He shook his head. “No way of knowing. We sent most of them toward the major cities. We don’t have a Hivemind, Love, but we evolved to use the thing. My hunch is that we can still anticipate mass Khetar coordination, even between packs, by just anticipating what the Hivemind would likely have us do.”
“Which is?”
“Spread ourselves out, but not so thin that we can’t coordinate. So I sent 25 shards toward Ginsburg, 25 toward…”
He gave me the full breakdown. It made sense.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“Well, we were headed for Ginsburg, but we hit some debris on the way down. I have no idea where we’re going to land now.”
“100 shards. Over 10,000 in your pack, That means we have 100 Khetar or so on this shard?”
I was impressed she could do those maths without the Hivemind, and without even using her fingers, but I’d made a call in the chaos of the moment. A call which I now regretted.
“It’s just us,” I said. “I wanted to make us a smaller target. Technically I split us into 101 shards, if you count this one. I figured we’d be in Ginsburg, and once we landed we’d have enough of my pack around. Now we’re on our own. Still a small target though.”
She squeezed my wrist. “I’m safe with you, Tschenkar.”
“Yeah,” I said, “nothing is going to happen to you, Love.”
I laughed. “Except for the violent landing on unknown terrain, which is happening in about 45 seconds.”
“I can’t bullshit an engineer,” he said, “this shard is going to use a proper primitive rocket to slow itself down. It’s going to be a rough ride. Buckle down.”
“I’m completely buckled down and can’t even move my head a half degree, Tschenkar.”
“Good.”
And then the rockets fired. Tschenkar had strapped himself back in. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him grunting from time to time, and then a big, massive jolt shook everything. Even with the couch protecting me, I sensed just how violent the jolt was. As the engines died down, I heard Tschenkar groaning.
“Release!” I shouted.
“Captain’s authorization required.”
“Tschenkar! Let me out.”
I sensed we weren’t moving anymore. After having been in various forms of extremely violent and uncomfortable forms of motion, acceleration, and getting shot at over the past several hours, the feeling of just simply not moving was extremely noticeable and pronounced.
“Tschenkar!”
I couldn’t see him. I was still strapped down.
“Release! Please!”
“Captain’s authorization required.”
“Is the captain awake?” I shouted.
I couldn’t bring myself to even ask if he was “alive,” but it was an obvious implication to my question.
“No, Engineer.”
“Why is everyone calling me Engineer suddenly? Did Tschenkar order them to do it to make me feel good?”
“No,” Tschenkar said, his beautiful laugh filling the whole shard, “the Hivemind programmed them to talk like humans. Most of my crew based their language algos on Eden, so as to blend in all right and proper.”
“Unlike you.”