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She sighs contentedly. “Yes. Perfect.”
EPILOGUE
Grace
Four weeks later
Ihead into the lab space where Lorna is still bent over one of Mercenia’s computers. There was one of the machines in the medic offices where I worked, but they were only used by supervisors, not by myself or any of the medic staff. I wouldn’t know where to begin using one, but Lorna has the benefit of a top tier upbringing and education. She knows how to get information out of the computers.
“How are you getting on?” I ask.
We’ve been here a couple of days now, and the discomfort of being around Mercenia built things is only outweighed by the discomfort of wondering what the hell they were doing here in the forest in the first place. It’s clear this building has beenabandoned for a while, but that doesn’t offer much reassurance. Mercenia bothered to make a base here, bothered to stash a load of women in cryostasis in the basement. There must have been something they wanted. We need to know what to properly assess the chances of them ever coming back.
“It’s difficult,” Lorna says. “There’s plenty I can access without passwords, and some of the passwords are written down, so I can get at the information. But I’m not a scientist. I understand less than half of what I’m reading, and a lot of it is like notes, not complete thoughts.” She shakes her head, squinting at the screen. “They were definitely researching something. There’s a lot of information here about local flora and fauna. Photographs, observations, samples and then a load of science stuff that I don’t understand. Lots of talk of genetics and genomes.”
“Samples?” My stomach drops. “Did they have captive raskarrans?”
Lorna’s expression darkens, and she glances at the doorway where Maldek is talking with Gregar. Maldek has been Lorna’s shadow this entire trip, looking out for her in Shemza’s absence.
“I think so,” she says, keeping her voice low. “I haven’t said anything to anyone else yet, because I want to be sure. I know the raskarrans won’t take that idea well.”
No. It would be devastating to them. When there are so few of them left, to think that some of their number might have been taken. Kept as prisoners.
“It gets worse,” Lorna says. “I don’t understand what they were doing, but… This operating system.” She gestures at the computer screen. “It’s old. Really old. Like, older than what I used when I was first starting on computers at school.”
Lorna is twenty. She would have first started schooling fifteen years or so ago. A computer system older than that - the implication makes my stomach go cold.
“I can’t prove anything,” Lorna says. “Maybe the chain of cause and effect isn’t sinister. Maybe the sickness came, and that’s why they abandoned this place.”
I don’t think she believes that any more than I do.
“We need a scientist,” she says, turning back to the screen. “Even if I didn’t have baby brain, I wouldn’t be able to decipher most of this. Do you think any of the women in the pods…?”
I doubt it, somehow. Mercenia are famously big on not letting their upper tier women be anything other than housewives. Perhaps there are some middle tier scientists, but would they have the education and the power to end up on an expedition in space? And if they did, why would they be left behind, frozen, when the other people here abandoned this place? No, I suspect the people in the pods in the basement are women like us. Lower tier, expendable. What exactly they were needed for is just another question we can’t answer.
I head down there now, descending the stairs, heading past the various lab spaces, the infirmary, the shower block, to the room at the end of the corridor. I’m not surprised to find Liv sat against the back wall, watching the pods. There are twenty of them altogether, all containing a human woman.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She looks drawn, pale. I know she’s been struggling with fatigue, thanks to her pregnancy - far more so than she lets on around Gregar, who wouldn’t let her get out of bed if he thought she was struggling even a little. While I understand her desire not to send her protective mate into unnecessary overdrive, I have questioned the wisdom of her making this journey with us. It’s obviously left her drained.
“We can’t leave them down here,” she says, ignoring my question as she stares up at the pods.
“No,” I agree.
“But we can’t absorb another twenty people into the village. Not yet. We don’t have enough huts for everyone as it is. The expansion is going well, and our reserves are getting back up to more reasonable levels. But the tribe needs to adjust to the current influx of people. We can’t just introduce even more.”
“The raskarrans would probably argue for waking them all up now, everything you just said be damned.”
Liv manages a small smirk. “I know. I wondered at first whether I could be a good chieftess to the tribe. I’ve never been a leader. But it turns out a lot of what I have to do is talk excitable raskarrans out of doing things. Be the voice of reason. They’ll want them waking up because they’ll be desperate to find their mates, I know that. But I don’t think it would be fair or right for these women to be absorbed into the tribe right now. You don’t have a house, we’ve got no food security, things are in utter chaos. Oh, and you’ll probably have to shack up with one of the big green guys and have his babies. I’d rather introduce them from a position of stability.”
“That sounds reasonable and logical,” I say, wondering what’s troubling her about all this. “Could the tribe spare a few warriors to make an outpost here, guard them against those other raskarrans coming back?”
Liv nods. “I was thinking a rotation. Spend a couple of weeks camped out here, then a new group comes out, takes them off duty. It’s too far to travel here and back in a day, even if they aren’t slowed down by short-legged humans.”
And they’ll all be willing to do it. No one would argue or protest against it.
“So, what’s the problem?” I ask.
