The other book i have been working on

This is another very very rough draft of another young adult book I have been writing for a special young person i know. (yes, she's very romantic)


Chapter 1: The Pod
None of the children expected to wake up until they were docking at the colony, and they especially didn’t expect to wake up with their pod detached from the ship and strange coordinates in the navcomputer. Tell, the oldest of all of them, was the first the computer took out of chryosleep, and he began the tedious task of taking the rest of them out of chryosleep manually, since they weren’t set to come out for another two years. He took Lira out first since she had extensive background in engineering. She had spent her entire childhood in various engineering rooms with her father while growing up, while her brother Tell had stayed with their mother and gone to school. Every document said she lived with her mother too, so when the lottery came up and said that they were to be shipped to the new colony, she was of course to go with them, which meant her father had to travel eight weeks out of his way to get her back to Bardoo for their departure date on time.
With both of them working together, it took less time to wake the other ten kids, all around their own ages. Tell and Lira were the only siblings, though they knew each other less than some of the other kids who had grown up together. He had been training to be a security officer, and began taking the lead with ease, despite his lack of knowledge on any of the pods controls.
“Lira, see if you can determine where we are headed, and maybe what happened, where is the ship?” Tell asked as soon as they had revived the last two kids, ignoring the questions and demands of the others.
“Yeah Tell, hold on,” she answered sitting at one of the two Navseats on the small pod. A blonde haired boy not much younger than Tell sat in the other and pulled the com close. She didn’t stop him since he seemed to know what he was doing and started trying to pull up information on their coordinates. “Black space,” she told Tell finally, trying to sound less frightened than she was. “But our coordinates are for a class A planet more than a week away, and we weren’t the only pods to be launched. Two others, all from starboard side.”
“Black space?” A girl asked in a high pitched voice.
“Uncharted. No one goes in Black space. Too dangerous.” Tell answered frankly, frowning and running his fingers through his dark hair which matched his dark eyes. He turned back to Lira, “What about the other pods? Where are they?”
“Not within range, but they have the same coordinates we do. If they don’t have enough people, or someone with enough experience to pilot in a landing on the planet, or if everyone is still in chryosleep when they reach the planet, they’ll all die.”
“What about everyone else? What happened to the ship?”
“Why was our pod launched?”
“Who’s on those pods?”
“What about our parents?”
“Hold on guys, one question at a time. The pod computer was linked to the main computer, but it didn’t retain any of the main ships information, just information pertinent to it. As for the other pods, all the pods on the far starboard side held the same age groups, like us, so the nutrient feeds could be maintained easier. The adults were all taken to port. It didn’t say all the pods were ejected on starboard, only three. Three out of twenty eight. Maybe more were launched in a second and third round. Maybe after we get there, everyone else will get there too, who knows? I do know it’s no use speculating about it. We have a little over a week before we get to this planet, I say we spend the time wisely, and the first thing we do is list our assets, ourselves. I am Lira and I have traveled with my father for ten years, since I was four, on every kind of ship, and I know about every kind of ships engine there is.”
The boy sitting next to her grinned, his blue eyes sparkling. “I was training at the academy before the lottery came. I have seventy eight logged hours, and I can’t tell you how many un-logged on my fathers freighter. I‘m Landis.”
Tell rolled his shoulders. “I’m Tell, I was training as a security officer.”
“I’m Colt,” said a small boy with mousy brown hair and green eyes, “and I wasn’t really doing anything special, just going to school. I do have a nice collection of old mid century paper books.”
“Uhh, great,” Tell said frowning at the younger boy. “What about you?” He asked pointing at a tall lanky boy trying to make himself smaller on the floor.
“M’ name’s Hollis. I was supposed to be going to med school till the lottery voided my scholarship. I know a bit, not enough.”
“Better than nothing, you?”
“Me? I was in a culinary finishing school when the lottery hit. I’m Maya Luca from Jeris Island.”
“I’m sure there’s no upper class where we are going,” another girl said rolling her eyes and nudging the girl next to her who grinned wickedly. “I’m Cecilia, and this is Brenna. We were both in the same science program.”
“I thought about science, for a while, but it didn’t suit me, neither did security really,” a big dark haired boy said with a laugh. “Turned out school didn’t suit me at all. I was working on a freighter off of the summit moon when the last lottery hit. I’m Jak.”
“Oren Veneraux, and I was still in school. I have no talents really, unless someone wants to play me in Stratagm?”
“They say they greatest generals play Stratagm well. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Do you think we will have need for Generals where we are going?”
“No sense in not being prepared.”
“I’m Annise,” the high pitched girl said. “I’m also from Jeris Island. I had a private tutor. I can speak four different languages, including Mikanese. I have had extensive…”
“Great, if any Mikans are on this class A planet in Black space, we will let you handle them,” Lira said cutting the girl off. “Tell, there is debris ahead of us, off to our port side.”
“One of the pods?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think so, I can’t find any human DNA. The pod sensors aren’t very good.”
“Are we close enough to see?”
“Not yet, an hour, ninety minutes, tops.”
“All right Lira, let me know if it’s going to be a problem once we get closer. Who’s left?”
“Me,” a small red haired boy said softly. He looked serious for his age, and Tell wondered how someone his age had gotten grouped with the rest of them. “I haven’t thought a lot about what I want to study, mostly what I have done since I was small is travel all over the system from tournament to tournament. Maybe I will have my own school on the new colony.”
“What kind of tournaments?”
“ProCom.”
“ProCom? Are you serious? YOU know Protero Comminus?”
“Yes, I was working on my fourth degree black belt, second level.”
“You aren’t old enough to be a black belt of any degree.”, said Jak with disdain.
“Yeah right kid, we can all say whatever we want now, right?”
“Believe me or not, but you asked what I could contribute. ProCom is all I know. And I am fourteen.”
Even Lira turned from her com-panel to stare at him in disbelief. He was maybe nine, ten at most, and small for that. His big brown eyes regarded them all seriously, stoically, as if he had done the same a million times in his life. Lira, herself, had no room to judge. Herself, also fourteen, was the same size he was, but she was a girl. It wasn’t as shocking for people to find out she was fourteen, it was usually more shocking for them to discover she wasn’t an eight year old boy. Traveling with her father as an engineer had given her strange dressing and grooming habits, her shorn hair being one of them.
“If you say you are fourteen, then we believe you, I mean, it’s not likely they put a child in with the rest of us being a like age. As for the ProCom, well, I’m not willing to find out if it’s true or not, are any of the rest of you? Even small as he is? Yeah, didn’t think so. Anyways, what’s your name boy?”
“Cameron Mendez. Cam, everyone calls me.”
“Well, a liar can’t be worse than stuck up witches,” Brenna whispered loudly to Cecilia who laughed.
Annise lifted her nose in the air and turned to Maya. “Some people have no class, really.”
“Jeris Island is a long ways from here,” Lira said turning back to her controls. “Unless you two plan on living by yourselves when we land where we’re landing, maybe you should climb down off that high horse.”
“Listen to me little boy, you may know something about ships, but we know everything about class, so you just turn around and keep your nose in those controls, and we’ll deal with the social problems.”
Lira rolled her eyes and didn’t bother with a response as Tell cut in, “All right that’s enough. We do not need any sort of social hierarchy unless I set some sort of command structure, and if I do, you two won’t like it as you have absolutely nothing useful to contribute, you’ll be pretty low on the list. For now shut it and sit down. Landis, can you land this?”
“Sure. It will fly itself right up until entry into the planets atmosphere, well, after really too, if you count the fact that it will keep going right until it crashes into the surface, but anyways, yeah.”
“Great, Lira, you got everything until then?”
“Sure Tell, um, maybe we should take shifts, Landis and I.”
“Yeah, yeah, we all should. Ok, here it is, three shifts, four per shift, right? Landis, you and Hollis and Jak and umm, Colt. I’ll take Annise and Maya and you Oren. Lira, you take Cam, Brenna and Cecily. Are there any questions? Lira, your group can take first shift, my group takes second shift, then Landis’.”
“What about food?” Annise asked.
“All we have is what’s coming through the nutrient tubes. If you get hungry suck on one for a while.” Lira said knowing what was coming next.
“Gross!”
“It’s that or starve. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if you tried to wait it out. There’s two years worth of nutrients for inactive bodies. I’m not sure what our intake will be now that we are awake. I’m sure we should make it with plenty to spare, lets just hope this A class planet is super hospitable, unless one of you is some super hunter in disguise or knows a lot about plants.” Lira was for some reason feeling especially dour, though she knew she should be trying to keep everyone’s spirits up.
“I went fishing once with my grandad,” Colt offered hopefully.
“I know a little about plants, mostly about plants in the dense waterwood jungles in the south on Bardoo, but maybe it will help,” Brenna said looking at Cecily who nodded enthusiastically.
“Of course it will help, we know what things to look for in poisonous plants, mostly, that’s what will really help, right?”
“Hey, I have a question. If this is Black space, who says it’s a class A planet?” Oren asked frowning.
“Sensors. Sensors can sweep a ways away, they would have said if it was an I class or any other class. It is an A class. No humanoid life forms on any planets in the system but able to sustain life.”
“Oh.”
“It was a good question Oren,” Tell offered judiciously and Jak grinned maliciously.
“None of us need coddlin’ do we? We’re all old enough to take anything that comes our way.”
“Not everyone here is as world-wise as you Jak. Let it go. Maybe some of you should think of getting some sleep so that you wont be tired when your shift comes. It’s ok to lay back down in your chryosleep stations, they’ve been deactivated.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Me neither.”
“I couldn’t sleep if I tried.”
“Do you think our parents will be there?” Colt asked turning to stare out the window into space.
“Probably not at first, but maybe they will arrive after we do. Hey, do any of you have any games in your bags? Cards?”
“I have a Stratagm block.”
“I have a Pak deck, if any of you have anything to wager,” Jak said still grinning.
“No gambling.”
“Who made you Captain of this ship?”
“The ship did, when the auto-controls woke me first after the pod-launch. I’m the oldest, I have security experience.”
“Landy there can fly this thing, seems to me that makes him more of a Captain, or even the boy there if he can fix it, Liren.”
“My name is Landis, and speak for yourself Jak, I don’t want to lead, I just want to fly. Why make trouble? Everything he’s saying makes sense, just let it go and stop making trouble. Not one of us really knows everything we need to know about being a real leader, so let him do it, he’s at least sure enough of himself.”
“All of you think that? He’s sure of himself so let him do it? That’s dumb. You should..,”
“No, what’s dumb is you causing dissention already. Landis can fly and I can fix the pod. Between us we can tell Tell anything and everything he needs to know about what’s going on on this ship. We report to him and he makes decisions, that’s how it works, one person doesn’t do everything on a ship. Or didn’t you know that? Haven’t you ever been on a real ship? You said you worked on a freighter, but if you did you would know that. What I think is you just need to go sit down and shut it till we get to where we’re going and quit causing trouble,” Lira said irritably.
“You have a big mouth for a small little runt, how about I show you your place little man?” Jak said standing up to his full height and looming over her seat.
“Sit down!” Tell demanded stepping in front of him as Cameron unfolded himself from the floor and simply stood just a couple feet away, watching.
“Spend your whole life protecting that mouth? You won’t always be there.”
“Don’t assume you know anything about us,” Lira said still not looking up from her control panel. She was still more than a little bitter that she hadn’t seen her brother since she was seven, per his choice. He didn’t approve of their fathers ‘vagabond’ lifestyle, so much so that he wouldn’t even visit. Their mother wouldn’t allow their father in the same city as her, she had court orders, though she wouldn’t tell them why. Even when her father dropped her off at the ship, he had to leave before their mother got there. For all Lira knew he had gone right back to his shipping route and he was none the wiser that she was gone. It had been three years for him, while she had been in chryosleep, remaining fourteen until she was awoken. Would he find out what happened? Would he look for them? In Black space? He would. If anyone was brave enough, her father was.
“Oh I have known plenty of your kind, smart mouthed little brats with big brothers always there to bail them out.”
“Tell, I have to rig a homing beacon, take my chair while I find some parts I can use.”
“A what?”
“A homing beacon, something with a repeating signal on a loop, that sends off our coordinates, maybe a short message. If something happened and it gets back to dad, he’ll come looking for us, and even if nothing big happened, they still might need a beacon to find their way to us. Anyways it couldn’t hurt.”
“No one will come to Black space looking for us, least of all dad.”
“Of course he will, you didn’t know him at all.”
“I didn’t need to, mom told me all about him.”
“Lies I’ll bet, anyways, he will come, or maybe someone else, here, sit down. Like I said, it can’t hurt anything.”
Lira stepped past Jak as if he didn’t exist and went looking for the parts she would need as Tell sat down. Oren was going through his bags with Colt looking over his shoulder and Lira wondered idly if everyone would object to much to a cataloging of all of their things, just to see what was at their disposal? Maybe one of them had something she would be able to use. A recording device would be especially useful. She moved back to the front and ran the idea past Tell, who thought for a moment, then nodded judiciously.
“Ok everyone, go through your things and bring Lira anything electronic, or whatever you think she can use.”
“No way!”
“These are my things!”
“Why should we give him anything?”
“It’s not for me, it’s for us, for the homing beacon. Hurry, the further into Black Space we get, the less good it does.” Lira said angrily.
Tell stood up. “Come on now, we seriously have to start thinking in terms of ‘us’ and not ‘I’ if we are going to make it. We have no idea what to expect on this planet, we’ll have to work together.”
Grumbling, everyone but Jak pulled out their things and began going through them. Jak just grinned maliciously at Tell and sat down against a wall.
“Why do you insist on causing problems?” Tell demanded angrily.
“What problems am I causing? You said give over anything he could use, alls I have is a change of clothes and a Pak deck. That’s it.”
Soon enough, Lira had a small group of electronics in front of her to filter through and see what she could make use of. It was simple enough for her to build a small beacon that looped their ship name and the coordinates of their destination. There wasn’t room for more, but that was all that was really needed. Her biggest worry was that it didn’t emit a powerful enough signal. You would have to be close to it for even the most advanced sensors to pick up, but it was better than nothing. As soon as it was launched, she began building another, and then a third, which was all she had parts for. She planned on ejecting them within a day of each other, hoping that if one was missed, one of the other two might be found.
While she worked, the small boy named Cameron sat near her and watched everything she did with quiet interest. He didn’t speak and she didn’t feel induced to make conversation, the silence wasn’t awkward at all. When she finished the last one and sat them aside before moving back to her seat, relieving Tell of his spot, Cameron stood also and went to watch her and Landis at the controls.
“Wanna learn?” Landis asked grinning over his shoulder at him.
“Can the pod be taken off it’s course, or flown again once it has landed?”
“No, the flight plan was coded, and I can’t break it,” Lira said with a frown. “It would have to be done from the main ship, not this pod. All we are doing now is monitoring the ships functions and sending out sweeps. I’ve already pulled all the available information from it. Once we hit atmosphere, autopilot will disengage, and Landis can land it, but that‘s it.”
“Then I see no point in learning anything about something that won’t be of any use to us in a week.”
“Eight days, actually, but suit yourself,” Landis said still grinning. He seemed like the sort of good natured person that wouldn’t let anything bring him down. “So what was it like, traveling around the system, fighting in all those tournaments? Ever go to Breyn?”
“I enjoyed the tournaments, all of them, I like competing. I went to Breyn once.”
“And?!?!”
Lira glanced at them curiously, wondering what Breyn was.
“It was two years ago, I was in a lower division and smaller then than I am now. I didn’t have the self confidence required to fight in Breyn, against opponents so much larger than myself, but my coach bid me without asking me first. He thought it would teach me something, give me the confidence I needed. It didn’t work.”
“So, you lost?”
“Did your father teach you to fly?”
“Yeah, on his freighter.”
“Did he throw you in the seat one day and say ‘fly this’ or did he show you all of the controls first and maybe sit you in his lap as he flew and show you all the ropes?”
Landis stopped smiling and his face colored. He turned back to his controls and Lira tried to reason out what was meant in the question, what had even transpired between the two. Did Cameron win or lose in Breyn, whatever Breyn was, and what did Landis learning to fly have to do with it? Frowning, she sent out another sensor sweep, judging how far from the debris they were, and trying to keep track of how far back the beacon was and how long till the sensors no longer received a signal from it. They were almost to the debris field when the signal dropped completely and she sighed. Calling Tell to the window, which made everyone come and crowd around, she pointed to the small debris field just within sight on port side.
“Still can’t get an idea of what it was, these sensors are really bad, but there are definitely no traces of any sort of DNA. Whatever it was, it was unmanned. Maybe a satellite? Or a probe?”
“They did say in class that hundreds of probes were sent into Black space not that long ago,” Cecelia said practically pressing her face to the window. “To bad we can’t get closer. Wonder what happened to it?”
“Yeah, I thought no one traveled in Black space, it was uncharted.”
“It’s uncharted, and therefore dangerous, but that doesn’t mean it’s never traveled.”
“It’s just traveled by scary people.”
“Or just unknown people. Black Space is uncharted, there could be systems full of perfectly normal people throughout, and how would anyone know? Unknown doesn’t have to mean scary.” Lira was beginning to get exasperated.
“What if the Sunuba have charted Black Space and are using it to travel undetected by us? Or the Vilis?”
“Then the Bardoo government would have had intelligence on it a long time ago,” Tell said moving away from the window.
“Well someone destroyed that probe.”
“If it even was a probe. It could even be space trash, a dump off some freighter that has drifted. It doesn’t really matter, and there is no use thinking up wild stories on what it might be. Tell, maybe you should organize some sort of rec time?”
“We don’t need organized rec time, we need answers.”
“Anyone who could give you answers is not on this pod. We are all there is Jak, so stop trying to lay blame and cause trouble.”
“How do we know? Maybe it was you and bigmouth that did this. You were both awake before the rest of us. Make Mommy and Daddy mad, make them sorry.”
“No,” said Landis, “It’s in the computer, The pods were launched while all twelve of us were in chryosleep. After separation from the main ship, the computer is set to wake the ‘Captain’, two weeks before arrival. In this case Tell, because he’s the oldest. He did what a normal person would do and woke his brother first because of his knowledge. It’s not subatomic equations Jak, even for you, it’s all right here, you can read it yourself.”
“Sister,” Cameron said softly, and everyone turned to stare at him, even Lira.
“What?” demanded Jak, now irritated and wanting to take it out on someone.
“Tell’s sister. You all keep saying ‘him’. She’s a girl.”
Lira blinked, and felt her face redden when she heard laughter. “I am. So? Being a girl doesn’t make me less capable.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Landis asked at the same time Tell said, “No one ever said it did Lira.”
“I was to busy to correct your assumptions at the time, and what was the point? I’ve spent most of my life not bothering to correct people, just to have to bear all the shock or even the teasing over and over again. I usually didn’t have to spend more than a week around the same people, what was the point in telling anyone? Everyone important to me knew. Anyways, what difference does it make?”
“Do you like girls or something?” Maya asked giggling and nudging Annise as she leaned in close to whisper something in her ear. Both girls laughed and Lira rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“How did you know?” Colt asked Cameron, “Do you know her? Are you friends?”
“No, anyone who just looked at her could see she was a girl with short hair.”
“Short hair! She has no hair!” Annise exclaimed.
“Does it matter at all?”
“No Lira,” Tell said frowning at Annise and Maya who were still giggling. “Let me know if anything shows up on our sensors again, will you?”
“Sure Tell.”
“Ok, the rest of you, go put your things away. Oren, when you’re done, I’d like to talk to you.”
Everyone drifted away, some grumbling, and some still giggling. Annise and Maya seemed to have bonded due to their social status and Lira felt they deserved each other. She knew she shouldn’t be angry at Cameron for telling everyone who she was, but she couldn’t help it. She was used to guarding herself from exactly those types of reactions. Hair was a hindrance in the kind of work she did, and so were girls clothes. There were no other reasons, but she hated having to explain it to everyone over and over again. She tried to shove it from her mind, but the pod was small enough that she could hear whispers and giggles no matter how hard she tried to tune them out. She was sure it was all about her, and she became more and more melancholy as the day wore on.
It didn’t take long at all for the twelve kids to separate into their own cliques, but what surprised Lira, was who was in them. The hulking and dirty Jak had somehow managed to befriend the manicured and cultured Maya and Annise, despite their social superiority. Geeky Oren and bookish Colt didn’t surprise her, they were birds of a feather, but bumpkin Hollis and athletic Tell sitting with them in a close group did. Cecilia and Brenna were friends back on Bardoo, so it was no shock that they sat together whispering and giggling over either Tell or Hollis, she couldn’t really tell. Stoic Cameron sat alone in his sleep chamber, looking over a librilio of some sort. The ever-smiling Landis kept cutting looks at her, and he finally got up with a sigh and went to join her brother with his new friends. Was she destined to once again be alone? Wherever she went, would she always be the outcast? It seemed that way to her.
When Tell came to relieve her from her shift, she didn’t want to leave. It meant having to speak to one of the others, or endure their looks, so instead, she moved over to the extra seat and sat staring out.
“What was mom like?” she finally asked. “Dad didn’t talk about her much, accept to say she hated him.”
“She did. She was all right I guess. I didn’t see her a lot, I was always gone at school. When I was home on break, she was working all the time. I used to think she only took the extra shifts when I was home, just to avoid me, but then I saw a bill for my school, and I knew why she worked all the time.”
“Why did she hate dad?”
“She never told me the reason, but she sometimes talked about how angry he was all the time when they were together. Maybe that was it.”
“I always thought it was because she hated that he traveled so much.”
“Maybe it was. So, how come you never wrote her, or me?”
“Why didn’t she write me? Or why didn’t you?”
“It’s harder to send a message to someone traveling than it is to send one to someone who stays in one place.”
“Dad had a pickup. Mom knew where, she was never shy about writing him when she wanted more money for something.”
“Why shouldn’t he give her money? She was taking care of his son.”
“In that case, why shouldn’t she send him money for me?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why not? Am I less deserving?”
“I never said that. I meant she had to pay for school and he didn’t, and he made a lot more than she did. Why shouldn’t he help?”
“He didn’t make very much, barely enough to take care of us, and she was always demanding more and more from him. If I hadn’t started pitching in and earning too, we wouldn’t have been able to buy our own dinners on layovers. All dad ever wanted was to make enough to buy his own freighter, but the second he saved even a pec, she was there, demanding it.”
“You make her sound greedy! Do you know how many hours a day she worked? What she went through, do you think she liked asking him for anything?”
“I think she liked keeping him from his only dream, yes. She knew exactly what she was doing!”
“That’s absurd! She was only trying to pay my tuition!”
“And it never occurred to you to attend a less expensive school so that you wouldn’t enslave both of our parents to some academy?”
Tell recoiled, his face turning bright red, and he started to stand.
“Hey guys, everything all right?” Oren asked stepping up between them and pulling Tells attention away. Lira realized for the first time that everyone was watching them. Embarrassed, she turned and stared out the window as Tell fumbled with the controls in front of him.
“Yeah, why don’t you take second Oren?” Tell said gesturing to her seat as Jak sniggered.
Lira stiffened, but relinquished her seat to Oren without comment and went to her sleep chamber without looking at anyone. She lay down and turned over on her side facing away from everyone. She gritted her teeth and told herself she would not cry. To often lately she found herself crying for no real reason she could think of but now, she flat refused to cry on Tells account. No way would she give him that satisfaction, or any more fodder for the others to laugh at. Instead, she made herself focus on their predicament, and what the possible explanations could be. The only one she could really come up with that made sense was some sort of containment breach. That’s the only reason the pods might separate on their own, without any of the others also separating. To keep the inhabitants safe from a leak that had already infected every other pod. Either that or someone purposely did it, and again, she had to think of why. The only answer was almost the same. To save them from something that was affecting the other pods. Nothing else made sense. And that meant something had happened to the ship, which made her realize something else. If something horrible had happened, and the ship had been destroyed, no one would know they were gone from it.
“Tell!” She practically shouted as she climbed out of her chamber.
He turned to her in wide eyed shock, wondering what had happened.
She hurried close to him, a small part of her screaming that she should tell him in private, but the thought had scared her to badly. “What if something happened to the ship?”
“What?”
“The ship. What if something happened to it, it was attacked, or suffered some kind of malfunction and it was destroyed? Our pods were deployed because of a fluke, or I don’t know, because someone was trying to save who they could, but the ship is gone?!”
“What about it freak?” Maya asked rolling her eyes.
“Lira, calm down and explain it please,” Tell said scowling at Maya.
“She means no one will be looking for us, they won’t know to if there isn’t enough of the ship left to know our pod was deployed.” Oren said moving to the edge of his seat, obviously uneasy now.
“What about our parents? Are they ok? What happened to the ship?” Colt asked almost hysterical.
“Nothing that we know of. Everyone just calm down, it’s just one scenario. Even if the ship were destroyed, which no one is saying it was, it will be salvaged, and they could easily find enough of the computer to know exactly what happened. Lira, why don’t you and Landis go over as many scenarios as you can, and then when you have exhausted everything you can think of together, we’ll talk about it, you two and me and Oren.”
“What about us?” Jak demanded almost immediately.
“We’ll all talk about it when we four have decided the most plausible avenues and ruled out the absurd ones.”
“You mean anything that will panic the kiddies,” Jak said looking pointedly at Colt, who turned an unseemly shade of purple.
“Lira? Can you and Landis get on that?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled turning to Landis who offered her a half grin. Why wasn’t anyone else as concerned as she was?
She sat down near him and he pulled a small librilio and a stylus. “I was kinda going through a few things too,” he said making himself comfortable near her.
Lira nodded and looked over his shoulder as he began jotting down a few of his ideas. She didn’t know why she was surprised when Cameron seated himself a few feet away, between them and the other passengers who all looked at them as if they wanted in on everything they were saying. She turned back to what Landis was writing and ignored everyone else.
“Pirates?!?” she whispered incredulously.
“Sure. They are all over space, looking for vessels traveling alone. Why not?”
“Well, for one, why would the ship deploy our three pods over pirates? And why would the pirates let three pods escape? Also, I have been traveling all over known space since I was small, and no ship I was ever on ever came in contact with any pirates. None, anywhere.”
“Ok, fine. What are your ideas?”
“Well, one is some sort of containment breach, and our pods were deployed because we hadn’t yet been exposed when everyone else was. To save us, you know? Another is a malfunction, electrical, or something, and an emergency deployment of pods that could clear the explosion, which in this case was only three.”
“Why not all of them, just in the off chance one more might make it?”
“Because the computer can deploy a pod on the opposite side of the ship, even while the explosion is happening, containing it enough to get pods away, but it wouldn’t waste much needed energy on trying to deploy pods with no chance. It’s a split second thing, before the computer is completely destroyed.”
“But why not an auto deploy for all the pods in that case?”
“Who wants a burning projectile hurtling through space?”
“Ok ok. Breach and explosion, what else?”
“The only other thing I can think of, is someone deployed us for some reason. Maybe they knew something was going to happen, or mistakenly ejected us, I don’t know. That’s my only other explanation.”
“Yeah, I thought of that too. Maybe someone got on board, killed the captain and crew, and started randomly deploying all the pods to different places.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Who knows?”
“Um, ok. Well, do you have any other thoughts?”
He leaned closer to her and whispered, “What if your brother did it? Programmed the computer to make it look like he didn’t get woke up till later, ejected us, all that? To get back at your dad maybe, or your mom?”
She looked at him flatly. “That is not Tell’s way, first off. He wouldn’t do anything to upset our mother, no matter what it would do to our father. Second, have you seen him around the computer? He’s practically useless. There’s no way he could find his way around something as sophisticated as the ships computers. Third, why three pods and not just ours?”
“It was just a thought.”
“Have either of you considered that someone might have another reason for deploying our pods? Some other agenda?” Cameron asked softly over his shoulder.
“Like what?”
“Tell said just me and her were supposed to be doing this.”
“Easy Landis, it’s no big deal. Like what Cameron?”
“Cam. Like maybe someone’s enemy. Any of the people in any of the three pods could have an enemy that is unknown to us, and they could have done it. Maybe they only knew that who they were looking for was in one of the three pods, so they sent out all three. Maybe, wherever we are headed to is all a setup, or trap for this one person, and we are all just caught up in it.”
“Maybe, but that seems like a lot to go through for one person.”
“Spoken like someone who has no enemies.”
“No, I have never made any enemies,” Lira said thinking for a moment. Enemies? She had never made a friend, or even been on anyone’s radar save for her fathers.
“You probably have a lot of enemies though, huh?” Landis asked Cameron.
“I have had many opponents, but no real enemies, I just understand them.”
“So what, we have to find out if anyone has a mortal enemy?”
“It was just a supposition Landis. All we are doing is gathering ideas to go over with Tell and Oren.”
“Why Oren?”
“He’s smart, and he has a calculating mind.”
“Pirates would not have been his first guess,” Cameron said turning away from them again. Landis blinked and Lira tried not to smile. She knew Landis didn’t get the jab Cameron had delivered not so subtly.
She and Landis talked for a few more minutes, but neither of them could come up with any more ideas on what could have gotten them to this point, so they moved back to Tell and Oren who were talking about a tentative plan for when they landed. She waited patiently for them to get to a point where she could break in, but she was getting frustrated with how unfeasible their plan was.
“We are going to have to do it sooner or later,” Tell said in reference to their talk of a rank structure.
“I don’t think it will work. Most of them aren’t even familiar with military ways, and it would take Jak saying just once ‘why should we’ before they all realized they didn’t have to do a single thing you said.”
“We’ll deal with him eventually, but anyways, as soon as we set that up, we have to start building a place to live in.”
“Won’t that bother them to? Suggest permanency?”
“It isn’t the first thing we should do anyways,” Lira finally cut in. “And as for rank, start it now. Small things, like you have been, but constant. Let them get used to taking orders, and delegate. Have Oren give an order per you for example, you know? Small things first, get them used to doing what you tell them. Make them do small things, but useful things so they don’t see that your just ordering them around.”
“She’s right, that’s a good idea,” Oren said looking back at Tell.
“What’s wrong with building a shelter first?”
“We should orient ourselves first. No point wasting energy building something if in a couple weeks we end up finding some place better suited to our needs.”
“Better suited like how?”
“Closer to water, food, more defendable. I’m sure some of the wildlife won’t be overly friendly with intruders.”
“Yeah, we should explore some first, get our bearings,” Oren agreed again.
Tell frowned thoughtfully, but didn’t object to her changing his plans. “What did you two come up with?”
Lira went over everything they had talked about, skipping the pirates theory, though Landis threw it in when she finished. Tell snorted and Oren laughed like he thought it was a joke and Lira kept talking so that Landis wouldn’t get angry. “Anyways, the plans we made haven’t really changed, since we can’t know what exactly happened. I’ll keep sending the beacons out and hope someone follows them to us eventually. We can’t put all our stock in being saved though, and that’s that. We have to plan like no one knows we are alive. Better that than wait for rescue right up until the day we all die of old age.”
“Don’t put it like that when you go over the three main theories with the others. Be upbeat about it. Stress the fact that if it was an accident, or a breach, someone will be looking for us. When you talk about the possibility of explosion, stress the fact that the computers get salvaged, and all our info will be on them. When you tell them someone might have done it, don’t talk about enemies, just say there will be records of it on the computers. Make sure they all have hope.”
“Why me? Oren is your second, have him do it.”
“You’re my second Lira. Oren and Landis are my thirds.”
“I think you are discounting someone.”
“No, if Jak had an ounce of power, he’d abuse it.”
“I meant Cameron.”
“He’s just a kid!”
“He’s my age, and he’s wicked smart. It’s your call, but spend five minutes actually talking to him and you might change your mind.”
“I haven’t seen you say three words to him.”
“It was just a suggestion Tell.”
“He is perceptive. Remember he’s the one who knew Lira was a girl.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to him. If he can really do ProCom, he would make a very useful officer.”
“You can’t make everyone an officer though.”
“No, but a command structure is essential.”
“What about the other pods? You don’t think they won’t have the same ideas? Their own captains?” Lira asked.
“Once we all land, we can all integrate, work it all out according to who should be in charge.”
“Tell, your talking like this is some big adventure that your excited to be on.”
“No, I’m just not letting myself get upset over it like other people are.”
“Hey guys, no one has said what I think is glaringly obvious about this,” Oren interrupted. “What about the Vilis? Or the Sunuba? Isn’t it likely they were involved in this?”
“Well,” Lira began thoughtfully, running the idea through her mind, “It begs the same question as ‘pirates’. Why would they let any pods escape?”
“Maybe not all of them did. Maybe we got away while the other two were being tracked and destroyed, or maybe they just haven’t gotten to us yet. Or, maybe they had a spy on board who shipped us off to use as hostages later.”
“The first doesn’t seem likely, since they could destroy any pods as they were being launched, it isn’t like autopilot is programmed with evasive maneuvers. The second idea, well, why not take the whole ship in that case? Or more important hostages? If everyone on these pods wasn’t already expendable, we wouldn’t have been sent away in the first place.”
“She’s right,” Tell said frowning. “I can’t see a real pattern to follow there either.”
“Maybe they have their own reasons, but we can’t completely rule them out.”
“We won’t. Lira, go ahead and talk to the others, let them know what we talked about, but remember, keep it cheerful. As much as you can.”
Lira sighed but did as she was told. The next week seemed to go that way. Tell giving orders, her arguing or fighting with him. Jak disputing every other thing he said. Annise and Maya seemed to completely fall in with Jak and they began questioning every little thing Tell asked them to do. Oren became more and more faithful to Tell with each passing hour, and Colt came around to the same position after Tell was able to keep him from breaking down in tears every few hours. Brenna and Cecilia spent as much time with Hollis and Tell as they could, which meant Lira also spent time with them. She got to know them so well, she began to wonder if they were what friends meant. Landis and Hollis followed Tell not quite as faithfully as Oren, but they were all very close friends. Cameron was the only one who never fell into a group, though he never once disobeyed Tell. He stayed back and observed everyone else, and to Lira it seemed like he was right there every time she turned around. She would have taken it personally if everyone else didn’t have the same problem to a smaller degree. Tell took some time to talk to him and decided he would make him his fourth, and also, his enforcer. After a week, they still had yet to test if Cameron even knew ProCom, though he seemed to practice some sort of fluid movements that looked almost dance-like three times a day.
A day away from the planet, they were all on edge once again, wondering what to expect once they got there. They were still to far out for Lira to be able to scan the surface, and they all kept speculating what the planet would be like.
“I wonder,” said Oren idly, standing next to Tell who was in the second nav-seat. “If we’re going to end up doing exactly what we left Bardoo to do. Colonize another planet.”
“Why would you think that?” Colt asked frowning. He had been thumbing through one of his books on the other side of Tell as they discussed the planet. Landis was behind Tell, watching out the window silently.
“Think about it. If we never get rescued, what else can we do but survive there on our own? We’ll have to spend the rest of our lives with just each other.”
“And whoever is in the other two pods,” Lira chimed in from the first Nav-seat.
“Forever with Jak. Pshh.” said Tell shaking his head.
“We’ll have to watch him after we land. He’ll make a play for you Tell, wait and see. He’s just biding his time now.” Oren said looking over his shoulder at Jak who was in the back with Annise and Maya.
“Not with everyone around,” Lira said as she sent out another sweep, hoping for some sign of the planet they were speeding towards. “He’s not brave enough to take on everyone. He’ll wait until he can get him alone.”
“I meant make a vie for power. You think he’ll try and hurt Tell?”
“Yeah, out of pure spite. Jak is malicious like that.”
“Why? It isn’t like the computer would have woken him up first if Tell wasn’t here. Landis would have been next, then Hollis. He would have even been after Brenna and Maya. I have everyone’s ages right here.”
“It doesn’t matter. Jak thinks he is more world wise and therefore a more capable leader. The problem is, I have been on a lot of ships, and for someone who was working on a freighter, he doesn’t have a lot of experience. At least none that he has shown. In fact, the only thing he has proven he can do is be disagreeable. Maybe once we land and need someone for menial labor he will be more useful.”
“You don’t talk like you’re fourteen,” Oren said looking down at her. “You have seemed older than your age since day one.”
“She’s always been like that. Our mom said it was because she was never around kids, just ships crews. She said Dad stole her childhood from her.”
“It was my choice, and I told you not to bring it up again, I’m sick of fighting over our parents.”
“I was talking to Oren, not you.”
Lira sighed heavily and frowned out the window. Brenna and Cecilia chose then to come and join them, with Hollis in their wake.
“We have everything catalogued, right here,” Hollis said laying down a librilio between Tell and Lira. Lira already knew everything at their disposal, she had seen everyone’s belongings the first day and the ships computer had a catalogue of the rest, but Tell had needed something for them to do.
“Thanks Hol. Hey Bren, thanks for that story. I put the librilio back on your bed. I think you should keep writing, you’re good at it.”
“Really?!? Thanks Tell.” Brenna was beaming and Lira almost smiled. Tell had liked all the attention from Brenna at first, but Lira knew he had gotten bored with it after a couple of days. Landis had not gotten bored with Cecilia. She stood next to him and slipped her hand in his as they talked to Tell. Brenna, still grinning, nudged Cecilia, then Lira, which caught her off guard. She was used to the girls constantly nudging each other and giggling, but this was the first time she had been included. It felt… good.
She was still trying to get over her shock when information from the sweep finally came back. “The planet,” she said almost numbly, receiving her second shock.
“What, where?” Tell asked spinning to look out the window. Everyone leaned over both of them so they could see out the small window.
“No, on the sensors, finally. Look, I have some data even. Wow, it’s huge! And temperate for the most part. Not a lot of water, less than twenty percent. When we’re closer the scan will be more detailed, but we’re close now. Less than half a day!”
“What’s going on?” Jak demanded coming to the front of the ship, Maya and Annise in tow.
“The planet. Ok everyone, we’re getting close, we all know the drill, right? Landis and Lira will be in these two seats, the rest of us have to strap into or sleep pods, it’s the safest place for us.”
“Yeah Tell, we’ve been over it ten times. What else Lira?”
“I don’t know, I’ll keep sending out sweeps.”
“What else what? What do we know?” Jak demanded pushing his way to the front.
Lira quickly related what she had told everyone else, figuring it was easier to answer than be snarky to him.
“That’s it? What about life forms? What about structures, or other ships?”
“We aren’t close enough, but don’t you know what an A class planet is? No humanoid life forms. No one lives there, no ships or structures.”
“I knew that,” he said irritably, but Lira knew he was lying. “I meant the other pods.”
“Why? Know someone on them? Worried?”
“No. Just wondering if we were going to be alone.”
“I haven’t received any data from the other pods on any of my sweeps. It’s not that unusual though. When we were ejected, it was away from each other so we wouldn’t collide, they would have had a different trajectory to the planet. For all we know, we floated away from the ship for a day or more before the pods engines kicked on. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. We can’t make plans for anyone but ourselves. We can’t count on anything else.”
“Who is really in charge here I wonder. Your little sister seems to talk a lot more than you Tell, and you listen as much as everyone else does.”
“Shut up Jak.”
“That’s it? ‘Shut up Jak’? Wow Tell, crushing. Admit it though, who’s really running the show. Think about it now.”
“Jak, go back to your hole. Any idiot knows that a Captain listens to the advice of his officers.”
“How long you going to let her be your voice Tell? I say something to you, she answers. Someone asks a question, she answers. You rail against a single soul questioning you, but you let her pull your rug right out from under you. Who are we all really following here? Think a minute, all of you. Has he given a single order that wasn’t her idea? Has he had one idea that she has not changed for him? Let’s really think here. What we need..”
“That’s enough.” Cam said softly.
Lira hadn’t seen him slip in behind Jak, and she had almost forgotten about him even being on the ship. His quiet voice had been little heard over the past week, and when it didn’t seem like he was following her, he was very unassuming.
“Oh, and here’s Tells little army.”
“Jak, no one here is listening to you,” Lira began more than a little exasperated.
“Except your whore’s,” Brenna said glaring murder at Annise who she had taken a personal dislike to.
“That’s uncalled for,” Tell said standing up. “Jak, I don’t know what problem you have with me, but whatever it is needs to stop here and now. We’ll have enough problems once we land.”
“My problem is you. Even your baby sister is more capable of leading than you are. Age doesn’t make you a good leader, and neither does the amount of friends you have.”
“I’m what we have right now. Go back to your sleeping chamber Jak.”
“No Tell, let’s have this out now.”
“Last warning,” Cam said lifting his eyes to Jak.
“Or what shrimp? I think you’re a bunch of ridiculous chatter. No one here believes your idiotic lies boy, so why don’t you go sit down before you embarrass yourself?”
Lira wasn’t really sure what happened then. Cam moved, but it was so quick she could hardly see it and suddenly Jak was reeling. Cam was standing in a different position than he had been, his hands in half fists, palms showing. Jak was holding his face, and when he dropped his hands to look, his nose was pouring blood. Lira could see the panic there, for just a moment, but it turned to rage almost instantly. “You broke my nose! You..!” He didn’t finish as he charged Cam with a roar.
Cam easily sidestepped him with a liquid grace that looked unreal and shove Jak from behind as he passed, adding to Jaks huge momentum. Jak bounced off the side of the ship with a thud and sat down hard on the floor as he held his dazed head.
“Stop!” Tell ordered, as shocked as everyone else, but it was over. Lira knew then that Jak would never mock Cam again, and as long as Cam was around, he wouldn’t bother Tell either.
Once Jak made his way back to his sleeping chamber, Annise and Maya close to him, trying to help him, the rest of them sat in stunned silence. Cam seemed to fade into the background again and Lira was able to remember herself enough to send out another sweep. After that episode, nothing exciting happened right up to the moment that Lira and Landis took the controls and everyone else strapped into their sleep chambers.
Lira wasn’t really sure what to expect when it came time to actually land. She had the sick feeling that Landis was all talk and overconfidence, but once they cleared the atmosphere, the pod sailed smoothly to the surface and Landis landed the pod in a huge open grassland between the foothills of a huge mountain and what looked like a dense jungle.
Almost as soon as they set down, everyone was climbing out of their sleep chambers and crowding the front to look out. Lira herself was staring out in as much amazement as everyone else.
“It almost looks like Bardoo!”
“No, look, the sun up there, it’s almost yellow in color it seems, and look over there, that’s another moon, in the same sky as the sun. That’s two that we’ve seen.”
“Sensors showed four moons in orbit.”
“What else?”
“Screw the sensors, open the door, lets go look around!”
“Lira, open the door,” Tell demanded moving to the pod door.
“Just a minute Tell, the ship hasn’t given the signal for release yet. I think we have to wait for the engines to completely shut down and maybe even cool off.”
“Can’t you override?”
“No, I can’t. I’m not a code breaker Tell.”
“What about the other pods? Everyone else? Are they here somewhere?”
“Hold on, I can send another sweep while we’re waiting. Wait! The signal! There!” She jumped out of her seat as the seal on the pod door broke and collided with Landis who was jumping out of his seat at the same time. No one else noticed them at all as they all crowded off the pod. Lira was the last one out and she stepped out behind Landis into a very tall grassy plain. She could only look up, as the grass obstructed her view of the surrounding countryside. The sky looked strange to her. On most planets she had been on, the sky was always blue, but this sky was tinged green by the bright yellow sun and the moons which seemed far to bright for mid-day.
“What should we do? Where should we go from here?”
“I’ll go run a sweep, find water, look for the other pods,” Lira said backing back onto the pod with a feeling of trepidation. The land was to open, and yet, the tall grass made her feel almost claustrophobic.
“Hello!” came a distant call just as she was about to turn around. Every one of them froze where they were and stared at each other.
“The other pods?”
“Has to be, who else?”
“Maybe someone was already here.”
“Shh, wait, everyone, just be quiet for a second.” Tell demanded. “Lir?”
“I don’t know Tell. They may already be here, but, for how long? Long enough to be able to see us land and come find us from wherever they were? I don’t know.”
“Hello!?!” Came the call again, closer this time.
“What should we do?!?” Tell demanded turning back to her.
Jak pushed foreword, “Are you serious? You are asking her? Step up and be a leader or stand aside for someone else.”
“Jak shut up. Cam, do you think you can scout them for us?” Lira asked Cam, who nodded once then moved silently into the tall grass towards the voice. “All right, everyone else back on the ship, I can seal the doors again if I need to. Come on.”
Most of them hurried back on, but Jak stood staring for a moment in the direction the voice was coming from before he finally, reluctantly, got back on.
“Tell, watch for Cam, and let me know the second you see anyone but him and I will seal the door,” she said sitting back in the first navseat.
Tell stood at the door and everyone else crowded around him, watching out. Lira had everything set to seal the door with the hit of one button and she sat waiting, her nerves frayed .
“Cam!” Tell whispered loudly and Lira just stopped herself from hitting the button her finger was poised over. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned as Cam boarded the pod. She expected him to report to Tell, but he ignored him completely as he moved in front of her.
“Half a dozen boys, all like us.”
“Human?”
“Yes, and young. No one over sixteen or seventeen.”
“Sounds like they are from the other pod. All right, lets go meet them,” Tell said, but no one moved. They all looked to Lira, even Jak, waiting for her decision.
“You heard him, lets go meet them,” she said motioning towards the door and a very red faced Tell.
They all filed out once again, and waited silently, almost fearful and Lira wondered if she shouldn’t be more afraid too. Instead of letting the thought take hold, she yelled out, “Over here!” causing every one of them but Cam to jump and stare at her wide eyed.
Seconds later six boys came stumbling through the tall grass into the little flattened area their small group had made walking around on the grass.
“Hey!” exclaimed the largest of the boys, and the obvious leader. “Your from the ship, right? Our ship?”
“Yeah, we are. Is this all of you?” Tell asked stepping foreword.
“Oh, no, there’s more of us back at camp. Shawn sent us after you when he saw your pod.”
“Shawn?”
“Shawn Stone, from the first pod. He’s the camp leader.”
“First pod?”
“Yeah, they landed a few days back. We landed a couple days ago I guess.”
“How?” demanded Lira. “How did you get here so far ahead of us?”
“I’m not sure really. Shawn broke codes on his pod, and hijacked the fuel lines to feed more into the engine. We..”
“The pods don’t run on fuel, they run on..”
“No no, I know, but that’s how he explained it so I understood, anyways, my ship, I just sort of rode it out till we got here. If it wasn’t for Shawn, we’d have probably died. Anyways, we should be heading back to camp, Shawn’s waiting for us. You guys want to grab your stuff? We can introduce back at camp.”
“Wait, I have more questions,” Lira demanded of the boy who reminded her a lot of Jak with his dark hair and eyes, and his brooding looks.
“Yeah, we’ll all answer everything at camp kid, just hold on.”
“You guys grab your stuff, we want to get back to camp,” one of the other boys said. He wasn’t as scary and brooding as Jak and this new leader, but he was a close second. Only his baby face saved him, though he was trying very hard for the same look.
“Easy Tad, let them get their bearings. Remember how long it took all of us.”
“You say ‘us’ like you were part of our group Adam.”
“How many times can I say I’m sorry?”
“Both of you shut up,” another boy said. This one had light hair and a ruddy complexion, and a look of menace to him that Jak and Adam didn’t exude. Lira knew to fear this boy the moment she laid eyes on him. He was the boy who would always prey on the weak and work in the shadows to bring down his opponents. In her mind she named him ‘Spider’ and she felt for him a hate she didn’t even feel for Jak.
“Let’s just go,” Adam said looking through his long dark hair at Tell. Tad tried to glare at Adam, but with his full lips and baby face, it looked more like a pout. Lira saw a rivalry there as big as Tells and Jaks.
“We want answers first.”
“Yeah, and why do we have to go to this camp with you anyways?” Tell demanded.
Adam looked surprised and Tad looked confused, but it was a fourth boy who answered, this one just looking very innocent with his big blue eyes and freckles. “Because all of us are there. It’s our camp. Shawn found it himself, he says it’s the best spot all around here.”
“Maybe we want to find our own,” Tell said lifting his chin.
“Suit yourself. We came to help you, lead you back to the camp, but if you don’t want to come, stay out here and die.” Tad said crossing his arms.
“Why would we die?”
“The creatures, no water, no food.”
“Enough! We just want to ask a few questions, then we will go back to your camp.”
“You can ask questions at camp!”
“This is a waste of time!” Jak said angrily. “Lets just go.”
“What creatures?”
“Giant furry lizards with big claws, we aren’t sure what they are, but they are huge, and scary.” The big eyed boy said.
“Shut up Daniel. We almost killed one.”
“Your leader, he found a camp near water and food?”
“Yeah, Shawn is real smart. He had a campsite all set up when we landed, then he came and woke us up when he saw us land.”
“Woke you?”
“Yeah, Adam didn’t know how to wake us, so we were still sleeping when we landed. We almost didn’t even make the landing, but he was able to wing it enough that he didn’t kill us all, even if he did smack the pod right into that mountain over there. Only Rachael was really even hurt, and just her wrist.”
“Daniel you talk to much.”
“Embarrassed?” Tad demanded angrily.
“Shut up! Come on, we’re wasting time here, let’s get back to camp!”
“Why the hurry?”
“We told you, the creatures. Shawn and the others, they’re all building a wall, and digging spiked pits and putting a whole ring of spikes around the camp.”
Everyone was suddenly anxious and looking around.
“Come on, Shawn can answer the rest of your questions, let’s go.”
No one wanted to argue or waste any more time. They all went inside the pod to gather their things and Lira used the latch to shut the door from the outside. She was really hoping someone from one of the other pods had enough know how to get the pod back into space and headed back towards home.





Chapter 2: The Camp
Their small group, which to Lira had seemed like a large group in the small confines of the pod, followed the half dozen new boys from a safe distance. Tell fell back to the back with her and watched the new boys warily. “Does this all seem off to you?” he whispered softly, hitching his large bag. She shifted her own small bag as she thought.
“It does, but I can’t tell why. They seem nervous, all of them.”
“Maybe these creatures they have been talking about?”
“Maybe, but it’s not the only thing. For being so afraid of these creatures, they never really watched their surroundings, just us. They also have no way of defending themselves. You’d think the first thing they would have done is sharpen some long sticks, or fashion some kind of weapon, but they had none.”
Oren, who had been far enough back to hear their whispers, moved back to the other side of Tell. “What I want to know, is why every one of them is from the second pod. Why didn’t this Shawn mix them? Send some people from his own pod? Is the camp segregated?”
“If his pod did arrive first, maybe he has all of his own people busy doing other things. This group didn’t have assigned tasks yet?”
“Maybe, but if he is doing what they say he’s doing, building and what not, why send all these strong boys? Why not younger boys, or girls?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s another power struggle.”
“No,” said Cam, slipping up from behind them, and Lira jumped a little. Last she had looked, everyone else was in front of them. “Adam isn’t a leader, and he doesn’t really want to be. See the way he carries himself? He just wants to be left alone. Tad resents Adam to much to think about a chunk of power for himself. He’s to interested in making his life miserable. The other boy, the blonde, he’s who you watch out for.”
“Why? He spoke once.” Tell asked with a frown.
“No, Cam’s right, I got the same thing from him. He’s not a nice person.”
“He can’t be worse than Jak,” Tell said with a glower at Jak’s back.
“He is,” Lira and Cam said in unison.
“Shh, they are watching,” Oren said urgently.
Lira looked up and saw that Tad and the blonde boy were both looking over their shoulders at them.
“Let them look. We’re just talking.”
“Yeah…” Tell said noncommittally.
“Here’s what I think,” Oren said softly. “Once we get to this camp, you stay in the background Lira, you too Cam. You’re both small and unobtrusive, no one will notice you. You guys can probably find out more about what’s going on than Tell can, or me. All Tell has to do is not mention you if they ask who’s in charge, though they’ll probably just ask about him. If we think they are still hiding things after we get to camp, it may fall on you two to find out what.”
“No. Cam maybe, but not Lira.”
“Don’t even start acting like you care now.”
“No, it’s not negotiable. I won’t let you get hurt, you’re to small Lira, if you get caught, any one of those boys, even the smallest one, could break you in half.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” Cam said, almost angrily, as if he was offended that they even considered that anything could happen to her.
Tell sighed angrily, but nodded his ascent as they began hearing the sounds of other people. “All right then, do it, and remember, don’t talk to anyone but me about it.” He didn’t wait for an answer, he just moved back to the front with Hollis and Landis. Oren moved up to walk with Colt and Lira stayed in the back as Cam slipped off into the tall grass again.
The camp was almost like she had pictured it in her head when they finally made it out of the grass and could see it ahead of them. The big difference was that they had no shelters and didn’t seem concerned about it. She could see people working on the wall, pulling logs from the dense forest just a couple hundred yards from the camp, and digging pits. Everyone looked up as they approached, but no one stopped working. She saw girls working as hard as the boys, and not one single person was standing idle. Only one person finally stood up from a section of the wall and started towards them as they got closer, and Lira could only stare. She heard gasps from Brenna and Cecilia both who were the closest girls to her, and she was sure Annise and Maya were both staring too. She had seem handsome men before, and they had never effected her so profoundly as this boy was. He was tall with broad strong shoulders. His blonde hair was slightly tousled, but not overly messy like he never brushed it, and his dark eyes looked intelligent and kind. His features were perfect. The kind of perfect that they put in advertisements and girls stared at longingly on their bedroom walls.
He stopped walking and Lira realized that she had stopped walking a ways back from everyone else and was holding her breath. She hurried to catch up, her face red, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of this new addition.
“Glad to see you all made it safe. We were beginning to wonder if you were even going to make it, since the other pod landed a couple days ago. I’m Shawn Stone, I’ll introduce you to everyone else tonight.”
The six who had come to get them didn’t stick around, they all went to the wall and began working. Lira wasn’t the only one who watched them curiously.
“Are you the leader?” Shawn asked Tell, who nodded and kept staring out at the camp.
Lira managed to drag her eyes away from Shawn and she finally noticed what everyone else was staring at. There were more than two dozen people there. There were that many working on the wall alone. Between the forest, and the small stream she had just noticed, there were another dozen, and more on the other side, digging.
“Who are the others?” Oren asked just before she asked, and she was glad he did. She was supposed to be small and inconspicuous.
“Humans from other ships.”
“Other ships? What ships? From where? Are there any more?”
Shawn looked at her and she felt the full force of that gaze in the pit of her stomach. “Six different ships, from all over Bardoo and the surrounding systems. There may be more. It seems like more land every day.”
“Why?”
“No one knows.” He turned back to Tell who was glaring over his shoulder at her. “We could use your help, and the help of all of your people. The wall is almost done, as you can see, just this one area left, then we can start on shelters.”
“Where are the pods?” Lira asked, unable to ignore her curiosity.
“Not everyone arrived in pods. Some arrived in shuttles. Most are wrecked, or trapped.”
“Trapped?”
“In the jungle.”
“Jungle?”
“There,” he said pointing at the forest. “If you all just want to go find anyone who’s working, they can show you what to do.”
“Wait. Our pod is still functional, and not trapped. With a few strong backs and some of those logs, it would be easy to get it back here and use it not just for shelter, but as a defense.”
“Who are you?” Shawn asked her with barely disguised irritation.
“I’m.. Lira.”
“Lira. It’s a good idea. I’ll send a group back for your pod. You,” he said pointing to Jak, “and you, and you, and I will send some others. Adam, Tad, Gage, Adin and Cade.” He had pointed to Tell and Hollis, then he turned and shouted the names he had mentioned. Five of the larger boys came towards them and he motioned to Tell. “You’ll be following them back to their pod to bring it back here. Get some of the smaller logs to roll it on. Hurry, we’ll hold out this section of the wall till you get it in.”
“If you had more people, it would go faster. Smaller boys could rotate the logs,” Lira said quickly.
“So you could. Ok, you can go, and you,” he said to Cameron and Landis. “Daniel! Baron! Haden! Garrett! Raegan!” he shouted back into the camp. Five more boys dropped what they were doing and started towards them. “That enough, or do you think we should all drop what he are doing to go and help?” Now he seemed slightly amused and Lira blushed.
“No, to many will get in the way. Umm, is Tell in charge then?”
“No, actually, we’ll let you take it.” He was smiling outright now, and Lira was mortified. He turned and walked back into the camp and Tell hissed at her.
“Way to be inconspicuous idiot!”
“He thinks I’m a boy,” she said miserably, then was shocked she spoke out loud.
“What? Who cares? Agh! Let’s go.”
They headed back to the pod and Lira wondered if they should leave the others behind at the camp. None of them seemed to mind as Brenna, Cecilia, Maya and Annise all clustered around Shawn who looked a little wide eyed at all of the attention.
Instead of worrying over them, Lira moved closer to the front with Tell and Adam who seemed to be thinking about something distant. “All those other people, who are they?”
“What? Oh, Shawn told you. Kids from other ships.”
“What ships? From where?”
“All kinds of ships. Cargo freighters, passenger liners, even personal crafts.”
“From where?”
“All over.”
“Haven’t you even talked to them?”
“Yeah, a few of them. Nick, he was on a freighter I think. He’s down at the waterfall, building a net to catch fish today. Umm, Clay is off a science ship, so’s Blake. Dave was on a personal ship with his dad and the family they worked for, all the Harkers, they’re here too. Umm, there’s more, but I don’t know everyone yet. One ship was full of Illis, and one had Amacitians. Two families of Torva were on another.”
“Has anyone figured out why?”
“Why what?”
“We’re here!?!”
“Oh, no. Shawn talks to everyone who lands about what they remember, but it’s always the same thing. They woke up in Black space with this planet on their autopilot.”
“Does it matter?” a sour faced boy asked angrily. “We’re here and we have to stop dwelling on useless issues. What we should be doing is..”
“Raegan, shut up. Anyways, Shawn has ideas on what could be going on. Talk to him about it.”
After that, Adam didn’t want to answer any more of her questions, and he made sure no one else did either. They had the pod back to the camp by the time the sun sat on the horizon and the rest of the camp seemed to be waiting for them. Lira was anxious to find Shawn and ask more questions, but Tell found her first and caught her up short. “Remember, stay small and listen! Stop sticking yourself out there!”
She sighed, but did as she was told as everyone moved the pod into the encampment. Shawn approached Tell when they had it in place and Lira was struck again by his beauty. She heard an ugly snigger from Jak and she realized she was staring open mouthed at Shawn, as she glanced over to see that Jak was laughing at her. Embarrased, she moved herself back to watch and not be seen, though it galled her to no end. Everyone from the whole camp gathered around, everyone talking at once and Shawn held up a hand for silence.
“All right, hey guys. We have a shelter, but here’s the deal, it won’t hold everyone, not even close. So tomorrow, we will all discuss who our leaders will be. We’ll set up the whole chain of command, twelve, because that’s how many beds are in our new command structure.”
“We should take turns!”
“No, the girls should have it!”
“Yeah! We need our privacy!”
“I have made my decision. Because of the instrumentations in it, we’ll need to use it to defend ourselves. It’s our new command center. Tonight, each ship will bring foreward their own candidates, and we’ll all talk.”
“What if more ships come?”
“What if we don’t agree on our ships leader?” Jak asked looking at Tell defiantly.
“Each ship, or pod, should have picked a leader. Bring your seconds and thirds, and we’ll all talk about it tonight. We will vote tomorrow on leaders.”
Tell looked at her in the back and shook his head slightly. She had already known she wouldn’t be included, but it still made her feel frustrated.
“We have questions,” Oren said and Lira wanted to cheer for him.
“I guessed. Lets get dinner, then we can all introduce ourselves and you can ask whatever you want.”
Dinner consisted of a choice of roasted something and unfamiliar raw fruit, but Lira ate as heartily as everyone else, glad she didn’t have to suck more goop from a tube. She was sure to seat herself as close to Tell and Shawn as she could so she could hear everything, while still trying to be inconspicuous.
“How long since the first pod landed?” Oren asked Shawn as soon as the older boy sat down.
“Our pod was first, we landed five days ago now. A shuttle from Star Sailor, a science vessel, landed that same night. Kings Ransom’s pod landed the next afternoon, and Melanie’s Kiss that night. Straight Shot landed within an hour of Adams pod from our ship the day after, then the shuttle from Galina’s Breeze the next day. Yesterday the pod from Hammer of the Twelve landed, and today, you. There are now seventy one of us. Four have died, two from Star Sailor trying to kill one of those lizard things the second day, and two when King’s Ransom’s pod crashed. Rachael is the only one of us who is wounded, her wrist broke when Adams pod crashed into that mountain.”
“He left my sleep chamber open, even though he couldn’t wake me,” said a slight, pale girl with long strawberry blonde hair. Her wrist was wrapped in bandages and her arm was in a sling.
“You should have it stabilized better,” Hollis said moving closer to look at her arm. He immediately led her away from the group, the girl wide eyed and looking over her shoulder. Shawn nodded at her slightly, then turned back to Tell.
“Hollis, he was in med school. I’m Tell,” he went through and introduced everyone.
“Yeah I met a few of them while you were gone. Maya was very useful helping to make dinner.” He smiled at Maya who beamed at him and Lira felt sick.
“Adam said you had some ideas on why we were here,” Tell said setting his food down.
Shawn shot a look at Adam, who didn’t look up from his meal.
“I do. I think it’s the Sunuba.”
“Why?” Lira demanded. She had been over and over it, and could not think of a single reason why the Sunuba or the Vilis would be behind it.
Shawn looked over his shoulder at her and she tried to ignore Tells glare. “Because. Two days after our pod landed, I saw another pod land, and then two less than ten minutes later, at almost the same time. We trekked all the way through the jungle to find them, and we did, right next to a big lake. All three pods were Sunuban, and they tried to attack us. They were young, like us. I think it’s some sort of training exercise for them.”
“That’s why the wall before shelter then. If it’s a training mission, why are there so many of us and so few of them?”
“For every pod or shuttle that lands on this side of the jungle, one lands on that side too. Every day.”
“Are they all Sunuban? What if our own people accidentally land over there and are getting slaughtered?”
“So far, from what we can tell, they seem to all be Sunuban. We can’t get very close to look around their camp.”
“Cam can get close,” Oren said, then seemed to realize that he had just exposed Cam. “He’s small for his age,” he said with a shrug.
“We’ll see. Now we are more worried about our own defenses. Making sure we can stave off an attack.”
“I haven’t seen any weapons.”
Tell actually elbowed her this time and she grunted.
“No, I have the crew of the Strait Shot on weapons. No one carries anything until they learn how to use it.”
“Smart, but who’s going to teach them?”
“We will,” said a tall boy with a dark complexion and long silken black hair. Lira recognized him, and all those sitting around him as Torvan. They were also all related, she could see by looking at them. All tall and lithe with the same features. “I’m Chaska Ohanzee, this is my first cousin Diwali Tawa. We are Sun and Shadow Clan.” He motioned to the boy next to him as Diwali, and then the rest of them when he said Sun and Shadow Clan.
“What does that mean?” She asked and Tell threw up his hands in exasperation.
“Sun and Shadow, Ohanzee and Tawa. Four generations ago, there were no greater enemies, but we came together when the new enemy came. Now this enemy has trapped us in his nets, but we will not be rabbits in snares. When he comes he will find a bear, a wolf, a black eagle, a spider, a black fox and the First Son.”
Lira frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand, you’ve found these animals here?”
“I am the Bear of Shadow.”
“I am the Wolf of Shadow.”
“I am the Black Fox of Shadow.”
“I am the one who bites poison in the Shadow.”
“I am the Black Eagle of Shadow.”
“I am the First Son of Shadow.”
Lira was a little overawed at their serious nature, but three had not spoken, and she had to know. “What about you?”
“I am The Bowl of the Sun,” said Diwali Tawa, and these are my sisters, “Pretty Valley of the Sun and Beautiful Sun. Genesee Tawa and Mahwah Tawa. How are you called?”
“I am Lira Denno. My dad said Lira meant ‘song of my heart’. Umm, I don’t really know what Denno means. Uhh..”
“You can make its meaning yourself, by your deeds.”
“Sure, so, you all know how to use the weapons you are making?”
“We do, we were raised to know the use of our hands, and weapons crafted from the lands.”
“Hey! I can use my hands to fight! I know ProCom!” a boy said excitedly and Lira looked over at him. He was larger than Cameron, by at least a head, and she couldn’t see in him that dangerous way Cam moved.
“We know Paul, you have told us.”
“Well, I can! I was almost a green belt!”
Lira didn’t know what that meant, or much about ProCom at all, but she did know peoples reactions. The boy was all talk.
“There you go Cam, you have a friend now,” Jak said derisively.
Cam cut his eyes at the boy, then looked away when the boy looked over at him. “Hey!! I know you! You’re Cameron Mendez! I saw you fight at three different tournaments on Bardoo! Hey, do you remember me? You signed autographs for me! I still have both of them! I have them here, in my bag, your’s and a dozen others! Hey! That’s the Cameron Mendez, the ProCom fighter!”
“I remember you,” Cam said getting up and walking away from the fire.
“Nickoli, see! I told you I traveled to tournaments! I can’t believe that’s really Cameron Mendez, here on this stinking planet, with us! Hey! He can teach us all ProCom! Hey Cam! Can you?”
There was no answer from the darkness.
“I think he wants to be left alone,” Tell said looking out in the darkness Cam had disappeared into. “So how long till this wall is done?”
“Tomorrow. Day after, Chaska and Diwali can start showing people how to use the spears they have made. We can also see about scouts. That boy really a ProCom fighter?”
“He is.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Dunno.”
“I think the boy bothered him,” Lira said looking at the shaggy haired blonde boy with the long lock of hair down the right side of his head. He looked like he was ten kinds of trouble. The kind of boy who liked practical jokes, but was otherwise harmless.
“Paul, leave him alone.”
“Sure Shawn,” the boy said, his feelings hurt.
“Where y’all from on Bardoo?” asked another boy, his head shaved to close to tell what color it was. His eyes and bushy eyebrows were both dark and his skin darkly tanned like he spent his days outdoors.
“Hey I know you,” Hollis said suddenly perking up. “We went to primary together. “You’re Cade Foley!”
“Yeah, I don’t ‘member you.”
“I was a lot shorter back then, and my hair was a lot redder than it is now, it turned dark.”
“Hollis! Holly Holly Hollis!”
“Yeah,” Hollis said turning away as his face turned red.
“Your hair aint as long as it was either. Still long though.”
“From the bald kid,” said the boy who was named as Raegan earlier. He had almost the same haircut as Hollis, and his hair was more red, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Hollis had soft, fair features with dark eyes and Raegan looked mean with his green eyes and freckles.
“Hey at least it’s easy to take care of.”
“Enough. We need to talk. Tell, you have a second?”
“Yeah,” He hesitated a second, and for a split second, Lira thought he would say her name, but he said, “Oren Veneraux is my second, then Landis and Hollis.”
“For now, just Oren. Tomorrow we can talk about who else we might need. Everyone else, why don’t you show our new guests around camp?”
Lira watched everyone get up and leave, and she moved back just far enough to be out of the firelight. Cameron came up from behind her and squatted next to her. He didn’t speak and she didn’t feel obliged to ask after him, so she paid attention to what was going on around the fire instead.
“Ok Tell, what did you guys get from your sensor sweeps? Anything at all?”
“Umm, not much, I guess. Lira did all the sweeps.”
“When did the computer wake you? Where were you? Your coordinates?”
“Um, Black Space was all Lira told me.”
“Well, did the computers tell you any more than they told us?”
“Lira was on the computers.”
“Didn’t you ask any questions?”
“Lira knew what was going on, I didn’t feel I needed to double-check everything.”
“What about signals? Did you try and boost any signal?”
“Oh yeah, Lira did send out some stuff.”
“Ok, can you ask Liran to come here?”
“Yeah, hold on. Lira!”
Lira stood up with a sigh and waited a second before she stepped foreword. “Yeah Tell?”
“He has some questions for you.”
She looked at Shawn who was watching her with curiosity. “Yeah, when Tell woke me up, right off we were at these coordinates,” she said pulling a librilio out of her pocket. “Then I released signals, small ones, with a message on a loop, at the next three coordinates, there. The fourth set is where we found a debris field, to far to scan properly. We didn’t know what it was. We passed within range of each of those planets listed there, at those times, and those coordinates, mostly class I, save for the one class A. We were just over a eight days off of the planet when Tell woke me, I didn’t write the exact time down, I was busy for a while.” When she finished, she felt every eye on her. Shawn and the boy called Adin who had gone with them earlier. Adam and Tad, Chaska and Diwali, Tell and Oren, and then five boys she didn’t know. That was when she realized there were no other girls around the fire. She swallowed hard and fidgeted with the stylus as Shawn looked from her down to the librilio.
“He was listening,” said a pale boy with white blonde hair and ice blue eyes. He spoke with an Amacitian accent but Lira wasn’t surprised, because he looked Amacitian.
“Did you not hear her speak of her name?” Diwali asked scornfully.
“Is Oren Tells second?” Shawn asked suddenly, handing the librilio back to her.
“He told you he was.”
“Why then? Does Tell not see the potential in you?”
“Perhaps, but I think he’s trying to keep me out of the whole power struggle thing.”
“Why, does he fear you?”
“No, he fears for me. Tell is my big brother.”
“Ahh. That’s that then,” he said cocking his head slightly. He got quiet then and just stared at her. She swallowed hard, but didn’t back down. She made herself calmly put her librilio back in her pocket and return his stare with equanimity.
“I do not think we should allow Lira,” said Chaska leaning foreword and breaking the silence.
Lira blinked and looked over her shoulder at him with an open mouth, indignation bubbling up.
“Me neither,” said one of the boys she didn’t know.
“Nor I,” said Tell.
“My cousin is right,” said Diwali, but he at least sounded like he didn’t like admitting it.
“As compelling as all your reasons are,” Shawn said sarcastically, “It ultimately isn’t your choice. Each of the six shuttles and pods from the other ships will elect one from their own group. The three pods from our ship, because we held twelve each, will elect two.”
“Even yours?” Oren asked quizzically.
“Even mine. I have no fears. Do you?”
Lira cut her eyes at Tell, who did look nervous.
“What about tonight?”
“What about it?”
“Who sleeps in there tonight?”
“Liran, Tell said you ran all the sweeps, ran all the computers.”
“Yes? And it’s Lira, not Liran.”
“I was the only one on our pod who knew my way around the pod. I won’t have time to stay on the com-panel all the time, so if your people don’t vote you into leadership, I will need you to take shifts, and maybe teach some others how to use it, send out sweeps, all that, all right?”
“Yeah, Landis, he was our pilot, he knows the com-panel by now too.”
“Good, shift off with him then, till more people know how to use it.”
After that, he ignored her, which she wasn’t sure is she was grateful for or upset about. He talked to the others about the Sunuba, ignoring Tell and Oren as well as her. When he announced it was time for bed, everyone got up from what they were doing without a word of argument and went to where they had made makeshift beds for themselves on the ground.
“Tell, you can choose, there’s an open ground for your crew between mine and Adams crews, or over by the Torvas, or over on the other side of the Amacitia,” Shawn said, and at that moment, a girl approached Shawn. She was tall with curly brown hair and big brown eyes and Lira knew that she was a stunning beauty without having to look at Tells face.
“I.. I, yeah, we’ll all bunk in here. I.. we have more questions. Umm, hi.”
“Hi!” the girl said smiling brightly at Tell and Lira felt for him. She knew exactly how he felt.
“Bailee, this is Tell and Liran, and Oren, is it?”
“Yeah,” Oren answered, also staring at Bailee.
“Lira,” Lira said enunciating her name slowly and loudly, feeling even more frustrated now, in the presence of this beautiful woman.
“Nice to meet you all. Hey Shawn, I needed your help with something, can you look at it for me?”
“Yeah Bailee, I’ll bee right there. Tell, your crews area is right over here then, next to the wall. It becomes your responsibility to guard this section, you need someone on it all night. Take shifts, assign someone, it doesn’t matter, just make sure they don’t sleep on duty. Shout a warning if there’s something out there, loud enough to wake the dead. It’s important. Make sure your people know.”
“Got it.” Tell answered still staring after Bailee. Shawn gave Lira one last look and turned and followed Bailee. All around the camp people were lighting torches around the wall and climbing into their beds. Tell finally shook himself and went to gather up their crew.
The space for them was just small enough that the three crews seemed to be mingled. Lira wasn’t in the least surprised to see Jak sitting up and whispering with Tad, Annise, Maya, and Gage. Tell set up his bedclothes as close to Shawn’s camp as he could, though Bailee was on the far side of the other camp next to Shawn. The boy named Cade was closest to Tell, with Raegan. Paul and the boy he called Nickoli were on the other side of them, their heads together, whispering. Lira tossed her things down next to Brenna’s, who was next to Cecilia who was sharing bedclothes with Landis. Hollis was between Landis and Colt, and Colt was turned on his side facing Oren, whispering. Tell sat up on the other side of Oren, staring into Shawn’s camp. Lira wondered if Shawn would end up getting angry at him for staring at her so much. She laid down with a good space between herself and Maya and turned to face Brenna who looked near to tears.
“Do you see him?” she asked, her voice cracking. “He hasn’t said a single word to me all day, I saved him a spot, and he didn’t even see me, he was just staring at her.”
“Don’t worry about him. Didn’t you take a look around today? You’ll have your pick of boys. They outnumber us almost two to one.”
“But I don’t want any other boy!”
“Are you sure? Did you see how cute Chaska and his brothers and cousins were? And what about Adin? His blue eyes were pretty dreamy.”
“Tad was kind of cute too.”
“Sure,” Lira agreed noncommittally. He looked to much like Adam and Jak, who could have been brothers. “There are a ton of boys here.”
“Yeah. Let him see me talking to one of them, see how jealous he gets.”
Lira sighed, but didn’t try and talk her out of it. She would forget Tell eventually. She faked a yawn and turned over closing her eyes, but opened them again when she was facing away from Brenna. Jak was still whispering with Tad and Gage, with Maya hanging on his arm. Annise was watching Tell, and Lira wondered what they were whispering about that they didn’t want Tell to know about. Annise glanced at her, then turned to Jak and whispered to him. He turned and looked at her, but she didn’t look away, despite his scowls. He moved, like he was about to get up, but his eyes moved to something else and he stopped. Cam threw his bedclothes down between her and Maya and sat down between them, blocking her view. He ignored her and the others as he pulled a librilio out and started reading over it. After several minutes, he tossed it down close to her and stood up to make his bed. Lira could plainly read the short message on the librilio that he had tossed inches from her face.
‘They plan to out Tell. Cause dissention. Divide votes. Jak wants in. Three will be enough.’
Three votes would be enough if he managed to make everyone else split their votes. She turned back over to face Brenna. “Hey, who are you voting for tomorrow?”
“I thought maybe you. Cecilia is too.”
“Don’t. Jak is trying to split the vote so he can get in. Vote for Tell.”
“But we don’t want Tell. He’s… just.. not a leader. He’s a nice enough guy, and I like him a lot, but you lead better than he does. You’re smarter, more decisive.”
“We can’t have split votes! Not now, or Jak will get in!”
“All right, all right, I’ll talk to Celia, and she’ll pass it down.”
Lira watched as one by one they whispered to each other, right up until Oren and Colt. Oren nodded, but said nothing to Tell who was still sitting up and staring into the other camp. Lira then passed down a reminder that Tell had to set a guard, which did make it all the way to Tell. He spoke softly to Hollis, who nodded and got up without even looking grumpy about it. Lira turned over again to face Camerons back. She could no longer see Jak and his friends, but that suited her fine. His face wasn’t really what she wanted to go to sleep to.
Light seemed to fill the camp far to early, and she wasn’t the only one making sounds of protest as Shawn began calling out for everyone to get up. It was a miserable morning, with a slight chill in the dampness of the air. All of her bedclothes seemed heavy with saturation as she folded them, and she sighed, wondering if this was going to be her horrid new existence. It didn’t seem very promising right now, but then she saw Shawn, his pleasant warm smile brightening the gloom off of her heart. This morning there was another girl trailing after him, with long wavy red hair and pretty green eyes. She was pretty, not like Bailee, or even Maya with her blonde hair and plastic features, but a wholesome pretty that made you like her. He was listening to whatever she was saying while nodding hellos and good mornings to everyone he passed. When he got to the center of camp, he yelled out, loud enough for everyone to hear even over the people talking.
“I said we would vote today, on our leaders, and that’s what we will do now. We will vote one crew at a time, by secret ballot. Know this now. No matter what has been said to you, how you may have been coerced, this is a free vote, to vote for whoever you want. No one will harm you or judge you. This is your choice, not the choice of a bully who wants it. You have the camps protection if someone tries to retaliate in any way. Is this completely understood? All right. Strait Shot, you’re up first.”
It was a quick vote, and no one was surprised when Shawn announced Chaska Ohanzee as their representative in leadership.
“Kings Ransom, you have voted four to one for Nick Keith. Star Sailor, unanimous vote for Clay Eskina. Melanie’s Kiss, four to one vote for James Harker. Galina’s Breeze, four to two vote for Dmitri Abramov. Hammer of the Twelve, unanimous vote for Gunner Birger.”
It took less than an hour for the other pods and shuttles to cast their votes, and Lira was anxious as Shawn announced that they would start voting on their ships pods. “Since our pods held twelve members, we will be voting on two members. There will not be two votes, whoever gets the second highest amount of votes, gets the second position.”
Lira almost panicked. Who was going to vote for Oren? She moved to Tell and whispered fiercely “Vote for Oren, or Jak will get in!”
“I was going to. What’s…”
“Just a minute, before we vote!” Jak said standing up. “I have something to say to everyone! You really need to think before you vote this morning. Has Tell ever once made a decision for himself, or was it always someone else’s decision that he just mouthed? Didn’t we all watch him panic back at the pod after we landed? Who kept a cool head and took control? Not him! Is that who we want to represent us as leader? Write a name down carefully, think before you vote out of blind friendship. This is our lives on the line here.”
Tell scowled and Lira frowned. Did he really think that speech would get him a single vote? “The others talked last night, we need to vote for Oren! Tell Colt!”
“What?”
“Time to vote,” Shawn announced and Lira sighed in vexation. She was first up because she was the youngest and she scrawled Oren’s name and hoped Tell said something to Colt as she went and stood on the other side of the box. Cameron gave nothing away as he scribbled a name down and shoved it in the box, but Annise was smiling haughtily as she sauntered up and wrote a name down with a flourish. Oren and Cecilia both hurried through the process and came to stand next to her, but they didn’t speak as they watched Jak stroll up. She knew, Oren at least was thinking the same thing she was. Of someone else didn’t vote for him, Jak would have three votes and Tell would get seven. Oren would get two votes, but it wouldn’t be enough. She wanted to pound her fist in frustration, and seeing Jak grin over his shoulder at Tell made it worse. Maya took her time, signing a name with a flourish like Annise had. Brenna and Hollis were both quick, but Landis seemed to have trouble as he leaned over the paper and formed each letter as carefully as a six year old would have. Tell walked up without a single worry and Lira could see the giant ‘O’ he formed at the beginning of Oren’s name. After that, it took forever for Shawn to count the votes. When he turned back around to face them, he seemed vastly amused. “The leader, by a ten to two vote, is Lira Denno. The two other votes went to Oren Veneraux, the acting second.”
Jak threw back his head and laughed and Lira was stunned. His plan was to keep her brother out, not put himself in. All he wanted was Tell to lose. She should have seen that! His speech should have given it away! Tell looked at her in horror, his face going bright red. “You did this?”
“No! Tell, no! I told them all to vote for you so the vote wouldn’t be split.”
“She did,” Brenna said to Tell. “She said the vote couldn’t be split, so we all decided to vote for her. It was our choice.”
“And no one will be punished for their choice,” Shawn said with a nod. “Lira and Oren are the new leaders representing their pod. All right, Adam, your group is next.”
The next vote was much less dramatic. There wasn’t a single vote for Adam, not even his own. Tad won with a nine to three vote, and Gage won second with two votes. Shawn never said who the extra vote was for and no one asked. Shawn saved his own pod for last, and they ended with an eleven to one vote for Shawn, and one vote for Adin. Lira guessed that it was Shawn who voted for Adin, electing himself an easy second, which didn’t seem overly fair. She didn’t argue though, or even bring it up, she was still to shocked. They had voted for her. Even Jak. Horrible disagreeable Jak. It didn’t seem to matter that they only voted for her to keep Tell out, she was to stunned to think about anything except Jak and Annise and Maya, who hated her, voted for her. Apparently they didn’t hate her more than they hated Tell.
“All right, for anyone who didn’t get elected, we have to finish this wall today. From now on, we aren’t different crews, we are one camp. We need to get to know each other, communicate better, stop going off alone, doing our own things and reporting only to our own crewmates. We are all one camp now. We need to unite against the threat against us!”
Cheers went up then, from all over the camp. Lira wasn’t convinced though. She had more questions. She found Cameron in the mayhem and leaned in close to whisper to him. “Do you know where the Sunuban camp is?”
“Yeah, I heard people saying it was almost due north through the jungle, just a slight eastward cant.”
“All right, as soon as I am done in this meeting, I’m going to find my way there, you keep Tell and everyone else of my tail.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I’m not convinced they mean us harm. What if they are in the same position we are? Just dumped here? No idea what’s going on? Maybe we can talk to them.”
“Do you know Sunuban?”
“No Cam, but I just want to look for right now.”
“Are you coming Liran?”
“Lira! Are you kidding me? Is it that hard? Lira!”
Shawn just grinned and it dawned on her suddenly that he had been doing it just to unnerve her all along. He ducked into the pod and everyone who had been elected followed him in. Lira glanced once over her shoulder at Cam, hoping he didn’t decide to tell Tell just so she couldn’t go, then followed the others inside.
“All right everyone, Some of you met Liran and Oren last night. Everyone else, this is Liran,”
“Lira.”
“Liran and Oren, This is Gunnar Birger,” he said pointing to the pale white blonde boy from the night before. “This is Dmitri Abramov.” He said pointing to a smallish boy with pale skin, dark hair and dark eyes. “You met Chaska last night.”
“I still do not agree with Lira being here,” the boy said scowling down at her.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Dmitri.
Shawn went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “This is James Harker, the oldest of the Harker brothers,” he said motioning to a chubby boy with a round face framed by blonde hair in what was commonly referred to as a bowl cut. “Nick Keith,” he said pointing to the tall skinny boy next to him with lank black hair and hollow hazel eyes. “Clay Eskina.” The boy he pointed to was staring at the floor, a half smile that looked more nervous than friendly on his face. “His crew was the one attacked by the lizard things. You met Tad and Gage yesterday, and Adin here. All right, we need to talk about the Sunuba, but first, we need to share information. I know some of you,” he said looking pointedly at Chaska, “have had some of your people out scouting in the jungle, and other places.”
“Are you having us watched?”
“Everyone is watching everyone. Some people noticed them coming and going, that’s all. Can we just share information instead of accusing again?”
“If we all live here together, we need to all have each others backs, not be watching each other as close as we would watch our supposed enemies,” Lira said angry to hear that there was already in-fighting.
“Supposed enemies?” Adin asked scowling at her. “Where are you from that the Sunuba are not your definite enemies?”
“All I meant is, you assume that they brought us here, you don’t know for sure. What if they were brought here just like we were?”
“I have said the same many times!” Chaska said angrily to Shawn.
“They attacked us! What more proof do you need?”
“Maybe they were scared! They’re kids like us! If the situations were reversed, they just suddenly stumbled into your camp, you can honestly say you wouldn’t have attacked? The reacted badly, but maybe it wasn’t their outright intention to make war on us. Maybe someone can talk to them.”
“Also I have said this, many times!” Chaska said now moving to stand beside Lira.
“I thought you didn’t like me,” she said sarcastically.
“I said I did not approve that you shared this room with so many men.”
“Oh!” she said, her face suddenly coloring.
“Why can’t he share a room with the rest of us? Is he sick?”
“I am not sick,” she said glaring at Dmitri who seemed to be being purposefully obtuse.
“She should sleep out with the other women,” Chaska said to Shawn.
Lira looked at Shawn for his response, so it was hard to miss the outright shock on his face. He tried to recover, but she could tell from his expression that he was trying to determine if Chaska was right. “Leaders sleep in here, in the beds,” Shawn muttered, and it was the first time she had seem him out of countenance. Hadn’t he heard Chaska the night before? He obviously must not have, he must have been concentrating on the librilio she had given him with all the information on it. He wasn’t the only one she realized. Others were staring at her as if trying to see what Chaska saw.
“Not every girl is a cookie cutter stereotype.”
“But your head is shaved!”
Lira rolled her eyes and felt like screaming. How many times would she have to go through it? Hopefully this was the last.
“No, look at her eyes,” Dmitri said as if he suddenly saw something.
“She has a girls frame too, if you look,” Clay chimed in.
“I guess, a skinny little girl. How old are you?”
“Does it matter? Can we move on now?”
“Lira is right,” Shawn said scowling down at his librilio. “Chaska, have you found anything on your trips?”
“Like?”
“No games Chaska, please, lets work together.”
“Together? I speak and the breeze blows by you. Lira speaks, the breeze blows by you. You have heard all you wish to hear.”
“Fine, fine! I admit they may not be here to just kill us, but you at least admit that they might be here to do just that!”
“As you say. Now. There are seventy one of us, and they have less numbers. Less than fifty says Wahotkonk who has the spirit of the black eagle and the eagles eyes. He moves as a shadow moves. He has seen. They had more, sixty plus, but they made camp close to a nest of the lizard cats, and they fought four of them, two to the death and lost twelve men. They have fewer women than even we do. We have only twenty two now, to our forty nine men. They have eleven to their thirty seven men. They fight more over the women than they do the creatures or us. They build shelter first and use the weapons they have made only to hunt.”
“Do they scout us?” Lira asked, knowing he would know.
“Twice they have, but they only looked. Less than ten twenty counts, then they left. Wahotkonk says they only looked to make sure we were not preparing to attack them.”
“It seems like they want no part of us at all.”
“Says one scout. One. Two others, ones who were caught, say different.”
“They weren’t hurt.”
“They would have been if they had been captured, or if they hadn’t been faster than those chasing them. They’d be dead.”
“Before we go planning on a war, I think we should send an emissary, someone to try and talk to them.”
“Suicide. No.”
“If not that, then at least we stay on this side of the jungle unless provoked.”
“Why did I think it was so funny when you got voted in?” Shawn asked scowling down at her. “You think like a girl Lira! Try and think about it from a different perspective.”
“Do I also think like a girl?” Chaska asked, offended.
“No, look, I know you and your people are peaceful people, but you can’t always have been. Look how much you and your family know about fighting.”
“There is a reason. Who would throw stones at a great and powerful lion? No one. We live in peace because others fear our power.”
“Talk of power is good and all, but your people have had to have proved it at least once, right? Otherwise it is just talk and just a lot of wind, as you put it.”
“We have proved it only when provoked. Never because we perceived an enemy where there was not one. Enough of this talk. You are fond of your votes. I vote no on taking war to these children.”
“I also vote no,” Lira said quickly and looked to Oren.
“No,” Oren agreed. “Right now we have a tactical advantage. This ship. We have range enough to know every move they make. We make ready in the meantime, and if the time ever does come, it is easier to defend the place we have fortified than attack on unknown ground.”
“That makes sense,” Dmitri said turning to Shawn.
“We don’t have to attack, just keep ourselves safe,” James said.
“No, we should eliminate the threat now, while they are weaker!” Gunnar said angrily. “I can see cowardice from the girl, but the rest of you, it is unacceptable!”
“It is not cowardice, it is intelligence! They don’t want a fight!”
“They are our enemies!”
“They are children! We are children! Is it that hard so comprehend or are you so hot blooded that you can’t see it?”
Gunnar laughed and Lira could see the same sort of icy perfection that was in Maya. Perfect cold looks that were beautiful in the right light, but usually twisted with contempt and rage. “Hot blooded? Me? Any Amacitian? Don’t you know we have to be hot blooded to survive in Amacitia?”
“Lira, enough. We won’t put it to a vote yet, there’s no need to move yet. Let’s move on. Today will see the wall finished, once that’s done, and we start on weapons, we each have to choose from our groups who we think would best serve us in learning these weapons. Lira, the boy Cameron. You said he knew ProCom? How much does he know?”
“He traveled and fought, I don’t remember what he said he was, it was all gibberish to me.”
“Were you born under a rock? Who doesn’t know what ProCom is?”
“I traveled a lot, I didn’t listen to news, if I wasn’t outrunning it, it was from a place irrelevant to me, or very old, so I didn’t bother.”
“What did you do?”
“My father was an engineer, he traveled on every kind of ship there was and I went with him. I was going to be an engineer too.”
“You look like a grease monkey in those clothes.”
“I would go into what you look like Dmitri, but I fear the snakes would be offended by the comparison.”
Gunnar and Chaska both laughed, others look confused, and Shawn looked as angry as Dmitri. “I will talk to the boy myself then, find out how extensive his knowledge is. Will he be willing to teach others?”
“You could always ask. Cam is, I don’t know, taciturn. I don’t know him very well.”
“Fine. If he will, he can show the ones we choose some basic self defense. Each of you choose two, not yourselves, to put foreword. Well, not you Clay, we can just assume Mike will join from your group, all right?”
“Sure Shawn, whatever. Mike’ll do it.”
“All right, everyone else?”
“Tell. Tell was studying to be a security officer, this is right up his alley.”
“Yeah,” agreed Oren eagerly. “And probably Jak.”
“Give him a weapon? Next to Tell? Are you nuts?”
“Hollis wants to set up an infirmary with a girl named Lainey who was going to nursing school, and Landis, he’s not much good outside of being a pilot. Colt, are you kidding? It has to be Jak.”
“There’s nothing here for Landis to pilot! He’ll do fine.”
“I guess.”
“I think Adam and Haden from our crew, they are the most athletic,” said Tad as Gage nodded his ascent.
“Diwali and Nashoba. A sun and a shadow. Diwalis strength shines bright, like the sun, and Nashoba is cunning like a wolf. The shadow protects it’s own.”
“We need some of your boys, outside those you put up as foot soldiers, to teach.”
“Then you must take three. Zotom, Hohots and Wahotkonk were born together and will not leave each others side. Diwali will teach the spear, Nashoba the knife and hands. Three shadows to give strength to darkness.”
“Fine, that’ll even out Clay’s one. Nick?”
“Unless you want girls, you’ll have to make due with Isaac and Paul.”
“No girls. James?”
“Dave and Clint.”
“Dmitri?”
“Alexi and Konstantin.”
“Gunnar?”
“Anders and Dag. Margareta will be bitter that you said no women. Rolf will be angry that it is only two.”
“Two is enough. I put up Cade and Raegan. Paul will be upset, but I think he is overeager to prove himself, especially in front of his hero. Why didn’t you put Cam up Lira?”
“Because I doubted he would have settled for such a menial position. He may teach, but mostly he seems to do his own thing.”
“I have a list then, and no one wants to change it? When we leave here, I’m going to announce these names.”
No one spoke up, so Shawn went on. He spoke about menial tasks, like fishing and collecting food, but Lira tuned him out and just stared at his face while he talked. She wondered at the fairness of the universe to make one man so attractive as she watched his full lips move. She wondered idly what it felt like to be kissed. She had seen kissing before, she knew how to do it, and she imagined Shawn kissing her. The thought made her blush and look away from him. Her eyes landed on Adin. He had pretty blue eyes, but was otherwise plain with his curly brown hair and dark complexion. Poor Oren with his strawberry blonde nest, pale skin, huge overbite coupled with slightly buck teeth looked out of place standing next to Gunnar who was almost as tall as Shawn. His white blonde hair shot out in spikes in every direction, like a collection of icicles. His blue eyes were clearer and lighter than Adins pretty sapphire color. Gage was still blonde, ruddy and mean looking, with the pouty looking Tad next to him. She decided Brenna was right, his baby face allowed him to be attractive despite his want-to-be bad boy persona. Chaska stared back at her when she looked at him, and she blushed, imagining he knew exactly what she was thinking. He was as attractive as Gunnar and as opposite as he could be with his dark skin, dark hair and black eyes. He kept his hair caught back with a clip where his cousin had let his fall free, and she liked the looks of Diwalis better. It invited running fingers through it. Dmitri was also dark haired and eyed, but his skin was as white pale as Gunnars. He was attractive in an insolent boyish way, but she didn’t like admitting it. James looked like he would rather be doing anything else, and the dullness in his eyes made him more unattractive to her than his girth and bad haircut. Clay had the same glazed look, but he seemed more shell-shocked than stupid. His greasy blonde hair fell around his face hiding his eyes. Nick also had greasy lank locks, and he looked very much the grease monkey Dmitri had accused her of being with his white tank top and greasy filthy coveralls tied around his waist. She turned back to Shawn who was still tallying their food supplies and going over a list of useful objects they had salvaged from the other ships. Lira realized suddenly what she had been doing and she tried to work out in her head what had come over her. She never cared before if a boy was handsome. She hadn’t even had time to daydream about such inane things! Now, when she certainly should have her mind on other things, she was imagining how a boy kissed. She felt herself blushing furiously and stared down at the floor, completely abashed. Chaska nudged her. “You all right?” he whispered.
She nodded, but didn’t look up. His touch had only reminded her that he was standing right next to her and that she had thought he was handsome! She realized also that he was over a head taller than her and she decided on the spot that she liked tall men. Shawn was tall, so was Chaska, and she thought Gunnar was attractive and he was tall too.
Gunner chose that moment to speak. “We also have all that wiring, most of it’s long enough to secure a joint, so we won’t need that many vines.”
“And we can use old clothes that we’ve outgrown.”
“Most of us are past our growth spurts Oren, and we’ll want to save our clothes for those who are smaller than us if we do. Keep in mind, our clothes are the only clothes we have for the rest of our lives if someone doesn’t find us. We can’t just rip them up if we can find another solution.”
“Wasn’t thinking of it that way.”
“I think we should set people to gather and make food, the same as we set people as soldiers. Give them a specific job.”
“The girls can do that can’t they?” said James and Lira gave him and indignant look that he didn’t see.
“You go tell Margareta or Britta they have to make dinner,” Gunnar said with a malicious grin. “I’d really like to see that. I’d like to see what’s left of you afterwards.”
“The women aren’t always the weak ones. It should be a job for those we need to keep close to camp, those that can’t take care of themselves. Anyone want to volunteer anyone?”
“Maya. She was going to culinary school, she likes to cook.”
“Annise is her friend, they wouldn’t want to be separated,” Oren chimed in.
“I guess Rachael and Odelia,” said Tad.
“And I put up Elias and Jace,” said Shawn looking over his librilio.
“Jodi would help, I guess, and probably Blake.”
“Two more.”
“Natalya,” offered Gunnar.
“Chloe,” said Nick at last, looking tormented.
“Fine. We’ll set them to work too. Whoever is left will be building. The wall, places to sleep, as best we can. That’s us too, all of us. Lira, you will be in here, on the com-panel, you and the boy you said could use it. I’ll let you train others two at a time, all of us first. You can start now with Adin and Oren.”
“I’ve been trapped in here for over a week! I wanted to look around the camp in the daylight, talk to Tell and stretch my legs some.”
“All right, but be back here in an hour.”
Lira hurried out the door to find Tell, but she no sooner found him than Shawn started announcing the names of those chosen to be trained as soldiers.
He stood up as she approached and crossed his arms, then his face went white when his was the first name read. “Are you serious Lira? A soldier?”
“I thought you’d be pleased! You went to school to be a soldier!”
“A security officer, there is a distinct difference!”
“One gives orders, one gets them,” Jak said laughing. “What’s wrong little Lira, didn’t trust me with a weapon around old Tell?”
“Go away Jak.”
“Lira, you have to fix it! I can’t be just a soldier!”
“Tell, calm down, I’ll see you’re put in charge of them. I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About the vote. I really didn’t plan it that way, and if I would have thought, I could have stopped it.”
“I don’t care Lira, if everyone wanted you, that’s fine. It’s a relief actually. All that mess is off of my back.”
“No, because here is where you would have shined, here where it really counts. Not one stupid week on a ship that will never be relevant again.”
“If that’s the case. Then I will shine no matter where I am, right?”
“If you say so Tell. I really wish I could have done something though.”
“Doesn’t matter now. Promise you’ll put me in charge?”
“Absolutely. Hey, have you seen Cam?”
“Yeah, he’s right over there talking to Shawn.”
Lira looked at where Tell was pointing and saw Shawn towering over Cam, practically bending over to talk to him, but somehow Cam managed not to look small or diminished in Shawn’s presence. Cam was listening silently to whatever Shawn was saying and Lira looked around for anyone else who might be watching. No one seemed to be paying attention at all, so she rambled around the camp for a minute, made her way to the stream and looked around again, trying to appear like she was enjoying the view. When she was sure no one was looking, she darted into the jungle and began a steady trek due north. She found herself a heavy stick as she walked and after about half an hour she began wondering how far to the lake. She had never asked. It could be through the next clearing, or another three hours or more away. She was careful to be quiet, but the constant stress that came from every noise the jungle made was unnerving her. After one especially loud eruption of birds from a tree overhead, she had to stop and catch her breath and slow her heartbeat.
“If Tell knew you were out here, he’d skin you himself.”
Lira jumped and turned to face Jak. She couldn’t imagine a face she wanted to see less while she was out here alone, accept maybe Gage’s.
“Why did you follow me?” she whispered harshly, looking around her carefully.
“Someone had to. You were obviously running off to get yourself into all kinds of trouble. I told Tell he wouldn’t always be around to protect you. This proves my point.”
“Stay away from me Jak,” she said hefting the heavy stick.
He laughed and moved closer to her. “It’s not me you need to worry about Little Song. Don’t you know what those Sunubans will do to you if they catch you? You might get off lucky, being a girl, but I doubt it since they won’t be able to tell you are a girl by just looking. Even so, not exactly sure rape is preferable to death in some cases. Heard they are pretty brutal with women. You should head home. Stare at your pretty boy some more.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Your name means song. Oren said you told him that.”
“I didn’t tell him, I was… Why don’t you head back? Leave me alone.”
“Who will protect you from the big bad wolf?”
“Really Jak, I just want to be left alone.”
“Am I bothering you? Really now? If you are set on having your peek, miss nosy, let’s go.”
His arrogant swagger annoyed her to no end, but she knew she wouldn’t be rid of him, so she just turned and started back North again. He followed close behind her, managing to move more quietly than she was even given his large size.
“You haven’t thanked me.”
“For what? Being a jerk?”
“Getting you voted as the leader.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because you aren’t Tell. Someone had to make sure it wasn’t him.”
“Why do you hate Tell so much?”
“The obvious reasons aside? He couldn’t cut it.”
“What obvious reasons?”
“Your brother is an arrogant jerk. He pretended to have it all together and be so much better than everyone when he should have just stepped back and let someone else take over. No one was fooled, no matter how much they liked him. You can only use everyone around you for so long before it gets old quick. People hate being used. Everyone but you. You let him use you again and again and kept defending him. What got me was, you to seemed to hate each other as much as I hated him. Yet you were always the first to stick with him and support him, blindly, foolishly.”
“So why didn’t you vote for yourself, when you were sure everyone else wasn’t voting for him?”
“I want no part of this kiddy government you all are building. It will collapse during the first real crisis. Half the people in that pod are only there to keep the masses happy. Shawn is the only one running the show.”
“He listens.”
“He listens, like a kid listens to all the kids on the playground telling him to go ahead and push the little kid in the mud. He wants to do it, so he listens to the ones saying ‘do it’ and ignores everyone saying ‘leave him alone’. He chooses what he listens to, goes along with what matches his own agenda. I know Shawn, I’ve met him before.”
“You have?”
“Not this Shawn, but the dozens of others who are out there, just like him. Shawn is everywhere.”
“You sound more like you are jealous to me. Just like you were jealous of Tell.”
“I wasn’t jealous of Tell, I just thought he was an idiot. And he is. Idiots shouldn’t hold reigns, even temporarily. Jealous would indicate I wanted what was his. I’m not interested in that.”
“What does Jak want then?”
“You need to sit down? You’re out of breathe.”
“No. Avoiding the question?”
“I don’t ask for much. I just want to be left alone, enough in my pocket to keep me comfortable, that’s it. And what about Little Song? What does she want? Beside the pretty boy back at the camp?”
Lira blushed and picked through the underbrush as she thought about the question. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Once, I wanted to travel everywhere, like my father, and work on ships. Now, I feel like, I don’t know, everything I know is useless.”
“You have common sense though, and you are smart. You can think things through and come up with a decision while everyone else is still stumbling over the problem. While men like Tell are panicking.”
“He didn’t panic, he was just looking for reassurance.”
“Reassurance would indicate he had made a decision. He hadn’t, he was just in a complete panic. If he had faced a single problem that wasn’t in a text book, he might have had a chance.”
“Is that why you hate him? He had a real education while you were to stupid to get into school?”
“You assume I was stupid, and that’s why I left school? Typical of someone like you.”
“So why then?”
“I found my calling.”
“Loading and unloading a freighter. A calling highly suited to you.”
“Exactly.”
They were both quiet for a while and Lira thought about what he had said about Tell. If it had been anyone but her brother would she have agreed with him? Everyone else said they liked Tell, but he wasn’t a born leader. She wasn’t either, she had only been able to make decisions because she knew about ships. What would they do when they found out? Would they feel cheated?
“Are you trying to get us caught? We aren’t close yet, but if you keep stumbling around like that, they’ll hear you two miles off.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“No, seriously? Thinking about your pretty boy?”
“Maya seems to think a lot of him too.”
“Was that a barb aimed at me? You think Maya means anything to me? Or Ann? Means to an ends.”
“What ends could you possibly gain with those two? You accused Tell of being stupid, but those two insipid monsters are beyond hope!”
Jak smiled, a small mocking smile and walked on silently.
“You think what? They may get in good with someone here and feed you information? Gain you an ear? Is that why Maya is hanging all over Shawn?”
“I’m sure Maya is ‘hanging’ on Shawn because he is such a pretty boy. If Ann were a little prettier, he might notice her enough to let her hang on him too. Or did you not notice that about your charming pretty boy?”
“Notice what? That girls flirt with him?”
“He never flirts back though, does he? Did you even notice that one girl was with him when he went to bed last night, and a different when we woke up?”
“So, he can talk to whoever he wants.”
“Talk. Yes he can.”
“I don’t understand what you are getting at Jak.”
Jak stopped suddenly, his head cocked like he was listening, then he suddenly bore her to the ground and rolled them both into undergrowth. Lira was smart enough not to speak out or even move, but she went through a string of every bad name she knew in her head, getting them all ready for when she could speak to him again. She waited silently beneath him, his weight crushing her enough that she could feel her own pulse in her head and his face hovered above hers close enough that she could smell him. She had expected body odor and stench, but he mostly smelled like leather, a spice she couldn’t name, and the fruit he had eaten for breakfast. She couldn’t see through the foliage he was looking through, but she could hear, and she couldn’t hear anything. She started to wriggle, but she squeezed her tighter just as she heard the slightest rustle in the leaves in front of them. A second later, a voice whispered in a language she didn’t understand and it was inflected like a question. Another voice answered from further back and she realized she was trembling. She couldn’t hear another sound, but she didn’t dare move, or hardly even breathe until Jak finally relaxed on top of her.
“We are going back to camp, now!” he hissed angrily.
“Get off!”
“One more minute, they are on both side of us now, I have to be sure we are clear.”
Lira gritted her teeth angrily. “I can’t breathe!”
“Sorry,” he said lifting himself slightly, but not taking his attention off of the jungle.
“Sunubans?”
“No. Vilis. They heard us talking, they are looking for us.”
“How do you know?”
“He said, ‘Do you see them?’ and the other said, ‘no, but I heard them this way’.”
“You speak Vilis?” she asked incredulously.
“Shh. You’ll have them back on us. I think it’s clear, let’s go.” He got up and pulled her up without asking. Holding her wrist tightly, he began trotting through the jungle back towards camp. They met no Vilis or Sunuba, but halfway back to camp, they did run into one of the Torvan.
He stepped out of the brush in front of them, bringing them both up short with a gasp. Lira realized she had grasped Jaks arm in her free hand and made herself let go. “This is not a place for love meetings. The jungle holds dangers, more today than usual.”
“You are Wahotkonk Ohanzee, right? Your brother told me about you. What have you seen in the jungle today?”
“Go on to camp, it’s not safe here. The jungle moves,” the boy said, then ducked back into the brush. Like that he was gone. Jak looked down at Lira, then turned and started pulling her even faster than before. She was running still when they cleared the jungle and came within site of the camp. She heaved a sigh of relief even as twenty heads looked up and in their direction. Tell was one of them she discovered when he popped up and stood staring at her as they got closer. She yanked her wrist out of Jaks grip and walked the rest of the way to Tell on her own. Jak broke off from her route when it was clear where she was headed and went to find something to eat. Lira watched Tell watch Jak leave with incredulity, then turn to her with the same stunned look.
“Are you insane? Have you lost your mind? Lira, what the heck?”
“Lira! There you are. Chaska said one of his brothers saw you go into the jungle, more than two hours ago. What were you thinking? Didn’t you hear us say it was dangerous? Didn’t you hear us say the Sunuba live on the other side of that jungle?”
“I wanted to look, see for myself how dangerous they are. Good thing too. There are Vilis along with the Sunuba.”
“No, Chaska would have known.”
“Maybe he does, or maybe he never saw them.”
“Are you positive? Did they see you? Describe them.”
“I, well, I didn’t really see them. Jak did. I couldn’t really see anything, I was hiding.”
“That was idiocy Lira! How could you? With Jak!”
“Tell stop.”
“He could have hurt you, out there alone in the jungle!”
“He saved me!”
“Then he’s just making you complacent. There probably weren’t any Vilis at all, just some stupid trick he pulled.”
“A trick that had two people speaking Vilis? No, he was as scared as I was. Tell, just drop it.”
“Where is this Jak, I have questions for him. Lira, meet me in the pod, Tell, get this Jak and tell him to meet us there.”
Lira followed Shawn who was to angry to return any of the hellos thrown at them as they passed through camp. Landis was at the com-panel when they entered and Shawn ordered him out. Lira tried to look at anything but Shawn as they waited, but it was hard since they were alone.
“What else did you see? How big was their camp? How many Vilis?”
“I didn’t see the camp, just two Vilis in the jungle, that’s all. I was hiding in undergrowth, I couldn’t see anything.”
“That was really stupid Lira. Really stupid. What made you think you could succeed where Adin and Cade failed? And why?”
“I wanted to see them. See if they were this huge threat you projected them as.”
“Now you know.”
“Now I know there are Vilis too, but I saw nothing to make me believe they were a threat. More likely they were a couple of hunters who stumbled on us.”
Jak walked in looking bored and angry. He gave Shawn a put-upon look before he hopped up into what used to be his bank and stretched out leisurely.
“Lira said you saw something.”
“Something. Sure, I guess.”
“What did you see?”
“Something, just like you said.”
“Jak quit being an ass and tell him.”
“I did. I saw something. I admitted it. Can I go?”
“Who did you see?”
“Some people. That all? Can I go now?”
“Jak!”
“What Lira? You told him what we saw, why do I have to come in and repeat everything?”
“She said she couldn’t see, only you saw, describe them.”
“Two Vilis.”
“What did they look like?”
“Vilis,” Jak said speaking slowly.
“Describe what they were wearing.”
“Haven’t you ever seen a Vilis before?”
“Humor me.”
“Jak, just tell him, so we don’t have to suffer you any more.”
“Since you asked so nice. One was taller than average, the other just tall like usual. Both wore only their waistbands and paints, a hunting pattern. Hair was normal, waist length dreads, knotted up in hunting knots. They both carried four short spears with red feathers. Hunting colors, not green.”
“You know a lot about Vilis.”
“Jak of all trades,” he said with a sarcastic smile.
“Funny. That’s it?”
“You expected more?”
“You can go.”
“Oh you are very welcome,” he gave Shawn a mocking bow coupled with a rude gesture before he left, but Shawn was already ignoring him. Lira stood and waited, but Shawn was ignoring her to, in a way that made her feel like she didn’t exist.
Chaska burst in suddenly and Shawn finally looked up. “Wahotkonk has seen new people in the jungle. He describes men who are Vilis hunters.”
“So I heard.”
“He also saw Lira and a boy together, and the boy Cam following them. He described the one called Jak.”
“I know,” Shawn said dismissively.
“You were spying on me?” she asked Chaska incredulously. “And Cam followed me? And I wasn’t ‘with’ Jak, we bumped into each other out there, and then the Vilis, anyways, I don‘t have to explain myself. But for the record, I hate Jak!”
Chaska looked confused, but Shawn just smiled and shook his head slightly to Chaska. She knew that look. The ‘don’t ask’ look.
“I do not ‘spy’, Wahotkonk only told me what he saw, and I reported it.”
“Well, he was wrong.”
“Wahotkonk is not wrong. His eyes see well.”
“No, he assumed he saw something. I’m telling you he was wrong!”
“It matters little. Wahotkonk says they hunt the cat lizards. The Vilas have come from the far side of the lake, where they have a large camp. They are choosing leaders with a test. Kill the cat lizard with only the help of a second. They met with the Sunuba this day. Four teams of two hunt the jungle for the cat lizards. Wahotkonk says he could not understand their talk, but they seemed to reach a good understanding with each other. The Sunuba sent three men to meet the Vilis on the other side of the lake after the hunters left.”
“We have to do something. Find out what they are doing! Chaska, gather everyone here, call a meeting. Hurry!”
“I’ll be right back!” Lira said darting out the door before Shawn could object. She got outside and looked around hurriedly, but couldn’t see who she was looking for anywhere. She started towards their camp, but someone grabbed her arm and stopped her short.
“I still want to talk to you,” Tell said pulling her away from anyone who might overhear.
“Not now Tell, let me go!”
“No, you listen! I know you think that you’re hurting me, getting back at me, whatever, but Jak is dangerous.”
“Tell, don’t be ridiculous! I have no desire to get back at you or hurt you, or anything like that, now let me go! I have to hurry, it’s an emergency!”
Tell let her go, scowling at her and she took off towards their camp, but it was empty. She spun around and Cam was walking up from the opening in the wall.
“You!” she said angrily. “I’ll talk to you later!” The she took off again, leaving him with a perplexed look behind her.
“What are you doing?” Tell demanded as she passed him again. “Who are you looking for?”
“Where did Jak go?”
“Are you serious Lira? Are you freaking serious? You are! Go to hell Lira,” he said angrily and turned on his heal to walk away. Lira growled in frustration and ran up to Landis and Hollis who were talking to Cecelia and Brenna.
“Hey, any of you, do you know where Jak is?”
“Jak?”
“Why Lir?” Brenna asked in confusion.
“He’s at the stream, near the jungle. I passed him a minute ago,” Cam said coming up behind her.
“Stop following me!” she screamed turning to face him. She turned from his shocked expression and ran towards the opening in the wall and then headed for the stream. She could see Jak there, watching the jungle while he scooped water up in his hands and used it to slick his hair back out of his face. He turned to look at her before she was halfway there and grinned his smart-aleck grin.
“No more jungle trips for you,” Chaska said catching hold of her wrist from behind. “Shawn said to bring you back to the pod, everyone is waiting.”
“Wait! Stop! Just a second Chaska, I wasn’t going to the jungle, I just have to ask someone something first. I will be only a second, I promise.”
He let her go with a frown at Jak and she hurried to the stream.
“Now what is this pleasure owed to? Twice in one day, people will talk.”
“The Vilis and Sunuba are meeting, talking.”
“So?”
“So, we need to know what they are saying. Can I tell them you can speak Vilis?”
“You asked? Surprised you didn’t just tell them and let them try and make me. The answer is no. I’m not going anywhere near that camp again.”
“Oh come on! No one else knows what they are saying! Even half the conversation is better than nothing, come on!”
“Actually, Vilis and Sunuban both speak Loquax. Two of over eleven races who picked up a common language between them.”
“I.. I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you wouldn’t.”
“How come you know so much about them?”
“Your escort is looking perturbed.”
“Jak, please help. It could stop a premature war if they are only talking to each other for mundane things. Shawn will demand a preemptive strike if he convinces the others that they are meeting to join forces against us.”
“How is that my problem? I wasn’t chosen to pick up arms against anyone, remember?”
“If they decide to attack, then every able bodied person will be thrust into it.”
“Lira, we must go!” Chaska called and Lira wanted to scream.
“Why are you so horrible?” she demanded and Jak grinned at her again.
“Have fun at your meeting Little Song.”
Lira stalked back to Chaska and he turned as she walked past him and walked with her. Just outside the pod, he stopped her. “You should gain your bearings first. We will have a tough fight inside, your mind should not be elsewhere, not on him especially.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
Chaska nodded, but did not look convinced. They entered together and everyone looked at them
“Lira, do not take off that way again. This is twice you have shirked responsibilities.”
“Shirked! I have in no way shirked anything, I was seeing about a solution to our biggest problem! And as for earlier, someone has to actually look and see what the Sunuban are doing. A responsible leader, who didn’t shirk his responsibilities would have already done that and determined the actual threat instead of just guessing and thinking with your muscles and testosterone!”
Gunnar laughed out loud, a full bellied laugh, but everyone else was grimly silent as Shawn glared down at her. “She has fire this girl. Some day when she grows up and gives up the sword, she will make a fine mate.”
“The sword is not her peoples way Gunnar,” Chaska said softly. “Your words, if she understood them, would give her insult.”
“They are not meant that way. If she is not a sword maiden, why does she shear the twelve’s matronly gift?”
“It is not because she dislikes men.”
“What are you two talking about? If you mean my hair, I keep it short so the machinery I work with doesn’t yank it out of my head! Are we done talking about that now?”
“Do not be angry. My own sister Margareta is a sword maiden.”
“I don’t care if your own sister is the prime minister of Bardoo! How can you even broach such inane things when we are here to discuss something as important as putting seventy children’s life’s on the line?”
“You need a way to vent your anger,” Chaska said patting her shoulder gently. “I have methods that will serve you well, though Gunnar may become convinced you are a sword maiden after all.”
Gunnar grinned, softening his perfectly sculpted features and Chaska’s smile warmed his whole face.
“What I need, is people to talk to who aren’t complete idiots!”
“Talking to yourself is definitely out then,” Dmitri said with his sarcastic grin.
Lira was ready to scream. “Don’t any of you care why we are here?”
“Enough, all of you,” Shawn said through gritted teeth. “Vilis are here, we all know this now. We’ve had two reports, two sightings, by two different sources. They are joining with the Sunubans. We have to..”
“They spoke to the Sunubans, a hunting party who didn’t talk about us at all so far as could be determined, just the lizard things they were hunting.”
“Don’t interupt me!” Shawn shouted angrily.
“We all have equal voice here right? We were all voted into this position by our people, not one of us voted you supreme commander over everyone!”
“We all know the only reason you are here is because your whole crew hated your brother so much and only wanted to piss him off!”
“That’s not true! They all voted for who they thought would best represent them! Not like you who has your crew brainwashed with following orders and doing as you say!”
“You are both making yourselves ugly with this fight,” Chaska said sternly.
“I don’t care! If we have an equal voice here, then let his dictatorship come to an end!”
‘Chaska, she needs a walk.”
“No, I need you to listen for once! You are so set on fighting with your ‘enemy’, you haven’t stopped once to think about the consequences! If the Sunubans and Vilis were dumped here too, and they are kids like us, then it’s likely they have no desire to follow in their fathers footsteps and continue a ridiculous war no one even knows the reason behind anymore! Let’s be reasonable and not just jump into something because it’s ‘what we have always done’. We have a chance here to start something new! Something better! At least consider trying to talk to them.”
“How? No one here knows Sunuban, or Vilis.”
“I can find a way, if you just let me try.”
“I’m tempted to let you just so you would be removed from this council. I know it’s suicide though, and I couldn’t live with your murder on my mind, so no.”
“One chance, one envoy. I will take Cameron with me, and Jak! They can protect me.”
“Why Jak? Why not Chaska or Diwali, someone who can fight?”
“Jak is more expendable.”
“He’s also more likely to start a fight with them!”
“Don’t be ridiculous Oren.”
“I’m not!”
“I say we let her go,” said Adin. “Once she figures out how dangerous they are, then we can be done with the arguing about it.”
“The girl is brave enough. I think she will return,” Gunnar said crossing his arms. “But she will not like the news she gets. Sunuban do not negotiate.”
“Let her go, who cares?” said Nick, scowling at nothing.
“Her neck,” offered Tad looking up at Shawn, who was still glaring at Lira. He was beautiful even when he glared.
“Fine. Go in the morning, early.”




Chapter 3: The Fall
Lira left the meeting feeling slightly sick to her stomach. How was she going to convince Jak to help her? She knew ordering him would do little good, he would just laugh at her then dig his heals in deeper. She decided on a different approach as she set out to find him again. He was no longer by the stream, or at the little camp, or by Maya and Annise who were making dinner. She finally decided to ask, despite what it would make people think. “Colt, have you seen Jak?”
“Yeah, he was playing cards with some boys over on the other side of the wall. Back on the mountain side.”
“Thanks Colt, umm, if anyone asks, I didn’t ask, okay?”
“All right Lira. Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Oren has been telling everyone that you like him. Me and Hollis have a bet because Hollis doesn’t believe him, but why would he lie about something that would be so easy to find out, right?”
“I’m not sure Colt, but you owe Hollis whatever it is you bet him.”
“Are you serious?”
“I haven’t spoke two words to Oren outside of the meetings.”
“I should have known! Ahh! Hollis knew! He just bet me to get my nature book!”
“Sorry Colt.”
“Couldn’t you pretend, just long enough to mention to Hollis that you like Oren?”
“Not for a million pecs.”
“Fine,” he said poutily and Lira left him there to find Jak. He was sitting in a small circle with a group of boys who she mostly didn’t recognize. Adam was there, scowling at the cards he held, but they were otherwise strangers to her. Jak looked up at her, then rolled his eyes and laid his cards down with a sigh.
“What now Little Song?”
“Don’t call me that. I just wanted to let you know, I’m going back in the morning.”
“So? Tell your brother, or your shadow.”
“Tell isn’t speaking to me, he thinks… well, he thinks something stupid, but anyways, he isn’t talking to me. Cam, I yelled at him, told him to quit following me.”
“So you are going alone. Good luck with that. Maybe your new nature friend will go with you.”
“Chaska can’t go, he has to be here to train the soldiers. Diwali too.”
“If I were you I’d put off going then.”
“I can’t. If I don’t come back tomorrow afternoon with good news, Shawn will start a war with them.”
“Hey, what is this? You are all supposed to be working on the wall! It has to go up! Is this your doing?” Shawn demanded of Jak as he walked up to their little group.
“No one here had their arm twisted to take a break, if that is what you really mean.”
“Gambling isn’t allowed in camp.”
“Good thing we were outside of camp then, huh?”
“All of you, get back to work, this wall has to be up before nightfall.”
Everyone got up and headed back to the wall, grumbling. Jak kept his seat, slowly picking up his cards and taking his time with putting them away.
“Lira, you need to really think about this. Walking in there is suicide when we already know their answer. Just let us handle this, you don’t have to have in part in it.”
“I do, because I am against it. I won’t stand aside Shawn, what you want to do is wrong. You can’t base an attack on ‘I think they might eventually get around to attacking us’. That’s just insane.”
“Have you ever been around them? Do you know what they are like first hand?”
“Have you?” Jak asked lazily, leaning back on his elbows to look up at Shawn.
“This isn’t your conversation. Go help the others with the wall.”
“Have you?” Jak persisted.
“I know more about the Sunuban than anyone here!” Shawn said viciously. “I watched my father die from wounds they gave him, and then my oldest brother, then my mother, who died from pure grief! No one here knows them like I do!”
“You mean no one here hates them like you do,” Jak said quietly. “How many Sunubans died in front of their mates from wounds your father and brother gave them? How grieved were their widows? Their sons? It takes two to fight a war.”
“What do you know? It’s easy to talk when you have never been there!”
“I guess it is,” Jak said standing up and walking away from the now trembling Shawn.
“Go if you want then, and take him with you,” Shawn said angrily, turning away from her. “I hope they kill you both!”
Lira watched him walk away in stunned silence. Tears welled up in her eyes and she turned away from the camp and ran out into the tall grass. She stopped just as the camp was hidden and sat down hard on the ground to sob alone. Why were men so impossible? Why couldn’t he just understand? Why did he have to hate so much? She cried until the sunlight was almost to dim to see by and finally sat up, scrubbing her arm across her eyes. She started to stand and noticed a movement close to her. Cam standing up from the tall grass, didn’t surprise her at all. He said nothing, just watched her as she brushed herself off.
“I asked you to quit following me.”
“No.”
“No?!”
“I wouldn’t follow you if you didn’t keep walking off into dangerous places.”
“I don’t need a protector Cam.”
“No? What if those men had seen you and Jak today? They had weapons, and they walked almost right over you.”
“What could you do against two men with spears?”
“Boys. Boys with spears, who didn’t even know how to hold them. They would never have seen me coming.”
“Fine. Did you tell Shawn you would help him train men?”
“I told him to let you decide. He was unhappy with that answer, but I would not give him another.”
“I don’t get you Cam.”
“Nothing to get.”
“I have to go back through the jungle tomorrow, to the Sunuban camp. Will you come?”
“Yes, I will be there. If you want to convince Jak to help, use something that appeals to him.”
“Like what?”
“Something he wants.”
“What does he like?”
“Vice, mostly. He watches a girl a lot, when he thinks no one sees.”
“Bailee.”
“No, everyone else watches her.”
“You too?”
“I watch a different girl. Chaska watches you, so does the Amacitian, but not like Chaska does. Chaska feels a kinship, he thinks you are in need of guidance from a bigger brother. The Amacitian, he wants something from you. He see’s a challenge in you, but I don’t understand what. He has spoken of you to his brother and his friend in his own camp.”
“You have eavesdropped on them? What did he say?”
Cam shrugged. “Nothing I understood. He wants you to grow your hair. That’s most of what I got.”
“He said something like that today. Who else have you eavesdropped on?”
“Everyone I guess. I am there when they talk, and I happen to hear what they say. I was never there to listen.”
“What kinds of things?”
“The Illis leader thinks he should remove you from the council.”
“Illis? You mean Dmitri?”
“I did not hear his name. He thinks you argue to much, for the sake of arguing, and you are bad tempered. His kind, Illis, they believe as the Vilis believe. Women are to be possessed, they are not independent and equal. I think he just resents your position and authority.”
“I knew I didn’t like him for a reason.”
“But you see something pleasant when you look at him.”
“W-what?”
“You see him as attractive. Not as much as when you look at Chaska, or the Amacitian, or especially Shawn, but you like what you see when you look at him.”
“You notice all these things by just watching everyone?” she asked, her face coloring with embarrassment.
“I learned a long time ago to read people faces, expressions. It helps to anticipate what they will do in a fight.”
“Oh. Well, maybe you could not talk about it to people? Things you see about me?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know, people gossip a lot.”
“And you always see me in these groups, gossiping with them?”
“No, Cam, I didn’t mean that, I just..”
“Here you are,” Jak said stepping through the tall grass next to her. “Figured you’d ended up out here when I saw Shawn turn up and not you. Tell is looking for you and Cam, but I didn’t say where you were. Returning the favor. He’s convinced you two went back into the jungle though and wants to go after you, even in the dark.”
Lira sighed and nodded. “Thanks. Jak?”
“How many times do I have to say no?”
“The girl you like, what if I talked to her, got you a date with her?”
“Date? Here? Very funny Song. I don’t want a date anyways. Only one thing I want from a girl. Means to an ends, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Well, what if I talked to her?”
“Why would I need you to talk to her? You think I have some kind of problem talking to girls? It’s something you noticed about me, my inability to go for what I want?”
“No..”
“Or, you think you can bribe me with this paltry excuse for what you think of as a good deed, to go with you in the morning?”
“Well, if not the girl, what then?”
“You couldn’t get me the girl anyways. That’s all on me. You know, I can’t think of a single thing I want that you could get me.”
“What about a weapon? And training along with it?”
“Maybe I have one. And say I do, we can assume I don’t need to be trained in it’s use.”
“Fine. Fine Jak. Just say what you want then.”
Jak looked over his shoulder at Cam who was watching him guardedly. “If I go tomorrow, why don’t we just say you owe me one. No matter what it is, when the time comes, and I ask for it, you do it.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know yet. But that’s the deal. No stipulations, no backing out, your word that when I say the word, you jump.”
“Don’t do it Lira,” Cam said taking her arm and pulling her to a stop.
Jak gave Cam a smile that wasn’t congenial at all and stepped in front of her, close enough she could smell the leather of his coat again. “One thing. That’s it.”
“How can I agree if I don’t know what it is? I mean, I wouldn’t hurt anyone, or..”
“No, nothing like that, just something for me. When the day comes.”
“Lira don’t.”
“All right Jak. One thing, that’s it.”
“Deal.”
“Lira it’s you. You’re the girl!” Cam said turning her to face him. He actually looked fearful.
“Me?”
“See you in the morning Song,” Jak said smiling to himself and leaving her and Cam just outside of the still unfinished gates.
“You’re the girl he watches. Like he has some sort of secret only he knows, and you are at the heart of it.”
“It doesn’t mean anything..”
“Only that he has plans for you, and we both know they aren’t good. He’s smarter than he lets on, he’s not who he says he is at all.”
“It’s to late now, besides, I need him.”
“Why? You had a plan before you knew he spoke their language, what was wrong with it?”
“I couldn’t be sure they understood what I was about before they reacted. Cam, you worry to much. Tell, as angry as he is now, would never let him hurt me.”
“Tell?”
“Or you. Ahh. Come on, before Tell sends people into the jungle after us.” She turned and hurried through the gates, letting him follow in her wake. She was having trouble trying to digest everything that had just transpired. What plans did Jak have for her, and what sort of deal had she just made?
“Lira!” She turned towards her name, though she didn’t recognize the voice.
“What?”
“Come here a second.”
“Who’s there?” she asked, trying to see into the darkness.
“It’s me, Dmitri.”
Lira approached the voice cautiously, half fearful until she was close enough to see that he had people with him, including two girls. “Lira, these are my friends, fellow Illisians. Alexi, Konstantin and Yuri. The girls are Tatiana and Natalya.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said trying not to stare at the girls after what Cam had said about the Illis beliefs.
“Sit with us a moment. Alexi wanted to hear some of your views.”
Alexi and Konstantin both laughed, a nasty laugh that sent shivers up her spine.
“I can’t, my crew is looking for me, I have to go.”
“A minute!” Dmitri said jumping up. He caught her arm as she started to back away. “Alexi and I have a wager.”
“Another one?”
“What?”
“Nothing, what do you want Dmitri?”
“Alexi says he thinks you have never had a kiss. Me, I think you’d rather get your kisses from Tatiana there. So who is it then? Me or pretty Tati?”
“Neither, let go Dmitri, you’re hurting me!”
“Oh come on now, be fair. It won’t hurt my feelings if it’s Tati, we just want to watch.”
“Tell!” she screamed, and Dmitri shoved her away from him and onto the ground. Tell ran up just as she was getting up and he helped her. Half the crew was behind him, including Jak.
“What happened?”
“I asked for a kiss and she started yelling.”
“He wouldn’t let me go Tell,” she said trying to find words. Shawn walked up just as she bursted out in tears for the second time that day.
“What’s wrong with her?” Shawn demanded from Dmitri.
“I asked for a kiss. I didn’t know she hated men so much.”
“Pig!” she screamed at him, which brought laughter from him and the boys with him.
“Lira, go to the pod, find your bed. Stay inside till daybreak.”
“That’s it? I have to go hide from people in my own camp?”
“You shouldn’t be out by yourself at night.”
“So it’s my fault for being alone,” she demanded, just as she remembered she hadn’t been alone. Where was Cam? Why hadn’t he done something?
“You are making to much out of nothing.”
“Nothing? He was accosting me!”
“I was teasing her, that’s all.”
“No he wasn’t, he was hurting me, look at my arm!”
“Look at her. If I were going to accost any woman in this camp, it wouldn’t be her. There are plenty of pretty girls to choose from.”
“You did it out of hate, not want! You can’t stand that as a woman I hold as much power as you!”
“You seem like the one with the personal grudge Lira. Go back to the pod, wait for me there.” Lira knew it was no use arguing. Shawn hated her to much to side with her no matter how right she was. She gathered what was left of her dignity and pulled away from Tell who still looked confused. They had attracted a pretty large audience, but she managed to hold her head up as she walked to the pod. Jak stepped close enough to whisper as she passed.
“Did he?”
“No,” she answered, half expecting him to say more, but he just walked off in the opposite direction and she walked alone to the pod. No one was there when she went in, though all the beds but one were full of peoples things. It wasn’t her old bed, which made her a little angry. Instead of pressing the issue, she just sat on the empty bed, wondering if it would be all right to go and get her things. She never had to decide as Tell walked in with her small bag and bedclothes.
“Hey. Where were you all afternoon? No one could find you. We though you and Cam went into the jungle. Have you seen Cam?”
“I was just sitting right out there in the tall grass. I wanted to be alone, to think.”
“I don’t like what you are doing tomorrow Lira.”
“Good thing I don’t need your approval then.”
“Don’t you know how dangerous it is? Why can’t you just leave well enough alone?”
“Because well enough isn’t good enough. If Shawn has his way, people are going to die, lots of people, all of them just kids.”
“But what if he’s right? What if we need to strike before they do? Keep them from getting to strong?”
“This pod is for the leaders,” Shawn said to Tell as he walked in.
“I was bringing Lira her things since she can’t walk around the camp at night anymore. Should I warn the rest of the girls to stay close together, or was this demonstration just for Lira’s benefit?”
“You can go now.”
Tell left and Lira watched Shawn, wondering about what Tell had said. Had it been a show? Something to scare her? Keep her manageable? Shawn sat at the com-panel and sent out a sweep. While he waited for it to come back, he spun the chair around to face her. He no longer looked angry, he just stared at her as if trying to read her mind.
“I didn’t put Dmitri up to that,” he said finally.
“But it was convenient enough for you that you didn’t punish him either.”
“Maybe. I’m not above admitting that I’d like to see you taken down a rung or two.”
“Why? What have I done to you?”
“Everything was fine here, before your pod hit. I should have seen it in you right away. You are good at getting your way, good at convincing people to see what is just so right to you. You are smart, you have good ideas, I’ll admit that. But I really wish you had never landed. Things were so much better when I didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for every little thing.”
“Every little thing or your personal war?”
“It isn’t just my war. Our people have been fighting the Sunuban for decades, for a reason. You have to be convinced, so go get convinced. By tomorrow night, you’ll be ready to start training the soldiers yourself.”
The com-panel beeped that it was finished with the sweep and he turned to look at it. “Hey, come here a second. Landis said the white dots were human DNA, but what are these other things, they look blue.”
“Blue is non-human DNA, usually a cold blooded animal, large for the scan to catch it. See that, the red one there? That’s a warm blooded animal, also large.”
“Where at exactly?”
“We’re here, in the center, so that is back towards the mountain. The blue ones are all in the jungle. Those white dots, the human DNA, that must be their camp. About two hours walk then.”
“How accurate is this scan?”
“Not very. A small person would get by undetected. Look, do you think there are seventy one white dots here in close? There are maybe forty or fifty. The smallest twenty kids in our camp are the size that pass under this scan.”
“Like you, probably.”
“Like me.”
“All those blue dots, they are all creatures bigger than you?”
“How big were those lizards?”
“Bigger than you I guess.”
“See, you can fix the scan, key it to only human DNA, then it will pick up every human, but no animals.”
“Can you do that?”
“What about the lizards?”
“They haven’t ever come after us, we just stumbled on them the day we were bringing Clays crew back from their shuttle out in the jungle.”
“Yeah, here.” Lira changed the scan to human DNA and sent out the sweep. When she looked back at Shawn, he was staring at her.
“In a few years, if you let your hair grow, I think you might be really pretty.”
“Uhh..”
“How old are you anyways?”
“Fourteen. Fifteen in two months.”
“You look younger, but you act older.”
“Uhh..”
“I can leave if you two want a minute alone,” Gage said sarcastically from the door. He walked in with Tad in his wake and Lira quickly stepped away from the com-panel and Shawn. She hadn’t realized she had been so close as she was showing him the panel. Shawn stood up and walked past her as if she didn’t exist and sat down on the edge of what was once Tells bed.
“Tomorrow, when she gets back, Lira will teach you both to use the com-panel. We should all know everything about it in case of an emergency.”
“Whatever. Hey, someone said one of the Illis just lost their whole stash gambling.”
“All of it?”
“Everything on their shuttle.”
“Who was it?”
“Some kid.”
“Find out who, gambling isn’t allowed here.”
“Raegan said it wasn’t here. They had a game out in the tall grass. The boy just came back and told Dmitri what he’d done. Dmitri was pissed, but he ordered it all packed up and given to the other kid.”
“Illis are weird about honor among men.”
“And men only,” Lira said in a low voice as she sat at the com-panel.
“Anyways, this other kid, he sent an invitation for Dmitri to come win it all back.”
“Did he go?”
“Yeah. We left when he did.”
“Idiot.”
The panel beeped and Lira looked over the scan results. “Shawn?”
“What?”
“Do you have someone out in the jungle? Two someone’s?”
Shawn came and looked over her shoulder. “Where?”
“There,” she said pointing to two faint dots in the center of the jungle.
“Maybe it’s Chaska’s brothers.”
“Or the Vilis hunters still? Would they hunt past dark?”
“How should I know?”
“It’s to dark to see, so why would anyone be out there?”
“Keep sending sweeps, make sure they aren’t coming closer.”
“What if it’s Chaska’s brothers?”
“Just do it!”
Lira punched the button, irritated at him once again. “It’s two dots. Even if it’s the hunters, what can two do against our whole camp?”
“Spies can do plenty of harm. Tad, go get Chaska, run, Gage find Adin, and if you see anyone else, send them here.”
Tad and Gage left at a full sprint and Lira watched Shawn scowl at the wall. “We need a signal, a way to call in all the leaders quickly in an emergency.”
“The camp isn’t that big, just call them.”
“Look at the last scan! At least twenty people are outside the gates in the grassland, gambling!”
Lira looked, and he was right. There were a full two dozen people out there in the field. “You can set up a signal tomorrow. Tonight you are over-reacting. It’s just two people, maybe our own.”
“It should have been done already. If I hade been thinking, it would have!”
“Be easy. Look, there, see? The dots haven’t moved.”
“Send another.”
“Already did.”
“Everything all right?” Chaska asked ducking through the door, followed by Tad.
“Are all your brothers in camp?”
“No, Wahotkonk followed the boy called Cameron into the jungle. Nashoba and Hohots are watching a game out in the grass field.”
“See? It’s Cam and Wahotkonk.”
“What are they doing?”
“My brother says the boy moves well in the jungle, and is aware that he follows him. High praise. Do not worry about the boy, or my brother.”
“I gave specific instructions that no one go into the jungle without telling me.”
“I tell you now, Wahotkonk travels the jungle from the first light to the last. Even in the darkness now. A word from you will not keep him from it.”
“What about a word from you?”
“When there becomes a reason to give that word, I will give it, and he may or may not listen. Is this all you needed?”
“Call in everyone from out on the plain.”
“They still haven’t moved,” Lira announced as she hit the button again.
“Why would they just be sitting there?”
“Perhaps they talk. Wahotkonk wished words with him.”
Lira turned and frowned up at Shawn. Was he always so prone to overreaction? Maybe he was tired, or the whole thing was getting to him.
“Did you send another one?”
“Yes Shawn.”
“Keep sending them.”
“You already said that.”
“If that was all you needed, I will go see to my brothers in the field.”
“Thanks Chaska,” Lira said for Shawn, who was now pacing the small space.
“Maybe they are hurt!” He said suddenly. “Human DNA is DNA whether it’s alive or dead, or hurt, or whatever.”
“Or maybe they are talking.”
“Here,” Shawn said moving next to her and switching the sweep back to the inclusive sweep.
“Funny, you couldn’t do that a minute ago.”
“I was lying. See if there is anything close to them.”
“It will be hard. Cam is only slightly bigger than me, and Wahotkonk is almost as small as Cam. They won’t show up.”
“See if anything else does! Watch that spot!”
“The sweeps are ranged different. The scale will be different and they will be in a different spot, but I think I can gage close enough to the same spot.”
“Do it then!”
“Patience. I can only go as fast as the scan does.”
“Why would he go off alone like that?”
“Cam does almost everything alone.”
“You should..” Shawn cut off when Gage came back in with Gunnar and James behind him.
“Nick was getting Dmitri and Adin from the field,” Gage said sitting next to Tad.
“What’s wrong?” James asked.
“What about Clay?” Shawn asked as Lira answered James. “Nothing yet, we’ll see in a second.”
“Clay might be over with Adin at the game, I didn’t see him.”
“I suppose you must have overlooked Oren?” Lira asked frostily.
“No, I told him to come. He was packing up pieces of a stratagm board.”
The panel beeped and Shawn was looking over her shoulder almost as soon as she was able to look down at it. “They were about here,” she said pointing to the screen. “Nothing there, nothing near it.”
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t before. How long have they been there? Switch it back to human, monitor them.”
“What is it? Is someone coming?”
“No, we don’t think so, but two of our people are in the jungle and they aren’t moving.”
“Chaska’s brother practically lives in the jungle. It’s all he’s been doing,” Gunnar said confused. “Why’s it a big deal?”
“They haven’t moved at all, I think something is wrong.”
“They who?”
“Cameron, the little red headed boy on my crew and Wahotkonk.”
“Cameron, the ProCom kid Paul was going on about?”
Adin came in then with Clay, Dmitri and Nick in the rear.
“Yeah, same kid.”
“What’s this about?” Dmitri asked looking around the room. His gaze stopped on Lira and he grinned and winked. She spun away from him and back to the panel.
“Shawn thinks that two boys are in trouble in the jungle,” Gunnar said slowly, as if he were having trouble with the logic of it all. Lira felt he wasn’t alone, she saw no logic in it either.
“What boys? Why are they in the jungle?”
“The ProCom kid and Chaska’s brother.”
“Paul?”
“No, the other one, the one Paul was on about.”
“Oh… So? If any two people can take care of themselves in the jungle, it’s them two.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Which one is he again?”
“The red haired boy who came yesterday. The small one, not the medic kid.”
“Oh yeah, ok, I think I remember him. Quiet kid, stayed in the back.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s the problem with them?”
“They haven’t moved,” Shawn answered irritably.
“Why not?” Clay asked blinking.
“We don’t know.”
“Chaska says Wahotkonk wanted to talk to Cam, he thinks they are talking. I think that is the likely answer too. Oh… No, they still haven’t stirred.”
“So, that scan there, is picking up two people in the jungle, and that’s what this is all about?” Gunnar said irritably. “How do we know who it is exactly?”
“They are the ones unaccounted for in camp, and Chaska said Wahotkonk followed Cam into the jungle right after sunset.”
“But this Cam has been missing since early afternoon, I heard Tell and the others on your crew looking for him.” Gunnar said crossing his arms.
“No, he was with me then, out in the grasslands.”
“What was in the grasslands?”
“Peace.”
“Does this sound stupid to anyone else?” Gunnar asked turning to everyone else.
“I wasn’t going to be the first to say it,” Dmitri said throwing himself into his bed. Lira was glad to see it was next to Shawn’s and far from her own.
“What do you want us to do Shawn?” Adin asked looking lost. “Get some torches and go after them?”
“None of you seem at all concerned!”
“It’s just that you choose the two boys who need it the least to be concerned over,” Gunnar said moving to the back of the pod, shoving his bags to the side to make room to sit down. His bed was directly across from hers she noticed.
Oren came in then, his arms wrapped around a wooden box. He shoved it under the bed closest to the door and looked around sheepishly, but no one besides Lira even noticed him.
“If you decide on this war, the danger will be real to every person in this camp.”
“Don’t start with me Lira,” Shawn said angrily.
She turned back to the panel with a sigh.
“What do you want us to do Shawn?” Tad asked rolling his eyes and throwing himself back on his bed.
“It’s to dark to go after them,” James said climbing up into his bed next to Oren’s.
“The only people qualified to go into the jungle at night are already there,” Gunnar said shaking his head. “No one is going after them, they’ll come back as soon as they are done with whatever they are doing. We should all get some sleep. Shawn?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know the Sunubans are going to move on us though.”
“Not tonight. You heard Chaska’s report, they are building houses.” Lira said gently. “Hey look, see? They are closer now, they are coming back.”
Shawn turned to Adin, “Tell the guards, and tell Chaska. I want to talk to both of them as soon as they get back.”
Adin left and Shawn started pacing again. Everyone but Lira and Shawn found their beds and started putting their things up or talking.
“How much did you end up losing?” Tad asked Dmitri from across the pod.
“Yuri lost it, he lost everything. The boy was cheating, I am sure, but I can’t prove it. Others from his crew were there, all backing him and playing. They helped him win.”
“From what I understand, his crew doesn’t care much for him. Right Lira?”
“What? Who?”
“Jak. No one on your crew likes him.”
“That’s not true. Maya and Annise like him well enough.”
Oren laughed, but no one else got the joke. Lira didn’t care, she was feeling happily vindicated. Jak had cheated Dmitri out of something important to him, she didn’t know what, but she didn’t care. ‘What’ mattered not at all.
“The new cooks? The one is pretty enough, if she would just smile. Why do they like him and no one else does?”
“They have similar temperaments.”
“Somehow I don’t see that. Jak seems arrogant and brooding. Like your brother.”
“Tell wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.”
“Two people who are so much alike rarely get along.”
Lira didn’t answer. She was beginning to get annoyed with Gunnars prying jabs. “They are more than halfway back, from where they were,” she told Shawn, but if he heard her, he gave no sign.
“So what will you and your boys do now Dmitri?”
“Find a way to get it all back! Or learn how to make new. He cannot want it all for himself. One boy cannot drink so much. He will trade it.”
“What are you talking about?” Oren asked scratching the nest on his head.
Gage leaned across his bed with an evil grin, “Dmitri had a whole shuttle full of Vinum.”
“My dad drank that sometimes, said it was the strongest liquor that the Illis made.”
“You are confused. Vinum is the strongest liquor made. That we Illis make it is just a bonus for us.”
“Oh, is it good?”
“Good? It tastes like rocket fuel! It isn’t supposed to taste good. What matters is how it makes you feel.”
“What does Jak want with all of it?”
“Who knows? Drink it probably. He looks like the type to enjoy a drink as much as we do. Hey boy, that game you have there, what is it?”
“Stratagm,” Oren answered, watching Dmitri warily.
“How does it work?”
“It’s like a little war on a playing mat, with two opponents.”
“We have something like that in Illis. Are you good?”
“Pretty good.”
“Could you beat the boy Jak?”
“Sure, but I doubt he would play me, especially not with a wager on it.”
“No? He’s good at cards, but what is he bad at?”
“I don’t know Jak very well, you’d have to talk to him.”
“Or one of those girls. The cooks. They would know?”
“Maybe.”
Dmitri nodded, happy enough with what little he had gleaned from Oren and turned over on his back.
Lira watched the sweep a couple more times while everyone else talked behind her, trying to tune out what they were saying. Once the dots that were Cameron and Wahotkonk got close enough, they blended in with the others and she couldn’t tell where they were anymore. Before the next sweep came through, Chaska was bringing both of the boys through the door to the pod. Shawn stood up straight and turned his full scowl on them when they entered.
“You two were in the jungle, after I told everyone to stay in camp!”
“You never gave express orders, you only said that you thought it was a good idea, and to tell you,” Chaska said, immediately speaking up in their defense.
“And I have never heard of any such rule,” Cameron said returning Shawn’s scowl in kind. “I am from Bardoo, where citizens are free peoples, with free choice. Unless I am mistaken, you are from the same place. When did this planet become your realm? I am sure we did not elect you to the position of king. You’ll need a bigger force at your back to become dictator. When, as a council, you decide what rules to put into force, I will abide by them. Until then, no one here answers to you.”
Lira could have hugged him.
“Look at him, little big for his britches!” Gunnar said with a laugh.
“You worried everyone here, needlessly by simply not telling anyone where you were going!”
“We answer to you now? I answer to only myself and Lira Denno. When I cast a ballot with your name on it, I will answer to you.”
As much as Lira loved hearing Shawn put in his place, she knew it was only making things worse.
“All right Cam, thanks for reporting back here. I will talk to you about this further tomorrow. Why don’t you go back to camp with the others? Remind Tell about setting a guard on the wall by our group?”
Cam nodded at her, then left. Wahotkonk stirred, looked at Chaska, who nodded at him, then he left too. Shawn turned and faced the wall for several tense seconds and everyone looked at each other, waiting for something to happen.
“Tomorrow, Lira, when you return, if you return, we as councilors will have a meeting. It’s all well and good to say we are a council, but sometimes prompt answers need to be given, with no time to deliberate. One among us has to lead, and they all have to know who their leader is. Nine separate leaders saying different things won’t work.”
“I don’t agree. As a council we should all have equal voice. We can discuss and deliberate together about what needs to happen here at camp. I further think we need to have a re-election. Everyone voting for twelve seats. Not one person from every ship, some ships or pods, don’t have anyone qualified to lead.” She avoided looking at James and Nick. “Every position voted for, twelve separate ballots, no one supreme leader.”
“I agree with this,” Chaska said straightening up and crossing his arms. “I say we make this announcement to all, and those who wish to make themselves leaders step up to be voted on.”
“We should also think about those we are calling our soldiers. We shouldn’t choose a certain amount from each ship, simply put foreword those capable. Girls as well as men,” Gunnar said stepping closer to the center. “I saw the group yesterday, there are boys in that mess that my sisters could break in half. Gender should not be an issue at all, only ability.”
“No,” said Dmitri. “No more women in any sort of authority position!”
“You are damaged in this way,” Chaska said scowling at Dmitri.
“I agree with Gunnar,” said Oren, and Lira nodded.
“We have a group set, do we really need to change it now?” Shawn asked irritably.
“It isn’t as if they have begun their training yet. It would be easy enough to just change it to a group of more capable people. We need to stop going by crews and start doing this as one community.” Lira said, willing Shawn to stop being so bullheaded. “And once we get a good solid group together, we need to set a leader among them.”
“Their trainers would lead them.”
“Trainers don’t always lead well. These two things do not always go hand in hand. Lira speaks correctly, one among their group should command.”
“Hey, Tell was training to be a security officer, and I have talked to him, no one knows more about military rules and maneuvers than he does!” Oren said excitedly.
“It’s true, Tell was top of his class,” Lira said, glad it was Oren who had suggested him.
“There is no one on my ship who was not born to be a soldier, and we did not learn it from a book or a school. We learned it by living it. We are Amacitian, and none alive know battle like we do.”
“I would put any of my brothers against yours,” Chaska said, seeing Gunnar’s statement as a challenge.
“Enough! It doesn’t matter who can fight better than who, what matters is how well we can fight together. With such a small group, only one can lead. We should let them, after a week of training together, put forth who they think should lead, and let them vote on who they think it should be. It is each other they will have to count on, not us. It should be their choice.”
“Lira speaks sense. We should do as she suggests.”
“Fine. Anything else you want to change Lira?” Shawn asked acidly.
“That was not my suggestion, to change the soldiers up.”
“We need no more fighting amongst ourselves,” Oren said and Chaska nodded. Everyone but Gunnar and Dmitri just watched the whole scene in dumbfounded silence. Gunnar and Dmitri just looked amused.
Shawn didn’t respond to Oren, instead he pretended the whole comment had never happened. “We will have this new vote then. One vote though, and the twelve highest votes are in. First highest has say though, when time demands no debate.”
“A first among equals? I can live with that,” Gunnar said nodding, and Dmitri shrugged his consent as well. Lira sighed and saw Oren looking to her to see what she would say. She was to tired with the whole thing to argue anymore. It would be out of her hands soon enough anyway, since she didn’t plan on putting her name foreword to be a leader. She nodded and Oren followed her example. Chaska, scowling, did not answer one way or the other, but everyone else agreed, only Adin enthusiastically.
“Are we done?” Chaska demanded and Shawn waved a dismissal at him. Chaska went to his bed and sat on the edge of it, pulling out a librilio and angrily stabbing and slashing at it with a stylus. Everyone else drifted away from Shawn as well, some in pairs, whispering together, some serious, and some joking. Lira watched Shawn warily as she moved to her own bed, but he was ignoring her as thoroughly as he was ignoring everyone else. After a few minutes of staring out the front window, he turned and ducked out the door. The pod was quiet for a moment, then everyone went back to talking and whispering. She looked around and saw Gunnar and Dmitri’s heads close together in a very conspiratorial whisper. When Dmitri saw her looking he blew a kiss at her and she quickly looked away, her cheeks burning. Chaska was staring at the wall now, the librilio forgotten in his hand. Oren sat down next to he on her bed and she scowled over at him, remembering what he had told everyone else about them.
“So what do you want to do about tomorrow? I’m sure everyone from our pod will vote for you.”
“No. I’m not putting my name up for vote.”
“Why not?!? We need you in here! If you aren’t here then it is only Chaska fighting against Shawn not to attack the Sunubans, and all the other stupid things he is doing. You know he will get the highest vote, he has been here with these people to long and they all like him. It should be easy enough to get you in here, we have enough numbers to do it.”
“Oren, I am not a leader, I have never led before, ever!”
“But no one here is more qualified than you! We’re all just kids Lira, no one has actually ever led before, what we need is people like you, with common sense! You’re quick on your feet and smart, that’s what we need. Not hot heads like Shawn and Gunnar and Dmitri. They think about their own wants and needs, you think about everyone. Please Lira, you have to at least try.”
Lira sighed and turned away from him, using the task of making her bed as an excuse to think. “On one condition,” she answered finally.
“What?”
“You stop telling people that I like you.”
His face reddened and he looked down at his hands and nodded. “Sorry.”
“Ok then, I’ll put my name up for vote, but don’t count on me getting any. Last time it was a fluke.”
“Yes! Ok, I’ll be back!” he shot out the pod door before Lira could ask him where he was going and she scowled at the door after him, She also noticed half the pod looking at her expectantly, wondering what she was up to now. She turned away from all of them and lay down on her bed facing the wall.
It felt strange laying in the new bed, facing a different wall. She shifted around but couldn’t get comfortable. She knew sleep would be a long time coming, but she tried to convince herself that she was tired and tried not to think about the next morning, or about everything that had happened that day. How had she gone from being a quiet mechanic to an outspoken and hated leader of a group of misplaced kids? Why did it bother her so much that so many people disliked her position on everything? She was sure she wasn’t wrong, but didn’t everyone feel that way, even when they were wrong? She sighed again and tried to think it all through again. Tried again and again to see it from another point of view, but she kept coming back to the same conclusion. She should try and stop this impending confrontation. She also thought about the vote. How humiliating would it be to not get any votes? Shawn and Dmitri would gloat mercilessly. What if Shawn tried to rig the vote in some way? Make sure she didn’t get voted in? He wouldn’t stoop so low, would he?
“A ship! A new ship has landed!” A boy burst into the shuttle that she had never seen, and everyone, including her jumped up. “Shawn said hurry, to the gates! Chaska and Adin, and he has a group ready to go already.”
“Where?”
“Out by the mountains! He said hurry, people could be hurt, they crashed. He has the medic kid already, come on!”
Chaska and Adin left at a run, Adin yanking his shirt on as he went. Lira looked around at everyone else for only a second before hopping up and dashing out the door to see if she could learn anything more. She sensed other people following her out, but she didn’t look back as she headed towards her brothers camp.
Cam appeared almost immediately out of the darkness, a scowl marring his features. “What is going on?” She asked quickly, still moving towards her brother.
“A ship crashed landed near the mountain. Lira, Tell told me what happened. I never thought you could get hurt in the camp or I would have stayed with you.”
“Never mind Cam, it doesn’t matter. Do you know anything else about the shuttle? Did it look like it was from Bardoo? Or was it Sunuban or Vilis?”
“It was to dark to see, but Shawn said that every craft that landed on this side of the forest has been from Bardoo or a friendly. Lira, what happened earlier matters to me. I feel like I have personally failed.”
“Cam, seriously, it’s over and I would like to forget it. How many did they take?”
“Shawn took two dozen, including Hollis and that girl nursing student Hollis has been with since we got here. He also took a flare, in case he needed more, he already has another group standing by. Is anyone monitoring it, to see maybe how many people are on the ship? If there are a lot you should maybe send the second group out.”
“That’s a good idea, where’s Tell?”
“He left with Shawn.”
“Are you serious? Shawn took Tell?”
“And Jak.”
“Anyone else?”
“No one that I knew except some of Chaska’s brothers, and two people from Gunnar’s ship. All men.”
“All right, I’m going to go start a sweep then.”
Cam followed her back to the pod and she didn’t object. She ran the sweep and waited impatiently for it to finish while Cam waited at the doorway, watching out. She was alone in the pod and it felt so much more peaceful without being full of people she was beginning to feel like were her enemies. The sweep came back and she sighed in frustration. However many were on the ship were to clustered together to be able to tell how many there were, but she also knew from the size of the one large mass, that there weren’t enough to send the second team for. She told Cameron that he could tell the second team to relax and he nodded once and slipped into the darkness. She felt alone suddenly and turned to the panel to try and keep her mind off of how lonely she felt here. She kept the scans constantly running, programming a continuous loop of them, and wondered why she hadn’t thought to do that earlier. Once she had it done, she wished she hadn’t because she no longer had anything to keep her hands busy. She started running standard sweeps on the pod itself and busied herself with routine and standard maintenance instead while she kept an eye on the groups progress towards the pod.