Unholy Star, Beyond Faith

Evacuation

Bast ran from his room, eager to share his strange encounter with the beautiful auger Wu Zetian. He checked his interface, Sen was in the common room with Xe' ed. He found his Mawlar, Sedek on his ship, the al Danni. He wondered why the flying fortress was hovering above the living platform. Something was going on about the Halls of Learning, people were moving about with a sense of urgency, something was not right.

His suspicions were correct when he ran into the common room and Sen rushed up to him, "Bast! This is terrible," she seemed on the verge of tears, "Xe' ed says that we have to go!"

Sen's mawla moved up behind the child technopath, her long copper red hair flowed over the shoulders of a tan uniform that Bast had not seen before, it was striking with a blue horizontal stripe that ran across her chest. Bast looked up to the warden, who like Sedek, was also a Warlord of the Borderworlds. Her green eyes shot at him like lasers from her dark skin. "It's true, Bast, there are dangerous things brewing. We need to take you and the rest of the Ethnaa Aashar to safety."

"Are we going to have to get dressed like dolls every time we have breakfast? I hated that." Sen asked, looking up.

"No, not if you don't want to." the concern on Xe' ed's face was evident, "Come, quickly, we don't have much time."

They ran to the docking bay where the shuttle was waiting to shuttle them up to the big ship. Unlike their first entry onto the ship, this time they used a secondary tactical boarding bay. Xe' ed was tenser than either of the children had ever seen her, and her right hand pulsed with a level of energy that Bast had not seen before. She would be biting her fingernails if she could, he thought. Out of the shuttle's porthole, Bast could see other shuttles moving up and back down to the big disc-shaped ship.

After what seemed an eternity standing next to the unsettled Mawla, the hatch dropped open to a scene of chaos.

"Bashshar, have you seen Het? Is she here?" Xe' ed called across to the room.

Sen broke away and ran up to the captain who had been busy directing one of his crew. He stopped and dropped down to a knee while the girl hugged the friendly man. He ruffled her hair as he stood to meet Xe' ed, but didn't engage the youngsters further beyond passing a wink to Bast.

Sen moved over to Titus who was sitting in the corner with the handsome Learned, Shoo-e. The older Learned was slapping at his butterflies, the movement was more frantic than usual, and he didn't respond to as was normal to Sen's greeting.

"Don't worry about him, he's stressed too." Shoo-e comforted as Bast rocked up a little shy of the rock star-like aura that surrounded the young man.

Bast noticed other Ethnaa Aashar were here too. This docking bay was a tactical ready room, and so, based on its function, its layout was bereft of any of the ornamentation found in other parts of the ship. This area was all business.

A new shuttle was dropping its hatch just as Sedek entered from a back room. The Mawla was still his calm, but his manner now was one of stern authority. It was clear who was in command.

"Where's Het?" exclaimed Xe' ed running up to Sedek.

"I'm sorry we can't locate her."

"You what!?" Xe' ed was furious; a fact clear by her levelled whisper that a typical person wouldn't have been able to hear (but Bast was no typical person). Xe' ed had said to Sedek, "That was the deal. Het was to come with us." Bast wondered, what deal?

"I know our deal, and I've hunted for as best I can, she's nowhere to be found." confessed Sedek

Adding to the disorder, Lei'tee the Mawla of the bully Ethnaa Aashar called Ester stormed up to Sedek and Xe' ed having just disembarked their shuttle. She demanded, "What is the meaning of this? There is no way that we are leaving the Halls of learning on the whim of either of you".

Sen had told Bast what Ester had done to her, and, because of that, Bast disliked her too. Ester walked right up to Sedek as if he was her servant rather the most powerful lord of the Borderworlds, "I've told everything to Zoro, and he wasn't happy. I'm not allowed to tell you what he said he was going to do to you when he gets hold of you."

Sedek began to reason when Bashshar yelled. "The Fortress, she's here!"

Bast accessed the ships environmentals and confirmed that the only other Fortress class starship, Zoro's ship had drifted in from deep space and was squared up against the Al' Danni, leaving Sedek's ship wedged between the living platform and itself.

Not having time to reach the command deck, Bashshar waved Sedek and Xe' ed into the adjoining briefing room. Sen and Bast followed quietly, knowing that they would likely be kicked out if discovered listening in on the grown-up business.

The back wall opened into space, for the typical person in the room, it would have seemed like the side of the ship had dropped away, and Bast could feel Sen grabbed his arm as if she was to be blown out into the vacuum, but the display was a visualization only; Bast could direct the stream to his v-tex -- a technique that rendered the world has he would have seen it with his real eyes, but also in a way that was far inferior to the sensory input sensors that now provided his vision.

The Fortress was named after its technical class. It was the pinnacle of Amaran spacecraft design and development, and like its sister ship, al Danni, was shaped like a robust disk half as high as it was wide. The ships floated in the red gas cloud, waiting.

"Thread request received" relayed Bashshar from his Communications officer from the command deck, "They have enacted battle protocol".

"That's ridiculous," observed Xe' ed, "what are they going to do? We match them one for one on weapon arrays, Zoro knows that."

Sedek looked over to Bashshar, "accept and send back a request to entreat."

A minute later, "It's Zoro himself, he want's Xe' ed."

Xe' ed nodded, I'll broadcast to the wall.

If a man was so old that they reached the point where they appeared more early hominid than human, to Bast, Zoro was at that point, and the old man's anger only added to his monkey-like appearance. Zoro motioned to a point beyond the viewport, and one of his personal guards dragged a distressed Het into view. They held a knife to her throat.

"Het!" Sen screamed.

"Sedek turned" and shouted angrily to no one in particular, "get her out of here!"

Bashshar quickly guided the children out of the room before reentering and sliding the hatch behind him.

"It's okay Sen." Bast calmed his frantic friend, "I can still access the thread, I'll share it with you."