“Glad to hear it.” Riccirubbed his hands together and in an obvious move to change thesubject, he pointed at the table, saying, “So, the foodis…?”
“Apparently technicallyedible, Captain.”
“Just like this buildingis technically ahuman suitable environment.” He surveyed the room. “Though I can’tquite figure out why I’m finding this perfectly pleasantplace….”
Tal offered up a favoredphrase of Decker’s. “Seven kinds of creepy?”
“Exactly.” Ricci nodded atthe door. “Could you let Kaplita and Bayer know it’ssafe to come backin?”
“Yes, sir.” Jacoway headedoff, stopping in the doorway to ask, “And then what?”
Arms akimbo, Riccianswered, “And then we wait. To finally meet theLignatians.”
Chapter 11
More thanTrue
“Fairy tales are more than true: not becausethey tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us thatdragons can be beaten." GK Chesterton, as quoted inCoraline by NeilGaiman
It was the second day in arow that Decker had allowed Finnegan to do the daily check of thedeserted L3 shuttle by herself. Since Kennedy had been releasedfrom Med-bay, Decker was spending a lot of her time assisting inhis recovery by doing something called “sparring” with him. ToMoira it looked like they were beating each other up with sticks,but the doctor seemed to approve and it had spurred Naiche tobestow this responsibility on her, so Moira approved, too. Deckereven let Finnegan take Kayatennae with her, though she got thedistinct impression that the dog thought Moira wasaccompanying him.
Finnegan quickly finishedthe check of the shuttle and logged it in the system like Naichehad taught her; she was heading towards the exit hatch when Kayrushed ahead of her and started barking. She was retreating backinto the shuttle, planning to use the comm to contact Decker, whena flash of movement in some shrubbery caught her eye. Afterstudying the spot for a moment, she concluded that there wasdefinitely a face peering out of that bush – a Featayface.
“Hello,” Moira called. “Isthere something you need?” When there was no reply, she walkedtowards the bushes. “I won’t hurt you, come on out.”
The figure slowly stood up;Finnegan was surprised to see a Featay arrayed in shiny,machine-made clothing. She stared for a second and realized therewere two Featay gaping back at her. Moira asked, “Why are you sofar from your village?”
“Maykah is our dwellingplace.” One of them pointed off in the distance towards where thedomed city was presumably located. “There it isobscured.”
“You’reMaykure!”
“It is so. What are you?”Before Moira could answer, they blurted out a series of rapid-firequestions. “Is ship belong to you? Is ship come from away far?” Andlastly, pointing at Kay, “Why we know your speakings and not yourfellow?”
Moira introduced herself,allowed them to do the same, and then explained that she was humanand Kayatennae was a dog, which led to additional questions abouthis species, which she couldn’t answer. After struggling for a fewminutes, she said, “Dogs don’t talk. I don’t know why but theysimply don’t.” Feeling like it was her turn to ask some questionsshe said, “What are you doing here? I thought the Maykure neverleft the city – that’s what the Featay told us.”
The one who’d introducedthemself as Bingaul said, “You faced down Featay! How you claimyour escape?”
The other Maykure, namedLootan, asked, “You suffer attack as food?”
“Don’t be silly. Ofcourse, they didn’t want me as food. That’s all a myth of yourpeople.” Finnegan suspected these two Maykure were rather young andsought to enlighten them to truths their elders didn’t know. Sheexplained how mistaken the Maykure prejudices against the Feataywere and how much help they’d given to the humans.
Lootan replied, “I hold notrust on this.”
With a dismissive toss ofher head and an exaggerated sigh, Moira said, “Why would I lie?”Bingaul and Lootan stared at each other, both seeming to want theother to respond. Since there was no answer forthcoming, Moirasaid, “I have to be getting back and I suppose you should begetting home, too. Won’t you be missed?”
“This same hour, we holdas our time outside,” Bingaul said. “Outside at the city-surround.We mark this ship from the deck and come here, to mark closer.Elders will not hold we as missing, not until times later.”Bingaul’s nose twitched slowly while Lootan whispered in their ear.Bingaul pointed at the shuttle, saying, “We make enter in thisship?”
Moira had started toexplain why that wasn’t a good idea when Bingaul interrupted,“Please! For time short. We mark upon nothing but our city – ever.To mark closely ship from off-world share to we….”
“A memory forever,” Lootanfinished.
Moira’s resolve was slowlydissipating. “I know what that’s like,” she sighed. “To be soconfined. I used to live in a bubble, too. And I didn’t even knowit until they finally let me leave.” She pointed to the open hatch.“Come on in – but don’t touch anything.”
The two Maykure rushed inand excitedly started pelting her with questions. Moira didn’t meanto lie but she couldn’t help exaggerating a bit about how much sheknew. It felt so good to be the more experienced one, the onelooked up to, for a change. They’d been chatting amicably for aboutfifteen minutes when Lootan asked, “You make this ship tofly?”
Since Croker had allowedFinnegan to watch him fly the Aurora – a much bigger ship – and ithad seemed straight forward, Moira felt it was okay to stretch thetruth slightly. “I’ve never flown this shuttle – but I could if Iwanted to. It’s pretty simple once you know the basics.”
Bingual leaned forward,studying the cockpit. “Does not mark as simple.”
“Well…you have to knowwhat you’re doing.” Against all of Decker’s warnings, Moira sat inthe pilot’s seat, figuring an ultra-quick perch couldn’t reallyhurt anything. After all, she had no intention of actually tryingto fly it. She would merely activate the base-system, lighting upthe cockpit, like she’d seen Naiche do, and then shut it all down.However, immediately upon touching the control-panel, a warninglight pulsed out red flashes as the deafening sound of a klaxonflooded the shuttle. Finnegan hurriedly tried to reverse heractions but that only activated yet another warning from thecontrol panel.
Bingual and Lootan both hadtheir hands clamped over their ears and Lootan shouted, “Why clamormade? What holds wrong?”
Moira didn’t even botherresponding as
