Xing’che waited patiently in her cell for Barry to appear for their daily talk. She hated how this had become the highlight of her day, but at least she got the opportunity to be clean and eat something other than the bland porridge Jacob had been feeding her.
She had briefly considered trying to manipulate Barry into helping her out of her predicament, but she quickly dismissed that option after speaking to him. His disinterest was plain to hear when he spoke on most topics. Much like with Franky’dee, she had met people similar to Barry. They weren’t immune to manipulation, but you needed to know exactly where their interests lay even to begin enticing them, and she knew very little of the man other than he was interested in eiraxin history.
Even knowing that wouldn’t help her much. People like Barry rarely deviated from their interests. She suspected convincing him to help her would be more effort than it was worth, and she didn’t want to risk her outings.
Being imprisoned was not ideal, but she had made alternative plans before departing. Those plans should be coming to fruition shortly if Commander Zyn’vak had been able to contact all the off-world cells.
Like clockwork, she heard the outer door slide open and slow, measured footsteps approach.
Xing’che stood and smoothed her outfit out of habit. Her efforts did little for the jumpsuit she had been given. Unlike the delicate dresses she normally wore, the material of the jumpsuit was sturdy, almost stiff. At least it was far warmer than the dress she had been wearing when she arrived in the cell. Unfortunately, it did nothing to flatter her body, but it wasn’t like this was the first time she had worn a jumpsuit. She still had fond memories of running around one of the small parks in the low-income area where she had grown up. The strongest memories were the ones where she fell and got dirt stains on her knees and hands.
Quite a few of her childhood memories were like that. She really was a clumsy kid.
She hadn’t grown up poor, but she wasn’t much better off than most of her fellow eiraxin. Only a lot of sweat and effort had gotten her to her current role as adjunct. She was glad she hadn’t grown up in one of the more affluent homes. Those eiraxins were hated even more than the eiraxin government because they were seen as suckling from their overlords’ teats. The hate was completely misguided.
The Astryx laws prevented most eiraxins from starting any business that might turn them into a threat, so very few ever gained any true wealth. Those who did were severely taxed, making it almost worse because they did twice the work of most eiraxins for barely half the reward. Some certainly were traitors to their people, but those were few and far between, and she knew every single one of them. They would get what was coming to them eventually.
Xing’che could technically be considered well off now, but it wasn’t because of her role as an adjunct. Despite what the average eiraxin might think, as an adjunct to the Primogen, Xing’che made little more than the average laborer. She simply led a rather sparse lifestyle, with her only indulgence being clothes, which is why she missed them so much.
Sure, the majority of her income came from illicit deals, but she never kept any of that money or spent it frivolously. It was all invested into her efforts to free her people.
The door swished open, and Barry stood there. “Are you ready to go?”
She nodded and stepped into the hallway. “Any specific topic you’d like to discuss today?” she asked as they made their way to the shower.
“No,” Barry admitted.
Xing’che deflated slightly at that. She preferred the days when they just chatted to the ones where Barry silently stared at her while she ate. She knew the man probably wasn’t actually present during those silent meals, but it was still disturbing.
“Jacob has finished up his task and will be returning soon,” the man said.
Xing’che stumbled at that. “Does that mean our daily visits will come to an end?”
The answer to that question terrified her, but she had to ask.
“Possibly,” the man admitted. “I didn’t exactly get his permission to take you out of your cell like this.”
She could feel herself starting to shake uncontrollably, and she shoved that fear back down and got her body back under control. “I see,” she replied flatly. She would endure.
“Your drone looks different today,” Xing’che said, trying to strike up a conversation. She knew Barry loved to talk about his drone, but it wasn’t like she could leverage that to her advantage.
“Indeed,” the man replied. “I was able to integrate some improvements to the joints.” The man lifted one of the robotic legs and flexed it, the connection moving nearly silently.
Xing’che was genuinely impressed. While most of their sessions had been her sharing everything about herself and her people, Barry had shared a bit of his own.
She was surprised to learn that Barry’s people were not inducted into the Astryx. At least she assumed that was the case since she had never heard of any species called human. That wasn’t the only reason she was surprised.
The fact that they were compatible with merging was almost unheard of, and for good reason. The technology had been developed specifically by the Concord Imperium for the Concord Imperium ruling species. For humans to be compatible would mean that they were biologically similar to at least one of the signatory races. Similar enough to produce offspring.
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There were plenty of physically compatible races. Most of the Astryx council was made up of such species, their worlds having a similar oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, which seemed to generate similar evolutionary outcomes. That compatibility led to other cross-species behavior as well, but she had never heard of any species being bio-compatible to the point of reproducing the ability to merge.
The real question was, were the humans similar to the lau, t’uk, or eiraxins? Going by Franky’dee’s reaction to her body, she was leaning toward eiraxin, but that brought up more questions than it answered. The biggest question was how exactly that compatibility had come to be.
She had tried to get more information out of Barry to answer some of those questions, but the man refused to elaborate on his people.
The last reason for her surprise was the speed at which the human’s understanding grew. To be fair, she really only had three examples, but even that small sample size showed they were finding novel ways to exploit Concord technologies. According to Barry, Franky had not only used her suggestion to climb up in the ranks, but he had also figured out how to build a data center aboard an old transport ship, transfer himself over to it, and cut off any attempt for Jacob to stop him.
She didn’t know how Franky had managed such a slaughter, but she felt horrible when Barry told her that the man’s escape had cost the lives of thousands. While she did have some genuine sympathy for the innocents killed by that idiot, most of her concern went to the fact that Franky’dee’s actions likely ruined any chance she ever had of convincing Jacob to help her.
Speaking of Jacob, his growth was even more staggering. From Commander Zyn’vak’s report, she expected to find someone in over their head and easy to manipulate. Her impression didn’t change when she first met Captain Jacob either. His complete avoidance of her told her everything she needed to know. At least she thought it did.
That changed when he confronted her after the attack, then it shifted again when he confronted the judicator. Even though the man had come to eliminate the planetary conditioning vessel’s AI, he was also there to assess the threat that Jacob and Xing’che posed to the Astryx, but Jacob refused to step aside.
Xing’che smirked when she recalled that tense standoff, and the myraan judicator being sent off without his prize, which had been her. Honestly, getting locked up after killing Uht’ra had probably saved her life.
That interaction showed her that the man was more than capable of leading and maybe even defending the station. It was so far off her estimations that she wondered if Jacob had been faking his ineptitude the entire time to throw people off. Barry had been the one to burst that bubble, making Jacob’s growth staggering.
Of course, that left Barry. Barry confirmed that he had only awakened after Commander Zyn’vak was ushered away, meaning the man had come to understand the drones well enough to not only rebuild them, but make significant improvements on Concord’s outdated designs in a remarkably short time.
People studied most of their lives to become roboticists, which meant Barry had to have experience from before his transition. She suspected the others also had similar experiences in their respective fields, although she couldn’t say for certain what those fields were.
So not only were humans not associated with the Astryx, they were compatible with Concord technology, and they seemed familiar enough with that level of technology to modify and upgrade it. If she hadn’t blown her chance, they would have made the perfect allies. Unfortunately, she had, and she knew that. It was up to her people to change the man’s mind.
***
“Will it make it?” Zyn’vak asked Vo’tek.
The specialist scratched his head and sighed. “Maybe?”
Zyn frowned at the younger man’s response. “That’s not very reassuring.”
“Unfortunately, that’s all I can give you, Commander. This ship was never designed for the rigors we are putting it through. Stars, it shouldn’t have even been outfitted with phase coils at all.”
Zyn grunted at that. “We didn’t have a glut of options to choose from. This was the cheapest option that fit our needs, that we could get our hands on.”
“I know,” Vo’tek said tiredly as he straightened his back with a pop and a satisfied sigh of relief. “That doesn’t change the fact that these systems were never designed to work with an intersystem ore hauler. The fact that we haven’t burned through all of our phase coils already is a miracle in and of itself. They are reaching their limit, however. We need to take more time between transitions to let the energy bleed off.”
“We’re already behind schedule.”
“Better to be late than stranded in deep space or dead, Commander.”
Zyn nodded reluctantly. “Do what you can to keep the coils operational, but see if you can shorten our downtime between transitions.”
Vo’tek saluted, then hurried off to fix another issue.
Zyn rubbed at his tired face and moved toward the hold of the ship. When Adjunct Xing’che had given him the orders to collect all of the off-world cells, he hadn’t realized how big an undertaking she had tasked him with.
Not only had he been forced to acquire a ship capable of carrying all of them to their destination, but he hadn’t quite realized how many eiraxins he would be transporting.
As he neared the hold, the noise of conversation was already echoing down the hall. A family group consisting of a mother, father, and three children stepped aside at his approach and bowed. Zyn nodded curtly in return, and once he was past, the family continued toward the wash area. Much like the FTL drive, the wash area had been haphazardly added to accommodate the increased number of passengers.
The sounds of talking grew almost deafening as he turned the corner to the hold, the metal walls doing nothing to muffle the noise. Thankfully, the hold had been draped in fabric as well as temporary walls to give people some privacy. That muted the noises inside the cavernous space by quite a bit.
As he stepped inside the stifling atmosphere of the hold, the sounds died down only for a trickle of sweat to run down the side of his face. The additional atmospheric regulators weren’t doing much to keep up with the combined body heat of over two thousand people.
It didn’t help that they were all packed in with barely enough space to lie down, but nobody complained. As outcasts, they had known far harsher conditions during their lifetimes. And soon enough, they would reach the station and freedom.
Zyn didn’t like the fact that he was blindly returning to the same station he had been chased away from, but he had faith that Adjunct Xing’che reached an agreement with the lost eiraxins who controlled the ancient Concord facility.
If she hadn’t, they would all die. Even if the ship could make the return journey, the people he was walking past would never be able to return to their hidden refuges. That bridge had been burned as their shuttle’s arrival tipped off nearby bounty hunters, who closed in on the hidden outposts.
Some of the more aggressive bounty hunters even chased them through FTL, but the shields had managed to hold long enough for the ship to transition again. Eventually, the bounty hunters gave up the chase, their ships not designed for such long distances.
The chase did highlight a problem. Some of the bounty hunters had managed to tag the shuttles with tracking beacons. After the shuttles were safely aboard, the devices were removed, but he couldn’t discount others being on the hauler’s hull. Zyn didn’t have enough trained personnel to scour the entire exterior of the massive ship between transitions.
It also wasn’t an immediate concern. After giving up the chase, he knew that the bounty hunters couldn’t possibly know where they were going, so they would have to wait until the ship was stationary for an extended time before they pounced again.