“Wow is right,” Clue said in a dry tone as Bendis waved back dazedly.
“He might be able to help with your power stations,” Janya suggested, “although he’s strictly a theoretical physicist,” she smiled faintly. “Aren’t you, Contro?”
“Theoretically!”
“Right,” Bendis said, “well, we had a group of transpersion boffins. All Molren, though,” he added. “Never actually seen a human one,” he shook his head as if to clear it of a mildly-distracting flight of fancy. “Doesn’t really matter,” he went on with a lopsided smile, “since the problem with our reactors is that they’re all gone. Unless you can build one from scratch, out of ice and warmium and broken pieces of–”
“I could give it a try–”
“Contro,” Janus spoke up quietly, “not the time.”
“Aw,” Contro said, although in his defence the usual blank optimism of his voice was muted. “It’s alright. I guess I wouldn’t be likely to have much luck making anything out of ice. But anything I can do,” he clipped off a cheerfully sloppy salute, “happy to help!”
“Actually, truth be told what we need most right now is either more robots like the Fergunakil giela, or big fellows like this,” Lou gestured at the two ables, who straightened slightly. The simple shift in stance made the clones seem to swell and ascend almost to Decay’s height. “Ables – nothing complex, because it gets in the way of their muscle coordination, but just some blokes to help with the rescue and repair operations. Most of them are going on down in digs, or in other collapsed areas. The ability to bench your own body weight is preferable to a degree in transpersion physics right now.”
“We might just be able to help you with that,” Clue murmured, and flicked an inventory item across to Lou’s pad.
His eyes widened as he loaded and read it. “What the…”
“Crew dramatically reduced, plant configuration systems damaged,” Z-Lin explained concisely. “We needed a half-dozen ables to fulfil the function of one. So long story short we have a big, strong, basically expertise-free crew.”
“Holy wow.”
“Yeah,” Z-Lin chuckled. “I’ll start assembling and marching them out for you, and your folks can delegate them to whatever you need. We also have nineteen strapping Bonshoon settlers, and a couple of their kids are about the size of an able,” she cocked her head, scrolling the items on her pad. “If your reactors are gone, how are you keeping the lights on?”
“Since The Warm’s heat exchange generators started to die and the warmium started dropping back towards ambient deep space temperatures,” Lou said, “we’ve been running mostly off some solar batteries, Fergunak turbines that are in danger of freezing up any moment … crap like that.”
“Items 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 on the list,” Decay said politely, looking up from his own device.
“Yeah, knew they were there somewhere,” Bendis muttered.
“We’ll see what we can do to get you some more power,” Z-Lin said, making a note and turning to Contro, who was now bouncing his wristwatch playfully from hand to hand. He grabbed it out of the air and gave her a guileless yet guilty smile. “Can you feed the reactor’s output out into the spar, and charge up any batteries or other stuff they might want to hook up?”
“Sure!” Contro said happily. “I think so!”
“We’ve got a couple of power station grunts who aren’t doing us much good,” Lou said, “they might be able to help. Ables, of course, but–”
“Hold on, Lou,” Decay said quietly. “These counts … the nine hundred survivors found so far includes about a hundred humans, an estimated hundred and fifty Fergunak, and the rest are Molranoids?”
“That’s about right,” Bendis said. “A hundred and ten humans, I think it was last time I checked for sure. Molranoids are generally tougher, see, so we’ve found more survivors in rough spots and we’ve had more recoveries from serious injuries than deaths from them. I think one of our guys in logistics said that this was a fairly normal disaster distribution. That’s part of the reason they divide ‘em up by species at all, you know – for timing and triage purposes. And our survivors are mostly Molren since they were the most numerous species aside from humans,” the Acting Controller sighed heavily. “Anyway, the longer we go, the fewer living humans we’re going to find among the ruins. Statistically.”
“But the human count also counts ables?”
“They’re divided at a sublevel,” Lou said, “but it’s hard to make out because there’s only eighteen of us.”
“Eighteen?” Clue exclaimed.
“And the other ninety-odd are ables?” Decay insisted.
Lou nodded unhappily. “The thing is,” he said, “there were a couple of big able living habs that went completely untouched – we’re not sure, but it looks like they were on sleep-shift and that might have had something to do with it, like their … I don’t know, their mental signatures or something were slowed down, harder to find or target. It’s all in the reports we forwarded to you. Anyway, that was about seventy ables right there. They’re tough too,” he added with a little shrug, “so they survive a knocking-around. That’s what they’re designed for. Technically, medically, they’re just very tough humans. We needed to use a few of them for transfusions and transplants, but there was more than enough among the casualties that we didn’t need to do anything too grisly,” he uttered a hollow laugh. “Lucky us, eh?”
“Well, like I say,” Clue said awkwardly, “our medical bay can fabricate organs and things if needed, even if we’re understaffed and the configuration system is shot. Meat’s easy enough.”
“Appreciated. It was weird though. All our fabrication plants were hit, all our big habitats and gathering places, but those two big dorms of ables were okay,” he grimaced. “Well, ‘okay’ in that there used to be eight plants and about three thousand ables. Statistically, like I say, they did pretty well compared to the rest of us. Better than the Bonshooni, even, from about the same starting population. I’m thinking it must’ve been the fact that they were sleeping.”
“Pretty small starting population,” Janya remarked idly, “for ables.”
“It’s a very old and established settlement,” Janus noted. “Not exactly the wild frontier.”
“Right,” Lou said, giving him a nod, “and the general ideology wasn’t in favour of having too many of them around anyway,” he added, sounding apologetic. “There were limits to how many ables we could print off per head of population, and what configurations we could give them, just like on an AstroCorps ship – except in emergency situations, of course,” he added with a second little nod, this time in Z-Lin’s direction. “We’re not about to turn our noses up at their help now, though, are we? Wild frontier’s got nothing on this mess. We’d’ve been printing the big buggers off around the clock since the attack, if we had any printers.”
“We can triple your able complement if you’re really not too fussy about their smarts,” Clue said. “If you’re willing to trade us for any more starship-capable specimens that we could add to our crew, we’d be more than willing to make that transaction permanent when we leave. I’ve calculated that we could swap at least five of our ables for a single qualified one from The Warm, depending on the specifics of the qualifications.”
“Seriously?” Bendis blinked.
“Seriously,” Clue replied, “but make no mistake, these ables of ours have problems, alright? They’ll be able to do simple stuff for you, but they’re pretty scrambled. And at the end of the day you still have to feed them, and keep them from going gee-lass, and fill their lungs.”
“Scrambled is fine,” Lou assured them, “as long as they can follow basic instructions. And if your modular can feed them and keep them breathing, we’ve got enough systems to keep them alive too.”
“Let’s say the ones we give you will be able to follow basic instructions,” Z-Lin hedged. “Our mutual regulations probably won’t allow us to offload our absolute bottom-shelf boys on
you, even if we were inclined to be so irresponsible.”
“It would require a bit of creative request filing and computer trickery,” Janya said, “but if we offload enough eejits – ables, under the shipboard emergency protocols and replaced key positions with ables from The Warm like you were saying, we could probably use the same protocols to print off as many more as they might need here,” she paused, then added carefully, “or at least as many as they’re able to support, which like Lou says, has to be a few more than our ship can, even with all this…” she waved vaguely around at the docking area at which their ship was the only operational vessel.
“I assume your own plants are gone, as opposed to damaged – much like your reactors,” Clue said. Bendis nodded grimly. “And you don’t have the parts or expertise left to repair our damaged shipboard systems?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Decay said without raising his eyes, and Lou shook his head sadly. Janus wondered when the man had last slept.
“Afraid not,” he said. “Like I told you, we could have done a great job on your modular, but that was then and this is now. We can’t do anything with your computer, we’ve got no synth, and we can’t help with your fabrication plant. We’ve got plenty of raw materials to stock up your reactor and your oxygen farms and all of that, and make a few other repairs for you, but we can’t do any of the big tech. I doubt even the Fergies can help you with that.”
“Alright,” Clue said, and they finally started to walk along the short concourse towards the emergency-bulkhead-enclosed central transit hub. “Our main tech repairs will have to wait, we’ve come this far without them and we can make do with what we can get from here. We help out as much as we can, upgrade what we can upgrade, and move on to the next settlement up the chain when we can.”
“Mm,” Lou said noncommittally.
“If there is another settlement,” Janus spoke up. “You know, I’m just saying.”
“Even if they’ve all been simultaneously hit,” Clue said quite firmly, “which I still find a bit difficult to imagine, Bayn Balro and The Warm each seem to have comparable proportions of surviving people and infrastructure. The larger the world, the better our chances of finding more significant undamaged areas.”
“Actually, that’s true,” Janus admitted. “And also I just realised I should probably have been more up-beat than that, seeing as how I’m ship’s counsellor and everything.”
“Yes,” Clue said, “let’s all of us keep it up-beat.”
There turned out to be a couple of different directions one could head from the Tramp, even with the comprehensiveness of the destruction, depending on whereabouts in the array one was headed. They didn’t see any sign of Waffa, or any indication as to which way he had headed. As Bendis had told them, Janus saw that there wasn’t so much damage here as erasure, but plenty of makeshift seals and cladding had been flung into place to make this docking spar capable of holding atmosphere against the vacuum outside. It was a mess, more like a slapdash construction site than a rescue and repair operation, and the overall cathedral-like impressiveness of the space was diluted by the panels and wiring and safety strips.
“We’ll select three hundred ables that will be most useful for you and least useful for us,” Z-Lin went on, “and get them signed onto your work details. In the meantime, anything else we can do…”
“You know, all this – with the plant and your ables and our needs, all of it – it actually meshes quite nicely,” the Acting Controller said, leading them across the chilly, echoing space towards a gaping hole that had once been a freight scrollwalk but was now a steeply-sloping ramp with an elevator platform riveted to a rail. Janus thought he seemed preoccupied by something, and had been since Z-Lin had mentioned moving on to a larger Six Species world. He wondered if the Acting Controller was worried about evacuation, or maybe thinking about how many of his people could fit on a little starship like the Tramp. A lot, Janus thought – especially if their swollen population of eejits was replaced by humans and Molranoids.
“Meshes, does it?” Z-Lin inquired politely.
“Mm,” Bendis said again. “You guys drop headcount quantity in favour of quality, freeing up shipboard resources that you’re probably going to be forced to drop.”
Z-Lin frowned as they jumped down onto the elevator platform, and Janus was reassured that she seemed to be as wary as he was, and had detected Lou’s veiled implication. There was a good five-foot gap between concourse and platform, but the low gravity made it easy. “What do you mean?” she asked as she landed and brought her heels back into contact with the metal, and Janus followed behind. Here comes the part where they try to commandeer the ship, he thought, steeling himself, and Sally blows the docking spar off at the roots.
“Well, all this stuff,” Lou hit a push-button on the hastily-assembled old-style control panel and started them descending. He held up his brother’s old organiser pad, flipped it over the back of his hand one more time, and waggled it. “I mean, these are our priorities,” he said, as they bumped and rattled down off the spar hub deck and into what was left of the bowels of The Warm, “but it turns out we have a priority zero for you.”
Decay looked up sharply from his own organiser. “You have an aki’Drednanth on board?” he asked. “She wasn’t on the manifest.”
“Late arrival,” Bendis replied. They continued descending through the increasingly-cold and clammy depths of the settlement. “And you know they tend to stay off the official lists. I’m not actually sure how many people are left who even know she’s here.”
“But she was here for the attack,” Decay said, “and survived? She hasn’t identified the attackers? What did she have to say?”
Bendis chuckled and raised his hands. “Whoa, whoa,” he said. “One question at a time. And oh yeah, I don’t have answers to basically any of them. She hasn’t given an official statement or anything but a quiet all-clear from her habitat out on the metal. I’m told she’s been part of a couple of deep-freeze rescue ops but I was never involved, I just coordinated my deputies and then got the reports. She was down below when the attack came and that’s most likely why she survived, but then … well … aki’Drednanth, you never know. I mean, she could have used her abilities to escape somehow, or evade attention. Don’t ask me, I just work here,” the long-suffering Acting Controller was beginning to look harried under the Blaran’s piercing gaze, and the harsh engineering lamps that illuminated the sloped elevator shaft were particularly unforgiving on his tired eyes and ruddy bald pate. “I don’t know where myth ends and fact begins with the big buggers, alright? I’ve never seen an aki’Drednanth, and that includes Thord. I only know she’s here, and that makes her – and her needs – your priority zero by the AstroCorps book.”
“Thord?” Janus asked before Decay could descend any further into stammering fanatical jabber. “That’s her name?”
“That’s her name,” Lou replied, “or – you know – that’s her human-friendly pseudonym,” he spared Decay a wry grin. “That at least I can tell you.”
DECAY
Decay considered himself a hard-boiled next-generation Blaran freed of historical obligation, superstition and baggage. Unlike Steña who – poor thing – had had first-gen Blaranity thrust upon her, he was born to it and inured against all that Ancient Debt bonsh the Molren went on about.
Nevertheless, he was fluttering with excitement inside.
They were about to stand before an aki’Drednanth.
Louzhan Bendis led them to another makeshift transit system built on the bones of a clearly superior one that now lacked the power infrastructure to run properly, and they traversed some more tunnels. The platform they disembarked at was scooped into the soft, silvery native mineral of The Warm – warmium, Lou kept calling it – and Decay couldn’t help but feel an additional flutter, this time of uneasiness and sorrow. It was cold here, so much so that even he was glad of the thermal garb, and if what they’d been told was true the temperature was only g
oing to drop.
“It’s still only about fifteen below here,” Bendis confirmed, when Decay crossed to the wall beside the ascending stairs and pressed his gloved upper left hand to the metallic surface. “The whole thing’s cooling from topside in. Up in the bubble we’re headed for, last readings put it at minus twenty-three.”
“Thord won’t even be wearing her envirosuit,” Decay said.
“Are you bioluminescing a bit there?” Janya murmured in amusement.
“Hope you brought your autograph book,” Clue added.
“Shut up.”
“I guess you run a pretty casual ship,” Bendis chuckled.
“We’ve been through the wringer,” the Commander shrugged. “And what can you expect from civilians?”
As if to illustrate this, Contro crossed past the access arch and toe-bounced over to a door set in the warmium. He opened it to reveal a dead, dusty maintenance and monitoring console. “Hello! What’s this?” he asked cheerfully.
“Nothing of any use to us anymore. This way,” the Acting Controller said, ushering them towards the stairs. They had once been automated but were now as dead as everything else, slightly oversized and awkward for the humans to climb but relatively easy for Decay. Of course, the effective absence of gravity aside from the practical illusion provided by their boots made it as easy for them as it was for him.
We’re going to see an aki’Drednanth, he thought, but no longer felt the urge to share with the group, not just out of her envirosuit, but in zero gee.
“Come on, Contro,” he said, giving the transpersion physicist a clap on the shoulder and noting in passing amusement that the smiling human was actually wearing a cardigan over the top of his thermal. “And don’t lick anything.”
“Thanks for reminding me!” Contro exclaimed, and rummaged in the pocket of his baggy top. He dropped his watch, managed to catch it before it could drift away, put it in his pocket, pulled out a paper-wrapped tube, dropped that, caught it as it bounced off the wall, and held it aloft triumphantly. “Aha! Anyone want a toffee? Eat up before they freeze, I always say! Well, not always, but it’s certainly a point! Ha ha ha!”
Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Page 8
