The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)

by John Scalzi

  “The way I see it is if anyone has a problem they can come here and try to collect,” Junn said. “But they better hurry.”

  “What about bringing them back with us?” Marce said, to Captain Laure, after his visit with Junn.

  “The Dalasýslans?” Laure said.

  “Of course.”

  “Where will we put them, Lord Marce?”

  “We can squeeze in,” Marce said.

  “We really can’t,” Laure said. “This ship crews with fifty, and includes a dozen marines and your science crew on top of that. You’ll have noticed that your berth is roughly the size of a broom closet. Mine, I regret to say, is not much larger. Every square centimeter that’s not allocated for occupancy is already claimed for something else. How many Dalasýslans are there?”

  “Almost two hundred.”

  “Again I ask: Where will we put them? We literally have no space for them on this ship.”

  “We have a cargo hold.”

  “Yes,” Laure said. “That will work quite well as long as we don’t ever expect them to sit. Which brings up another salient point, Lord Marce. The Dalasýslans have never been exposed to full gravity. They’re used to, what, a third of a g?”

  “That’s what their living quarters pull, yes.”

  “So we’d be exposing them to three times the weight on their bodies that they’re used to.”

  “We can draw down our own push fields.”

  “That works fine until they get to the Interdependency. I don’t know of a habitat that functions at a third of a g on a constant basis. Living on Hub for them would be like you or me living on a gas giant. And finally, even if I did stuff them into the cargo hold and drive home on a third of a g push field, how do you propose we keep them sequestered, to keep them from catching a disease from us they have no defenses for, or vice versa? The cargo hold ventilation system is tied in to the rest of the ship. The only time we close it off is when we’re purging the air out of the hold for sterilization. We’d leave with two hundred refugees but arrive with not so many, I suspect, Lord Marce.”

  “They’ll die if they stay here,” Marce said.

  “No,” Laure said. “They’ll die if they stay here with that broken ship of theirs. Maybe we can help with that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Laure smiled. “Sensing that I might be having this conversation with you at some point, Lord Marce, and anticipating your objections, you may be interested to know that I have already sent a courier drone to Admiral Emblad, with a confidential message outlining the problems the Dalasýslans are facing. The Imperial Navy has several ships that have been recently decommissioned, including at least one fiver. There’s nothing wrong with them except that they are old. But none as old as what Captain Chuch and his crew are sailing in. It’s possible the navy may be interested in saving the expenditure of tearing that fiver down for scrap. Especially if you, sir, drop a similar hint to your good friend the emperox.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Marce said, then did some math in his head. “The timing will be tight for anyone hoping to get back.”

  “Captains don’t like to talk about this, but it’s possible for a ship to be navigated to and from a Flow shoal entirely by computer, even more so if there is no crew to manage.”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t tell anyone I told you that. I’ll have you tossed out an airlock. Sir.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. And since you are being so accommodating to me at the moment, Lord Marce, let me say it’s good you went looking for me, because it saves me the trouble of having to look for you. I have news for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “That ship of yours. We think we found it. Way the hell away from here.”

  * * *

  “Another ship, another airlock,” PFC Gamis said, and cranked open the airlock to Marce’s mystery ship with his spreader. Marce, Gennety Hanton and Sergeant Sherrill floated in, and Gamis uncranked the airlock’s outer door closed behind them. He opened the inner door to the ship and was surprised, as was everyone else, to hear and feel the air rushing in.

  “It’s still got an atmosphere,” Sherrill said.

  “Want to take off your helmet, Sarge?” Gamis asked.

  “I wouldn’t suggest it,” Hanton said. “Not unless you like breathing air that’s two hundred and seventy degrees below zero.”

  “Come on,” Marce said, and led the team away from the airlock, in the exhausting magnetized gait.

  “This is odd,” Sherrill said as they walked the length of the ship. “All the bulkheads are open. Nothing is secured.”

  “And no one here,” Gamis said. “Not a single frozen corpse.”

  “Captain Chuch said the crew of this ship joined the survivors of Dalasýsla,” Marce said. “This ship didn’t meet a violent end. It probably just got parked.”

  “A hell of a long way from Dalasýsla,” Hanton said. The ship had been parked in the trailing orbital Lagrange point of Dalvik, Dalasýsla Prime’s largest moon. The Bransid’s crew spotted the ship only several hours after Dalvik emerged from the far side of its planet. Dalasýsla itself orbited much farther out than Dalvik, to avoid the large moon’s gravity and also Dalasýsla Prime’s violent magnetic field. The shuttle, flying flat-out, took six hours to get there. The team would have only a few hours before this ship winged itself back behind Dalasýsla Prime.

  “Maybe that was the point,” Marce said.

  “I think they hid the bridge as well they hid the ship,” Gamis complained. “This would be easier if we had a deck plan.”

  “Found it,” Sherrill said, ahead of them. Gamis grumbled at this.

  The bridge was small, almost intimate, and dark, with only one glowing light, positioned at what looked like the navigator’s workstation.

  “There’s a light on,” Hanton said, pointing. “This ship still has power. After all this time.”

  “Let’s find the heater,” Gamis said.

  Marce walked over to the workstation and peered in close at the small light, which was embedded in the workstation itself.

  The light flashed in Marce’s eye. He sputtered and took a step back.

  The lights on the bridge flickered on.

  “What the hell?” Sherrill said, looking around.

  “What did you do?” Hanton said to Marce.

  “I looked at a light,” Marce said.

  “Well, don’t do that anymore.”

  “I think it’s a little late for that.”

  From away in the ship, thrumming began. The sound of a ship waking itself up. Marce felt a pressing on his shoulders. A push field, or something very much like it, had turned on and had begun to simulate something like a full g.

  “Okay, I’m very officially not liking this now,” Gamis said, and turned to exit the deck.

  There was someone standing in the doorway.

  Gamis yelled in alarm and raised his weapon. Sherrill did the same.

  The person in the doorway held up a hand, as if to say, Don’t do that, please.

  “Wait,” Marce said. Gamis and Sherrill both held their ground and didn’t back up, but stayed where they were. Marce walked up to the person in the doorway, who watched him approach, his hand still up.

  Marce stood in front of the person and poked at his hand. His finger went through the hand like he wasn’t there.

  Because in reality, he wasn’t there.

  “Gamis, if you’d shot him, you just would have put holes in the wall,” Marce said.

  “That’s a projection?” Gamis said.

  “Either that or a ghost.”

  “That’s great,” Sherrill said. “Of who?”

  Marce looked back at the image of the person in the doorway. “That’s a really good question.”

  “Your accent and grammar are strange to me, but I think I can follow it now,” the apparition said. Its accent was as strange to Marce as his was to the app
arition, but perfectly understandable. “You speak like the Dalasýslans, but not quite the same as they do.”

  “I’m speaking Standard,” Marce said.

  “Standard. Yes,” the apparition said, and tilted its head slightly. “Are you from the Interdependency? Aside from the Dalasýslans, I’ve never met anyone from there. I would be delighted to change that.”

  “I am from the Interdependency,” Marce said. “We all are.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “I’m Lord Marce Claremont, of End.”

  “An actual lord,” the apparition said. “How unexpected. And the duo still aiming their weapons at me, although it will do them no good at all?”

  “Sergeant Sherrill and Private First Class Gamis,” Marce said, and motioned to them to lower their weapons. Both of them complied, reluctantly. “And over there is Gennety Hanton, computer expert.”

  “I thought I was, anyway,” Hanton said. “Looking at you, I’m maybe changing my mind.”

  “You think I’m a computer projection and not a ghost, Mr. Hanton?”

  “Dr. Hanton.”

  “Dr. Hanton. My apologies.”

  “And aren’t you?”

  “It’s accurate to say I’m a little of both,” said the apparition.

  “Who and what are you, then?” Marce asked.

  “My name is Tomas. Tomas Reynauld Chenevert. Or was, when I died, which now I find was more than three hundred years ago. Good lord. I was the owner of the Auvergne, the ship you are now standing on. And now you could say I am the Auvergne. How I became a ship after I had been a human is a long story which is perhaps best saved for another time. But I still prefer to be called Tomas, if it’s all the same to you. Or Monsieur Chenevert, if you prefer.”

  “Hello, Monsieur Chenevert,” Marce said.

  “Hello, Lord Marce. Or is it Lord Claremont?”

  “Lord Marce. The Count Claremont is my father.”

  “A count. Indeed.”

  “This is very weird,” Hanton said.

  “It is indeed,” Chenevert said, to Marce. “I put myself to sleep with the full expectation that I would not ever fully wake up. Except for the most minimal of maintenance, the ship has been dormant for three centuries. But now I find myself awake, and with guests. Can you please tell me why you are here?”

  “I was curious about this ship,” Marce said.

  “What about it made you curious?”

  “To begin, where it was from.”

  “That’s answered simply enough. It’s from Ponthieu.”

  “Where is that? Is that on Earth?”

  Chenevert smiled at this. “Oh, no, Lord Marce. Nothing’s really from Earth anymore, is it?”

  Before Marce could respond to that there was a ping in his ear: a message from Captain Laure, recorded because the Bransid was several light-seconds away.

  “We have a problem,” it said. “Another ship has come through the Flow shoal. It’s located us and is heading our way. Our attempts to hail it have been unsuccessful. We’re assuming it is hostile.”

  “Are you hearing this?” Gamis said. The message had been sent to the entire team. Sherrill waved him to silence.

  “Do not return to the Bransid,” Laure continued. “If the ship is hostile, all your shuttle will be is an easy target. We are powering up and heading away from the Dalasýslan ship to draw the other ship away. Dr. Seve and Lyton are still with the Dalasýslans. If necessary and possible the Bransid will make a break for the Flow shoal back to Hub. If that happens head to the Dalasýslan ship and take refuge there. We will arrange for rescue. Do not respond. Radio silence until further notice. Good luck.” The message ended.

  “Can the Bransid defend itself?” Marce asked Sherrill.

  “Back in the day the Bransid was a naval interceptor,” Sherrill said. “But these days it pulls courier duty. It’s not armed for battle. It has defensive weaponry. That’s it.”

  “So if that other ship is hostile, the Bransid is a soft target,” Hanton said.

  “Captain Laure will put up a fight,” Sherrill said.

  “That’s not what I asked, though.”

  “Your ship is under attack?” Chenevert asked Marce, watching the conversation.

  “Not yet,” Marce said. “But maybe soon.”

  “Not from the Dalasýslans.”

  “No.” It occurred to Marce that Chenevert, asleep for three hundred years, might not be caught up on current events.

  “Then from whom?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “I regret to say that I’m not in a position to offer much help,” Chenevert said. “I’m using stored battery power for gravity and life support—the ship will be warm enough for you soon—but reactivating the engines will take several hours.”

  “Anything we can do to help?”

  “Thank you, no. This ship’s engineering section is entirely automated and was even before I became the ship. You’d just be in the way.”

  “This ship is going to go behind Dalasýsla Prime soon,” Hanton said. “We’ll be cut off from the Bransid no matter what.”

  “If anything happens to the Bransid, we’re screwed,” Gamis said.

  “You’re welcome to stay here,” Chenevert said to him.

  “That’s great,” Gamis replied, sarcastically. “Got any sandwiches?”

  “Quiet, Private,” Sherrill said. Gamis shut up. Sherrill looked over to Marce. “He’s not wrong, though.”

  Marce nodded. “What supplies do we have on the shuttle?”

  “Enough protein bars for about five days for each of us. Probably about three days of water each.”

  “I have water,” Chenevert said.

  “No food, though,” Marce said.

  “Sorry, no. Even if I did, after three hundred years you wouldn’t want it.”

  “So all the water we need but still only five days of food,” Sherrill said.

  “The Dalasýslans would feed us,” Marce said.

  “They can barely feed themselves, sir. Not to mention we can’t get out of our suits without risking infecting them.”

  “What’s happened to the Dalasýslans?” Chenevert asked.

  Marce considered what to tell Chenevert about the Dalasýslans and how to say it. “It’s complicated,” he finally settled on. “But the last three hundred years have not been great for them.”

  “Oh,” Chenevert said. “Oh, dear.”

  “Are you sure the engines will come back online?” Marce asked.

  “They should,” Chenevert said. “I’ve been asleep, but the Auvergne has done regular checkups on its systems and processes. I can tell you every system on the ship is functional.”

  “What about weapons?” Sherrill asked.

  “This is not a warship,” Chenevert said. “No missiles or physical weaponry, and after three centuries those would be of questionable utility anyway. But as it happens, before I left Ponthieu I had cause to install an array of beam weapons.”

  “What was the cause?” Gamis asked.

  “Let’s just say that I anticipated that when I needed to leave Ponthieu, it would be suddenly, and that I might be chased. And that those chasing me might prefer that if I couldn’t be caught, that I should be rendered into very small pieces.”

  “What are you, a criminal?”

  “That would depend on who you ask, Private Gamis,” Chenevert said. “Although anyone you might ask that of is now dead.”

  “The beam weapons,” Sherrill asked. “Do they work?”

  “They should once the engines are spun up. They are not routed through the engines, of course. But they draw power from them.”

  “You’re thinking we should go after the other ship,” Marce said to Sherrill.

  “I would if it were my ship,” Sherrill said. “But it’s not my ship.”

  Everyone turned to Chenevert.

  “Well, this is all very sudden,” Chenevert said. “I sleep for three hundred years, wake up to four strangers on my shi
p and not fifteen minutes later am asked to ride into battle for them. That’s a very different situation than just offering temporary hospitality.”

  “Is that a no?” Sherrill asked.

  “It’s an ‘I’m giving it thought.’” Chenevert turned to Marce. “We have another six hours at least before the engines are spun up, Lord Marce. I suggest we spend it with you getting me up to speed on current events.”

  “That’s a lot,” Marce said.

  Chenevert nodded. “Just the last three hundred years will do.”

  Chapter

  17

  Nadashe had not seen her mother in this much of a state for years. Part of that was Kiva Lagos having turned Tinda Louentintu into a punching bag, although that was less about the well-being of poor Louentintu than it was about Lagos sending the message for the countess to get the fuck off her planet. The countess did get the fuck off the planet and returned to the Blame in a fury.

  But that was only a small part. The larger part was that Jasin and Deran Wu were coming for a clandestine visit to the Blame, to meet Nadashe and to detail to the countess all their plotting in this exciting nascent conspiracy they had going. Nadashe’s brain put sarcastic emphasis on the word “exciting” here, because to date, it had been anything but that to her. In point of fact her only role in the current conspiracy to overthrow Grayland II was to be married off.

  This rankled Nadashe. She had no problem with being married off when she was a full participant in a scheme; that’s how it had worked with Rennered Wu, the crown prince. Nadashe had gone into that one with eyes open and with full consent and active participation. She had wooed Rennered by letting him think he was the one who had been doing the wooing, charmed him and amused him and fucked him and complemented his skills all well enough that Rennered would think the match was something more than a practical political union.

  It would have meant that Nadashe had to wear a mask for the rest of her life (well, the rest of Rennered’s life, at least)—one that showed what could be thought of as love for the man. Nadashe had been willing to do that, in return for everything she and the House of Nohamapetan would have gotten out of it. And anyway she hadn’t hated Rennered. He was shallow and had a facile intelligence at best—this was why Amit had liked him so well, since they were cut from the same thin cloth—and he was led by his dick enough that Nadashe had known that it was a thing she would be required to manage, since she wouldn’t be able to curtail it entirely. But he was not a horrible person, or cruel. He was appropriately respectful and affectionate and knew the correct times and place for each, and he was tractable. Nadashe could have easily worked with that.