For One Nen (35 page)

297 AE

Aboard the EGRESS

Someone’s coming,” Deni whispered loudly as she jumped to her feet and snatched the knife from her boot.

She took a prepared stance
, but as she turned to look back at the crowd, there was a loud blast from the other side of the door. 

The door of the fallow field burst open and Tani
k stormed in, followed by nearly a dozen angry people, mostly Emissaries and some other Goweli.

Teltel jumped to his giant feet and hurried to the front of the room and shut off the video.

“Don’t bother trying to hide it,” Tanik hissed. “You’re found out, you Het.” Tanik turned to her followers. “Just a dumb rebellious giant, still trying to hide his lies from us,” she cackled.

Aiden positioned himself in front of his sister and stood his ground.

Deni stood in front of Tala. But it was Tala that side-stepped Deni and stormed the angry group, holding her personal terminal as if it were a weapon. Holding up the terminal with both hands next to one shoulder, she placed herself between the mob and the video’s computer. With Teltel to her back she dared the mob to approach. Deni quickly joined her, then Benai and the other students.

However, as they did, one m
an in the back of the crowd of Tanik’s followers, lit a book on fire and dropped it into the tall white crate. It took only a minute for the flames to shoot high into the air.

Screams erupted from the entire crowd.

“This isn’t right,” Merari screamed at her teacher.

Mathis raced to aide Teltel
, who gave no attention to the obvious chaos.

Trina grabbed a nearby bucket and began filling it
with dirt from a nearby fallow table garden. She dragged it to the crate.

“Help us,” Bug yelled to Benai. Together they lifted the bucket and poured it into the crate, smothering some of the flames. When most of the flames had been extinguished
, Trina scurried her small body up the side of the crate and jumped in.

“What are you doing?” Bug screamed after her. He followed her up and over.

Together they saved some of the books that had been in the bottom of the crate but had burned their feet in the process.

The same man who had started the fire took a piece of cloth and marched with intention to the video computer, and in a flash Teltel was standing in front of a fire. He pulled Mathis away and the two of them stood together without a word.

“Do something,” Merari screamed at Teltel.

But
Teltel just stood tall and silent.

All at once Merari stormed the crowd
, knocking Tanik squarely with her shoulders, slamming her tall Goweli teacher to the ground. At that moment, the other students charged the mob and the chaos was fueled by both sides with anger.

The Most Holy Maven stood
, wringing her hands and wept for her people.

Over the sounds of mayhem came a scream; loud and long.

It was so piercing that one by one the fighting stopped, as they realized why the scream had come.

They looked out the large window of the fallow field into the blackness
of deep space, where only things very close could be seen, due to the lights from their ship.

Out there, very close but slowly floating away
, was a man.

“Turk,” The maven moaned. “No, no, no.”

Only moments earlier, Turk had come from the medical bay with determined steps to an airlock. He closed himself in with a turn of the long handle. It took him a moment, since his right arm was completely bandaged due to the burns he had sustained from the fire in the engine room.

“We took a chance,” he said aloud to himself. “If I’d been smarter…If someone else could’ve found the answer…” He held his left hand over a large round button beside the windowed door that separated him from the deadly void of deep space.

He took a deep breath and pulled his hand back from the button.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the tips of his fingers. Reaching out
, he ran his drenched fingers across the window in front of him.

‘
Forgive me’
, he scrawled with a shaking hand. Then closing his eyes he punched the button, and the transparent doors of the airlock opened, and he was yanked out into the instant death that awaited him.

Back in the fallow field the crowd wiped their
own sweat from their brows, the blood from their lips, and rubbed their black eyes. As they all watched the engineer who had been working for months on a way to save them all, float away. They saw his bandaged arm. They saw his twisted face, as if his anguish would be frozen into his expression for all of time.

The man who had started the fires left first. Tanik’s other followers
, one-by-one turned their faces from the window and headed quietly for the door.

“But wait,” Tanik called out to them.

None turned back except for the beautiful Goweli boy that Merari had seen in the library that day.

His wet face bore witness to his hopelessness.

“We’re dying tomorrow anyway, so why does it matter?” he said with an empty, dry voice.

“But it does matter,” Tanik said spinn
ing around to the crowd that consisted of mostly her students.

“It matters to keep the truth,” she said as she let her voice and expression attempt to entice them.

Molly squeezed her hands into fists and raised them in front of her. “Get out,” she said with complete calm.

Merari stood with her. Beau came
, as well as Benai. Bug and Trina, with a lingering smell of smoke, limped over to join their fist-raised classmates.

Tanik’s eyes darted from one student to another. She looked to Teltel who was still standing in silence next to Mathis. She looked at Tala who had taken Deni’s hand. She looked into the sad eyes of the Most Holy Maven. With her head held high she slowly turned and left the fallow field.

After the door banged shut, Merari turned with her fists still raised, and stormed Teltel. She beat his belly and screamed, “Why did you let them destroy what you’ve worked so hard for? You were the only one big enough to stop them!”

Maven Sharla walked to the smoldering computer wringing her hands. “Such a loss,” she cried.

Teltel let Merari beat out all of her frustrations on him as he looked down at her. No one tried to stop her. Most of them were wondering the same thing; everyone but Mathis.

A smile almost bigger than his face
, stretched from ear to ear as Mathis wrapped his short arms around Merari and pulled her away from Teltel. He turned her around.

“Nothing is lost,” he said gently with his giant of a smile.

“But the crate and the computer and the videos and all that history,” Merari sobbed.

Teltel scratched nervously at his chin as he looked at the crowd. When he dropped his hand to his side
, he spoke.

“When Mathis and I patched into the garden’s electrical system to get the computer running
, I downloaded all the hard drives to this computer. Then earlier, when Tala got me into the central computer, I uploaded them all there. Now everyone can read the stories.”

The Maven turned to Teltel. “What are you saying?” she asked.

He explained again, “I knew Tanik wouldn’t stop until she destroyed all the books and things we found, so I just uploaded everything to the central computers. You can check any of your transmitters. It’ll be there,” he said with a proud smile.

“But the books in the crate,” Trina said. “I couldn’t save them all.”

Teltel laughed. “We found writings in one of Chris’ journal’s that said he had hidden all the stories on these individual hard drives.”

Teltel held up one of the little metal boxes. “It even told that he hid these in a large crate with antique paintings.” Teltel laughed again. “Us guys worked hard on this,” he said as he patted the top of Mathis’ head.

“Oh!” gasped Merari as she fell against him in a tight hug.

“It’ll be alright,” he said
, as he held her.

The Maven approached the couple and leaned her head down on top of Teltel’s head.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The rest of the crowd drew near to show their thanks to Teltel and Mathis.

Watching Trina limping, the Maven said, “I’ll take you to the medical bay. You too Bug.”

Trina was really struggling to walk
, even as Bug tried to help her.

Benai scooped her up and said, “I’ll help you buggy.”

Bug reached up to slap Benai’s back but instead he held his slightly burned hands in front of him and just offered a verbal, “Thanks man.”

Looking over Benai’s shoulder
, Trina called back to Teltel. “You might tell us next time, that you already saved the day before we storm the fires.”

Teltel looked at the tiny girl and her once short blonde hair now filled with black soot.

“I’ll remember that,” he said with a smile.

Without turning directly toward Molly, Beau asked her, “So what are you doing during zero hour tomorrow?”

“Yeah, looks like our friends will probably be busy,” she said. Turning around she looked straight at him with an air of confidence, which she usually carried, and asked, “Why? Are you asking me out?”

“Well,” Beau stumbled. “I don’t know if we should call it that.” He shrugged his chiseled shoulders.

“You’re not brave enough for one date with me? Not like you’ll have to go out with me again,” she teased.

Beau scratched the back of his head. “So you want to maybe eat together or watch the stars or something?” he asked nervously.

“I’ve seen the stars since I was born. I’ve eaten with most everyone on this ship, even you. In my last hours of life, I think I’d like to do something I’ve never done before,” she said, as her playful smile fell into a pleasant seriousness.

Beau spluttered out a single nervous giggle before offering his arm to her. They walked out of the fallow field as if they were walking down their wedding aisle; arm in arm and heads held high.

Still holding Merari in a gentle embrace, Teltel called out to Mathis who had stepped away from the crowd to survey the actual damage to the computer.

“Want to find a screen so we can see more videos?” Teltel asked.

“Oh! Let’s go too, Brother!” Arla said to Aiden.

“If you like,” he answered.

“How about the screen in class?” Mathis suggested.

“Yes,” Teltel said. “And Tanik’s console will allow us to access the central computer and show any video we want.”

The little crowd headed for the door.

“Are you coming?” the Maven asked Deni as she too moved toward the exit.

Deni looked at the Maven, and then to her Tala.

When Deni looked back to give her answer, the Maven gave a respectful bow and said, “May your time together seem as though it were a beautiful lifetime.” She straightened herself and added, “As for me, I think I’ll join the young ones. It seems only right that I should surround these old bones with youthful optimism.”

Tala and Deni watched as Teltel took Merari’s hand and walked out of the fallow field. Mathis followed Rasta as she pushed comical thoughts teasingly to him. Her dreads bounced from side to side as they both giggled all the way out the door.

Aiden followed Maven Sharla and Arla through the tall shiny doors.

“Where shall we go?” Deni asked Tala, with her knife still in her hand.

Tala tossed her personal terminal on the pile of burnt wreckage from the other computer and grabbed Deni’s hand.

“Where are we going?” Deni asked as Tala almost pulled her along. She clumsily slid the knife into her boot. Out the doors they went through the next room and down the very long aisles of green lush growing life.

Before they reached the main doors Deni asked with a laugh, “Quarters?”

Tala barely slowed her pace as she looked down at Deni. The corners of her mouth turned up and showed her shallow dimples but she didn’t say a word.

“Ah! It’s a surprise. I get it,” Deni said with a nod.

Deni grew disappointed as Tala led them closer to the open area where Teltel and Mathis were starting a video for the others. But she smiled again when Tala raced past the group and on around the hall to the door of the library.

“You can take me anywhere. Really,” Deni said. “And I won’t even mind the dust.”

Tala gave Deni a flirting glance when several technical support personnel raced past them toward the elevator.

The interruption
paused the ladies’ playful moment, but very quickly the workers had hurried around the bend and were gone.

Deni took Tala’s face in her hands and looked up into her fearful eyes.

“We’ll be okay,” she whispered.

Tala let out a quick breath and pulling Deni
close she slowly inhaled her with one long breath.