Expendable - James Alan Gardner [131]
“Don’t hurry,” I told her.
“Festina,” she said, “ever since Chee and I escaped, the High Council has stationed two picket ships in this system, to make sure no one leaves again. Do you think this is the first time I’ve tried to land on Melaquin? I’m an admiral; I have a ship at my disposal. Every now and then, I try to come, but the pickets always turn me away. When I received your egg collection, I came once more, wondering if this would be the time I’d defy the pickets. I lurked in this system’s Oort cloud for more than a day, trying to make up my mind. Then, suddenly, you Explorers launched a ship; a ship with Sperm capability.” She smiled. “That sure as hell caught the pickets napping. The two of them bolted after the Explorer ship and must be in deep space by now.”
Seele grabbed me by the arm. “I saw my chance and I took it, Festina. The first time in forty years I’ve been able to land on Melaquin. I came to see my old city. I came to see some glass friends…” She shook her head. “Never mind. I’ve found you instead. Our sensors picked you up while your plane was flying. And now you have a chance to escape! The others won’t succeed—the pickets will snare them with tractor beams and drag them back to this planet. But while the pickets are gone, you and I can get clear. Let’s go, Festina. This chance may never come again.”
“So I should save myself and leave the others in the lurch? That’s what you and Chee did all those years ago.”
Seele looked stricken. “We don’t have time to discuss this….”
“I have all the time in the world,” I told her. “The way I see it, you found a working spaceship in the city below….”
“Yes, but—”
“And you took off without worrying about other Explorers banished on the planet….”
“It was a small ship, and we had no way to locate the other—”
“Then,” I kept going, “you got back to Technocracy space and cut a deal with the High Council to save your hides. You’d keep your mouths shut, and in exchange, the council would make you admirals. Isn’t that it? So you and Chee got cushy positions while other Explorers kept disappearing.”
“Festina, you have to understand—”
“No, Admiral,” I interrupted, “you’ve picked the wrong day for me to be understanding.” I turned away from her in disgust. “And you’ve picked the wrong woman to save,” I shouted over my shoulder as I stomped back to the eagle. “Just because I remind you of your damaged young self—”
“Festina,” Seele said.
Something in her tone made me turn around. She was aiming a stunner at me.
“I’m like a magnet for those guns,” I told her.
Then she shot me.
My New Quarters
I woke up in bed. The bed was in a standard officer’s cabin on board a starship. My head throbbed with all the leaden pain that comes from a stun-blast. In a way, that was a blessing—I couldn’t focus my mind on other ugly thoughts that threatened to devil my conscience.
Much as I wanted just to lie there, wincing each time my pulse bludgeoned my frontal lobes, I faced a physical imperative—after hours of unconsciousness, I urgently needed to empty my bladder. Groaning, I made myself vertical and sat on the edge of the bed until purple things stopped exploding behind my eyes. Then I staggered to the toilet, did my business, and continued to sit on the seat, staring dully at the wall.
My head throbbed. I counted sixty blunt pulses of pain, then stumbled back toward the bed. As I passed the desk, I noticed a plain white pill sitting on top of a card that read, THIS MIGHT HELP. I swallowed the pill immediately, on the theory it couldn’t possibly make things worse.
In a few minutes, the pain did ease a little: enough to let me take stock of my surroundings. Yes, I was in officer’s quarters, almost exactly like my cabin on the Jacaranda but a mirror image—on the port side instead of starboard. The room had no decorations, but standing near the door were three packing crates, lined against the bulkhead. I opened the lid of the closest one and saw many small objects wrapped in wads of cotton.
My eggs.
My eggs.
Tears came to my eyes. I was too scared