Chasing the Stars (7 page)

‘Aidan, stand down,’ Vee urged her brother.

Aidan took a step forward.

‘I said stand down. Damn it, Aidan, I mean it.’ Vee moved in front of her brother. ‘Don’t you dare . . .’

Aidan turned to look at Vee as if her words were only just registering. The strange, focused expression faded. He stepped back.

‘Vee, Aidan, I can only apologize for the behaviour of my second-in-command,’ said Mum. ‘I assure you, we are all . . . grateful for everything you did to rescue us.’

Wow! Mum’s gratitude was a meagre dish, watery at best. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Aidan and Vee exchanged a pointed look before Aidan sat back down. Vee stepped further away from me to stand closer to her brother – and I couldn’t say I blamed her. As first impressions went, we were all making a pretty piss-poor one. A tense hush reigned for a few moments as we all waited for someone else to break the silence.

‘How long were you all on Barros 5?’ Vee asked at last.

‘Just over three Sol months,’ Mum replied.

‘Had the Mazon ever attacked you before?’

‘No,’ I answered before Mum could. ‘They only became aware of our presence a day ago. That’s when they warned us to leave their planet immediately and go back to where we came from or suffer the consequences.’

Vee looked at me. ‘Which you took to mean . . .?’

‘You’d have to ask my mum that,’ I replied. No way was I jumping in front of that question.

Looking deeply unimpressed, Vee turned to Mum and waited for an answer.

‘I was hoping that with our actions we could persuade them that we were no threat to them,’ said Mum on the defensive. ‘That we might even be a benefit to their community. And besides, we had no way of leaving the planet surface.’

‘How did you get there then?’ asked Aidan.

Mum and Darren exchanged a swift, calculated look, but not swift enough because Vee caught it. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

‘A transport left us there,’ Mum answered.

‘Why would a transport ship deposit you on a planet in hostile Mazon space with no means of escape?’ Vee looked to me for answers. Answers I couldn’t give her. I met her gaze directly but didn’t say a word.

Was that disappointment I saw in her eyes? I’d only just met her and yet I felt that in some way that I’d let her down by not being honest with her.

‘When you first arrived on Barros 5, why didn’t you send out an emergency signal immediately so that you could be rescued a lot sooner?’ Vee asked. ‘I know you could do that because that’s how my brother and I managed to track you down.’

Another look exchanged, between me and Mum this time. No one spoke.

‘When the Mazon started firing on you, why didn’t you fight back?’ Vee asked.

Darren frowned. ‘How d’you know we didn’t?’

‘I was monitoring the situation as we approached the planet,’ Vee replied. ‘All the weapons fire was coming from one direction.’

Mum’s lips thinned. ‘We were trying to establish a non-violent colony, to prove to the Mazon that they had nothing to fear from us. All we wanted was a safe haven and peaceful co-existence.’

‘Are you serious? You do know that the Mazon hate us humans – right?’ Vee said scathingly. ‘They’re the worst xenophobes in the quadrant. You can’t preach peace to those who revel in hatred and hostility towards anyone who is different.’

‘We had to try,’ said Mum. ‘Actions speak louder than words. We wanted to prove to them that they had nothing to fear from us. Besides, with no way off the planet, we had no choice.’

‘You had a choice between living and dying,’ Vee pointed out. ‘And another thing, when this ship landed on the planet, some of you initially ran
away
from us, not towards us. What was that about?’

No one said a word.

‘Well, Aidan, break out the dictionary. We have a ship full of scintillating conversationalists,’ said Vee with enough sarcasm to make me wince.

Disillusionment was rapidly setting in. Is this what I’d risked my life for? Each and every one of them was hiding something. I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out. Catherine asked a lot of questions but answered very few, Darren did his thinking with his fists and none of the others had much to say about anything. And the one with the dark hair – Nathan? – he was the biggest letdown.

When I first saw him and he’d smiled at me, I thought . . . I could’ve sworn . . .

Well, no matter. I’d been mistaken and that was all there was to it.

I glanced at my brother. The pointed look he gave me told me that he knew something wasn’t quite right here too.

We may have been alone for the last few years, but I’d had direct dealings with the Mazon before, which was obviously more than this lot had done. There was no reasoning with the unreasonable. No appeasing the unappeasable. Every word I’d read or heard about the Mazon said it was best to leave their planetary system alone and give them a very wide berth. They were a race who were terrified of change and as a consequence would do anything they could to make sure it never happened. The status quo was their religion. It was pure arrogance to expect the Mazon to change just because Catherine and her other colonists wanted them to. Where had they been that they didn’t know that? Or maybe they were convinced that the Mazon would make an exception in their case? I had to admit, part of me grudgingly admired these people’s optimism, misplaced and dangerously foolish as it was.

‘I’m assuming you had weapons down on the planet?’ I said.

‘Enough to protect ourselves against the indigenous wildlife. Not enough to wage war,’ said Catherine.

‘Protecting yourself against the Mazon isn’t the same as waging war.’

‘We didn’t have the fire power to effectively protect ourselves against them. Besides, how could we hope to convince the Mazon of our good intentions if we fired at them? Sometimes you have to show that peace is more than just a word.’

‘By letting them kill you? That’s showing them all right,’ I said with scorn. ‘And just now, Darren was ready to tear my head off.’ I looked straight at him. ‘If my brother hadn’t deliberately provoked him to draw his fire, it’d probably be my mouth – or worse – bleeding by now, not Aidan’s. So you’re not all quite as peace-loving as you like to make out.’

Darren’s lips disappeared altogether at that, not so much as a gash as a paper-thin line. In that moment, I knew I had made an enemy. Probably more than one. How many other survivors on board my ship had loved ones who had been left behind on the planet surface? How many others now hated me because of it?

‘What is wrong with you people?’ A woman in her early forties with short, dark-brown hair and sad, pale blue eyes pushed past Darren. She cast a glance at Aidan, then took a step forward to address me directly. I braced myself, ready for another onslaught. ‘Vee, I’m Doctor Liana Sheen. I don’t blame you at all for what happened. I know you did your best and none of us would be here now if it wasn’t for you. We don’t all think – or act – like Darren.’

‘Liana, I think I can—’ Catherine began.

‘I don’t understand why you’re all so ready to crucify this poor girl and her brother,’ interrupted Liana, shaking her head. ‘She risked her life to help us.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to the doctor, only slightly mollified.

‘I’ve already apologized for Darren’s actions . . .’ Catherine began.

‘Save it,’ I dismissed. ‘What it boils down to is you’re all too principled to stand and fight but you have no qualms about condemning me for doing what you wouldn’t.’

‘We had no weapons that could affect the Mazon ships. They were way out of the range of our weapons,’ Darren protested.

‘Then isn’t it lucky for all of you that I came along?’ I made no attempt to disguise the contempt in my voice.

These people had been on my bridge for less than fifteen minutes and already I had a crashing headache and a pain in my chest like I hadn’t felt since Mum and Dad died. It was going to take me another ten Sol months to get back to Earth’s solar system. Ten months with these people.

Ten months of sheer and total hell.

Well, I’m not sure how our initial meeting with Vee and her brother could’ve gone any worse. The tension on the bridge was a living, breathing thing. Darren was an arsehat at the best of times and this sure wasn’t one of those. Yes, he’d just lost his wife and son, I understood that. We all got that. The Mazon were too powerful and too far away to blame. Vee and Aidan were right here. But he was being so damned unfair. I turned to face Vee. The beautiful dark brown eyes that had been soft and uncertain when we first came onto the bridge were now cold and hard as stone as they surveyed all of us – including me.

I didn’t like that. At all.

‘Aidan, get us as far away from the Mazon ships as fast as possible. Reconfigure our energy signature every few nanoseconds so they can’t track us,’ Vee said to her brother. ‘Then could you scan and register these people. Provide any orientation they may need to help them find their way around the ship and settle in.’ She turned to the rest of us. ‘After that I recommend you all meet up in the mess hall on this deck whilst my brother and your commander work out your various assignments. Aidan will also assign your sleeping quarters, most of which are below us on the middle or mid deck. In the meantime we shall resume our original heading back to Earth.’

Oh God!

There were gasps and groans at Vee’s announcement. One person in the background exclaimed a very audible, ‘No!’ I think it was Jaxon, though I couldn’t be sure. I looked at Vee. Her frown had deepened, bewilderment narrowing her eyes. Why didn’t Mum just tell her the truth? Vee looked around the bridge, still puzzled.

‘You’re taking us to Earth?’ said Mum, her tone sharp.

‘That’s the plan. We’re ten Sol months, two weeks and five days away so I suggest you all make yourselves comfortable. It’s going to be a long trip,’ said Vee, adding under her breath, ‘for everyone.’

‘We can’t go to Earth. We need to head for Mendela Prime in the gamma quadrant,’ argued Mum.

Vee stared at Mum. ‘Are you nuts? Mendela Prime is over twelve Sol months in the opposite direction. And to get to the nearest wormhole to make it to the gamma quadrant in that time, we’d have to travel for at least five weeks through Mazon space. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Mazon are now actively hunting us. If we try to double back, we stand little to no chance of sneaking through their territory undetected. I’m not prepared to risk my ship like that. If you don’t want to go back to Earth with me, then fine. I’ll take you to the nearest neutral starbase from where you can send a sub-space message to Earth or Mendela Prime or wherever. No doubt you’ll find a convoy that will pick you up and take you to where you want to go.’

‘That’s not acceptable,’ said Mum.

I winced. Could she sound any more arrogant? Not in this space-time continuum, I suspected.

Vee’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, excuse me all over the place but, acceptable or not, that’s what’s going to happen.’

‘Are the Mazon really still after us?’ asked Mum.

‘Yes. As far as they’re concerned, if they allow us to escape, other Terrans will surely follow. You’ve thrown down a gauntlet which they’re not about to ignore,’ Vee replied. ‘I’ve been monitoring their comms. They’re coming after us and they’re not going to give up in a hurry. We can’t match their fire power so our only hope is to outmanoeuvre or outsmart them, preferably both.’

‘When was the last time you were at an Earth spaceport?’ asked Mum.

‘We set off nearly seven years ago on our deep space exploration mission and the last time we docked at an Earth spaceport was when we reached the alpha quadrant’s outer rim about three years after that. We haven’t docked at one since then,’ Vee frowned. ‘Why?’

‘So your ship’s computer hasn’t been linked to an Earth Authority hub in four years?’ asked Mum.

‘That’s right. Why?’

‘Then I’m sorry to have to do this but I don’t have time to babysit you and your brother,’ said Mum. ‘Computer, this is Commander Catherine Linedecker CYL-Phi-Epsilon-803-1995. I am hereby invoking Earth Vessel Override Authorization Code 26-theta-upsilon and taking command of this vessel. Acknowledge.’