Chapter 11 #2
As the auto-nav took over flight, Torian leaned back, retrieving her mug. “Moss? I’m sorry I pried. You’re well within your rights to ignore Dutch—but I hope you won’t ignore me, too.”
“I was not ignoring you.”
“You weren’t talking to me, either.”
“Sometimes, I do not have—”
The ship picked up speed, and Torian stopped listening to Moss as shocks of black slithered beyond the window. Something was out there. Her chest tightened, every nerve alight, and she pushed to her feet.
“Moss. Wait.” She hastily set her mug on the counter, leaning as close to the front window as she could.
When she squinted at that spot, all she saw were distant, glimmering stars—but her gut churned anyway.
She hadn’t imagined it. “We’re not alone.
Tell me your sensors registered something out there. ”
It wasn’t a ship. It had been something much, much smaller … but that wasn’t exactly comforting. She knew with certainty it was the same thing she’d seen twice before, entering the nebula yesterday.
Draic surveillance, maybe? Did draics have surveillance drones?
… Did the nylarians?
“I registered nothing,” Moss said. A pause, then it added, “Although now that I have control of Auto-Navigation, I can see it did detect an obstacle to avoid.”
Then she was right. “Is it following us? What is it?”
“Unknown. It is far behind us now.”
Torian clenched her jaw. “Something’s in this nebula, Moss.
” She wanted to be rational, but her heart was pounding in fear.
Her mind went back to the stories about the Kialoa Nebula and its odd anomalies.
Mineral-rich asteroids that no one could mine because something lurked there.
Her tone was sharp: “I’m telling you. Human ships don’t just break down for no reason. ”
“Debatable,” Moss replied.
Several moments of tense silence passed, but Torian didn’t see anything else. Eventually, they flew past the patch of derelict human ships, then through the dusty pink wall and into dark, empty space beyond.
Safe.
Hopefully.
“Let’s not go back there,” Torian muttered.
“Agreed. We will arrive at Rhymarra in eleven hours.”
They left the Kialoa Nebula behind, sliding into another wormhole. Darkness surrounded the ship. This time, flecks of blue light danced on the edges of the wormhole, but when Torian would look at them, they’d vanish.
“Yesterday, the wormhole was black. Today, there’s light. You see that, right?” The wormhole seemed to glimmer like the kerrac tree’s leaves, but it was so subtle she wondered whether Moss’s cameras could identify it.
Sure enough, Moss sounded suspicious. “Your vitals are fine, but now, I am questioning your sanity. Are you attempting to hallucinate vividly before your sleep cycle?”
Torian stared at the flashing blue lights and laughed miserably.
“Maybe. I think I need to relax for a bit.” There was scrap metal in the engine room; she’d seen it littering the mossy floor when she peered down there earlier.
Maybe it was time to experiment with a smaller-scale model of the Destitute.
A little welding might do her mind some good.
She left the flight deck and stepped down the stairs.
Eleven hours. Time enough to start building a new starship model, and maybe give the potted plants a bit of attention.
Some of them looked wilted. When Celise’s plants wilted, she replenished the soil and cleaned their roots—a fresh start, she always said.
It usually worked, so maybe Torian would try that, too.
Anything to forget the dark figures lurking in the nebula, or the strange lights flashing inside the wormhole.
“Do you have soil aboard, Moss?”
“I am an organic computer on a starship that utilizes flora as life support. Of course there is soil.”
Perfect.
Torian was elbow-deep in repotting that alien fig tree when Moss said, “Approaching Rhymarra.”
It was almost a shock—Torian had nearly forgotten their destination in favor of a perfect life in the stars.
She’d spent the early part of the morning reading, then had set a pot of vegetable stew to simmer while she lay down for a nap.
After, she collected spare scraps of metal sheets, screws, brackets, and laid them all out for inspection while she ate.
Making model ships was a labor of love, and she thoroughly enjoyed taking her time with it.
Each piece that made it into the sculpture had to be perfect, and perfectly shaped on top of that.
She spent hours cutting scrap pieces to size, bending them with her tool set, before she even pulled out her pocket welder.
As she constructed a model of the Destitute, she asked Moss to explain nylarian culture. It had several educational pods—but they were nylarian-made, and Torian’s translator had never heard that language before.
Instead, she chatted with Moss about how the nylarian economy worked (an export-based society, where they offered terraforming services and received alien goods in return), how their society was structured (something of a meritocracy, but based on an individual’s contribution to society, rather than their skill set), and their values (community first, less individually focused, with emphasis placed on harmony with nature).
It made Torian even sadder to think of the remnants of Vaesa, after learning all that. If the nylarians placed emphasis on community, then left the galaxy with little word of their destination, Dutch must be very lonely, indeed.
Maybe even as lonely as Moss had been.