Which hadn’t been helped by the fact that there was no destination in mind. The evacuation coordinator had been more focused on getting them out of the system than finding a place for them to go, so they had ended up at the O’Neal System, which had promptly ordered them to proceed onwards to a different system. Ron had found it hard to blame them — there were only a dozen asteroid settlements in the system and they were already overwhelmed with refugees — but Captain Basil and his wife had bitched their asses off. The next system had said the same, despite their angry protests, although they had provided additional food and water supplies. The Family Farm’s internal food processors had never been intended to feed so many.
“Not yet,” Ron said, tiredly. The Footsoldiers had been trained to spend months, if necessary, inside their suits, yet no one enjoyed the experience. He was tempted to crack the suit open for a while, smell or no smell, but he didn’t trust Captain Basil in the slightest. The only advantage the two Footsoldiers had was the armour. If they climbed out of it, he wouldn’t have put it past Basil to kill the pair of them, before ejecting them and the kids into space. Captain Basil had bitched almost as much as his bitch of a wife. “I don’t know when we’ll be there.”
Some of the kids, at least, still thought that it was a great adventure, but the older ones knew better. The links to the Galactic Communications network had been weakened badly by the destruction, yet they had been able to establish that many of the children were suddenly orphans. Most of them were complete orphans; their parents hadn’t even been able to upload themselves into the MassMind before the Killers destroyed their homes. Ron didn’t know what they were going to do with the kids. It wasn’t as if they could take the Family Farm to another galaxy and set up a new homeworld there.
“We just got fobbed off from another asteroid,” Captain Basil snapped, coming over to glare down at Ron’s armoured visor. Ron, who had been fighting off the temptation to simply take the Captain’s head in his armoured hand and squeeze hard, scowled at him. He knew that the blank visor would show nothing of his expression to the increasingly frustrated Captain. “How much longer are they going to make us wait?”
“As long as it takes,” Ron said, as calmly as he could. The augmentation that made a Footsoldier helped him to keep his voice calm, even though the frustration was getting to him as well. He wanted to get out there and get stuck into the Killers, who had slaughtered his friends and comrades, even though he knew that it would be almost-certain death. It would be better than babysitting an untrustworthy Captain and fifty kids, even if some of the teenage girls were real stunners. “We have enough resources to cruise for years if we have no other choice.”
“I will not stand for that,” Captain Basil said. “I didn’t sign up to keep my ship at the Community’s disposal for years.”
Ron felt his temper flare. Legally, the Captain was right; the Community lacked the ability to force compliance from its member settlements. Apart from the Defence Force, which was the only arm of enforcement the Community possessed, there was little binding the various settlements together. The settlements guarded their independence jealously and often competed against each other almost as much as they competed against the Killers. Some even turned rogue and opposed their fellow humans, others isolated themselves from the remainder of the Community and refused all contact. There was no way to force them to open themselves to the Community…
But Ron had a card the Captain couldn’t beat. “You signed up to the general protocols when you worked within the Community,” he said. “You had the legal obligation to help with the rescue effort, which you did. You will help us to find them a safe place to stay and then you can fly to the other side of the universe if you want.”
He allowed his voice to harden. “And if you keep pushing us, we will lock you and your wife in your cabin and take control of the ship directly,” he added. “I have obligations to the kids as well.”
“Don’t fight,” Mary said, before Basil could answer. “You’re both adults. You shouldn’t fight.”
“One week,” Basil hissed. “You’d better find them somewhere within one week.”
He stalked off before Ron could say anything in return, so he returned to his direct link to the Footsoldier network. It was almost like being AWOL, in a sense; other Footsoldiers were fighting and dying, while he was on a starship that was safe, if very isolated. The direct link to the network was online, barely, but there seemed to be nowhere to go.
A new message blinked up in the inbox and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. “Captain,” he said, carefully lowering Mary to the ground and standing up, armour and all, “we have a message from the Defence Force and new coordinates for delivery.”
“And then I’ll be rid of you?” Basil asked. “You’re going to be off my ship?”
“Oh, probably,” Ron said, mentally crossing his fingers behind his back. The report he intended to file would probably cost the Captain most of his future earnings. The Community might scrabble from time to time, often over the pettiest of things, but no one would feel inclined to tolerate a person refusing to help out people in trouble. An asteroid settlement was no place for selfishness. The population would understand not risking ones life, but Basil hadn’t been in any danger. Hell, statistically, the children would have been safer on his ship than on any asteroid settlement. “Might I suggest that you set course at once?”
The Family Farm had a fairly primitive form of the Anderson Drive. It was still astonishingly fast by the standards of Warp Drive, or whatever the Killers used for their FTL travel, but it took it nearly an hour to jump into a system orbiting a dull red star. When they finally arrived, Ron was astonished by how much firepower was orbiting the star and its handful of settlements, enough Defence Force starships to lay waste entire star systems. It would still be almost useless against the Killers, he reflected. They might as well have thrown rotten eggs at the enemy starships.
“There are hundreds of warships here,” Captain Basil muttered, angrily. “Where were they when my home system was under attack?”
Ron didn’t bother to reply. Defence Force starships had stood and fought at Asimov and died winning time for the evacuation. There would have been no change in the end result if the other starships were thrown into hopeless battle; it was better to hold them in reserve and use them, if necessary, as a scouting and evacuation force. It was a grim conclusion, in a way; humanity had advanced so far, yet they were still little more than ants swarming around the Killers feet.
“Take us in,” he said, finally. Docking information was beginning to scroll up on the main display, pointing them towards a massive asteroid some distance from the others. He was starting to wonder why the Defence Force had steered them here, of all places, before he saw the other refugee ships. There were few other places that could take so many people in a hurry. In time, the refugees would be distributed out throughout the community. “I would strongly advise you not to deviate. This isn’t a safe place at the best of times and trigger fingers are getting itchy.”