“My family lives here,” Mace told them, gesturing to some kind of a heap of wood in front of him. “I’d offer you accommodations, but it’s already a bit crowded. My son and his family live with us. His wife is pregnant, and her time is coming soon…” he trailed off.
“We’re accustomed to sleeping outside,” Bram told him. “You needn’t worry about where to put us. We’re a bit more concerned with getting back to Bajor, if we can.”
Mace laughed sharply. “You’re better off staying here, if you want my advice,” he told them. “Anyway, I don’t know if it can be arranged. The Cardassians mostly leave us alone here. Between trying to maintain their hold on Bajor and their ongoing border troubles with the Federation, they don’t see us as being much of a threat to them. We’re just eking out a living here; Valo II has nothing that they want.”
“But you do go into Bajoran space, from time to time,” Laren pointed out. “Like after the freighter-“
“Yes, and we still take in refugees,” Mace admitted, “but we follow a strict procedure in doing so. There might be some way to get you back, but it will most likely be a few days, at least. We’ll have to discuss it with Keeve and Akhere.”
“Are they in your cell?” Laren asked him.
“Cell?” Mace repeated. “What do you mean?”
She wrinkled her nose. “The resistance,” she said. “You are a resistance fighter, right?”
Bram held up a hand. “That’s enough, Laren, don’t interrogate the man.” He turned to Mace. “She’s just a kid,” he said dismissively. “Smart for her age, but-you know.”
“Just a kid, eh? Flying a raider, all by herself, out there in space just swarming with Cardassians…” Mace grinned at Laren, and she scowled ferociously back. She did not appreciate anyone’s attempt at being overtly friendly; she found it suspicious. Still, a long-buried part of her visited the man’s kindness with an infuriating sort of longing. She did her best to suppress it.
Mace looked up just then. “Ah,” he exclaimed. “Here’s the man I’ve been looking for.”
“Darrah,” greeted the other man, nodding at Mace. He was an older fellow, not much beyond Mace in years, but with a completely bald head and a rather ornate earring. It was one of the old D’jarra ones, denoting him as Te’nari. Not everyone wore the jewelry of their caste anymore, though of course everyone still wore some kind of adornment. It would have been as absurd as going without trousers to be seen without an earring.
Following at the man’s heels was a tall boy, a teenager, with the greenest eyes Laren had ever seen. The two were clearly father and son, with a resemblance that went beyond their similar earrings: a kind of similarity about their noses and mouths, though the father’s head shone with its hairlessness, and the son had a shock of very thick brown hair that hung nearly in his eyes.
Mace clapped his hand against the other man’s forearm. “Juk,” he said, “I brought back a couple of stowaways with me.”
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The bald man turned to regard Laren and Bram. “Where’d you find them?” he asked Mace, as if they could not hear him.
Bram answered. “Your friend here claimed a derelict vessel that we had our eye on.” He extended his hand, which the other man looked at for a moment before taking it. “I’m Bram Adir, and this is Ro Laren. We’re from Jo’kala.”
“Jo’kala!” he exclaimed. “You mean-Bajor?”
“That’s right,” Laren answered him, unable to take her eyes off the boy who stood mutely behind his father. He did not appear to be much older than Laren herself. She hadn’t had much interaction with people her own age since joining the resistance.
“I’m Akhere Juk,” the man finally said. “I’ve been on Valo II almost my whole life, long before the Cardassians came, though my people were originally from Mylea.”
“You’re a Te’nari,” Bram observed.
Juk shrugged. “We don’t pay much attention to those designations anymore,” he said, but Laren had a feeling that it might not be entirely true. She fingered her own earring, an old one of her father’s that her mother had allowed her to take. Sern’apa. Caste was so unimportant that she paid it almost no mind-it was little more than a word. Its only significance for her lay in the fact that it was something of her father’s.
“Neither do we,” Bram said, “other than to find things to reminisce about. My mother’s people were Te’nari, also.”
“Ah,” Juk said, and Laren detected a new light in the other man’s eyes. It had always puzzled her, the old D’jarra system. The very idea that the adults would still pay any sort of homage to it was laughable. Just like most of the old ways. Foolish. Bram and Juk continued to jaw about their castes, and Laren shifted her weight from foot to foot, bored and impatient for something to happen. She looked over Juk’s shoulder at his son, and their eyes met for a paralyzing moment. Laren quickly looked away, realizing that her face had been plastered with a sneer. She rearranged her features to look unreadable, benign, but still durable-a person to be reckoned with. It was the truth, after all.
The boy cleared his throat noisily. “My name’s Bis,” he said, the proclamation clearly directed at Laren. His voice was deep, but not quite like a grown man’s; there was still a ragged softness to it. He took a step toward her. He extended his hand to her, and it was then that she flinched, as though she thought he meant to strike her. Ro wasn’t much for shaking hands, and in fact, she supposed she had never really done it before that she could remember; she’d only seen adults do it from time to time. To her chagrin, Bis laughed at her. “What’s the matter?”
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She put her own hand out, her cheeks burning, and shook with him, without making eye contact. “This is all very friendly and everything,” she said loudly and sharply, “but just where do you propose we sleep tonight? We haven’t brought our bedrolls or anything like that-“
“Laren, you let me worry about that,” Bram snapped, bossy as always.
“We’ve got plenty of room at my house,” Juk suggested, but Bram quickly began shaking his head.
“No, no, we wouldn’t dream of it. Just find us an empty building and we’ll curl up in a corner. Even under a grove of trees-we don’t need much.”
Laren shot him an are-you-crazy look, for though it was true that she had often been reduced to sleeping in some very unaccommodating places, she couldn’t imagine turning down an actual bed to do so.
“Let’s take them to speak to Keeve,” Mace suggested. “And then we can figure out where we’ll put them for the night.”
Juk and Mace went on talking, and Laren pulled Bram aside, speaking in hushed tones. “Why are you turning down his offer of a decent place to stay? Is it just that you like to be miserable?”
“I saw the way that boy was looking at you,” Bram whispered. “We’ll not be sleeping in their house.”
Laren was indignant. “Now I know you’re crazy,” she said. “You would put a phaser in my hand, train me to fly a shuttle, encourage me to break and enter booby-trapped facilities… but you won’t let me sleep in the same house with a boy?”
Bram snorted. “Let me tell you something, Laren. Bajoran teenage boys can be far scarier than even the most menacing Cardassian soldier.”
It was Laren’s turn to snort, but Bram kept talking.
“I ought to know about teenage boys. I used to be one.” He laughed at his own joke, and Laren, though annoyed, couldn’t help but smile a little-if only at the thought of Bram ever having been as young as she was.
Basso Tromac did his best to avoid making eye contact with any of the Cardassians as he headed to the Bajoran section of the Promenade. There were a handful of them who treated him with at least some facsimile of politeness, but the newcomers generally did not know that there was any distinction between him and the Bajorans in ore processing. They would often stop him and begin asking annoying questions if he looked at them the “wrong” way. Considering the sheer number of new personnel here, it was usually wise to just keep one’s eyes pointed forward, at least until he came to the Bajoran sector, where he could again square up his shoulders, even add a bit of swagger to his gait.
He had almost made it to the heavy barricades that divided the station when Dukat’s lazily authoritative tone spoke out behind him: “Ah, just the man I have been looking for.”
Basso turned around quickly. “How can I be of service, Prefect?” He bowed a bit, as he always did when addressing Dukat.
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“Basso, I have a question for you.” Dukat spoke loudly over the din that was beginning to erupt beyond the gates-a fight breaking out, perhaps a lost child, some other trivial scuffle.
“Do you want me to go look into that?” Basso asked.
Dukat waved his hands. “No, no, I’ve got Thrax and a couple of the others patrolling back there, they’ll get to it soon enough. Come. Let’s walk this way.” He pointed in the opposite direction, and Basso followed him. He didn’t mind walking on the Cardassian side so long as Dukat was accompanying him; in fact, he rather enjoyed these rare opportunities to demonstrate for the others that he was no ordinary Bajoran.
“Basso, have you been seeing to Meru, as you have been asked?”
“Of course, sir.” Basso took pains to keep his voice neutral, for he had anticipated this question. He did not have to guess at the tone of the meeting that had taken place between the prefect and his mistress in the office the other day.
“You haven’t noticed her seeming… different, lately? Unsatisfied with her life here?”
Basso shrugged. “Certainly no more than before, sir.”
Dukat’s eyes narrowed and his smile wavered, and Basso quickly tacked on a follow-up: “I mean to say, she seems as happy as ever.”
Dukat looked away, continuing to walk. The two passed several security officers, on their way to the Bajoran side, along with several miscellaneous soldiers and civilian personnel. Dukat nodded to each one, stilling their conversation until they were out of earshot. “Has she said anything to you about…” He trailed off as the chief engineer’s assistant passed alongside them. “…Tora Naprem?”
Basso shook his head, but maintained a look of puzzlement on his face. “No, she hasn’t said anything specifically about her-but now that you mention it, she did seem to indicate to me… well, I suppose I dismissed it as nothing, but it does seem a bit odd…”
“What?” Dukat demanded. “What did she say?”
“Well, she said that she worried that one day you would grow tired of her, if you ever found a younger mistress, someone prettier. She said she thought she knew how your wife must feel, having to tolerate dalliances by the man she loved…” Basso shrugged. “Nothing that any woman doesn’t fear from time to time, but perhaps… perhaps she did learn something of Naprem… the new baby. It would seem to explain why she is suddenly-“
“She spoke of my wife?” Dukat asked sharply. He stepped into an empty pathway that led toward the habitat ring, and Basso followed him.
Basso nodded. “M-hm, m-hm, she did indeed, sir. She said, ‘Poor Athra, it never occurred to me how difficult it must be for her-I almost feel in her a kindred spirit.’ It was something along those lines.”
Dukat looked furious, though he kept his voice low. “She spoke of my wife by name?”
“Yes, I remember it quite specifically.”
Dukat looked troubled. “I have never told her my wife’s name,” he said. “You’re sure she said those words?”
“I am quite certain, Gul, but you must know that she has the resources to find out just about anything she wants to know.” Basso contrived an expression of sudden realization. “Oh, my. You don’t think-you don’t think Meru would ever try to contact your wife, do you? She is such an impetuous person, and so lonely for female companionship…” Basso stopped, and shook his head. “No, no, that’s ridiculous, of course.”
Dukat looked troubled for a moment. “Lonely?” he said, almost to himself. He turned to Basso, speaking louder now. “She has no means of contacting anyone.”
“Well,” Basso said, “that’s not entirely true, Gul. She has been on the station such a long time now, she has learned how to bypass many of the security protocols that were originally installed to keep her safe. She doesn’t necessarily choose to use them, but I’ve caught her leaving her quarters at unauthorized times, and fooling around with her library computer-“
“Why haven’t you mentioned this to me before now?” Dukat snapped.
Basso did his best to look pained. “I have tried, Gul Dukat, I have really tried to discuss it with you, but you never seemed concerned when I pointed out that Meru had too much freedom…”
Dukat’s eyes became faraway again. “Yes,” he murmured. “You have tried to warn me. At any rate, we must tighten up the security that surrounds her.”
“It’s an excellent idea, though I’m not sure she’ll tolerate it. She has always been so… ah, high-strung, we might want to ease her into the idea. Otherwise, she might try to resist you…”
“High-strung, yes. I suppose that does describe her, somewhat…”
“Although,” Basso added. “If I may say-I sincerely doubt that she would really try to contact Athra, for revenge or any other reason-“
“Did you say revenge?” Dukat broke in.
“Well, it does make sense. Just as you were saying, she is a high-strung woman, and she does have a great deal of freedom to poke around, if she wanted to… and if it came into her head to try and make trouble for you…”
Dukat shook his head. “I am going to speak with her. You go on to ore processing. I will speak with you later.” Dukat waved him in the direction of the turbolifts.
Basso headed for ore processing with a little more confidence than usual. It wasn’t everyone who could successfully put a bug in the prefect’s ear, so to speak. He hoped he could continue to steer the prefect in the proper direction, for if this went the way he wanted, he could finally rid himself of those duties that concerned Meru, and the effort of watching after her impossible family.
“My name is Mora.” He had said it at least a hundred times today, and he was tired of the sound of his own voice. His mouth felt pasty, his throat sore from speaking, but he could not give up, not until Odo could repeat the words, and produce some indication that he actually understood them.
The shape-shifter gestured to himself, as Mora had been doing. “Mem,” he said. “Mem-ma.”
Mora sighed, exhausted. Did Odo understand what was going on here? Or was he merely mimicking the sound of Mora’s voice? Could it be that he was not sentient after all-at least, no more than a tyrfox or a batos? He regarded the readouts on the electrostatic field that surrounded Odo’s “head,” and increased the frequency.
He continued to work with him for another seemingly endless round of call-and-response, with Odo’s pronunciation gradually becoming more precise, and then less so, and then more so again. Mora believed that Odo was eager to please him, but then it may have only been an illusion brought on by Mora’s own isolation. He occasionally feared he was spending too much time with the creature; he hadn’t seen his parents in weeks, usually coming home to his family’s residence long after they had retired for the night. And Prophets forbid he should ever meet an eligible woman! The idea of it seemed about as likely as the possibility that the Cardassians would turn tail and leave Bajor tomorrow. For better or worse, Mora was married to his work here, and he probably always would be.
“Mynameissssmore… uh,” said Odo.
“Very good, Odo!” Mora positively beamed, for this was probably the best pronunciation Odo had managed so far.
Odo’s “eyes” occasionally rolled around, drifting lazily like those of a person touched in the head. It was an unsettling effect, though Mora had noticed lately that he seemed to understand the concept of “looking” at something. Right now, his gaze appeared to be trained on the door to the laboratory, and his expression was convincing enough to compel Mora to turn around and look. Sure enough, Doctor Yopal was standing in the doorway. Mora almost praised Odo for it, but Yopal spoke before he had the chance.
“Do you think he believes… that his name is Mora? Or do you think he even understands any of it at all?”
Mora felt immediately dejected, despite all the progress he’d been making this afternoon. “Well, only time will tell,” he said stiffly.
Yopal went on speaking, her usual refrain about men and the sciences, and to Mora’s grave embarrassment, Odo began to chatter behind her, a string of senseless syllables. “Mem. Dobake. Goobsine.”
Yopal at first raised her voice to speak over him, but she abruptly stopped speaking after a moment, looking at the shape-shifter with curious surprise.
“Mem dobake good sine-tiss.”
Yopal turned to Mora with openmouthed astonishment. “Do you hear what he just said?” She turned back to the shape-shifter. “Say it again, Odo’ital!”
“Mem dobe bake good sine-tist.”
“That’s right!” Yopal beamed. “That’s right, Odo! Men don’t make good scientists!” The Cardassian woman then did something Mora had never dreamed she was even capable of: she laughed.
“Odo,” Mora began, not sure quite how to respond.
“He’s making a joke, Mora!” She laughed again, and Mora was stunned at how natural her laughter sounded. But even more alarming than the revelation that the Cardassian scientist was capable of genuine emotion was the change that had come over Odo’s “face.” The strange pulling at the corners of his mouth looked anything but natural, but it was certainly nothing that he had ever even attempted before today-at least, that Mora had ever seen.
“He’s smiling,” Mora said.
“Yes, he is,” Yopal agreed.
This time, Mora laughed along with her.
Keeve Falor was a quiet-speaking man, dressed as shabbily as everyone else on Valo II, but with an even more elaborate earring than the one worn by Akhere Juk. Laren did not recognize the design; she only knew a few of the D’jarra symbols, and his was not one that she had ever seen before. Bram, however, seemed to know Keeve right away, though by his face or his D’jarra, Laren wasn’t sure.
“Minister,” Bram said reverently, as Juk and Mace began the introductions.
Keeve broke into a sheepish laugh. “Not Minister. Not for a long, long time.” He extended his hand to Bram, who shook it warmly. “We’re all more or less equals here on Valo II.”
“But we do often defer to Keeve when a decision is to be made,” Juk cut in.
Laren mentally nodded to herself; the D’jarras did still have some pull here, just as she had imagined. Keeve’s D’jarra must have designated him to the class of politicians and civilian leaders.
The adults commenced to talking about what to do with this and that, where could Laren and Bram make their camp, how could they return to Bajor, the specifics of which did not particularly interest Laren-at least not while Bis was standing so near. She imagined that Bis had probably lived on this windy, dusty rock his entire life. He had never even seen a proper tree before. The foliage here was scraggly, with sparse leaves and dry, crackling branches, nothing at all like the grand forests in Jo’kala. She pitied him, a little.
Laren wondered many things about Bis. Had he ever seen a Cardassian, here on this world? Had he ever flown in a shuttle? Was he impressed that she had been in a raider all by herself?
“So, if you and your daughter would like, we could set up a tent for you, just outside of-“
“I’m not his daughter,” Laren interrupted Keeve fiercely. She’d have expected Bram to have told him at least that much.
Keeve looked surprised, and a little amused. “Begging your pardon, my dear. So how is it that you came to be in a ship all alone, in Cardassian-controlled space?”
Bram answered for her. “I look after her,” he said. “She’s something of an orphan. My resistance cell has taken her in. We’re teaching her how to fly-“
“I already know how to fly.”
Keeve continued to look surprised, and Bram spoke quickly.
“Laren, please. My apologies-I’ve not done a very good job teaching her any manners. She lived on the streets, when I found her, running with a crowd of beggars…”
“I’m no beggar,” Laren interrupted. “I stole things from the Cardassians. That’s why Bram wanted me along, because I can break into their stockades better than any of the grown-ups in the resistance cell. He needs me to disable the security feeds before anyone approaches.”
Keeve looked a bit unsettled as he turned to Bram. “She can’t be more than twelve,” he said.
“I’m fourteen!” Laren shouted.
“Laren! It’s true, Keeve, the girl does have talent. She can hack into a security system like nobody’s business, and I can’t even begin to figure how she does it.” He shot her a pointed look. “I’d never tolerate her impertinence if she wasn’t good for something.”
Keeve’s expression reset itself to one of thoughtfulness. “Is that right?” he said, and he turned to look at Laren. “So, you fight in the resistance, do you?”
Laren decided she didn’t like his tone. “Yes,” she said sulkily. “And what do you do, here on Valo II, to try and drive out the spoonheads?”
Keeve’s eyebrows shot up and he addressed Bram. “I see what you mean, about the manners,” he said, one corner of his mouth twisted into a forced-seeming smile. He turned away for a moment to speak quietly with Juk and Mace, arguing good-naturedly in hushed tones. Laren could barely catch the gist of what they were discussing, but she was fairly certain it had something to do with her. Juk’s voice rose above the others more than once, saying, “She’s only a child!”
“You’ll have to help me set up our tent, Laren,” Bram said, apparently trying to draw her away from the conversation, but Laren did not answer, straining to hear what the other men were talking about. She caught Bis’s eye as he shifted his attention from his father’s conversation back to her, and she quickly looked away again, forgetting the men for the moment.
Keeve stepped away from the tight circle he’d made with the other two, and he turned back to Laren. “Well, Laren. If you can hack into Cardassian computer systems, then we might just have a little job for you. You ask what we are doing to fight against the Cardassians, and I’ll tell you. We observe. We gather information. And we have a little reconnaissance mission that I think might benefit rather well from a little girl who knows how to bypass a Cardassian security system. A simple download at a hidden facility. Does this interest you at all?”
Laren lost her attitude in no time at all. “Yes!” she said. She stole a glance at Bis to see if he was watching, and sure enough, he was staring right at her. Her eyes met his for a moment, but she was too excited to be embarrassed. This was the perfect opportunity to impress him, and maybe she’d even get to kill a spoonhead or two.
Chapter 16
Lenaris could not resist flicking out his hands to steady the flight yoke. His little brother turned to him, burning with annoyance, to judge from his expression. “I know how to do this, Holem.”
“I know you do, Jau. But I keep thinking that you might want to wait until after we exit the atmosphere before you-“
“Leave him alone, Lenaris.” Ornathia Sten spoke from where he crouched in the back of the raider. It was a tight fit with the three of them in the little ship, but since most of the cell’s raiders had been taken to the Lunar V base, they generally had to commute in cramped quarters.
“I’m going to be flying on my own for this raid,” Jau said firmly.
“Of course,” Lenaris said, meaning to be reassuring, aware that he probably sounded condescending. As always, according to Jau.
Jau shook his head, and Lenaris decided it would be best to keep silent. Jau was sixteen, and though it was true he was as good a pilot as any of the grown men, Lenaris still couldn’t help but regard him as a baby. The age gap was enough that Lenaris wasn’t entirely sure how it was that Jau had come to be the gawky near-adult he was now; Lenaris had already left home to join the resistance before Jau had even learned his first words. But this mission called for every available pilot, and he could not argue that Jau was capable. It was only… Lenaris wasn’t sure what his mother would do if anything happened to Jau. He wasn’t sure what he would do.
It was a long way to Jeraddo in a sub-impulse raider, the moon where the Ornathia cell had managed to store most of their raiders, since Pullock V. They couldn’t keep all of their ships in Relliketh, where the cell was currently headquartered-as quickly as Taryl came up with new fuels, new ways to mask them, the Cardassians found ways to detect them, and the fleet was too large now to keep together.
The Ornathia fleet had regrown in recent years, as more people joined the cell. Some of Taryl’s cousins who had originally fled back to their families’ farms had returned to the cell after the Pullock V report had gained notoriety. Some of the raiders could still be stored in the Berain mountains, where the natural kelbonite in the rock shielded them from overhead scans, but the constant lifting off from the same location was risky, and Lenaris had suggested moving some of the shuttles to Derna, but Taryl had insisted that it would not be wise to keep the communications links and the shuttles in the same place. Halpas had been the first to suggest Jeraddo; the sparsely populated moon was of little interest to the Cardassians, their presence there minimal. It was the perfect place to hide their ships.
Lenaris tried to make conversation to pass the time. It never hurt to remind everyone of the basics, either. “So, we’ll go in with a typical kienda fan formation, with me and Sten in the lead. Jau, you and Nerissa will flank, and-“
“I know,” Jau said wearily. “And the Legans will be at the tail. We pull down until we’re just about fifty linnipates above the base, and then we drop our ordnance in the center of four parked skimmers, and pull up. The blast should take out at least sixteen skimmers, if we position our explosives in the correct place, so make each hit count.”
“Yeah,” Lenaris said lamely. From the back, Sten chuckled.
Lenearis said little else until they reached the site, where they cruised over the forests of Jeraddo and quickly found the cave they had dubbed Lunar V. There were twelve raiders in all here, many of them engineered entirely from scrap, mostly by Taryl. These improvised ships lacked the comprehensive sensors that some of the older raiders were equipped with, though Taryl hoped to change that eventually.
It was one of these “newer” birds that Jau would be flying, since he was considered an apt enough pilot to compensate for the lack of equipment. The Legan brothers were barely competent fliers, and Lenaris would have been happy to have left them behind entirely, but they were short on pilots just now. Taryl was pregnant, and Lenaris wouldn’t have dreamed of putting her in harm’s way. She was safely back at Tilar, working on the communications upgrades. Halpas and a few of the others were on Derna right now, calibrating new relay towers to keep the cells on Bajor connected. And there had been an accident recently. The warp carrier had been taken out to try and make contact with some of the Bajorans outside the B’hava’el system, and it had never returned. Seven people were on that freighter, seven members of the extended cell, seven friends, brothers, sisters, parents, children-seven pilots. Lenaris had to make do with what was left.
The Legan brothers were coming in with Ornathia Nerissa, and Lenaris didn’t trust them to take one of the scrap raiders. No, it was better to put them in the idiot-proof ships, though he didn’t feel especially confident they wouldn’t find some way of getting themselves lost-or, more likely, killed.
Lenaris quickly claimed his own shuttle, and they set to work. The little vessels had to be pushed manually from the cave, and the three men worked to move their vessels out into a more reasonable takeoff position, stomping through the heavy foliage and sidestepping the unusually large insects that patrolled the moon. The second of their transport shuttles docked while they were struggling, and Nerissa and the Legans emerged to help them. They managed to get each ship into position, each one loaded with appropriate ammunition, each double-checked according to Taryl’s extensive list.
There were a few backslaps and encouraging words, and it was time. Each man or woman climbed into his or her vessel, all looking deferentially to Lenaris. It had never been said-at least, not within his earshot-but he knew they considered him the leader. It wasn’t a job he’d lobbied for, but he couldn’t deny the responsibility.
“Good fighting, everyone,” Lenaris said, and pulled the glacis plate of his raider closed. He tapped in a few commands and lifted his shuttle into Jeraddo’s mild sky, pushing through the sound barrier and out of the atmosphere in almost no time at all. There was little in the way of shock absorption. The inertial dampers did their best to keep up, but Lenaris was still rocked crazily about his cockpit before the shuttle broke into the openness of space.