It’s a very controlled explosion that he’s set off; only a small part of the ceiling falling down in pieces to its floor. It’s still enough dust that several people on the circle’s edge cough. Aleta glances around to confirm the children are all safely further back.
Though the Riggistian next to her sounds very young as they ask, “It is safe to go up there?”
Aleta answers honestly: “No, but we can’t survive down here.” Even so, she smiles as the light from the planet’s suns floods her; the small lamps they had with them can’t compare. It feels like a long draught when she’s been dying of thirst.
The next part’s easy, even when she’s a little weak from hunger, with so much light. She gathers it to herself almost on instinct, filling her body back up before she starts to make the cart, the floor of it first, followed by waist-high walls on three sides. Many of the refugees who didn’t know about her light-manipulating ability stare in disbelief. “It’s all right,” Martinex tells them from above. “It’ll be quite solid.”
The first Riggistaji to step onto the cart bend down to feel the floor; Aleta sees some startled expressions as they encounter resistance. But she can’t pay much attention; she has to concentrate on keeping the light doing what she wants. When about half the refugees have filled the cart, she told them she was going to lift it before she did so, but so many of them still jumped they were lucky no one fell out.
Lifting the other half of the refugees out, as well as herself, Aleta’s definitely feeling the strain, but being now directly in light helps. So does the sight of Stakar standing next to Martinex.
“Looks like you managed to keep most of them alive,” he comments, impressed, as she brings the cart to the rocks they’re standing on with the first half of the Riggsitaji, and gently lets it disperse around them. “And there’s some good news: they’ve forcibly stopped the genocide down in the south. Seems the Polu down there didn’t want to kill their Riggistian neighbors. We can fly these people to safety no problem.”
He sounds relieved, too. He didn’t really object to them intervening here once things got bad enough, but he’s reminded them more than once this do-gooding isn’t supposed to be their scene.
Now’s probably not the time for Aleta and Martinex to tell him about the conversation they had down there. About how this may not be the only planet they land on where a majority species will react to what happened by turning on a minority species, or other terrible things will be happening. And losing Charlie-27 and Krugarr, and seeing and hearing about so much death, including other Ravagers and possibly also Quill and his crew, well, it’s changed what the two of them, at least, want to do with themselves and their lives, at least for a little while. There’ll be time enough for stealing shit and such later, when the universe’s people have recovered and started to regrow.
For now, Martinex just chimes in, “Mainframe’s already working on routes that’ll minimize how much we’re seen. Ship’s in good shape; we can go as soon as everyone’s on board and we choose one.”