Resurgence

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Starting over

The Have-It-All had started its journey as a luxury ship. In its equipment and its fittings—even in its weapons—it served as a symbol of the best that the Orion Arm could provide. Louis Nenda had worked for many years to make it that way.

Now the ship was a stripped-down hulk, a fleshless skeleton of a vessel barely able to support the life that travelled within it. Nonetheless, Louis Nenda whistled cheerfully as he sat in the ruined control cabin of the derelict and made final adjustments before Bose node entry.

“Louis, I sense a contradiction.” Atvar H’sial was crouched a couple of meters away on the bare metal floor. “To one who sees as I do, your vocal utterances are extremely ugly. Yet your pheromones display an uncommon happiness.”

“Sure I’m happy. Who wouldn’t be? We’re goin’ home.”

“This ship is a wreck.”

“It is. But we’re not dead. As long as you’re not dead, you can start over. Also, Julian Graves says that the inter-clade council will pay to restore the ship to the way it was.”

“Do you believe that?”

“ ’Course not. They’re a bunch of idiot bureaucrats. We’ll be lucky if we can squeeze two cents out of ’em. But the other side of that is, while they’re jawing about what fine people we are, only they don’t have any money to reward us, we’ll have things easy. They won’t be tryin’ to kill us off or stick us in jail. Graves says we’ll get some kind of award. Even Archimedes, for hangin’ outside the ship without a suit an’ draggin’ in Sinara and the other survival team members. Graves says he’s amazed that Archie didn’t die doin’ it.”

“You appear less confounded.”

“Hell, it takes more than that to kill a Zardalu. Archie keeps goin’ on about how he’s afraid I’ll disembowel him, but if I did it wouldn’t do him in. He’d just go ahead an’ grow another set of guts. Graves doesn’t know any of that, though, so Archie’s up for an award along with the rest of us.”

“Do not trust Ethical Councilors bearing gifts.”

“At, you’re gettin’ cynical. It don’t become you.” They had passed through the node, and Nenda stared with satisfaction at the view on his one remaining display. It revealed an almost total absence of stars. The ship was floating in the empty spaces of the Gulf. “We have a few hours to spare before the next node entry. Want to go hear what E.C. Tally has to offer? He’s been workin’ non-stop with the damaged beetleback, an’ Hans Rebka says there’ll be somethin’ worth hearin’.”

“It was always my impression that you disliked and distrusted Captain Rebka.”

“I do. But I never said he was an idiot. If what Tally has found out is good enough to interest Rebka, it’s probably worth a listen.”

“Do I detect admiration for Hans Rebka?”

“No.”

“Respect, then, which is separated from admiration by a thin olfactory boundary?”

“At, stop playin’ pheromonal word games. Let’s go.”

Nenda led the way along the ravaged upper corridor of the ship. Without circulation or temperature control equipment, the air was stale, hot, and humid. At the doorless entrance of the conference room, Louis paused and sniffed. Everyone on board was packed into the chamber. This was the way that hard-worked crew members should be. Sweaty, and smelly, and with clothes that could not be changed or washed for another couple of weeks.

Even the four survival team members looked right. The Have-It-All’s stripped-down robodoc hadn’t been able to do much more than hold the status quo. Teri Dahl wore a body cast and was clearly paralyzed below the waist, Ben Blesh had a neck brace and his face was a swollen mass of purple-yellow blotches surrounding sunken bloodshot eyes, Torran Veck’s upper body was a mass of bandages, and Sinara Bellstock was relatively intact but had the expression of someone in need of about a year’s sleep. Instead of being neat and clean and fresh-faced and enthusiastic, each one was bedraggled and filthy. Louis could for the first time believe that the group might actually be earning its keep.

Archimedes was sprawled along one whole wall of the room. Nenda went to sit on the Zardalu’s meter-thick mid-section, and Kallik at once hurried over to crouch at his feet.

E.C. Tally was standing at the far end of the room, next to the captured beetleback. It had been in poor shape when it reached the Have-It-All, and recent treatment had done nothing to improve that. The dark ventral body plates had been ripped open along their center line and folded back. The interior was exposed, and parts of it had been removed.