Ion 417: Raiju (7 page)

"Those are emergency rations. They have those in survival packages. There's some in the escape pod of the ship if you really want them, but you should know that it's the type of thing they feed to prisoners in the worst prisons. Not what I'd call a delicacy."

The taste of the berries had awakened my stomach onto realizing that it wanted food. I was suddenly starving. I licked the last of the juice from the package before sliding it into the recycler, and picking the next package on top of the large stack. If it came to a choice between food that was here, and those greenish-brown wafers hidden away for emergencies, I was glad this was no emergency. This package read as Wendo Steak. The instructions were a little different, but then one of my talents is being a quick learner. The steak was as different from the berries, as the berries were to the survival rations. I decided I liked both of them. I looked up to find Traxel staring directly at me as I licked the remaining juices from my fingers.

"Seeing you take such delight in those common berries I am inclined to start believing your story. Just be careful. It took me a few minutes to figure out what you tried to do back in the cockpit. Dominance assertion only works if you're a Cardovan, and it always fails when you reek of fear. You managed to nearly trigger a response to kill you, which I'm sure would have ended badly as you have your hidden weapon."

With that he stood and walked past the preparation machines, where he tapped the controls for a small door that I hadn't seen before. Seeing it now I realized that it had been on the drawings, I just hadn't paid any attention to it. Traxel continued on without a backward glance as he made his way up the passageway to his cabin. The small door he'd opened had been listed as pantry, and inside I found shelves enough to hold all of the food packages. Many of the shelves were already full, but even with all the ones I'd brought there were still empty places. An entire section of shelves was even devoted to holding colored glass bottles of liquid on their side.

I kept the two stacks separated as I moved all of the packages into the pantry. When I got down to the packages that he'd tossed randomly around the common room, I tucked those into the bottom back corner. Z'kelk'ta was among those packages, and I was certain the rest were similarly poisonous to him, and probably me. If I got really hungry I might have to test my tolerance to them.

The common room looked much better without the scattered packages. Now I could take a look around at what there was to do in here. A holoviewer dominated one side of the room, where the chairs could be turned to face it. Between the counter, and the wall aft of it, there were enough machines to heat or chill most anything you could want. I couldn't find the actual chemicals for this laboratory setup, but I did find some things for entertaining.

One of the cabinets opened to a rack of small hand weapons that were simple charged pellet throwers, not nearly powerful enough to punch through hardened armor. The next cabinet held plates and dishes. I'd never had my wafers in a dish, and perhaps with these new forms of food that might work better. It might even be fun to pretend that I was royalty enough for dishes.

One of the other cabinets had several small boxes of... stuff. I was trying to think of a purpose for them when I recognized the name on one of them. Releso was one of the games I'd read about in many of the texts about court behavior. Perhaps I would find a chance to engage Traxel in game playing.

Game playing was not among the studies that I'd been taught. I once thought I'd found a game in the data banks of the terminal. The strategy of it seemed pretty complex. I had gotten to the point that I could keep the forces balanced quite well. I actually thought I was winning for two weeks. In the end it had turned out to be the remote access controls to the waste recycling unit.

With the long trip ahead I knew I was going to need something to occupy my time. That was something I'd not even considered when the whole plan consisted of getting to high drive with the bow pointed to Terra, Sol. I had left the elaborate exercise machine behind as well as the endless supply of information to read. There was a terminal on the counter that connected into the ship's main AI, but I doubted that it contained even a fraction of the information the orbital lab had housed.

My muscles ached to be flipping through the bars of the exerciser. Now that I had eaten I was faced with the choice of... sitting and doing nothing. That sounded great for all of two minutes. I needed something to do, and the first thing that popped into mind was satisfying my curiosity. There was a whole room full of boxes that were just begging for me to peek inside. I had never gotten the chance to just peek inside a box. I'm sure it would hold the same thrill as finding a new section of data to dive into, only this was something I could do with my hands.

One by one I started pulling some of the boxes out of the last cabin to stack them on the table where the food packages had been. Their contents proved to be an odd assortment that only deepened the mystery of why they weren't in the cargo bay. Small stone statuettes that weren't all that detailed, and carved wooden trinkets gave no clue as to value, but they looked extremely old. I was beginning to think that it was all just a pile of things that were thought worthless until I found the box of coins.

A few hundred kilos of gold coins were something I knew could be useful to trade if the need arose. I moved those and the phased pulse accelerator rifle into the Captain's cabin where I could get to them as needed. There were also a couple boxes full of jewelry that I wanted to try wearing. I had never had any jewelry, or any other form of personal decoration. I had never owned any of it.

Of course I never owned anything. Even the clothes I wore bore the stupid twisted helix symbol on them that everything on the lab bore. I guess that was Teyrn Elon's way of showing that he owned even the people there. Those Selstlak had worn jeweled armbands that I had always found intriguing; now I could wear something pretty as well. Freedom was going to be very nice indeed.

Among some of the boxes I found a large image that looked very much like how I imagined an ocean bottom would look. I couldn't say why, but I found it intriguing enough to affix it to the wall in my cabin. A tool box in engineering had a gadget that extruded micro bond putty. A dab of that stuff and the image stayed in place, only tilting about two degrees.

As I looked around the cabin I realized something. This, all of this, was Teyrn Elon. The Teyrn, as Traxel called him. I hadn't escaped him at all. There was no way that I could relax being surrounded by him with everything I looked at in here. I hoped Traxel was using that sleep inducer torque, because the scream I let out must have shaken the entire ship. Clothes started flying out the door as I started the purge with the wardrobe. Everything else that I could grab went out the door as well. I didn't care about breaking stuff, in fact a few things I purposely threw hard enough to hear a satisfying crash.

The lab was all machines and sterility. It was very utilitarian and strictly business. He had decorated this up far different than the lab, but it was still his choice on how this looked. This was his other side, the personal touches he liked to have around him. I stripped it all out of there. The decorations, the bedding, everything. I even tore the images off the wall. Every stupid little thing that he had liked well enough to have in his own little room made wonderful crashing, banging sounds as they landed in the passageway.

In short order I had stripped everything but the wardrobe and bed from the room. Those just happened to be mounted in place well enough that they didn't budge when I tried. The box of coins, rifle, and image remained as well. I told myself that since I had moved them in here -- that made them my choice. I did sort of like the furniture; since I couldn't move them, I would have them as my choice rather than go to engineering and get tools to yank them out. I did strip all of the sheets off the bed too, and the mattress was leaning against Traxel's door at the moment.

Just to make it mine, I stripped off the shipsuit and hung it in the wardrobe. Too bad I had left its mate sitting on the orbital lab. Two clothings would look better than one in there. One shipsuit in there just looked out of place, but it made it mine! I closed the door of it, and caressed the wood paneling. I liked the feel. Yes, for my choice I would have the wood. I guess it's a good thing it was already here. Teyrn Elon must have had to endure it, because he didn't seem like the sort of person that would enjoy the subtle feel of wood. It was mine now. I liked the wood and it could stay.

Now came the second part of the fun as I shoved shirts and whatever that thing was before getting broken, into the recycler. The opening was small, and some of the stuff took a bit of effort before the waste tube finally swallowed it. By the third armload of junk I stepped on a broken bottle of something I didn't know. It smelled like insects I guess, though the only insect I'd ever met was comatose and hiding from the me, the mad woman. He didn't smell like that, so I don't know what it was. Ahh, there's the label; it smelled like a Gavadian no. 5. Never heard of a Gavadian. Into the recycler it went.

After all the rest had made its way down the opening, I was faced with the fact that no matter how I tried, there was no way to squish that mattress down small enough. I had even managed to snap the frames on the images to crumple them small enough, but the mattress just wouldn't go. I settled for knowing that the sheets were gone. He would never have slept on the bare mattress, so it was fine. I dragged it back to the bed and sat on it as I admired the now very empty looking room.

Although the room really didn't feel like 'me', it had lost all feel of the capricious manipulator. I was going to have to spend time trying to figure out just what it would take to be 'mine'. The plastic coated walls in my box would have felt familiar, but they had never been something I liked. The lab morons had never talked to me, let alone asked for my ideas in decorating that box I was shoved into. I just didn't have any experience to know what was even on the list of options to choose from.

In the other staterooms I found bedding that fit a smaller bed, but I would use it rather than the stuff Teyrn Elon had slept in. Whoever had needed those sheets wasn't Teyrn Elon, and wasn't along on this trip. I even grabbed a few items from the shelves in the other rooms. I had no idea what most of them were, but I did know that they were things to put on shelves.

I spent a few more hours idly rearranging various useless decorations that for some reason looked better than bare walls and shelves. It was very different feeling the thrill of turning the room into something that was my choice. This felt like the first of many choices that freedom would allow me to make. It was my life on my terms.

With the decorating done, I moved all the remaining boxes down to the cargo bay where they could be with the other stuff stored there. The whirlwind destruction of Teyrn Elon's influence had felt good, but it had hardly even taken the edge off my craving for exercise. I had left my elaborate exercise setup back on the orbital lab, so I had to improvise with available methods. I alternated between running up and down the stairs and lifting boxes in the hold for two hours. I missed having the tangle of bars to flip through and the treadmill to run on, but my make-shift routine served to burn off most of the energy I had built up with the decorating.

I was actually breathing hard when I ran up the stairs for the last time. Traxel had come out of hiding, and was watching a holo in the common room when I got there. It seemed to be a report about some humanoids in transports chasing other transports while firing weapons at them. The Cardovans being chased were also firing weapons at the pursuers. When I inquired of him how he had managed to get event reports in high drive he let out another series of those high pitched chirps.

"We can't. This is an entertainment holo I pulled out of the ship's data files. I have them stored for review when I get called away on short notice trips. I guess this qualifies as such. Haven't you seen this one before? It's pretty much a classic."

"People find violence entertaining?"

"This would be described as a rehearsed portrayal of a fictitious event, intended to be enjoyed because people don't like actually being in danger themselves. The plasma bolts are just light effects."

I shook my head in amazement. There were so many things I had never read anything about. I sat down to watch it with him, and had to admit that the stimulation did trigger a few responses in me, even though I knew I wasn't anywhere near where this was happening.

We talked for a while as he explained that a lot of entertainment holos were created using elaborate simulations of fictitious events. He even pointed out how some of the explosions would not have happened from the action going on at the time. The people making the portrayal had rigged them all beforehand to make it look more realistic. By now the Cardovans in the holo had proceeded to wrestle with each other, or perhaps this was a mating ritual I was viewing. I prepared a roasted gourd filled with meats to enjoy while watching it. All the wonderful flavors of the food again reminded me of the bland nature of the water on the ship. I would have to resolve that issue soon.

When the holo ended he left to enter his stateroom, leaving me to sit alone in the quiet of the common room. Suddenly there didn't seem to be a lot I could do. Maybe it was what seemed to be the short list of things that I wanted to do, and were available to do on the ship. I could take a break from digging out every scrap of information from the terminal for now.

After pacing the length of the common room several times, and test sitting in each of the cockpit seats, I thought about the cabinet full of games. Maybe I could try to play all four sides of a Releso game. I attempted to set up the Releso game, but the instructions seemed to be incomplete. I stared at the tiny colored pieces for a while, before dumping them all back into the box. When he decided to wake up again I hoped that he knew how to play; In the meantime I returned to my stateroom to stare at the images I had mounted on the wall. They portrayed scenes that I longed to see in person. Freedom would give me that chance. It led me to wondering what Terra must look like.