Aari looked crestfallen and again Becker caught an impression of overwhelming shame.
“You -will starve because I cannot feed you that which you need to sustain life. Riid Kiiyi will starve also,” Aari said.
“Not if we can help it. We just have to find a way to get back into the Condor. Kisla-baby tap-danced on my remote.”
The three of them returned to the former graveyard. The grass was dying already, turning brown and brittle without the power of the horns. Becker found the pieces of his remote where Kisia had left it. It was smashed so badly even he couldn’t fix it.
They tried a couple of horns but the horns didn’t seem to work on electronics. However, Becker did have some emergency backups. Not easy ones, not convenient ones, but he had them.
By standing on Aari’s shoulders, he was able to grasp a tail fin and haul himself to within reaching distance of a particular area near the hatch. Touching that, he whistled the bar of “Dixie” that was the opening code. An encoder implanted inside the hull translated his whistle into electronic code. Then all he had to do was slide back down the tail fin and drop to the ground before the robolift descended on his head.
He and RK climbed aboard and chowed down. He grabbed the spare remote he had stashed in the ventilation duct, and then he and RK returned to the surface with a bag of freezedried veggies for Aari.
The Linyaari was busy hauling loads of bones to the Condor.
“I must set aside my shame now and ask you to take me to narhiiVhiliinyar, the new home of my people. I must take the remains of our forebears with me. This world has become unsafe even for the dead.”
For Markel, the Haven’s ventilation system was home sweet home. He had hidden in it and made his “way around the ship after the Palomellese bandits had killed his father.
Trained in warfare or not, the Starfarers did have one advantage over the Red Bracelets, and that was that they knew their ship. When it became clear they were caught in a trap, Markel had naturally suggested the ventilation system as a hiding place for the younger ones and the ships “guests.” He, Johnny Greene, and Khetala, along with the Reamer family and Starfarers under the age of five, would hide in the ducts from Decks A to D, which could be blocked off from the rest of the ship and supplied with their own oxygen.
Of them all, only Markel realized that this section was also where many of the bandits had been gassed to death while trying to pursue him, Acorna, Calum Baird, and Dr. Hoa after Markel had rescued Acorna. As he lay flat in the duct, not speaking, hardly breathing, with perhaps a hundred other bodies lying in the same fashion down the length of the ducts, he thought he could still smell the lingering pong of the poison gas they had used. But, of course, that was ridiculous. It had been many months since the Palomellese had been overwhelmed, gassed, or spaced.
He waited for the cries of his shipmates below-for ‘Ziana and Pal to shout orders, a surrender, anything. Their faces had appeared on the comscreen and so his friends could not be hidden from any possible attackers, lest their enemies realize they were not dealing with all of the Starfarers. But he heard very little from below-no screams, no shouts, just sighs and slight shuffling sounds, before the boots of the enemy tramped across the Haven’s decks and retreated again, even more heavily.
The bay vibrated with the noise of other ships taking off. And still no noise from below.
Markel had positioned himself strategically above the supply lockers, a bit separated from the others so that if he was discovered, it might be presumed he was alone. Or if the others were discovered, he might not be, and would be able to help them escape.
Johnny Greene was above his duty station, the computation and navigation room. Khetala, Reamer, and some of the “lore mature children were placed among the younger childi’en, to keep them quiet. Not that there were many among the ^^y young -who couldn’t fight and think extremely well under Pressure. But the little kids were also the smallest and the most easily captured.