Page 22 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)
Zeke
“W ould you like to go for a walk this morning?” Dax asked me, as I dithered over my second cup of coffee. We hadn’t gone yesterday, so I knew I was going to have a hard time saying no.
But on the other hand, I was still planning on visiting Henderson, and if we didn’t go for a walk, I could use that as motivation to get up and head to the base, guilting myself into it on the basis that I had to do some sort of excursion today.
But then again, if we did go for a walk, then I could take more time to brace myself not only for the train ride out to the base, but for the potentially overwhelming emotions of being back in a place that had torn my life apart so thoroughly.
That was a tricky one. The Hon base itself had done nothing to contribute to my injuries or trauma. That had been a decision from Alliance HQ, based in the Drazig system. Henderson had bent over backwards to get a lot of the paperwork squared away, after I got back from Ixralia, and had even come to visit me personally a couple of times. I knew a handful of the soldiers still working there, and they’d always been supportive, a few of them being very vocal about how badly the Alliance had screwed up with the whole Ixralia issue.
But even so, being around so many uniforms and ships was bound to shove some very unpleasant memories into my face.
Why was I even going back there?
“Yeah, let’s take a walk,” I said to Dax, breaking into the silence that had dragged on too long, at the same time as forcing my leg to stop bouncing up and down. “Hopefully it’ll help me clear my head a bit.”
He fetched shoes and socks for me and himself, checked that he’d turned the stove off after cooking breakfast, and closed the kitchen window. Fucking hell, he was a godsend. So many small tasks that for the average person would have been barely noticeable, but for me were an insurmountable challenge.
We headed out the front door, with Dax making sure it was locked behind us, and strolled up the road, a slow meander in the direction of the park. “Did you sleep okay?” Dax asked, a quiet, probing question that was designed to make sure I was all right today, without being too intrusive. After my outburst a couple of days ago, he was getting remarkably good at that. And I liked to think I was getting better at keeping my temper when he did small things that annoyed me.
“Not really,” I admitted, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I woke up at about one in the morning and stayed awake for over an hour. No particular reason. No nightmares, thankfully. I just… I was thinking about stuff.” A low rumbling sound filled the air, and I paused while I waited for it to fade away. Shuttles sometimes took a high flight path over the city to get to the military base, so a bit of noise every now and then wasn’t unusual.
But rather than fading out, the rumble got louder… and that’s when it occurred to me that it wasn’t the first time that day that I’d heard it. At least twice over breakfast… and was I imagining that I remembered that same rumble while I’d been lying awake in the night? What was going on? Some sort of military exercise? They usually gave us notice about those, so that people could keep their pets inside to prevent them getting scared and running off.
The sound got louder still, and I felt Dax’s hand on my shoulder. No doubt he was worrying about me having a panic attack, but I was too curious to be feeling overly anxious. This was my home – both my home planet and my home neighbourhood – and it felt too comfortable and familiar for there to be any real threat here.
A moment later, a shuttle came gliding into sight, appearing over the tops of the trees that lined the bushland surrounding the park. It was immediately clear that this wasn’t an Alliance vessel. It was a light blue colour, instead of dark green, and the wrong shape – wider and flatter than any of our ships. And right across the underside, in bright red, was an insignia of some sort.
I lifted my comm, scanning the symbol. It beeped a moment later, then a holographic page popped up, detailing what the symbol meant.
“They’re Halagals,” I told Dax, as the shuttle continued on, in the direction of the park we were heading for. I was confused about their presence, but not overly concerned. The Halagals had a peace treaty with the Alliance, and while they weren’t regular visitors to Rendol 4, there were small colonies of them on a couple of other Alliance planets.
“What are they doing here?” Dax asked. “I didn’t see anything in the news channels about visitors to Hon.”
As we watched, the shuttle dipped down, disappearing behind the trees as it went in to land. And judging by how close it was, it was landing in the park. What the hell? Any interplanetary visitors should have been docking either at the military base, or at the docking station to the west of the city.
Thinking fast, I pulled up the contact list in my comm, intending to make a call to someone who would firstly know what was going on, and secondly would answer my call. But before I could, an irate woman came bursting out of one of the nearby houses, waving a dishrag and cursing up a storm. “That was another one, wasn’t it! I heard it! Hey, you there! Did you see that?” she screeched, her ire clearly directed at the shuttle, rather than at us. “More of them! Bloody vermin! They’ve been doing that all morning. They’ve taken over the park. Have you been down there? Have you seen it? Whole hordes of them! They’ve set up tents everywhere, and before you know it, they’ll be shitting in the lake and trampling all the grass. No consideration for the local residents. I don’t know who authorised this, but I’m going to be making an official complaint!”
“I hadn’t heard anything about it,” I said cautiously. I didn’t want to end up in an argument with the woman, and she clearly had some strong opinions about the situation. “They’ve taken over the park, you said? Any idea why?”
“They’re claiming they’re homeless,” she scoffed. “They say it’s not their fault, always someone else to blame, but that doesn’t stop them taking what belongs to other people. If they’re actually refugees, the Parliament should be building camps for them out in the desert, where they won’t disturb anyone else.”
“I might just go take a look,” I said, heading quickly towards the park. “Thanks for your help,” I called back to the woman, hoping she went back inside, instead of starting any real trouble. “Refugees?” I muttered to Dax. “The Halagals? Why? And more to the point, why here, of all places? God, this is weird.”
We reached the top of the hill only a couple of minutes later, and the park came into view, spread out below us. And sure enough, there were a multitude of pale blue tents, set up in haphazard clumps all around the place. The Halagals themselves were squat, blue people, with stubby legs and flat heads. They had large, protruding noses and mouths that seemed too wide for their faces, by human standards, at least.
The shuttle we’d seen had landed on the playing field and was currently spewing another few dozen people out onto the grass. The newcomers didn’t seem to know what to do next, loitering in groups, staring about themselves, small bundles of belongings clutched in their arms or strapped to their backs. I could see at least three adults who were holding young children.
Remembering my previous intention to try and find out more information, I activated my comm and dialled Aiden.
“What’s happening?” he asked, as he answered the call, and I noted that he’d set the channel to voice only. Was it my imagination, or did he sound more stressed than usual?
“Hi Aiden,” I said, making an effort to be polite. “Bit of an odd morning, all things considered. Some Halagals are currently setting up camp in our local park. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Aiden was silent for a moment. “That’s classified information,” he said, sounding reluctant about it. “I can’t tell you anything.”
“One of the locals said they were refugees,” I went on, knowing full well the level of information he would or wouldn’t be able to provide from my own military training. And that allowed me to know exactly what sort of questions I should be asking. “So we wouldn’t happen to be getting involved in a war, would we?”
“I don’t know anything about any kind of threat to Rendol 4,” Aiden replied carefully. Confirmation through denial, they’d called it in our training courses; letting someone know what you did know by selectively denying certain details. So apparently, these people were indeed refugees, but not from any conflict that directly involved us.
“The Rendol Parliament is very good at organising things,” I said, as a bland sort of statement. “So they should be able to organise some suitable camps to look after these people. Any idea why they’re taking over our local park instead?”
“God damn it,” Aiden muttered, and a thumping noise in the background suggested he was hastily moving something around on his end. “How many are there?”
So he hadn’t known they were here.
“A couple of hundred, from the looks of it. With more arriving by the hour.”
He muttered a few choice curse words. “Can I ask a favour?” he said, once he’d calmed down a fraction. “Can you give Henderson a call? Tell him what you know? If he can get you clearance, he’ll fill you in on the details. I really can’t say anything else right now.”
“Yeah, no problem,” I told him. “I’m on it. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I’ll do my best,” he said, not sounding terribly confident about it, then ended the call.
I immediately pulled up Henderson’s contact instead. The comm played its standard ‘connection pending’ sound, while I waited for Henderson to take the call. And waited. And waited.
“Recipient unavailable,” the comm said, in an electronic voice. “Would you like to leave a message?”
“No,” I said, and the device helpfully shut itself off. I stared down at the park again. The latest cluster of refugees had finished disembarking and the shuttle closed its ramp and began to lift into the air again. Given the situation down there, and Aiden’s response to it all, I could infer that this particular crisis had developed suddenly and rapidly. What I’d said about the Rendol Parliament was true; they were generally both organised and capable at responding to any given emergency. So if we were getting disorganised masses arriving unannounced, something serious was going on. And furthermore, it was a large scale something, if it was spilling out into civilian parks on a backwater planet like Rendol 4.
I turned to Dax, who was watching the scene below us with both fascination and concern. “Looks like we’ll be taking that trip out to the base after all,” I told him. “Come on. Let’s go see if the world needs saving.”