The girl nodded. "I love cats."
Duncan took her hand, and as they walked toward the exit, he gave Emet a somber look.
He grieves, Emet knew. Every one of these stories shattered his heart. Every one of those we could not save weighs upon him. As they weigh upon me.
Heart heavy, Emet returned to the bridge, leaving the refugees with a few of the younger Inheritors, soldiers with kind smiles and bright eyes, men and women to provide comfort in the shadows.
A soldier not only kills an enemy. A soldier also comforts those who cower, offers a shoulder to cry on, kind eyes for a wounded heart, and hope for the hopeless.
The Jerusalem was a large ship, but her bridge was humble, a chamber not much larger than a bedroom. The floor and walls were raw, unadorned metal. A viewport stretched across the front wall, displaying a view of space ahead. Other monitors displayed stats from inside and outside the ship. Drawers and shelves held computers, cables, and weapons. Emet had been spending most of his time here. Without a permanent base, without a home planet, here was his headquarters. Often he slept on the bridge, slumped in his chair, ready to wake and respond to any emergency, be it enemy ships, an engineering malfunction, or a call for help from a human community.
Through the viewport, he could now see the rest of his fleet. A handful of starships, mostly old freighters and tankers and cattle cogs, bought from scrap yards and converted into warships. They had a handful of starfighters too, most of them a century old, modeled after Earth's classic Firebirds from two thousand years ago. With the new refugees, these ships were now crowded. Emet would need to buy more ships from Old Luther, his scrap dealer. He needed more food too. Much more. A temporary base, perhaps a place to spend a year or two, to grow crops, to heal.
Emet turned away from the view. He looked at the wall, where he had hung a framed photograph—the only personal touch on the bridge.
The photograph showed him as a younger man, no white to his hair or beard. His wife stood by him, the beautiful Alexis, her skin light brown, her hair black and lustrous. Their children stood by their sides. Bay was seven years old in the photo. He had Emet's light hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, but he was graceful and slender like his mother. In the photograph, Bay was hiding his bad hand inside his jacket, always so ashamed of his disability. Leona stood by him, ten years old. She had inherited her mother's darker colors, but she was tall and strong like her father, a natural warrior.
Those had been happier days, the photo taken on a sunny world. Back before Emperor Sin Kra, lord of the scorpions, had slain Alexis. Back before Bay had run.
Emet touched the glass pane.
So many of us lost families, he thought. So many grieve. Every human left in the galaxy has a tale of tragedy. I must find them all. I must bring my people home.
He looked at the memory chip in his hand. It was no larger than his thumb, yet surprisingly heavy. Emet knew the tongue of Skra-Shen. He could read the glyphs on the device.
The Human Solution.
How had the girl's father come by this? Was there a human resistance within Hierarchy space, the way the Heirs of Earth fought for humanity in Concord lands?
"How do I access the information on this chip?" Emet said to himself. He owned several computers. His drawers were filled with adapters and translators. Yet none would work with Skra-Shen technology.
He stared more closely at the chip, wondering if he could build an interface, hack into this device. What secrets did it contain?
The Human Solution.
Emet shuddered. He winced in sudden pain. The image flashed before him again: the strikers firing on the Rawdigger cog, tearing it open, and the hundreds of refugees spilling out, dying in space, so close to salvation. Deeper memories bubbled up, his wife screaming, reaching out to him, and—
An alarm blared, tearing Emet away from his thoughts.
He turned toward his security monitor.
Incoming starship.
Instinctively, Emet reached for Thunder, the double-barreled rifle that hung across his back. Even now, even here, he still reached for that old weapon.
He took a deep breath and let his hand drop. He recognized the starship on the viewport.
"Leona," he said. "You're back."
At once, a weight lifted from him. Whenever Leona came home safely from a mission, Emet felt half as heavy.
He watched her starship approach. It was a rusty old starwhaler, far smaller than the Jerusalem. Decades ago, Leona's starship had hunted starwhales, great animals who swam through space, feeding on stardust. Emet had purchased the rusty vessel from Luther's scrap yard, had given the ship to Leona on her eighteenth birthday. She had already been a capable pilot, even back then. All Inheritor ships bore the names of old Earth settlements—cities for frigates, towns for the smaller corvettes. Leona had named hers Nantucket, a town mentioned in Moby Dick, her favorite book. She had tattooed a line from that book across her arm. I love to sail forbidden seas. It seemed appropriate that she should pilot an old whaler.
Emet opened a communication channel, hailing the Nantucket.
"Welcome home, daughter!"
Leona appeared on the monitor. "Home, Dad? I'm approaching our fleet, which floats in cold, dark space. Our home is on Earth."
His smile widened. "Well, welcome to our fleet which floats in cold, dark space then."
She grinned. "Better."
There was weariness to Leona's grin. Her eyes were sunken. But her back was still straight, and her hair was thick, wild, and curly as ever. Like him, she had a lion's mane. Many called Emet the Old Lion; she was the Young Lioness. But while Emet's hair was blond, streaked with white, Leona had inherited her mother's colors. She looked so much like Alexis.
I wish you could have known your mother longer, Leona, Emet thought. I'm so sorry you had to grow up like this, here in the cold and darkness.
"Dad, I've got seventeen refugees aboard the Nantucket," Leona said. "We encountered some resistance. From the Peacekeepers."
As the ship got closer, Emet noticed the scars on its hull. Those would cost money to fix. Scryls were in short supply these days. Emet had almost a thousand humans on his ships now. Water and food cost a fortune on the black market, and they needed weapons too, and medicine, and someday another ship, and—
But enough for now. Right now his daughter was home. That was all that mattered.
"We've picked up many refugees while you were gone, Leona," Emet said. "Hundreds of them. Our ships are brimming. But we'll find room and board for seventeen more. Bring them aboard the Jerusalem. Doc will look at them."
Duncan's bearded face appeared around a doorway. "Doc is up to his bloody eyeballs with patients."
Emet suppressed a smile. "Doc, I keep telling you, get one of the village healers to help you. There are a few among the refugees."
He snorted. "Village healers? Next you'll tell me to consult astrologers." With a shake of his bald head, Duncan vanished around the corner again, grumbling something about needing no damn help from anyone.
Emet opened the Jerusalem's hangar, and he sent out two Firebird starfighters to escort the Nantucket back toward the fleet. Not that Leona needed the escort. She was the best damn pilot in the fleet, skilled at flying both small starfighters and larger, heavier corvettes like the Nantucket. She had even begun to take shifts helming the Jerusalem, a vessel the size of an aircraft carrier from old Earth. Leona was twenty-seven, a deadly warrior, a legendary pilot, a heroine of humanity—and yet Emet still worried about her. Still felt the need to protect his little girl.