The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [149]
Crim transmitted, “Hello, escape pod. Anybody in need of a rescue in there?” He pounded on the hatch with his gloved fist.
The pod’s access door was so small that only one of them could cycle through at a time. With a knot in his stomach, hoping he wouldn’t find one or more bodies inside, Nikko went first.
Inside stood a shaggy old man with beard stubble, unkempt hair, and rumpled clothes. He had a huge grin on his face. “Well, it’s about damn time. I could use some company besides those flashing lights.”
Nikko recognized him. “Caleb Tamblyn?” As soon as he popped open his faceplate and took a breath, the stench made him wrinkle his nose: body odor, stale air, improperly recycled wastes. He doubted old Caleb could even notice the smell anymore (not that the man had ever smelled as fresh as a rose). The escape pod’s life-support systems must have been on their last gasp. He stepped away from the hatch so that his father could cycle through. When Crim Tylar entered behind his son, the escape pod became extremely crowded.
“How long have you been here?” Nikko asked.
“About three weeks, as far as I can tell. Maybe four.”
“Impossible,” Crim said. “Your supplies couldn’t last that long.”
Caleb snorted. “Any Roamer worth his salt can figure out solutions . . . and, well, I had a little help from the wentals. They provided enough energy to get by on less food. I’m awfully damn hungry, though. You have mealpax aboard your ship?”
“Plenty of them,” Nikko said.
Once aboard the Aquarius, Caleb wolfed down self-heating rations. He explained how the faeros had destroyed his water tanker and Denn Peroni had been obliterated. “I didn’t think anyone would be looking for us, but I wasn’t about to give up.” Caleb shrugged his bony shoulders. “Those faeros really piss me off. We didn’t do anything to deserve this. Poor Denn . . .”
He looked around for a bunk so he could take a nap, but Crim told him in no uncertain terms that it would be a wise idea for him to use the ship’s sanitary facilities to clean himself up first.
“We can take you directly to Plumas,” Nikko suggested. “I assume you want to go back to the water mines?”
“Wynn and Torin are probably overloaded with work and mad at me for leaving them, but I’ve had a long time to sit there and think about my Guiding Star.” Caleb leaned back in a hard passenger chair. “This war seems a lot more important than the family water business. If you’re gearing up to fight those faeros, I’d like to see this through to the end.”
* * *
103
Del Kellum
On the Golgen skymine, Del Kellum was happy to receive Kotto Okiah and his entourage. Whatever the engineer came up with would certainly be interesting. Kotto came to the Osquivel shipyards in a midsized Roamer transport that seemed a little too large, given his limited piloting abilities. When Kellum learned that Tasia Tamblyn was in the cockpit, however, he granted permission for the craft to land on a small mid-level landing deck. He took a lift down from the ops center, pulled on a jacket against the cool breezes, and went out to meet them.
As expected, the inventor had brought a shipful of gadgetry with him. “You never know what might come in handy,” he said, as he walked down the exit ramp while Tamblyn finished shutting down the systems in the cockpit. He looked over his shoulder, back toward the ship. “I’ve brought some friends along. I find them very helpful in my work . . . at least nondistracting. They’ve never been aboard a skymine before.”
Three compies descended the ramp after him; each had a different body coloration, two of them Technical models, the last a Friendly. Kotto flushed. “Well, those aren’t friends, they’re compies . . . although at times I think of them as friends.” Finally, a teenaged girl and an older man came down the ramp. “I was talking about these two — Orli Covitz and Hud Steinman.”
Steinman seemed a bit seasick; Orli, though, stared around her at the huge open skies of Golgen, the high clouds, and the bright sunlight, and she smiled in delight. Tasia Tamblyn emerged from