Tichel, Barc, Qualus and a few other planets in the system appeared on the screen. He didn’t know where he’d take them when Duval was destroyed. Tichel? Cold as Sotec and tough to grow anything. How would the kids survive? People lived underground there and ate a green mush derived from a special moss that grew on ice. Barc would be gone soon. And Qualus was the Federation’s trash dump. The toxicity levels on that rock, in the soil, in the air, made scratching out an existence tough. The humans that worked the refuse facilities didn’t look right. Some had begun to morph. Some in minor ways like an extra finger or toe, or one part missing that you wouldn’t notice at first, but others weren’t so lucky. He’d heard of some humans with extra limbs, or animal features like tails. No thanks. He’d rather float out in space on a stolen cargo hauler than subject his people to the horror show on Qualus.
Hours before, back at Marco’s, George had given his latest report. He started with the good numbers. The tower crews had made steady gains. Each day taking down more than the last day with more people coming on board and better efficiency. This seemed like good news. But in the end, the numbers don’t lie and with a mere 18 days left, the people on Duval weren’t going to make it. Katy didn’t want to hear it. Nobody did.
At current pace, George calculated they needed to double their output to hit a 50% kill rate. They were close, but not close enough. There was no way to double the amount of downed towers, they were already maxed out. Already very efficient. The tower teams would continue but evacuation started to take the fore.
The last hope of saving Duval was to get the military involved. If Jolo and Barth could convince Filcher and a few other Galaxy class Defenders, maybe some gunboats, to converge on Duval, they could take down the towers by force. The big guns on a Defender could kill a week’s worth of towers in a day. Add four or five gunboats and there was hope. Jolo had no faith in the Fed, but he was desperate and had to try. He took a deep breath and sat down in his chair. He would go to Callen and find Filcher, a man he used to know, and ask for help.
“Take us out of here, Koba.” Koba nodded. The Argossy shuddered for a moment then straightened and started the jump into Astid. The computer would make the calculations, finding a safe jump point to emerge into on the other side to prevent reanimating into another ship, a rock, or some bit of space debris. At the beginning of a jump Jolo’s body felt light, like he could float off his seat. He closed his eyes and his fingers tightened around the cold metal armrest. The middle of the jump was the worst. It was if parts of him slipped out and started to drift off, like he’d been digitized, detuned somehow and the parts didn’t fit anymore. Koba had laughed at him when he said this and launched into a formal explanation, but his brain shut down early on in the lecture.
The Argossy popped into Astid and the inertial dampeners kicked in and Jolo felt whole again. He opened his eyes and the big screen showed nothing in the sector but a class D transport, maybe a mud humper from one of Astid’s moons. Greeley sat in Koba’s chair staring into Koba’s custom display with a smirk on his face. He looked like a kid who’d forgotten his numbers taking a math test. Greeley was at his best on the ground with Betsy in his hands. Koba started the calculations for the next jump immediately.
Jolo called down to Hurley and Barthelme. “How we doing down there, Boys?”
“Good to go, Captain,” said Hurley. Jolo had wanted to hear Barthelme’s voice but Hurley would’ve said something if anything was wrong. They’d bolted a metal seat to the floor near the engineering control panel just for Barthelme. He was still weak. He’d started walking only a few days before, but he was determined to go.
Three jumps later and the Argossy was finally in Callen. Immediately blue dots started popping up on the sector scan. Greeley had his boots up on the console with his fingers interlocked behind his head. Jolo moved Greeley’s display onto the big screen. “How many we got?” said Greeley, eyes fixed on the blue dots continuing to show up.
“Shitpot full,” said Jolo.
“It looks like at least half the fleet,” said Koba. “Two Defenders, one of which is Filcher’s, a squadron of gunboats, three frigates and a few transports.”
“Yep, that’d be a shitpot full,” said Greeley. “This don’t feel right. We aught to be headin’ in the exact opposite direction.”
“Thanks to Koba’s transponder we’re just a merchant vessel carrying wood chips to the settlement on Cresser,” said Jolo, the Argossy’s green dot just on the outside edge of the fleet of blue dots. Without Koba’s transponder scrambler Jolo and crew would have shown up as a hostile red dot on every Fed boat’s scanner.
“We’re being hailed,” said Koba. “It’s the Defender.”
“Okay, stick to the plan,” said Jolo. “Put ‘em on speaker. We’ll hold ‘em off on the open channel until Barthelme can get a lock on a point to point.”
The
