“If you could look at our supplies and distribute some nutrition and hydration packs.”
They had about ten people they could have done without. The Quendala could have accommodated them easily. It was too late to wish they’d brought the ship into atmosphere instead of the shuttle.
“What is happening?” one woman demanded, though her tone lacked real force. It was more in the range of desperate.
Riina hesitated. She didn’t want or need a riot. How much information could she safely give them? She considered them thoughtfully, really looking at them now, and not just seeing them as a bunch of humans who’d come to see aliens.
Well, they’d been brave enough to do that. Perhaps they were brave enough for as much truth as she had.
“We were scooped up by the aliens who were extracting the Vorthari from your planet. We weren’t able to communicate well enough with them to stop them leaving the system—your system—with us on board their…ship.” Had it been a ship? She still didn’t know what the entity had been composed of. “I believe that they dropped us here because they didn’t know what to do with us.”
“Where is here?” This question came from the one Riina believed was Lira’s father.
She faced him. “I have no idea. All our ship’s systems but life support were down during the transit. Tim is out there right now trying to get information from the people here.”
People? They had been a kind of people. Vaguely humanoid.
“Are they friendly?” Dr. Walker asked.
Riina met his gaze and gave a tiny shake, remembering the sudden one-way fire fight.
“We’re not sure what they are,” she admitted, feeling he, and they, deserved this much truth. It wasn’t much, but then she didn’t know much.
She looked around the bay again. They had arms enough for everyone, but not protective gear. If they ended up in another fire fight, there would be casualties.
It was ironic, Kellen thought, as they dropped into real space once again, that the element they were following through jump and real space, was something they’d never encountered before.
The thought of it raised the hair on the back of his neck as he had to adjust his thoughts about what it meant to go somewhere he’d never gone before.
There were many places in the Garradian Galaxy he hadn’t visited. He’d not been there.
This wasn’t that.
He was going somewhere that might not offer a return trip, or a return trip in the lifetime of his colleagues back at Central Command.
He couldn’t have done it without Veirn, and he was fully aware how little he was contributing to the actual process. His, um, processing power was no where near that of Veirn’s.
Even though he knew he could speak, ask questions, and comment and it wouldn’t affect the AI’s ability to parse the data, he kept silent. If there was anything for him to know, Veirn would tell him. This required a new level of trust.
It was an uncomfortable level of trust, he could admit to himself. But at some deep level, he knew it was necessary, for him, for Veirn.
Even if it all went wrong, Veirn was doing its best. Kellen knew this, even as his hands clenched and unclenched in his lap.
He should get up and walk around, move his legs and arms. He’d been in this seat for far longer than normal. He was geared up, and his suit accommodated his biological functions. Or it would for a while longer.
Veirn had suggested he don the gear in case of a catastrophic breach in the hull. They were far outside any of the known star maps, traveling with jump drive alternating with the star drive when they could—which wasn’t often in completely unknown space.
“You should eat something,” Veirn said.
His stomach roiled at the thought.
“My nutritional needs are being met for now,” he said. If it went on too much longer, he would have to make adjustments to his suit’s systems. But he didn’t plan to do that while they were hurtling through unknown space.
“The traces are getting harder to follow,” Veirn said.
“I understand,” Kellen said. Did he? Possibly he understood. Their mission had always been next to impossible.
For some reason, this made him think of the Earth woman who had married Helfron Giddioni, the former Gadi Leader. Though neither of them had referred to it, Kellen suspected that the interesting Hel was a descendent of his.
