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"Well, let's gethitched."
After a quick ceremonywe returned to our quarters, where we made sweet love. The next morning we left for his protectorate, Astrionis.
He had explained to me before that his home planet was called Astrionis, as well as his domain, but the other planets under his protection each had different names, which I tried to memorize as well as their locations.
During the journey I tried to learn as much as possible about each planet; trying to figure out where best to place the first group of refugees, which had grown from our original group plus another hundred humans Xandros and Ashley had freed during their short stay on Colynth.
Garth assigned me a budget and put me in charge of the entire project. He promised he would introduce me to whoever I needed to hire, from builders to farmers, and leave the final decisions to me. The only requisite he put on my project was that I needed to get the humans to be self-sufficient wherever I settled them.
He indicated that Daryus was prepared to purchase more humans from the Cryons if necessary, until they had enough evidence against the despicable race to open a formal complaint against the Cryons with the GTU
Since Garth had been the driving force behind it, Daryus said he would send any and all refugees our way, which meant I needed to get settlements going as quickly as possible.
"How large was the human population on Earth?" Garth asked one evening before we reached Astrionis.
We were both sitting in our living quarters aboard theVyper. He behind his desk and me on the couch, surrounded by multiple tablets, as I found it easier to open screens on different ones instead of having to flip through one back and forth.
Garth promised he would create another workstation for me in his office at the palace. This was one of the few allowances made to modern life and gave me a glimpse of the precarious balance Garth upheld to keep his protectorateto the old ways and yet protected with as little technology as possible.
"Almost eight billion," I said, wondering how many were left now and where they were.
"Rottvan might be suitable for them, not many Pandraxians have settled there yet. It's one of my newer colonies," he suggested.
I searched through the numerous tablets around me until I found the one with the colony of Rottvan open, already having perused it.
"That might work," I thought out loud. "Will you be sending Pandraxians there as well?"
"I can hold them off and find another suitable planet," he offered.
One of the many perks of the Pandraxian universe was that, contrary to Earth, it held many habitable planets. As humans would say, it was only a skip and a jump from Pandrax to the first colony they built and things got easier from there, whereas humans had never been given that chance.
When I told Garth about it, he said that this made Earth and our galaxy unique, because most habitable planets were like the Pandraxian galaxy, filled with many planets that would support life.
Luck of the draw I supposed with a sigh.
"No," I told him now, "don't hold them back. I think if they and the humans have to work hand in hand to build up a colony, they will form a much-deeper bond quicker and get along better."
"You are very wise, my mate," Garth praised, making my chest swell.
If anybody had told me that instead of selling houses, I would be searching for locations for hundreds of human refugees I would have laughed in their face. Even now, I wondered about my audacity to even try.
There was nobody else though. Ashley, whom I had gotten to know a little bit better during breakfast before we left Pandrax, was hell-bent on dishing out physical revenge on the Cryons. She would have never considered caring for the refugees she was so determined to avenge.
Truth to be told, I was growing into my new role and wouldn't have wanted it any other way. It was unique, challenging, and also rewarding as I found out when I talked to the other refugees.
I solicited help from some of them to catalog all the people we had aboard now—names, occupations, talents, and so on. There was even a computer whiz who offered to build a database, which would become more important once we brought in more humans and hopefully might even be able to unite some loved ones.
I wasn't really holding my breath for it, but especially Kevin was excited at the prospect of finding his mom and dad, even though we constantly cautioned him.
Xandros and Ashley's mission was to find Earth and once they did, they would begin distributing weapons and initiate a style of guerrilla warfare against the Cryons. If we couldn't stop the Cryons with sanctions, we could at least make their harvest more difficult. It was sad that it was coming down to that, but I was beginning to come to grips with the reality that we could only save as many as possible and that Earth might be lost to us forever.
It was a hard reality, but I was learning that humans were only a small group of fish in a very large ocean, and I was also learning to accept that I, and some others, were the lucky ones and we should count our blessings instead of bemoaning what we lost. As hard as it was. As much as I wanted to rail against the gods and Cryons for what had happened, it had happened and it could not be changed.
Some days survivor's guilt gnawed at me, but not as bad as some others who lost family and friends. And for the first time in my life I was happy that I didn't have any of that to bemoan.
Garth picked up training for Kevin and me, and many of the other refugees joined our early morning lessons.
Tablets weremade available for the humans as well, and those who were willing had already immersed themselves into learning about their new futures. They were studying how the Pandraxians hunted, gathered, sowed, harvested, fished, and mined. But there were also many who lay in their cots and bewailed their lot in life. Those, I wasn't sure yet how to help or how to reach.
