Reunion: Chapter 13

  Kathryn awoke, but it wasn’t like any kind of waking up she’d ever done before.  It felt more like coming back from the dead than rousing from a restful sleep.  It took her a few moments to load up the last thing she remembered, but when she did it bolted her upright from laying down.  This was a mistake; it brought on a crushing pain in her head which compelled her to lie back down.

  At least the bed was comfortable enough.  It seemed to be a mattress shaped bag of sewn together animal hides, presumably stuffed with… fuck did her head hurt.  Lying down was at least helping alleviate the pain somewhat; she could feel it slowly dissipating.  She turned her head to the side to get her first good look at her surroundings.  She was in a smallish room which she imagined might be the entire structure.  The walls appeared to be built out of logs stacked on top of each other, crossing each other in an interlaced way at the corners.

  She reached down to feel if she still had any of her equipment in her pockets.  She didn’t.  Both her PANEs and scroll were missing.  “Well at least there’s that…” she darkly humoured to herself in a croaked voice.  “Okay…   Let’s try this again.”

  This time with adequate caution, she slowly raised her head and worked her way up to an upright sitting position.  Just as cautiously, she swung her body around to put her feet on the ground beside the bed.   Looking down, she tilted her head to the side as she noticed that the floor was bare earth, dry and packed down hard, but bare earth all the same.  It was the first time she fully processed that she had been taken by the Earthlings.   She hoped she was considered a guest, but the dart suggested a prisoner instead.  She tried not to think about what uses they might have in mind for her.

  While she was contemplating her chances of successfully standing up, the door swung open and a young woman entered, younger than Kathryn certainly, but a grown adult woman nonetheless.  Kathryn was struck by how different this woman looked to the humans she’d encountered before, the small group of males who had darted her and presumably brought her here.

  What struck Kathryn was how clean the woman was compared to the men, how freshly bathed she clearly seemed to be.  Her dark hair was tied back with a pink ribbon which perfectly colour matched the pink flowers patterning her white sundress, form fitting about her core, but flowing quite elegantly down from her hips.  She had an air of arrogant confidence about her, one she recognized from elites on Haven specifically and the people from Kobol she’d met more generally.   It was the kind of condescending regard one might expect from an aristocrat or someone of some other position of unearned privilege.

  “English?”

  “I… yes!” Kathryn marveled.  “Why do you speak, I mean, am I… what’s going on here?”  She didn’t know what to ask first so she blurted out several partial questions at once.  It was a confluence of her having too many questions to ask first and lingering fogginess from whatever was in the dart.

  “What land do you come from?” the woman asked with an intent unwavering gaze.  She didn’t seem interested in answering any of Kathryn’s questions.

  “Land?   I don’t um…” Kathryn shook her head.   “I don’t understand.”

  “How far did you travel to get here?” the young woman seemed to become too quickly irritated with her lack of forthrightness.

  “Pretty fucking far…” Kathryn chuckled to herself, resisting the urge to snap at her, to rush her and knock her unconscious as quietly as possible and make a run for it.  The woman wrinkled her nose in confusion.  “Why was I attacked?” Kathryn asked.

  “You were alone, in unfamiliar clothing,” the woman answered.  “Our explorers thought it best to capture you first and investigate secondly.  Perhaps not the wisest decision, but… wisdom generally is not one of their strengths.”

  “What’s your name?” Kathryn asked.

  “Patricia,” she answered without bending her gaze or confidence.  “And you?”

  “Kathryn.” Patricia merely acknowledged this with a nod.  “Are you the leader here Patricia?” Kathryn asked.

  “No, but I do serve our leader,” she answered softly.  She pulled a chair from the desk pushed against the wall and sat down, clasping her hands in front of her, and seeming to become more comfortable if not more forgiving. 

  “I’d like to meet your leader,” Kathryn said, sitting back down on the bed herself.  “I have a great many questions, and… I’d like us to be friends if possible.”

  “Perhaps,” she dismissed.  “How did you find yourself alone in our lands?  Certainly, you were not foolish enough to have travelled so far alone.”

  “I was not alone,” Kathryn acknowledged.  “I had friends with me who must have retreated after seeing what you did to me.”

  “They have abandoned you.”  Her observation seemed almost sympathetic.

  “I can assure you they will be back for me,” Kathryn stated with a thin bead of threat.

  “I see.” Patricia nodded.

  Kathryn slightly lowered her head to darken her eyes and lend more intensity and explicit threat to her words.  “In force if necessary.”

  “I understand,” she affirmed.  She accepted the threat but didn’t seem moved by it.

  “I can’t help but notice your clothes…” Kathryn observed, trying to change the mood and topic, “they are genuinely nice compared to the animal skins I saw the others wearing.”

  “Serving the leader has privileges.” Patricia stated evenly.

  “Yeah.   It usually does, doesn’t it?”   Kathryn idly commented as she began to take a closer look at her surroundings for things she’d missed, things she might be able to use if things went badly.

  Patricia tilted her head to the side in a questioning way and took on a more insistent tone when she spoke.  “What land do you come from?”

  “Haven,” Kathryn replied with a shrug, lacking any better explanation.

  “I have not heard of this land.”  The young woman appeared a touch uncertain for the first time.

  “No,” Kathryn remarked, “I’d be quite surprised if you had.”

  Another tilt of her head to the side.  “You had this equipment with you.”  Patricia produced her PANEs and scroll from her dress pockets.  She pulled the scroll apart and looked accusingly at Kathryn.   “We’d hoped we could learn about your land and its people from this scroll, but it is password protected.” 

  “You know what a scroll is?” Kathryn asked with great surprise, worried she’d revealed too much.

  “Yes,” Patricia answered matter of factly.

  “Well, go ahead then.  Password is KB4186.”

  Patricia entered the characters into the scroll, and it unlocked for her.  Kathryn watched as he started poking around in it.

  “Haven… is a planet?” her head raised to look back up at Kathryn, the surprise her face betrayed seemed the first truly genuine reaction from her.

  “That’s right,” Kathryn answered cautiously.

  Patricia’s eyes widened and she spoke slowly in dark accusation.  “You are attempting to deceive me.”

  “No, it’s the truth, I swear…” Kathryn insisted.  “Like I said, we’ve come from very, very far away.”

  “So it would seem,” she considered for a moment.  “And yet you are human?”

  Kathryn smiled and looked down in amusement.  “It’s kind a long story.”

  “I look forward to hearing it.”  Another genuine moment.  “So will the leader.”

  “My turn,” Kathryn insisted.  “How do you know what a scroll is?”

  Patricia obliged.  “Some technology has survived from ancient times.  It is rare, but we who serve the leader are privileged to have access to it.”   She gestured in a her generally rightward direction.  “The dam provides us with the energy we require to power and use the remaining technology we do have.”

  “I see…” Kathryn acknowledged, her wheels turning.  “That’s why all of the settlements are near dams.”

  “Yes,” Patricia acknowledged, seemingly increasingly comfortable answering her questions.  “If we can maintain the dams, not only do they supply us with all of the water we could ever need, but they can also power the technology we have been able to scavenge.”

  “Is that what your explorers were doing?” Kathryn asked.  “Looking to find more?”

  “Yes.   We can maintain a straightforward way of life without discovering new supplies, but… luxuries and technology we cannot create for ourselves must be scavenged by our explorers.  

  “Perhaps by design,” she continued, “the dams which power the old technology are never near the places we tend to find it.  The journey to the lands of the south where such treasures can be found is a very treacherous one.  Our expedition teams leave in the spring and camp in the south for the winter before heading home the following spring.  Sometimes…” the woman looked down with a noticeable welling of sadness.  “Sometimes they don’t come back at all.”

  “I see,” Kathryn offered sympathetically.

  “How did you come here from Haven?” Patricia asked, composing herself.

  “On a ship,” Kathryn answered.  “A starship called New Horizon.”

  Patricia narrowed her eyed skeptically.  “I find this unlikely.  The stories say that such a journey would take many lifetimes.”

  “Ordinarily it would,” Kathryn admitted, “and that’s how we got there in the first place.   But we made some new friends recently who have the technology to get here much quicker.”

  “How quickly?”

  “Weeks.”

  Patricia was quiet for a few moments before finally admitting: “I would very much like to meet these friends of yours.”

  “I’m positive they’d like to meet you as well, believe me.” Kathryn assured her.

  “Well,” the young woman uttered as she stood, “if nothing else I am satisfied that you must be brought before the leader.”

  “Grand!” Kathryn exclaimed.  “Can I have my equipment back?”

  “No.” Patricia answered firmly.  “The leader may see fit to return these to you, but that is her prerogative, not mine.”

  “Very well.”   Kathryn was annoyed, but knew it was probably too much to hope for.  “Does your leader have a name?”

  “We call her The Great Moll.”

  “I see.”

   

  “There!   See?  She’s on the move!” Jaren exclaimed to no one in the briefing room.   He’d been watching intently since Kathryn had shown the first signs of rousing with the infra-red filter on the ship’s telescope which until how had shown her laid down and largely motionless (though certainly alive) up until now.  They’d been able to see on the telescopes her be brought into the structure unconscious, and the ship’s sensors were able to show when she was separated from her kit.  They could at least be certain that she was alone until they watched a woman bring her scroll back to her and they seemed to be talking.  Jaren was burning to know what they were saying.

  They shortly observed as Kathryn left the structure with the woman, and Jaren had a small sense of relief being able to finally see her in true optical imaging instead of an infra-red outline.  It was still only the top of her head, but as best as they could tell, she at least seemed to be unharmed.  He didn’t have to watch long before he observed her steal a moment to look up into the sky and give a thumbs up.  It was a somewhat ambiguous message, but Jaren resolved himself to accept that it meant that for the moment at least, she was okay.  Jaren continued to watch as the two women sat on the bank of the river in anticipation of a third figure seeming to bring them some food.

  “Of all things…” he shook his head and muttered to himself.  “A frickin picnic.”

  “Looks like she’s doing just fine without us, doesn’t it?” Felix observed over his shoulder.

  “Oh, Parker.   Yeah, well…” he let out a long, exhausted sigh.  He hadn’t slept since she Kathryn was captured and hadn’t noticed the other man enter the room.  “We can’t really know what’s going on down there, or what’s going to happen.  How are we for supplies?”

  “Well all told we’ve been able to assemble quite a little arsenal for ourselves when we need them.  We’ve got four of your, um… magic wand things which Irvina tells me can render someone unconscious with a touch.”

  “That’s right,” Jaren acknowledged.  “And it’s just ‘wands’.”

  “Right.   And… we’ve got plenty of scrolls which, according to my research are capable of emitting a particularly pernicious flashing of light which overloads the visual system and knocks people out.”

  “Good, that’s great, I hadn’t realized that.  What else?”

  “Well unfortunately there’s not a single drop left in the ship’s printers.  They were drained to make as many tools as we could before abandoning the ship.  But I’ve looked into it and there are a number of things still aboard which… with some work could be reduced to printing material.  The food trays in the dining hall for example, with some processing the plastic could be recycled to make like… crossbows or something.  We could even harvest some of the internal bulkheads to print some firearms if… well, if we wanted to go that far.”

  Jaren swiveled around to face him.  “Well Parker… from what I understand you’re her best friend, how far do you think we should be willing to go to get her back?”

  Felix considered the question gravely for several moments.  “I have never taken a life… and I don’t ever want to.  But I could.  If that’s what I had to do to save her.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel.” Jaren distantly agreed.

  Felix nodded with a raised eyebrow, indicating he accepted that Jaren did.

  “The thing is though,” Felix added, his nodding giving way to his head shaking his head.  “I don’t think Kathryn herself would want us to save her if that’s what it cost.”

  “It’s not up to her though, is it?”

  “No.  But we should consider what she’d want us to do.”

  “Yes.   Yes of course, you’re right.”   Jaren weighed his options.  “We’ll make every effort to recover her peacefully and without hurting anyone, but if it’s them or her-”

  “If it comes down to that,” Felix interrupted, “I won’t argue with you.”

  “I’m glad we understand each other.” Jaren said.  “I understand that you are an active member of Haven’s military, same as Kathryn?”

  “Well paramilitary would be more accurate,” Felix corrected, “but yes.”

  “Well that makes you the closest thing we have onboard to a soldier.  You can handle a firearm?”

  “I can.” Felix answered thoughtfully, seeming a touch dismayed at the prospect of having to.

  “Then recycle what you have to and print yourself whatever gun you feel most appropriate for yourself as well as a few crossbows for others.  If they make any clearly aggressive move against her, we’ll launch immediately.  That would be the most dangerous option though and I hope we can avoid things getting that kind of messy.  Hopefully, another opportunity will present itself.  I suspect that if it does… we’ll know it when we see it.”

   

  Eventually Jaren managed to sleep.  He could have gotten a pill from Nadelle, but that would have prevented him from being sufficiently alert should things seem to go bad down on the surface.  So far things thankfully didn’t seem to be trending that way as best as they could tell.  Kathryn stayed close to the woman who had greeted her in the building she’d been brought to after they’d captured her.  She appeared to be receiving some sort of tour of the encampment.  Their best guess was that she was conducting the diplomacy which, surprising as it may have been to Kathryn herself, was seeming to come quite naturally to her.

  When night fell, she seemed to join a larger group around a campfire on the outskirts of the settlement before finally retiring to her room for the night.  Upon seeing this the whole crew tried to get some rest, hoping that the next day would present an opportunity.  If one didn’t present itself in the next couple days, they resolved that they would have to risk a direct incursion before it was too late to save her from the virus which unbeknownst to her was grew stronger in her body and closer to killing her every minute.

  After watching her get some breakfast in the morning with her companion, they started seeing indications that they were preparing for some sort of trip.  Felix had finished manufacturing his weapons, and Nadelle had prepared a transdermic which could cure Kathryn if they could get it to her.

  Shortly after they saw the two women leave the settlement and head west, accompanied by two males from the camp.  Jaren gave the order, and along with Irvina, Felix, Elim, Teresa, and Francis, they all piled into one of the two Koboli shuttles, leaving Xion in command of the New Horizon.  When ready, their shuttle detached from the ship and began its descent into the Terran atmosphere.

  Feeling no need for subtlety at this point, even suspecting that a little shock and awe might work in their favour, Jaren brought the ship directly down towards Kathryn’s location.  Descending rapidly, he expertly conducted an emergency landing only a hundred meters away from Kathryn’s party.  The door flew open, and Jaren’s team poured out with all manner of weapons pointed at Kathryn’s captors.

  “HALT!!” Jaren yelled.  “Let her go!   We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we will if we have to!”  Jaren didn’t know if they spoke English or not, but he figured it was a good bet based on how much Kathryn seemed to have been conversing with them over the last couple of days.

  “Jaren!” Kathryn screamed, horrified.  “No!!”

  Jaren looked at the others in confusion as one of the males accompanying Kathryn stood behind her and held a knife to her throat.  “Go back where you came from, or she dies!” the man yelled at Jaren.  The Terran seemed startled if not outright fearful of their sudden and unexpected arrival, but he left no ambiguity about the seriousness of his threat.  “We are taking her to see the leader, only she can decide her fate.”

  “Unacceptable!” Jaren yelped as panic rose in him over his creeping understanding that he’d already lost, that he’d fucked up, that he’d have to leave her behind again.   “She is coming with us!  Let her go!  You will die if you hurt her at all I’m not screwing around!”

  “Neither are we!” The man was speaking loudly enough to be clearly heard but not yelling.   He was far cooler than Jaren, in control of the situation.  “You leave now, or she dies!” A small trickle of blood began to flow from where he was holding the knife to Kathryn’s throat.

  “Jaren!” Kathryn croaked, “do what he says!”

  “But-”

  “Do what he says!!”

  Patricia, in the same loud but unpanicked voice as her male associate, attempted to assure Jaren in a way the male was clearly unwilling to.  Jaren observed the vaguely unsettling calm about the woman Kathryn had but was better able to recognize it as the calm of a believer without doubt.  “We have no reason to believe that the leader will wish her harm, but we must bring her and cannot allow you to interfere.”

  “Okay!   Fuck!” Jaren yelled, frustrated at his defeat and ineptitude.  “We lower our weapons,” he clarified, “and you take the knife off her throat.”  He failed utterly to make it sound more like a command than a desperate plea.

  “You first,” the man responded with narrowing eyes.

  “Alright, alright, take it easy…” Jaren pleaded, pointing the gun just lower enough to not be pointing explicitly at anyone, but still at the ready.  A quick glance at the others prompted them to do the same.   If in the moment he could see a way of freeing her by killing all of her captors he would have, but he didn’t see any way he could attempt this that wouldn’t just get her killed.  He also couldn’t help noticing how clearly Kathryn wanted him to do any such thing.

  “I…” he stammered in frustration, “we have to treat you Kathryn, there’s a disease here!”

  “What?” she exclaimed in confusion.

  “Enough!”  The man sharply yelled.  “You get out of here!  Get back in that thing and leave now!”

  “But I-”

  “NOW!!” the man screamed as he put the knife to Kathryn’s throat again, shallowly cutting into her and generating a second trickle of blood.

  “FUCK!!” Jaren burst in frustration.  “FUCK!  FINE!  ALRIGHT!!”  Jaren was incensed by his impotence to extract Kathryn.  “We’ll find another way Kathryn; we’ll get you back!” he tried to reassure her.

  “Do nothing!” she croaked, trying to avoid moving her throat with the blade already dug in.  “Just wait, I’m okay really!  I should be able to contact you by the end of the day, if not-” the man put his hand over her mouth to prevent her from saying anything more.  

  As they began pulling back with her, Jaren pulled the transdermic from a Velcro pouch on Nadelle’s utility vest and flung it as far towards them as he could.   “You’ll be dead in two days unless you take this,” he yelled, then watched in misery as Kathryn’s eyes widened in understanding as they continued to retreat without the medicine or another word.

  After everyone else had re-embarked Jaren stomped onboard and as the door swung up, he punched one of the wall screens with so much anger and frustration that it cracked in a spiderweb out from the point of impact.  Jaren cried out in pain and collapsed against the wall clutched his hand.

  “Dammit Jaren,” Elim exclaimed.  “Your hand, dumbass!”

  “What did you call me!?” he yelled with fire in his eyes, spoiling for a fight he could actually engage in.

  “HEY!!” Irvina yelled, “everybody just calm the fuck down!  Computer, engage autopilot back up the ship immediately.   Jaren you are a dumbass, and you will sit the calm the fuck down and let Elim have a look at your hand.”

  “Irvina!?” Jaren screaked.

  “You will sit the fuck down and get a fucking grip on yourself,” she ordered of her superior.   She successfully stared him down, and he began the slow process of returning to centre.  “We are returning to the ship.” she sated.  “We will assess our situation and plan our next move.   There’s nothing else we can do here now.”

   

  “So, is this how you treat all of your guests?” Kathryn asked Patricia as she dabbed at the wound on her neck with the sleeve of her jumpsuit, and then in primordial instinct put constant pressure on it to stop the bleeding.  They were continuing on to see Moll, passing from the plains into a wooded area.  Based on their direction of travel and mapping scans she’d studied before their landing, Kathryn guessed they were headed to the dam, but she kept it to herself for now.  She now felt properly under threat, and information was power.

  “Fenn and the rest of the men can be…” she looked about searching for words more tactful that truthful- “overzealous, but he was not wrong,” she sated without doubts.   “Your people should not have done that.”   With a shrug she added: “He did what he had to do.”

  “How can you say that?” Kathryn balked.  “You condone me being treated that way?”

  “Your fate shall be decided by the leader, and the leader alone.  Your friends will not be allowed to interfere,” she stated with cold certainty.

  “Then we’d better get there already, shouldn’t we?” she stated acidly.  “I’d certainly hate to keep the fates waiting.”  Kathryn had become far less interested in indulging them after the incident, still bleeding from the neck as she was.

  Patricia held out her hand for Kathryn to lead the way and she headed on.

  “Jaren mentioned something about a disease.  You know what he was talking about?”

  “Perhaps,” Patricia answered.  “The stories tell of a disease, a plague that brought about the end of ancient times.   The Great Moll teaches us that we are the descendants of a blessed people, those who were spared from the plague.”

  “This plague…” Kathryn uttered in quiet contemplation.  “It must still be around, that must be what Jaren was talking about.   What he threw towards us must be a cure.   We have to go back for it Patricia please, I could die.”

  “There is no cure.” Patricia stated definitively.

  “Well, my friends are very resourceful.  What can you tell me about this disease?” Kathryn asked.   “What are its symptoms?  How long does it take to kill?  How does it spread?”

  “I don’t know anything about it other than that those who contract it die quickly once they begin to appear sick.  From time to time it still claims some of our children. We don’t know why.  If you wish to know more about the plague you will have to ask The Great Moll, only she will be able to answer your questions in more detail.”

  “How does she know so much about it?”  Kathryn asked while dabbing at her neck, becoming convinced that the bleeding was finally stopping.

  “Because she comes to us from the before time.  She can remember what happened when the plague first struck.”

  Kathryn stopped dead in her tracks and turned around to face Patricia who stopped as well.   “That must be… like, a metaphor or something right?  I mean that’s not actually possible.  We lost contact with Earth over six hundred years ago, no one from that time could still be alive today.”

  “It’s true.   She is… not like us.  You will see.”