“Well, I think you are doing great,” she said.
“Am I? Am I really? One crew member’s dead. Nearly all the rest injured. And nothing to show for it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Check this out.” She beckoned me over to her workstation.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the location of the Kryrk. We found it!”
The Kryrk was in a vault on the colossal mechanized orbiting space station Bandala. I recognized the name, not because of any briefing, but because I remembered that Bandala was where my father died seven years ago. Ana-Zhi had confirmed it yesterday when we spoke about my father. I still wanted to know more. But first I had to clear up some things.
I called the entire crew to the bridge.
“Two things. Both important,” I announced.
“No, we do not have pornography on the ship,” Hap Galish said with a straight face. “And, no, you cannot borrow mine.”
“Listen,” I said. “The Shima’s logs have been disabled. We don’t have to worry about what we’re saying anymore.”
“What happened?” Ana-Zhi asked. “You grow some balls over breakfast?”
I ignored her and said, “Chiraine knows who I am. We’re not playing games anymore. And you know what? It’s a huge relief.”
“It’s a huge relief to me too, junior,” Ana-Zhi said. “You were doing a piss-poor job pretending to be captain. I mean, it was downright painful.”
Chiraine said, “I know, right? Anyway, don’t worry. I won’t say anything to the Shima.”
“You better not, if you know what’s good for you, missy,” Ana-Zhi said.
“What’s the second important thing, pray tell?” Obarral asked.
“I’ve located the Kryrk,” Chiraine said with a smile of satisfaction.
“Unbelievable!” Galish said. “Just when I was beginning to think she was a waste of oxygen.”
“Where is it, girl?” Obarral asked.
“Bandala.”
Immediately there was a lot of excited talk and the crew peppered Chiraine with questions. But not everyone was pleased with the discovery. Specifically Ana-Zhi and Yates.
They both had been part of the ill-fated mission seven years ago. Ana-Zhi had been confined to the MedBed because of an earlier mishap, but Yates had ventured inside Bandala with my father. He barely made it out alive. And needless to say, he was not eager to return there.
“It’s not worth it,” he said, echoing what Ana-Zhi had told me privately. “The place is a deathtrap. And it’s still hot, with all kinds of active security measures. Even with a platoon of rangers, you wouldn’t make it through there alive.”
“Just tell them what you know, Yates,” Ana-Zhi said. She was sucking on a leptic stick, probably trying to clear her head.
Yates rather sullenly complied. He explained that Bandala was a space station, a rough cube, over one and a half kilometers on every side.
“That’s big,” Obarral said. “And I know big.”
“Yeah, you don’t realize exactly just how big, until you are inside.”
“You mentioned active security measures,” Galish said. “How do you get inside?”
“That part is easy. There are several good-sized landing decks. Beacons. The whole deal. And once you land, you’ll find plenty of artificial gravity.”
“At that scale?” Chiraine looked skeptical.
“Don’t ask me how it works,” Yates said. “It just works.”
“So what was this place’s purpose?” I asked. “Do we know?”
“Part storehouse, part orbital battle station. We don’t really know for sure.”
“Actually, we do,” said Chiraine. “At least we believe we do.”
Ana-Zhi raised one eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
Chiraine took over the narrative. “There are actually a lot of records that reference Bandala. I’ve researched it extensively.”
“Well goody for you,” Galish sneered. “How about enlightening us?”
“That’s what she’s trying to do,” I said. “Sorry, Chiraine, continue.”
“Bandala was constructed in 1671 by the Sky Reavers as an autonomous orbital fortress and treasure vault. At that point, their war with the Ptomeans was ramping up and the Yueldians were worried that if the Ptomeans conquered the planet, the treasures the Yueldians had collected would all be lost.”
“So what?” Galish said. “Easy come, easy go.”
“Not to the Sky Reavers. Their plunder was much more than merely treasure.”
“She’s right,” Yates said. “To the Yueldians, the items they stole were totems of sorts. They signified the power that the Sky Reavers had usurped from their enemies. This wasn’t some symbolic power. To the Yueldians, it was real.”
“Exactly,” Chiraine said. “If they lost these totems, the Yueldians believed that they would weaken and be crushed by their enemies.”
“That’s what happened, didn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, ultimately the Ptomeans did prevail, but it turned out that they had no interest in seizing what the Sky Reavers had plundered.”
“Ironic,” I said.
“Yeah, well. That’s why Bandala is still around and intact.”
“Tell me more about the defenses,” I said to Yates.
He rubbed his eyes. “There’s not much to tell. We got nailed within an hour of entering the fortress. Security drones, blast traps, scrubbers, guardian bots, prowlers—you name it. Fortunately the Tabarroh Crystal wasn’t too far in. But even so… Are you sure you want to be talking about this, Jannigan?”
I nodded. “Go on. It’s important.”
“Well, your dad held off the bots so I could escape. He sacrificed himself for me. And for the mission.”
“How did you locate the Tabarroh Crystal?” Chiraine asked.
“Sean knew the location—right from the start. He never told the rest of us how he knew. I always assumed that the Dodelan Alliance provided that data.”
Chiraine seemed very interested in this particular detail. “What about you, Ana-Zhi? Did Beck ever confide in you?”
Ana-Zhi eyed the other woman warily. “About the Tabarroh Crystal? No.” She took another hit of her leptic. “But I agree with Yates. It would be suicide to go back inside Bandala.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell her, Chiraine.”
“I still need to do a bit more work, but I might have discovered how to shut down the security grid.”
After we dropped Murroux off—something I still felt bad about—Galish set a course for Bandala. Chiraine and I returned to her workstation in the engineering bay.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
She tapped her biklode
