Part IV: Revolution
“War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself.”—Benjamin Franklin
On the Road to Qimmiq Port
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.28 Interstellar
Janus’s buggy got light on its wheels as he hit the small bump in the endless grasslands, but he’d gotten a good feel for the First-Landing-era vehicle by now, and he and the others were going as fast as they could while keeping their vehicles well under control.
The tundra stretched out in front of them. The ancient maglev had transported them almost 900 kilometers northeast, and they’d hit the trails hard, crossing over the centerline of the Twilight Valley and entering the region of true night. The air was thinner here, and the team had taken to wearing their helmets more often, plugging into the buggies’ environmental control system to stop the headaches and the constant shortness of breath.
They’d opted for four of the Irkallan-style buggies—closer to heavy ATVs than the sun-side side-by-sides they’d driven—instead of taking a heavier, slower crawler. A crawler would have been more comfortable and also able to follow a navigation plot autonomously while the team rested, but it would have been easy prey for a compartmentalist ambush—assuming Brago and his team could catch up.
Another ambush was more than possible, and that was another reason they’d opted for the one-to-two-person buggies: the small all-terrain vehicles handled the hills and flats almost as well as they did the roads, giving them dozens of possible paths they could take. Koni and Mick were both riding Hunter-style buggies with two seats in case one of the vehicles broke down. Lira had opted for a single-seat buggy with a trailer to haul some generic supplies she’d retrieved from the Western Research Hub—things that were valuable but not so advanced they’d attract the wrong kind of attention.
As for Janus, he’d opted for a buggy with a sealable sidecar so Fury would survive the trip into coldside. For now, the not-so-little jungle dragon was doing fine, her head poking out of the open top with her two sets of gills externalized to capture extra oxygen, but they would reach a point where the air was too thin and too cold even for her.
“When’s our next stop?” Koni asked.
“Soon,” Janus said with a grin. Wearing the aspirant suit for two days straight, aside from minimal hygiene stops, was getting under the Verazlan woman’s skin. To her credit, she hadn’t complained, at least not after Janus explained they would have to eat, drink, sleep, and fight in them once they were in coldside proper, and by then, she needed to be used to the feeling of it. “Let’s stop on that rise over there,” Janus said, tagging a small mound near the horizon, just five kilometers away.
Koni acknowledged the transmission without speaking, gunning her engine to pull ahead.
Janus chuckled. He hadn’t held a grudge against Koni for the comments she’d made about his people being weak early in the race, but he wasn’t so noble he didn’t enjoy a little karma coming back her way.
***
“How’s the suit?” Lira asked, handing Koni a steel canteen cup full of chunky soup she’d made.
“Fine,” Koni said, dipping her head in thanks for the food. She glanced at Ryler, whose eyes were glowing again, reviewing the data he’d been able to take with him. “Did Janus and Mick run off?”
Lira nodded, sitting on the camp stool next to Koni. “Janus is getting lichen samples and seeing if he can find me more of those tubers you’re eating. Mick took Fury hunting. Surprised you didn’t go with him.”
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“Who? Mick?” Koni said, blowing on a spoonful before eating it.
“Yeah. You two seem to be getting along.”
Koni snorted. “He’s a good warrior, and I wouldn’t kick him out of my cabin under different circumstances, but ancestors protect us that man loves to talk!”
Lira laughed. “He really does.”
“Did you two ever—?”
Lira shook her head. “He’s a good friend. It’s not like I didn’t think about it with the stress we’ve been under, but I didn’t want that kind of complication.”
“You think Mick’s complicated?” Koni asked with a smirk.
Lira pursed her lips. “I think I might be the complicated part of that equation. Mick’s people are very open-minded about that sort of thing.”
Koni grunted and ate another spoonful of the warm and filling soup. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately: ‘My people.’”
“Because of the attack?” Lira asked.
Koni nodded. “That, and because of some of the information Ryler gave me. It has… challenged some of the perceptions my clan has about itself.”
“Like what?” Lira asked, holding her spoon in her mouth while she dug through her bag for Mick’s salt shaker.
Koni took a moment to compose her thoughts, then said, “For as long as I could remember, my mother told me that Clan Verazlan was respected because we were strong, and that applied to every aspect of my life as a child and a young woman. We had to send our boys off to join the rangers so the other families would be afraid to challenge us. We had to dominate the river trade so no one could out-leverage us.”
Lira nodded. “I’ve got to tell you, it sucks being on the other side of that during negotiations, but I can’t say it doesn’t work.”
Koni smiled sadly, and Lira saw some of the costs that came with a constant battle for dominance in the other woman’s eyes. “I don’t think it’s who we were supposed to be. We didn’t get our respect or our position as judges through strength. We got it because of the Verazlan.”
“‘The’ Verazlan?”
Koni nodded. “It was a starship—a warship of the Perseid Free Navy. About three hundred years into the exodus, the Splinter Fleet started to face serious shortages of hard-to-source materials during a long stretch through dark space. There were general discussions about whether the most damaged ships should be scuttled, but since they were often older passenger vessels, that would have put a severe strain on the overall Splinter Fleet’s life support.”
“I think I see where this is going,” Lira said, cringing inwardly. “That’s why they made you judges, because you made the hard choice.”
“We did,” Koni said proudly. “We gave up our ship.”
Lira’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“The Verazlan was one of the older vessels in the PFN that had gone through a refit in the late stages of the War. Her parts were compatible with many of the passenger transports, and scuttling her would save the greatest number of ships. Our captain put the choice to the crew by referendum, and the vote was unanimous: we gave up our ship so that the others might live. There was no one ship that could take all of us, so just like the Verazlan’s parts were split between the different vessels, so too were its crew members, and because we had all voted to do what was right by the many, we were relied upon as impartial arbiters when disputes arose on or between ships.”
“Wow,” Lira said, genuinely shocked by how far the culture had drifted.
“Yes,” Koni said, holding her soup tin with both hands. “So, tell me, Lira Allencourt. What would you do in my position?”
“Me?”
Koni nodded. “I’m used to overcoming obstacles by walking over them. I find myself in need of a more diplomatic solution.”
Lira picked a bit of stringy meat from beneath her teeth and thought about it. “I don’t know if I’m the best person to advise you on this. I mean, I understand where you are. I was raised in my mother’s shadow, and I loved her, but it was a lot to live up to, you know?”
“I do,” Koni said openly and sincerely.
Lira shrugged. “I made mistakes because of it. I accepted that pressure without thinking, and I let it shape the way I treated people.”
“You mean Janus?”
Lira bobbed her head. “Not just him. Others. Myself. I was trapped by who I thought I should be. I still am.”
Koni raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were exactly who you wanted to be. That’s why I…”
“What?”
Koni sighed. “That’s why I tricked the Carverites into stealing the samples. I saw I couldn’t win in the council chambers.”
Lira felt a wave of sadness pass through her at the thought of that, not because of the way the negotiations had almost fallen apart but because the behavior—the use of any means to get what she wanted—reminded her so much of her old self, even if she could console herself with the thought that she hadn’t progressed to attempted murder by the time she came to her senses. “Do you know what I would do if I wasn’t exiled from my homeworld and fighting to survive?”
“What?” Koni asked.
Lira smiled and felt herself tear up. “I’d open an inn for travelers with my uncle, Pasha. No trade treaties, no traveling, just simple hospitality and endless haggling with him over the price of ingredients.”
Koni nodded silently, sipping her soup from the cup. “You would be good at that.”
“I know,” Lira said, wiping her eyes, and then she laughed. “What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Koni said, taking a last bite and rinsing the empty tin out. “But with everything that’s been happening lately, I think I need to start now.”