Blooban gave a croak of agreement. For once, she wished he hadn’t.
She didn’t remind him that he hadn’t believed her when she’d told him about the company. He’d seen as much as he could see without leaving the ship, so he believed to some extent, but he thought it was all wrong and had pushed her to find help.
And he had tried to help her in his own way. She suspected he’d done something to the security scan that was required before she could leave the ship. It had been less uncomfortable since she’d brought him there. She didn’t ask what he’d done, because she’d have had to report it, and he didn’t tell because she hadn’t asked.
“They believe you believe, or they wouldn’t be here,” Blooban said finally, as if he’d been working on the words for several minutes.
“That’s not the same as believing,” she pointed out.
“But better than not believing.”
“I guess.” It didn’t feel better. It felt…lonely…her gaze was drawn toward the tall, strong figure of the general. John. He’d asked her to call him John. It felt like more than just believing her, but what did she know? She’d been a lonely specter among the ghosts of the company for her whole life. Of Scoyfol. What did that even mean? She thought she’d known, but as she tried to explain them, explain their existence, even she could hear how thin the story sounded. Did she know the truth of her and her people’s existence?
She’d operated out in space, gone onto docks that were seedy and filled with danger, and she hadn’t felt this uneasy. Blooban had encouraged her to reach out to those who had defeated the Dusan. She’d had to fight against her own compulsion to obey, to do her duty no matter what, to do as he suggested.
Since she’d met John and been on Kikk, a seed of hope had taken root in her heart and it was growing. But she’d obeyed for so long. Even now, when it was done, she felt as if she had to fight herself not to turn back.
An alert showed on navigation. They’d be dropping into real space soon. They must have heard it, because John and the others left the bay.
“We’re almost there,” she said, a profoundly unnecessary statement. One thing her bringing them aboard had accomplished. Whether she wanted to or not, she had to keep going forward.
2
As the Vycorth dropped into normal space, and the forward view steadied, Halliwell had to stop himself from leaning forward for his first sight of the Scoyfol ships. It was an amazing story and, at this moment, he realized how very much he hadn’t really believed it. In any case, leaning wasn’t a general thing to do.
Instead of ships, he saw nothing but a nebula or some kind of anomaly. Lots of space with no ships. He should be better at knowing what kind of space this was, but he usually had people, geeks for that.
Naxe had refused to identify the region of space where the company currently hid. This would have worried his team—and himself—if not for Tim and the Garradian outposts’ tracking systems. He might be willing to go where no man had gone, but he wasn’t willing to go where no one knew where he was.
There was a complicated comms trill, and Naxe reached out and tapped in what he assumed was a coded reply.
“Are strangers coming aboard a common occurrence?” Halliwell asked.
“Refugees are—were welcome to join the company,” Naxe said. “With the peace, it has not been necessary to take in others.”
From refugees to “others?” Halliwell exchanged a look with Riina because it was no use looking at Tim for that.
More trills, another response from Naxe. The exchange began to get more insistent. As far as Halliwell could tell, Naxe’s responses were delivered with the same deliberate persistence. The set of her shoulders didn’t change and the frog didn’t move.
“Problem?” Halliwell asked. Something is wrong, she’d said. Now he glanced at Tim, though he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if he could ask him if this was a code sequence or trouble. Tim’s head angled toward him, his visual display tracking faster. So Tim might be concerned, too. They had an exit plan. He could give him the signal and stop this before—
With a last trill, the horizon in front of them wavered and suddenly the ships were there, hanging in space like some ungainly, eerie space creature. An ancient, dead space creature it appeared, with no lights showing anywhere. A fission of unease crept across his nerve endings. He had Tim, he reminded himself. And questions. First up, what was the force that had hidden them for so long? The Garradians had cloaking technology, but their outpost sensors could see through it, and they hadn’t seen this.
His next question he asked Naxe. “Are the ships always blacked out?” It felt like overkill when they had such effective cloaking.
“It helps conserve resources,” Naxe answered.
It made sense, almost the only thing that had so far. The array of ships drew his attention like a magnet, particularly the “head” of the “creature,” with its tentacles of ships strung out beside and behind it. There were web-like connections—transit tubes, he’d guess—between all the ships, at least fifty of them, he surmised. There was some logic to the arrangement. If the formation was attacked, none of the ships would impede each others ability to flee, or completely block each other’s firing capability.
The big ship had to be the original ship, he decided. It appeared old, without looking decrepit, and the arrangement of smaller ships looked protective, at least on this approach vector. If the arrangement was to protect the Scoyfol ship, was it designed to protect the passengers or the captain?
“What’s it called?” he asked, “the Scoyfol ship?”
“Scoyfol’s Hope,” she said.
Prescient, unless was it changed later. He stared at the formation, wondering why it kicked off all kinds of instinctual warnings? And then he got it. Hidden or not, it looked like a very appealing trap. It appeared dead, helpless, a carefully arranged tangle of ships that could deceive the unwary. Was that meant for “refugees” or someone else? In the beginning, when they’d needed resources so desperately, how had they acquired them? Had the motley mix of escort ships been willing to join the Scoyfol party?
There was trouble, Naxe had said, but was it only about going home or staying here? Or was there more to it? Had the original voyage been accompanied by support ships? A convoy of sorts? Or had they all been acquired later? Why wouldn’t the captain want to be relieved of this mess? What benefit did he receive from keeping the status quo?
He looked at Riina, wishing he were free to ask what she thought. As if she sensed his gaze, her gaze met his—a gaze filled with caution. What did she see out there? He studied the ships once more, this time focusing on those closest to the Hope. Those would have been the first ships “acquired,” or so he assumed. He couldn’t see a pattern to them. They were all shapes and sizes, and they all looked old, but in fairly good shape. There was a curiously squat ship situated in the Hope’s bow. He’d seen a fair mix of ships since they arrived here, but he’d not seen one quite that like that one. It was an ugly sucker—he tensed. Ugly. The Dusan had liked ugly. But they were gone, killed by the mental connection that had allowed their Leader to control them.