CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
“That’s cute,” the man said, with clear disinterest. “Vonnie? You want me to take you somewhere else? Some military boffin contacted me, and you know I never trust the military.”
“No, I honestly believe they mean to help,” Rohinavon said. “I’m not in danger here.”
“I’ll believe that once we’re both safely locked inside my ship,” the man said, and I realised then just how deep his distrust went.
“Neither of us are armed,” I told him, holding my hands out wider in a gesture of peace. “We’re not holding her against her will.”
“Then you won’t object to her leaving, will you,” the man said.
Rohinavon sighed, but she started moving slowly towards the ship. “I won’t be long,” she told me. “Let me just sort this out with Yohana.”
“You know, if you did want to leave, we wouldn’t stop you,” I told her. Perhaps this was all some elaborate charade, and she really was trying to leave? “We genuinely want to help you.”
“I know,” she agreed, her face giving nothing away. “Please, just let me sort this out.”
A small ramp appeared out of the side of one of the ‘trees’, and they both climbed inside, the ramp disappearing a moment later. I waited, wondering whether we were going to have to explain to Aiden that our visitor had bailed before we could even get the project started.
“My being here is a problem,” Xel surmised, but I jumped in before he could start offering to leave, or any other ridiculous solution to the situation.
“No, it’s not,” I told him. “You have every right to be here, and if other species want to work with the Alliance, they’re going to have to learn to deal with a few dimari being around. A simple conversation would solve this problem, rather than everyone jumping to conclusions.”
Xel nodded, a small, shy smile on his face. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and I felt a warm glow at that. He’d defended me against unkind remarks in the past, so it was the least I could do to make sure he felt welcome now.
After a minute or two of silence, the ramp suddenly appeared again, and Rohinavon led the way back down onto the ground.
“My apologies,” Yohana said, tucking his weapon away.
“Can’t be too careful in my line of work.
My name is Yohana. You may call me Yona.
” He bowed deeply, though he kept his eyes on us.
That was a quirk of Anicrian culture – a bow with the eyes down was a gesture of trust, where as a bow with the eyes up was designed to indicate respect, but not trust. I’d learned in high school, during our galactic community studies, that it was a firm custom in Anicrian culture for them to let the people around them know explicitly how they were feeling, and a host of different gestures and rituals were integral to their ongoing attempts to communicate those feelings.
“I’m Cole,” I introduced myself. “And this is Xel, my dimari.” On impulse, I bowed back to Yona, lowering my eyes to the ground.
He seemed surprised by the gesture, though whether it was my declaration of trust that caught him off guard, or the fact that I knew the gesture at all, was impossible to tell.
“Would you like to come over to my house to discuss our plans?”
“No,” Yona said. “Are we safe here? I don’t want to leave my ship unattended.”
I was a little taken aback by the blunt reply, but I couldn’t really argue with his concern. A ship that expensive, which was also his only way off this planet, was a reasonable thing to be protective about.
“Fair enough. You were contacted by a man named Aiden Hill,” I began, pulling up the document Aiden had sent me.
I hadn’t even had a chance to read it yet.
“I understand that you’d be wary of trusting our military, but he’s trying to put a plan together with our Parliament to help Rohinavon.
He sent me a document listing what we can offer you in return for your help-”
“He wants me to steal babies for you,” Yona said, baring a set of large teeth.
“I want to know where these babies will live? Who will look after them?” He looked Xel up and down with a sneer.
“And that you’re not going to turn them into even worse slaves than they would be already.
What happened to your face?” he asked suddenly, a change of subject that caught me completely off guard.
“What?”
“Did someone torture you? This Alliance you have here, do they torture their criminals? Are you a criminal?”
I forced myself to take a slow breath. Yona had come here in good faith, despite all the potential risks, to assist a largely unknown organisation commit what was essentially a massive act of interstellar provocation.
He was well within his rights to want to know exactly what he was getting involved with.
“I’m not a criminal,” I said, working hard to keep my emotions in check. Apparently, I wasn’t doing all that good a job, since I felt Xel’s hand on my shoulder in what he clearly felt was a necessary show of support. “I was caught in a house fire. This is just scarring from being burned.”
Yona snorted. “Your houses don’t have fire retardant systems? Are you stupid?”
“No, we’re just living on a class four planet that’s still in the process of being terraformed. There are a lot of resources we don’t have access to.”
“So why are you wanting to raise Vangravian babies here? Why not somewhere they would be safer?”
That was something we hadn’t discussed with Aiden. We’d just about got as far as whether we should even be asking the Parliament about this. We hadn’t spent any time at all considering where the project should be set up – aside from the very brief chat Xel and I had had on the topic last night.
But before I could answer that question, Xel spoke up.
“I think here would be a perfect place, for the exact reason that it’s a class four planet.
That way, the colony would evade notice.
This place isn’t worth raiding, it hasn’t yet developed any significant natural resources, its people aren’t particularly wealthy.
The most valuable thing this system has is the wormhole, and anyone making use of that doesn’t need to get close to the planet.
There would be nothing to draw any attention to us, and no reason for anyone to be looking for anything unusual in this system.
And if we’re going to be here for the next twenty years, staying hidden is going to be of far more value than the most advanced defence systems.”
Yona stared intently at Xel, his long tail swishing. Then he turned his attention back to me without acknowledging what Xel had said. “Aiden wants to take my ship away,” he grumbled. “Why would I let you do that?”
Holy fuck, Aiden really had thrown me in the deep end with this one, hadn’t he?
I scanned over the document he’d sent, hoping there was a simple explanation for that one.
“Sorry, you’ve caught us a little unprepared,” I said to Yona.
“Give me a moment, and I’ll see if he’s explained everything.
” Thankfully, it was easy to find the bit where he talked about his plan for the smuggler’s ship, and…
“Oooh, right, yeah, that makes sense,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.
I turned to Yona, rather impressed with the idea Aiden had laid out.
“It’s not really about the ship in the end.
It’s about the incubators. We’d need to get our hands on about ten incubators if we’re going to be able to look after that many babies.
But Aiden’s worried about drawing attention to ourselves if we just try to buy them out of the blue.
So what he’s suggesting is that you give us the incubators you already have, then you give us your ship and we give you a new one – just as good as the one you’ve got now, stealth capabilities included.
” That was remarkably generous of the Parliament, and I wondered who the hell was driving this plan, if they were willing to throw away a decent quality cargo freighter fully kitted out with stealth tech.
“Then we take your old ship to a distant system,” I continued, “and get it ‘accidentally’ destroyed. But in a way that wouldn’t kill everyone on board.
So plausibly, you escaped the crash, bargained your way into a new ship, but then, of course, you need to buy new incubators to fit it out, which explains why you’re buying them in bulk – bankrolled by the Alliance, of course – and in the meantime, Rohinavon conveniently disappears, and oh, whoops, you sadly lost track of her in all the chaos with your ship being destroyed.
Then when you go back to Vangal, you can tell them a hair-raising story about how this mad woman threatened you with a pulse projector and held you hostage while you took her where she wanted to go, and now you’re thoroughly pissed off about the whole thing because she ended up causing you to lose your ship.
That all puts you above any suspicion when you go back to collect more babies. ”
Yona regarded me silently for a long moment. Then he finally covered his teeth with his lips, his tail stilling. “That is not a stupid idea,” he said grudgingly, and I took that to be high praise. “What about these babies? Where would they live?”
“We have a barn that we’ve been considering turning into a nursery for them,” I said, wondering if Aiden was going to scold me later for overstepping my bounds. “We haven’t made any firm decisions about where they’re going to be, but-”
“Show me,” Yona demanded. “Show me this barn. A barn is not a place for babies. This part is a stupid idea.”
He thought it was stupid, but he still wanted to see it? “It’s over this way. Not far,” I said, aware that he didn’t want to leave his ship unattended.
We all trudged across the paddock to the barn, Yona keeping his distance from the rest of us.
I opened up the big double doors, then explained, “It needs renovating. We’d build bedrooms, and a kitchen, and there’s more space up in the loft.
And then maybe build some cabins for security personnel.
It’s very much a work in progress at the moment. ”
Yona grunted, then scampered off on all-fours to look around.
I glanced at Xel with raised eyebrows, wondering if we should follow Yona, or just wait here.
He shrugged, so I figured we’d just wait.
Yona was sure to tell us if he wanted anything, after all.
I took the opportunity to read through the rest of what Aiden had sent me.
But thankfully, none of it was very complicated.
A few minutes later, Yona came back, dusting some straw off his fur. “It could work,” he said. “What else do you want from me?”
“It’s really just the two things; help us discreetly buy some incubators by destroying your ship, then deliver the Vangravian children to us and pay their mothers so they don’t suspect anything’s amiss.
We’d pay you for the deliveries, plus the money to pay their mothers, and as I’ve already said, you get a new ship and a new set of incubators for your trouble.
If there’s anything else you want as part of the deal, let us know and I’ll run it past Aiden. ”
Yona’s tail started swishing again, but this time, his gaze was on Rohinavon. “You’re insane, you know that, little girl? Your mother will kill you for this.”
“She’ll have to catch me first,” Rohinavon said, not showing the slightest fear.
Yona made a derisive sound, then turned back to me. He watched me for a long moment, and I waited, knowing that this entire plan largely depended on his cooperation. Neither Rohinavon nor Aiden would forgive me if I fucked this up.
“There is one thing that I want,” Yona said, and I braced myself for all manner of outlandish requests. Money, weapons, rare tech or minerals; I could think of a thousand different things a smuggler might want to get their hands on.
“And what would that be?” I asked, when he didn’t continue.
Again, he hesitated. “I want…” He shuddered, looking around nervously. “I want you to… When you set up this nursery for the children. I want you to take… I want you to make a place here for one extra child. Not a Vangravian one.”
“What sort of child?” I asked warily. This was certainly not what I’d been expecting him to say.
“An Anicrian child,” he said, body tense, his hand on the butt of his weapon. “My son.”
His what? “I see,” I said slowly, though I really didn’t understand. “Why do you want your son to live here? How old is he? Where is he now?” I had so many questions, but tried to keep a lid on them so as not to overwhelm him.
“He has not been born yet. But he will be, in about two months. Anicrian culture is very complicated. I have been outcast from my family – hence my occupation,” he added, with a snarl, “so the authorities will take the child and give him to my older sister. She is not a nice person. My son will not be safe with her in charge.”
“What about his mother?” I asked, baffled by the explanation. “Doesn’t she get a say in this?”
“She will be executed. For breeding with an outcast.”
Holy fuck. Now I had a mountain more questions.
Did Yona love this woman? Had she fallen pregnant deliberately or accidentally?
Why had he been outcast in the first place?
And had that happened before or after he’d become a smuggler?
This wasn’t a part of Anicrian culture that I’d learned anything about in school.
But before I could sort through the quagmire of swirling questions, Xel asked a very simple and very sensible question. “Will you be bringing your son’s mother here as well? Or just the child?”
That, it seemed, honestly hadn’t occurred to Yona. “You would… accept his mother as well?”
“It would be better if his mother came,” I said emphatically, giving Xel a grateful nod. “We’ll have to find surrogate families to look after the Vangravians, but if your son already has a mother, that makes things a lot easier.”
Yona bowed suddenly, as low as he could manage, with his eyes firmly on the floor. Wow. That was quite a change. In less than half an hour, he’d gone from threatening to shoot us to a heartfelt display of trust and gratitude.
“I would be most grateful,” he said, when he stood up.
“If you will do this, then yes, I will do everything I can with the rest of your plans.” Then he suddenly announced, “I need to go. I have deliveries to make, and you are clearly not ready for the babies yet. Aiden or Vonnie can contact me when you need me next.”
“Okay,” I said, scrambling for a reply as he scampered for the door. “Well, thank you for coming. We’ll be in touch!”