Dominion (14 page)

“What is a pilot anyway?” she asked, “You never explained.”

“A pilot is pretty much the same as an oil lamp that remains inside a machine.  It stays on all the time, ready to light any gas that flows past it,” he said, “I just need you to reach in with a match and light it.”

“Sure,” she quickly accepted, “As long as I don’t get burned.”

Fire Dragon located a box of matches and handed it to Hawke.  He then knelt down next to the open door and showed Kashuba where the pilot should be.  She nodded, then took the box of matches from Hawke and lit one of them.  Hawke turned on the gas and peered into the machine as she reached in.  Her slender arm slipped right between the two pipes.  She stretched further before a small explosion of gas made her scream and draw quickly backward.

Hawke laughed, rolling backward with her in his arms as she glared upward toward him.

“That wasn’t funny!” she shouted, “I could have died!”

“No you couldn’t have,” he defended, “It was just a quick burst of burning gas.  Look at your arm.  You’re not even burned.”

“It was an explosion!” she snapped at him.

“You merely lit the pilot and some of the surrounding gas was burned
away in the process,” he explained, “Seriously, if you had been in any danger, I wouldn’t be laughing.”

“Well, to me, that was dangerous and I don’t find it funny,” she said, quickly escaping his arms and rising from the floor.

Hawke peeked into the machine and verified that the pilot remained lit after Kashuba’s near death experience.  He brushed the dust from his hands and then closed the metal door.  He returned to the control panel and flipped the switch again in an effort to turn the machine on.  The machine made a knocking noise like last time, but then suddenly came alive like a car engine starting up.  Soon, a watery sound could be heard from the two science projects beside them.  A moment after that, a fan or something similar came to life inside the machine, blowing air through the giant ventilation tunnels above their heads.

“Any idea if this is working properly?” Fire Dragon asked.

“None whatsoever,” Hawke grinned at him, “But I’m thinking we might want to get all these furnaces brought back online so we can finally take off these jackets.”

Twenty-one

It was the equivalent of early evening when all the
“North Survivors,”
as they had chosen to be called, returned to the gymnasium.  The reactor had proven throughout the day to be fairly self-monitoring and sustaining.  Even so, a person was required to stand watch in the control room at all times in case of emergency.  Hawke’s standing rule was that if there was any doubt at all as to what a warning alarm was about, the person was to shut the reactor down.  They could always restart it later but if there were a meltdown, all hope would be lost.

Air and heat were
flowing throughout the ship and had been doing so for the past few hours.  Unfortunately, that also meant that there was a lot of dust being stirred up throughout the ship.  Allergies were the biggest problem at the moment - that and the question of where they would find food.  Besides what they brought with them, there would be no available sustenance located on the ship.  Had they discovered any food reserves, they would have most certainly been decayed beyond recognition.

Now, everyone had returned to the place it all started several hours before.  Fire Dragon however had relieved Star Dancer from the tedious job of monitoring the reactor, so he was the only one not present for their first meeting.

“While it may not seem like much, we’ve got power, we’ve got air, we’ve got water, and we’ve got heat,” Sky Listener began, officially the leader of the group now, “No doubt that the food we are about to eat will be our last for a while.  It’s no reason to lose hope because we are still searching for a way to get this ship out of the ice.  I’ve caught wind that some are saying we’re going to die.  Others say that the plan to bust our way out of the ice is just a far-fetched dream of mine.  I’d like to let Meriwether Hawke answer to these rumors.”

Hawke joined Sky Listener at his spot in front of the filled bleachers.  It was nice to stand there and see such a large group of people who didn’t have the same expressions of hopelessness he had seen earlier in the day.  Unfortunately for Hawke, their hopes all rested on him.

“This ship operates like nothing you are accustomed to on Rain.  Even the Shomani do not possess such a technology.  I’d love to give you a detailed explanation on how it works, but you wouldn’t understand.  Not that you’re too stupid because I know better than that.  But rather because you have no experience with any of the prior technologies that the warp-generating system is derived from, so it would probably just be confusing,” he stated, “What I can tell you is that the ship runs on gravity.  You all know about gravity because it’s the very thing that keeps us from flying when we flap our arms.  It’s the very thing that draws objects back down to the planet.

“This ship creates its own gravity, but nothing
even comparable to what you’ve seen on Rain.  This ship creates a gravitational field that… well, let’s just say that it is so powerful that it bends the very fabric of space, folding it in on itself and causing a ship to basically leap from one location to another.  If anyone wants, I would gladly explain more on this at a later date when things are a bit less eventful.

“I think Sky Listener wanted me to give you all some hope and personally, I think
hope is something we definitely have.  But I’m also one to give it to you straight and to not sugarcoat things.  I can bring that engine online with no problem.  What I can’t do is actually fly a ship and as of yet, we haven’t even located the bridge.  I have no idea what the flight controls even look like.  I sat as a co-pilot on a smaller ship though, so I’m not completely ignorant in this regard.  I just wanted you all to know that there’s a chance of failure.  I don’t believe we’re going to fail, but I just wanted it clear that the possibility exists.”

He then shrugged and returned to his seat next to Kashuba.  She put her arm around him and pulled him close.

The woman he’d seen in the tunnel carrying a baby stood up with that same baby in her arms and walked to the spot where Sky Listener and Hawke had given their speeches.  She turned to the group and forced a broken smile.  Her eyes were red from dust allergies, giving the appearance that she had been crying.

“I’m Night Whisper and I’m not even
supposed to be here.  I’m just a courier who had delivered a wagonload of food from the Trader’s Bakery.  I was on my way to the surface when the attack happened.  I turned and ran back down the tunnel, abandoning my eldest daughter and my husband who were at work and at school.  I can only assume they are dead now.  But my baby was colic, so I chose to bring her to work with me this morning.

“Anyway, I
don’t have much to offer but I do ask that you share in the food I brought down.  I’m hungry and my baby will be hungry when she wakes up, so I was-”

“We are all part of the ‘North Survivors,’
Night Whisper!  Of course we are going to share equally,” one of the men in the bleachers interrupted her.

“But I only brought food for the people who were supposed to be here
today,” she said, rubbing her watery eyes, “I didn’t bring food for me and my daughter.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Sky Listener stated, walking over to her, “We are all equal and the food has already been divided by the medical crew in order to feed us all.  None of the food will last until morning, so it’s in our best interest to waste nothing.”

She gave a quick nod, looking down at the floor.  Then, as though an important thought came to her, she looked up suddenly at the group seated in the bleachers.

“Well, before I sit back down, I just wanted you all to know that I
desired to find a way to help out since I felt so ‘out of place’.  So while everyone was looking for machinery, I was looking for beds,” she said, looking at a woman seated in the front row, “On the deck beneath this one, all the rooms directly to the right of the stairs are devoted to sleeping places.  I went into these rooms and took off the bedding and shook out all the dust into the hallway.  Then I remade the beds in those rooms.  I was going to wipe down the tables and dressers, but I ran out of time.”

Sky Listener nodded, then put an arm around her.

“We need all the help we can get, but you don’t have to earn your way into this group,” Sky Listener stated, squeezing her close, “And actually, you thought of something important that I hadn’t even pondered yet.  So I’d like to be the first to thank you for making sure I had a place to sleep tonight.”

The woman she was looking at gave her a smile of reassurance.  At the back of the group, a middle-age
woman rose from her seat and walked down the bleachers toward the crate on the floor.  She opened the lid and then gestured for everyone to join her.

“We have a jar of water, a loaf of bread, and a half-portion of dried meat for everyone here,” she said
to the group, “And despite what Sky Listener just said, the fruit that Night Whisper brought will last just fine until morning, so we will all get to enjoy a nice piece of lorma-sweet in the morning with a small portion of dried meat.  So please enjoy this, knowing that it’s
not
your last meal.”

. . . .

Hawke and Kashuba spent the majority of their meal meeting the crew of the “North Survivor,” a name they christened their ship during the meal.  He was encouraged not just by the sheer intelligence of the crew, but also by the high morale evident in their demeanor.  Hawke was no more educated in ship operations than these people were, so he knew he would be relying heavily upon others for the remainder of his time here.  After talking with the others, he was confident that they would find a way to get the ship off the ground.

Shortly after dinner, everyone resigned to locating their
individual berthing on the deck below.  Upon locating the corridor of living spaces, they started moving beds and other furniture around in order to accommodate the people with young children.  They located a crib in a nearby storage room that would be suitable for Night Whisper’s infant.

Everyone worked together to ensure a certain level of comfort for
each other.  Kashuba and Hawke had taken a bed from another room in order to make theirs a share berthing.  They had no need for another dresser, much less the one that was already in the room since neither of them had come prepared with changes of clothes.

“
How long before people start going crazy?” Kashuba asked, “I mean, there are children here.  In a couple days, the hunger will be pretty powerful and I’m sure no one wants to see children going hungry or starving.”

“
Indeed,” he said, sliding her bed up against the wall next to his, “I don’t have answers, Kashuba.  I can only hope we are able to get out of here before anyone is to the point of starving.”

“What’s the plan right now – tonight and tomorrow?” she asked, remaking the beds.

“I’m tired as I’m sure you can imagine, but we can’t leave Fire Dragon to watch the reactor all night.  I figure I’ll go take over for him if you don’t mind and that way I can check out all the engineering systems before we spend the day tomorrow searching for the bridge,” he said.

She turned to
him; an expression of hurt invading her gentle features.  He wrapped her in his arms and held her, pressing his lips into her hair.

“I know it’s our honeymoon and I
most certainly wish to spend it right here with you.  I want to shut that door right now and lock it for the whole night,” he said, kissing the top of her head, “And once we are exhausted, I want to sleep like I’ve never slept before.  But these people are relying on me, and I’m going to be relying on Fire Dragon… and Star Dancer… and Sky Listener… and several other people with weird Indian names.”

“I know,” she whispered, holding him tight, “I don’t know what a weird Indian is, but I do know you have a lot to handle right now.”

He held her a moment longer, then kissed her again.  She released him, then returned to the bed she had been making and grabbed both pillows.  She tossed them to Hawke, who barely managed to catch both.

“You take the pillows and I’ll grab the blankets,” she said, “You said yourself that the person in the reactor control room merely needs to stay alert for any alarms.  Since the alarms involve flashing lights and audible sounds, I don’t see why it can’t be monitored by two people lying together on the floor.”

He smiled, and then he grinned so wide that it suddenly transformed into a laugh.  She winked at him, then turned to the beds and folded up the blankets.  Fire Dragon was going to discover that he was no longer welcome in the reactor control room for the rest of the night.

Twenty-two

After breakfast and an early morning walk-thru to verify all systems were still online and operating as expected,
they divided themselves into two teams to go in search of a bridge or piloting room.  The secondary goal was also to map out interesting rooms while performing their search.

They had already searched the full upper level the previous day, locating nothing beyond
several vacant storage rooms, living spaces, bathing facilities, a shared dining facility with a vast kitchen, a gymnasium of course, an exercise facility, and a hospital or medical facility.  This news was the most disappointing to Hawke because he had expected the bridge to be located on the uppermost level based on his knowledge of twentieth century science fiction.

He and his group also bypassed the second level where they had chosen their living spaces.  All the second level had been searched already and had shown to be an almost identical copy of the previous level with the addition of a science lab and an auditorium in place of the gymnasium and hospital.

It was the third deck where they started their search.  They already knew that the life support system and the electric generator were located on this level, but a complete search had not been performed.  The other team went to the lowest levels and began their search down below.

“To answer your question from breakfast, there are some sects that believe the bane ore is magic.  I’ve never discredited it myself, but I can’t say I believe it,” the scientist named Ocean Song said to Hawke, “With what you’ve told me about the metal in the reactor though, I imagine it’s just another sort of metal with similar non-mystical qualities.”

“But the Uranium is poisonous to us and all other life.  It ionizes living cells which… let’s just say it is quite deadly.  I don’t see those qualities emanating from the ore,” Hawke replied, opening a hatch and peeking into an empty room, “I haven’t conducted any real tests, but simply sleeping in that tent with a bane ore stove should have sickened me or killed me.”

Hawke shut the hatch and followed the others down the corridor
.  They continued to open the doors as they went, casually observing the various rooms.

“So, do you believe it might be magical?” Ocean Song asked.

“No, not at all,” he replied quickly, “I’ve seen enough to know that everything has its moment of being classified as
‘magic.’
  But then the time comes when it’s dissected, analyzed, and after many experiments, it’s revealed for what it truly is.  I have to believe that bane is either a metal that is beyond my known periodic table, or it’s a perfect blend of some already known elements.  I hope to have time to perform many experiments though.”

“Well,
I heard we have plenty of the ore down below,” he chuckled.

“I heard the same thing,” he replied, “It would be nice to find out why it’s there.”

“Umm… Guys, I think I have something!” a man shouted from one of the side corridors.

Hawke rushed toward the sound of the voice.  He was fairly certain however that whatever it was the man located, it couldn’t be the bridge.  It
wouldn’t make any sense to have the bridge hidden so deep inside the ship.  He quickly located the open door near the center passageway where others have gathered.  He wasn’t prepared for what he’d find when he slipped past the group and looked into the room.

The man who had
just hollered had been Light Bender and his back was to everyone in the doorway.  On the other side of Light Bender was what appeared to be a shoulder-height aquarium filled with thick green sludge and the skeletal remains of an unidentified creature.  The only bones visible in that murky water were those that had settled up against the glass.

The aquarium however wasn’t the thing that horrified those
standing in the doorway.  It was the detailed diagram of the insides of a Shomani man.  Only this particular one wasn’t the kind of chart made on a giant poster as is often found in schools and medical facilities.  This was the body of an actual Shomani adult male based on the presence of jaw horns, and he’d been sawed in half top to bottom and preserved in a thin glass case on the left wall.  This back half of the creature was all that remained, showing all the inner organs, muscles, and bones with white labels throughout to define what was being viewed. 

Kashuba screamed, catching sight of the same thing Hawke had just noticed.  She rushed out of the room
, pushing her way past those in the doorway.  As much as Hawke wanted to follow her and make sure she was all right, he also needed answers.  He turned away from the repulsive dissection to examine the rest of the creepy room.  The opposite wall was covered in shelves, most of which were devoted to partially dissolved books that would surely crumble to dust if disturbed. Three small aquariums were situated randomly on those shelves.  These units were devoid of all water as they hadn’t been sealed like the giant one in the center of the room.  Lying at the bottom of each of those grimy aquariums were various fish or snake skeletons.  On another shelf, he discovered a Shomani skull and two skulls that resembled those of alligators with shark-like teeth.

Someone called from the door opposite the murky aquarium.
  Hawke and Ocean Song rushed to the attached room to discover a lab surrounded by walls of various size cages.  Even from a quick glance, it was immediately evident that several creatures died in their cages the same as the fish and serpents in the other room.

“What is all this?” Ocean Song asked, examining the larger of the cages, “
I hope these creatures didn’t suffer.”

“I hate to
say it, but it looks like these were all abandoned while they were still alive,” Hawke said, recognizing none of the skeletal remains, “I can understand the desire to study the native creatures, but not to the extent of letting them suffer.”

“I’m more concerned about that filleted
Shomani in the other room,” one of the men stated, “Going with the assumption that this was a zoological lab dedicated to the study of Rain’s creatures, one has to wonder what they classified the Shomani as.”

“I wonder
ed the exact same thing,” Hawke replied, “Did they feel the Shomani were merely another mindless animal on a planet that was free for the taking?”

“Speaking of Shomani, I think you should go talk to your lady,” a woman behind him said, “She didn’t look too good a moment ago.”

He turned and caught the worried gaze of the paramedic.  She was introduced to him an hour ago, but he couldn’t remember her name for the life of him.

“She’s sitting in the hall with Winter Grass,” the woman added.

He nodded, then excused himself from the room.  He doubted he would be able to gather anything useful from the limited evidence left in the two rooms.  Knowing mankind as he did, he feared that anything he gleaned from those rooms would only continue to disappoint him.

Kashuba was indeed seated far down the hall with a young lady knelt next to her.  He joined up with them and was relieved to see that although her eyes were wet, she was no longer crying.  The lady next to her looked up at Hawke and shrugged.  She then rose up from the dusty floor and brushed
her hands on her pants as she headed to the rest of the group.

“Do you see why the Shomani call the Cheronook savages?” Kashuba asked, patting the floor next to her in invitation, “You would never find such an atrocity in Hollodale.”

He sat down next to her, taking her hand in his.

“And you wouldn’t find such an atrocity in the Frozen North.  You already know these people
well enough to understand how equally appalled they were with the stuff in that room,” he replied, “I have studied enough of human history to tell you that we are always doing stupid stuff and regretting it later.  Mankind is always better than it was a few generations prior.”

“You have more faith in the Cheronook than I do,” she said, “I don’t know that my mind will ever change in regards to them.”

“The Cheronook aren’t a
‘them’
.  The Cheronook is actually me and it’s you.  It’s your parents and your grandparents,” he said.

She sighed, shaking her head.  It was clear that she disagreed with him, but wasn’t in any mood to argue at the moment.