Shreta had once again worked her way over to pick up rock alongside him.
"How are you feeling, Van Gar?" she asked, even though it had been days since the beating. Truth was she asked him five or six times a day just because her conversational skills were that limited, and she wanted to talk to him.
"I'm fine. Healed. Stupid, but well."
She giggled, "You shouldn't have defied the foremen like that."
"That's not why I feel stupid," Van Gar growled back. She jumped a little at seeing his obvious anger, and he didn't feel in the least bit guilty."All my life I have felt that we were a highly superior race. I looked down at the other races I encountered, thinking them inferior in every way. But look at us, at all of us, and especially me. We are total morons. We gave up everything of worth to come here. For what? To haul rock and eat green glop 'til we eventually die on this godsforsaken planet of dust and rock."
Shreta looked at him and frowned. She was even uglier when she wasn't smiling."We came here to make a homeland. To have a better life."
"And does this," he stood up, held his arms out, and turned around, "look like a good homeland to you?" He let his arms fall to his side and looked into her eyes."Is sleeping on a cold, hard, cardboard floor in a room full of smelly Chitzskies, eating green slimy shit made out of gods only know what . . . Is this really better than the life you had before?"
She looked really confused now."We . . . we are working towards something. We are building a place for us, and our children and their children. It will take a lot of hard work, a long time . . ."
"How long? Look around you, Shreta. Rocks and dirt. A few struggling, scraggly shrubs. It will take generations to make this unfertile piece of crap yield crops or sustain herds. We surely won't live to see it, and as for children . . . would you condemn a child to live the life we live here? How horrible was your life before, that this seems better to you?"
A small crowd had now gathered around them, listening intently.
"I . . . I was a checker in a clothing store," Shreta said, obviously trying to remember the experience. Suddenly anger marked her features, making her yet uglier."I always had great clothes because I got them at discount. I was never too hot or too cold. I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted." She looked at Van Gar."We were tricked. That's what you were saying, isn't it?"
Mumbling started throughout the group as everyone recalled all that they'd left behind, all that they'd signed over to the "Pride Leader."
"You there, back to work," a foreman ordered approaching them.
Van Gar walked through the crowd and up to the foreman."Why?"
"Because there is work to do . . ."
"So?" Van Gar said with a shrug.
"So, the Pride Leader has set tasks for us to complete, and . . ."
"When did you stop even pretending not to be ordering us around?" Van Gar asked.
"Yeah," the others said as a group.
"If we're here because it's a better place for us, why do we have to answer to you? Why should we have to answer to anyone? Are we your brothers and sisters, or are we your slaves? And if we aren't your prisoners, why can't we leave if we like?"
"You again!" the foreman said, suddenly recognizing Van Gar."Brothers and sisters, this man is nothing but a lazy trouble maker. Such negativity will accomplish nothing. The Pride Leader has taught us . . ."
"His words have the ring of truth to them," an angry young Chitzsky said."Why should we have to listen to you? Why should we have to take orders from anyone? We were promised freedom from the abuse of the aliens we lived encased by, but what about the abuse that is shelled out by you in the name of the Pride Leader?"
"Better than that, if this is paradise, then why doesn't the Pride Leader come live here with us?" Van Gar added.
"He's . . . he's suffering out there, so that we can all be brought together here." But now even the foreman stammered.
"For what purpose? So that we can all starve together on this floating turd in space?" Van Gar asked. He'd run more than a few scams himself in the time he'd spent with Drewcila and he could now hear in this man's voice the faltering that always comes before the sell.
"The plantings we've made so far are starting to grow . . ."
"They are stunted and barely existing. Take in a deep breath. You know what that horrid stench is, my people? It's
us
. Why? Because there isn't enough water to bathe, much less water crops properly. The more of us there are, the more water we're going to need, and you can't squeeze water from a dry sponge. We can recycle the water just so many times, and then it isn't good for anything but plants, and there won't be enough of it to make them thrive. This guy who calls himself the Pride Leader has robbed us all, and he did it by promising us something that we all felt like we were missing. I know this because I also felt like I wanted a home planet. Someplace that belonged to Chitzskies, that we could call our own. But what were we really missing out on before? We had everything but a rock on which to hang claim and be responsible for."
"The Pride Leader used that small wish in each of us—the wish for a home planet—to take everything we had of value, and force us into a life of slavery so that he could get power and money. He is the greatest traitor to our race that has ever lived. And that's saying a lot considering that our ancestors managed to fight a war so brutal that they wound up blowing up our home planet."
A much larger group had formed by the time he ended his speech.
"What should we do?" the former foreman asked.
"We've already started," Van Gar said."We tell all the others and win them over. Then we get off this rock, go find this great imposter and take back what's ours."
Drew sucked on her cigar and paced the command deck, going through different options in her head. They were now in orbit around Barious, and every attempt made at communication with the surface had met with the same failure as earlier attempts. She had her best geeks working on it, but it was obvious that whatever the problem was, it wasn't one that they could solve—at least not from up here.
Their hard work had in fact done nothing but confirm what she'd already been sure of: someone had detonated a communications disruptor from one of the orbiting satellites.
The question was who? Without the answer to that question, she couldn't be sure just what sort of reception she'd be getting at the palace.
The Lockhedes were the likely suspects. After all, this whole war had been started because of Zarco's unwillingness to allow them to salvage with Barious. Cut off communications, and you basically shut down the biggest salvaging port in the galaxy, crippling the superior economy of the Barions, and bringing all commerce to a standstill until communications systems could be brought back on line. A few hours would cost them millions—a few days, trillions.
It definitely leveled the playing field.
However, her gut was telling her that it was probably Zarco and whatever idiots were pulling his strings at the moment who caused this disruption. The real problem was that Zarco was a moron, and it would be just like him to start a war that Drew didn't want, and then ruin her business by destroying communications. Yes, it would definitely be like him to shut the planet off from the rest of the galaxy, not to mention making planet-wide communication impossible, all just to piss her off.
Well, if all he'd really wanted to do was piss her off, he had succeeded beyond his very wildest dreams.
If she went in now, she'd be flying in by the seat of her pants. No ground support. No way of knowing whether the spaceport, or the palace for that matter, was over-run by the Lockhedes. She'd have to trust her own instruments to tell her that she wasn't running into things—like other ships. If she went down there and the country had been nuked, it was all just a great waste of time, and she'd need all her time to try and save her corporation.
"Orders?" Jurak asked carefully.
"I'm still thinking!" Drewcila stopped in mid stride and turned to face him."Can't you see I'm still thinking?"
"Sorry, my Queen." Jurak bowed submissively.
"All this sobriety, and thinking, and having to be responsible . . ." Drew stuck her cigar in her mouth and held it with her teeth as she ran her hands through her hair."I had hoped for so much more from life." She took a long drag from the cigar, and puffed the smoke slowly into Jurak's face until he gratified her by coughing. At which point she walked over, flopped into her command chair, and put her seatbelt on. She'd made her decision.
"Strap in, gang. We're going planetside," Drewcila ordered, and gave them exactly five seconds to comply before she started the descent towards the planet's surface. She puffed on her cigar, making clouds of smoke as she concentrated on the actual flying of the ship, while trying to watch all the monitors for any signs of enemy craft. There were three other people whose job it was to monitor such things, but she didn't actually trust any of them to do it.
This was a salvaging barge, but it was a
royal
salvaging barge, manned with an all-Barion crew. They were hopelessly loyal to her, but they hadn't traveled the space lanes as long as she had. They'd never had to deal with pirates or smugglers, and they didn't know all the tricks that an enemy could use to get around detection devices.
The ship had a pilot, and ordinarily she let him fly the ship, but right now, going in blind, perhaps into enemy territory . . . Well, she didn't trust him to do his job as well as she could, either.
This wasn't the Garbage Scow, but it was her ship, and as long as she was sober, she might as well fly it.
Of course, what would have put her most at ease was to have Van Gar at the controls. No one could fly under pressure like he could. She also missed having him around to bounce things off of. Jurak was the closest thing she had to a friend on this ship, and he was mostly an ankle-biting little lackey whose job it was to kiss her ass. He was too afraid of her to give her honest feedback most of the time, and he wasn't a true salvager. He, like the rest of the crew, had never been in the trenches with the garbage.
They didn't truly understand the ways of a salvager. They didn't think like one or act like one. Salvaging wasn't just a job, it was a way of life, an attitude, a certain way of seeing the universe and your place in it.
These people had yet to become one with the trash.
They didn't understand the true circle of life. You are born, you live, you make trash which must then be recycled, you die and you are recycled.
All things are eventually recycled. It was a truth that guided every true salvager.
And she, Drewcila Qwah, Queen of all Salvagers, had allowed herself to get too far away from her roots. Not the roots of her forgotten life as Queen of Barious, she couldn't give a shit less about that. No, what in that moment shamed her to the depth of her soul was that she had allowed herself to move too far away from her
real
roots. She was Drewcila Qwah, and before she was Queen, before she was owner of a major corporation, she was a Salvager. She should be captaining a real salvaging barge, not flying around in some imperial mock-up, giving orders over the computer to a bunch of greenies who wouldn't know a good score of trash if it jumped up and bit them on the ass. She should have a crew of salvaging scum from all corners of the galaxy under her command, and be traveling the galaxy in search of really interesting salvage.
As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, Van Gar was right. She had changed. Not because she was drinking, partying, or screwing around anymore than she had. She had always done that. But because she had forgotten to momentarily sober up and get in the trenches with the filth to find the good stuff. She had allowed herself to become soft and complacent.
She admitted something else, something that caused her a wrenching pain in her stomach. Money really wasn't everything! Being filthy rich wasn't worth anything if it kept you from doing the things you truly loved, if it cost you one of your only true friends.
Just then she saw an all too familiar blip on the bottom of one of her screens that immediately died out.
"Ah, fuck!"
"What is it, my Queen?" one of the techs who should have noticed the blip asked.
"We've picked up a tail. One of you morons try to get me a visual."
In front of her the picture of a star class Lockhede battle cruiser filled the screen.
"Try to hail the ship," Drew ordered.
"I'm sorry, my Queen . . ."
"They're powering up their canons!" Drewcila announced.
"How do you know that, my Queen?" Jurak asked.
"Because I'm not a moron. Our instruments show a change in the power fluctuation coming from their ship. Shields up! Full power!" she ordered as she began an evasive move to starboard.
"Shields at full power, my Quee . . ."
"Knock the my queen crap off. Call me Captain. I'm the Captain of this ship, damn it!" The first blast hit them, rocking the ship."Damage report."