of her new spot. Pizi snuggled against her and soon slumber took her away.
The next morning, Levona snuck into one of the rooms on the floor below to use the tiny toilet and sink. This single room with toilet-shower bump would be hard to live in for the rest of her life … very hard, but she was determined.
She wondered if the rest of the crew had seen their living space.
As she walked back to their nest, she became aware of … others.
Voices didn’t quite “echo” through the ship, but both Levona and Pizi could tell when one person spoke to another, and definitely when the leaders gathered. She deduced about ten people currently lived on the ship. Levona left Pizi in their nest and walked along the wall until she found the conference room. She stood a minute before rationalizing that she must listen in because she needed to know everything now since she’d missed so much.
She learned that some of the mutant leaders — of all the ships — had prices on their heads from the mobs, the True Religionists, and the gov, which kept the top leadership tense. So far Lugh’s Spear housed only one pilot, Netra Sunaya Hoku, but two more should be coming.
The meeting broke up and Levona was beginning to explore one level below in detail when Pizi found her.
Peoples are outside with many big crates and putting foods and drinks here in My Ship! Levona changed her clothes to the more battered ones. She also arranged her hair differently and tinted a streak of purple in it — something that mutant-freaks rarely did because who wanted to call attention to themselves? — and slipped out of the ship while no one watched to become one of the workforce. She kept her psi-gifts locked down and shielded as she carried boxes from trucks to a staging area up a ramp and into a bay that held what appeared to be scientific instruments.
Psi-mutant guards watched the trucks, and one of the leaders, a tall, thin woman with dark skin, opened some of the boxes to check the food and taste it.
Her intimidating manner made the drivers and people delivering the food nervous, and Levona figured the woman intended that result, so the psi-folk wouldn’t get cheated. After all, the colonists wouldn’t be here on Earth to complain to the suppliers, would they?
So the delivery guys thought Levona worked for the ship, belonged to the barrio, and the psi-mutant freaks thought she’d come with the trucks.
Pizi took off to see the cats, and visit them in their new homes, and came back now and then to “supervise.” The ship folk noted her — how could they not with Pizi mentally shouting? Most of the psis could hear her telepathically — but didn’t associate her with Levona.
Levona also saw a group of psi mutant Geek Class techs march under Lugh’s Spear to fix the tear she and Pizi had used to sneak into the ship. Since they took hours she figured they were doing an excellent job. Her and Pizi’s escape route was gone.
Trucks kept coming and coming, and so did barrio guards, especially after one of the drivers had run at them with a knife, shouting, “Death to the mutants!” He’d been wrestled down, his truck stripped immediately of the provisions, those thoroughly checked, and he and his off-loaders escorted off the ghetto lands asap.
It made everyone nervous, and Levona figured they all believed the launch date just got moved up before the gov could whip up a mob against them, or the True Religionists got drunk enough to storm the gates, or the gov ordered the military in.
Levona and Pizi ate a late lunch off-site, strolling the neighborhoods for, she hoped, the last time.
After finishing the afternoon shift, Levona hid behind a panel in the storage area while the last truck left. Then she and Pizi snuck back to their nest. They ate dinner packets Levona had purchased and while Pizi explored inside some more, Levona kept her senses sharp. Sure enough, an hour and a half later, the leaders living on the ship convened another meeting.
This time Pizi came with Levona as she huddled behind the main conference room wall to eavesdrop. A jumble of people talked over each other before a sharp female tone stated, “Speaking of the cryonic tubes, they’ve been retro-fitted for this older ship, and we don’t know if they will work.”