Pasha noticed Tarnya nodding a tentative acceptance of this explanation. She looked around, and was unsettled to see many others expressing agreement too. Of course, Kona was well known. Loved and respected. He’d led these people, or their ancestors, through the most harrowing times of their history. Most would be willing to trust his judgment. But not all.
“Four centuries of patience?” someone called out in an angry voice.
From Urban, that cynical smile. “Literally, we ran into problems.”
He told them of the lost outriders and the ensuing resource shortage. “We couldn’t rebuild the outriders and complete the gee deck. Not until we made up our margins. The most efficient way to do that was to go hunting. To find another Chenzeme courser, lure it in, disable it, and take from it what we needed—and that’s what we did.”
A murmur of disbelief, of trepidation. Pasha’s heart raced, half in anger because he had to be lying—it would be madness to seek out a Chenzeme warship—and half in fear that he was mad enough to truly do such a thing.
“And here we are,” someone said in a bold voice balanced between amusement and anger.
Pasha leaned forward and looked down the row to see that it was Shoran, standing up from a seat near the end.
Shoran gestured at the sunlit garden beyond the pergola’s shade. “Here we are, surprisingly alive, on a beautiful deck that appears fully finished. I surmise we had the misfortune to sleep through a grand adventure?”
Urban looked puzzled, as if uncertain of Shoran’s deeper meaning. “Sooth,” he agreed. “It’s done.”
Pasha heard murmurs of relief:
Glad I wasn’t awake for that.
I would have died of fright.
“No, Shoran is right,” she muttered. “I would rather have been awake. It’s better to die aware.”
Tarnya turned a sympathetic gaze her way, but said nothing as questions erupted:
How was it done?
What damage was incurred?
Urban assured them, “The full history is in the library, and summaries have been prepared for you. You’ll be adopted by the network in the next several seconds and then you can review it all for yourselves.”
He looked to the side where Clemantine stood. She nodded as if to tell him to go ahead.
“Welcome to Dragon,” he said. “You each have your own reasons for being here, but one reason I hope we all share is an abiding curiosity about what happened to our ancestral worlds and what survives there now. We’re still a century of travel time from the closest star of the Hallowed Vasties, but we’ve already found our first artifact—and our first puzzle. I sent an outrider to investigate. It’s stealthed, so we can’t track its progress and we won’t get a report until it’s back in range—another ninety days or so—time enough for you to catch up on our history.”
He jumped down from the dais, putting an end to his speech just as Pasha’s atrium linked her into the ship’s network. Oh, she admired the strategy. She had gotten only halfway out of her seat when she sank back down, her resolve to confront him yielding to curiosity. What artifact had been found? And where exactly were they going, and why?
Without leaving her seat, she pulled up the summary reports Urban had mentioned and began to read.
Chapter
21
“You did good,” Kona said, his voice pitched just loud enough to draw Urban’s gaze as he left the dais. “Now you should stay. Make yourself accessible. Answer questions.”
Urban met this praise with a dismissive half-smile. “Let them catch up on history first. I’ll be around.”
He threaded between Vytet and Clemantine, nodded to Riffan who still stood near the entry, and walked off into sunlight.
Kona turned a disgruntled gaze on Clemantine, who rolled her eyes. “It’s better this way,” she consoled him. “He’s no good at comforting people and you know he doesn’t have the patience to listen to complaints.”
Kona grunted reluctant agreement as he eyed the ship’s company. Nearly everyone was still seated, eyes glazed, focus turned inward as they used their atriums to access the documents prepared for them.
“I thought his speech went well,” Vytet offered, his voice a gentle, low rumble.
“It did,” Kona agreed, also striving to keep his voice low so his words would not carry in the eerie quiet pervading the amphitheater. Somewhere, a trembling breath suggestive of quiet weeping. Rustling fabric, shuffling feet. A raspy indrawn breath. Sniffling.
The atmosphere would heat up once people got past the initial shock. Kona had agreed to be the buffer when that happened. It was the deal he’d cut with Urban, to get him to deliver the orientation speech. Urban had wanted Kona to speak, arguing, “You’re the politician. This is your role. You explain to them what happened.”
Kona had refused. “They need to hear it from you. This is your ship. You’re the master here. People need to know who you are. You need to engender trust, not suspicion. Let them know you’ve got their best interests in mind.”
The quiet continued for minutes before people began to look up, look around. Speak to their neighbors.
Motion drew his gaze: Shoran, rising from her seat near the end of the first row. She looked to Kona, and offered up a brilliant smile that warmed him deep in his belly. An old friend, an occasional lover. Her bright and cheerful personality a sharp contrast to his own somber pessimism, but they had gotten along, and he’d always admired her fearlessness.
He went to greet her properly. She came forward to meet him, but partway along the front row of seats she paused, using her toe to nudge Pasha Andern’s bare foot, startling her out of a reverie. With a smile, Shoran told her, “You started this. So come on now, and let’s figure out what’s next.”
Pasha’s lip curled. Her brow wrinkled in a scowl surprisingly fierce for such an elfin face. “All I did—” she started to exclaim.
“Was give the rest of us the opportunity of a lifetime,” Shoran interrupted. She turned her mischievous gaze on Kona and, raising a scolding finger, she said, “You I am not going to forgive for letting me sleep through the conquest of a Chenzeme courser and the expedition to the Rock. However, I’m still willing to negotiate on where we’re going from here.”
“There’s time for that,” he said gently, grateful to have her there. “Right now we need to get people settled.” The volume of noise was climbing as people left their seats. Several openly wept, others strove to comfort them, their encouraging words a sharp contrast to knots of angry conversation.
Shoran side-eyed the growing hubbub. Pasha turned in her seat to look. Beside her, Tarnya did the same, her expression concerned.
Kona knew Tarnya only from her bio, but he liked what he’d read. She’d served on the city council and had earned a reputation for straight talk and efficient action.
“All of you,” he said. “Work with me.” They turned to him with questioning gazes. In a low voice, he explained, “This could go either way unless we set a positive tone now.”
Tarnya was first to catch on. She nodded. Kona left it to her to lead the others. He stepped back onto the dais. “This is new for all of us,” he said, his voice calm, confident, and pitched to carry over the rising volume of conversation. It was also a voice everyone in the ship’s company knew, if not from personal experience, than from historical speeches replayed on annual holidays. The gathering quieted. People turned to listen.