CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SAHVIN
During the briefing for boarding, the Rered Rauner Commander Maktu told us they were calling in four more Dreads for the raid on Nadoo. It would take days for us to round up all or the people we wanted to liberate. As I said, earlier the boarding teams from Dread One would remain on the ship.
Dread One went into orbit in a parallel orbit with the slave ship and AI jammed their scanners so they wouldn’t discover us before we could sneak our shuttle aboard. Our pilot slid the shuttle into their shuttle bay as the iris was closing so they could repressurize it.
There was a look of pure horror on the bay technician’s face as we poured from the shuttle in full combat armor with our stun guns drawn. He was a Pican, just like the fish-faced humanoids that Nora and her friends had described on their slave ship. He threw up his arms and surrendered immediately.
Facing armed combat specialists was far different than managing unarmed slaves with pain sticks. They were a cowardly bunch, easily subdued. As we rounded them up, we secured them into an empty barracks compartment until one of our shuttles arrived to take them down to the planet. We had no need to harm them, although I considered it. They were likely associated with the same Picans that kidnapped me from Earth.
They would be marooned on Nadoo until another ship came to collect supplies from the planet. The would survive if they worked for it or they would starve, but we would not harm them.
Rered Rauner was far inferior to the Kurellis. It was divided into numerous large compartments that housed the slaves’ barracks with up to a hundred in each compartment. There was no privacy for anyone. Many of the five hundred modules were empty, and the smell of unwashed bodies hung in the air.
Commander Maktu called for engineers to come look at the air and water purification systems to see if they could improve the efficiency. They only had to last until we got to Farseek.
With the Pican’s secured in three rooms of the slave barracks, Admiral Degatu sent one of our piloting teams to run the ship, while we accompanied the non-combatants to take a complete census of the slaves. Most of the ones left on board the vessel were females and included three from Earth and two from Narova.
The mercenaries were thrilled to find many Uatu female among them. One of them was solmatu to Gerj Victu, a member of my team. The women in her barracks cheered when we came in and announced that we had come to free them take them back to Farseek. It made us feel good.
I felt good that we were helping to free them to go back and rebuild their homeworld, and that Nora and I were going there to make a place for ourselves there.
The AI tech with the pilot team discovered that the names and origin of all the captives on the ship and those that were just shuttled down to the planet were recorded in their AI system along with all of the slaves they had delivered in the last five years.
They also discovered star charts in the system with specific coordinates for Earth, Narova, and the whole Alliance. Both Commander Maktu and Pyrr looked worried as they heard the news. The navigator was quick to add that it was at least six months journey past the far side of the Sargus Empire, farther than anyone from Farseek had ever been.
“It would be wrong not to tell them, sir,” I said respectfully. “I don’t believe they will want to go back. If solmatu is like meomee, only death will break the bond. Now that we have the information, we may be able to get word back to their families. Before I was kidnapped, the Alliance was on the verge of opening relations with Earth. It may have already happened.”
“Not a word to your mates until we figure this out. I need to discuss this with Admiral Degatu and the rest of command before we tell the women anything. Is that clear Lieutenant Mazza?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. Although I didn’t like it, I would comply. I hoped Nora would understand when she learned the truth. I couldn’t help feeling elated that we would finally know where we were in relation to our home world.
It was ironic that I had taken a position at the Alliance Earth base, hoping to find meomee while I was there. I had exhausted my options with the matchmaking service. They had found no mate for me on Narova, and there was no match among those registered for ancestor DNA evaluations.
The odds I would find my mate on Earth by chance were slim. But I was within a hundred-mile radius of people descended from people who had contact with my ancestors. They were among Nora’s ancestors. The odds that I would find Nora as I did were genuinely astronomical.
I believed Nora, and I had made peace with the probability that we would never be able to return to our home worlds. My only wish would be to let our families know that we were alive and happy. I also wanted to let the Alliance know about the Picans preying on pre-space faring races in addition to the Tenzari.
The Picans knew of our race, but we had never captured any of their slavers. I felt avenged for what they did to my life before the Farseek Mercenaries rescued me. Now, these Picans would be marooned on a backwater planet with no way to get back home at least until another Pican ship comes to Nadoo with a new shipment.
There is no sense in telling our mates about this until we figured out the ramifications. Would it even be possible to contact the Alliance? I knew the channels we used, but I had no idea if they were compatible with the Farseek systems.
At that point, it was not that difficult to keep the information to myself. I didn’t just want to blurt it out in passing. We were far too busy with the mission to sit down and discuss it. It would wait.
My perspective on the situation was a bit different than Pyrr’s or the Commander’s. I had spent a couple years on Earth, and I was prepared to go wherever I needed until I found meomee.
But now I had, and we are mated for life. Nora was my home. I had no home without her.