Reckless Rescue (39 page)

Tyris returned her smile, looking deep into her eyes. Her words sent a swirl of anticipation right down to his toes. He would have been satisfied with any answer, but he couldn’t help but be glad he would get to see his home again.

As long as he could convince the council. “Nerris, I need to borrow your spaceship.”

Nerris frowned. “You can’t take it apart, I told you that.”

Tyris grinned. “I don’t need to.”

Nerris folded his arms. “I hope you’re not thinking of putting your engine in the Tenacity, because it just wouldn’t work. The size difference is too great. It would never have enough power to make it all the way to the Colonies.”

“I don’t need to get all the way to the Colonies. I just need help to get up into orbit. The Hylista can make it the rest of the way!”

The council still looked bewildered, but understanding dawned on Nerris’s face. “Use her like a launch pad. That might just work!”

“It will work,” Tyris asserted. “I’m sure of it.”

“You can’t expect us to stand by Nerris’s word that he would help you,” Kalim began, “we need to discuss this before any decision can be made.”

“You old fool,” Weiss snarled. “This is our one chance. If we can get off this planet and claim this anysogen find, we’ll all be rich! If Nerris thinks it will work, we can’t turn down this opportunity.”

Tyris hadn’t thought about the anysogen as anything other than a way to get home in months. And he only cared about it now if it could sway the council’s decision.

“It’s not that simple, Weiss,” Yasmyn snapped. “We can’t go back, you know that.”

“You might think you can’t go back, but I don’t have anything against the Colonies,” Weiss said. “I don’t care that you believe in a stupid conspiracy theory.”

“Enough!” Kalim barked. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. He stared at them all impassively, then sighed. “Yasmyn, what do you think? You were the one affected most, and your daughter is the one who wants to leave.”

Marlee stiffened in his arms, and twisted to stare at her mother. “What are they talking about? Everyone was affected the same way, weren’t they?”

Yasmyn stared at her daughter. She bit her lip, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Marlee, I should have told you long ago, but it always hurt too much to talk about. I thought it would get easier with time, but it never did.”

“What?” Marlee pulled a little away from Tyris, staring at her mother. Her eyebrows pulled down.

Yasmyn took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice broke on the words. She waved a hand at Nerris.

He glanced at her, sympathy etched on his face. “Everyone on Semala knew about the meteor showers,” he explained. “I had a small telescope in the backyard. I thought I could teach Nelor a bit about astronomy, just playing around really. But what we saw were more than just little asteroids. One was much bigger than I expected. I had a friend who was an astronomer. I figured if anyone would know anything, he would.”

“Daddy?” Marlee’s voice wavered. She was white as a sheet. “He knew about this?”

“No!” Yasmyn interjected.

Nerris shook his head. “No, Glesin had no idea. He’d been told to study sun spots, I guess to keep him from paying attention to the meteors. As soon as I told him, he contacted the governor, trying to warn him.”

Tyris winced. He could guess what was coming next. He hoped he was wrong.

“What happened?” Marlee asked sharply.

“He had an accident on his way home from work that night,” Nerris said, his voice heavy with emotion.

Yasmyn hid her face in her hands.

No one said anything, Marlee looked shell shocked.

“But you don’t think it was an accident?” Tyris asked softly.

Nerris shook his head. “It was too much of a coincidence. Too convenient for the Colonies. They had to have been involved,” he said regretfully.

“How did you escape the same fate?” Tyris asked.

“They didn’t know I was there when Glesin made the discovery. I was lucky,” Nerris said soberly.

Tyris shook his head, almost unable to believe the fantastical tale. Would the Colonies really stoop so low? Yet, there was a strange ring of truth to the story. A lone politician, far from home and country, facing the destruction of the entire planet. There would have been nothing he could have done to save them. Yet…

“Most of us find it difficult to ever trust the Colonies again. It was bad enough that they left without warning, and that they took people away from their families. But the idea that they would stoop to murder to cover it up? Most of us agree that we don’t want to be part of a society that condones that,” Nerris said. “If it weren’t for the fact that this planet is so polluted, we’d be happy to stay here permanently and have nothing to do with the Colonies ever again.”

Tyris looked at Marlee. Would this change her choice? “What do you want to do?”

Marlee looked at her mother, uncertain, then crossed the room and put her arms around her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked softly. “It would have explained so much.”

There was a long pause, and Tyris thought for a moment that Yasmyn was going to reject her daughter as he suspected she had done subtly over the years. But then she put her arms around Marlee, pulled her close, and began to cry.

Tyris felt a twinge of admiration for the woman. She’d been pregnant when she left Semala, her husband murdered, and yet she had chosen to take a new partner, put up with his crude behaviour, and raise three more children. She was as hard as nails. It was no wonder she didn’t understand Marlee’s sensitivity.

“I… I couldn’t. If I thought about Glesin, about how much it had hurt… it was too hard. So I shut it away,” Yasmyn said, her voice muffled. “I couldn’t bring your father back. I just had to work with what I had.”

Or maybe she did understand it all too well. He could see Marlee, faced with such a tragedy, withdrawing and refusing to feel again as well. Yasmyn had tried to protect herself from the pain, and in the process, had kept her daughter at arm's length. Would sharing the past with her daughter help her open up, and let them reconnect?

Mother and daughter hugged, rocking back and forth in a long overdue reconnection. Tyris waited patiently, knowing they both needed this moment.

But Weiss couldn’t wait. “You’re not going to let mistakes from that many years ago keep all of us stuck on this hole of a planet are you?”

Both Marlee and Yasmyn turned to glare at him simultaneously. Tyris bit back a laugh.

“Shut up, Weiss,” Yasmyn said succinctly. Then she turned to her daughter. “What do you want to do, Marlee?”

Would this news sway her towards staying? He couldn’t blame her if it did.

Marlee looked at the other council members then at the closed door behind which most of the villagers were no doubt wondering what was going on. “We can’t stay here,” she said to her mother before she looked around to include the rest of the council. “We’re dying here. Everyone deserves the chance to leave if they want to. I can’t make the decision for anyone but me.”

“And what do you choose, Marlee?” her mother asked.

Marlee looked at Tyris. She hugged her mother fiercely one last time then crossed the room to take his hand. “I’m going home with Tyris.”

He looked down at her, searching her face. “Are you sure? This is quite a shock. I’ll totally understand if you don’t want anything to do with the Colonies either. I’m going to be with you whatever you choose, so don’t make the decision for me.”

Marlee looked back at him seriously. “I’m not. What is there here for me? Even if we stay together, even if we get terribly lucky and have a baby, what sort of life is there here for a child? Growing up with only a dozen other people they might be able to love? Facing the possibility of never having their own children? What sort of a life is that? The Colonies might have done some terrible things, but even so, there’s more possibility there than there is here.”

Tyris nodded, his expression serious. Then he looked to Nerris and the rest of the council. “Are you going to work with us, or do we take this to the rest of the village and see what their choice is?”

“You wouldn’t,” Kalim’s eyebrows arched down. “You’d risk splitting the village, possibly putting everyone’s lives at risk, just because you don’t like the rules here?”

“No. If this only affected me, I’d happily keep it quiet. But everyone deserves the chance to have their say on this. To decide for themselves if getting off this planet is worth the small risk that this plan won’t work. And this time, the risk is small, isn’t it, Nerris?” He turned to the engineer, one eyebrow raised.

Nerris frowned. He looked at Kalim, then at Yasmyn, and sighed. “The odds of success are high this time. The only risk is if the Tenacity fails to break orbit itself or develops a malfunction, and in that case, it wasn’t going to save us when we needed it anyway.”

The council’s faces were grim. Kalim looked at Yasmyn. “What do you say?”

Yasmyn looked at her daughter. Tyris held her breath. Then she nodded. “It’s time. This decision is too big and far reaching for us to make it without consulting everyone.”

“How much do you plan to tell them?” Tyris asked.

Yasmyn hesitated. Then slowly shook her head. “My husband is not their concern. We’ve let it hold us back for too long. The Colonies betrayed Glesin,” her voice broke, but she took a deep breath and continued. “They betrayed me, but they didn’t betray everyone. Let them base their decision on their own needs. Marlee’s right. There’s no future here for our children. Or our grandchildren, if we ever have any.”

Without the key piece of knowledge, Tyris was pretty sure that the majority of the villagers would choose to leave the planet. She must know that. “Thank you,” he said softly.

“There is one other possibility,” Nerris said. All eyes turned in his direction. “We swap this planet, and the anysogen, for another one, a habitable one.”

It was a perfect solution for those who wanted to keep their current way of life and stay away from the Colonies. “But don’t you want tools, materials, even some medical supplies as well?” he suggested.

Nerris shrugged. “That would be good, but if all we can get is a planet, we’d be set.”

“I’m not sure if that will be possible,” Tyris warned. “Inhabitable planets are rare, and the few we’ve found are already occupied.”

“We have quite a bargaining chip though,” Nerris pointed out. “If the Colonies want this fuel badly enough, they just might be willing to accommodate us. What do you think?” He turned to the rest of the council.

One by one, they nodded. All except Weiss.

“You’ve got to be joking!” he demanded. “Give up a fortune for another hunk of rock where we can slave away for the rest of our lives? Not a chance.”

Kalim ignored him. “It seems we’re prepared to try your plan Tyris, if everyone agrees. If you make it back to the Colonies, you can present our terms to them.”

Weiss had been outvoted. He scowled, but there was little he could do.

It was not Tyris’s problem. He turned and threw open the doors. It seemed like the entire village was standing outside. All eyes turned towards him expectantly. “I have a plan to get back to the Colonies and bring a rescue,” he said.

There was a stunned silence for a moment. Then a cheer went up. Tyris grinned and held up his hand. Slowly, the cheers died down.

“It’s not guaranteed, and it does involve using the Tenacity to lift the Hylista out of the atmosphere. There are risks involved and no guarantees I’ll make it. But Nerris agrees that the chances are good.”

Nerris stepped up beside him and nodded. “Tyris’s plan is sound. The council has voted to try it if everyone here agrees.”

Another cheer. There were no doubts what this crowd thought. Jaimma and Beren jumped up and down and hugged one another. Rejan punched a fist in the air. Nelor and Brenda were looking at each other, tears in their eyes. Everyone was smiling.

A warm glow filled Tyris. He’d come here with nothing more than a plan to find some fuel and save a way of life he no longer saw any value in. Now, if this worked, he would get to save an entire village of people from living with the effects of anysogen poisoning. The idea was far more uplifting.

“Who’s going to fly the Tenacity?” Nelor called out.

Tyris looked at Nerris and raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me. I’m not a pilot.” Nerris held up his hands.

“Didn’t you fly the Tenacity here?”

Nerris shook his head. “Rejan’s father was our pilot. But he died of cancer more than ten years ago.”

“But you know enough about ships to fly it, right?” Surely he was not going to be stuck here for want of something as simple as a pilot. “I can fly the ship up there, but I can’t land it again. We could leave it in orbit, but I have no idea how long it could maintain it. You could lose the Tenacity.”

“I’ll do it,” Nelor volunteered. Brenda hung onto his arm, her face drawn. But she didn’t protest.

Everyone turned to look at him. Nerris showed no surprise. “Are you sure? You’ve never flown before.”

“No, but I’ve always wanted to. You have no idea how many times I’ve sat in that pilot’s seat and pretended I was flying. I’ve read all the manuals, all the blueprints, all the flight books. I can do this.” He looked down at Brenda, and squeezed her hand. She smiled nervously back at him.

The council exchanged looks, but since no one else was volunteering, Nelor got his wish.