Chapter 14
Nova
Although she planned to stay in the room for days to show Miran how upset she was, she only lasted a few hours.
She was used to being active and after all the down time in her dome, staying cooped up in the room was impossible.
Especially after a night spent with the last medicated wrap.
Her ankle felt good, she was well rested, and all that meant she was restless.
She half expected the door to the room to be locked, but of course it wasn’t. Miran had never purposely lied to her, even if he was good at lying to himself.
Thinking of the life they couldn’t have together made her want to slap him around and demand he see the universe for the cold, harsh place it was, not the idyllic myth he’d been told.
There was no green planet full of happy families waiting for her. There never would be. That wasn’t the life Decanted humans ever expected. They were engineered, often for specific purposes, then sold off to be used, abused, and discarded when they were no longer useful.
Whoever these Hissa were working for couldn’t possibly mean to do anything good to her when they got to their destination.
Dismissing those depressing thoughts, Nova explored the quiet gunship. It wasn’t very big and soon she found herself in the command room, where everyone was frantically talking.
“The Diniki sent a fleet from the planet!” Nerin announced, his hands moving rapidly over his console. “They’re demanding we leave the area. What do we do?”
“An entire fleet?” Miran asked, staring at the display in his console.
“None of the ships are as advanced as ours,” Nerin said. “But there are too many of them for us to take on by ourselves.”
“We have skill on our side,” Lazil said. “We can take them.”
“How did this situation get so bad so quickly?” Miran asked. His voice was deeply frustrated with a hint of helplessness. “Our arrival was supposed to help defuse the situation, not escalate it.”
She almost snorted. She could’ve told them that showing up in a well-armed, sleek gunship was going to make the Diniki upset, even if they weren’t already.
The comms in the room were on so she heard a Diniki demanding that a ship called Assist allow the Diniki to inspect it and that the gunship leave the area.
There was a response from the Assist in Diniki, but it seemed like they were having issues with their comms. Their words came out chopped and strangely truncated.
Diniki wasn’t easy to learn and the only reason she knew it as well as she did was because they visited four different Diniki colonies every year, and if you spoke even a small amount of Diniki, you got great tips.
“Who’s on the Assist?” she asked, making the three Hissa in the room startle.
Miran recovered first. “A Hissa warrior named Warik, a Decanted woman named Nisha, and about twenty-five vats full of children.”
She gasped in a shocked breath. “There are kids there?”
“Yes, and we might have to go to war to try to save them. If the Diniki board that ship, they’ll claim everyone on board. The children will all be sold, that is if they survive being Decanted by people who couldn’t care less about them.”
Nerin gave her a little more context. “Warik and Nisha are pretending to be Diniki so they don’t get boarded. But it’s not working.”
“I can help!” Nova said, moving to the center of the room. “I can tell your Hissa friend what to say to the Diniki. Their accent is good, but they’re not saying the right things.”
“You speak Diniki?” Nerin asked.
“Yes, but not well enough to fool anyone. I need to tell them what to say. This isn’t a helpless situation, I promise. They only have to have the right words.”
“How would you know?” Lazil asked. His question wasn’t mean, but it was frustrated.
“The same way I knew which drink to give Miran or how to hide in the desert,” she shot back. “I know all about a lot of species.”
“I’m opening comms to them now,” Miran said as he tapped on his console.
There was a pause, then the display on the wall lit up to show a mangled control room with a human, Hissa, and droid all staring back at her.
She was a little spooked by the droid. A strange sense of intelligence was emanating from it.
Shaking off the odd feeling, Nova focused on the human and Hissa while Miran, Lazil, and Nerin all got up to stand around her.
“If we have to go into battle, we’ll put ourselves between you and the Diniki ships,” Lazil said before she could address anyone.
It took a lot to keep from cursing at Lazil. She was not interested in dying today.
“I need to talk to them! This can all be worked out,” Nova said, trying to talk loud enough for Lazil to hear through his thick skull. It didn’t work, no one looked at her.
“We should put Nova in a biosuit and lock her in an escape pod in case the worst happens,” Miran said, probably resigned to the thought of fighting because of Lazil.
“Then we need to hurry,” Lazil said. “We need to strike them before they expect it.”
Not on her watch. It looked like she was going to need to save this situation before these warriors did something irrevocably stupid.
“It’s the only way to ensure victory!” Lazil finished saying, only to have the Hissa warrior on the other ship shut them all up.
“Quiet!” he roared. To Nova’s relief, it worked, and Lazil stopped talking and all three Hissa standing close to her stiffened. It seemed that this Hissa had some authority. The stranger focused on her. “I’m Warik, and this is Nisha.”
Nisha raised a hand to give a little wave. “Hi! Sorry the situation is so ugly.”
Nova was relieved to be dealing with apparently rational people! She gave them a warm smile.
“I’m Nova,” she said, then introduced the guys. “That’s Nerin.” She tried a bit of humor to help diffuse the tensions. “The violent one is Lazil. Don’t hold it against him, he’s had a rough couple of days.”
He gave her a sour look and grumbled under his breath. “Any troubles we’ve faced were created by you.”
That was new. He was acknowledging that she didn’t get lucky but was able to orchestrate her escapes. That would make future plans more difficult, but at least he didn’t see her as stupid and helpless anymore.
Of course, first they had to survive the current situation.
“Which one of you was speaking Diniki?” she asked. “It was really good!”
Nisha looked pleased and quickly explained that it was a program she created that spoke Diniki without an accent or hesitation. Nova was even more impressed. There were plenty of translation programs out there, but you could always tell. This one was flawless!
It took some back and forth on whether they’d trust her to help until Miran simply said with absolute confidence, “I trust her,” that Warik agreed to let her help.
She quickly told them what to say to calm down the Diniki tempers and open up an exchange where they could eventually bribe someone into leaving them alone.
Nova thought all the trouble was over when they talked the Diniki into going away after a large sum of wealth was distributed to them in a way that they wouldn't have to declare it to their government.
She was about to collapse into a chair when Nisha’s expression turned upset.
“This isn’t great timing,” Warik said.
“What?” Miran asked before she could.
“There are twenty-five grow vats on this ship, and they all need to be decanted right now. You guys need to figure out how to get onboard. We’re going to be very busy.”
***
Miran
An exhausting day and a half later
By the time the Ardent showed up, they’d successfully decanted all the children and had them in bunks, resting. Because the Assist was so badly damaged, the Ardent had to get creative. In the end they attached the Assist to the Ardent with struts, then assembled a tunnel between the two ships.
Thankfully they got a few men and menders over to help with the children while the rest of the Ardent crew worked hard to combine the ships.
There was still a lot of work, and they couldn’t relax, but it felt much better to have experts checking each child for issues. The first few days after decanting could be as dangerous for the children as the initial growing process. One missed step could be fatal.
When the hatch to the tunnel connecting the ships finally opened, allowing the Ardent’s crew to flood into the room, Miran was so exhausted all he could do was lean against a wall and watch.
Nova was sitting on the floor next to him.
She looked dazed, and he wasn’t sure she was even comprehending what she was seeing.
Warik, Nerin, and Lazil were barely standing. Nisha had fallen asleep in a chair next to one of the cots, holding the hand of a little girl.
After watching his fellow warriors get to work, reality finally seeped in. The scariest part was over. All the children had survived.
Nova mumbled something, then slumped over, dead asleep.
Crouching down, Miran slung her nearby bag on his shoulder, then scooped her up into his arms. She mumbled again and nuzzled her face against his chest.
“Is she sick or injured?” one of the menders asked as Miran stood up with Nova secure in his arms.
“Neither. She’s exhausted," Miran said. “Decanting is hard work and nerve wracking. There were only five of us.”
The mender gave him a brief smile, already distracted by one of the children. “Stay with her while she sleeps. Contact one of us if she doesn’t wake or her cognition seems impaired."
The mender was gone before Miran could even nod.
Holding Nova close, he left the grow room and made his way through the tunnel they’d erected between the two ships.
There was talk about having to tow the Assist back because there weren’t any rooms that were the right size to house all the Decanted children within the tight environmental limits they required.
That was all someone else's problem. His entire focus was on Nova now.