FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #82

In our... In the Commonwealth's new home Father and I still had to keep quiet about what and who we were. Well, all of our family had secrets that shouldn't be known to anybody outside our immediate household. Beyond the battlefield my power was still that of a child—and I could do nothing when Baro was taken into custody.

Different types of conflicts required different types of power to navigate and handle them. This one was harder to deal with than kicking the asses of a couple of powerful folks somewhere in the depths of space far away from curious eyes. Destroying recently established peace in the Commonwealth still weary from war was not what I wanted.

If Baro had been a civilian, he could have been granted a pardon. As a Peacekeeper, however, his offence was grave enough, even being softened by the fact that he had been fighting on the front lines along with us. Tarrenat was also taken into custody. Yet as a torture survivor and as a father, he had better chances of being released. A loner would get and take all the blame, and his niece would be placed into Tarrenat's household.

But before this all happened, still in Tjrnenagh's infirmary, I'd held a meeting with Yajur Garai regarding a completely different issue.

Besides Baro and Arann, the only other person who came out unscratched by my fireball was Mom. I briefly remembered her sneaking into my room and placing cool compresses on my painful spots. She returned to change those from time to time. Did I talk to her in my sleep? I did not remember that. All I remembered was the feeling of her presence.

Eyuran and Orewen both topped the list of the most injured, but those severe injuries came from their own fight, and my intervention saved one of them, or probably both, stopping their battle. Father was doing slightly better—he managed to protect himself and his valuable cargo from death, yet he was still injured in the process. However, he actually seemed to enjoy his rest, since Mom was staying by his side. That's how those two bloodlights in the next room felt.

I kept wondering if there was a possible connection with Mom's Cold Sleep and me being a Sangu. But then, what about the others who'd ended up in the same state? What if the whole condition was related to the hidden processes in people's soma? Those processes could be the ones Wen talked about, the ones related to the possibility of existence of a Sangu Shaamta discovered in us. Something akin to recessive genes.

The more I reflected on our whole interaction with Shaamta, the more I believed that, since the very beginning, somewhere since the moment Father didn't stop Eyuran from rescuing Tagai, or maybe even earlier, Father's 'irresponsible' actions were to provoke Shaamta to act in a certain way, to inform him that he was 'bringing me' to the Baal, which in fact was somewhat true. Yet Father's agenda appeared more intricate than that—what he actually accomplished while securing the ground for me to achieve victory was that Shaamta could observe me all he wanted, but in the end he could never have me as he had planned. Father's revenge, of a sort, though indirect, was as clever as it was elegant. That was so like him.

Dorgu, Shaamta, and Wen all regained consciousness, yet their bodies were messed up pretty thoroughly, so their healing would take a week or more, just like my family. All three were placed in Tjrnenagh's infirmary as well. Funny thing though, no one was complaining, even when I came to visit them. I guessed my final point in all our arguments had reached them deep enough—of course, we all still had plenty of things to discuss. Everyone and everything else caught in my blast was similarly disabled.

Dorgu's Enclaves exited dive right after the explosion in the main ship, and the whole bunch never reached our trap. Anika and Garai found us soon after that, and Dorgu's and Shaamta's kids were scared and confused enough to fight them. Hence more lives were spared eventually.