Apex (9 page)

 

Chapter 9

J
ALIA
RAN
STRAIGHT
, a pitter patter of tiny feet impacting against the smooth cold floor of the
Resolute
's accessway. She came to the next crate and leapt up over it, pulling her bare legs up almost to her chest to clear the makeshift hurdle. Her equally bare arms went wide to maintain balance as she re-­extended her legs, coming down and picking up her stride with only a small bobble.

She returned to her gait, heading aft down the 1.2 kilometer long hallway, already six laps into her workout. It was day four of their eighteen day jump to the Mewlon System, which meant a lot of downtime on their hands. On most trips Jalia usually occupied herself with training or study, but at the moment she was too anxious to read through technical manuals.

Wearing nothing but a scant two-­piece inner liner, the Junta maintained maximum agility and speed, which for her race was several levels above galactic par, and continued down the long open space within the ship towards the next high stack of crates.

Jalia reduced her speed as she approached, then dipped down mid run and sprung up in a massive jump, landing on the second tier of crates. Quickly she climbed up over the next two levels and dropped down the sheer back side of the pile, landing deftly on her tiny bare feet in a messy bundle of flying headtails as her flexible restraint tie snapped.

She paused at the base of the crates, mildly frustrated, but decided to ignore it and ran on, shrinking in the distance down to a small dot until she reached her starting point and headed back, starting lap seven. She went through twelve laps before stopping, a standard workout for her, then went back to her quarters and took a quick shower. She dressed in an ankle/wrist length grey bodysuit with a white stripe down either side, but left her feet bare. At the moment they were a bit sore and she didn't feel like shoving them into shoes just to head down to the galley and grab a bite to eat before beginning her sleep cycle.

When she'd taken possession of the
Resolute
, she'd opted not to install private food stores in her quarters and had always taken her meals from the communal galley. Each race had different nutritional needs, but there were some commonalities and the galley was full of as many varieties as Jalia could find. There were a few specifics though, such as her Tilari cakes.

A delicacy from her homeworld, the tiny black discs held enough sugar and spices for an entire meal, making them unpalatable for most races. Jalia liked them best of all post-­workouts, to help quickly replenish her energy. Junta were by design a high metabolism race, able to work long hours at high output, but requiring a great deal of nourishment in exchange.

Add in their high reproduction rates, and lack of adequate foodstuffs was one of her overpopulated homeworld's perpetual calamities. Most Junta were forced to live a sedentary lifestyle to diminish the drain on their food supply, which was one reason why Jalia trained so much. It separated her from her ­people's debilitating and repressive culture.

When she arrived in the galley she was surprised to see Ivara with two of the Tilari cakes on her tray, along with an assortment of other small portions. She'd opened her food stores to the Cres, telling them they could eat whatever they liked, but this was the first time she'd noticed any of them actually eating.

Ivara held a half-­eaten cake in her blue, five fingered hand, pausing and looking over at the Junta as she entered. “Sorry. I didn't realize they were yours.”

“It's fine,” Jalia assured her. “I just didn't expect you to be able to stomach them. Most races find the compact nutrients overwhelming.”

Ivara smiled slightly. “These are mild compared to our rations,” she said, picking up a small stick from her plate and breaking a piece off. Jalia realized it wasn't something on her galley's menu.

Ivara tossed it to her. “Try this.”

“Cres food?” Jalia asked.

Ivara nodded. “Highly compact.”

The piece she held in her palm was barely the size of her black fingernail, and its polar opposite in color. She bit half of the white, chewy substance off and immediately tasted intense sugar. Chewing more than should have been necessary, she got the cloying piece of food down her throat.

“That's really dense,” she commented, popping the other half into her mouth.

“Saves space when packing,” Ivara explained with a touch of sarcasm.

“Same with the Tilari cakes,” Jalia said after she finished chewing and sat down opposite the Cres at one of three small tables. “We have small stomachs, but large appetites.”

Ivara looked at her closely. “Do you know why?”

Jalia shrugged. “High metabolism,” she said, raising the retractable door on the cabinet beside the table. She pulled out a liquid pack and a brick of Reva bread, then thought twice about it and added two more bricks to the tabletop, forgoing grabbing a tray.

Ivara nodded. “We have the same high energy requirements.”

“Where did you store your rations? I didn't see you bring anything onboard aside from one crate.”

“It's segmented,” Ivara explained as she finished her first Tilari cake. “We stuffed as much gear and foodstuffs as we could inside before we fled the dig site with the cargo. Our other supplies were destroyed when the transport blew up onboard the jumpship.”

“Is there anything else you need?” Jalia asked. “You're welcome to scrounge around the ship for anything you want. Maybe some extra clothes?”

“Thank you,” Ivara said kindly, “but I don't think I'd fit into anything of yours.”

“No,” Jalia said, almost laughing. She was a stick compared to the sculpted musculature of the Cres, though the woman stood barely two fingers taller than her. “But we have some basic clothing stores you might be able to use, plus whatever the crew has in their quarters. Borrow what you like, they're not going to need it again.”

Ivara's eyelids closed slightly. “You don't plan on returning for them?”

“Well, I'm certainly going to track them down and explain things, assuming we survive that long,” she added unnecessarily. “But with the credits they have now, they probably won't be crewing ships again . . . unless they blow it all, which is a distinct possibility for Hemmer.”

Jalia sipped a bit of the purple liquid out of the large bag-­like container through a clear straw, then began chomping away at one of the heavy Reva bricks, followed by a long pause in the conversation.

“Jalia,” Ivara finally said, using her name for the first time. Up until now she'd simply called her Junta. “What do you know about the history of your race?”

She stopped chewing, looking at the Cres oddly, then swallowed her mouthful. “There's not much to tell. Cycles of clan warfare, our population dropped to almost fatal levels, then recovered after Itar laid down the Axien Accords. The clans cooperated more, but fought in other ways. Praxion repopulated, too much for the available food supply, so the clans sell off extra population as slave labor to cover the costs of importing food and everything else we can't produce on our homeworld.”

“That's as much as you remember?”

Jalia shrugged. “Our homeworld is basically the pit of the galaxy. There's not much worth remembering.”

“Is that why you left?”

Jalia put down the Reva bread and crossed her arms in front of her on the table. “What is it that you want to know that you haven't already read in my mind?”

“You're different from the other Junta,” Ivara said bluntly. “Why?”

“I don't really care for the clan lifestyle,” Jalia admitted. “Too introverted for my tastes. The others can't see past our society, past Praxion. Which is probably why we haven't colonized any other worlds. The others just sit at home, backstabbing each other, trying to become king of the refuse pile.”

Ivara inclined her head to the side quizzically. “And you want more?”

“I want to matter,” Jalia said, opening up a bit more than she'd expected. “The others sell our brothers and sisters for a few mics like they're property, not ­people. Actually, nobody on Praxion acts like anyone is a person . . . not even themselves. Everything is superficial. A giant, pointless game. We have so many problems as a race, fixable problems, but nobody ever rises to the challenge. I left when I could to avoid becoming a marital gift for another clan's leader, a pawn in their pointless political maneuvering. Out here I earn my own, look after my crew, and set my own course. It's dangerous, but I'm me, not what Praxion tells me I have to be.”

“Yet you had us send credits back to your clan,” Ivara pointed out.

Jalia conceded that with a nod. “I still owed them for my ship. It's true that I had already saved them more in shipping costs than the price tag for this freighter, but I hadn't really paid them back enough to say goodbye and good riddance. A thousand credits in their coffers, now that says I was a good investment. It helps the clan with a lot of expenses, and I can finally be done with Praxion.”

“I understand,” Ivara said, looking down at her half empty tray. “You still care for them, but won't let them burden you any longer.”

“I hate going back there,” Jalia confided. “Seeing my sisters, wanting to steal them offworld with me, to escape that lack of life. I know I can't, at least not all of them. I tried once to talk some of them into crewing for me, but they turned me down. The sorriest thing about it is they don't want anything to change. They like Praxion the way it is.”

“No vision,” Ivara said, putting a term to Jalia's thoughts.

“Yes . . . exactly.”

“Perhaps you are the true Junta, and they are not.”

“I would like to think so, but the truth is I'm the misfit. I'm the only Junta I know of offworld that's not a slave.”

“No,” Ivara urged. “The truth is you are more like the Junta of past ages, before your race fell from grace.”

Jalia's eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Ivara sighed. “Junta are not native to Praxion. It was one of your mining colonies before the fall. All other worlds that you possessed were destroyed. Your race survived on Praxion, but you lost who and what you were.”

“And what were we?” Jalia asked emphatically.

Ivara smiled. “An ally of the Cres.”

Jalia's jaw dropped. “You're saying we were . . .”

“On our level, yes,” Ivara finished for her. “With some variances, of course.”

“What happened to us? You said there was a fall?”

“We don't know everything,” Ivara admitted. “Much information from that time was lost. But we know your race spanned dozens of star systems before being overwhelmed in a war that we know very little about. You were a great race once, but that is lost now. Save for, perhaps, you.”

“Me?”

“You're the first sign the Cres have seen of the Junta beginning to return to form. It is long overdue.”

“Me?” Jalia repeated incredulously.

“I've looked into your mind, Jalia. First on the jumpship when you were following me. Your curiosity alone is a good sign. Would any of your kind have even cared?”

“No, they probably wouldn't.”

“When I checked you I did a deep scan, and was surprised by what I found. That is why I sought you out when we required assistance.”

“I wondered about that.”

“And you didn't disappoint,” Ivara noted.

“Well, the 100,000 credits helped a bit,” Jalia noted humorously.

“Liar,” Ivara rebuked softly. “You would have helped us regardless.”

Jalia looked her in the eyes. “Would I?” she asked, unsure herself.

The Cres nodded. “The credits alleviated your responsibilities to your crew, making your decision easier, but you would have sought to help us regardless.”

“Are you saying that's my nature, given our races' past relationship?”

“No. I'm saying it's the nature of a good person.”

Jalia glanced down at the table, avoiding eye contact. That one compliment meant a lot to her, especially coming from the Cres, whom she'd always admired. Now, perhaps, she had an inkling of why.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Ivara nodded politely and returned to her meal. Jalia did the same and the two women sat in amicable silence until the Cres finished and left the galley. Once she was finished herself, Jalia returned to her quarters, stripped out of her bodysuit, and slid her nude legs into the covered bottom portion of her sleep pod. The warm material eased the aches from her workout and adjusted to match her body temperature, soothing her red legs and tail. She leaned back, lowering her upper body beneath the energy field covering the top half of the pod and relaxed as the warm interior air soaked into her face.

She began to drift off to sleep, then belatedly realized that she'd left her quarters' lights on. Part of her didn't care and wanted to just let it go, but another part of her was annoyed by the illumination and she knew it would cause her trouble falling asleep, so she regrettably pulled herself out of the warm pod and walked across the cold floor and reached for the illumination panel.

A slight tremor ran through the ship, barely noticeable. Had she stayed in the pod she wouldn't have even felt it, but the fact was there shouldn't have been anything to make even the slightest disturbance during the drift phase of a jump. The ship's engines were powered down, and they were completely alone in the void between stars. Had they hit some debris it would have either torn the ship apart or cored directly through it without so much as a bump, given the velocities involved. No, that vibration had felt much more natural.

Regardless, it wasn't something she could let go, so she reluctantly pulled her bodysuit back on and donned a pair of slip-­on shoes, then out of habit Jalia slipped her gun belt on as well. She was getting that same bad feeling all over again.