Seele looked stricken. "We don't have time to discuss this…"
"I have all the time in the world," I told her. "The way I see it, you found a working spaceship in the city below…"
"Yes, but—"
"And you took off without worrying about other Explorers banished on the planet…"
"It was a small ship, and we had no way to locate the other—"
"Then," I kept going, "you got back to Technocracy space and cut a deal with the High Council to save your hides. You'd keep your mouths shut, and in exchange, the council would make you admirals. Isn't that it? So you and Chee got cushy positions while other Explorers kept disappearing."
"Festina, you have to understand—"
"No, Admiral," I interrupted, "you've picked the wrong day for me to be understanding." I turned away from her in disgust. "And you've picked the wrong woman to save," I shouted over my shoulder as I stomped back to the eagle. "Just because I remind you of your damaged young self—"
"Festina," Seele said.
Something in her tone made me turn around. She was aiming a stunner at me.
"I'm like a magnet for those guns," I told her. Then she shot me.
My New Quarters
I woke up in bed. The bed was in a standard officer's cabin on board a starship. My head throbbed with all the leaden pain that comes from a stun-blast. In a way, that was a blessing — I couldn't focus my mind on other ugly thoughts that threatened to devil my conscience.
Much as I wanted just to lie there, wincing each time my pulse bludgeoned my frontal lobes, I faced a physical imperative — after hours of unconsciousness, I urgently needed to empty my bladder. Groaning, I made myself vertical and sat on the edge of the bed until purple things stopped exploding behind my eyes. Then I staggered to the toilet, did my business, and continued to sit on the seat, staring dully at the wall.
My head throbbed. I counted sixty blunt pulses of pain, then stumbled back toward the bed. As I passed the desk, I noticed a plain white pill sitting on top of a card that read, THIS MIGHT HELP. I swallowed the pill immediately, on the theory it couldn't possibly make things worse.
In a few minutes, the pain did ease a little: enough to let me take stock of my surroundings. Yes, I was in officer's quarters, almost exactly like my cabin on the Jacaranda but a mirror image — on the port side instead of starboard. The room had no decorations, but standing near the door were three packing crates, lined against the bulkhead. I opened the lid of the closest one and saw many small objects wrapped in wads of cotton.
My eggs.
My eggs.
Tears came to my eyes. I was too scared to touch a single egg; I just looked at the cotton-wrapped bundles, counting them over and over again… only the ones I could see at the top of the open box.
My eggs.
"This is stupid," I said aloud. "I lost Yarrun and Chee and Oar, and I'm overjoyed over some eggs?"
But I was. I had not quite lost everything. Not quite.
The Stars
The door chittered and Admiral Seele walked in. Doors open for admirals, even if you don't give permission to enter.
"You're awake," she said. "Sorry for being abrupt, but we were wasting time."
"So you shot me. Just what I'd expect from an admiral."
"No," she replied. "A true admiral would have ordered someone else to shoot you. I'm still an Explorer at heart."
I had to smile in spite of myself. Then a sobering thought hit me. "You don't really intend to take me back to the Technocracy?"
"If you prefer," Seele said, "I can drop you off at a Fringe World. Admirals can order course changes on a whim."
"You can't drop me anywhere but Melaquin. The League will kill me if I try to enter interstellar space. I'm a murderer."
She lifted her eyebrows.
"I am," I insisted. "I killed my partner. And I would have killed Jelca if Oar hadn't beat me to it."
"Festina, I can't believe—"
"Believe it," I snapped. "I'm a dangerous non-sentient. And now that I've told you, your life is on the line too. If you let this ship leave the Melaquin system, we'll both be snuffed out."
"Then we'd better go to the bridge," Seele said quietly.
She led me out the door and down the hall, up a companionway and through the hatch leading to the bridge corridor. There, we passed a man wearing Social Science green and he saluted… first the admiral, then me, although I only wore the skirt and top built from my tightsuit. He must have thought I was a civilian, and civilians on Fleet vessels were almost always dignitaries of some kind.
"Admiral on the bridge!" someone barked as we entered the bridge proper. A few people snapped to attention; most remained at their posts. Protocol is one thing, but duty is something else — even vacuum personnel knew that.
"Captain Ling," Seele said to the man occupying the captain's chair, "could you please activate the view screens?"
"Yes, ma'am." He twirled a dial and the main screen brightened to reveal a starscape. It was no different from any other starscape you might see. That's why view screens are almost always turned off, except to impress visitors. No FTL ship navigates by sight. Running with the screen active would simply distract the crew from watching more important things: the gauges and readouts that gave solid information instead of useless scenery.
"Now, Explorer Ramos," Seele pointed to the screen, "what do you see?"
"Stars," I answered.
"Captain Ling," Seele said, "what is our current distance from Melaquin?"
Ling gestured toward the navigator. The navigator said, "9.27 light-years, ma'am."
"Are we in interstellar space?"
The navigator's eyes widened slightly. "Yes, ma'am."
"Out of any star's local gravity well?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thank you," Seele said. "As you were."
She turned and stepped back into the corridor. A moment later, she took me by the dumbstruck arm and pulled me after her.
"You see?" Seele said in a gentle voice. "Whatever you did, you aren't non-sentient. The League is never wrong about these things. We're alive and we've reached interstellar space; therefore, Festina, you are not a murderer." She gave the ghost of a smile. "It's almost as if God has personally declared you innocent."
The Admiral's Story
Back in the cabin, I told Seele everything. This time was different from when I confessed to Jelca. Then, I was trying to connect with him, partly to reach his sanity and partly to reach mine. Now, I was trying to connect the facts: to see the chains of cause and effect, to understand why the League had incomprehensibly given me a reprieve.
Seele said nothing as I talked — no attempt to make me admit that Yarrun's death was an accident, no easy comments on what I should or shouldn't have done. She simply listened and let me tell the story. When I was finished, she asked, "What do you want to do now?"
"Apart from pushing the High Council out an airlock?"
She didn't smile. "Is that what you need to do, Festina?"
"Someone should." I gave her a look. "Why didn't you?"
"You think Chee and I could actually sway the council?" She shook her head. "We gave it a shot: all the silly things you see in entertainment bubbles. Letters marked TO BE DELIVERED TO THE PRESS IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US. Sworn affidavits, with accompanying lie-detector certificates. A plan for confronting the council in public forum… naive nonsense. At worst, we could have made ourselves an inconvenience — forced the council to sacrifice a scapegoat low down the chain of command. But before we could do even that, we were outmaneuvered. We'd taken too long to set things up. The council was ready for us."