Chapter 168: (Nemta) (1/2)

Nemta woke up, moaning and rolling over in his nest. He opened his eyes and saw the broodcarrier leaning over him, wiping him down with soft cloths. She was singing softly to him, trying to soothe him, even as the light from the doorway clawed at his eyes and made his head pound.

”Thirsty,” he managed to croak.

The broodcarrier held up a squeeze bottle with a straw, gently lifting his head and tilting the bottle. ”Cool drink, yummy drink, good Nemta drinky drink,” it crooned.

Three swallows and it no longer felt like his tongue was going to abrade away the top of his mouth. His headache receded slightly and he looked around. He was no longer sleeping on the floor in a wad of aerogel, now he had a low bowl of woven plas strips, much more comfortable. His uniform and the clothing the mantid had modified hung up on pegs on the wall. He had windows now, complete with curtains and cryplas windows that were tinted to keep the sunlight out. He now had a floor instead of bare dirt and dead grass.

”How long...” he coughed and the broodcarrier rolled him on his side, holding a bowl up to his face. He started to protest when he suddenly vomited up thin strings of bile and the juice. When he was done she let him curl up and set the bowl to the side.

He realized that this one was a different broodcarrier than he had seen. This one had burn scarring on her side and was missing an eye and an ear.

”Many days sicky sick. Get better soon. Gonna bring Mommy,” the broodcarrier said. She took the bowl with her when she left and Nemta put his arm over his eyes.

He remembered watching as the Mantids worked to build the space ship, went twice to the starport to help the mantids and Friend Terry recover the controls and computer cores from several ships. He had stopped eating the rations because Mother had moved them somewhere else, enjoying the food from the dispenser that the Mantids had made.

There was the tapping of a cane and Mother came in, dressed in a wrap around robe and wearing sandals. She moved over and sat on the stood the broodcarrier had been sitting on. The broodcarrier busied herself wiping down Nemta's feet.

”You look better than you did,” Mother said.

”Was I poisoned?” Nemta asked, then coughed. His stomach clenched and he groaned.

”All of your life, as were we,” Mother said. She shook her head. ”I should have thought of it but it happened so long ago for our people that I did not even think of it.”

Nemta swallowed. ”What? What is wrong with me?”

”Friend Terry calls it Detox Dee Tee's,” Mother said. She sighed, reaching out and smoothing Nemta's fur on his brow. ”You, like us, were fed drugs all of your life. Mood stabilizers, mood alterers, many different types of chemicals. All of them addictive, all of them with terrible detoxing effects so that it would be known if you tried to wean yourself off of the chemicals.”

Nemta coughed, the broodcarrier moving up with the now-empty bowl again. Nothing came up but a few thin strings of bile. Mother waited while the broodcarrier wiped Nemta's face with a cool damp rag.

”I never took any pills. Not a chem-head,” Nemta said. He felt weak and shaky and his missing tail hurt.

”No, you did not. It was in your food, in your drink. Every meal, every drink, you were medicated,” Mother said, shrugging. ”When you started eating the rations, you started to detox. When you ate from the food dispenser, you were starting to detox faster.”

Mother sighed, leaning back slightly and lifting a carafe with tea in it.

”The little green miracle workers had scanned your rations, seen your nutritional needs, and programmed the food dispenser to ensure that your meals had everything you needed but the medications. Combine with a, and I quote, quick gene-scan, and the food dispenser was providing you with healthy food your body needed without the drugs,” Mother said.

”Then why do I feel so bad?” Nemta asked.

”Because you went through detox,” Mother said. ”You fell six nights ago and had a seizure. Friend Terry and the miracle workers cared for you. Friend Terry is trained in basic medical procedures,” Mother shook her head. ”The Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol demands they teach their warriors so much.”

”We cared for you. You had a hard time of it. You had waking nightmares, hallucinations. Twice you tried to run away screaming that the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol was coming for you,” Mother stroked Nemta's forehead. ”You frightened the podlings and cuddlers. They thought you had Precursor Madness.”

”I feel as if I almost died,” Nemta admitted.

”You would have, had no Phreni'ima and Friend Terry not taken care of you,” Mother said. She shook her head. ”Friend Terry told me he was obligated, by the Law of the Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol that he do everything in his power to care for you and treat your wounds.”

”Why?” Nemta could vaguely remembering sitting in the sun next to a starship talking to the Terran, but couldn't remember when.

”Because that is the law. That an enemy soldier becomes a non-combatant when he cannot defend himself any longer and cannot retreat. You were sick, and the Arch-Angel TerraSol demands he care for you as if you are one of his own,” Mother said. She petted his head. ”Ah, you are feeling better. The last time I told you this you wept in shame.”

Nemta swallowed thickly. The broodcarrier moved over, cradling his head, and let him sip at the liquid again. His throat stopped burning and he started to feel slightly better.

”The ship?” Nemta asked, then coughed for a moment, but managed to keep from vomiting.

”The frame and the primary wiring is finished. It is much bigger than I thought it would be and has things I would not have considered,” Mother said. She laughed before sipping at her tea. ”To me a starship just magically goes from one place to another. I need not think about such things as plumbing, waste reclaimation, power supply and balancing, and many other things that the little green engineers concern themselves with.”

Nemta nodded, slowly sitting up. The broodcarrier noticed immediately and helped him up, rubbing his back. His muscles, hell, even his bones ached like crazy. It took him a few minutes before he felt good enough to swing his legs off the bed and sit there for a moment.

The broodcarrier brought him a robe to wrap around himself. The cloth was soft and warm against his fur and he realized that despite the sunlight he felt slightly chilled.

Mother put her hand of the back of his neck and hmmm'd to herself. After a moment she nodded. ”Your fever is gone. You may feel shaky, so Phreni'ima will help you outside.”

”Warm sunny day,” the broodcarrier said softly.

Nemta felt a little ashamed that by the third step his strength was gone and he had to lean against the Telkan broodcarrier. The curtain was some kind of door that pulled itself aside when he got close. He was surprised at her strength as she helped him out into the sunlight.

The appearance of the encampment had changed so much that all Nemta could do was stare.

The shelters had been painted, windows in the frames, doors in the formerly empty doorways, roofs, gutters. The encampment had been expanded slightly, the huge orb and the ship-frame now obviously outside the main walls of the encampment. The inner courtyard of the encampment had paths laid down and short grass. He could see three broodcarriers teaching groups of children from six different races on the grass, all of them with hologram emitters. There were new buildings, power leads, outside lights.

It looked like a modern village that just happened to have a wall with mounted lights on it.

”What... what happened?” Nemta asked as the broodcarrier helped him sit down on a flat rock that had been moved to the grass.

”Friend Terry said it might take some time to finish the ship. He led us in working on our encampment, said that now we had the tools to build the tools to no longer live like wild animals,” Mother said. She pointed with her cane. ”We have a place to eat,” she pointed again, ”A place to do laundry,” and pointed a third time. ”And a place to make things.”

Nemta shook his head. He couldn't believe it had all gone up quickly. He must have been sick for months.

”How long?” Nemta asked.

”A week.”

Nemta looked around again, staring at everything. He could hear the sound of those grinders operating outside the walls. He looked at where the starship was being built and shook his head. There were robots up there welding parts in place, both jump-drives were in place and having the ancillary machinery attached. It looked there was going to be a main body with the two engines away from the main body in a V design. He understood it immediately: It got the engines as far away from the starship itself with the least amount of material.

Nemta saw quite a few people looking at him out their windows, or coming out of their houses to stare at him.

”When all of these people get here?” Nemta asked.

”Friend Terry has been bringing them back. He wants to leave as few as possible on the planet,” Mother said. ”He worries quite a bit about abandoning others. The Mad Arch-Angel TerraSol instills ”Leave None Behind” into her people from birth.”

Nemta was beyond disbelief when it came to the Terran. If Mother told him that the Terran had sprouted wings so that he could bring back a piece of the sun and showed him a chunk of burning gold he would have just nodded.

I spent so much time disbelieving what was right in front of me. It's like a fog. I can barely remember it, he thought to himself. He looked around the village that had sprung up where the encampment was. For the first time he noticed that there were guns mounted on the wall that had Telkan and Shevashan manning them. Heavy guns, with protective shells, mounted on towers. He could even see anti-air missiles mounted. I can believe he planned and helped build this.

”Have we been attacked since I got sick?” Nemta asked.

Mother nodded slowly. ”Three times, but none since the guns were mounted on the walls. Friend Terry believes that the Evil Ones are out there but are unwilling to approach the walls now.”

”Those are big guns,” Nemta said. Quad-barrelled, what looked like projectile weapons. Terrans love their kinetic weaponry, he thought.

”Friend Terry says that you should always speak softly and load a big gun,” Mother said. She nodded to herself. ”It one will not listen to your soft voice asking for peace then they will listen to the voice of the big gun as to why they did not want war.”

Nemta felt a moment of confusion. A small part of him wanted to argue with her, dismiss what she had just said as primitive nonsense, but then remembered that he was a pilot for the Unified Military Forces, and just his existence, much less his presence, kept others from declaring war upon the Unified Civilized Species.

I was the gun that kept away war, Nemta thought to himself. Now the Terrans fight us.

That made him think, sitting out in the sun, wondering why the humans had gone to war with the civilized species. He realized that, deep down, he had wondered why a species that seemed more content to just wander around doing their own thing had declared war on the Council Species.

There were rumors of at least two massive war fleets launching into Terran Space. Yes, their forces were already here, but they were in the Neo-Sapient Systems holding off the Precursor machines, Nemta thought to himself.

But the Terrans can't beat the Precursors and require us to save... started going through his head.

Images went through his mind. Full visualization. Of Friend Terry sitting on the snake, casually eating the hydraulic piston after drinking the hydraulic fluid like it was juice. Of Friend Terry punching through duralloy to yank out a handful of wires and show them to him saying 'fried out' as he shook the blackened wiring harness.

Everything felt like it went sideways as he suddenly asked himself a basic question: If Friend Terry is just one Terran, and nothing the Precursors have on the planet can face him, what is an entire military force made up of Friend Terrys like?

The broodcarrier Phreni'ima caught him as he started to slump, holding him close and gently stroking the fur on his shoulders. ”Deep breath. Deep breath. In slow out slow,” she said.

”Are you all right, Friend Nemta?” Mother asked.

Nemta nodded. ”I'm feeling fatigued. Can you help me back home?”

”Of course,” Mother said. She stood up and walked with Nemta as Phreni'ima helped him back home.

Nemta laid for a long time in the bed, staring up.

I've been lied to. Drugged up. My entire life, he thought to himself. And I was faithful, not some extremist, not some agitator. I was loyal. There was never a reason to detain me, I had not a single black mark on my record.

He stared at the ceiling, holding the soft blanket close.

If they were willing to drug me, just to ensure I was complacent, and I was a space superiority fighter pilot, what else were they willing to do? He wondered before he went to sleep.

-----------------------

The next morning he was sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of food dispenser created salad that tasted and had the exact texture of his favorite salad, when there was a slow knock on his door. Three precise knocks, even spaced.

”Um, come in?” Nemta said.

The door-curtain folded back and Friend Terry moved into the room. He was dressed in workbeing coveralls with a tool belt on, with a hat of hard macroplast in one hand. He was even bigger than Nemta remembered, his skin dark brown and his head shaved as well as his face.

”I came to check on you, kid,” Friend Terry rumbled. ”Mother and Phreni'ima told me you were up to walking around yesterday. I'd have visited, but I was out tracking another group of survivors.”

Nemta nodded slowly. He never noticed how the Terran smelled before. Dangerous, almost primal. It stimulated a slight fear response in him, made him fee slightly anxious. ”How do you find them?”

Friend Terry pointed at the chair. ”May I sit?”

Nemta frowned slightly at the Terran's deference, then realized: Friend Terry was in Nemta's hut. Terrans put a high value on politeness, even in private settings.

”Yes, yes, sorry,” Nemta said, waving his hand. ”I was distracted for a moment.”