jennasportion @ 2005-12-21T21:07:00

2005-12-21T21:04:30Z

Vered did not leave Jenna waiting long. She still found his deference surprising. His bearing was that of a subordinate. "You wanted to see me?" he said.

"Yes." she said, "I can't lead your people."

His disappointment showed on his face for amoment, but then he said, "I understand. I will arrange for you to go wherever you want to be."

"I can't lead them, but I can and will help you. Vered, from what I have seen, they will follow you anywhere. Don't waste that by putting me in charge. I'll work with you, lead with you, if you like, but I won't attempt to replace you."

He seemed happier then. "Jenna, that's wonderful! Are you sure? You don't want more time to think?"

"You didn't hesitate to help me. I can't find Blake, I don't feel like going it alone for a while. It makes sense for me to be where I can do some good."

"They would follow you." he said.

Jenna stood. "Vered, you may well be a second Blake. I am not. Anyway, you've achieved a lot with these people."

"I'm a beta grade trooper."

"On the Liberator, we had a delta grade thief and he was worth his weight in gold."

"Vila Restal?"

"The same."

Vered nodded. "We'll lead together then, as equal partners."

"That, I can live with."

"Of course, if you find out where Blake is, we'll all understand."

"If we can find Blake, we can offer to help him. He'd welcome your support."

"He'd have it." said Vered.

jennasportion @ 2005-10-07T21:44:00

2005-10-07T20:06:30Z

The gunships were closing and Jenna knew she could not squeeze another second’s lead from the straining drives. Time was running out. If they were intending to destroy the Crow, they had already had several chances to do so. They wanted to take her alive. She would be interrogated. Against her will she would betray everyone who had helped her. Then she would be executed.

Her thoughts flew to her friends. After she had left the Liberator, fellow smugglers had helped her. A favour she had half forgotten was remembered by Jag Haslow, who had helped her get hold of a ship. Tarel and Lina had hidden her for four days when she was recognised in a spaceport. She didn’t want to repay them with life on Cygnus Alpha. She could not let the Federation take what friends she had left.

She looked at the self-destruct unit. It had always seemed altogether too prominent in the ship, a loud whisper to her subconscious that she might one day go out that way. She wondered if she had the courage to do it, now that it came to it. It would give her sixteen seconds, long enough to ponder mortality.

The ships were still closing. Soon they would be within the blast radius. She would not die alone. It would not be a complete failure if she could take some of them with her.

Sixteen seconds, though. Sixteen seconds of knowing she would die, knowing there was no prospect of escape. She hesitated. She could face any threat if there were the tiniest chance of survival, but suicide went against every instinct.

Then she remembered the pod, set into the floor behind the pilot’s position. She could not launch it in the time available and, even if she did, the pod would be seen and tracked, assuming it even survived the blast. However, the pod was the only part of the ship that might survive the self-destruct. She had seen it before, a cloud of fragments with a few battered escape pods drifting off. If she could get in and seal it, she could tell herself there was a chance. It was enough. She opened the pod.

She checked the speed of their approach. With luck, three or four might get close enough to be destroyed or damaged. She waited as long as she dared, then hit the self-destruct. She moved fast. She had just sealed the pod when the first explosion hit. A wave of agony tore through her upper body. Then she felt nothing.

***

“Jenna.” The voice sounded unthreatening, even concerned. “Jenna, can you hear me?”

She opened her eyes. As they began to focus dark hair came into view. Below it were blue eyes and a rather patrician face that ended with a dimpled chin. He was smiling at her, a look of obvious relief on his face. He turned his head. “Kred, come over here! She’s awake!”

A middle-aged woman with tawney hair hurried to the bedside. She looked at a bank of lights to Jenna’s right. Then she faced Jenna. “You’re looking much better than you did. You’ve been with us for a couple of days. You won’t be able to move just now, but that’s nothing to worry about. You won’t feel anything either. You suffered severe fractures in your shoulder, spine and ribs. The boneknitter is working on it and, while it works, we have electronically blocked the pain messages from your nervous system. Otherwise, you’d be in agony, and we don’t want that.” Jenna must have looked apprehensive, because Kred added, “We know who you are and what you are and you have fallen into the hands of friends.”

“What I am?” said Jenna.

“One of Blake’s crew.” said the man, “One of us. A dissident, a rebel. I never expected to meet Jenna Stannis. I only wish I hadn’t first seen you being pulled out of a crushed escape pod. You looked dead.”

Jenna tried to smile, but her face felt very stiff. Scars should have been the last thing on her mind, but she needed to know. “How bad do I look now?” she said, her voice sounding strange and faint even to her.

Kred replied, “Considering all you’ve been through, not bad. You’re badly bruised, but that will pass soon. You won’t be disfigured.”

“Thankyou.” she felt very strange. She could feel her face, but not anything below her neck. She felt disconnected from her body, yet could still see it. She looked from one concerned face to the other. “You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble for me. I hope I can repay you somehow.”

The man said, “No debts, no obligations. We’d have done as much for anyone and especially anyone who was with Blake. Hearing about the Liberator gave hope to us all. Before you make any decisions about your future, I want it to be very clear that you owe us nothing. If you have other things to do, we’ll understand and we’ll help you get wherever you need to be.”

Kred interrupted, “Vered, we can talk about all that when Jenna is well.”

He looked embarassed. “I wasn’t thinking. It just seems so fortuitous ...”

“She needs to rest.” said Kred firmly.

Jenna felt sorry for him. Whatever it was that he wanted to discuss clearly mattered to him. I’m not up to involved discussions,” she said, “But I’d like to know what it is you want me to do. If I can help, I’d like to, obligation or not.”

Vered glanced at Kred, who shrugged. He looked into Jenna’s eyes. There was a weariness in his expression that troubled her. It was the look of a manwith too many worries and too little rest. When he spoke, his voice bore no sign of the strain. It seemed he was accustomed to hiding it. “We are a mixture of the committed and the desperate. We have survived, and even managed sometimes to strike back because we work together, but we are in need of a better leader. There are nine people on this ship and another fifteen at our base. All are at your disposal, if you wish to lead them.”

Jenna was uneasy with the idea. When she imagined rebel leaders, she thought of Blake, Avalon or Kasabi, not Jenna Stannis. This man, Vered, saw something in her, or in her legend, that she did not. “I was separated from the Liberator some time ago. I returned to smuggling.”

“But still fought against the Federation.” said Vered.

“When I could. You said a better leader. What would your present one think of being replaced?”

Kred answered, “Vered is the present leader.”

“It seems to me you could do a lot worse.”

Vered glanced down, unwilling now to meet her gaze. “I have tried, but you would do better. Just consider it. As I said, you owe us nothing.” He backed away. “I’ll leave you to rest.”

She tried to nod, but failed. Instead she closed her eyes.

***

When she woke again, a younger woman was checking the equipment beside her. She was probably about eight years younger than Jenna. Her shoulder-length hair was brown and her eyes slate blue. She nodded to Jenna.

“Hello.” said Jenna.

“Hello. I’m Selis Vered. How are you feeling?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that. She still felt the bizarre disconnection. Her face, though, felt less stiff and swollen. “Better, I think.” she said, “Was it your husband I was speaking to before?”

Selis lauighed, “No! Anwar’s my brother! I wouldn’t marry someone that annoying.”

“Oh. What is this ship called, Selis?”

Selis checked a reading and nodded before answering. “Calypso. We have the Sterling too, but that’s smaller and much less comfortable. Calypso has better defences too.”

“And where are we headed?”

“Our base. We have a planet. There was an automated Federation supply depot down there before the war, but they lost it.”

“Where do you get supplies from?” asked Jenna.

“We can take out a small carrier, if we need to. Our food is mostly grown.”

“You have hydroponics, then?”

“No. We just grow things in the ground.”

Jenna found that idea unappetising. “Don’t they taste very earthy?” she said.

“It takes a bit of getting used to, but the food is edible.”

“Your brother seems like a good man, a good leader.”

Selis pushed back a strand of her dark hair and smiled. “He is. We came together by chance and he made us a team.”

“Blake was like that. It helps, doesn’t it?”

“What was it like, working with Blake? Was he as great as they say? Are the stories true?”

Jenna could see how much Selis wanted Blake’s legend to be real. She was happy to be able to reassure her. “They don’t do him justice. I’ve never known anybody else quite like him.”

“Good. You’ll soon be well again. Your bruises have nearly gone. We were so worried at first. It’s a nasty thought, that a legend might be dying in your sickbay.”

“I’m not a legend.” said Jenna.

“You are, Jenna. You were with Blake. You were there when he rescued Avalon. You took the same risks.”

“All of you have taken risks, from what your brother said.”

“Yes, but who showed us they were worth taking?” said Selis.

“Your brother wants me to lead you. I assume that you don’t want me to take his place.”

“He says you can lead us better. We need every advantage we can get. You’ve had far more experience and you’re an alpha grade citizen, used to autonomy. We’re beta. I was a lab assistant and Anwar was a conscript.”

“When I was on Earth, most betas seemed to avoid conscription. An intelligent man like Anwar should have had no difficulty in getting a job that protected him from it.”

“The war changed a lot of things. Low alphas are getting called up now. The Federation are anxious to reclaim what they lost. That needs soldiers. Anwar had just finished basic training when he was one of a group sent to deal with dissidents outside the dome.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “They were living in the woods. There were children there. The five men with him were his friends, but one raised his gun to fire at a child and Anwar shot him. Another tried to arrest him, but one of his friends killed that one. The four of them came back to the dome, collected their families and deserted before they could be summoned to give a report. We all got onto a transport ship, but troops boarded and two of the men were killed, along with the wife of one and the brother of another. Anwar was hurt. He was grey-faced, but he got the ship out. By the time anyone realised that the troops who were meant to be on the transport were dead, we were away. He got me out of that dome, which I never thought of as a bad place until I saw that there were other places. For days afterwards, he kept saying, ‘Selis, I’m sorry.’ That was the worst part. He thought he’d killed all those people and dragged me into danger. It wasn’t like that.”

“Obviously not.” said Jenna, “He was brave, to disobey. I’m not surprised you’re proud of him.”

“He hates the Federation. He wants it destroyed.”

“We all want that.” said Jenna, “I hope I can help, although I don’t want to replace him.”

“Will you stay then?” Selis looked hopeful.

“I think I probably will.”

Selis nodded. “I won’t tell Anwar until you’re sure. You should sleep. Tomorrow you may be able to move around.”

***

The following day, she was indeed able to move. They had cut the pain relief overnight. She felt a bone-deep ache all over. Her body was weak fronm the effort of recovery or the inaction. She was trembling as she sat up, but it was good to be able to feel like more than a head and neck. Kred was very attentive and helpful. She helped Jenna to change from the thin and unflattering gown into a skirt and tunic the colour of malachite. The skirt was knee length and the tunic loose-fitting and comfortable. When she was dressed, Kred brushed her hair. “I look terrible, don’t I?” said Jenna.

“You look tired, that’s all.” said Kred, “You still look better than I do.”

Jenna smiled. “You’re very kind. Would it be possible to speak to Vered? I know he must be busy.”

Kred seemed amused by that. “Jenna, you entirely mistake your status. Nothing is more important than your comfort and convenience. However, I think perhaps you should rest a while longer before getting involved in discussions with Vered.”

“I’m grateful for your concern.” said Jenna, “But it is good to be on my feet. I owe all of you a lot and I feel ready to talk about how I can help.”

Kred nodded. “I will ask him to come to you. You are still unsteady. I think walking anywhere right now would be unwise.”

Jenna thanked her and sat in a comfortable chair to wait.

Jenna's Portion

jennasportion @ 2005-12-21T21:07:00

jennasportion @ 2005-10-07T21:44:00