Page 15 of Reformation
“He’s going to go crazy with worry,” Ten predicted.
“He’ll have to get over it,” Cody said firmly. “I’m not leaving my dad like that.”
“You realize the Drifter satellite might not get close enough for us to affect any kind of landing, especially not if it’s an active war zone.”
“I’ll jump that wall when I get to it.”
“Of course, you will.” Ten thought in silence for another moment, then burst into a whirl of activity. “All right, let me put these cell lines in stasis and make sure the safety systems are up and running. Grab a few changes of clothes for me too. It’s dirty on Drifter ships; there usually aren’t any automatic cleaners apart from the scrubbers for the atmosphere.”
Cody could have melted with relief. “You’ll come with me, then?”
“You would have had to have knocked me out, tied me up, and thrown me in your retractable closet to stop me. And even then I’d have chartered a private ship and found you before you could even get out of the Central System.” Ten’s bright eyes met Cody’s. “I’m always coming with you. Get used to it. And I’ll bring my tool kit too.”
Ten’s tool kit was a marvel of engineering, a box a meter long and twenty centimeters tall, packed with an array of devices for use in every one of Ten’s fields of interest, which were practically all-encompassing. “Good idea,” Cody said. “I’ve got some credits on hand to help pay for our passage, but I don’t know if they’ll be enough to get us to Pandora.”
Ten waved a hand. “Who said anything about credits? We’re going totradeour way to your dad, and they’re going to be grateful to get what we’re offering.”
“Which is what?”
“Whatever we can fabricate that they need. Which is almost everything. Oh, and we should bring your bike.”
Cody’s new bike, based on a diagram that Wyl had left with him a while back, was a marvel of engineering. It had a propulsion system that rivaled a shuttle, an antigrav unit thatwould hold up ten bikes like it, and even an environmental seal that could be utilized without draining the battery for up to two days. It was massively overbuilt and a present from his dads for his last birthday. Cody resolutely pushed its origin out of his mind. “Good idea.”
“Most of them are.”
Chapter seven
Jezria
The attack on Pandora was not, unfortunately, the first time Jezria Dowd had come under fire.
No, that honor belonged to her youth on Olympus, when her school transport had been attacked on a field trip by anarchists. No one had died, and honestly, Jezria had scarcely believed they were under fire until she’d exited the transport shuttle and seen the pockmarks where the projectiles had hit.
The second time had been far more serious; on her second appointment as a diplomatic aide, she’d been part of the Alliance’s first—and last—convoy to Pexc’l’R. The planet was inhabited by a sentient, independent, and incredibly unfriendly species. Rather than leave them alone, the president at the time had prepared a series of ultimatums in the form of increasingly angry diplomatic meetings, finally followed by an invasion force.
The beings of Pexc’l’R had responded by luring them into a meeting held in their capitol city under the pretext of tradingwith them, then blowing up theentirecity. Jezria was one of eighty-seven people to survive, out of an original convoy of nearly five hundred. It had been an educational experience, to say the least.
The Pexc’l’R were wiped out twenty-three years ago by President Alexander, under the pretense of interstellar security. No one had fought him too hard on it. At least, no one who wanted their career to survive.
Jezria was no longer an interstellar politician. She had hung up her senatorial status long ago and hadn’t regretted that transition for the past decade. She currently served as Pandora City’s de-facto mayor, but before now it had been a largely ceremonial position, with little required other than organizing shipments of goods and transports of people and welcoming the new arrivals. It wasn’t until death began to rain down on the Box that Jezria had realized she was one of the few people in the entire colony with any form of combat experience.
Now here she was, playing at being a commander when all they could do without spaceside support was endure. For how long, she didn’t know.
“Shield status.”
“Seventy-four percent, ma’am.”
“It’s draining faster,” her aide, Steven Miyakawa, noted. “There’s been an increase in the rate of energy loss of two-point-seven percent over the past four hours.”
“And how are we addressing that?”
“Doctor Sims is increasing power to the fusion reactor. It’ll dim the lights, but she says it should reinforce the electromagnetic field.”For now, the unstated ending to that sentence went.
“We can live without lights,” Jezria said calmly. “What’s the status on the evacuations?”
“Fifteen percent of the population is currently evacuated, ma’am.”
“Unacceptable.” Jezria turned her gimlet eye on the unfortunate bearer of bad news. “We should be up to at least thirty percent by now.”
