorless laugh. “Sorry to bore you, Festina.” He turned to Oar. “What do you think Festina would rather talk about?”
“She would rather talk about my stupid sister, Eel.”
“What about her?” Jelca asked.
“Where is she?”
“She’s your sister,” Jelca said. “If you don’t know where she is, why should I?” Before Oar could react, he gave her hand an ungentle tug. “Enough talk. I can smell supper and it’s making me hungry.”
The First Supper
The next few hours were an exhausting jumble.
I met the other Explorers—some familiar to me, but many stranded on