Young Writers Society

Treego

The wonder on Gerry McCaw’s face was almost pure enough to excuse the early hour, in Treego Dart’s opinion. Maybe it was overexposure to their human bosses but Treego was firmly convinced that nothing productive could ever be achieved before ten o’clock in the morning. Maybe that was why Chip had chosen to open with the video – a reminder that sometimes, if you’re lucky, it actually is worth it to put in some effort.

It really was heartening to watch the video. It had been sent yesterday from Aeralis, eight days since they’d warily taken off into the relatively calm gravity field of the planet. Seemingly, Margo Whipple had been right about the drills; ever since the Archess had ordered the cessation of their operation, the gravity surges had also stopped happening in her province. Many other province leaders had since followed suit. What this meant for the future of Aeralin architecture, Treego didn’t know, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it. He smiled at McCaw, who was grinning straight at him, then sat back and watched the video.

It was of the Archess’ two children, Oran and Minia, playing in the palace gardens. They were chasing each other round in circles, but not as wolf pups did back on Earth. Their circles were in the air, around all kind of axes. Their sleek bottom halves let them whiz through the air as they whooshed past the camera lens. They giggled almost maniacally as they played and their joy really was slicing through Treego’s drowsiness. The images switched to similar activities on the parts of the children, but this time they were racing each other round a long, wide, positively cavernous hall. It had paintings lining the walls and elegant black chandeliers hanging from a monstrously high ceiling. McCaw’s squawk of delight on seeing the children flying so high that they skiffed the cornices gave Treego a sharp, warm feeling in his chest.

Then the video finished, the screen went black, and Chip cleared his throat to start the meeting. Treego sighed. What chaos were they going to have to fix today?

“I want to talk about Lezeki,” said Chip. His eyes were narrowed and his brow was low.

Treego was sitting directly across the circular table from Dr. Margo Whipple. Margo’s eyes had gone wide at this, and Treego could almost hear her heart thudding from six feet away.

“Don’t worry.” Chip smiled. “I’m not about to go chasing after him. The fear – the panic – I saw in you, Margo, when Kernik convinced me to look up at the communication screen … It was the same panic I felt when I saw Lezeki. Trust me, I’m not in the business of making my crew feel like space has developed gravity and they’re going to plummet to their deaths at the bottom of it.”

Margo smiled and nodded at Kernik, who was standing in the middle of the desk space just to Treego’s right. He’d been promoted after the previous week, where he’d essentially stopped Chip from setting out on a hopeless quest for a wasp none of them had a clue of the location of. Few people had argued with his reward.

“But Ochon’s,” Chip went on, “Er, I mean Boinet’s funeral kind of … distracted us … We need to discuss this before Earth sends us off to correct the gravity of any more ailing planets.”

As Chip had spoken Ochon’s first name, he had glanced at Kernik, who had nodded at the correction and was now continuing to nod as Chip set out his plans to launch an enquiry.

“We need at least these four questions answered,” Chip said. He held up a long, furry finger and continued, “One. Where the hell Lezeki is. Two –” he added his middle finger – “Where Mar – my sister is. Three, how those nanobots managed to infiltrate our defences. And four – how they then managed to disrupt our systems so spectacularly … Any thoughts?”

The entire room was silent. For the meeting, Chip had assembled Treego, Gerry McCaw, Margo Whipple, the newly promoted Executive Comms Officer Kernik Ochon and Alexandra Flicktail, one of the most senior pilots on board the JCST Canopy. Not one of them made another sound for what Treego guessed to be around ten to fifteen seconds. The room was mostly white-walled but there were a few pictures of famous Earthan landmarks dotted around about. Plenty to “distract” you while you resolutely avoided your captain’s eye.

Chip sighed, definitely more loudly than he needed to. “Look, come on, it’s not going to be easy so we might as well get it over with. Question one. Do we know where Lezeki is? … Margo?”

“No, I don’t, Chip.” Margo frowned. “Why are you asking me?”

Chip didn’t reply. Instead he turned to Alexandra Flicktail and said, “Alex?”

“No idea, sir,” Alex shrugged.

“Gerry?”

“Nope?”

“Kernik?”

“No, sir.”

“Treego?”

“I don’t know either, Chip.” Treego let one side of his mouth tug upward as he shrugged. Quickfire questioning of everyone in the room. Captain Chip Puccoon was well and truly back. This was how he made everyone feel involved.

Chip sat back and smiled at them all. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, as you all know, I – and Gerry, too – was somewhat incapacitated at the moment of the Great Wasp’s departure. Who can tell me at what point that occurred?”

Flicktail raised her hand. She squirmed a little when all eyes turned to her but then she took a deep breath and said, “When Ochon … Boinet? Boinet foiled Lezeki’s plans he grumbled something and terminated his contact with the ship. I would assume this was when he cleared off.”

Chip nodded. “Sounds logical. Alright, you would expect if anyone knew anything about my sister it would be me and I don’t so … no one? No? Okay, question three – how did the nanobots get on the ship?”

Silence again.

“It’s alright,” Chip said, “I know what you must all be thinking. And I think we need to consider it. There was no alarm, no record of any tampering with the teleportation dampeners, no unauthorised crafts boarding us.”

“Somebody let them in,” said Kernik. Kernik always had a deeper voice than you’d expect for his size but here he spoke with a pitch lower than you would expect from a lion, or a very, very angry wolf.

“Or aided them in some other way, yes.” Chip nodded.

Treego spotted Margo’s eyes flicking towards the desk on which Kernik stood but she didn’t quite make eye contact with the spider. Treego wondered if she suspected Kernik, or the Bug Division more broadly. After all, they had most reason to hate the humans’ guts, having been landed with all the most menial jobs aboard the ship.

Chip didn’t seem to have noticed because he was still talking. “Now, we all know Lezeki’s main aim the first time around was to bring glory to bug-kind.”

Treego remembered that very well indeed. It had been about a year after the ‘Awakening’, when they’d all developed speech, reasoning, conscious thought etc. Lezeki had been an admin assistant on their ship and his mutiny of Bug Division members had caused havoc. It still seemed ridiculous that the humans had sent him back, but then you remembered that the humans wanted nothing to do with any of them, and it made more sense.

It was therefore unsurprising that the most anthro-hostile officers, those most likely to be sympathetic to Lezeki’s cause – the Bug Division – were coming under suspicion from the rest of the crew.

“So what we need to figure out is who would have the most to gain from the demise of the humans.” Chip stared round each one of them in turn. Treego tensed when his gaze fell on Kernik, but Chip lingered on him no longer than on anybody else.

Kernik, however, seemed to feel the tension anyway. “Look, I know you’re all looking at me, or at least trying very hard not to, but if you won’t accept me telling you the Bug Division had nothing to do with it, at least consider the method. Why would a BD member tamper with something so fiddly we inevitably would be the ones recruited to fix it?”

Almost immediately, Margo said, “Can’t argue with that.”

She must have spoken either too loudly or too quickly, because everyone, including Kernik turned to stare at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t think it was them. And I really don’t think we should start letting people think it was.”

Chip nodded. “I agree. Whatever department the, er, traitor … belonged to, there’s no reason to suspect the entire rest of that department of Lezeki sympathy.”

Nobody dissented. Treego nearly breathed a sigh of relief.

“I honestly don’t think we’re going to find the culprit,” Chip said, “Unless somebody comes forward with new information, and it’s already been almost a fortnight so I doubt that, then we’re going to have to treat the problem itself. And that brings me to question four.”

He stared straight at Treego. Treego gulped.

“Officer Dart,” he announced, with a grin, “When the Conditions Management department removed the old heating system, we were all still deep in the grieving period and I, in my wallowing self-pity, ordered them to store it in the hold, so that I would not forget Boiret’s loyalty. I need you to go through the remains and see if you can find the remains of a frazzled fly-bot thing, or any evidence of their sabotage. We cannot have this happen again. I need you to understand how the attack worked, so that we can figure out how to defend ourselves from it.”

Treego gulped again.