Chapter Ten
I ought to exercise more caution, but it is not in my nature. My father was a risk-taker of the highest order, and it is my weakness that I have inherited this tendency from him. Hopefully, I have not also acquired the Zultan’s madness.
—Emir Hari’Adab
The Mutati delegation should have been able to reach the Tulyan Starcloud in a few minutes, but it was taking them much longer to cross the galaxy. Hari’s two lab-pods had been in the far reaches of space for more than a day so far, but they had not yet reached their destination. At the moment the vessels were dead in space, having been stopped by their crews to assess the unexpected situation. In the lead craft, Hari’Adab and his followers were in comlink contact with the other crew, trying to figure out the problem. And inside the holds of each vessel, HibAdu prisoners were being interrogated intensely.
One thing seemed clear. The Hibbil navigation units on each ship, which the Mutati crews originally thought they understood, had sent them off-course by millions and millions of light years. But that could be made up quickly, if they could only determine where they were. At the speed of podships, even traveling along a damaged infrastructure, such distances could be covered in a relatively short time—and these lab-pods, like their natural cousins, were biological entities with seemingly unlimited travel capabilities. But the lab-pods were acting like blind birds flying headlong through space, not knowing where they were going.
According to one of the prisoners, in all manufacturing tests the Hibbils had performed, covering multiple star systems, the nav-units had functioned perfectly. Apparently, he claimed, they did not function well in all sectors—and in the deepest reaches of space, far from the Hibbil Cluster Worlds, they were undoubtedly giving erroneous readings.
Dismayed and frustrated, Hari conferred with Kajor Yerto Bhaleen. They sat at a small table in the spacious passenger compartment examining an electronic clip pad that displayed an astromap of this galactic sector. Tapping a button on the pad, Bhaleen called up a holo image of the sector, showing planets, suns, an asteroid belt, and a stunning, butterfly-shaped nebula in the distance that glinted with golden light.
“It’s incredibly beautiful in this region,” the kajor said, “but that doesn’t help us figure out where we are. My officers are running and rerunning programs now, searching for answers. The prisoners may have thrown us off intentionally, providing false information.”
“You think they’re fanatics?”
“Maybe. Hard to tell.”
“Give me your best guess,” Hari said. “How much longer do you think this will take?” Hari asked.
“To figure out where we are, or to get to the starcloud?”
“Both.”
“Hard to judge, because even if—I mean, when—we figure out our location, we are still having problems with the nav-units. Even so, my officers are confident that we can compensate for the errors. They’re taking astronomical readings, and the ships’ computers should be able to figure out what we did, and how to correct it.”
“But the computers allowed us to go off course?”
“They did, but there have been problems with the podways on which these ships travel, with entire galactic sectors damaged so badly that we couldn’t travel through them, requiring that we go around.”
“And now?”
“With all the course mistakes and corrections we’ve made, we’re way off course. But don’t worry. My navigation officers will come up with new settings.”
“At least that’s what they’re telling you.”
“True enough, My Emir.” The kajor smiled cautiously. “But you’ve always liked my optimism in the past.”
With a broad grin, Hari patted him on the back.
Just then, Bhaleen took a comlink call from the other ship. Under intense interrogation, the captured Hibbil and Adurian soldiers were offering no assistance whatsoever. The kajor went on to discuss a mechanical question with someone on the other end of the line. Bhaleen was the most loyal of all military officers Hari had ever known, and could always be relied upon to perform his work well.
That took some of the load off the young leader’s shoulders. But it had not been an easy journey for Hari to arrive at this point. In sharp contrast to the radical, demented militarism of his own father, he had always considered himself something of a moderate—a person who was willing to talk to the enemies of the kingdom and negotiate with them for the mutual benefit of two very different galactic races. And, just as he loved Parais d’Olor, he was certain that all of humankind was filled with relationships such as the one he knew with her, of people who didn’t care about ancient enmities and just wanted the fighting to stop.
Normally, Hari was not an appeaser; while he was willing to negotiate, he also believed in negotiating from strength. In the present circumstances, however, that tactic was no longer possible. With the total destruction of the beloved Mutati homeworld of Paradij (an event that would always weigh heavily on his conscience), the shapeshifters had sustained a grievous setback. His people were still in possession of considerable military strength in other Mutati star systems, but the command center and the most powerful forces had been lost with Paradij. The brightest of the brightest had been wiped out, along with the greatest of all military minds and a great deal more.
He tried not to dwell on the troubling details but they kept surfacing to torment him, almost beyond the limit of his endurance. His heart sank at the thought of the great libraries that had been destroyed on the beautiful world, with all of the priceless ancient documents. All of the historical and cultural treasures. And most of all, the lives that had been taken, especially the young ones. Their imagined faces spun through his thoughts and he fought off tears.
Suddenly, Parais d’Olor burst into the passenger compartment. Excitedly, she almost lifted her wings, though she had no room to fly in there. “One of the Adurians is talking,” she said. “He’s a navigation technician who refused to say anything before. Now he’s telling our officers what we did wrong, and how we were misled by other prisoners.”
“But can we trust him?” Bhaleen asked. He hurried past her, heading for the hold where the prisoners were.
“Wish we had a Tulyan to use the truthing touch on him,” Hari said.
When Hari and the others entered the spacious hold, he saw his officers and soldiers standing around one of the hairless, bulbous-eyed Adurians. The alien was spewing words like automatic projectile fire, technical information about astronomical coordinates and settings on the nav-units. One of Hari’s men was recording him and another was entering notes on a clip pad.
Finally, the HibAdu soldier fell silent.
Pushing his way past the others, Kajor Bhaleen unfolded a knife and held the blade against the throat of the prisoner. The Adurian technician had dark, bulbous eyes that were comparatively small for his race. His gaze darted around nervously.
“Why should we believe you?” Bhaleen asked. He drew a trickle of yellow blood from the alien’s neck.
“Please don’t kill me! I’m telling the truth because I don’t want to die out here, marooned. I have told your men what they need to do.”
“If he’s lying, we will know soon enough,” Hari said, placing a hand on Bhaleen’s shoulder.
The kajor hesitated, then withdrew the weapon. He wiped off the blade and folded it back into his pocket.
The Adurian pleaded to be sent back to join his companions, and received assurance from his captors that his actions would be kept secret. Afterward, Mutatis checked and rechecked the new information. All calculations and projections showed that it was correct, and finally the ships got underway again.
Three hours later, the Adurian was found dead in his sleeping quarters, strangled by a fellow prisoner.
***