Part XIII: Somasteria

A few hours later, Jyra lay on her bed, turning her mother’s locket in her fingers. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Derek had said. It made her realize she hadn’t considered the sacrifices she might have to make to get to the bottom of Dario’s death.

Her life on Tyrorken had been one of perpetual hardship and struggle. It was hard to forget the nights when it was difficult to breathe because of the pollution. As she grew older, her parents spent more time at work. TF even consumed most of the time Jyra would have had with Dario. There was little to be excited about on Tyrorken besides her dream of becoming a pilot.

Jyra knew she couldn’t escape her past experiences, but she could move beyond them. She no longer lived on Tyrorken. It was her home planet, but it wasn’t her home.

Jyra sat up and set the locket on her bedside table. She dug a mirror out of her duffel and examined her reflection. Her dark eyes glittered at her beneath her equally dark hair, which hung past her shoulders. She gave herself a small smile, which disappeared when she noticed no trace of the Mourning Mark on her forehead. She touched the spot where it had been. As she lowered her arm, she caught sight of the cut near her elbow. It no longer pained her, but Jyra could tell a scar would remain; the skin around the wound glistened in the dim light.

It would likely shine for a few weeks just like the scar on the back of her hand. Jyra looked at the white line that began at the base of the knuckle of her index finger. The sight of the scar reminded her of Jed. She couldn’t think of him without considering his message.

Did he carry his grudge against TF into his career with the company? When did he decide to sabotage the ship? Did he act alone? The last thought opened a whole new path of inquiry. If others helped him, were they associated with the resistance?

Though she fought to resist it, the memory of her parents’ murder filled her mind. Just before the killing shots sounded, the guard had said information had been passed to a known enemy. Could that enemy have been the resistance? Tadwin had also said TF had killed Dario. Jyra clutched her head in her hands, straining to recall the details.

“How far does this go?” Jyra breathed aloud, unable to assemble the information into a coherent thought. How had all these different people come to turn against TF? Jed, Jyra’s parents and brother, and all the members of the resistance with Jyra on this ship had a common goal and somehow weren’t aware of it. After witnessing the TF agents’ assault on Derek, Jyra understood the need for secrecy had been of utmost importance. As she thought about it, however, the confidentiality had undermined the resistance more than protected it. If they all had been able to work together from the beginning, perhaps TF would have fallen long ago. Then again, the resistance could have suffered that exact same fate.

Jyra’s thoughts returned to Tadwin’s insistence that TF had killed Dario. He had said it with a conviction Jyra had never heard in her father’s voice. He was often soft-spoken and vague, never one to speak in absolutes.

Before she could consider the idea further, voices in the corridor distracted her. Jyra stood up as quietly as he could and pressed her ear to the door. Berk’s gruff tone was easy to identify, but it took several moments before Jyra recognized that a second, breathless voice belonged to Macnelia.

“Settle down and just tell me what’s wrong,” Berk said gently.

“I’m having a hard time,” Macnelia gasped. She sounded out of breath. “I…I’m not sure what my…our next move is.”

For a moment, all Jyra could hear was the sound of Macnelia taking deep breaths.

“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Berk said.

“No,” Macnelia said. “It’s not that. We’re adrift in more ways than one. I don’t know what happened back there, but the Nilcyns were already attacking. We need to understand why. And we’ve got to get this ship back online. It’s all we have to further our campaign.”

“What do you want to see happen?” Berk said. Silence followed his question and Jyra strained against her door, listening.

“I want to see Tyrorken restored,” she said. “I want to save that planet and drive TF into oblivion.”

“Well we’re off to a good start,” Berk said.

“And we have a long way to go,” Macnelia continued. She began to sound more like herself. “Taking out their headquarters doesn’t eliminate them. There’s still more to do.”

“Do you feel better?”

“I think so,” Macnelia said, her voice faded with footsteps as she and Berk continued down the corridor.

Jyra returned to her bed, thoughts of her parents and the resistance suspended as she pondered what might be troubling Macnelia.

                       *

After another shift of rest, the resistance resumed work on Valiant Conductor II. Leonick completed his inspection of the engines and insisted they were ready for power. Shandra instructed everyone how to check for damage to a ship’s hull from the inside. Then everyone split off and began assessing different parts of the enormous vessel.

Jyra ventured into the stern below the engine room, making her way toward the starboard hull. “Ships of the Kaosaam System” had indicated this part of the ship would likely consist of storage and power bunkers. An empty cargo bay lay behind the first door she entered off main corridor. The closed door gave her moment’s pause, until she saw the marks from Berk’s hammer that marred its left edge. Members of the resistance had already been through this part of the ship to check and fix the doors.

A number of crates were stacked in the next room, which was dark. Jyra flipped a switch on the wall and several lights clicked on. She began reading the packing labels on the crates, moving between them with mounting eagerness and urgency. “Crackers, bread, oats, rice, pasta” Jyra read aloud, her voice trembling with excitement. Another label listed dried fruit, nuts, and chips. One box contained jars of water.

“There must be fifty crates here,” she said, pressing her fingers into her hair. “This will last us for months.”

For the first time in a long time, a sense of relief spread through Jyra and she sat on one of the crates. The fortune of finding such a large supply of food overwhelmed her. She put her face in her hands, surrendering to her feelings. For a moment, she remembered the feeling of her bed on Tyrorken, the creases in the sheets and the weight of the blankets. She thought of the days before she fled her planet, when her brother and her parents were still alive. It suddenly seemed as though no time had passed since their deaths.

Jyra pushed her hair back and wiped her eyes with the back of her arm. She waited for the relief of discovering the crates to fade, but it remained fixed inside along with her sadness.

Jyra heard footsteps in corridor and stood up to find the label on the crate so she could pretend to be reading it.

“Oh,” Craig’s voice said from the doorway. “I’ve strayed into your part of the ship. What’s in the crates?”

Jyra did her best to keep her face hidden as she tested her voice, wondering if it would betray her emotions.

“Food,” she croaked. “There’s food and water here.”

“Are you kidding?” Craig said, rushing into the room and checking the first label he saw. “I can’t believe it.”

Jyra gave a jerking nod and Craig noticed something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked, the excitement draining from his words. He approached from behind and put a hand on Jyra’s shoulder.

She turned and pressed her face into his chest so that he couldn’t look at her. They put their arms around each other. One of Craig’s hands traced small circles on her back. Jyra focused on the sensation, managed to quell her tears, and she broke the embrace. She shuffled back to the pile of crates and sat down, staring at her hands in her lap.

“I’ve lost so much,” she said slowly. “For what? We destroyed a building, but TF ships are still out there. I thought the resistance would give me something I wanted.”

“What do you want?” Craig asked, joining her on the crate. Jyra glanced up into one of the lights, thinking.

“Vengeance,” she said dully.

“You don’t sound very convinced,” Craig said with a small smile.

“I know,” Jyra said. “I think it’s what I want, but I have no idea how to get it. When I heard about the plan to bomb TF headquarters, it seemed like the perfect solution. I thought it would satisfy me. But it didn’t and now I’m worried that whatever I want, I won’t be able to get it.”

“It sounds like you need to choose that first,” Craig said. “Once you’ve got a goal, you’ve got something to focus on and achieve. It doesn’t need to be related to the resistance.”

He stopped talking abruptly and stared at the floor. His eyes narrowed and his brow was furrowed. Jyra glanced at him and remembered the only other occasion when Craig had looked that way. It had been Jyra’s first day back at Jed’s Garage after getting stitches in her hand. Craig had arrived late and he wore that same expression when he entered the shop.

“You’re thinking about your goal, aren’t you?” she said gently and he nodded. “What do you want?”

Craig took a deep breath and drummed his fingers on his knees.

“I should start by reminding you of some advice I gave you once. After we got out of the TF complex, I told you not to regret things you didn’t do.”

Jyra recalled the exchange more vividly that she cared to, but she only nodded to encourage Craig to keep talking.

“We’ve both lost our parents to TF, but in different ways,” Craig said and Jyra felt her eyes grow wide with curiosity. “I haven’t done a very good job of taking my own advice. I know I did all I could to prevent my parents’ fate, but it’s easy to blame my efforts, because, obviously, they weren’t enough.”

“What happened to them?” Jyra said. Craig rarely discussed his parents and Jyra had never seen them.

“Have you ever heard of Somasteria?” Craig asked. Jyra shook her head.

“TF has gone to great lengths to keep the disease out of public knowledge. Once someone contracts the illness, TF quarantines them. If they or members of their household are caught discussing it, they are thrown in a medical facility. More of a jail really.”

“What causes it?”

“Somasteria is caused by several of the products TF uses for drilling. Excessive direct contact with skin leads to the early stages of the disease. It primarily attacks the blood, but eventually compromises the nervous system. There’s no cure, only symptom blockers, but within about two years, the victim is completely comatose.

“Both of my parents contracted the disease on a weeklong drilling mission. They weren’t even handling the solvents, but they were exposed to the fumes. Your susceptibility depends on the strength of your immune system.

 “The first symptoms weren’t very severe—lapses in memory and difficulty sleeping—but they got worse as time passed. They had trouble eating and drinking. Forming complete sentences became a challenge. They developed paranoia and night terrors. Even through all that, it wasn’t too hard to look after them, until they began to forget who I was. There was a two-week period where they asked my name each day. At the end of those two weeks, they stopped asking. Not long after that, they just stared straight ahead and never said another word.”

Craig pushed himself off the crate and crossed to the opposite wall. Jyra was too stunned to move. She couldn’t believe such a debilitating illness could be hidden from the public, let alone that it had affected someone so close to her. It sounded too horrible to be real. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have her parents gradually forget who she was. Craig’s ordeal seemed even worse because he had been there, watching it happen.

“I wanted to hide them,” he said, turning away from the wall. “I wanted to get them somewhere safe, but they were each in medical beds by the end. There was no way to move them on my own and when the TF doctors came, it was all over. My parents were transferred to the medical facility, beyond my reach.”

“Can’t we go after them?” Jyra said.

Craig gave a hollow laugh and shook his head.

“That brings me back to my point,” he said, pushing his hair off his bowed forehead. “I could try to rescue them. And what would happen if I did? Get myself injured or killed in the process. At the very least, I’d get a company of TF agents pursuing me. The way I figure, even I get out of there with my parents, it’s more of a risk than I care to take. They look at me but don’t see me. Even if they’re still alive, my parents have left their bodies. Sometimes it takes all I’ve got to fight back how I regret not being able to save them from TF. I can regret the things I did, because I could have prevented them. But it’s not worth going through the anguish and grief over things I didn’t do. Life’s hard enough without extra misery anyway.

“Let’s finish checking the hull,” he said after a brief pause. “Then we should head back to our ship.”

“All right,” Jyra said, but before we regroup with the others, we need to do something.”

After completing the inspection and finding no faults with the hull, Craig and Jyra made their way back to Mastranada. They bypassed the cargo bay, ignoring the chatter within.

Jyra entered her quarters and promptly began digging through her duffel while Craig lingered in the doorway. After moving Dario’s dagger and setting “Ships of the Kaosaam System” on the floor, Jyra found the small canister. She stood and beckoned Craig forward. He stood in front of her, eyeing the silver vessel in Jyra’s fingers.

“Close your eyes,” she said, unscrewing the lid.

She dipped two fingers into the charcoal powder and applied the Mourning Mark to Craig’s forehead. Some of the black dust fell into Craig’s eyebrows and eyelashes, disappearing immediately.

Jyra screwed the lid back on the canister and gripped Craig’s arm. He opened his eyes and a let out a deep breath. Jyra extended her fingers again and pressed the Mark and Craig blinked before pulling her into another embrace.

“Thank you,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“You’re welcome,” Jyra replied. “May you carry their memory with you forever.”

“And you,” Craig said.

                        *

“Well?” Macnelia asked when Craig and Jyra stepped into the cargo bay.

“The hull’s solid,” Craig said.

“In that case, I suggest we prepare to power up the engines,” Leonick said. Berk gulped his whiskey and passed the flask to Leonick.

“Right, let’s get to it,” Macnelia said. “It’s time we had little control over our direction. What do we do first, Leonick?”

“If you mean in order to start the engines, we need to calibrate them and bring each one online and link them to the bridge.”

“Jyra, can you help Neeka and me forge the link from the bridge?” Macnelia asked.

 “Of course,” Jyra said.

“Leonick, why don’t you take Craig to assist in the engine room?”

“I cannot think of reason, so come along,” Leonick said, motioning to Craig.

“The rest of you will work with Berk in the main hangar,” Macnelia said.

“What are we doing?” Shandra asked.

“Getting the auxiliary laser cannons mounted in place,” Macnelia answered. “Once we fix the shield drive, we’ll start hunting down the remaining TF ships.”