Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter 11.

Through
the haze of my memory I could vaguely feel the pain. My leg throbbed at the
knee. There were several faces hovered above me in the twilight. My teacher. My
wife. I was lying with my back on a plank.

“Tie
the leg down,” a voice instructed. “It will set in time, perhaps a month.”

“But I
have work to do, the fields need to be plowed,” I heard myself say.

“Then
your wife will do twice the work, or they will go unplowed,” the voice
responded harshly. “You were foolish Eli. You took an unnecessary risk by
moving the log alone. You must now pay the consequence.”

He put
his hand on my knee, applying pressure.

The
pain grew, but I said nothing.

“There
are consequences for our actions,” This time it was my teacher. “We follow the way
of our people. Walk the path of prudence and patience. You should have waited
for help. You acted impetuously. And your pain is the result. Now, you must
stay and lie down until the bone has set.”

“I
don’t see why I can’t put on a splint. I can still work, I can still
contribute.” I was pleading.

“Contribute?”
spat the other voice. “You cannot contribute, for you have not learned. You
took the short path. Those who take the short path seek to circumvent the
realities of the world for power, status, or convenience. They think that they
are taking a risk upon themselves, but they do not pay the price. The people
around them do. No, you stay on the board. You can watch out the window as
others toil all the harder without your hands, and they will toil together. A
community is not about one soul acting alone for the sake of his own
achievement, for his own glory. Community is submission to your own weakness to
the greater strength of the whole so that we can thrive under the great dark
sky.”

I woke up
face down on a cold steel floor. My chest was pounding. I shook off the haze
and tried to sit up, but I found my hands were tied together under me and my
feet were bound. There were several smears of red-black handprints on the floor
beneath me. Dried blood. I gasped, only then did I notice the stench of death
and rot. The stink was so thick I could taste it and my eyes watered. I gagged.

I heard a
series of quick thuds and a muted explosion. The floor below me shook, and then
world pitched sharp to the right. I slid across the floor, slamming my right
side against a wall, no, it was steel. A bulkhead.

Less than
a second later something hit my left side.

I groaned
in pain as I rolled over to see what had struck me, it was Ju-lin. Her hands
and feet were bound like mine, and she had a bruise on her forehead, but seemed
to be breathing normally. There were two blackened marks on her shirt where she
had been shot, I looked down and saw two similar marks on my own chest.

“Stunners,”
she grunted, her eyes flickering open. “You alright?”

“I’m
alive,” I said. “I think.”

“A joke?
That’s good.” She grunted. “At least you’re not going all terrified on me.”

She
rolled over and spun around on her back, leaning forward into a half-sitting
position to look around.

“Where are
we?” I asked.

“Best
guess?” she said. “I’d say we are in the main hold of the Carrack.”

The ship
shook violently. A siren sounded for a few seconds and was silenced.

I pulled myself up to lean
with my back against the bulkhead. The cargo hold was large and filthy. There
were blast scars and blood splatters on the wall. On one end was a large cargo
bay door, the other was a closed hatch leading further into the ship.

“Those
weren’t human,” I said, afraid to ask the question.

“Not
completely,” she said as she pulled herself across the floor toward a computer
terminal next to the hatch. “Those were Draugari.”

Every
Draugari raid and attack that I had read about on the Slate, and every tale I
had heard the colonists tell about the Draugari ended in swift and brutal
death. “But I thought the Draugari don’t take prisoners.”

 “Today
they did,” she said. “Who knows, maybe they just didn’t have time to kill us on
the surface. Look at the blood on the walls. We’re not the first people to get
locked up in here. Maybe they’re saving us for dinner.”

The ship
lurched with another series of explosions, the engines thundered in response.
This time I managed to grab a cargo strap to keep from sliding across the
floor. Ju-lin wasn’t as lucky; she slid the length of the empty hold, slamming
against the cargo door with her left side.

“You
alright?”

“Yeah,
just fine,” she groaned and she started working her way back across the hold,
this time she was clumsily gripping the handholds. “They must either have not
expected us to wake up, or didn’t think of us as much of a threat, or they
would have done more to secure us. I need to activate that terminal and find
out what the hell is going on. See if you can find something to cut these
bindings.”

There was
a loose coil of thick canvas cargo strapping mounted on the wall. It looked
like it was the same stuff they had used to tie our hands. A scattered pile of
trash was sliding around the floor, some packing foam, a shoe, and several
ceramic shards that looked like they could have once been part of body armor. I
looked closer, the shards were small but they could be sharp enough. I turned
and pushed off from the wall, sliding toward the debris.

“Got
something?” Ju-lin called, she was nearly back to the console.

“Maybe,”
I said as I fumbled through the pieces, too small, too dull. The third piece
sliced the tip of my finger as I picked it up. I couldn’t get in a good
position to use it to cut my own hand bindings, so I began using it to saw at
the bindings on my feet. “This should work, but the straps are thick. It won’t
be quick.”

“Well,
hurry,” she said dryly as she reached up to a cargo strap to pull herself to
her feet next to the console. She looked from the terminal to the cargo strap
and back down to her feet. If she let go of the strap, another hit would send
her tumbling across the room again. “Well hell, now what?”

The
cutting was agonizingly slow. Twice I lost my grip and had to fumble to recover
the shard. I was only halfway there, and could tell that Ju-lin was getting impatient.

I looked
back up to see that Ju-lin had bitten down on the strap to stabilize herself as
she began to work the terminal controls with her bound hands. There was another
jolt as the Carrack took fire and pitched again. Ju-lin made a muffled cry followed
by a stream of unintelligible curses. She was red faced and wild eyed, but her
bite held.

Finally,
the strap on my feet came loose. I struggled to my feet and hobbled toward
Ju-lin. She spit out the cargo strap and took ahold of it with her hands to steady
herself.

“Sonuva—”
she stretched her jaw.

“Here.”
My hand still bound, I reached my arms up over her head and brought my arms
down around her shoulders, drawing her close.

“What the
hell are you trying to do?” she spat. “This is
not
the time, and it is
definitely
not the place.” She didn’t struggle or try to move out of my arms, though.

I kept
hold of the ceramic edge with my left hand, and grabbed the cargo strap with my
right, securing her against the wall.

“Oh,” she
said. “Sorry, I thought that you were—”

“I
figured this would be easier, now get the terminal going.”

She
continued to work the controls. The screen changed several times as she
scrolled through the ship’s logs and systems. Finally a three dimensional
locator grid appeared.

“We’re in
low orbit now. Looks like those two Celestrials are on us. No sign of those two
Draugari Slires. Either the Celestrials took them out, or they buggered off.”

We heard
another eruption of rapid fire from somewhere on the forward decks. One of the
Celestrials signals blinked out and disappeared.

“The good
news is it looks like now the Draugari are winning,” she said.

“The bad
news is it looks like the Draugari are winning,” I replied.

“Boy you
ain’t kidding,” she said. “See if you can get my hands free.”

She
shifted in my arms to turn her back to me and bring her hands closer to mine.
Her hair tickled my face. A new sensation. I was amazed that even in the stench
of the cargo hold, her hair managed to smell sweet like the blue flowers that
grew along the edge of the fields back on the colony. I shook the strange
thoughts from my head and worked to get the ceramic edge in position to start
cutting her bindings.

“So, no
chance you know how to fight?” she asked, her voice was calm and
conversational.

“Fight?”

“Yeah.
Thought not.”

The ship
took another hit, a series of explosions rang somewhere above us.

“The
power systems took a hit,” Ju-lin said.

For a few
seconds there was complete silence, and then a few clicks and a hum as the
lights came back on. But the deep hum of the engines did not. There was one
more series of thuds as the attacking ship came around again, and then another
burst of fire from the Carrack’s guns, followed by a triumphant yell from the
cabin above.

“The
scope is clear,” I said nodding down at the terminal. “They must have gotten
the last Celestrial.”

“Yeah,
and the engines are silent,” she responded. “We’re just drifting in orbit.
Let’s hope they focus on fixing the ship before they come to check on us.”

With a
final slice I finished cutting through Ju-lin’s bindings, freeing her hands.

“Ahh,
finally,” she ducked down and slipped out from under my arms and hopped away
easily on her still-bound feet. “At least the artificial grav systems are still
working. Here hand me the shard.”

She took
the piece of armor from me and quickly got to work cutting through the bindings
on her feet.

“A little
help?” I said, holding up my hands.

“You
can’t fight, remember?” she asked. “My feet are more useful than your hands.
Priorities.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “The ships dead in the water, you
can let go of the cargo loop.”

I’d
forgotten that I was still gripping the strap on the bulkhead. I took a few
steps, stretching my arms. 

“Okay,
let’s see what we have,” she said looking around as she worked on freeing her
feet. “They took all my gear, what do we have, the spool of cargo cable, maybe
we could use that for something.”

They had
taken her gear. My thoughts went immediately to the memory card and I began to
panic. I checked my pocket; it was still there tucked safely away. There was
noise in the forward cabin, doors opening and closing and muffled voices.

“What’s
that?” I said, a small blip had appeared on the edge of the scanner. “Another
Celestrial ship?”

“There we
go!” Ju-lin tossed the last of the ties aside and leapt to her feet. “What is
it? Oh, no, that’s not Celestrial, maybe it’s one of the Slir-no, wait, that’s
an Earthborn signal designation.”

“Someone
sent for help?”

“We’re
too far for help. It has to be from the surface.” Her hands flickered over the
controls. “I’m glad they didn’t lock out this terminal, let’s hope they aren’t
watching the scopes. Wait, the ship is broadcasting a signal.”

She hit a
few keys and a stream of characters crossed the screen.

“Coded?”
I asked.

“Yeah,”
she tried to access the message and the system prompted her for a key. She
typed in a series of numbers whispering “Oh, please, please.”

The
message decoded:
L.M. en route. Ackno and Disab Scans.

“Dad,”
she smiled.

“Lee’s
coming?” I asked. “Is he going to attack with the shuttle? Can he do that?”

“No,” she
answered as she accessed the ship’s system control. “It’s just an
interplanetary shuttle, no weapons. It’s designed to perform satellite maintenance
and dock with orbiting craft.”

“Dock?”

“Yup,”
she said.

She
typed:
J.L.M. Ackno, mak’n nois, be quik
.

“But
won’t they see that message?”

“The
Draugari use their own communicators, something in their helmets. They won’t be
monitoring our coms, especially with the power plant offline and the
Celestrials out of the way.”

With
that, Ju-lin entered another series of commands. The screen began to flash
scanners
offline
.

“Alright,”
Ju-lin said, still typing furiously on the keyboard. “As long as they aren’t
looking out the windows they won’t see him coming.”

“And if
they do?”

“It’s our
job to make sure they don’t,” she answered. “And to make enough noise that they
won’t notice when the docking clamp locks.”